How is the most optimal party in D&D 4e from levels 1 to 10 anything other all wood elf superior crossbow rangers?

How is the most optimal party in D&D 4e from levels 1 to 10 anything other all wood elf superior crossbow rangers?

Speed 7 for kiting, Sense Threat for initiative, Reactive Stealth to hide at the start of a fight, Crossbow Expertise to ignore up to superior cover, raptor companion to quarry basically anything, Twin Strike for damage and taking out minions, Two-Fanged Strike for killing enemies, Invigorating Stride for kiting and healing, Disruptive Strike for defense, Spitting-Cobra Stance for big melee encounters, maybe Shadowdance leather armor to avoid opportunity attacks.

What party can fight better from levels 1 to 10? The same party, except with Beast Rider and Medium horse companions? The same party, except pixies riding their raptor companions?

Never mind what can happen with themes...

Reminder that All 4e players on Veeky Forums are just one very sad man who knows how to rotate his IP Address and pretend like there's more than one person that likes 4e. He is a sad, desperate individual who wants people to enjoy his shitty game, but no one does.

Why does this fall off at 11?

Other, more optimal nova builds start to appear at level 11, and by then, the party wants a Battle Captain with Combat Commander.

>literally everything is combat related
I can guarantee that you're not half the player you think you are.

Five trained skills and backgrounds. Spread around skills. Skill DCs in 4e are not very daunting. Skill challenges are very easy to pass, as written.

If you really want more skill utility in the party, drop one ranger for an eladrin bard with Bard of All Trades and Bardic Knowledge.

Half Elf Taxi bard
Thri-Kreen Barbed Chain TWF ranger
Warforged Ice Warden

It was the perfect party.

I don't know, but I plan on testing that someday.

I'm working on a 4e pseudo-roguelike. So far I have done the map editor, some of the interface, and the tile layer of the engine. Next I'm working on some more UI stuff, the actor layer, and the vision layer.

My goal is to generate random procedural five-level campaigns that are playable solo. This essentially requires me to implement AI companions. When that is done, the game can theoretically run itself.

Optimizing parties is probably a level of sophistication this project will never reach, but simulating large portions of the system should make testing out parties much faster.

BORING

No one wants to play in a party where everyone's doing the same thing. Basically anything else is superior by sheer virtue of being a lot more fun to play

I feel that some charge optimized party with the right kind of warlord could give them a run for their money (assuming pixies so they can just fly over stuff so not being ranged isn't that much of a problem).

Since you're on a grid and player is always at its center, vision line-of-sight is dead easy to do. I've seen people do pointless Bresenham line stuff every step, but all you need is a table that says for THIS square to be visible, THESE squares need to be unobstructed, then proceed to check blocking state of those grid cells only.

This.
4e is not a competition. Even if you play it as a combat simulator, there's nothing to win. Might as well have fun while you do it.

>Inb4 I only have fun if my DPS is the highest

>those tiles

It's not a DPS contest, it's everyone working together to fill the enemy full of arrows faster, because the optimal way to stop the enemy is to put them down like a mad dog, with tons of dakka.

So instead of namby pamby weak shoves and shuffling about, it's better to have four guys with big shooty rather than one guy with big shooty and other guys doing irrelevant stuff like making you be harder to hit.

I thought 4e was all about well-rounded parties.

This is a pretty well-optimized party, yeah, and you aren't wrong about more dakka being the best way to win. But there's two problems with your plan.

First off, there's more to the game than finishing fights as quick as possible. Players tend to not want to all play the same or very similar characters. Second off, from a pure optimization standpoint, you're too reliant on good conditions. Imagine this party fighting in a 7x7 room against a handful of melee bruisers with lockdown, a couple AoE artillery, and a stack of minions. There's nowhere to run, you can't nova every enemy off the field, and since you've built a party of relative squishy ranged characters of you get caught you're in deep shit. In short, the enemy needs perfect conditions, but any DM worth his salt will throw those out eventually.

Are they really that squishy if they've got Shadowdance armor, maxed Dex, and Invigorating Stride?

They can nova the artilleries to death, then nova the brutes to death, then Twin Strike the minions. They'll protect themselves with Disruptive Strike.

Looks like just another encounter.

>can't invigorating stride if you're surrounded
>poor fortitude defense
I'm not saying this is an instant loss. I'm just saying they don't autowin every encounter. I'll break out the calculator if you want me to.

Invigorating Stride's second wind functions still functions even if the shift is denied, such as if the character is immobilized.

Most optimal? Eh, probs, maybe there's something that can beat it (I'm partial to Half-Orcs Samurai Barbarians MC Avengers making it pretty hellish for these dudes). Most fun? The Ranger is a class known for ending up boring as fuck to play most of the time, so it'd probably be as fun as watching paint dry.

It is, but super high optimisation gets fucking stupid, as OP shows.

Since this is a 4e optimization thread and I don't feel like starting a new thread for this:

I know essentials classes are fucked in terms of player options, but how are they on balance? Would a TWF Ranger and a Scout be able to put out similar damage numbers? What about a Barbarian and a Berserker?

>TWF Ranger vs Scout
The Scout can by cheesing it to hell and back and combining it with the powers of chargining. the TWF Ranger will almost always have a better Nova, however.
>Barbarian vs Berserker
The Berserker is fucked because its class options are genuinely quite bad, but in theory since it has access to all the Barbarian powers you could feasibly wreck as much shit, just without some of the stuff that makes the Barbarian great.

So it sounds like, on the whole, essentials classes aren't that much worse than normal classes, mostly suffering from fewer options = less versatility = less optimized. Is that right?

I thought this fad is over and now we hate 3.P?

The people who hate 4e will never stop. Any mention of people enjoying the game will be met with scorn, derision and the same tired old arguments that have been repeated so often a lot of people believe they're true despite them having no basis in reality.

The issue is more lack of versatility. A TWF will pretty much focus on dealing tons of damage, but there's variety within that, even if sorta. The Scout is pretty much bound to a few things. A Thief doesn't have nearly as much versatility as a Rogue has. It's really just "if you're going into this, you have the very few following options that are anywhere near decent". Mind you, there's a big part that's also optimizing for how to make the most out of your MBA, but you have to remember you have certain class restrictions. And ultimately that is the issue with Essentials classes. You can probably squeeze out the same numbers. It's just going to be boring as shit as you go down the same path every time.

Some are legit just worse versions of existing classes ON TOP of being less flexible, AND they drop off by a lot come paragon and epic.

...

Which ones?

Hexblade is the big one, being locked into the godawful dailies, and otherwise just having a worse striker feature overall than Warlock.