Swordmage: Isn't it a little bit unbalanced?

[Sunseeker]

Except that no other defender could do more in this situation. Actually they could only do less, prevent no damage at all. Yeah, they slapped the enemy afterwards, but that didn't stop any of the damage.

But here's the thing, as pointed out earlier. Stopping damage doesn't end the fight quicker. Damage does. What's going to get your attention more as a BBEG, your damage being prevented? or being smacked in the face?

And who's easier to down? An enemy at full health, or an enemy at half health?

By the time monsters can reliably drop 30 damage on someone the swordmage should be able to absorb 20 of that

Even if they can, all that does is stall things out. Your ally is going to hit the enemy just as hard, bloodied or not. Heck, some will hit them harder!

Just like every other defender, except that most of them didn't even prevent any damage from the first attack.

At the end of the day, keeping your party at good health is your healer's job. Assuming we're all power-building in the group, that healer is gonna give you as much, or more than your surge when they tell you to spend it. Meaning the average PC is getting healed for half their health.

Your job as a defender is to keep your party from getting hit as much as possible. The swordmage does his job by letting the enemy hit them and dancing around the battlefield.

Damaging your foe when they ignore your mark means they WILL die if they keep doing it. Preventing damage does not.

 

[Mirtek]

But here's the thing, as pointed out earlier. Stopping damage doesn't end the fight quicker. Damage does. What's going to get your attention more as a BBEG, your damage being prevented? or being smacked in the face?

Then just replace the defender with another striker and you have even more extra damage.

Even if they can, all that does is stall things out. Your ally is going to hit the enemy just as hard, bloodied or not. Heck, some will hit them harder!

And the party resources are drained faster and the next rest has to be taken earlier.

At the end of the day, keeping your party at good health is your healer's job. Assuming we're all power-building in the group, that healer is gonna give you as much, or more than your surge when they tell you to spend it. Meaning the average PC is getting healed for half their health.

And with a defender who prevents hp damage to the party pool less healing surges have to be spend over a longer period.

Your job as a defender is to keep your party from getting hit as much as possible.

Which the "let them hit first and then punish them a little" defenders don't do either

The swordmage does his job by letting the enemy hit them

Letting them being hit for reduced damage which accumulate quickly to effectively equaling X hits less

Damaging your foe when they ignore your mark means they WILL die if they keep doing it. Preventing damage does not.

Unless the % of time they die faster equals the % of damage soaked up this is worse overall. If a shielding swordmage blocks 20/30 damage a fighter would need to make the monster die 66% faster just from the CC attack to get equal

 

[striatic]

Swordmages have average hp for defenders, shielding SMs are actually among the upper ranks of defender hps do to being con-based which many defenders don't have among their top 3 stats (thus likely no more than a 12/13 to begin with and a 14/15 to end with).

that's true. i guess i'm just used to playing with a certain dwarf who has never been as feat starved as my Swordmage, and so has Toughness in addition to the Dreadnought Paragon Path. Because i'm always a full 20HP lower than her my perception is rather distorted.

I'll still maintain that the multi-marking shielding swordmage is a bit more prone to being piled-on, and so their HP can end up drained more quickly, but you are correct - their HP is at worst average.

 

[striatic]

But here's the thing, as pointed out earlier. Stopping damage doesn't end the fight quicker. Damage does. What's going to get your attention more as a BBEG, your damage being prevented? or being smacked in the face?

In my experience? Having the damage prevent gets way more attention.

Monsters have lots of HP, and when you start hitting them it doesn't necessarily draw their attention unless you're dealing *the most* damage. And even if you're hitting them hard, they're still able to operate.

Whereas preventing all of the damage the damage they dole out can completely neuter them. Unless they are controllish or leaderish types, if they aren't dealing damage, they're worthless. So they'll attack the defender. If they can reach it and hit it. Which in the case of the Shielding Swordmage isn't always the case.

Having a monster thrashing around, almost completely neutered while your strikers pound it is a good situation to be in.

Healers are great, but they shouldn't be totally responsible for keeping up HP. they have a limited number of healing powers per encounter [and per round]. A low Paragon Tier Shielding Swordmage has the capability of preventing just short of a Healing Surge's worth of damage every round, and that gets a monster's attention more than nipping at their heels while the striker does the real damage and draws the real attention.

 

[Felon]

Regarding the swordmage's supposedly high AC (which at one point was the actual topic of this thread), I'd like to note that the fighter in our 25th level party currently has a 47 AC. A 25th-level monster has what for an attack bonus? +30 maybe?

 

[Aegeri]

Is that with Full Plate, Heavy Shield and Warpriest you can get close to that. I would be curious to see the full build there.

 

[Felon]

Is that with Full Plate, Heavy Shield and Warpriest you can get close to that. I would be curious to see the full build there.

It's a pretty basic sword-and-board with +6 godplate, with the only special extra being the adamantine soldier epic detinty (which grants +2 AC and Resist All equal to your Con).

 

[Eldragon]

But here's the thing, as pointed out earlier. Stopping damage doesn't end the fight quicker. Damage does. What's going to get your attention more as a BBEG, your damage being prevented? or being smacked in the face?
...
Damaging your foe when they ignore your mark means they WILL die if they keep doing it. Preventing damage does not.

This is why I lean more towards the Assault swordmage than shielding. But it is also highly dependent upon your DM and party makeup. An Assault Swordmage can set the Rogue up for their sneak attack. Which equates to a whole lot of damage, and most DMs will get tired of being set up for sneak attacks very quickly. Course the DM will probably choose to just kill the rogue off instead of going after the swordmage.

But if you DM likes to have just 1 or 2 hard hitting monsters in an encounter, the shielding swordmage is going to be better without question.

 

[Aegeri]

This is why I lean more towards the Assault swordmage than shielding. But it is also highly dependent upon your DM and party makeup. An Assault Swordmage can set the Rogue up for their sneak attack. Which equates to a whole lot of damage, and most DMs will get tired of being set up for sneak attacks very quickly. Course the DM will probably choose to just kill the rogue off instead of going after the swordmage.

But if you DM likes to have just 1 or 2 hard hitting monsters in an encounter, the shielding swordmage is going to be better without question.

Pre-MM3 yes.

The shielding swordmage at epic is arguably the saddest thing you've ever seen. When he's doing basically nothing to enemies that are chucking out absurd damage it takes the shine off it. Assault swordmages are a lot better at epic, because attacking something and killing it is ultimately better now than just slightly mitigating horrific doom.

Like 22 damage negated or so was a lot a long time ago. Now it's merely a minor annoyance and won't significantly budge many creatures attacks that much anymore. Especially brutes that get multiple attacks, who won't be concerned whatsoever. I find that when PCs are dropped at epic, the overkill is massive. They aren't being dropped by 1-2 HP, they're being dropped in the order of -30 or so into negatives.

 

[Shin Okada]

Onto the original topic. I have just checked how much were the AC of our party at 12th-level.

Paladin: 31
Bard/Warlord: 30
Shaman: 28 (Spirit 30)
Avenger: 27
Druid: 26
Sorcerer: 25

I guess those are a little bit lower than average, as non of those PCs were investing much on raising their ACs.

But anyway, our defender had only 1 lower AC than the said Swordmage. And Bard/Warlord and Shaman's Companion Spirit had AC 30. But when playing Revenge of the Giants, the DM seemed to have not much trouble on hitting those ACs. So AC 32 at 12th-level should not cause much difference.