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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trevelyan" data-source="post: 4805283" data-attributes="member: 54488">I'm playing in a party of four consisting of two defenders (fighter and swordmage), a cleric and a wizard. We have no strikers. According to Old Gumphrey, that's just about the least optimal party imaginable and we should be slogging slowly through fights and stretching our resources to breaking point trying to soak up the damage that we suffer when we can't dispatch monsters quickly enough.  Funnily enough, we find the exact opposite to be the case. Fights tend to be brief and brutal as the party works together to split up the enemy, press them into position and hit them hard. The fighter can pin down one or two monsters, or even just lure them in before stepping aside for the wizard to hit multiple foes with an AoE attack, the swordmage is everywhere at once, forcing enemy artillary into melee, making them pay if they chose to attack the rest of the party and frequently making use of the grouped monsters around the fighter for his own AoE attacks, and the cleric distributes bonuses to hit, bonuses to defenses and healing when needed. We often finish encounters with encounter powers unused simply because we didn't need them, ditto for daily pwoers when we settle down for a long rest. Having played with a few different groups, I'm tempted to suggest that the defining feature of strikers is not just the damage but the fact that they are frequently loners (some more than others - the rogue likes a flanking buddy). A group of people who enjoy playing strikers probably doesn't take the time to appreciate the teamwork aspects of a mixed party and see how they can enhance the performance of the group. A classic example being the apparent difficulty in hitting multiple monsters with AoE attacks - if everyone is out for themselves then it's hard to manage, especially wihtout hitting allies, but if the party works together, as ours does, then they wizard can be hitting three targets with relative ease, at which point the damage really does stack up, in addition to whatever status effects the wizard is applying.</blockquote>

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