jedibcg wrote:
Fred K wrote: A cleric is a great supporting character but isn't 100% necessary to survive a run. Healers make surviving runs less expensive as we rarely see cases where characters wouldn't survive to the end of a combat without immediate healing (it happens but is exceptionally rare where 10 or 15 points of healing wouldn't make due and 50 is immediately needed.)
Just attempting understand the we you are using when you say "we rarely see cases..." Are you referring to the runs you are on, or the community as whole?
I don't think being necessary to survive a run though is a good case for ranking power regardless of how you meant it. I am sure we have all been on runs where the party survived and any given class was not present. So no class is 100% necessary to survive a run. Now which classes make it more likely a party would survive a run is more accurate imo. And that is going to depend on a lot of things. Like you pointed out for the Rogue.
Though just surviving a run might not be a great judge either. You can survive a run by defeating no monsters and solving no puzzles on various difficulties (not counting epic) if you have lots of AC, Saves and healing. Would you count the party as successful though? And isn't being as successful as possible the goal of the party, not just survival?
I can't speak for the community as a whole. I have done runs over the past 5 years with likely over 100 different players. I can count on one hand the number of times clerics jumping in for big healing was absolutely necessary for the group to survive the room and avoid a tpk. One of those was a Patron run by Jeff tossing out 40 AOE damage multiple rounds - that is definitely an exception to what we normally see.
Excluding V5, if you are playing a character other than paladin or dwarf, how many times were you even targeted for solo attacks per dungeon? Usually, it is less than 3 or 4. If all of those hit, most characters wouldn't die. Including area effect attacks (at NM or higher), my guess is the average character who isn't funnelling attacks to themselves is damaged maybe 3 times per run unless something unusual is happening (multiple damage from puzzles, etc.)
A side note - thinking about the power level concept - difficulty and level of character/gear matters. Assuming all characters had an equal value in gear, level 4 runs at normal would likely have different rankings for the characters. In that case, Monk and Ranger would still likely lead but the casters probably be close to them in overall damage potential.
Fiddy - you are mostly correct that increasing AC adjusts things. Auto-hit via spell becomes more powerful. Combats with exceptionally high ACs at epic difficulty tend to be in the upper 30's. Monk builds don't tend to have a +30 to hit so it would drop their relative power. Rangers can be upper 20's to hit without much sacrifice so they would still be top 3. Barbarian moves into the top slot in that scenario since their to-hits tend to be as high (or higher) than fighter builds (due to rage.) The fighters might hit but won't be able to kill an epic level creature without big crits. The barbarian, in that scenario, can realistically do 300+ damage by themselves against a high AC epic level creature in 2-3 rounds without having to roll better than a 10 or 15 to-hit.
I agree that party composition matters. It's much like d&d in that you usually want the big primary roles represented (melee specialist, damage caster, healer, stealth/range attack.) There are classes, though, that you can not have represented and it is virtually unnoticed (fighter and druid - possibly paladin as well.) There are others where you just need 1 of the group they would be part of (wizards/elf wizard and high dps-types monk/ranger/barbarian.) Bard (bardsong and lore) and rogue (rogue boxes) both have unique abilities that you usually want in a run if it is the first time you are seeing a dungeon. Every other class has a redundant partner (or multiples.)
Fred