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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 5688336" data-attributes="member: 2011">Agreed. Anecdotal. It really depends on what options are allowed, how optimized the PCs are, how good the DM is at challenging his players, and how tactical the players are. I play with a group of players who don't always focus fire. So, some encounters sometimes stretch out longer and the group uses up more resources.Yeah, I was actually thinking implement user when I wrote that.Melee PCs have a lot of damage boost options, especially feats and items.Marked Fury??? I'm not sure how that applies. Maybe you're thinking of something else.Slashing Storm is conditional. DMs should use movement powers by Epic to avoid this type of thing. In fact, DMs should have the intelligent Epic level foes avoid defenders whenever possible by Epic. Attack strikers first, leaders second (first if detected), controllers third, defenders fourth.Son of Mercy can be avoided with the proper monster abilities (teleport, fly, etc., most DMs should go out of their way to avoid mark damage working all of the time and the vulnerable foe should attack a different PC).Those 3 are 21 or one third of your PC's points of damage, so yeah, if the DM allows them to constantly occur, then yes, your PC can do this a lot. Personally, I think that defenders should quite often be immobilized or locked down other ways by the time they get to Epic (your PC should be slid away from his foes on occasion, etc.) so that NPCs can focus on more squishy PCs.Epic riders should really challenge PCs. One of blinded, stunned,  immobilized, restrained, or weakened should show up most encounters, just to challenge players. Without those, the players mostly control the battlefield and the encounters are less challenging and faster to go through (abet still a lot of hit points to slog through). The PCs have schticks that they use every encounter, monsters should do the same (with the exception of healing which should be rare for monsters). Slugging it out with PCs where the monsters don't have cool riders results in the party winning without breaking a sweat.But you have to admit that with throwing in 3 * Wis damage into most every attack, your PC is optimized quite a bit more than the average Fighter. A lot of Fighters would be doing <40 (no paragon path damage boost, no super high wisdom applied multiple times, no dragonshard).Yes, it's possible to get up into those levels of damage, but it takes very specific builds to do so. Builds that very knowledgeable players such as yourself can manage, but many other more casual players cannot achieve without someone showing them how. And, a lot of it depends on which items DMs hand out.In fact, there are campaigns out there that do not allow all possible gaming sources and your PC wouldn't be possible. So yes, you managed it, but many other players would be doing a lot less damage with their PCs and hence, the grind is still there for many tables. And the grind is based on the basic core of the design whereas your more heavily optimized PC is based on you being vastly better at putting together a PC than most.This. I know of quite a few players whose PCs are more average. And those games tend to be a bit more grindy with longer encounters as the PCs gain levels because without the PC design tricks, those PCs are only increasing damage by one per level more or less.</blockquote>

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