PC Lifeplanner Spreadsheet - damage/defense statistics

Splart · Jul 27, 2008

In struggling with planning the best cycle for a PC, I created a spreadsheet to calculate and analyze all defense scores, attacks, and damage per round against a monster of the same level as the PC. This gives a feeling for how the PC damage/defense moves over time, and helps with choosing the stats. The damage charts are similar to the charts from Loisel, but instead of plotting against a range of ACs, I plot at the expected damage or defense for each level in the PCs life.

Here's the spreadsheet: 4e PC Lifeplanner Spreadsheet v1.5

Monster stats are based on DMG p. 184 and the thread on MM stats

Instructions are on the sheet. Here's a few pictures of what it shows:

Monster Attacks Until Bloodied against AC
This is how many times on average you can be attacked by a monster of the same level before you become bloodied.

The bottom axis is the level of your PC. Left axis is how many attacks you could take before you were bloodied. As an example, the for the 12th level Halfling Rogue/Ranger, he could handle 12 attacks against AC from an average 12th level monster before becoming bloodied.

Here is the Damage Per Round

The bottom axis is the level of your PC. Left axis is damage per round. As an example, for the 12th level Halfling Rogue multiclassed into Ranger to steal the Twin Strike at-will attack, he does 30 HP damage per round with his attacks against the average 12th level monster.

Here is a combination of the two.

Give to Get - How many monsters can you kill in a line before you get bloodied?

The bottom axis is the level of your PC. Left axis is how many monsters you could kill in one to one combat before you became bloodied. As an example, the for the 12th level Halfling Rogue/Ranger, he could kill 3.5 monsters of his level before becoming bloodied.

There is still more fine-tuning that could be done. Let me know what questions or comments you have.

--Splart

Runestar · Jul 27, 2008

Ouch...my eyes hurt. How am I supposed to interpret this chart again???

loisel · Jul 27, 2008

This is great stuff. I also wanted one of those, but I see you beat me to it.

Some early observations:

1) I can't figure out why your Scimitar Ranger 1 has auto damage.

2) Your wizard is not a very good build. Aside from the fact that orb wizards with high wisdom and the sleep spell are full of pwn, the human int 17/wis 19 (at level 1) Wizard with Cloud of Daggers is much better than what you have, because you get Wis bonus as automatic damage.

EDIT:

3) I can't figure out why your dual-wielding Rogue-Ranger has a higher AC than the Elf Ranger. How can he use a shield?

EDIT 2:

4) I'm not so sure about your damage charts. I don't understand how your normal damage per strike can average 19.5 at level 11 for the Elf Ranger with a Scimitar. It should be something like 1d8 + 2 (WF) +2 (enh). Even if you add cold vulnerability, and even with a +3 weapon instead of +2, you would still only get 14.5 average damage on a regular hit. What's going on?

Splart · Jul 27, 2008

I've made the pictures bigger, and added additional explanation for how to read them.

loisel said:
1) I can't figure out why your Scimitar Ranger 1 has auto damage.

You are correct that damage is not right for the Scim ranger under level 11. My intent was to find the damage for a ranger with Scimitar Dance and Stormwarden, but the code doesn't set a minimum level for those things yet, so it's not accurate below 11. Something I may do in the future.

loisel said:
2) Your wizard is not a very good build. Aside from the fact that orb wizards with high wisdom and the sleep spell are full of pwn, the human int 17/wis 19 (at level 1) Wizard with Cloud of Daggers is much better than what you have, because you get Wis bonus as automatic damage.

I don't agree that the Wand of Icy Rays causes the Cloud of Daggers to be cold damage. There have been a couple of threads discussing this, and I think the consensus is that Frost weapons work, but Wands of Icy Frost don't for giving the "Frost" keyword to attacks. In light of that, I'm not sure if Cloud of Daggers is better than Ray of Frost which can leverage the Lasting Frost and Wintertouched feats. I'd have to run that through to find out.

loisel said:
3) I can't figure out why your dual-wielding Rogue-Ranger has a higher AC than the Elf Ranger. How can he use a shield?

He's not dual-wielding. He's using Twin Strike with a ranged attack using daggers and a shield. There's no requirement to use a bow for a Twin Strike ranged attack that I could find.

loisel said:
4) I'm not so sure about your damage charts. I don't understand how your normal damage per strike can average 19.5 at level 11 for the Elf Ranger with a Scimitar. It should be something like 1d8 + 2 (WF) +2 (enh). Even if you add cold vulnerability, and even with a +3 weapon instead of +2, you would still only get 14.5 average damage on a regular hit. What's going on?

I added +5 cold damage for Wintertouched straight into the regular damage for all PCs that could use it at level 11. The weapon is only +2, since it has Frost keyword. The missing +1 damage is for the Two Weapon Fighting feat.

Revinor · Jul 27, 2008

Splart said:
You are correct that damage is not right for the Scim ranger under level 11. My intent was to find the damage for a ranger with Scimitar Dance and Stormwarden, but the code doesn't set a minimum level for those things yet, so it's not accurate below 11. Something I may do in the future.

Same goes for twin-strike rogue - his backstab chances should not get higher before 11th level. Additionally, it might be quite hard for ranged rogue to get CA on every round with ranged attacks - as Lasting Frost is not yet available.

Unless I'm confused and he is actually Ranger/Rogue. His quarry bonus seems to indicate so - it looks like ranger quarry, not rogue backstab. On the other hand, to hit bonuses look like rogue ones...

I think that for melee rogue, you should probably use brutal scoundrel build. If you assume always having CA, it is better than sky flourish for dpr - plus use riposte strike, which should do wonders in your duel comparison (as monster will be always attacking rogue back). Also consider going rapier route, with kensei paragon.

Click to expand...

Splart · Jul 27, 2008

Revinor said:
SAdditionally, it might be quite hard for ranged rogue to get CA on every round with ranged attacks - as Lasting Frost is not yet available.

One of the limitations of the spreadsheet is that it cannot account for changing attacks during the career of a PC. To keep a reasonable level of complexity, it assumes you use the same attack from level 1 to 30. For the case of the rogue multi-classed into ranger, for levels 1-10, a different column has to be used. The same is true for the ranger. Until level 11 when he becomes a Stormwarden and gets Scimitar Dance, he is better off using his bow than meleeing. That's why I have two ranger columns. The longbow ranger is for 1-10 and the scimitar ranger is for 11+.

Revinor said:
Unless I'm confused and he is actually Ranger/Rogue. His quarry bonus seems to indicate so - it looks like ranger quarry, not rogue backstab. On the other hand, to hit bonuses look like rogue ones...

All of the special attacks, Quarry, Lock Curse, and Sneak Attack are called "Quarry" for simplicity in the spreadsheet.

The next version of the spreadsheet will allow a modifier to Sneak Attack damage, to show that it's not a sure thing. On the other hand, I find that because of the heavy damage rogues do when flanking, if partnered with a marking fighter, they often give the fighter free attacks. It's not exact, but it does account for some additional damage when the rogue does have CA.

Revinor said:
I think that for melee rogue, you should probably use brutal scoundrel build. If you assume always having CA, it is better than sky flourish for dpr - plus use riposte strike, which should do wonders in your duel comparison (as monster will be always attacking rogue back). Also consider going rapier route, with kensei paragon.

Hmm. You're right. In a literal duel riposte would be a big factor. I don't think of it as an actual duel. It's just a metaphor to show how good offense is compared to defense.

As Loisel already showed with his spreadsheet, even brutal scoundrel, riposte strike, and a rapier does less damage than a ranger. Since the rogue/ranger does nearly as much damage as the ranger Stormwarden, but with a much better AC, it's clearly the better path. Once Twin Strike is available, Riposte Strike is irrelevant. In order to do a melee Twin Strike, the rogue MUST wield two weapons and use Str as his modifier. This means no shield and probably not enough stats left after maximizing Str and Dex for Con to get Hide Armor or Spec Hide feats. That's 4 points of AC (large shield 2, shield spec 1, hide spec 1) lost at 30, which will kill the rogue's Gives to Gets ratio, or damage inflicted to suffered ratio. A Str bonus to Sneak Attack comes nowhere near making up for it.

--Splart

Revinor · Jul 27, 2008

Splart said:
All of the special attacks, Quarry, Lock Curse, and Sneak Attack are called "Quarry" for simplicity in the spreadsheet.

Yes, but in rogue/ranger column they also seem to deal damage as quarry, not as sneak attack.

As Loisel already showed with his spreadsheet, even brutal scoundrel, riposte strike, and a rapier does less damage than a ranger. --Splart

Sure - I was talking about second rogue from your spreadsheet, one which has gone to Daggermaster paragon path. Twin strike rogue will work only with ranged attacks, so I called daggermaster one 'melee rogue' - I probably should be more explicit.

loisel · Jul 27, 2008

Splart said:
I added +5 cold damage for Wintertouched straight into the regular damage for all PCs that could use it at level 11. The weapon is only +2, since it has Frost keyword. The missing +1 damage is for the Two Weapon Fighting feat.

OK, so I'm coming up with 4.5(scim)+2(enh)+2(WF)+1(TWF)+5(cold)=14.5, instead of your 19.5.

What's going on? Same comment for the Rogue/Ranger.

By the way, TWF for the Scimitar Ranger only applies every other attack, so you should really be counting +0.5(TWF), for a total of 14.0 average damage.

Splart · Jul 28, 2008

Thanks, Loisel. You caught a mistake in my damage formula. It was adding lvl/2 damage, since I copied it from the TH formula. I've corrected now.

Now I understand why you didn't add in the TWF feat. The main hand only thing is a pain. I'll have to think if I want to add in something into the formulas to account for that correctly. For now I've corrected it to 0.5 damage, which is a rough approximation.

Revinor, I found what you were talking about with the Rogue/Ranger quarry looking like ranger. I had his class listed wrong on the PC page. I've fixed it now, so he does sneak attack damage as a rogue. Thanks.

Both are fixed in the new version above.

ac_noj · Jul 28, 2008

Splart, your work here is both very impressive and completely flawed. The spreadsheet you’ve created looks like it could be a very useful tool, but the data you’ve put into it and the conclusions your charts show are worthless.
The core of the problem is this: Spamming your At Will powers is a very poor way to go about a fight, and the survivability of a Striker cannot be measured simply by comparing your defenses to their attacks. It is only in this unlikely scenario that a Rogue that’s taken Ranger as a Paragon Path would come out on top.

I know that averaging out the At Wills, Encounter Powers and Daily Powers over a X rounds and a Y fights is extremely difficult but it’s the only accurate way to measure DPR. In fact I’ve used loisel’s spreadsheet to do it for a couple of builds.
Survivability is even worse. A Striker is by design supposed to move around looking for the best angle of attack, and has a number of powers that assist them in doing this. This makes their survivability extremely subjective to play style, the type of encounter, whether or not you’re a ranged attacker, how easily you can escape combat, how good your defender is, etc.
The defences vs. monster attacks part of your chart is very nice for comparing the ability of a Defender to soak damage, but not for Strikers.

I’m sorry if this sounds a bit harsh, I really do think that you’ve made a great spreadsheet. You just need to re-think what you’re trying to work out with it.

P.S. Have a look at a melee Ranger with the Pit Fighter Paragon Path. You get a bonus to AC and a very large damage boost.

PC Lifeplanner Spreadsheet - damage/defense statistics

Splart

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Runestar

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loisel

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Splart

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Revinor

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Splart

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Revinor

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loisel

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Splart

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ac_noj

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