Holy cow my party has 3 strikers in it

[Herschel]

The arguments the people in this forum make aren't that strikers are the best in concept, only in practice. Other classes do not have enough power to fulfill their roles as effectively as the striker. In most 4e combat I see the rest of the party distracts monsters that the striker isn't killing, while the striker kills the monsters. 5 Strikers just kill all the monsters, more effective. I would put one leader in my party, but mostly just to set up flanking and prevent a KO or two, otherwise, strikers.

No, the arguments that others are making is that you're missing the tactics and strategies the other roles add to the combat in a well-rounded game. If the adventures you play/the DM don't challenge the simplified party approach of all (or mostly) strikers, that's not the game's "fault" it's just the flavor of the particular game you are experiencing. Other classes have plenty of power to do their jobs, their job isn't just simply doing the most damage possible. That's (Do as much raw damage as possible) 3E thought (or 2E, 1E, WoW............). It can still work in certain types of games, but the game as a whole is more complex, or maybe better said allows for more complex tactics.

If you play LFR, for example, try playing East 1-4 UP with a mid-level (mix of 2s & 3s) party maximized for damage and AC attacking AC. A lot of low attack/high damage strikers have complained because the BBEG's AC was too high. That's because they're taking armor and +2 profieciency bonus weapons. That's the trade-off those characters make. The wizard can shine with his high Int attacks vs. reflex and defenders can soak his considerable damage better. And against an elite like that, it would normally seem to be a good matchup for the striker team.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

I have been thinking along the same lines as Old Gumphrey for a while. I have played a few LFR sessions with 4 strikers & its fun & edgy.
I have a feeling it works better in smaller parties than bigger ones - the bad guys can focus fire better with more of them which can overload the strikers more. The DM can focus tactically, to drop one guy in a given encounter, or strategically, to drain one guy of surges way before the others - though this is somewhat metagaming.

It takes me back to City Of Heroes days (not that 4e is like an MMO ) where my favourite team was a tank, a leader & the rest DPS.
There were debates in that game on whether a second tanker (4e defender) was ever wanted and if even the first was simply a self fullfilling prophecy.

In that game all defenders (4e Leader) was a viable team as they had massive stacking buffs. It has lead me to look at all warlord parties (who are the most offensive leaders) & they look pretty viable (if really dull & probably broken) too.

Interesting..
years ago I played a magician in Everquest (pretty dman good one too! )
most groups consisted of, at higher level, approximately:

a tank, prefferably a fighter (though a GOOD paladin was ok, paladins were kinda sucky in Everquest for a long time)
A cleric (only clerics had sufifcien theals to be good enough, unless you had a damn good druid and party to back them up)
the rest damage dealers, and be nice if you had a monk or good Shadow Knight for a "Puller" and "snarer" (like Slow in 4th ed, so runners couldn't aggro a mass of enemies onto you, necromancers , wizards and rangers could snare)

alas, the game became stupid in that you HAD ot have either that exact set up because it was insanely hard (creatures that could kill the best fighter in say 2 "rounds", and anyone else in 1!!!)...OR you had to have th every damn best folk there were. "Ordinary Joe" Paladin or whateverm was no use in hard bit sof gates of Discord as they'd get ganked, and that sucked

My class, magician, wwas the best DPs in game (though in long fights, say a god, necros were even better), most folk just never knew it for a long time, until it finally dawned on them, duh!!

For anyone not familiar with the term: DPS = damage per second, reffering in this case to high damage dealing classes (yes I know most ENWorlders are saavy...but acronyms suck...not everyone knows everyhting, hehe)

We found, in Everquest, that it was FAR more profitable, to have a hellishly high DPs group, to whittle down a mob faster than it coudl kill the tank and thus, eat all of us in 1/35th of a second!

interesting points though:

Only fighters, good paladins and magician elemental pets could tank a mob, and the pets weren't so great at it, but were disposable, if Jibober dies, big deal, summon a new one! *hugs his loyal Jibobers!*
If things screwed up, you could send a pet to tank when the fighter died, or an uncontrollable additional critter came.

A "controller", in this case mostly an enchanter (but a really good bard could do it) was usually VITAL. Only two classes could cast the 3.5 ed type of Slow, slowing down enemy damage out put, was onlyw ay you could survive their insane damage. So you'd slow 'em down, and DPs 'em to death toot sweet!

The cleric would hit the tank with a heal over time spell, a super regeneration, as mob came in, the tank woudl taunt the hell out of the mob so it wouldn't kill the cleric for that (heals were huge aggro, which is fair)
An enchanter or shaman would slow it, and then rest of us would light the SOB up like a mushroom cloud! Muhaha

We did work out some interesting combos.

It was better for the enchanter ot be doing some ueful damage, rather than just stand doing nothing, so they'd use charmed beasties
(dear gods were they SICK damage, as NPC vs PC damage was totally totally out of whack and broken, so a charmed beastie could kill another mob as fast as they could kill us...so the developers had to nerf the damage of charmed mobs, blech!)

Another thing some enchanters but also magicians like me, wizards or necros did, was to use weapons with a nasty "proc"
(Proc = a chance of an effect going off on a strike), there were a handful of weapons in the game casters could use that had unresistbale procs...now this is where it got fun.
An enchanter could cast haste, AND buff Dexterity (which increased the chance to proc), Shamans could buff physical stats the most.
Only the caster proc weapons had powerful damage procs (as balance for our lousy melee ability, they were menat as oh gimmicks, joke, fun items only)
And catsers could take "feats" (AA Abilities) that could increase spell damage and chance to crit, including the procs from these staffs and rods....

So, you'd see several casters whaling the tar out of the monster's backside, as a fight went on, hehe.
Attack from the rear so you'd not get a chance of a riposte from critters that could do damage = to 1/4 to 1/2 your health in 1 hit....
Also, if you aggroed the enemy, it wouldn't run all over chasing your dumb ass, so the tank had less trouble aggroing it back onto himself.

Worked out pretty good A buffed up caster with right abilities could actually do pretty useful damage with procs alone, and it was also FUN!

(Alas, I never got the Kelp Hilted Mace, as few folk had the guts to fight in the Plane of Water, wussies!)


However, without the lack of a "controller", you were in deep toruble if things went wrong.
You could "control" fights several ways actually, but due to creatures being able ot summon YOU if you damaged them just a few percent (damn what a dumb thing that was, understandable as it was needed to stop cheating, but stupid as it was becuase the NPCs' AI was abyssmal), it was usually far better ot let an enchanter "mesmerize" them.
You could also get a wizard to root & snare them, tricky though, and necromancers snares did damage so they had to use very low level snare spells for safety.

Ideally, you'd have mobs pulled in in a chain fahsion, wiht 1 sitting mesmerized, then slowed, and further debuffed while you killed a previous mob, and hte puller woudl rush out to go get another mob, so you had 3 onthe go all the time, incoming, killing, and mesmerized for ma effciency.
Again, very dumb from a true RPG sense I know, but talking effciency (it's also boring lol, hence "the grind" is the sucky problem with MMOs).

Before NPCs got so stupidly powerful, it was easy to just set a necormancer or magician pet onto additonal creatures to keep them busy and heal the pet as need.

But, sometimes, usually before the NPCs got so powerful, we'd do things different...

AOE Groups were my fave, dangerous as hell but fun!

you'd get a group of casters able to do "close burst" type nukes, so that was primarily wizards, and then to a lesser extent, magicians, plus a healer (prefferably cleric , for rezzing the dead!), an an enchnater (for point blank stuns)
now you could let a bard pull (they are amazing at it!), or let the cleric (they had a sort of short duration invulnerability power that made it excellent)...maybe a necro for summoning dead PCs corpses, help etc.
You'd pull tons of monsters at one go to the group then stun and NUKE them hell out of 'em, mad, barking mad, but what a rush!

*Was in first group on Karana server to AOE the Shrezra Temple, booyah!*


You can see how this is all applicable to D&D....

4th ed is a HELL of a lot more tactical than prior editions, thankfully.

 

[Mad Hamish]

There seem to be a couple of different questions here
a) How do different approaches stack up?
Are you better attempting to take individual targets down as quickly as possible?
Is the additional buffing and healing of leaders worth slowing the damage output?
Are the abilities that Defenders bring to the table worthwhile?
Do controllers provide enough functionality to make them worthwhile?

I think that the answers to this are highly dependent upon the way that the individual group plays and what the GM does.

My suspicion is that a striker heavy group requires less in the way of group coordination and is less reduced in effectiveness by lack of combined tactics.

So a group might find 5 strikers optimal for the way they play and the way that their GM sets things up, however for different encounter composition the focus on damage may not work as well as a more balanced approach.
The group I'm in currently has 1 leader (str cleric), 2 defenders (sword and board fighter and warden), 2 strikers (artful dodger rogue and archer ranger) and 1 controller (wand wizard)
In different fights the different characters contribute a different amount and do different things. The controller isn't generally the best contributor against 1 tough critter (although chuck in flaming sphere damage on top of other attacks and he's still doing a fair amount) The leader is a huge thing in terms of keeping the party going and provides reasonable damage and some very nice buffs. The strikers do output a lot of damage but then so does the forced movement focused fighter when combined with Zones, walls and barriers which the controller & cleric put out.
we had a fight last night that would have torn the strikers up completely if not for the fighter pulling off the majority of the enemies while the archer ranger took down the enemy leader, and without the cleric the fighter would have died, Blood Pulse also did a fair amount of damage as did Blade Barrier when they're combined with a lot of forced movement...
Similarly I suspect that an all-striker group would have real trouble againt an enemy force of controllers and artillary.

b) Are the current controllers effective?
There's certainly some questions on the Wizard straight out of the box. (I haven't looked through Arcane Power yet to see how it's changed) The general view seems to be that the at-wills are weak and the encounter powers moderate but the dailies are good.
I haven't had enough of a look at the Invoker to really say what it's like. The brief glance suggests that the at-wills provide more in the way of options for actual control.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

No, the arguments that others are making is that you're missing the tactics and strategies the other roles add to the combat in a well-rounded game. If the adventures you play/the DM don't challenge the simplified party approach of all (or mostly) strikers, that's not the game's "fault" it's just the flavor of the particular game you are experiencing.

Or, we're such tactical geniuses that we don't need other roles, and can survive on damage alone. Meh.

Other classes have plenty of power to do their jobs, their job isn't just simply doing the most damage possible. That's (Do as much raw damage as possible) 3E thought (or 2E, 1E, WoW............).

Wow. I almost poo'd in my pants because I laughed SO HARD. Is someone seriously comparing all other editions of D&D to World of Warcraft, while 4e is the gleaming pinnacle of strategy, tactics, and not-like-MMO gameplay? When every single attack but like 5 of them deals damage? LoL x 3d6 + 12. I actually hate it when people compare D&D to any MMO game, but be honest with yourself. If any edition of D&D is most like WoW, it's gotta be 4e.

As Mr. Everquest pointed out, MMO games utilize various roles such as that 4e INTRODUCED TO THE SYSTEM. Pre-4e D&D was basically the opposite of divided roles: bring them down any way possible, as fast as possible. Yeah, clerics healed and fighters fought, but a fighter didn't do anythinig a barbarian couldn't do. One was chocolate, one was vanilla, but they were both ice cream.

Now the roles are artificiated (I made this word up) into categories so that people can think they are playing a detailed strategy game. When if you would just try the game out with a party full of optimized strikers you'd see that any other class is just fluff. 1d6 + 7 to everyone (including your allies)...yeah, that's really cool and all, but flanking and 1d4 + 2d8 + 10 to one person is just terribly better. In one party, someone is bloodied and prone, and getting up next round to hit you. In the other party, that someone is dead, and will not be attacking next round.

But seriously, thanks for the laugh. I never thought I'd see the day.

If you play LFR, for example, try playing East 1-4 UP with a mid-level (mix of 2s & 3s) party maximized for damage and AC attacking AC. A lot of low attack/high damage strikers have complained because the BBEG's AC was too high. That's because they're taking armor and +2 profieciency bonus weapons. That's the trade-off those characters make. The wizard can shine with his high Int attacks vs. reflex and defenders can soak his considerable damage better. And against an elite like that, it would normally seem to be a good matchup for the striker team.

So...strikers that focus only on damage and not attack rolls while simultaneously ignoring non-AC attacks such as reflex are compared to wizards who max Int and attack reflex with low damage? Apples & oranges. Plus, if you're a striker and you're not maxing out your attack bonus, you are kind of missing the point.

 

[tiornys]

But to what end? Dead is clearly a better debuff than anything a wizard can throw out there. Generally when I see Wizards tossing out their debuffs it is very ineffective because the die rolls are not in their favor. First they have to hit (about 60%) then the enemy has to fail to save (45%). Our invoker blasted an entire battlefield with over 15 minions and 4 other enemies with a slow debuff only to effect less than a quarter of them. Our dragonborn defender quickly applied the 'dead' debuff to at least 5 of them, as well as drawing the fire of their leader. I noticed that the minions weren't able to make saves against 'dead'. Because of the controllers daily 4 or 5 minions were not able to make it into melee in the first round. Maybe 15 damage was prevented (leaders can do that 2/encounter as a minor). I see the controller's role, but I don't see them as effective.

Dead is the best debuff, agreed, but it's difficult to apply to multiple non-minion enemies early in a fight (especially without the support of a leader). What the controller can do is debuff the entire enemy party with a strong debuff while the rest of the party works on applying the dead condition to the most threatening enemy.

As far as your experience with a non-damaging daily targeting a bunch of minions...that sounds like an example of ineffective in-game tactics. No role is going to look good when using poor tactics.

So yes, the controller has a class role, but I feel that the other classes can easily 'control' the battlefield and that the controllers are not much better at doing so. No class is better at healing than a healer, no one can draw fire like the defender, the strikers are unmatched in focus fire, but anyone can do the controller's job.

Really? The Fighter can take the three Artillery completely out of the fight on round 1 without even using an attack power? The Rogue can shatter the enemy formation at will? The Cleric can daze the entire enemy force? Please explain how.

In my party of 6, when we fight mass hordes of enemies, our 3 strikers quickly dance/tumble/teleport past enemies and bring down the leader in 2-3 rounds. Without a not-dead-enemy-leader, the party is far less vulnerable to enemy tactics.

What happens when that enemy party has surprise? And wins initiative? The party with the Defender and the Controller is much better at recovering from these kinds of worst-case scenarios, and (if built well and played properly) comparable in better situations.

If the first defender was a striker with a few GTFO powers, the second defender seems unnecessary. Besides, even if one of the strikers gets focused and goes down occasionally, the party still has more damage output with 4 strikers than a typical 'well mixed' party.

You either overestimate the damage potential of a striker or underestimate the potential of the other roles. Strikers do more damage, yes, but not that much more.

Yup. I can say from experience across all editions, nothing disrupts the DM's strategy like killing a whole funload of bad guys really quickly. Controllers disrupt enemy strategy by dazing them; strikers disrupt it by making them dead. Dead is even better than stunned, and it doesn't allow a save, or end at some point during someone's next turn.

I mean, I'd rather have 2 or 3 enemies left standing than 5 dazed/slowed/weakened enemies standing.

You really think the striker team can take out 2-3 enemies in one round, and the balanced team can't even take one of those enemies out? I'm pretty sure that, on average, 3-4 blinded enemies deal less damage than 2-3 unhindered ones. As do 2 enemies that are forced to use their basic attacks and 1-2 enemies that can't reach a party member. As do any number of other combinations of 3-4 debuffed enemies. Especially when those attacks are going against higher defenses than possessed by most strikers. And trying to bring down higher HP totals.

t~

 

[Herschel]

Or, we're such tactical geniuses that we don't need other roles, and can survive on damage alone. Meh.

It's clear now you are trolling or simply don't care for an actual debate. Others and I have pointed out where you are incorrect in your assumptions for the game at large. The particular game you play in is obviously not representative of the wide breadth of 4E. And that's fine. If you enjoy that flavor then it's all good. Nobody is saying it's wrong to enjoy a particular style of game. We're just pointing out that there's a lot more to the game than you are seeing/representing/looking at/however you want to say it.

Nobody said damage wasn't important, just that it's (raw damage) no longer the be-all/end-all of succeeding.

 

[Herschel]

The roles have been around since the early days. Fighters stood on the front line and in the doorway whacking baddies, the Cleric buffed, healed, turned and shot spells and the Wizard blasted stuff from behind. They've just been changed a bit (as has the game in geaneral) and refined.

There are some wonky things I'm not pleased with but overall the designers have done a really nice job of creating a game flexible enough to run many styles, be it hack & slash or tactically intense. Multiple strikers works well for teh former, more balanced for teh latter.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

"Mr Everquest", I guess you reffered to me? has been playing D&D for over 20 years, I love RP, but I also like computer games, and they DO teach you things that you cannot see on a game board.
Alas, I rarely get to be a player in D&D, I'm nearly always the DM

D&D Online was best for realizing stuff about D&D from a computer game, IMHO, in that actually playing in a 3D scenario lets you appreciate the tactics etc of a real three dimensional scenario with TIME as a factor, with a lot of D&D rules (it wasn't pure D&D as it was real time, etc).

You don't have time to sit around and work out some complex strategy, you have to do it "Bam bam bam!" fast. That game had real time voice communication which made an enormous difference, IMHO, so you'd work out potential plans before opening a door etc.
Ah yes, a plan never survives contact with the enemy, how true!! hehe

I'd love to buy chess clocks and make everyone, DM included, make quick fire choices, make fights be quicker and more realistic.
Interesting what you cna learn to appreciate, from computer games, seriously

D&d directly spawned computer games, it's no shame to pick some of the things others have learned and add them to D&D, you know, be it us or WOTC, it's smart!


When running Neverwinter nights, mostly real time fights, 3.5 ed D&D, you can see that going heavy for DPs does have advantages...but also problems.
Say you are fighting incorporeal undead, they have damn nasty drainig=ng touch attacks.
So your high DPs characters can be ganked faster than by hit point attrition would.
Thus defencive buffs, turn undead etc all comes heavily to play.
and you can't backstab or crit undead in 3rd ed

Many 4th ed controller debuffs also do damage, UGH, stop ignoring that, folks, when talking about this issue. So, if a controller hurls out say Stinking Cloud or Crushing Titan's Fist, he not only can screw the mobs up by debuffs (blocking line of sight, and immobilizing, in those cases), he'll damn well kill any minion he hits, and those hit BIG areas, and Stinking Cloud is persistant!

So in effect, what he's actually doing, is automatically killing off any minion he hits AND debuffing non-minions who survives. That's a win-win scenario for my way of thinking
"Mooks" are largely wiped out surviving tough enemies are screwed up and thus less of a threat.

I agree with the poster who said a DM should be challenging his players
A striker group, faced with enemy artillery and leaders and a horde of minions, can be in deep trouble.
A striker group surprised by suitable mobs up close, can get the pants beat off them, etc

D&D doesn't exist in a purified stasis, nor does any class in it, which is a good thing! Always be willing to look at other stuff , be it games, novels, films or real life, and appreciate the impact, and insights they may have on D&D play

A good offence usually is the best defence, I don't have a problem with that, but pure DPS alone is not an answer for everything.

Folk should play what they enjoy, and what's fun to play with pals, rest be damned

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Incidentally we played last night in my Thunderspire Labyrinth game in which I normally have seven players, including three strikers. For the record, that's Paladin, Fighter, Warlock, Ranger, Rogue, Bard, Wizard.

However, due to a raft of pull-outs we were down to three regular players plus one guest star, so we ended up with Paladin, Fighter, Ranger, Invoker. They were just starting the Horned Hold section of the adventure.

Noticed a massive difference - the Paladin and Fighter took a lot more damage than normal as the enemies took a lot longer to die, and the Invoker was easy to pull away from the others and bring down since there were no Leaders.

Really great game, and clearly I'm going to have to up the stakes in some later encounters to match how much fun that was.

 

[Sadrik]

It's clear now you are trolling or simply don't care for an actual debate. Others and I have pointed out where you are incorrect in your assumptions for the game at large.

I have seen no evidence to prove that having an all striker party is better than anything else. Wishful thinking and "that's how its supposed/ought to be" lines of argument are flying in contrary to any sort of evidence that the striker party is doing. So lets run down the facts for you.
I think that you will agree that strikers do more damage in general.
I think you will agree that strikers have access to AoE powers.
I think you will agree that strikers have access to debuffing powers.
Strikers handle, solos, elites and soldiers the best.

In character design, strikers are always best as your base class, then you can multi-class, take races such as dragonborn (with minion killing breath), and magic items (of course). You can actually cover healing through these methods too. The bonus damage class features are simply too good and they help you get through tough encounters better.


This is where you are having a disconnect: a group of strikers is going to have more difficulty dealing with the odd ball encounter: say 30 minions + boss. I think that the strike team, can cover that easily with some well thought out characters. Not to mention if the strikers can get behind the initial lines and kill the boss and have the minions run away. It is so clear to me that strikers are better in every way. Additionally the strikers are the ones who are supposed to take out the artillery in the back, at least from what they have written.

The particular game you play in is obviously not representative of the wide breadth of 4E. And that's fine. If you enjoy that flavor then it's all good. Nobody is saying it's wrong to enjoy a particular style of game.

Nostalgia and ignoring facts staring right at you is one way to approach this. I choose not to ignore that the game plays favoritism to one role. You can like you say: "We're just pointing out that there's a lot more to the game than you are seeing/representing/looking at/however you want to say it."

Nobody said damage wasn't important, just that it's (raw damage) no longer the be-all/end-all of succeeding.

Absolutely you can have a party full of wizards and the DM can lower the level of encounters so he doesn't have TPK on every level appropriate encounter. The game can still be fun. But that is not what we are talking about. The most efficient party is an all striker group, or like I said previously all striker + 1 leader.