Holy cow my party has 3 strikers in it

[Herschel]

Those "odball" encounters, as you call them, aren't.

There are adventures where all striker parties will work, nobody said there aren't. In fact, most point out there are. I used a LFR, I'll now mention "The Dark Knight of Arabel". A striker group may go through that particular adventure without losing a healing surge. That's just the way it works out.

The DM and adventure design have a lot to do with how the game plays. If hack & slash is your thing, that's fine. The game allows for that type of game. But as to your points:

(Q) I think that you will agree that strikers do more damage in general.
That's their role. How much more is flexible.

(Q) I think you will agree that strikers have access to AoE powers.
Not nearly as many (and frequently) as other roles.

(Q) I think you will agree that strikers have access to debuffing powers.
Again, not narly as many (and frequently) as other roles.

(Q) Strikers handle, solos, elites and soldiers the best.
1: I pointed out an example above where they simply do not. Solos and soldiers, generally yes, but not necessarily elites.
2. You also failed to acknowledge you can be facing minions, artillery, lurkers and controllers. That's almost 60% of the possible opposition you completely ignore. Also, solos and elites tend to be the "one big guy" with little "help". Those are the encounters where strikers are supposed to excel because of the low number of targets.

If the DM designs that way or that's the way the adventure is set up, then you're fine. If it's not is where you run in to trouble. That's the whole point.

 

[Sadrik]

Does this equate?
Lots less damage and access to more debuff/AoE
Lots more damage and access to fewer debuff/AoE

No they don't. you still get the debuffs and AoE.
This is also why the designers know this too:
defeders 4 with swordmage
controllers 3
leaders 5 with artificer
STRIKERS 7! with monk

 

[Herschel]

There's the error. It isn't "a lot less damage" especially if you multiclass your strikers thereby "watering down" their damage and/or attack bonus. You seem to be referring to 'damage against a single target in a single action'. Other classes do respectable damage too. Take a Prescient Bard with a high Charisma and Great Bow Proficiency. He can Jinx Shot at low levels for a d12 + 4 or 5 (only roughly 1 or 2 points off a twin striking ranger minus quarry, which generally a feat is used to improve also) and knock the opponent prone if the opponent misses your ally. Then the baddie is granting combat advantage and has to use his move action to stand, so in melee if your ally shifted before the baddie's turn he can't attack or has to charge some other character and not use anything but his basic attack.

A solid chance knocked prone bad guy granting CA and maybe being unable to attack is worth a few points of damage, in most cases.

Also, the number of classes for a role has absolutely NOTHING to do with perceived effectiveness of a role. You could make the exact same debate saying 'they need more striker classes because they aren't as efficient as ones in the other roles'. Neither has any credibility.

You could more likely debate "strikers are the most popular role because they're easier to adapt to for video gamers and 3E players", although I'd argue that's an over-simplification also.

Also note that different classes have secondary roles already mixed in to the flavor, some dramitically altering their play. For example, depending on build, some Warlocks are closer to controllers (secondary role vs. primary damage dealers) than others.

I built my primary Swordmage to be a mobile "rescue defender". He pulls out allies or pulls away foes. I could have built him a bit stickier or with more controller or area powers. I could have went Earthsoul Genasi w/ Earthshock Master, multiclass as a Wizard for Thunderwave and taken Dragons Teeth for my level 1 daily and had a nice turn + action point control action for group combats. He's still not be as good overall a controller as a wizard, but once a day he'd be pretty wicked for a round or two.

 

[ilmoin]

Actually, I think the fact that there are more strikers than any other class is part of what contributes to the fact that people think they are the best thing ever.

A lot of this is about perception: people talk about what they've experienced, and on the whole what they've experienced are striker-heavy groups. With 3 strikers, 2 leaders, 2 defenders and 1 controller in the PHB, almost every group that I read about on bulletin boards over the next six months was striker heavy. A few doubled up defenders or leaders and I can't remember any with more than one wizard unless the group was pretty big.

When you watch a group play, there is a lot of static. It's difficult to parse out what's actually happening and who makes a difference in combats. The best that can be said most of the time is that striker parties tend to kill faster (and are slightly fragile), defender parties are tougher (and need to hold formation effectively), and leader parties tend to keep characters on their feet better (and run out of healing surges).

Controllers? They seem to make a marginal contribution to the party--because there is only one of them and their effect is drowned out by what is going on with everyone else. The only place that someone might ahve had enough experience of varied groups to comment is somewhere like LFR, but even there the pool of evidence is tainted. The same striker heavy bias is present in those games, too. Moreover, are the easiest characters to play with people you don't know--they are designed to be loners and need to coordinate with the rest of the group much less than any other character type.

Want to know how effective controllers are? Play a bunch of levels using a five person party with three controllers. Then maybe we'll know. Until then, you don't know what you are talking about--and neither do I.

 

[Machus]

Hard to disagree. Strikers in 4e combat, seem relative to other careers, outstanding. They are not glass cannons, as one might see in well balanced cooperative MMOs or other similar games. Especially if the coordinate, and play off one another, they can really shore up any perceived holes in their gameplay. And skills aren't dismal, and with a feat or two, can be rounded out nicely.

Bards and Wizards do have some nice out of combat roleplay perks, like good access to rituals and other things that play into the role playing experience and advancing the plot (with a few feats strikers can do most of that too though). They also have an entirely different feel to them, and with a good GM, it should be a ton of fun.

RP games driven by a GM excel at providing challenge, story, tactics, and surprises, because they have a GM. If the party has optimized to be a combat meat-grinder, the GM must optimize to challenge them. If not, it's just bad GMing. Who wants to be a badarse optimized rogue assassin with a high DPS answer for any situation, when you fight weak encounters? Its purely a GM issue IMO.

It would be like having a party with no healers, and forcing them to have to have a healer to finish every encounter. Who'd enjoy that? Or playing a controller when the GM never uses hordes of minons...ever. Thanks but no thanks. If the GM doesn't want to create fun for the players, no sense in playing a GM'd game.

GMs have the hardest role, to make sure the game is fun for any class combination the players choose. As long as it's not over-the-top obvious trying to find holes in their skills and exploiting it, with a good GM, the game will be good. If you play with a non-optimized group, in a very story-driven, challenging campaign, and all you do is single target massive damage in combat, it's probably not going to be as fun as it was optimizing it on paper. Of course, 3.5 had wizards being super-verastile, super flavorful, and super powerful...maybe 4e is a slap-down to that

As the above poster mentioned, how many groups have 3 controllers?
Ironically using the dreaded MMO reference, AOE as a soloer or without other AOErs was often not welcome in groups, it was entirely inefficient. So they formed AOE groups and set new records for kill rates....

 

[Herschel]

Want to know how effective controllers are? Play a bunch of levels using a five person party with three controllers. Then maybe we'll know. Until then, you don't know what you are talking about--and neither do I.

I have played a number of five and six-person parties with two and three wizards, part of them with no striker. They rock. Some times I'm challenged as a defender, but many times I can pick up the stray that gets through. Multiple wizards rock, especially when they can loose a daily or two each encounter in a LFR set up.

I've found having Resist 10 Fire VERY helpful as a defender when working with wizards. They might not be best all the time because some times you do face solo, low to mid AC meat sacks, but even then they can help out tremensously. I don't care how optimized strikers are, it's hard to chew through 500 HP at levels 5-7 when they have good defenses.

 

[Old Gumphrey]

And if it's hard for strikers, how hard is it for those 3 wizards whose combined damage output on a single target is equivalent to approximately 1.5 rangers? You just contradicted yourself.

 

[tiornys]

And if it's hard for strikers, how hard is it for those 3 wizards whose combined damage output on a single target is equivalent to approximately 1.5 rangers? You just contradicted yourself.

A wizard's damage output can easily surpass that of a striker. It won't be concentrated on a single target, but it will be more total damage. Add in some crippling combinations of status effects and a couple of single target damage dealers to finish off weakened enemies, and I can easily see how a party with multiple controllers might work extremely well.

t~

 

[Pbartender]

You could more likely debate "strikers are the most popular role because they're easier to adapt to for video gamers and 3E players", although I'd argue that's an over-simplification also.

I might argue that "strikers are the most popular class, because they reap the most personal glory on the battle field". Strikers make far more blatant contributions to combat than any of the other roles.

That is to say, if a Controller (or Leader, or Defender) makes a Striker twice as effective through their buffs and debuffs and so on, then a Controller and Striker combination can be just as effective as two Strikers.

The difference is that you have to build the Controller-Striker combo together as a team to be most effective, and be coherent about teamwork and party tactics in combat. With only Strikers, its easier to build a group of relatively self-sufficient characters, where the power and feat choices and the in-game combat tactics of any one character do not appreciably effect the performance of any of the other characters... That's a lot closer to the 3E paradigm of party building than the suggested 4E style.

I wonder if that's part of the reason Strikers look so powerful... Through the lenses of 3E, a solo Strikers or a party of (effectively solo) Strikers is the most powerful. However, a mixed party properly working together as a team could be just as effective, and easily moreso.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

Machus,
yup, absolutely nothing could touch the kill rates of a point blank AOE group in Everquest Even with deaths, you'd get 3 or 4 times the amoutn of XP, in the same time, easily, as normal fighting methods.

And I don't dread the MMO refference
Long since time folk accepted 4th ed is NOT an MMO, and that any edition of D&D should be open to pick up tricks and tips from any influence, as we've all been house rulling for decades anyway!
I wrote up a 2nd ed conversion for "X-COM" (in Europe, "UFO: ENEMY UNKNOWN"...damn I'll need ot put that back on my site, I think it's not on it currently)

A smart DM will play his NPcs appropriately: my players dread coming up against drow, mind flayers etc 'cause I'll play them as the very, very intelligent, tactical, sneaky, nasty dirty SOBs they are meant to be!

Yes, many strikers have "get out of jail free cards", but they don't/may not work if they are surprised and stunned, or in auras/AOEs that stop shifting or whatever. Nor are they unlimited.
So if your uber high DPs character is stuck there in some unpleasant aura or effect, with a brute in his face and a skirmisher at his backside...hm...

Well played enemies will have ambushes, traps and other means of getting the drop on the party. That's why feats/powers that help with Perception, initiative and the like, can be more effective than having another high DPs power.

Can you imagine how nasty a drow strong point would be?! I can, muhaha!!
They absolutely would not spread out and come forward as easy meat for the kill...that's the job of the goblin slaves, and thus to show up where the heroes are: ripe targets for drow specialists to teleport/drop on them.

Hey, a little point, while rituals canot normally be used in a combat due to the time...what the hell do folk think a drow wizard will have been doing in the half hour the drow have know a bunch of sun-dwellers have been plodding towards them, eh?

He'll open a special teleport, like a sort of reversed "Linked Portal", so allies can port directly to an area he knows close bye for a limited duration, one way travel, 'cause he obviously will have a Teleport Circle as they need that for supplies etc.

So you can imagine pairs or trios of drow soldiers/skirmishers porting to each PC once the drow have got the PCs style/plan worked out, or levitating safely down from heights or invisible or turning back to flesh after having been transformed ot stone stalagmites temporarily, or who knows what!

"Sending" would allow co-ordinated, devastating and logical tactics (you should always be able to justify such good combat teamwork).

And drow hunters will be ensconced in high up natural "bunkers" on cavern walls to turn enemies into pin cushions.

Meanwhile, the drow priestess will have been maybe summoning demons, spiders, or completes a Magic Circle that had previously been mostly set into the ground in silver, so it doesn't take long to do, thus blocking the only way through...or other nasty stuff.

Smart enemies are a nightmare. That's the fun of fighting them 4h ed's very good at letting you do sneaky tactics wih them.
If all you rely on is pure damage to win...you could really be left short. It's a very valid way of settign a group up, I'm not saying it isn't as evidence and logic shows it can be superb, but it's not the be all and end all.