TOPIC: Class Power Rankings

Fred K wrote: Power may be the wrong term for this discussion. A 4th level cleric with ok healing is extremely valuable but not powerful. Those terms aren't interchangeable. Can you do runs without healers? Absolutely - I do it frequently. On the other side, if you had only healers and bards, you'd lose virtually every time if room 7 is a combat room as they can't do enough damage.

With that said, healers can be replaced with potions (for the most part.) Can damage dealers be replaced similarly?

Fred

How are you defining power here, Fred?

Josh M. wrote:

Fred K wrote: Power may be the wrong term for this discussion. A 4th level cleric with ok healing is extremely valuable but not powerful. Those terms aren't interchangeable. Can you do runs without healers? Absolutely - I do it frequently. On the other side, if you had only healers and bards, you'd lose virtually every time if room 7 is a combat room as they can't do enough damage.

With that said, healers can be replaced with potions (for the most part.) Can damage dealers be replaced similarly?

Fred

How are you defining power here, Fred?

I'm using a more general definition of power we used in Political Science classes, "The relative ability to unilaterally exert influence or change." 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.)

A character able to deal substantial damage or enable others to vastly increase damage output, based on current TD design, would be powerful. A bard would be powerful if their presence or absence was the difference between hitting or not hitting. Wizards (either) can be powerful both in immediate damage output but also with boost in combination with barbarians or rogues. Monks, Rangers, and Barbarians are powerful with or without help. Monk definitely distances itself not just because it has, far and away, the highest damage output averaged throughout a run but because stun is so incredibly powerful (usually fights end between something being stunned and before it gets to act again.) Wizards gets into the same conversation as the big three but vastly increase the healing requirements to make that happen.

Rogues aren't in the category of the big three above for power but make a good case to be #4 and first time through hints on puzzle rooms can be very helpful (though, the spirit bowl can achieve the same thing once every run.) Druids, similarly can do about half of the damage of the big three but contribute also as part time healers and talking with animals. Clerics save money in healing and can power wizards to be more powerful with immediate healing in edge cases where wizards use MEC every round. Fighters get lost in the shuffle a bit unless there are multiple foes. Paladins are useful in protecting wizards and can provide some healing support but are, otherwise second class fighters.

Fred

Fred K wrote:

Josh M. wrote:

Fred K wrote: Power may be the wrong term for this discussion. A 4th level cleric with ok healing is extremely valuable but not powerful. Those terms aren't interchangeable. Can you do runs without healers? Absolutely - I do it frequently. On the other side, if you had only healers and bards, you'd lose virtually every time if room 7 is a combat room as they can't do enough damage.

With that said, healers can be replaced with potions (for the most part.) Can damage dealers be replaced similarly?

Fred

How are you defining power here, Fred?

I'm using a more general definition of power we used in Political Science classes, "The relative ability to unilaterally exert influence or change." 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.)

A character able to deal substantial damage or enable others to vastly increase damage output, based on current TD design, would be powerful. A bard would be powerful if their presence or absence was the difference between hitting or not hitting. Wizards (either) can be powerful both in immediate damage output but also with boost in combination with barbarians or rogues. Monks, Rangers, and Barbarians are powerful with or without help. Monk definitely distances itself not just because it has, far and away, the highest damage output averaged throughout a run but because stun is so incredibly powerful (usually fights end between something being stunned and before it gets to act again.) Wizards gets into the same conversation as the big three but vastly increase the healing requirements to make that happen.

Rogues aren't in the category of the big three above for power but make a good case to be #4 and first time through hints on puzzle rooms can be very helpful (though, the spirit bowl can achieve the same thing once every run.) Druids, similarly can do about half of the damage of the big three but contribute also as part time healers and talking with animals. Clerics save money in healing and can power wizards to be more powerful with immediate healing in edge cases where wizards use MEC every round. Fighters get lost in the shuffle a bit unless there are multiple foes. Paladins are useful in protecting wizards and can provide some healing support but are, otherwise second class fighters.

Fred

And then that all breaks down when the average AC goes up by a few points and suddenly Fighters deal more damage than Monks due to % hits shifting.

Fiddy wrote:

Fred K wrote:

Josh M. wrote:

Fred K wrote: Power may be the wrong term for this discussion. A 4th level cleric with ok healing is extremely valuable but not powerful. Those terms aren't interchangeable. Can you do runs without healers? Absolutely - I do it frequently. On the other side, if you had only healers and bards, you'd lose virtually every time if room 7 is a combat room as they can't do enough damage.

With that said, healers can be replaced with potions (for the most part.) Can damage dealers be replaced similarly?

Fred

How are you defining power here, Fred?

I'm using a more general definition of power we used in Political Science classes, "The relative ability to unilaterally exert influence or change." 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.)

A character able to deal substantial damage or enable others to vastly increase damage output, based on current TD design, would be powerful. A bard would be powerful if their presence or absence was the difference between hitting or not hitting. Wizards (either) can be powerful both in immediate damage output but also with boost in combination with barbarians or rogues. Monks, Rangers, and Barbarians are powerful with or without help. Monk definitely distances itself not just because it has, far and away, the highest damage output averaged throughout a run but because stun is so incredibly powerful (usually fights end between something being stunned and before it gets to act again.) Wizards gets into the same conversation as the big three but vastly increase the healing requirements to make that happen.

Rogues aren't in the category of the big three above for power but make a good case to be #4 and first time through hints on puzzle rooms can be very helpful (though, the spirit bowl can achieve the same thing once every run.) Druids, similarly can do about half of the damage of the big three but contribute also as part time healers and talking with animals. Clerics save money in healing and can power wizards to be more powerful with immediate healing in edge cases where wizards use MEC every round. Fighters get lost in the shuffle a bit unless there are multiple foes. Paladins are useful in protecting wizards and can provide some healing support but are, otherwise second class fighters.

Fred

And then that all breaks down when the average AC goes up by a few points and suddenly Fighters deal more damage than Monks due to % hits shifting.

Depends if that fighter traded away that +hit with power attack. The real winners as AC increases are wizards and Druids given auto hit spells.

Fred K wrote:
I'm using a more general definition of power we used in Political Science classes, "The relative ability to unilaterally exert influence or change." 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.)

I guess I can't really argue that the most powerful thing in TD is disposable income to have lots of tokens, including consumables.

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?

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

Fred K wrote:
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.

Cool beans, your experience is definitely different than mine. In particular room seven heals from Cleric and/or Druid have been needed. Though you define multiple damage from puzzles as being unusual where I would say that is the norm for my group.

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.

I very much agree with this which was I meant by depending on a lot of things, though I didn't spell it out and you did a much better job. Those healers become much more value at 4 lvl as well because HP is a lot lower and therefore characters are closer to death.

I think my runs are more inline with Jedi than Fred. Bards and Clerics are cheaper to run with than disposable tokens. If there were a token that granted +6 to hit, and +6 to damage considering that’s the most one can benefit from in a room maybe I would have less issue with the missing. I am not sure I want to craft that token though since the +3 magic ammunition was costly and only affected a single shot for a ranged weapon that took ammo. Also if need more of those condensed heals, maybe a lotus bowl to share.

So I'm super late to the party on this, but it seems to me that since the classes were designed with different roles in mind that maybe we should use multiple categories of power rankings and stack rank the classes under each category? For example, what are the facets of a party that help it succeed in a dungeon? I would submit those categories to include:

Melee Damage
Ranged Damage
Single target damage
Multi target damage
Big Turn Potential (who has the best cooldowns)
Healing/Survivability Provided (includes Guard and Taunt)
Healing/Survivability Needed (Think of this as the "Glass" half of the Glass Cannon Index)
Group Utility (Puzzle clues, bardsong, etc.)

By analyzing the classes across several categories we can start to make some overall assessments

Exbalz wrote: So I'm super late to the party on this, but it seems to me that since the classes were designed with different roles in mind that maybe we should use multiple categories of power rankings and stack rank the classes under each category? For example, what are the facets of a party that help it succeed in a dungeon? I would submit those categories to include:

Melee Damage
Ranged Damage
Single target damage
Multi target damage
Big Turn Potential (who has the best cooldowns)
Healing/Survivability Provided (includes Guard and Taunt)
Healing/Survivability Needed (Think of this as the "Glass" half of the Glass Cannon Index)
Group Utility (Puzzle clues, bardsong, etc.)

By analyzing the classes across several categories we can start to make some overall assessments

Are we ranking how things are currently, or how they should be? If we go with how things are currently, including the VTD 25% hit penalty on offhand attacks, I think we are something like this:

Single Target, low to mid AC Melee, Top end build requires minimum +20 saves, 60hp.
1) Monk
2) Barbarian
3) Ranger
4a) (Rouge, lots of crits)
4b) Poly Druid
5) Fighter
6) Dwarf Fighter
7+ Paladin, Non Critting Rogue, Cleric, Both Wizards, Bard

High AC (40+) will probably bump monk and ranger down quite a bit given that most offhand attacks will miss. I'm not sure the rest of the list will change much.

Ranged:
1a) Wizard - Auto hits

1b) Elf Wizard - same as wizard, but with fewer spells.

3a) Rogue- Crit dependent. Given an equal number of crits between Rogue and Ranger, an Assassin's Crossbow will put the rogue ahead of the ranger. Behind wizard due to no guaranteed hits.

3b) Ranger

4) Spell Druid.

5+) Everyone else? Maybe Benrow's monk with the right build gets to be #5 and then everyone else is 6+?

Endgame, I assume that you are talking Nightmare or lower in your power rankings - because at Epic you need to move fighter and dwarf fighter up the list.

Also for ranged combat how many combat rooms are you expecting?