Mistwell
Crusty Old Meatwad
I like Colby Poulson's (D4 Deep Dive) content too because I find him entertaining. But his assumptions are just nothing like what our games are like. In fact, I don't think they even apply to HIS actual games!
First, he had to have nearly a viewer revolt to get him to stop multiclassing every single build, most of which started with Fighter 1, and Goliath species for a bit of extra damage, in what he would call being a "slave to the spreadsheet." In real games, almost nobody does that, and a huge number of PCs are straight single class, with whatever species they're interested in.
Second, almost every build of his assumes one combat encounter per day, four rounds for that combat encounter. He blows all his resources in those 4 rounds, as a generalization. And for some bizarre reason that's what he calls "sustained" damage to distinguish it from "nova" damage even though nobody else would call blowing all your resources in the first four rounds of combat in a day "sustained." You can't even begin to take another long rest for 23 hours and 59 mins after that, since by the rules you can only gain the benefits of a long rest once every 24 hours. So what the heck are his PCs doing for the rest of that time and how would they ever do even a tiny dungeon crawl? And does he think the short rest mechanic simply isn't used in most games despite some classes being designed around it?
Third, his extreme focus is not just average damage per round for four rounds, but ONLY for levels 6, 9. 13, and 17. This is often taken to absurd lengths, where he routinely makes choices which nobody would make in a real game where you're levelling up between those levels. Those choices, like taking the Charger feat at level 9, are purely to up damage to boost one of those four levels so he can artificially crank damage on what he calls a Damage Report level. I can't imagine who that helps with a real game, unless it's a one-shot at that specific level.
All of this I find entertaining, but nearly useless for actual games. And it seems he doesn't use his own builds when he plays. He admits he wouldn't build things this way for actual play himself and would make different choices if he were levelling up such a character and cared about things like defense and control exploration and diplomacy and role play more. I just wish he'd do that: make real builds for how he'd actually enjoy and play the character, instead of this artificial theoretical damage maximization at 4-levels over 4 total rounds per day spreadsheet concept.
