Great weapon fighter is a "trap"? Forked Thread: I don't optimize.

[wayne62682]

Wotc should learn to start advocating simple yet good and effective builds which actually work, rather than traps (ie: stuff which sound good on paper but stink in actual gameplay) like great-weapon fighter or paragon multiclassing. It is like you are already lame in one foot, and are intent on shooting yourself in the other!

Emphasis mine. I'm curious why this is considered a trap; great weapon used to be the only way to play a Fighter in 3.x. Did that change for 4e? I was going to be making a Dragonborn Fighter who uses a glaive, so if it's a "trap" then I'm really interested in why so I don't gimp myself (especially seeing as I'm going to be the party's only defender)

 

[Gort]

I dunno, didn't we find in the "damage per round" thread that great weapon fighters outdamaged every other class in the paragon tier (using that stance that lets you hit everyone adjacent to you for 1[W])?

I think people might consider it a trap because it makes a trade-off that makes the fighter worse at his "job" - attracting attacks and withstanding them. The logic is probably that if you want to do lots of damage in melee, play a rogue.

 

[Cadfan]

The Great Weapon Fighter is fine. It just seems like a trap if you choose to fight with a greatsword, because the bastard sword + shield combo is better and doesn't cost very much. If you choose a con based weapon with a high damage die, you'll have extra durability to make up for your lower ac, and you'll deal more damage per round. Its an ok trade.

 

[Stalker0]

This is one of the things that will only be settled in time.

Right now, many are suggesting that the shield bonus is much better than the extra damage you get from a THW. Its a perfectly valid hypothesis, but its something only time will tell.

I will say that if we look at experience, many of the assumptions made about 3e in its opening months were wrong. The most common one was that the monk was overpowered. Many people, including myself, took a look at the monk's list of abilities and immediately declared them hokey broken. With time, not only was this proven to be false, the monk was actually determined to by one of the weakest classes.

 

[Nifft]

Emphasis mine. I'm curious why this is considered a trap; great weapon used to be the only way to play a Fighter in 3.x. Did that change for 4e? I was going to be making a Dragonborn Fighter who uses a glaive, so if it's a "trap" then I'm really interested in why so I don't gimp myself (especially seeing as I'm going to be the party's only defender)

Yes, it did change.

1/ Tide of Iron is probably the best Fighter at-will, and it requires the use of a shield.

2/ Reach weapons no longer threaten. Until you have Polearm Gamble (a Paragon feat), there's not much use in them for a Fighter. You don't get full use out of your Mark unless you're adjacent.

3/ Power Attack used to be taken by everyone, and made two-handed weapons very dangerous. Now, it just sucks, and should never be taken by anyone.

4/ Two-handed weapons used to be as accurate as one-handed weapons. Now, swords are +3 to attack, polearms and mauls are +2.

Cheers, -- N

 

[wayne62682]

Hmm... I see.

So it looks like sword+board is the way to go now, especially when one is the only defender in the party amidst two strikers (rogue, archery ranger), a controller (wizard) and a leader (cleric).

 

[Mengu]

If I was playing a fighter, I would go with the sword and board. It's mainly because, like others have mentioned, the defender role is better played with this build. However if you have a paladin in your party, or two fighters, one of them using the great weapon build could be interesting as well.

So it kind of depends on party composition. If you are the only defender who needs to protect all the squishies, guardian build is better. If your party is weak on Strikers, Great Weapon fighter can play the role of a pseudo striker, especially teamed up with a Tactical Warlord.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

Play what you want to play, not what some stupid numbers say you "should" play.

 

[Ginnel]

Play what you want to play, not what some stupid numbers say you "should" play.

I agree in principle but see the note further down

On a seperate note though a feat called two handed weapon defence for +1 shield bonus to AC would be great

The reason I dislike optimising is that everyone has to keep up with the optimiser to feel useful in combat, otherwise you get encounters that the non optimised can't handle or encounters that the optimiser just walks through.
I feel 4th edition has handled this better because as far as I can tell the difference between optimised and non optimised has been reduced.

Note: this does not mean I like having "useless" characters about, a 4th ed fighter class with 12 Str 10 Dex 8 Con 16 Int 15 Wis 17 Cha would seem pointless to me in a game with regular combat.
I would expect a class to have at least a 16 in their primary attack stat 15 at a minimum.
If you wanted to play a weak fighter type character thats perfectly fine describe him as weak but still have that 16 in str defeating enemies with his dexterity maybe, or even better have a look at rogue/paladin and see if you can fit your concept into those, but don't bring a deliberately mechanically weak participant to a combat focused game.

 

[firesnakearies]

Play what you want to play, not what some stupid numbers say you "should" play.

Amen and amen!

This is D&D, a pen-and-paper roleplaying game run by a live, intelligent Dungeon Master. Furthermore, the system itself is not that tough, and if the DM runs encounters according to the guidelines in the DMG, just about any party of mismatched, goofy-specced characters can still be victorious and do fine.

It's NOT end-game raiding or hardcore competitive PvP in an MMORPG.

Only in extreme situations like that is any kind of "optimizing" ever needed, for any RPG, tabletop or computer. No edition of D&D has ever needed players to optimize to succeed. No single-player D&D computer game has ever needed the player to optimize to succeed. It's just not that difficult.

It doesn't matter whether you optimize or not, because any decent DM will adjust and tailor their campaign as needed to suit the party.

Make a character, play the game, have fun. Leave "builds" and number-crunching to online PvPers and MMO raiders, who actually need to employ such powergaming to succeed.

Play what you want to play, not what some stupid numbers say you "should" play.