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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Badapple" data-source="post: 5057725" data-attributes="member: 71811">Well it's all fun theorycraft, but once the dice hit the table all bets are off.  This is my experience, and of course it's all totally invalid because every group plays different, has different builds, different situations, blah blah blah.  So here's my useless, but hopefully interesting, anecdotal two cents: So far I've DMed a group to 9-10th level, and played in a group that just reached 10th level.  Our groups have kept the same characters since first level.  Party sizes vary from 5-7 players.  So I can't speak for paragon+, but over the course of play we've had a chance to see 2 warlord builds and 2 cleric builds in action.  One group has a taclord and a lazer cleric, the other group has a str cleric and an inspiring warlord.  Based on my experiences I'll make the following generalizations: 1.  Warlords and Clerics are great complements to each other, and I'd rather have one of each in the group than two clerics or two warlords.  All those warlord powers that are great, buuuut you have to hit?  Well brand lets you hit! 2.  I have yet to see any one of these four leaders consistently outperform any of the others to the point where one build seems broken or gimped. 3.  Warlords are more "swingy".  There are some fights that become utter brutal kill fests because of warlord bonuses.  Other fights the warlord is a useless appendage.  Clerics are very solid, consistant performers.  Want to neutralize a warlord?  Run a battle on a very large battlemat with the PCs all spread out... or with hedges or walls all over the place.  Quickly the warlord bonuses are unable to be effectively applied.  Oh or have zones and stuff that block line of sight... guaranteed frustration to the warlords! 4.  If the party size is less than 5, clerics are better.  For every party member over 5, warlords just get more and more appealing, as their bonuses tend to be party wide bonuses. 5.  The healing pecking order seems to be lazer cleric > inspiring warlord > str cleric > taclord, but I suppose that varies highly based on feats/gear etc. 6.  The str cleric does very well being in the front lines, with the warlords being ok, and the lazer cleric being not good.  The str cleric can take gobs of damage and usually never runs out of healing surges. The two parties work pretty well in their own ways:Party 1:  Has two defenders and great healing from the lazer cleric.  The tac lord gives out great offensive bonuses.  This party has occasionally gone utterly ballistic and annihilated stuff, but also they have gotten their asses handed to them more regularly.  They were almost total party killed once (last fight of thunderspire labyrith) and have had a character die.  They seem to be a little more swingy. Party 2:  Has only one defender, but the str cleric and inspiring warlord both are competent healers.  More strikers in this party mean more damage overall, so this party doesn't miss the taclord offensive boost.  This party has yet to have an "oh crap I'm not sure we'll survive this" encounter. Interestinly RB hasn't been the super dominant kick ass at will that everyone says it is... yet...  It's a great power yes, but at lower levels we noticed it being no better than a basic attack over 80% of the time.  Of course a bunch of circumstances caused this:  (in no particular order of frequency) 1.  The cleric killed his enemy with the RB attack2.  Someone else killed the enemy before the guy with RB bonus got to attack3.  The person with the RB bonus missed anyway4.  The person with the RB bonus hit anyway5.  The person with the RB bonus attacked a different target6.  The person with the RB bonus got affected by some status condition that prevented him from attacking the target7.  The cleric missed with RB Then of course sometimes the cleric had to charge or use a ranged attack, or used an encounter power instead of RB. Over the first 3 levels (we kept track) RB only actually caused someone to get a hit on an attack simply because of the RB bonus 2 times.  Two times in about 20 combats!  Meanwhile in the other group the warlord was letting the rogue reroll a sneak attack with commander's strike or having the fighter do his basic attack with +4 damage over and over.  So at low levels, commander's strike was seriously outperforming RB.  The inspiring warlord's at wills weren't all that inspiring (though rousing attack is a welcome addition).  The lazer cleric's at wills were ok. At the mid to high heroic levels, brand is getting to be very nice and the ranger of course loves getting the bonus, and it sets up the warlord's attacks very well.  But the str cleric's encounters/dailys seem to be more meh than the other 3 leaders.  We'll see at paragon, but it seems to me just from scanning the books that battle captain and radiant servant will trump whatever the str cleric and inspiring warlord wind up taking.  Any thoughts on if this is true or not?</blockquote>

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