Class power level vs. tactical mastery

[Neonchameleon]

Bad: ... non-shielding swordmage ... monk

I assume by "non-shielding" you mean "Ensnaring". Because Assaults can be pretty effective as a second defender although are hard to play well. And the Monk rocks. It's not the highest damage striker by any means. But it has insane mobility. I can't remember the last time when I didn't have something extremely effective in my toolbox when playing my Monk. Getting to the right person, hitting their low defence, and beating the crap out of them while setting up the AoEs. Or off-tanking in a way most strikers can't. I've considered retiring my monk for being too obnoxious to the bad guys.

That said, both require thinking to get mileage out of them.

 

[Ryujin]

When everything falls into place, a powerful character build can bring its "A" game and clean up the field.

A tactically competent player can MAKE his "A" game happen, regardless of the situation.

 

[Tony Vargas]

This has probably been discussed many times before, but I am trying to ascertain whether 4E classes have distinct "tiers" in terms of how powerful they are.

Not really. If they do, then they are very shallow tiers, without a very big gap between the most powerful classes (the Ranger might be a candidate) and the least (perhaps the Seeker, ironically, the game's other archer archetype, or the Warlock). Nothing like the gulf that existed between casters and non-casters in prior eds, anyway.

The swordmage and the rogue have been far and away the most powerful of the group; I am having a hard time differentiating what is tactical skill on the player's part and what is a possible imbalance in terms of class power level.

I don't have a good sense of the power of the swordmage, not being into the 'Realms, but the Rogue is a very strong class on a few points - most notably, it has a +1 unnamed attack bonus with a +3 proficiency weapon and a wide selection of weapon attacks that target non-AC defenses, meaning the rogue hits /very/ consistently, which is a telling advantage in 4e.

As a general comment, one thing I've enjoyed about 4E is that it seems the onus of character power is less on system mastery - how well you can tweak the rules to maximize your character - and more on tactical mastery - how well you can utilize the powers your character has. Is this the experience of others as well?

I hadn't thought of it that way before. I mean, I noticed that 4e was even a little more tactically oriented than 3e, and a lot more robustly balanced, meaning you didn't 'win the game at chargen' so much as you did in 3.5, but I never really put the two together. But, yes, that's very true, how effective your character is in 4e tends to have a lot more to do with how you play it than how you build it. Not that you couldn't intentionally build a bad character, but it's pretty easy to build one that's good enough to do very well, if well-played.

The only thing I'd add is that /group/ tactics are also a big part of it. If the defender and striker in your game seem really powerful, it might also have something to do with how much the leader is buffing them or how well the controller is setting up their enemies.

 

[Theroc]

Swordmages are a Forgotten Realms class, not Eberron. Artificer is Eberron's class.

 

[DracoSuave]

A lot of the problem is that the classes do more than one thing.

Take strikers... yes damage is a concern, but there's a lot more going on that just damage for many of the classes, so reducing it down to 'The Ranger does the best damage' is not looking at the whole picture.

How do you compare leaders? If you decided a leader was the one best at healing, then your top tier would be cleric and shaman. If on the other hand, you decided it was ability to change the battlefield, bard and warlord would be top, with clerics near the bottom. If you decided it was the ability to make your team attack more often, then it would be ardent and warlord. And if it you decided it was flexibility, then it would be the runepriest and the alchemist. This question isn't even answerable because there's no agreement on what a good leader -does-. You just do better if you have one.

Not to mention, taking 'top tier' classes might not actually work so well. Going with a ranger (best damage), a warden (best hps and surges), a cleric (best single target healing), and a wizard (best lockdown) might yield some good dividends, but all that doesn't have the same synergy as a party designed around a bard, rogue, fighter, and invoker... relying more on position and flanking, rewarding tactical play rather than sheer stat-craft.

 

[ppaladin123]

I think rangers and rogues take little mastery of optimization methods to produce solid damage. They are just great right out of the box. If you do put time and effort into minx/max, you can actually produce game-breaking builds out of these two classes.

You can do wonders with warlocks but you really have to be very careful with feats, powers, items, etc. in a way that is simply unnecessary with the above two. The class just requires a lot of system mastery to catch up; there are too many "traps" and too many options that only produce excellent results when perfectly paired with the right items, feats, etc.

The assassin is just comparatively bad. Even masterful optimization work can only get it up to mediocre damage. For the typical campaigns this is probably sufficient damage, but even an experienced player is going to find himself lagging behind a newbie with a two-weapon ranger.

 

[Mr. Wilson]

The thread linked on the CharOp board actually goes into much detail about why they rank the classes the way they do.

CharOp tends to value offensive more so then defensive play, IMHO. The choices as top classes are pretty much par for that course.

Honestly, I only think there are two bad classes, but even they can be fixed once they get more builds and options (Assassin and Seeker). Right now, they are strictly inferior to any of the other classes you could choose in their role.

I would agree a bad class in a good tacticians hands will still be better than a Ranger in a bad tacticians hands.