Tweaking party composition

[Mentat55]

Question: I am a player in a level 16 party, our player complement is in a bit of flux (we are losing our avenger on a temporary, but potentially permanent, basis). Thus, I am thinking of changing my PC to make things run more smoothly.

Current party:

• Half-elf cunning bard
• Dragonborn cleric (Str/Wis, mixes melee, ranged, and AOE attacks)
• Goliath paladin (Charisma, wields trident and shield)
• Tiefling infernal warlock
• Human tome wizard (me)

So the party has two strong leaders, a defender, and a striker, plus my controller (the wizard). However, without our avenger, we have only two frontline characters for a 5-person party, and the cleric often uses ranged attacks. Between the bard, warlock, and cleric, we have a lot of secondary control, and between the two leaders and the paladin, we have a tremendous amount of buffing and healing.

I am thinking of playing a great weapon fighter, mainly because I really want to play a fighter in 4e (actually I wanted to throughout 3e too, but always ended up playing other party roles), but I am not entirely sure if that is the best fit. And when I say I want to play a "fighter", what I really mean is that I want to play a melee character that smacks or stabs people, so class is pretty open.

Ignoring stuff like really specific builds, does anyone have any suggestions? My current thoughts are great weapon fighter, two weapon fighter, two weapon fighter|ranger, fighter|barbarian, or warden|barbarian. I think the party needs another melee character, and probably would want that melee character to be a defender shading towards striker, or even an outright striker, but perhaps you can convince me otherwise -- or convince me to continue playing my wizard.

 

[mneme]

@Mentat55 :

Half-elf cunning bard

Strong Leader (some control)

Dragonborn cleric (Str/Wis, mixes melee, ranged, and AOE attacks)

Strong Leader (mix of everything, decent AoE crowd control)

Goliath paladin (Charisma, wields trident and shield)

Weak Defender, with good leader secondary

Tiefling infernal warlock

Weak striker, with good controller secondary

Human tome wizard (me)

Strong controller.

Taking out your wizard, and treating strong class fits at 1.5 and secondaries as .5, I get:

Leader: 3.5
Defender: 1
Controller: 1.5
Striker: 1

And its worth nothing that controller is the least necessary power set.

So it seems like you're over-supplied on leaders, and could really use more striking and defensive power. (given your ideas for what to play, I think you've realized this).

I'd probably go with a fighter optimized for damage. Any fighter with a modicum of thoughtfullness will be a very good defender; the paladin and leaders can keep you up even if you take some hits, and as a fighter who "plays striker" you can help keep the squishies from going down while doing the lion's share of the damage to the bad guys yourself.

Another approach, of course, would be to see what you can do to make the party work. For instance, if you rerolled as a summoner rather than a book mage, you could summon monsters to occupy the front lines while your mostly ranged party kept its distance. But mechanically, a fighter's a better choice.

 

[Mentat55]

I've actually begun shifting some of my daily powers to summoning creatures. So far, the DM has ignored my summoned monsters, and as of right now, it is only something I can do twice per day (my level 15 daily is typically prismatic beams).

 

[Mummolus]

You could also consider a blackguard - would be a decent striker with a solid defender element. Also works nicely as a foil to the paladin in the group, lots of potential rp there.

 

[Ajar]

Battleragers make pretty good secondary strikers. I've got a warforged battlerager who started with Str 18/Con 18, and took feats to let him add his Con mod to damage on his opportunity attacks and Combat Challenge attacks, in addition to taking various powers that have Str mod + Con mod in the damage expression. He's only level 3 so far, but I was leaning toward the Dreadnought paragon path, IIRC.

 

[Mentat55]

Battleragers make pretty good secondary strikers. I've got a warforged battlerager who started with Str 18/Con 18, and took feats to let him add his Con mod to damage on his opportunity attacks and Combat Challenge attacks, in addition to taking various powers that have Str mod + Con mod in the damage expression. He's only level 3 so far, but I was leaning toward the Dreadnought paragon path, IIRC.

Funny you should mention it, but one of the character ideas I am kicking around is a warforged fighter/kensei wielding a maul and using Hammer Rhythm to generate consistent damage. Adding the feats that boost OAs and Combat Challenge with your Con mod is a good idea. I went with Two-handed Weapon Talent and plate armor instead of battlerager, though.

 

[IanB]

It looks to me like you really need a striker more than anything, especially if the cleric is heavy on area blasty type stuff for handling minions.

You might consider a slayer, if essentials classes are to your taste. A barbarian covers the 'dude with big 2h weapon' niche pretty well too.

 

[mneme]

I've actually begun shifting some of my daily powers to summoning creatures. So far, the DM has ignored my summoned monsters, and as of right now, it is only something I can do twice per day (my level 15 daily is typically prismatic beams).

If you want summons to be effective deterrents (or damage sinks) you need them to be able to draw enemy's attention. The Abyssal Maw's actually best standing side by side with another melee character (or flanking with him), as they get automatic punishment, but don't have anything to do about shift+charge. The Arrowhawk isn't half bad either, if you use it right--it marks, which is nice, but it's only really sticky if it hovers right above the enemy's head.

The Chainbearer's also nicely sticky (threatening reach + slide kinda does that), but your level 15 slot is filled.

 

[tiornys]

Funny you should mention it, but one of the character ideas I am kicking around is a warforged fighter/kensei wielding a maul and using Hammer Rhythm to generate consistent damage. Adding the feats that boost OAs and Combat Challenge with your Con mod is a good idea. I went with Two-handed Weapon Talent and plate armor instead of battlerager, though.

Weapon Talent is definitely superior to Battlerager if you're looking to play up the striker side of a Fighter. A Mordenkrad-wielding hammer build is very good at damage. However, a likely superior option is the Gouge, which has a similarly huge [W], but draws on axe and spear support instead of hammer support. Your consistency drops a bit, but you can have better balanced defenses since you don't need as much Con. This also makes it easier to use Wis-based options like Marked Scourge. Significantly, you get access to the triple attack Rain of Blows, which is potentially the highest single-target damage option on the entire Fighter encounter list. You can find a damage-focused fighter build (The Crusher) in this post on the WotC CharOp forum.

t~

 

[Destil]

Eh, I'd avoid a gouge-charge build just because it looks like your party isn't super-optimized, and such a build very much is. Charge is the strongest and easiest thing to abuse in the rules right now by far.

A good solid great-weapon fighter with a hammer or an axe would also, for me at least, be more fun than a one-trick pony (no mater how good that trick is). Fighter/barbarian hybrid or muilticlass may also be a way to go if you want to balance defending and attacking.