L4W Discussion Thread III

[Atanatotatos]

AEHM. Actually there's talk these days on the wizard CharOp boards of a build involving avenger and punisher of the gods doing "infinite average damage". Whatever that means, I doubt it means the Avenger is behind on damage...
Granted, the unisher may be horribly broken, and that might be a theoretical, unplayable build (I don't know, I haven't looked at it, don't really care) but still...

 

[hafrogman]

Unfortunately I have been reading a lot of flack for the Avenger as a striker. The general opinion on the wizards forums seems to be that the Avenger isn't much of a striker at all and it saddens me to think that I wanna play this super cool assassin who cant actually kill anything. I don't suppose anyone has taken a closer look at it or done the math?

I think in general it's a reaction to low damage numbers. I haven't done specific math, but in general the design math is built around PCs hitting monsters roughly 50% of the time.

With rolling twice to attack, you'll be hitting 75% of the time. This actually equates to a 50% increase in damage done. That's idealized of course, due to focusing on hit rate, the actual seen damage increase will be, say, 30% - 40%, still significant.

 

[renau1g]

Pfffttt... CO boards.... sorry, but after seeing the build for the giant-hurler, throwing like 200d10 boulders, I stopped reading it for advice. I still look at the handbook's so I don't take a useless power (it sucks when you think a power's great and in play it's useless).

I just love the Avenger from a RP POV, which is why I'm playing a Rogue/Cleric going for Shadowbane Stalker/Inquisitor (3.5e) in RL.

 

[ukingsken]

See thats how I feel too. I dont care if you can optomize a ranger to Nova (Spend a lot of resources in one turn) to do like 2500 average damage, I just don't want to play an Avenger and have my party get frustrated because I'm not good at being a striker. My opinion was the same as yours hafrog, that the increased chance to hit should theoretically improve the average damage significantly. Again I dont care about the damage output so long as I could fill the role of striker adequately enough that I'm not a let down to my party.

And as for the Punisher of the Gods being broken, I suppose it depends on how you look at it. The basic premise is you are really really good at killing one person, to the point where the level 30 power for the Epic Destiny is "You always deal maximum damage against the target of your immortal curse." Which is the ED power that gives you a free action point whenever you critical that target. Might I add this extra EP has to be spent that encounter and doesn't count towards your maximum AP per encounter. I think the infinite damage thing plays on repeated criticals, generating repeated extra AP's in some kind of never ending cycle. But a simple "Max 2 AP per round" house rule fixes that.

So yeah maybe the ED is a lil broken, but thats kind of the point of an epic destiny, to let you be broken enough to fight gods.

 

[Atanatotatos]

I too think those builds are ridiculous (in fact, as I said, I didn't see the build I mentioned at all), BUT you have to admit reading in the forum it does widen your perspective on mechanics, and helps recognize cheesy things, broken things, subpar things, etc.
And when a class is underestimated because one hasn't looked at it long enough. As hafrog said, hitting more means doing more damage too; and if you have some nasty status effects in that power, it's even better.
(I'd take a rogue over a ranger any day)

 

[renau1g]

I agree with you on reading the boards, otherwise when a guy I used to play with (Super power gamer) would ask me if he could play XXX from XXX splatbook, I'd jump onto the CO boards and see how broken it was.

 

[ukingsken]

Oh I agree, the only reason to read the optomization forums is to find out things I don't ever want my players to do lol. The whole optomization thing is fun to see what I can do but I'd never play a character like that over one with a good story and solid RP value.

And I dont really think the punisher ED is broken at all, its no better or worse then lots of the other ones its just more focused and thus makes you better at one very specific thing. Like the punisher of the gods does exactly what it says it should, it makes you really good at taking down one truly epic monster (Orcus, Ancient Dragons, Deities). But put that guy up against 5 or 6 epic level monsters and all the sudden he isn't nearly as effective because he has to spread the love around.

And I agree I much prefer nasty status effects. I was just worried that when PHB2 is rolled out here that I would be making a character who no one would want in their party.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

Well, I think the Avenger will be just fine. His [W] multiples may be one or two lower than a rogue or ranger, but you have to remember that the rogue will probably have a [W] die at least two sizes smaller than the avenger, and the avenger will be ridiculously more accurate than either of them. Also, at higher levels the avenger's bonus damage can be pretty awesome when it comes into play. If you have a +6 Dex in paragon, you get +10 damage to every attack against your oath target if he runs away. It's constant, and it isn't 1/round. That, combined with much better than normal accuracy, and you can do some pretty sick average damage.

FWIW, a lot of people on the internet think the paladin is a worthless class as well. I beg to differ - I think Raiyek does a pretty decent job. Also, most of the people who think so choose to take a viewpoint that minimizes the paladin's advantages, instead of maximizing them. That, and a lot of people think that fighters are simply unbeatable in the defender department

 

[covaithe]

I'm going to be out of town and off the internet for a couple of days. NPC my characters as appropriate, yadda yadda.

 

[CaBaNa]

I'm going to be out of town and off the internet for a couple of days. NPC my characters as appropriate, yadda yadda.

Thanks for the heads up.