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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ShadowX" data-source="post: 3710772" data-attributes="member: 3720">I know the comparison of 4e to MMORPG, and WoW in particular, has already been done to death in a matter of days, but this thread sounds exactly like every discussion of party balance in WoW I have ever seen.Niches are a very easy and very lazy way to balance classes.  It takes far more ingenuity to let classes breathe and partake of several roles than to give one domain of the game exclusively to one class.  MMORPG run on a triad of tanks, damage dealers and healers.  Unfortunately, they always have more than three classes so you have multiple classes that are basically mirror images of another or you have various hybrids that by virtue of the stringent class roles are perennially outcasts.Third edition mostly avoided doling out specific responsibilities and as such is tactically far more interesting than any elaborately scripted raid boss.  Foremost, I don't think there are any necessary support roles as written and any that crop up can always be mitigated by a proficient DM.  Part of this has to do with healing being so weak.  People here talk as though healing is a required component of a party.  Healing in 3e is extremely impotent until Cleric's get Heal.  Before that, the extremely offensive nature of 3e far outstrips a Cleric's ability to heal.  Even with Heal, Clerics are sometimes better served by killing the enemy with their very many offensive tools.So I hope that 4e does not relegate Clerics to a healing duty resembling that of MMORPG.  Unfortunately, I also want 4e to reduce the dependence on buff spells even more than on magic items.  At least most magic items are permanent effects, whereas you have to constantly recalculate the effects of buff spells.  This make me wonder what purpose a Cleric could serve without these historic underpinnings of the class.</blockquote>

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