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Please delete your title and repost it as "Playing D&D - (Striker) Tactics 101" ! So much good info that soo many people neglect...

And while I never was fond about Avengers, Pursuit or any other, these examples alone made me respect them quite some more.

I'd just disagree one thing. Under the assumption that Soldiers and Brutes are about equally dangerous in their offense, I think Avengers are much better to go after Soldiers before Brutes, because...
1) The high Soldier Defenses make not that much of a difference for you, particularly in comparison to your allies.
2) You already mentioned higher crit frequency. Soldiers suffer more there, because they have less base HP and also you relatively crit more often (say 20% of all hits instead of 15% of all hits on Brutes).
3) Because Soldiers have better defenses, they are harder to control by imposing conditions and thus should be killed before Brutes.

Fair point.
Maybe I'm just an old, evil DM and always skip over those mobs when building encounters. My Soliders might not always deal big damage, but if they're on you, you'll hate them. If not for the constant damage, that waits to be exploited, than for being grabed and pulled, slowed and prone. And for me including just that one Lurker with the high recharge, big damage power, who hides until he can finish off that squishy as the most inopportune moment.

May 3, 2010 -- 10:25PM, langeweile wrote:

I'd just disagree one thing. Under the assumption that Soldiers and Brutes are about equally dangerous in their offense, I think Avengers are much better to go after Soldiers before Brutes, because...
1) The high Soldier Defenses make not that much of a difference for you, particularly in comparison to your allies.
2) You already mentioned higher crit frequency. Soldiers suffer more there, because they have less base HP and also you relatively crit more often (say 20% of all hits instead of 15% of all hits on Brutes).
3) Because Soldiers have better defenses, they are harder to control by imposing conditions and thus should be killed before Brutes.

OK a rejoinder to your first two points.

First, in general your expected damage output WILL be going down versus soldiers due to more misses. For critvenger builds these aren't really a problem because these additional misses came from your non-crits (note to ardent champs: you have to hit for your doubles to crit, so this doesn't apply to you like it does the 19-20 crit range builds). For everyone else, it's roughly a % reduction in average damage for the same reason that the Expertise feats are a boost. Soldiers compensate for higher defenses with lower hit points and damage output than brutes; Avengers usually do benefit a bit from this tradeoff compared to other classes, as you point out.

But the second issue is to me fatal. All things being equal, a good striker should be focus-firing. So while you might be only slightly reduced in your damage output, your pals now have a dilemma. If they assist you on your target, the group will take longer to take down the Soldier than the Brute because they're missing more (giving the Brute more turns to use his burstier attacks). If they do not, then both monsters stay up longer because you're spreading out damage (the soldier is tanking you!), and also because you're less likely to get bonuses from ally powers and flanking. Brutes and soldiers are usually both on the front line, so you're as likely to be well-situated to fight one as the other.

Obviously, this doesn't matter if you're off-tanking, or in cases where a particular soldier is more dangerous than a particular brute in a particular encounter. Those are situational. The general rule should be to get the kill count up, because "dead is the best status effect" and "teamwork is the best DPR buff". Avengers who take their targets off for solo killing obviously excepted.

I do agree with point number three, as long as that soldier is doing something more than dishing out a little damage every round.