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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mkill" data-source="post: 5863052" data-attributes="member: 55985">The only way to truly have "no roles at all" is solo adventures.As soon as you work together in a party, you need to split jobs somehow. In that sense, roles are something that was in the game ever since Gary Gygax and friends hacked Chainmail to play with small groups of heroes.Gary Gygax defined the Wizard as "the glass cannon that the party needs to protect" (need to look it up in the old "Ask Gary" threads on enworld). There is your striker / controller role right there.The difference with 4E is that before, these roles were implicit in what you were expected to do as a class. 4E defined them in 4 categories, and then attached each class to one of these four categories.Now, my impression of what ticked people off is that there was a mismatch between what the class meant before and the role they filled in 4E.(NOTE: Everything below is strictly <a href="http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/your_mileage_may_vary" target="_blank">YMMV</a>)Fighter: 50/50 Split between players who think the fighter should be an easy-mode tough melee striker, and player who think he is frontline battlefield control and absolutely love the marks and other toys. 4E recognized this split with Essentials, but too late to appease fans of the first category.Cleric: Probably the least controversial. Even though he is billed as a leader, he retains some very strong controller elements that he had before. (Which drew some criticism from 4E role purists)Rogue: There are old-school purists who think the rogue should be a skill monkey / expert and step aside in combat, but uncontroversial otherwiseWizard: There have always been several ways to play a Wizard. This is well-recognized by 3.5E splatbooks. The two main ones are artillery, concentrating on direct damage spells, and controller, i.e. using debuffs, save-or-dies and battlefield effects. 4E exclusively put him in the second box, to the dismay of players who liked the first one.Ranger: Uncontroversial as Striker. Personally I'm not a fan of the Quarry mechanic though.Druid: The 3E druid was a mixed back of melee striker (in wildshape), controller (entangle, summons and similar spells) and leader (healing + buff spells). 4E settled on controller, and removed most of the healing and buff abilities, and later delivered a leader variant. For me, this is the prime example where a class should have been designed to choose between different paths that fill different roles from the start.Swordmage: While I really love this class, it really didn't work well if you wanted to play it as a 3E Duskblade/PF Magus-style striker who enchants his blade for extra damage. I think a number of players would have been happier with the class if the Aegis of Assault was a straightforward striker build, because that's how they expected it to work.</blockquote>

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