TOPIC: What are the Ideal Class Damage Rankings?

Anthony Barnstable wrote: ...
2. Elf Wizard: similar logic, but has more support abilities, trades better wands for better polymorphing. Clearly designed to be the “less focused” wizard and more of the “jack of all trades” wizard. Would be great to see something like non-consumable polymorph tokens or focus boosting polymorph to hit bonus as well, that could help open a new option for elf wizard builds.

First, for the most part, I can see these rankings.

I don't feel any difference in how EW plays. Outside of Alertness, what wizard support spells ever get used? Even when playing 4th level with like sealed pack or whatever, the only spells that ever matter are damage spells IME.

4. Monk: sacrifices access to armor and weapons, worse than average sliding ability because of unique dual sliding mechanic, no support abilities.

I just don't understand why monk gets so much damage love. Saves = 6/6/9. Dazing Fist, Deflect Missiles, Evasion, Feather Fall into better versions with Diamond Body. Sure, some of these abilities are useless because dungeons don't do anything with them, but Diamond Body cheats a power rare. The theme of monk, if not the practice, is that monk gets a host of weird abilities that sometimes matter with two weak attacks because they use their fists/magic fists. Practice is a thematic fail, where double-fisting Thor's Hammer or whatever happens, though, admittedly, I'm now falling into the same trap that seemingly everyone falls into of spending too much time worrying about the broken BiS level of play and not levels of play where some semblance of balance might be good for the game.

5. Barbarian: should be designed to deal more damage but not hit as accurately as the fighter, good AC, great HP, good saves (maybe should have worse saves?).

Do people actually look at the saves for these classes? It's one of the few differentiators that matters. Barbarian is 6/2/2, which is not the 5/7/2 of ranger and along the lines of 5/2/2 of fighter and 7/2/1 of dwarf fighter. 4th level barb only does damage. 5th level gets Damage Reduction, which may not be great, but it's far better to me than better AC.

6. Fighter: the “default character”, falling squarely in the middle where they should. Designed for physical combat, designed to hit the most accurately, but should forego some damage because of this. Great AC, good HP, good saves.

Saves are 5/2/2. While I used to consider this the least appealing class because it's terrible and boring, my personal preferences actually find this sort of amusing where I hate playing some of the other classes, and I'm inclined to play this in weird runs where I get to play 4th level because I'm not particularly interested in resliding.

8. Rogue: ...

By far the most important ability of rogue is puzzle clues. That people who run the same dungeon 5 times don't care about puzzle solutions anymore is not the rogue's fault. I wouldn't say the attraction of rogue, though, is puzzle clues or even 3 tokens that have no impact on 1%er collections. It's playing Concentration that is the main attraction to rogue. Actually, I find wizard's main appeal to me is skill tests as otherwise it's just monotonous howitzering, but that's me.

But, is the goal to make classes equally appealing or equally good? I think equally appealing. Monk can be better than fighter because fighter is easier for players to understand how they work - it's the basic class to the monk's advanced class. Now, casual players, rare hunters, and forumites are going to have different general interests, nevermind that everyone is an individual, like how I never want to play rogue nor ever play cleric again.

As I'm lazy and not as invested as others, I would prefer seeing people crunch the damage numbers on all rare builds or like all UR builds, something that isn't the insanity that is the most expensive builds. But, I can understand why those who have all/almost all of the tokens only care about the level they play at rather than levels that don't just double-fist legendaries.

It also seems to me that these rankings should be done at different build levels. Typically I think they are done with "best in class" damage, but it's arguably more important to have the right balance with "only the starting 10 pack" builds, since that might be the largest percentage of players. Maybe also compare builds with Rares and below, and builds with URs and below.

And no, I'm not volunteering to do that analysis.

Endgame wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Paladin’s guard ability is quite a good support ability, and their saves are better than good - I think they are in the top two?

When was the last time Paladin's guard came up for you? Running every adventure since 2015, I've never seen guard happen, and in VTD there wasn't a single guard able attack. From a character design and balance standpoint, guard needs to affect the paladin's damage, but I don't think it actually ever triggers based on dungeon design.

As for saves, I'm pretty sure its 1) Monk 2) Druid, 3) Paladin.

What does “never seen guard happen” Mean? Never played with a Paladin? Never had a Paladin declare guard? Never been in a fight where there were melee attacks?

I will bet you a shiny 100 GP piece there were guardable attacks in V1a.

Have you ever seen an attack declared on a guarded character that is redirected to a Paladin on a 10 man run?

We’ve run with a paladin almost every run since we started (including running Paladin myself a couple years till I locked in on cleric). I have never seen the guarded character attacked - it almost happened once against the salamander (2016?) where the DM declared an attack on the guarded wizard, but when we called out the guard, the DM switched the attack to another Non wizard, non Paladin character.

Have I ever? Yes?

Is it often? Maybe every other year.

I have played a LOT of Paladin over the years. DMs are better about not switching targets now than they were before.

Also, intelligent monsters might notice the wizards hiding behind the Paladin and avoid that whole group altogether.

I do think it's less important than some other abilities, but still is a class defining ability.

Many argue that if none of those 3 get attacked, guard has done its job. I agree that it can be frustrating for the Paladin to have their biggest ability not see "use"

I agree on V1a. Though that might be best behind some spoiler text, just in case.

Endgame wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Matthew Hayward wrote: Paladin’s guard ability is quite a good support ability, and their saves are better than good - I think they are in the top two?

When was the last time Paladin's guard came up for you? Running every adventure since 2015, I've never seen guard happen, and in VTD there wasn't a single guard able attack. From a character design and balance standpoint, guard needs to affect the paladin's damage, but I don't think it actually ever triggers based on dungeon design.

As for saves, I'm pretty sure its 1) Monk 2) Druid, 3) Paladin.

What does “never seen guard happen” Mean? Never played with a Paladin? Never had a Paladin declare guard? Never been in a fight where there were melee attacks?

I will bet you a shiny 100 GP piece there were guardable attacks in V1a.

Have you ever seen an attack declared on a guarded character that is redirected to a Paladin on a 10 man run?

We’ve run with a paladin almost every run since we started (including running Paladin myself a couple years till I locked in on cleric). I have never seen the guarded character attacked - it almost happened once against the salamander (2016?) where the DM declared an attack on the guarded wizard, but when we called out the guard, the DM switched the attack to another Non wizard, non Paladin character.

In our run of v1a, all attacks we encountered were AoE, excluding some magic missiles that couldn’t be guarded anyway. Even if there had been a melee attack that used AC, I am doubtful that the guarded character would have been attacked.

I see Guard used effectively fairly often. Not in V1a, but in most modules it seems to matter in at least 1 combat, more commonly 2 combats, and sometimes even 3 combats.

Guard and Taunt both can make the higher AC of Paladin and Dwarf Fighter actually matter. Human Fighter on the other hand has no way to actively make their AC matter to help the party. I almost never see a Fighter get targeted with a Melee or Ranged attack outside of Grind. Instead the monster just attacks someone else. This is why I keep saying AC is overrated on that class and shouldn't be counted as highly on balancing purposes as most people seem to think it should. Because the Fighter can't make their AC matter. In fact, the best thing a Human Fighter can do to protect the rest of the party is purposely tank their AC to make themselves a more interesting target, and then rely on soaking the damage via high HP.

Balance between classes should take into account what impact an ability (or combination of abilities) has on the success/failure of the party, not just whether a number happens to be higher.

Ian Lee wrote:

Anthony Barnstable wrote: ...
2. Elf Wizard: similar logic, but has more support abilities, trades better wands for better polymorphing. Clearly designed to be the “less focused” wizard and more of the “jack of all trades” wizard. Would be great to see something like non-consumable polymorph tokens or focus boosting polymorph to hit bonus as well, that could help open a new option for elf wizard builds.

First, for the most part, I can see these rankings.

I don't feel any difference in how EW plays. Outside of Alertness, what wizard support spells ever get used? Even when playing 4th level with like sealed pack or whatever, the only spells that ever matter are damage spells IME.

4. Monk: sacrifices access to armor and weapons, worse than average sliding ability because of unique dual sliding mechanic, no support abilities.

I just don't understand why monk gets so much damage love. Saves = 6/6/9. Dazing Fist, Deflect Missiles, Evasion, Feather Fall into better versions with Diamond Body. Sure, some of these abilities are useless because dungeons don't do anything with them, but Diamond Body cheats a power rare. The theme of monk, if not the practice, is that monk gets a host of weird abilities that sometimes matter with two weak attacks because they use their fists/magic fists. Practice is a thematic fail, where double-fisting Thor's Hammer or whatever happens, though, admittedly, I'm now falling into the same trap that seemingly everyone falls into of spending too much time worrying about the broken BiS level of play and not levels of play where some semblance of balance might be good for the game.

5. Barbarian: should be designed to deal more damage but not hit as accurately as the fighter, good AC, great HP, good saves (maybe should have worse saves?).

Do people actually look at the saves for these classes? It's one of the few differentiators that matters. Barbarian is 6/2/2, which is not the 5/7/2 of ranger and along the lines of 5/2/2 of fighter and 7/2/1 of dwarf fighter. 4th level barb only does damage. 5th level gets Damage Reduction, which may not be great, but it's far better to me than better AC.

6. Fighter: the “default character”, falling squarely in the middle where they should. Designed for physical combat, designed to hit the most accurately, but should forego some damage because of this. Great AC, good HP, good saves.

Saves are 5/2/2. While I used to consider this the least appealing class because it's terrible and boring, my personal preferences actually find this sort of amusing where I hate playing some of the other classes, and I'm inclined to play this in weird runs where I get to play 4th level because I'm not particularly interested in resliding.

8. Rogue: ...

By far the most important ability of rogue is puzzle clues. That people who run the same dungeon 5 times don't care about puzzle solutions anymore is not the rogue's fault. I wouldn't say the attraction of rogue, though, is puzzle clues or even 3 tokens that have no impact on 1%er collections. It's playing Concentration that is the main attraction to rogue. Actually, I find wizard's main appeal to me is skill tests as otherwise it's just monotonous howitzering, but that's me.

But, is the goal to make classes equally appealing or equally good? I think equally appealing. Monk can be better than fighter because fighter is easier for players to understand how they work - it's the basic class to the monk's advanced class. Now, casual players, rare hunters, and forumites are going to have different general interests, nevermind that everyone is an individual, like how I never want to play rogue nor ever play cleric again.

As I'm lazy and not as invested as others, I would prefer seeing people crunch the damage numbers on all rare builds or like all UR builds, something that isn't the insanity that is the most expensive builds. But, I can understand why those who have all/almost all of the tokens only care about the level they play at rather than levels that don't just double-fist legendaries.

Lots of good points.

Another thought as the opinions and analysis fly, VTD vs sliding. Monk and Ranger Presumably are doing a ton of extra damage rolling as opposed to the manually dexterous sliding two pucks. Maybe not, I’ve not rule in person with an epic monk or ranger.

Mike Steele wrote: It also seems to me that these rankings should be done at different build levels. Typically I think they are done with "best in class" damage, but it's arguably more important to have the right balance with "only the starting 10 pack" builds, since that might be the largest percentage of players. Maybe also compare builds with Rares and below, and builds with URs and below.

And no, I'm not volunteering to do that analysis.

If you're OK with using my starter builds I posted in each class forum, I could calculate damage rankings for:

Level 1 (mostly commons and uncommons from current and previous year)
Rare and 4* and under (No UR, 4th level)
Rare + 3 UR (ex, get to 5th level, add a TE, and add one extra UR for the class)

Regarding Paladin:

People say "Guard never gets used" or "Guard is never effective," when they mean "I never get to use my Damage Resistance."

Like a defensive back in football or an off-ball defender in basketball, you can't truly judge a performance based on passes defensed or steals. If they don't throw the ball near you, you're effectively removing your opponent.

If you Guard a Wizard or Bard at 4 hp, and they aren't attacked (and the monster melee attacks someone else), you have saved that player's life. 100% success. Equal value to a resurrection token.

Intelligent monsters melee attacking other players is a feature, not a bug. Although they'll tend to be more the ranged/magic/AoE/saves type anyway, none of which matter to Guard. (In fact, if I would change anything about Guard it would be to make sure all DMs and players remembered it only matters to melee attacks).

Personally, I've played Pally once, DM'd a couple weekends, and played other classes maybe a dozen times, mostly on Hardcore and Normal.

I think I've actually seen a guarding Paladin actively take a hit two or three times in three years. But honestly, that seems ok to me. When dealing with a new Normal party, I'd encourage a Paladin to Guard someone, but even choosing targets randomly, that's only a 1-in-10 chance per round. You should fight against 10 dumb melee monsters and block 1 attack. That could be 3-15 actual dungeons or 10 runs in a dungeon that features a dumb melee-only monster. (Yeah, statistics don't really work like that, but you get it.)

Fiddy wrote:

edwin wrote:

Dave wrote: Doesn't impact your damage rankings, but thought just ran a little data against V1a to see what people were selecting as their class (since we now have that info if they select a class).

V1a - Total runs = 125 (includes Golden Ticket runs)
Tickets Available = 1250
Tickets Purchased = 1238
Classes Selected = 1195 (96.5% of tickets purchased)

Rogue - 112 / 89.6%
Druid - 110 / 88.0%
Cleric - 109 / 87.2%
Bard - 107 / 85.6%
Ranger - 106 / 84.8%
Barbarian - 101 / 80.8%
Monk - 100 / 80.0%
Paladin - 100 / 80.0%
Dwarf Fighter - 98 / 78.4%
Wizard - 89 / 71.2%
Fighter - 88 / 70.4%
Elf Wizard - 75 / 60.0%

You can reach your own conclusions. Seems to me that treasure is most appealing ability to people followed by a need to heal and keep parties alive. Fighter and Wizard classes lag. Part of that is probably due to having two classes that are much the same and part of it may be due to those classes still awaiting a legendary to put hopefully put them on par with other classes. Just my observations, for what little they're worth.

Classes selected does not necessarily equate to classes played. Seems like

We had to pick classes for ghosts. The overall impact might not be significant, but it is present.

Of the runs I am aware of the top 4 listed were ghost picks.

So 9 classes picked about the same amount of times, 2 slighly less and one even less.

Singsalot wrote: Regarding Paladin:

People say "Guard never gets used" or "Guard is never effective," when they mean "I never get to use my Damage Resistance."

Like a defensive back in football or an off-ball defender in basketball, you can't truly judge a performance based on passes defensed or steals. If they don't throw the ball near you, you're effectively removing your opponent.

If you Guard a Wizard or Bard at 4 hp, and they aren't attacked (and the monster melee attacks someone else), you have saved that player's life. 100% success. Equal value to a resurrection token.

Intelligent monsters melee attacking other players is a feature, not a bug. Although they'll tend to be more the ranged/magic/AoE/saves type anyway, none of which matter to Guard. (In fact, if I would change anything about Guard it would be to make sure all DMs and players remembered it only matters to melee attacks).

Personally, I've played Pally once, DM'd a couple weekends, and played other classes maybe a dozen times, mostly on Hardcore and Normal.

I think I've actually seen a guarding Paladin actively take a hit two or three times in three years. But honestly, that seems ok to me. When dealing with a new Normal party, I'd encourage a Paladin to Guard someone, but even choosing targets randomly, that's only a 1-in-10 chance per round. You should fight against 10 dumb melee monsters and block 1 attack. That could be 3-15 actual dungeons or 10 runs in a dungeon that features a dumb melee-only monster. (Yeah, statistics don't really work like that, but you get it.)

If you REALLY want to use your Guard for its DR, team up with a Dwarf, find a melee monster, and Guard the Dwarf, and have the Dwarf Taunt the monster. Load up on Retribution damage.

Pretty sure the PHB Says that you can’t guard a taunting dwarf.

I'm betting the numbers of Fighters/Wizards is largely due to there being two.

What would be great would be to know which of the two Fighters/Wizards were getting picked more when only one is chosen, and how many of those picked are because both were chosen.

Presuming Ghosts don't matter much, this gives a pretty good basic idea. Not surprised Dwarf is a bit more popular. Interesting that Elf is so much less popular (if that holds out more broadly).

Personally, I think it would be cool if there was an Elf class that did some magic, wore some armor, and fought with swords and bows, but obviously not asking for a total class redesign for anyone.

Endgame wrote:

Singsalot wrote: Regarding Paladin:

People say "Guard never gets used" or "Guard is never effective," when they mean "I never get to use my Damage Resistance."

Like a defensive back in football or an off-ball defender in basketball, you can't truly judge a performance based on passes defensed or steals. If they don't throw the ball near you, you're effectively removing your opponent.

If you Guard a Wizard or Bard at 4 hp, and they aren't attacked (and the monster melee attacks someone else), you have saved that player's life. 100% success. Equal value to a resurrection token.

Intelligent monsters melee attacking other players is a feature, not a bug. Although they'll tend to be more the ranged/magic/AoE/saves type anyway, none of which matter to Guard. (In fact, if I would change anything about Guard it would be to make sure all DMs and players remembered it only matters to melee attacks).

Personally, I've played Pally once, DM'd a couple weekends, and played other classes maybe a dozen times, mostly on Hardcore and Normal.

I think I've actually seen a guarding Paladin actively take a hit two or three times in three years. But honestly, that seems ok to me. When dealing with a new Normal party, I'd encourage a Paladin to Guard someone, but even choosing targets randomly, that's only a 1-in-10 chance per round. You should fight against 10 dumb melee monsters and block 1 attack. That could be 3-15 actual dungeons or 10 runs in a dungeon that features a dumb melee-only monster. (Yeah, statistics don't really work like that, but you get it.)

If you REALLY want to use your Guard for its DR, team up with a Dwarf, find a melee monster, and Guard the Dwarf, and have the Dwarf Taunt the monster. Load up on Retribution damage.

Pretty sure the PHB Says that you can’t guard a taunting dwarf.

What? Aw, nerts!

Just to point out in the old Divine Class Debate: Druids out-rank clerics in melee damage (because at least +5 Polymorph damage, more with Thor’s or various focus items, even with a green potion), spell damage, healing because spell surge (even more since Clerics’ Restore Power can only be used on others), and range attacks because higher starting DEX, which also gives them a +2 to their starting AC. They get the equivalent of +2/+2/+1 saves over Clerics, and even have +2 Wisdom, not that that matters at the moment, but someday soon it may. Oh, and +4 HP at level 5. And they can use pointy weapons.

Clerics get higher AC (clearly the least important of all stats, and mitigated by the Druid’s higher DEX) and turning (which is irrelevant in the majority of combats). If Clerics get the edge in some other way I sincerely don’t see it.

Advantage Druid, by a helluva lot.

It would be nice if that imbalance got addressed somehow.