Striker Balance

[azbo]

1) ok, but this only applies if you're in a place where the encounter is starting at crossbow range.  I've only been in one encounter where my warlock used a bow because he was out of range and he's close to 4th level.  There was one other encounter that I used the bow but that was becuase one enemy was fleeing the battle.  We're still putting a lot of focus on a 16th level power.  if the rogue is an adventurer, and he's entering an area that belongs to the "monsters" which is about 90% of encounters, they will know where he is to start so not everything you said is very applicable.

2) How many encounters are taking place at bow ranges regularly?  It's been my experience that it's pretty much none in a dungeon and less than 1 in 5 in the wilderness.  We're talking about 1 encounter in 10 at best.  It's been my experience that rogues get charged every bit as much as the warlock because most encounters begin inside 12 squares and since charge allows an attack at the end of a double move a lot of creatures can cover that gap quickly.  The warlock might need more teleports but if the rogue gets combat challenged by a fighter he's in a world of hurt. 

3) now you're arguing semantics.  I understand the concept of point damage vs controller damage but having some flexibility to do both is a good thing not a bad thing and at the end of the day all the encounter hit points have to be dealt with so total damage output is a pretty huge factor in winning.  I can agree that the rogue will frequently outperform the other strikers in point damage BUT I still think the warlock is the more valuable element in the party.  The flexibility is a bonus not a detriment.  Give me a 1st level rogue vs 8 decrepit skeletons and I'll give you a dead rogue.  Give me a warlock in the same situation and I'll give you a barely scratched warlock.  You're straying from the topic in order to defend your argument.  The original suppostion was rogues were over powered compared to other strikers.  My position is that warlocks are easily as valuable as rogues to any successful party.  What is your position?  You seem to be arguing with me but not defending the OP which my posts are really geared towards.  You even said yourself the warlock might be the better character so really you're agreeing with my position that rogues aren't overpowered but disagreeing with my posts?  Armor of Agathys NEVER gets one attack.  I'm pretty certain my armor damage average is around 10 per use, though admittedly much of that is on minions, I'll happily roll up on the target that the fighter has marked or that is engaged by the warlord let the warlord let me shift on his round (I like to delay my init to 1 less than the warlord once armor is activated) so that I can fire my ranged attack and still move back into proximity with the elite the armor means I'll be guaranteed to generate a curse damage as opposed to having a die roll decide like the rogue.  So instead of wideningt he gap as you supposed I'm more than closing the gap.  If he attacks me he takes damage from a paladins challenge or he gives the fighter an AoO, he has - mods to his ATT, he's working on my temp hit points and not the defenders real HP thus saving us surges and I'm creating extra attacks/damage.  This is the name of the game for the party since you're always struggling to get your number of ATT's up and the monsters down.  You seem intent on maximizing the rogues tactics and creating the most advantageous rogue encounters when those aren't really the norm.  Meanwhile you assume the worst case scenario for the warlock 1 time with the armor?  I'm pretty sure I've had encounters where I killed 5-8 minions and still inflicted 5-8 rolls with the armor on elites, maybe more.   We're talking about most likely over 100 dmg from one spell in an encounter plus 12 temp hitpoints.   I know I've killed 7-8 minions in one round on multiple occaisions using curse and feystep to jump to 2-3 seperate clumps in a single round.  If you count each minion as 7 damage (since most low level pc attacks and at wills average around this) you're looking at more than 50 damage in one round at 1st level.  I love barrage, but it's nowhere near as effective as armor.  Killing 8 minions means I've eliminated ~4 hits per round for the rest of the encounter.  This is an exponential benefit that the rogue will be hard pressed to match.  I can do it multiple times in a single encounter.  Armor is quite possibly the best 1st level control power in the game especially if the pact you chose is fey. 

4) You're facing multiple opponents there's a pretty good chance some of them have good perception scores but I still think this is a great power.  none-the-less it's a 16th level power still.  You keep skipping that.  80% of all rogues ever played will never have this power.  I'm being generous.  If you start looking at 14th to 19th level monsters you'll see that alot of them have double digit perception.  If you roll poorly they'll find you and if your DM approaches dangerous threats the same way the party does (if he doesn't you're being cheated out of the best part of the game in my opinion) then your rogue will attract a lot of negative attention.   Any encounter group that doesn't respond to the invisible guy dishing out 15-25 damage per round is kind of lame.

I pretty much agree with 5 and 6, I just wanted to point out that the rogue is likely to have some disadvantages in using the melee powers at high levels or else put himself in harms way if he's melee focused and deal with the resulting beatings that come with that.

[veekie]

Well, I would not begin to make the foolish claim that one is the better character than the other, not without much more extensive reading and actual use in play at least.

1)Range wise, yes, of course it's unlikely that you would be fighting at a range that allows you to bring the full power of archery to bear. However, being a stealth oriented character, it results in uncertainty as to where the attack came from, giving you more rounds to snipe from cover to cover, or even using allies as cover. The melee rogue on the other hand, would be that much more obvious a target, and of course, would not be participating at the same kind of fight that a warlock(who is purely ranged, abeit shorter). Again, the stealth issue here is paramount

2) The main point of using a crossbow would be to avoid ever being within 'challenge' distance of opponents, where the best solution for an artful dodger rogue at that point would be to brave the AoOs and get behind a defender, or to use a disabling attack at melee range(with a missile weapon if necessary) and proceed to leave the immediate vicinity. Well played, the target would be beset by ranged attacks coming from an indeterminate square, even within a closed scenario, and with the damage difference between warlock and rogue, he should be bloodied or even dead at lower levels, though at higher levels, the padded sumo effect kicks in and you might want to have someone like a wizard or a warlock to disable the target while you blow away chunks of hp.

With the stealth, note that the numbers I mentioned are at the beginning of a rogue's career, and he'd obtain double digit stealth modifiers about the same time the first of the monsters begin to. It's not an invulnerable cloaking device, it's a tool to buy a few rounds of risk free damage to get the edge. Notably, the levels you start getting monsters that can see through a stealth check reliably is also the level you get powers that lets you remain concealed without one. They can and will retaliate of course, but thats a couple of rounds of easy damage. Effort spent locating your rogue is effort not spent hurting the rest of the party, and mayhem will ensue.

In the end, my personal preference as to the more effective character does lie with the warlock, except his character role is ill defined, rather than a pure striker, the warlock serves best as a controller with striker attributes. Your own anecdotes with the warlock say as much, you're mowing down minions and using your Armor to inflict unavoidable damage over time while the use of the warlord's abilities is an admirable use of team strategy, using the Armor on it's own against non minions lasts briefly due to the temp hps(and you) being smashed in close combat.

I'm defending the rogue purely in the role of a striker, not in terms of overall power. You want lotsa point damage? Look no further. But if you want to do more than that, the warlock, the wizard, have more offensive options than just inflicting lots of pain.

[Kuroimaken]

Azbo, I suggest you look up THIS thread. This is the basic premise I'm assuming when I say the Rogue is still getting it better than the Warlock. It might really help you gather the perspective I'm trying to present here.

Further: a LOT of your premises are built around a single, level 1 daily. You tout it as if it were something you could rely consistently on. If you're using a DAILY to wipe out MOOKS you're doing something wrong. If that daily also involves you getting up close and personal to said mooks you're DEFINITELY doing something wrong.

As veekie pointed out more accurately than I did, the big point about the Rogue is that stealth is a LOT more powerful in this game than it used to be in 3e (not that it wasn't good back then). Specially the "must beat by 10 to pinpoint" rule. While it's a different style of what I call "passive-aggressive ambush" (namely seeming to focus on defense while chipping away offensively), it's a quite valid one nonetheless.

Also, your point about "most" combats not allowing you to play at range is patently false. If you're in a cramped space your tanks will surely be at the forefront, which ensures they will be getting hit instead of you; if so, ranged combat becomes more important than ever, as the tanks will be too busy dealing with THEIR frontliners to care about possible ranged attackers chipping away at their HP, and that's where our friendly rogue (as well as other ranged characters) will come in. Granted, this doesn't allow them to play at range with maximum efficiency; but as I mentioned before, after level 16, the rogue doesn't need to care about moving anymore, he just needs more range.