2011-09-27, 09:10 PM
Recap for late joiners:
Bishops can be built for damage rather than support. Given a boss run with limited capacity, runners should be chosen on the basis of what they can contribute to the run. If a bishop hasn't added SP to their support skills yet, but does more damage than other attackers you are considering, I would argue that you should bring them in addition to whatever support characters you deem necessary, and exclude the weaker attacker rather than the attacking bishop.
In order to illustrate this point I made up an extreme example of a LHC party and a bishop that actually skipped HS, in order to show that even with this extreme example, the character could still be preferable to alternatives. People found it helpful to rage and reveal their own arbitrary and often batshit crazy biases about who should get in their party rather than address my point. My original point being it makes at least as much sense to build a bishop solely to attack as it does to make any class that is solely good for attacking that is not the most powerful according to the dps charts. Sure, it's suboptimal to make such a class if damage is your only goal. Maybe it's even silly. But it's a silly game where all the characters are BMs (or whoever is top of the dps charts now) or all the bishops are just HS mules. People want to build characters in different ways, and thanks to funding they can be competitive in damage with others in spite of class imbalances.
If you want to exclude them you can, but you are the one sacrificing the speed or efficiency of your boss run or exp gain if you exclude them purely on the basis of skill build or class rather than what they can do for you. This goes for any class, but is especially poignant regarding attacking bishops.
Bishops can be built for damage rather than support. Given a boss run with limited capacity, runners should be chosen on the basis of what they can contribute to the run. If a bishop hasn't added SP to their support skills yet, but does more damage than other attackers you are considering, I would argue that you should bring them in addition to whatever support characters you deem necessary, and exclude the weaker attacker rather than the attacking bishop.
In order to illustrate this point I made up an extreme example of a LHC party and a bishop that actually skipped HS, in order to show that even with this extreme example, the character could still be preferable to alternatives. People found it helpful to rage and reveal their own arbitrary and often batshit crazy biases about who should get in their party rather than address my point. My original point being it makes at least as much sense to build a bishop solely to attack as it does to make any class that is solely good for attacking that is not the most powerful according to the dps charts. Sure, it's suboptimal to make such a class if damage is your only goal. Maybe it's even silly. But it's a silly game where all the characters are BMs (or whoever is top of the dps charts now) or all the bishops are just HS mules. People want to build characters in different ways, and thanks to funding they can be competitive in damage with others in spite of class imbalances.
If you want to exclude them you can, but you are the one sacrificing the speed or efficiency of your boss run or exp gain if you exclude them purely on the basis of skill build or class rather than what they can do for you. This goes for any class, but is especially poignant regarding attacking bishops.