What does optimization mean to you?

[Deriven Firelion]

breithauptclan wrote:

Deriven Firelion wrote:

When I say frontline I mean the guy heading in first. Rogues are a natural melee class, but the main tank/frontline guy they are not.

Every time I have tried to play a rogue without another stronger frontline melee or played them running in first, they have been face-planted multiple times. The weak fort saves, low hit points, and low AC just lead to a bad time going in to melee first.

Frontline to me means first in the door and able to stand as the wall drawing aggro between the casters and the secondary melee/martials.

Now that, I would agree with. Rogue is not a doorbuster. Rogue gameplay shouldn't involve stride to enemy/enemies, attack as many times as possible, then stand there and soak up all the retaliation that they dish back. That won't end well.

Though to be fair, there are very few classes and builds that can deal with that for very long.

I agree.

Champion
Fighter
Higher level barbarians
Defensive rangers
Monks
Defensive clerics I've seen do this with a combination of defense and healing through the damage

[Alchemic_Genius]

My sister player a ruffian Sentinel and zero issues with dying; my group actually just straight up has nobody who "tanks" outside her rogue.

Our typical opening round involves our ranged characters opening with a volley of ranged attacks (our group has a lot of range; only the swashbuckler doesnt have any; the rogue throws her spear) while the swashbuckler sets up panache. We usually target ranged characters first. The rogue most often raises a shield, demoralizes, and throws; getting the sneak attack through dread striker. After that, enemy meleers close in, then the rogue and swashbuckler start doing hit and run skirmishes. Both of them have backfire mantles, allowing me to bombard their targets with bombs while hitting most of the enemies with chip damage. A lot of our strategy involves making enemy damage dealers expend a lot of actions to actually get us in attack range

[Deriven Firelion]

Alchemic_Genius wrote:

My sister player a ruffian Sentinel and zero issues with dying; my group actually just straight up has nobody who "tanks" outside her rogue.

Our typical opening round involves our ranged characters opening with a volley of ranged attacks (our group has a lot of range; only the swashbuckler doesnt have any; the rogue throws her spear) while the swashbuckler sets up panache. We usually target ranged characters first. The rogue most often raises a shield, demoralizes, and throws; getting the sneak attack through dread striker. After that, enemy meleers close in, then the rogue and swashbuckler start doing hit and run skirmishes. Both of them have backfire mantles, allowing me to bombard their targets with bombs while hitting most of the enemies with chip damage. A lot of our strategy involves making enemy damage dealers expend a lot of actions to actually get us in attack range

Finally, another person that uses ranged combat to great effect.

Swashbuckler is another tanky class. I forgot about them. Found out in a game a Wit Swashbuckler makes a good tank.

[Alchemic_Genius]

Deriven Firelion wrote:

Finally, another person that uses ranged combat to great effect.

Swashbuckler is another tanky class. I forgot about them. Found out in a game a Wit Swashbuckler makes a good tank.

Yeah, guardian's deflection helps a lot, too!

I honestly can't imagine making a character that DOESN'T have range; even if I'm speced for melee; just having something like a couple of save spells I can lob in the opening rounds is nice to have; cant do dps if you waste all your actions running up to your foes (or face down in a pool of blood because you ran up only for the bad guy to be able to throw three actions worth of pain into you)

[Helmic]

If I ignore the technical discussions and etymologies and all that and just focus on my own feelings, the reason I "optimize" (whatever that might mean) is to avoid the feeling that I'm leaving things on the table or otherwise making a "sacrifice" for whatever flavor. I think that feels really, really bad, I had being put in situations where the idea i Have in my head requires me to just knowingly be worse. It feels like I'm being punished for trying to make something cool.

Much of what I like about PF2e is that, overall, it can mostly avoid that situation. But like when I run into a scenario where a player wants to make a melee Summoner build, notice that the only way to get heavy armor effectively is to take a Champion instead of Sentinel, and then see them squirm about being made to play a class that demands they pick a god to worship (not to mention the alignment restrictions on the reaction they want), that is the bit that really bothers the part of my brain that optimizes. The flavor says Sentinel better fits their character concept, but the math says Champion gives them way more mechanically while conflicting with the flavor, and I hate having that situation.

My solution of course was to simply let the player know to ignore the book because it's wrong and just pick Champion while pretending it's not actually a Champion, ignoring the flavor stuff bolted on, but that's the sort of thing that I'm primarily thinking about when I think of "optimizing." It's not that I want the game to be easier, but I hate hate hate being in situations where the appropriate flavor option is just weaker than something else. My optimization is more me just really, really wanting a system to be balanced so that mechanically it all works out no matter the concept and chaffing against any imbalances in the system I run into. I don't like the system telling me "no" or "ok you can have it but you gotta suck a bit."

PF2e feels a lot better overall though because for all of its edge case scenarios like that, 5e is just much much worse. Polearm Master tends to shoehorn lots of martials into using a halberd or glaive becuase, at least without UA or homebrew, nothing else has feat support, warping character concepts to accomodate that they have to be spear bois and not using the weapons they'd actually think are cool. Or some weapons just are strictly, mathematically superior for no real reason. Or entire classes or subclasses just do not function due to core design flaws in the system. Like PF2e on a baseline level at least does not have classes that are popularly understood to be, as a whole, a trap option, and that makes it much more tolerable for someone like me to both play and GM.

[chapter6]

For me optimisation comes from building in 2 stages. The first is concept and fun. The 2nd is for party. I think about concept and what I want to achieve, I never fully flesh it out because I want to leave room to try and cover party weaknesses. In most campaigns I will ask what everyone else is playing and what the party is short on and try to marry my concept with the party needs. I've played a magus as both the primary caster of the party and another time as the party dps machine. (Side note I really think people under value the int and cantrips on the Magus or the fact they are the only class that gets to add 2 stats to their attacks. And the crits are chef's kiss). A magus can tank just fine you just have to understand what it is and pick the right study. A sparkiling targe magus with the sentinel or bastion dedication are more than capable