Ideal group composition

Question

I play in a 5 person group and we are level 13 going on 14. Presently we have a hybrid defender/leader, a hybrid defender/striker, 2x pure strikers, and a pure controller. We have only played a few games with this group dynamic as one of our pure strikers used to be a pure defender but he got bored. Does anyone know what the ideal ratio of defenders, leaders, controllers, strikers is for a 5 person group?

To give additional information, everyone in the group has runic weapons that level with our characters and can have crazy attributes and effects (GM made these up). He likes the concept of us being more powerful than average heroes and consequently pits us against way larger monster exp and/or monster levels than the books say. So far everything has been balanced on the whole. We have 2 role-player style players, 1 powergamer style player, a strategist, and a nuker type if that makes sense.

Our GM bounces between stringing several short encounters before an extended rest and at other times does a single hard encounter followed by an extended rest. He isn't really the type to kill off a character if he can avoid it, but he almost always tries to follow the mentality & tactics of the monsters he has pitted against us.

Our current party is as follows: Deva Wizard - mostly AoE spells or utility style stuff such as mass resistance Shifter Pally/Cleric - he uses 2handed mace and his heals up his defence considerably. he also has healing hands and lay of hands (not a legal build btw) Shifter Beastmaster Ranger - 2handed ranger with pet paragon path Tiefling Dragon Sorcerer - Acid orbs and heavy damage is her schtick I play a battlerager fighter/barbarian - he's badass because we don't play with errata (he can defend against nearly anything and has spiky damage occasionally)

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need more info.

Answer 1

The stated ideal in the rules is 1 defender, striker, leader, controller and one wildcard. It is generally a good idea to have that wildcard be a leader.

From my personal experience, the Ideal Group is 4 leaders and a striker. The 4 leaders power the striker and the striker kills things really really really quickly. The traditional breakdown of defender/striker can get quite blurry, and controllers... change in paragon. What it boils down to is that by mid paragaon, basically anyone can play any role with sufficient effort, and so generalizations by role are not very useful. There are tactically optimal class combinations, but few tactically optimal role combinations that exist outside of specific synergies between players.

From a more nuanced perspective, it is more important to make sure that there's good synergy between characters than there is in making sure you have enough roles in enough buckets. This post will be edited when party composition is provided.

Looking at your specific situation with custom weapons, an intentionally over the top game, and no errata whatsoever (Really? are you sure? There are some awfully broken things that have been fixed...)

... Play whatever you want. Really. Completely and utterly play whatever you want. Completely ignore what the "recommended" roles are. For your rules and style of play, play whatever you find most fun.