Help Me Pick A Leader

Random_person · 10-10-2012, 11:58 PM

Hi, all. I come to the Playground for assistance in this hour of need.

My group is running a level 5 oneshot tomorrow, and I'm trying to work out what class and build to play. The rest of the party will be a warden, a wizard, a ranger and a sorcerer, of whom the last three all intend to stay well out of melee. With that in mind I feel a leader who can mix it up in the frontline and excel at either debuffing or long-range buffs/enabling would be ideal, but I'm not sure what best fits the bill.

I have access to all non-Essentials books except Primal Power and Dragon from 365 up to 394 (while I had a D&DI subscription I downloaded all the then-current ones). Any suggestions are welcome.

EDIT: Some more information. I have seen (though not memorized) the sorcerer's build. He's a revenant (dragonborn) storm sorcerer. His one area power is Whirlwind - the rest are single-target nukes, including the third-level encounter power Teleport Bash for emergencies. The other three are my responsibility to build, and I have vague notions in that direction. The earthstrength warden is a goliath with a big polearm. The wizard was no more specified than that, but for setting/fluff reasons I'm thinking that he'll be a tiefling. The ranger is an elven archer whose player is rather bad at making decisions quickly, so his build is basically Twin Strike with static damage boosters and some off-turn powers that he can save for emergencies.

tcrudisi · 10-11-2012, 03:26 AM

Well, good front-line leaders include, in no particular order:

Strength-Cleric
Warlord
Bard
Runepriest
Ardent

So, really, about anything. It really depends on what you want to do as a Leader. You've got an extremely unoptimized Sorc on your hands, so I think I would focus on doing damage, myself. To that end, I'd look at either Warlord or Runepriest, though there are some really good damaging Str-Cleric powers, especially at lower level.

Mistwing · 10-11-2012, 05:47 AM

Ima preach warlord here as they're very akin to fighters, but with leader powers. A warlord in the fray can handle the melee with one or two partners by outmanuevering the enemies and playing it smart. And they don't go down easily either.

And they're hella cool.

Smart_alec · 10-11-2012, 08:58 AM

Don't laugh but I'm partial to a Barbarian/ Warlord hybrid.

As a Thaneborn you can keep the same stat array as the Warlord and you get to compensate for their frankly par melee combat capacity. Take yourself a handful of his combination attack abilities, some buffers and you're golden.

tcrudisi · 10-11-2012, 11:34 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Smart_alec

Don't laugh but I'm partial to a Barbarian/ Warlord hybrid.

As a Thaneborn you can keep the same stat array as the Warlord and you get to compensate for their frankly par melee combat capacity. Take yourself a handful of his combination attack abilities, some buffers and you're golden.

While I'm not disagreeing, if hybrid is on the table, I think Cleric|Barbarian is one of, if not THE, best hybrids in the game.

Since Barbarian utilities are, for the most part, crap, you can focus on taking Cleric utilities that allow you to heal. And your damage output actually increases by going cleric at low levels. There's an immediate action level 1 encounter power that lets an ally spend a healing surge. Even considering using an at-will as a standard and that as an immediate action, your dps that round has increased over any level 1 Barbarian encounter power. Then, for dailies, the Cleric one that summons a hammer is better than any level 1 Barbarian daily for pure dps.

Beyond level 1, you focus on barbarian powers since they then become really good, excepting utilities, which you focus mostly on cleric for the extra heals. You're not a great leader, but you are a great striker who can heal. Close enough! :p (Not really. There's a massive gulf between healer and leader, but if all you want is heals, this guy does it well enough.)

Random_person · 10-12-2012, 02:54 AM

Reporting in the aftermath - it was fun. That Cleric|Barbarian idea, that was great fun. I threw around a lot of debuffs and damage and a smidgen of healing and had a great time. On the whole, though, I wouldn't recommend a hybrid Leader|Other as the sole leader in a group of five. A few times we really felt the lack of healing. Given that we've now picked up the premise and characters and intend to play through to higher levels I'm very glad that our usual leader player is coming back.