I do see the dmg difference a lot on my guys. War my lead guy is usually way ahead of the other 3 when running Ramparts or something. I'm thinking just the delay allows him to get an extra bolt off or two each fight. I haven't spent that much time digging into it. My black sheep is Famine, maybe cause of the name, but I'm usually running collection quests on him only just to catch up for lost xp getting caught on something or dieing first.