Defenders aren't very good at defending?

[OakwoodDM]

If a defender's AC is too high, then monsters can't hit him and they turn their attention to more viable targets.
Defenders defend the whole party, not just themselves.

That's juts what I was about to say. If the Defender's AC is consistently 2 points better than the striker's, a marked monster's no worse off with regards to hit chance (obviously, there are the other consequences) going for the striker than the fighter.

 

[James McMurray]

1- AC: With a shield defenders are probably going to have equal or maybe one point on a striker, without a shield it's pretty easy for a striker to have a better AC.

A defender with the highest AC in the party is not as good at his job as he could be. If he's too hard to hit the enemies will target the squishier party members instead. They'll have -2 to hit when marked, but it won't matter because they'll still be as likely to hit.

2- Marking: So you can get the attention of one guy, well in your average 4E combat there's a lot more than one guy, and yes there are some encounters and daily powers that allow marking of more than one but their core class ability let's them get the attention of one dude, and it has to basically be a dude that they're adjacent to anyway. Now I don't have any hard math here, but in my experience the defenders do most of their "locking down" in the same way everyone else does. Threating Opportunity Attacks and providing occasional cover vs. ranged attacks.

Fighter lock down comes from his ability to keep foes from moving away from him. The occassional ability to mark multiple people is nice, as it gives the rest of the party a pseudo-+2 to defenses, but it's the ability to get up to foes and keep them from moving away that helps. He doesn't just threaten OAs, his OAs stop them in their tracks.

Paladins' lock down comes from their free damage if the enemy attacks anyone but them. It's not as good at defending as the fighter's abilities, but paladins make up for it with increased healing ability for others.

To put it another way I've seen only a few instances where marking really changed who a monster would have attacked and even fewer where having the monster attack the defender as opposed to someone else really changed the course of a combat.

Have you never seen a monster miss by one or two because of the -2 penalty for not attacking the one that marked them? Have they never taken any paladin challenge or the fighter's interrupt attack? An enemy dropping earlier and missing on attacks is a big difference in how many surges are spent and who might drop.

3- Reflex, Fortitude and Will Defense: I'm sure there's some math to be done here, but just eyeballing I don't see any reason either from the numbers or from play experience to see any reason why the "Defenders" are any better at "defense" in this area then any of the other roles.

They're not supposed to have higher defenses, they're supposed to defend others.

4- Hit Points: Here defenders have a clear advantage, but how much of an advantage is it really? I'd say just based on eyeballing it that it allows them to take one, maybe two more hits than a leader or a striker.

Two hits is a lot.

In my play experience the defender gets the lions share of the healing and still goes down more than any other character.

I'm confused. The defender is taking the most damage, but he's not defending the rest of the party?

Much Better? Just to take the paladin as an example once he gets through putting his high stat's and stat bonuses into str, wis and cha he'll be lucky to have a higher con than the rogue or ranger.

Why is the paladin trying to be good at everything? If he picks a single aspect of his class to focus on and just makes sure he's decent at the other, he should be fine. Each class (except Wizard) has at least two primary foci. Any character trying to do both well is going to suffer elsewhere.

So let's say they both end up with a con of 12, that means at 30 level, where the hit point difference is the max, the Paladin will have 207 to the ranger/rogue's 174. That doesn't seem "much better" to me. As I said that's one hit.

A level 30 soldier (advanced Efreet, since all level 30s are solos) does an average of 22 damage per strike. Not including his higher healing surges, that's 2 more attacks the fighter can take. When you factor in his 200 hit point advantage from having larger and more healing surges, the difference seems pretty huge (11 more attacks per day he can take, assuming all other factors are equal, which they won't be because fighters can easily get regeneration for an entire encounter or heal themselves without spending a surge, or that Cha focused paladin can be adding his Charisma Mod twice every time he lays hands on himself.

Yeah they have a few more healing surges, but particularly when you're talking about the fighter, they don't have anyway to really use them.

Short rest
Comeback Strike (daily on hit)
Iron Warrior (daily minor action that gives more hit points and a save)
Indomitable Strength (daily Iron Vanguard power)

It's not a lot, but it's more than most get. Multiclassing Warlord or Cleric is a good bet for fighter's, and since they take a lot more damage than others, they spend more surges via the rest of the party;s healing powers as well.

It's much more common to run out of ways to use them...

Short rests.

So the ranger is the equal of the two-handed weapon fighter, that doesn't necessary rebut my point (I really think defenders should always have better AC at least by a point or 2). Also if you assume that that ranger started with an 18 rather than a 17 (obviously not unheard of) the it would be 34 to 33 and we're back in a situation where the striker has a better AC than the Fighter without a shield.

If your fighter is worried about AC, he should use a shield. +3 to AC and Reflexes (+2 before Shield Spec) will put him even or ahead. If he wants to focus on damage, he has to accept the downside of that decision.

Better Healing surges for defenders? Are you saying that because they have more HP? They're only going to be better by 1 or 2 points once you divide everything by 4....

Sure, at 1st level. At 30th (by your own numbers) it's a difference of 8. And that's again assuming the fighter is dumping Con, which given the regeneration stances, is a pretty bad idea.

 

[That One Guy]

Fighters' challenges are really nice, IMO. I've found them to play well and if the fighter has a good close burst attack encounter power - even better. The paladin has some difficulty with defending multiple people. He's better against elites and solos (or offering the ranger/rogue a provoke OA resulting in damage. My rogue has killed some enemies using my paladin buddy's challenge). I think the swordmage's anti-damage feels more defendertastic, though. The others are negative reinforcement (Enemy attacks not me; get hit) while the swordmage is simply like, "Lawlz, dude, you hit that guy for 7 less damage. Oh, you only did 3 now? Tough luck. Maybe you should fight me."

As far as the AC difference goes, I'm curious as to why a melee ranger would have that much dex. Regardless, it is the job of the defender to take attacks - and if need be get hit. In fact, a defender with an AC that is too high can be problematic. The monsters will realize that they cannot hit that target and switch their focus to attack everyone else even more (speaking as that party's rogue, I can tell you that it's not fun when the paladin has magical full plate and a heavy shield at lower levels).

However, if this is problematic to a fighter, I would suggest they make a STR-DEX-(CON or WIS) build. Probably an elf or eladrin. Wear Hide armor and a shield. Use the eladrin fighter powers from the edited dragon article to take advantage of dex-based powers.

Quick mention about the game with rogue & paladin. We also had a ranged ranger who got hit twice ever(maybe three times?) and a warlord. At the end of the day, warlord and I were lucky if we had 1 HS left. The paladin would usually have 3 or so. Essentially, we had to stop, but he could have kept going for a few more fights. Also, both the ranger and I multiclassed into clerics to be able to throw down more healing.

 

[James McMurray]

A paladin can really shine against solos and elites, especially if he goes Champion of Order. Keeping the big bad weakened and dazed for the rest of the combat is about as defensive as you can get. In our paragon campaign the paladin is a CoO, and the ability is downright beastly.

 

[DracoSuave]

The primary form of damage mitigation in the game is healing-surge-based healing. Almost every healing-surged-based heal in the game is based on the healing surge value, which, in turn, is equal to 25% of your total hit points. Therefore, the more hitpoints you have, the more you take advantage of the primary form of damage mitigation in the game. Defenders have the most hitpoints in the game.

It stands to reason that they therefore have the best ability to take advantage of the primary form of damage mitigation.

 

[Kintara]

The primary form of damage mitigation in the game is healing-surge-based healing. Almost every healing-surged-based heal in the game is based on the healing surge value, which, in turn, is equal to 25% of your total hit points. Therefore, the more hitpoints you have, the more you take advantage of the primary form of damage mitigation in the game. Defenders have the most hitpoints in the game.

It stands to reason that they therefore have the best ability to take advantage of the primary form of damage mitigation.

In other words, just say yes to Dwarven Fighter/Warlord-Combat Veterans.

 

[DracoSuave]

Stunty lil' rotters are worse than cockroaches!

 

[ShaggySpellsword]

In my KOtS group we have two defenders, and they both do their jobs really well--just differently.

We have our Dwarven Paladin with shield who does have a sick AC. He's not very good at locking down large numbers of enemies. But when there is one big-bad in the fight, he does a great job at locking him down with his Divine Challenge and Enfeebling Strike. The mob takes -2 to attack him and -4 plus damage to attack anyone else. That's pretty big insentive to be attacking the Dwarf...who won't get hit that often becaus eof his High AC.

We also have a Minotaur great-weapon Fighter. He's the one who locks down groups of the little baddies. With powers like passing attack (mark 2 enemies) and other eventual more than one target attacks, he's been solid at making most bad guys wish they had never gotten adjacent to him. Once they do, they can't move away because his OAs are sick!

They really do what they are supposed to-free up the rest of us to do our schtick.

 

[Keenath]

If you totally ignore any attempt at role optimization, yeah, a ranger might have same-or-better AC than a fighter.

But remember, a ranger in Hide can't boost his armor without jumping to heavy armor, which is probably a net decrease in AC as he suddenly loses out on his Dex/Int bonus.

A fighter, by contrast, can upgrade to Plate armor with only one feat, which the ranger will probably be using to boost his damage output.

And the differences widen as the characters level up. A ranger who goes from hide to darkhide has a net +1 armor bonus, while a fighter who goes from scale to wyrmscale or plate to warplate is getting a net +3.

A ranger who's putting his points in dex might manage to keep up with that, but in that case he's probably the archer who doesn't care so much what his AC looks like. Strikers often have better things to do with their points than buff their AC bonus.

 

[Stalker0]

A defender with the highest AC in the party is not as good at his job as he could be. If he's too hard to hit the enemies will target the squishier party members instead. They'll have -2 to hit when marked, but it won't matter because they'll still be as likely to hit.

While I will debate both sides about whether a defender does his job or not, I wanted to highlight this point. The fact that a paladin and fighter's marks get worse with higher AC is bad game design.

This is why the swordmage's marking mechanic is so superior to both classes. If you hit the swordmage, he's doing his job. If you hit his buddy, the swordmage negates some of the damage, still doing his job. A swordmage with a crazy high AC is just as effective at negating damage for the party as a lower AC one, maybe even better.


Back to the point, I think the trick is that defenders aren't going to be locking down the enemies 100% of the time. But if they do that's good. If a paladin's marks hit his buddy, well then then paladin is doing extra damage and contributing that to the destruction of his enemies...and giving the rest of the party a free +2 to defenses to boot with his mark.

I guess the ultimate question boils to this, is the defender (through his marking and increased durability) as useful to the party as simply having another striker would be?


Lastly, on to hitpoints, you really have to take healing surges into account in 4e combat. Generally every combat of note my fighter will use a second wind. Further, I usually will get a little warlord healing thrown in. And of course the encounter and daily powers that heal. So its not just the initial gap in hitpoints to look at, the increased healing per surge is a big deal.