I think they should take another hard look at their combat design in general. The aforementioned divide and conquer style battlefield control MUST be an integral part of D&D combat, or any tactical combat for that matter. It will only get more glaring later in the levels. This includes, but is not limited to:
- designing battlefields where you actually have chokepoints
- not allowing enemies to effortlessly jump or teleport around any AoE effect you might place to hinder their movement
- allowing AoE control spells to actually do their job without coming up with various ways to instantly blow them up
- not giving almost every enemy some form of powerful new ranged attack
- torches and flaming weapons not igniting ground effects unless they actually touch them (intentional action, i.e. Dip)
A controller spellcaster must be a valid way to play the game. Blowing stuff up is fun and all but it gets old, and there should be a "smarter" way too.
