Slayer build sillyness

Mezzer · Oct 29, 2010

Having great RBAs is why I ultimately decided to go with the Dex build, since we kinda needed some more ranged firepower. And my stances are Mobile Blade and Unfettered Fury, both of which are great with the bow as well.

And altough Power Strike on any basic attack would certainly be better, I don't particularly mind it as it is, since odds are you're gonna land at least one melee attack in any given fight.

ourchair · Oct 31, 2010

AbdulAlhazred said:
Huh?

The fighter is a defender, so why would it be unusual for a striker to do more damage than a defender? Not only that but you're dead wrong about the fighter being less capable as a damage dealer than other defenders, that's nonsense. The baseline PHB1 fighter is VERY close to striker level damage already, AND has the best defending mechanics in the game (well arguably the Knight may now be better, but the jury is still out on that). In any situation where the Fighter can draw mark punishment/OAs he will QUICKLY surpass pretty much any other class in damage output too, including Slayers, Bow Rangers, etc. Build a good punishing GWT fighter and grab fullblade, you're LETHAL and anyone who defies your mark is a fool. Of course you won't do the damage of a Slayer or a Bow Ranger BASELINE and you shouldn't.

I just can't really understand why anyone would think fighters should be doing striker level damage if they have defender mechanics. Slayer really isn't a good point of comparison with the fighter overall. They are built for different things.

I agree.

The PHB Fighter may not be a Striker, nor may it deal the damage of other Defenders, but the class features that are geared towards how it does its job guarantee that when played right, it can be LETHAL LETHAL LETHAL. Through a combination of favorable dice, and absurd accuracy min-maxing I have NEVER missed with my Dragonborn Great Weapon Fighter through all 8 levels I've played him.

I've played a Warden, a Paladin and a Swordmage and the Fighter is supremely supreme at punishment. With a bit of help from friends and the right min-maxing, flying solos and elites can be rendered helpless by it.

Gort · Oct 31, 2010

I found that while fighters tended to keep up in damage with the strikers (especially when you start using Sweeping Blow and Come and Get It in the same round to make effectively about 10 attacks) in Heroic tier, by Paragon they really started to lag. The fighter'll hit for about 17 damage, then the assassin will do 50. Or the sorcerer will do 25 to everyone in the world.

Of course, this was a shield fighter optimised to be as indestructible as possible, so it wasn't like we were trying to out-do the strikers.

What can a greatweapon fighter do to rival striker damage in the paragon tier? I suppose you'd boost your wisdom as high as possible and take Pit Fighter, or do some hybrid cheese.

Njall · Oct 31, 2010

Gort said:
What can a greatweapon fighter do to rival striker damage in the paragon tier? I suppose you'd boost your wisdom as high as possible and take Pit Fighter, or do some hybrid cheese.

Yeah, Pit Fighter + Marked Scourge, and Slashing Storm in epic as well.
Add a decent Con score and an at-will like Brash Strike to the mix, choose a couple of multi attack powers and you're probably on par with your average striker (rogue/warlock) as far as DPR and nova damage go.
Heck, by the time you're epic you're probably going to deal more damage than the Slayer (3xWis/round beats Dex+8, your average daily stance is better than any at-will stance the Slayer can use and if you run out of daily stances you can always use Battle Fury Stance) , and you retain your defender abilities on top of that...

CovertOps · Oct 31, 2010

Gort said:
I found that while fighters tended to keep up in damage with the strikers (especially when you start using Sweeping Blow and Come and Get It in the same round to make effectively about 10 attacks) in Heroic tier, by Paragon they really started to lag. The fighter'll hit for about 17 damage, then the assassin will do 50. Or the sorcerer will do 25 to everyone in the world.

Of course, this was a shield fighter optimised to be as indestructible as possible, so it wasn't like we were trying to out-do the strikers.

What can a greatweapon fighter do to rival striker damage in the paragon tier? I suppose you'd boost your wisdom as high as possible and take Pit Fighter, or do some hybrid cheese.

The fighter in my game took an Urgosh and combined it with every power that added CON to damage for his Warforged. Some require an Axe and some don't have any requirement, but his static damage bonus was just a few points behind the Sorcerer at level 18 (+26 vs +30 IIRC).

AbdulAlhazred · Oct 31, 2010

Gort said:
What can a greatweapon fighter do to rival striker damage in the paragon tier? I suppose you'd boost your wisdom as high as possible and take Pit Fighter, or do some hybrid cheese.

Sure, Pit Fighter, or Kensai. You don't really need hybrid cheese at all. Just pick up a nice Execution Axe, boost wisdom, toss in the challenge and OA boosting feats and the Axe feats. You can easily be doing striker level damage all the way up. You're a VERY good defender still too, anything that gets next to you and gets marked, forget it they won't dare defy that mark and take a hit, you can be 3 points more accurate on OAs/CC without even trying very hard. A couple hits an encounter with an E-Axe will knock your DPR through the stratosphere. At Epic it isn't hard for the wizard or etc to pick up a nice dominate condition and have enemies run through your zone of death, lol. Then you still have Come and Get It + RoS and other such silliness that is every bit as good as any trick your average striker can come up with.

As far as "why wasn't there an actual striker build of fighter before" the reason is simply to do with 4e design. You want to be a melee striker you take ranger or rogue for a class, not fighter. The only thing that was missing before was a non-barbarian two-weapon striker, and it was harder to refluff the barb. So Slayer fills up that one niche pretty well and it is fine if it is a build of fighter, but it really has little to do with fighters and there's no reason to compare it to the PHB fighters. Compare it to the PHB2 barbarian instead, that's the more valid comparison.

UngeheuerLich · Oct 31, 2010

Ok, I don´t get the cheese complaints...

Gooing outside your role has always been a nice twist for me... A 2-weapon fighter just defends by beeing strikerish if you ignore him... seems like a goodf concept...

a slayer has much less going for him... you can ignore him usually...

Actually i don´t think you should compare any classes against each other... the only 2 questions you should ask yourself are:

1. Is the character class design flavourful?
2. Does it do its job?

Lets take the warlock example:

1. Yes, i like it
2. Yes it does

Even as a star pact warlock?

Yes, even then...

edit: allowing the choice of charisma or con for dire radiance would not hurt though...

DracoSuave · Oct 31, 2010

Perun said:
I don't know whether this has been covered before, and if it has, I appologise. I just had to share

A player in our group has made a Slayer to replace his shaman character in our Dark Sun game, now at 2nd level.

In short, he made a human slayer (with a gladiator theme, but that's more or less irrelevant), he made Dex his highest stat (20, after racial modifier), and took Melee Training (Dex) and Master at Arms as his 1st-level feats (Surprising Charge [Martial Power] is his 2nd-lvl choice).

His attack is now +11 vs. AC, and he deals 2d6+8 damage (brutal 1) on a regular, unmodified melee basic attack. Which is better than any Str/Dex combination could achieve.

Dex 20:

+5 to hit, +6 to damage.

Str 20 Dex 14:

+5 to hit, +6 to damage.

What does the feat do for you again?

Even better, at 8th level, when his Dex increases to 22, his damage automatically increases by 2 points. He also has a good AC (unsurprisingly) and a decent number of hp (Con 14). About the only area where this character "suffers" is his Athletics check.

Str 22, Dex 16.

+6 to hit, +8 to damage.

What does the feat do for you again?

A character with Str 18 and Dex 16 ends up worse in the attack & damage department -- at 2nd level, such a character would attack at +10, and his damage would be identical to the all-Dex slayer. A Str 20/Dex 14 character could gain the same attack & damage values as the all-Dex slayer, but would have lower hp and AC.

False comparison. Comparing the damage and attack of a character based on an 18 primary is not as good as comparing to a 20 primary.

And you have a free feat, which you can use to take toughness, if hps are that important to you, or to take an armor feat, if ac is that important to you.

Str 20, Dex 14 + Toughness has more hps than your build can ever achieve.

I find it interesting that a single feat (Melee Training [Dex]) can have so great influence on a character class. I wouldn't call this slayer overpowered, but the fact that a character so modified can out-perform the basic, original version of the class (or, in this case, a build) clearly suggests that it wasn't a planned result.

It equally performs a min-maxed version of the class. It costs you a feat to accomplish an exceedingly insignifigant bonus to your hps, and +1 AC. That's not over performing; that's called 'on par.'

The Little Raven · Oct 31, 2010

Perun said:
His attack is now +11 vs. AC, and he deals 2d6+8 damage (brutal 1) on a regular, unmodified melee basic attack. Which is better than any Str/Dex combination could achieve.

This is wrong. At 2nd level, I can have a Str/Dex combo that has a +11 to AC and 2d6+9 damage (brutal 1) on a regular unmodified melee basic attack.

Two slayers, one Half-Orc and one Human, with the same starting array (18,14,11,10,10,8).

Half-Orc Slayer - 20 Str / 16 Dex
1 5/3 = 8
4 5/3 = 8
8 6/4 = 10
11 6/4 = 10
14 7/5 = 12
18 7/5 = 12
21 8/6 = 14 (9/7 = 16; +2 Str/+2 Dex epic destiny)
24 8/6 = 14 (9/7 = 16; +2 Str/+2 Dex epic destiny)
28 9/7 = 16 (10/8 = 18; +2 Str/+2 Dex epic destiny)

Human Slayer - 20 Dex / Melee Training
1 5/2 = 7
4 5/2 = 7
8 6/3 = 9
11 6/3 = 9
14 7/3 = 10
18 7/3 = 10
21 8/4 = 12 (9/4 = 13; +2 Dex/+2 one other epic destiny)
24 8/4 = 12 (9/4 = 13; +2 Dex/+2 one other epic destiny)
28 9/4 = 13 (10/5 = 15; +2 Dex/+2 one other epic destiny)

The slayers have the same attack bonus, but the Half-Orc has higher damage from the getgo, and the gap widens at 14 and 28 (or 21, with the right ED).

Perun · Nov 1, 2010

DracoSuave said:
<snip>

The Little Raven said:
<snip>

I'm afraid you're a bit late for the parade, guys. If you read the thread past the first couple of posts, you'd have seen that we sorted it all out, and I was shown the errors of my ways

To sum it all up: my original assumptions were wrong, Str/Dex combo can deal more damage than the Dex-focused build, but it (the Dex-focused slayer) remains a fun and viable character with certain benefits of its own.

Regards.