Damage Per Round

[loisel]

Damage Per Round

This thread is a comparison of the Damage Per Round of various character builds, in a one-on-one duel scenario. The only thing we're trying to do in this thread is to get the highest possible damage per round at various levels against a wide range of armor classes.

Related Threads

There's a few more statistical threads out there and they are very useful.

• The MM Statistics Thread
• Another DPR Thread: this one assumes an enemy with average defenses, and looks at your DPR as your level ranges from 1 to 30.

Notes about this thread

• I assume that all characters have all useful damage feats. This includes Lasting Frost and either Scimitar Dance or Hammer Rhythm. In order to get both at level 11, you must retrain a heroic feat.
• At Level 1, only basic nonmagical gear is allowed.
• At Level 11, All weapon-based attacks assume a +2 Frost Weapon, to help with Lasting Frost. This is upgraded to +4 at Level 20.
• At Level 11 and 20, All magical attacks assume a Wand of Icy Rays, and I assume that this is sufficient to give your power the [cold] keyword. I'm optimizing RAW, you may have to figure things out with your DM. Errata, er, I mean, "FAQ", says this doesn't work.
• For powers that proc when you are hit, I assume that your enemy hits you 50% of the time. This applies to the riposting Rogues, as well as to the Warlock's Hellish Rebuke.
• A power that targets Will is not directly comparable with a power that targets AC. As a heuristic, I am giving a bonus of +1 to hit if you target Reflex, and +3 to hit if you target Will or Fortitude; this is supposed to roughly match what monster defenses look like. EDIT: I know about this thread, I just haven't done anything about it yet.

The spreadsheet is here: v1.10.

At the time of this writing, I have looked at At-Will powers at level 10 and 20, and at Encounter powers at level 10.

I have looked at Fighters, Rangers, Rogues, Warlocks and Wizards. I have taken into account all the probabilities, critical hits, quarry, etc... very carefully. If you find an error in my spreadsheet, please let me know. I think my formulae are good, but I do find errors in my toons from time to time.

It's important to mention Fighter stances like Rain of Steel (see the Level 20 chart for an example of this). A particular awesome combination would be a Ranger who multiclasses into Fighter to pick up these stances.

If you can give me any suggestions for good builds that are going to score high on this contest, please let me know.

Without further ado, here are the graphs.

Level 1

At Level 1, unsurprisingly, characters are pretty well balanced, although already the Warlocks show their weakness. These are PHB-only characters and are not optimized to the max, but they are good characters. It's Level 1, we're still just playing games.

I've only looked at At-Will powers.

To read this table, look at the legend. Each line in the graph corresponds to a character using a specific power. I usually give the race, the class (and later the paragon path), as well as the level (in this chart, it's all 1), the weapon and the at-will power that's being used. The number(s) at the end (like 20 or 19/16) denote the ability scores. If it's just one number, that's the primary ability score (e.g., Str for a Fighter.) If it's two numbers, the first is the primary ability score, the second is the secondary ability score. The primary ability score is always the one that applies to the attack roll of the power being used. So, for instance, for a Wizard with Cloud of Daggers, the Primary is Intelligence, and the secondary is Wisdom. Sometimes, the Primary stat is lower than the Secondary!



Level 11

Level 11 is Serious Business. You get your Paragon Paths and, unless you've planned out carefully since Level 1 (or you cheat like in Dragon Magazine :P), you won't be able to take those super important feats like Scimitar Dance. The very first graph I produced was for the Level 11 toons, and many of them are Bugbears and Minotaurs, because that lets you get slightly better weapons and get slightly better ability scores. However, I've also produced a second chart from PHB-only classes, adding some character types that people want to play, just to see what their "DPR cost" is (compared to the best possible characters).

You also now have many Encounter powers, so you can expect to be busting out lots of those during any given encounter. Therefore, I am including the Encounter Power chart as well.







Level 20

At Level 20, your character is having his mid-life crisis, and is probably buying a corvette and cruising around the mall trying to impress the schoolgirls. Many of the game-changing powers (Blade Cascade?) make their appearance in the Paragon Levels, so I take another look at optimized characters. The big surprise here is the Fighter stance Unyielding Avalanche. Any melee character should multiclass to Fighter and substitute their daily for this stance, it is simply that good.

Important Remark: Although I have included "Unyielding Avalanche", which is a daily Fighter stance, it is only as an example of what happens if you throw in some dailies. There are many other DPR-enhancing abilities like Flaming Sphere, more stances, Armor of Agathys, etc... Because this one feature is causing so many comments, I will remove it from a future version of the spreadsheet.

[blargney the second]

Neat stuff! Thanks for posting these here.
-blarg

[Psychic Robot]

Ermm...shouldn't the warlock be a little higher up? (Not in terms of math, but theory.)

[loisel]

Ermm...shouldn't the warlock be a little higher up? (Not in terms of math, but theory.)

I wish. I wanted to play a lock, and I wanted to quantify the DPR cost of playing a Lock over a Ranger, so I did all this.

I still would like to play a lock but right now I'm finding it hard to swallow. It seems like the Wizard is a better choice...

[MeMeMeMe]

There's more to class balance and power than DPR, though.

[GnomeWorks]

Some rather nifty work, there. I'm not really sure I understand what's going on with those tables, but it looks like it took a long time...

There's more to class balance and power than DPR, though.

Not the point of the thread. It's an examination of potential damage output, not asking whether the classes are balanced or not.

[Revinor]

I know it is a lot of work to prepare it, but what about actually sticking to PHB races? I don't really think that classes were balanced against MM races, so having same graph for PHB races would be great.

If I could request one more thing for checking... I know it is not possible with RAW, but assuming it would be allowed to multiclass into Stormwarden with Warrior of the Wild, how well Rogue->Stormwarden would manage here (synergy on dex giving probably like extra 20 guaranteed dmg at 16 lvl).

Are ranger archers completely out of competition ? I feel their damage is not best, but are they really worse that warlocks in this area?

[MeMeMeMe]

Not the point of the thread. It's an examination of potential damage output, not asking whether the classes are balanced or not.

I thought the OP's goal was to decide which class he wanted to play. Calculating DPR was just the way he chose to decide if it was worth it.

[loisel]

I know it is a lot of work to prepare it, but what about actually sticking to PHB races?

Yeah, I'm wondering too. I'll probably do a level 10 matchup, but assuming the order doesn't change too much, I'll do just one chart.

If I could request one more thing for checking... I know it is not possible with RAW, but assuming it would be allowed to multiclass into Stormwarden with Warrior of the Wild

That you'll have to try yourself (just download the spreadsheet). It will help the rogue for sure, although I'm guessing a Ranger Stormwarden will still be a little bit better.

Are ranger archers completely out of competition ? I feel their damage is not best, but are they really worse that warlocks in this area?

I didn't do them, but Archers are probably comparable to Rogues. The reason why Stormwardens dominate is because of three reasons:

1) The damage on a miss, due do scimitar dance. That's 5-6 points of damage at the right end of the chart.

2) The automatic dex damage from the Stormwarden 11 ability. That's another 5-6 damage, everywhere on the chart.

3) At the left end of the charts, Power Attack plays an important role.

For these reasons, you can imagine the Archers as being maybe 10 DPR less than a Stormwarden across the board?

Archers do get access to Sly Hunter (+3 damage to isolated targets), but I personally think that's not a good feat, because it'll be too hard to find isolated targets.

Again, if you really want to know, just try the spreadsheet.

[generalhenry]

wooh

flash backs of 2E experience charts