What's your Fifth?

[Mircoles]

I chose striker.

My current group normally consists of an avenger(elf), chaos sorcerer(human), warden(goliath), druid(dwarf) and a shame(longtooth shifter).

Though, because the Dm has hit the busy season at his job, the druid is Dming and the Dm is playing a wizard.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I want cake, only got 4 players and they have a striker, striker, controller, defender.

 

[Hussar]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

 

[Mercurius]

Our group now has SEVEN players:

3 strikers (rogue, avenger, warlock)
2 defenders (swordmage, warden)
1 controller (wizard)
1 leader (cleric)

I picked striker for the sake of the poll.

 

[MarkB]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

I'm guessing there are a few factors here:

• Strikers are the 'sexiest' class, the one most attractive to players who want some spotlight time in combat.
• Controllers are already the 'fifth wheel' when building a balanced party, so people tend to look at them last.
• Even now, there aren't actually all that many classes in the Controller role, so it's harder to avoid doubling-up on individual classes.

 

[Herschel]

Looks like Striker is definitely the odds on favorite here. By about 3:1 over any other choice. The poor controller.

Why no doubling up on controllers?

Because too many people are still hung up on the 3E/Video Game mentality of "Damage R0XX0Rs!!!" instead of seeing how ultimately awesome controllers are. And I'd place part of that on DMs designing adventures too. There's two schools of thought (with varying degrees of overlap):

1: Design adventures that fit in the party's sweet spot.

2: Design adventures the party can overcome but are much harder without smart tactics and/or a well-rounded party.

Heck, I have yet to play a primary controller but play with plenty of them (sometimes three wizards) and always appreciate what they bring to the party. As a DM, no class bungles my design plans more than controllers. Strikers are the easiest to deal with.

 

[Somebloke]

As a DM, I let the player know he can take any class, but ask that he look at the strikers first.

They really are good or speeding up fights and removing complacency with the players.

 

[Theroc]

Because too many people are still hung up on the 3E/Video Game mentality of "Damage R0XX0Rs!!!" instead of seeing how ultimately awesome controllers are. And I'd place part of that on DMs designing adventures too. There's two schools of thought (with varying degrees of overlap)

Why is "damage rocks!" being attributed to an edition where a mage can AoE kill an entire encounter without dealing a single point of damage?

And videogames actually REQUIRE controllers. At least, WoW required "Crowd Control" which came in multiple forms, and was primarily a DPS(Striker) class feature. In otherwords, 4th Edition took the 'control' features strikers in videogames had, and gave them to a slightly lower damage class that was about as squishy, and gave it an entirely separate role. In WoW, Mages had Polymorph. Warlocks had Banish. Rogues could 'stunlock' opponents. Druids had Thorns/Hibernate/Cyclone, hunters had traps.

 

[Beckett]

I think the only game I'm in that doesn't use two strikers has two defenders, but the druid is played very much like a striker.

The sole TPK I've done in 4E was against a two leader party. Very resilient party, if slower at killing than most two striker parties (more coordination would have helped a lot). But, overextended as they were, the extra healing couldn't keep up.

 

[Jhaelen]

Our 4e test group had two strikers and three leaders (yep, a total of seven players).
Imho, it worked quite well, though replacing one of the leaders with a defender would probably have been more effective (especially since one of the leaders was played very much like a defender...).