Why do experienced players say Tinkerer is so bad?

[Lampros]

I've read multiple threads - especially outside of Steam - where Tinkerer was identified as the worst class in the game. In the least, it is difficult to find folks who seem to think they are even average. Yet, I've not really encountered detailed explanation other than two generic points: 1) healing is bad in this game, and Tinkerer is a healer primarily; and 2) Tinkerer does not scale well at higher levels.

So could someone explain in detail why Tinkerer is subar - even relative to other starting classes? I am especially curious, because my experience has been positive so far - albeit I've only played him to level 4 (and really to level 3, because he retired almost immediately after hitting level 4). He supplied the usual healing; and he surprisingly did almost as much damage as Cragheart - who was the designated "DPS" in my trio with Sunkeeper.

[Viper]

I love having a healer. Not bad in any way to me. You will need to recover health in the game. 2 from a long rest and 3 from a potion is not near enough.

[catpotato]

using the top card to heal is almost always bad since you're on a timer in this game. his dmg sucks, and his summons are bad. somebody has to be the worst, its probably him

[CostlySpider]

Man I love him, just the fact he can give back cards is great, make sure you stun with mindthief, so you get the freeze icon, you get two cards back. If you time it right, he can burn one card to give someone all there discards back.

2nd part is a little harder, as he has to be right next to them for that. But when done right, it gets all there discarded cards back. Which saves a long or short that burns a card.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by catpotato:

using the top card to heal is almost always bad since you're on a timer in this game. his dmg sucks, and his summons are bad. somebody has to be the worst, its probably him

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4. (Edit: Well, he retired when he hit level 4, so I guess just level 1 to 3 really.)

[catpotato]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by catpotato:

using the top card to heal is almost always bad since you're on a timer in this game. his dmg sucks, and his summons are bad. somebody has to be the worst, its probably him

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4.

shouldn't be the case, i'd have to see how a vid of you playing or something. even with a gimped melee build cragheart should be doing way more damage if both are same level.

[parent child bowl]

The only way I see tinker deal more damage than cragheart is when the scenario ends really fast and tinker just burns cards for damage from turn 1 on. In normal scenarios cragheart should always come out ahead by a lot.

[pitiflauticus]

It also depends on the number of characters.

He is not that bad to have around in a party of four, as he can help others to stay alive longer, can make them recover cards, has a lot of flexibility... and once you (minor spoilers about items) unlock items that convert single ranged attacks into AoE attacks, some of his cards become incredibly better (end of spoilers)

However, in groups of 2 or 3 characters you will miss raw damage, which is one of the staples of Gloomhaven: the best healing is the one you don't need to apply because the enemy is dead.

And what you read about not scaling at higher levels is true... some of the cards he gets are "fun" but no really that powerful. Other classes can start to do really stupidly powerful things around level 5-6 but the tinkerer takes forever to feel powerful enough.

He is not plain bad - he is just the worst overall class - someone had to be.

[Magedaddy]

At level 1, tinkerer is a perfectly fine class that can deal damage, has good loss cards, can heal, can apply both stun and poison, and can recover teammate's cards (although not as good as he can at higher levels).

However, as you said in the OP message, his level ups are just lackluster comparatively to other classes. At the risk of getting too spoiler-y, just take a look yourself at all of his level 2-9 cards and compare them to someone like cragheart. Tinkerer's most "optimal" build is one that emphasizes recovering cards for his teammates, and a lot of his cards don't scale well throughout the course of the campaign when compared to someone like Crag.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by catpotato:

Originally posted by Lampros:

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4.

shouldn't be the case, i'd have to see how a vid of you playing or something. even with a gimped melee build cragheart should be doing way more damage if both are same level.

Hmm, it could be that I am playing Cragheart inefficiently...

[Mechalibur]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by catpotato:

using the top card to heal is almost always bad since you're on a timer in this game. his dmg sucks, and his summons are bad. somebody has to be the worst, its probably him

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4. (Edit: Well, he retired when he hit level 4, so I guess just level 1 to 3 really.)

Tinkerer has some really mediocre level up choices on average. I think it's a decent class at earlier levels, but it has a much harder time keeping up with other characters later in the game.

[MrPyro]

Originally posted by parent child bowl:

The only way I see tinker deal more damage than cragheart is when the scenario ends really fast and tinker just burns cards for damage from turn 1 on. In normal scenarios cragheart should always come out ahead by a lot.

I literally just ran a mission like this, as I was angling to get my Tink to retire so replayed an earlier mission that was going to get the last bit done, and just played him as pure nova build. Still up at the end of the mission (just; about 3 cards left after only 12-13 rounds of play) and was max damage scorer on the scenario by a wide margin (78 damage delivered I think). Nice swan song for him anyway.

[syricon]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by catpotato:

using the top card to heal is almost always bad since you're on a timer in this game. his dmg sucks, and his summons are bad. somebody has to be the worst, its probably him

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4. (Edit: Well, he retired when he hit level 4, so I guess just level 1 to 3 really.)

You must be playing Cragheart wrong. I could burn tinker Aoes all day, run through the entire deck, and not match a single well placed unstable upheaval. My Max scenario damage in Crag is 160, I pretty much always hit triple digits. No way tinker outputs that kind of damage.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by syricon:

Originally posted by Lampros:

Does his damage get worse as he levels? As I said, I found his damage almost comparable to that of Cragheart - at least from level 1 to 4. (Edit: Well, he retired when he hit level 4, so I guess just level 1 to 3 really.)

You must be playing Cragheart wrong. I could burn tinker Aoes all day, run through the entire deck, and not match a single well placed unstable upheaval. My Max scenario damage in Crag is 160, I pretty much always hit triple digits. No way tinker outputs that kind of damage.

At levels 1-3? I can't imagine doing that much damage at low levels with any character.

[Fringehunter7719]

I personally think the Tinkerer is a lot better than he gets credit for. His damage is poor, but he has everything else. Stuns, returning stamina potions, returning cards, providing damage buffs.

There's no way he'll ever match a Cragheart in damage though.

One of the things I would say is that playing a team where Tinkerer is one character you control is *very* different from playing one character and not knowing what your allies are going to do. So many of his cards only work if allies place themselves to *your* convenience, which they won't do if they don't know what actions you're going to take.

This is made worse, if he's your only character, by his poor xp generation which will make you feel like you're not progressing and falling behind, even though it's a net boon for the team by lowering enemy difficulty to compensate.

Then there's the fact you can only replace a maximum of two thirds of your deck by level 9, where some classes can replace every card but one, so again you feel like you're (and in fact are) progressing slower.

This is the result of my last mission, which coincidentally features both:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2639536701
To be fair to Tink and Spellweaver they are slightly lower level than the Cragheart and Summoner. Plus all the characters had *huge* amounts of gas left in the tank:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2639536968
A fair amount of that is Tinkerer related.

Originally posted by Lampros:

At levels 1-3? I can't imagine doing that much damage at low levels with any character.

In most cases the amount of damage you do is the amount of health the enemies have (plus a modicum of overkill). So at level 2, on +2, you're looking at the cumulative health of placed enemies of level 4, and then sharing it based on how rapidly characters deal damage, which is affected by things like the proportion of turns they spend CCing, healing or using support abilities.

To be fair the raw numbers are singularly unhelpful. You only need to look how badly Music Note comes on stats, despite contributing enormously to CC, damage mitigation by curses and often inflicting wound on every enemy that chips away a significant fraction of the mission's total damage.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Fringehunter7719:

I personally think the Tinkerer is a lot better than he gets credit for. His damage is poor, but he has everything else. Stuns, returning stamina potions, returning cards, providing damage buffs.

There's no way he'll ever match a Cragheart in damage though.

One of the things I would say is that playing a team where Tinkerer is one character you control is *very* different from playing one character and not knowing what your allies are going to do. So many of his cards only work if allies place themselves to *your* convenience, which they won't do if they don't know what actions you're going to take.

This is made worse, if he's your only character, by his poor xp generation which will make you feel like you're not progressing and falling behind, even though it's a net boon for the team by lowering enemy difficulty to compensate.

Then there's the fact you can only replace a maximum of two thirds of your deck by level 9, where some classes can replace every card but one, so again you feel like you're (and in fact are) progressing slower.

This is the result of my last mission, which coincidentally features both:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2639536701
To be fair to Tink and Spellweaver they are slightly lower level than the Cragheart and Summoner. Plus all the characters had *huge* amounts of gas left in the tank:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2639536968
A fair amount of that is Tinkerer related.

Originally posted by Lampros:

At levels 1-3? I can't imagine doing that much damage at low levels with any character.

In most cases the amount of damage you do is the amount of health the enemies have (plus a modicum of overkill). So at level 2, on +2, you're looking at the cumulative health of placed enemies of level 4, and then sharing it based on how rapidly characters deal damage, which is affected by things like the proportion of turns they spend CCing, healing or using support abilities.

To be fair the raw numbers are singularly unhelpful. You only need to look how badly Music Note comes on stats, despite contributing enormously to CC, damage mitigation by curses and often inflicting wound on every enemy that chips away a significant fraction of the mission's total damage.

I am having trouble with capturing my screenshots at the moment due to some Steam glitch, but Tinkerer did almost the same total damage as Cragheart in my game; and he actually killed more enemies than Cragheart! Now I am interested in recruiting them again to see how they compare from levels 4-6 or so, in contrast to levels 1-3.

For future reference: What damage-related cards should be my staple for levels 1-3? I used Backup Ammunition first and then spammed a lot of single target ranged attacks. And once Backup Ammunition is spent, then I went for AoEs - including the loss card one. Am I doing it wrong?