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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4857240" data-attributes="member: 3146">I'm not advocating the idea that DPR is all that matters. I am arguing that it does matter for leaders, controllers, and defenders as well as strikers. In your case, you took destructive wizardry. Obviously, that's not helping you kill minions--they die if you only deal 1 point to them. But if you catch a real monster in the same blast (which I imagine you generally try to do) it deals more damage to that monster. On the other hand, the target of my discussion is the many people on this and other boards that look at something like dual implement spellcaster and say, "+5 damage for one feat? But why would I want that; damage is the striker's job--I'm going to sit back here and give the monsters -2 to their attacks or slide them one square; that'll win the battle for sure."The problem that comes up with this is that, while controllers (and defenders and leaders) have a lot of valuable things that they do other than damage, they do make a valuable contribution to the damage output of the party. And in tough battles where the striker might be taken down or otherwise incapacitated (an immobilized barbarian who's not adjacent to the monsters is a pincushion not a striker), it's going to be up to the rest of the party to take the monsters down without help from the striker. Also, if you kill the monster just one round earlier in a five round fight, you have on average prevented as much damage as you would by giving him -2 on every single attack during that fight. (Assuming the monster's base hit chance is 50%, a -2 penalty amounts to about a 20% reduction in his DPR which is what you get if you kill him in round 4 instead of round 5; of course if the monster's hit chance is higher than 50% a -2 penalty is not quite 20% so you come out ahead in the five round fight). If the fight is any shorter, killing the monster earlier is even better.There are lots of things that characters can do other than direct damage. But when a low opportunity cost to improve their damage comes by and characters do not take it, they are choosing to be less than optimized.</blockquote>

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