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I've read many times on the forums something along these lines "If your striker is not taking down a standard monster of equal level once a round (on average), he/she is not good at being a striker".

I simply do not see how this is mathematically possible.  I run a group with a few strikers, who are not "tweeked" but are built well, and they aren't anywhere close to this (being able to take down a standard monster of equal level once per round). They do well and I'm not having any problems in having them successfully complete encounters, but reading statements like the above has me perplexed.


So how is this possible?  If you want to give me build examples, let's aim it for level 15-16 (my group is 16 right now), and use classes from the PHB1 (Rouge or Ranger best, since my group has a Rogue and a Ranger).


Thanks in advance!       

Dec 26, 2012 -- 3:09PM, Malph wrote:

I've read many times on the forums something along these lines "If your striker is not taking down a standard monster of equal level once a round (on average), he/she is not good at being a striker".

Novas can definitely push you into that range. But the more accepted numbers of 'average damage' are generally between 20/40/60 on the low end and 30/60/90 on the high end.

Thanks for everyone's replies so far.

I don't know what a "nova" is, but it seems like averaging damage that's = or > standard monster of equal level is very high end Op, and not normal.

Our PCs certainly build wisely, but they are not tweeked by any means.  Their stats are well-rounded overall, mainly for role-play purposes.  And I am fairly stingy with magical gear, so they are definitely not stacked full of good gear (I keep them a little bit behind what might be normal for their level, though not enough to make encounters unbalanced against them).

To expand on that, there are:

Daily Novas:  All utility, items, and attack powers are on the table.  If you're using 2+ dailies as a striker in a single round, something should be dead or You're Doing It Wrong.

Encounter Novas:  Same idea as above, but only using Encounter resources.  You can do this again next encounter.  This should kill or severely maim a standard creature.

A useful nova should include some (or all) of the following:  Multi Attack powers (Rain of Blows, etc.), Minor Action attacks (Ruffling Sting, Sohei Flair, etc), personal damage boosters (Promise of Storm, etc.), action economy [usually involving movement baked into an attack] (Fury's Advance, Tumbling Strike), vulnerability taps (Morninglord, Sarifal's Blessing), and free action add-ons (Swift Charge).

The "secret" to real ultimate power is to stack lots of static modifiers and/or on-demand damage boosters/vulnerability, and combine it with lots and lots of attacks.  Things die.