TOPIC: What are the Ideal Class Damage Rankings?

Endgame wrote:

Guedoji wrote: There should be no ideal class damage ranking. All classes should be relatively equal at base, then damage should scale with earned equipment and skill at sliding or performance on their respective skill test.

Note: Also, just shaking my head when people justify the Rogue having less damage because they have a puzzle to help the group. It's just silly.

each class should have a design statement that determines why you want to play the class. Not every class can be the top damage dealer, but many classes are only defined by their combat abilities. For class balance sake, no class should excel outside of combat and in it. Since rouge has a role out of combat, to be balanced in desirability, it should have a weak combat role.

At entry level, rare, and even UR levels and possibly higher, the Rogue does not "excel" at combat. Maybe the Rogue does awesome damage with a sneak attack once (or twice with high end builds) but after that they fall back to the middle. Rogues do not sustain the high damage output that other combat classes do.

The Rogue has a unique role in a puzzle room, yes. In a combat room, the Rogue has NO role outside of combat. A spike in damage on sneak attack if you crit and then middle damage or flank is fine.

Why are we arguing so much about whether or not the Rogue is unbalanced when there are clearly other classes that need to be toned down (monk) and need to be brought up (fighters, maybe wizards)

It seems to me there are a couple of people who really don't want the Rogue to do decent damage, some people who are invested in the class and don't want to see it ruined, and a lot more people that think it's fine as is.

I think we're better served looking at ways to boost up the classes the need more, rather than nerf classes that stand out.

Endgame wrote:

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)

That would be interesting to see. I think sometimes we look almost exclusively at impact on BIS builds during the token design and not nearly enough at beginning and intermediate builds.

I agree with the point made earlier in the thread that classes are designed to do different things so it's pretty difficult to use damage as a basis for comparison. Even when looking only at damage and ignoring other variables like HP, AC, non-damage abilities and saves -

Monks and Rangers deal consistently high damage.
Barbarians deal high damage on the turns when they are using Rage and Fury.
Wizards deal high damage if there are multiple monsters in the room.
Rogues deal high damage on the turns when they are using Sneak Attack and get a Critical Hit.

Build cost also has to be considered, the damage output of some classes differs much more than others depending on the rarity of tokens available, which makes it very hard to assess the damage of the class overall.

I think we should be looking at a consistent damage range for BiS combat-based builds of all classes rather than trying to assign an order of which classes should be able to deal more damage than each other, especially since damage isn't necessarily the only consideration for a build anyway - I could easily make my current build deal more damage but I'd lose considerable HP and save bonuses to do it.

On a separate point, I do think Rogue needs to be viewed as a damage build and not as something which is primarily there for the puzzle box. Rogues have to spend combat attacking so need to be able to contribute damage, there is nothing else which they can do (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience). The main ability on the Rogue character card is only usable while attacking a monster, and in real time a Rogue will spend about half of a run attacking monsters compared to less than five minutes spent on puzzle boxes. Thematically you can look at pretty much any fantasy setting and find that Rogues are specialists at attacking for high damage at the cost of being bad at defense - including in TD where they are on the lower end of base stats and have an ability which provides a large amount of bonus damage in combat.

Iross wrote: (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience)

Re-read Flank. You can only place it once per combat, but you can leave it there the entire combat.

On some board layouts, you can effectively act as a backstop for multiple people to land crits for multiple rounds.

Brad Mortensen wrote: But you’re taking a very narrow view.

Well no, not trying to narrow the view, i'm trying to add an additional consideration to the other views already presented helping to expand the original thinking to make the discussion more holistic over all.

Brad Mortensen wrote: Rogues aren’t supposed to deal as much damage as a Fighter. And there’s no getting around the fact that a fighter who spent as much on your rogue build would still outdamage you, because that’s all they do. No flank, no clues, no bonus treasure, no sneak attack...

Agreed. Sort of. I think fighters (and all classes) should also have a unique still that increases their enjoy-ability. However, if I have more skill, and have accumulated more exp and gear, I should easily out damage any class not at that same level. A Rare build of one class should not be comparable to a UR build of another.

Rogues have a puzzle box, which is a lot of fun, but can be costly to get a personal benefit from it. We need to get a Libram of looting so we can benefit without feeling as though we screwed the team, albeit that can be fun, but you run the chance of not being invited back. Then the Rod of Persuasion or the Raven are option, but important if you want to ensure success, my point here is it can be costly to be a viable Rogue.

Then we have sneak attack which is the primary method of doing damage. We can typically only do this once, unless we are well geared, it requires a crit, we have to have a token to ensure we don't have to wait a full round, we have to have bracers of guided strike to ensure thee is no immunity to that crit or that damage is out the window. Then of course we have to hope no one knocks our sneak attack slide off the target because we likely can not make the damage back up. In addition to this, to get our expanded crit range through our necklace we have to sacrifice treasure from of neck slot if we didn't have CoA. Again, my point is, we make a lot of sacrifices to be competitive and or help the team.... which is funny as that's not typical of a classic Rogue.

Brad Mortensen wrote: If every class had equal damage output, then Fighters and Barbarian would be pointless, because damage is all they do. Anyone who chose them would be laughed out of the party. “Don’t be silly, choose a class that does something the rest of us can’t.” Maybe Monk, too. All they have is a bunch of defensive powers and a Stunning Fist that is much harder to trigger outside of VTD.

I think the goal is to make every class equally powerful and useful and fun across all dimensions, not just damage-dealing, even if it is the hands-down most important. Dead monsters don’t usually swing back.

That's what i'm saying. I don't disagree Fighters and Barbarian should be high on the list, but I don't agree rogues should be at the bottom because they have a fun ability or two. Give the other classes fun abilities to even things out, don't call for removal of another classes enjoyment.

Iross wrote: I agree with the point made earlier in the thread that classes are designed to do different things so it's pretty difficult to use damage as a basis for comparison. Even when looking only at damage and ignoring other variables like HP, AC, non-damage abilities and saves -

Monks and Rangers deal consistently high damage.
Barbarians deal high damage on the turns when they are using Rage and Fury.
Wizards deal high damage if there are multiple monsters in the room.
Rogues deal high damage on the turns when they are using Sneak Attack and get a Critical Hit.

Build cost also has to be considered, the damage output of some classes differs much more than others depending on the rarity of tokens available, which makes it very hard to assess the damage of the class overall.

I think we should be looking at a consistent damage range for BiS combat-based builds of all classes rather than trying to assign an order of which classes should be able to deal more damage than each other, especially since damage isn't necessarily the only consideration for a build anyway - I could easily make my current build deal more damage but I'd lose considerable HP and save bonuses to do it.

On a separate point, I do think Rogue needs to be viewed as a damage build and not as something which is primarily there for the puzzle box. Rogues have to spend combat attacking so need to be able to contribute damage, there is nothing else which they can do (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience). The main ability on the Rogue character card is only usable while attacking a monster, and in real time a Rogue will spend about half of a run attacking monsters compared to less than five minutes spent on puzzle boxes. Thematically you can look at pretty much any fantasy setting and find that Rogues are specialists at attacking for high damage at the cost of being bad at defense - including in TD where they are on the lower end of base stats and have an ability which provides a large amount of bonus damage in combat.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t The inspiration of TD 2nd Ed DnD, where Rogue (Thief) picks locks, disarms traps, scouts for the party by hiding in the shadows and maybe, if he opportunity presents itself, stabs someone in the back. When I was playing DnD all those years ago, when combat happened it was “the thief hides in shadows”. Does he do anything else? Nope, still hiding..,

Guedoji wrote: There should be no ideal class damage ranking. All classes should be relatively equal at base, then damage should scale with earned equipment and skill at sliding or performance on their respective skill test.

Note: Also, just shaking my head when people justify the Rogue having less damage because they have a puzzle to help the group. It's just silly.

I disagree - because players want to do:

Damage to monsters
Buff / enable the party
Survive the combats

If damage to monsters is the same across the board, there is no reason to play classes that are weak at buff/enable the party or are less durable.

Fiddy wrote:

Iross wrote: (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience)

Re-read Flank. You can only place it once per combat, but you can leave it there the entire combat.

On some board layouts, you can effectively act as a backstop for multiple people to land crits for multiple rounds.

That's interesting, there's no mention of that on the character card at all and I've had to look in the PHB to see that's the case. I wonder how many other people aren't aware that's an option - the assumption would be that the puck is collected at the end of a round in the same way as all the other pucks, especially since the Rogue character card even states directly after explaining how to use Flank Attack "During future rounds, make regular attacks with a melee or ranged weapon".

I'm still not sure how much I'll end up using it instead of attacking, it'd probably depend on the board and party makeup more than anything else. Thanks for making me aware of that - it's definitely an important thing to know.

Dergidan wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Guedoji wrote: There should be no ideal class damage ranking. All classes should be relatively equal at base, then damage should scale with earned equipment and skill at sliding or performance on their respective skill test.

Note: Also, just shaking my head when people justify the Rogue having less damage because they have a puzzle to help the group. It's just silly.

each class should have a design statement that determines why you want to play the class. Not every class can be the top damage dealer, but many classes are only defined by their combat abilities. For class balance sake, no class should excel outside of combat and in it. Since rouge has a role out of combat, to be balanced in desirability, it should have a weak combat role.

At entry level, rare, and even UR levels and possibly higher, the Rogue does not "excel" at combat. Maybe the Rogue does awesome damage with a sneak attack once (or twice with high end builds) but after that they fall back to the middle. Rogues do not sustain the high damage output that other combat classes do.

The Rogue has a unique role in a puzzle room, yes. In a combat room, the Rogue has NO role outside of combat. A spike in damage on sneak attack if you crit and then middle damage or flank is fine.

Why are we arguing so much about whether or not the Rogue is unbalanced when there are clearly other classes that need to be toned down (monk) and need to be brought up (fighters, maybe wizards)

It seems to me there are a couple of people who really don't want the Rogue to do decent damage, some people who are invested in the class and don't want to see it ruined, and a lot more people that think it's fine as is.

I think we're better served looking at ways to boost up the classes the need more, rather than nerf classes that stand out.

I agree with this - the flurry of discussion about rogues here is not very productive.

The damage problems in this game stem from ever increasing stackable melee boosters that are more prevalent than other boosters for ranged/spell and two classes (monk, Ranger) that benefit substantially more from those boosters than the other 10.

Fiddy wrote:

Iross wrote: (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience)

Re-read Flank. You can only place it once per combat, but you can leave it there the entire combat.

On some board layouts, you can effectively act as a backstop for multiple people to land crits for multiple rounds.

\

I.. completely misunderstood flank then.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Dergidan wrote:

Endgame wrote:

Guedoji wrote: There should be no ideal class damage ranking. All classes should be relatively equal at base, then damage should scale with earned equipment and skill at sliding or performance on their respective skill test.

Note: Also, just shaking my head when people justify the Rogue having less damage because they have a puzzle to help the group. It's just silly.

each class should have a design statement that determines why you want to play the class. Not every class can be the top damage dealer, but many classes are only defined by their combat abilities. For class balance sake, no class should excel outside of combat and in it. Since rouge has a role out of combat, to be balanced in desirability, it should have a weak combat role.

At entry level, rare, and even UR levels and possibly higher, the Rogue does not "excel" at combat. Maybe the Rogue does awesome damage with a sneak attack once (or twice with high end builds) but after that they fall back to the middle. Rogues do not sustain the high damage output that other combat classes do.

The Rogue has a unique role in a puzzle room, yes. In a combat room, the Rogue has NO role outside of combat. A spike in damage on sneak attack if you crit and then middle damage or flank is fine.

Why are we arguing so much about whether or not the Rogue is unbalanced when there are clearly other classes that need to be toned down (monk) and need to be brought up (fighters, maybe wizards)

It seems to me there are a couple of people who really don't want the Rogue to do decent damage, some people who are invested in the class and don't want to see it ruined, and a lot more people that think it's fine as is.

I think we're better served looking at ways to boost up the classes the need more, rather than nerf classes that stand out.

I agree with this - the flurry of discussion about rogues here is not very productive.

The damage problems in this game stem from ever increasing stackable melee boosters that are more prevalent than other boosters for ranged/spell and two classes (monk, Ranger) that benefit substantially more from those boosters than the other 10.

Of course, if the design intention is that monks and rangers are supposed to be the top 2 damage dealer, then it’s working as intended?

Guedoji wrote:

Fiddy wrote:

Iross wrote: (except one turn of Flank at 5th level, which rarely gets used in my experience)

Re-read Flank. You can only place it once per combat, but you can leave it there the entire combat.

On some board layouts, you can effectively act as a backstop for multiple people to land crits for multiple rounds.

\

I.. completely misunderstood flank then.

You're not the only one, I had no idea about that either - as mentioned above the character card doesn't give any indication you can leave the puck on the board. Fiddy's completely right though and it's very clearly stated in the PHB - "The flanking puck may be left on the combat board as long as the rogue wants—even the whole combat, if desired."