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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5509374" data-attributes="member: 78116">Heh, you should see what I do to parties that use a Knight who isn't a dwarf for their defender. To say it's an absolute massacre where the Knight wonders what he's supposed to be doing is an understatement. I personally find the Knight the easiest defender to circumvent in the game. They struggle so hard against enemies that can slide them as effects or auras (which is why being a Dwarf is so important - or the Knight rapidly becomes impotent).This is not correct because the Knight doesn't "Mark" and this may seem like I'm splitting hairs - but it's unbelievably important to how they function in this scenario. The difference between the -2 defender aura and a mark, is that once out of your defender aura that's it - you have zero effect on that monster. Skirmishers that can leave without provoking AoOs make the Knight Struggle, because once away they don't even take the -2 penalty to attacks. While other defenders with a mark have the same problem, it isn't as debilitating because the creature at least will end up with a -2 penalty. Those penalties count for a lot in many situations, so when the Knight fails to even impose that consistently they can fail to draw any attention. A Blizzard dragon for example can slide your fighter, battlemind or warden (as examples) away 1 square - suffering that -2 penalty even if it attacks your wizard. The same dragon against a Knight immediately renders him ineffective straight off, meaning it can now freely do whatever it wants. Worse, it's sliding you away on the end of your own turn. So the Knight cannot do much, except ready an action and pray he doesn't get the trigger wrong. It's often advisable for a Knight to MC another defender, or take a paragon path (like Warpriest) to mark enemies specifically. Using defender aura for creatures that lack special movement powers and the ability to force move the Knight away.Due to the Knights considerable drawbacks though, they are very viciously build and item specific. Your average Knight needs a weapon like feyslaughter to stop teleporting enemies. They need an aurakiller weapon to deal with things with auras that force move them (like the Blizzard Dragon). Build wise the only effective Knight I've ever seen uses Defend the Line (Slows on hit) and Worlds Serpent Grasp (Knocks a slowed enemy prone). Otherwise many skirmishers can again find it very easy to ignore them.This doesn't mean the Knight is useless, but they have drawbacks that over a while of play your DM will really notice. If your DM exploits any of your weaknesses you can be absolutely nullified instantly. This is also why Dwarf is so important to a Knight - the resistance to that 1 square of forced movement is gold. Quite a few controllers can just slide a square as an effect - not even relying on hitting. 1 square is more than good enough to completely stop you from doing anything to monsters in your aura. If you have 3 monsters in your aura and the controller slides you 1, you now have no monsters in your aura. If you were trying to defend the two brutes - well let's just say anyone squishy in the party is immediately in trouble.This of course is bearing in mind that other defenders have the same issue - but the -2 mark penalty sticks around. Stick that penalty on top of an illusory ambush, another penalty and so - suddenly your Wizards normally quite sad 16ish AC is looking impressive at effectively AC20 or even higher.The other problem is with base effectiveness - all of the Martial classes in essentials basically - is their lack of options. They are basically very effective, but the severe lack of options and powers means they can find life extremely tough when the tough gets going. A fighter can have come and get it for multimarking + holding enemies adjacent - plus stops movement on an AoO (something the Knight lacks). The fighter can have rain of blows for alpha striking with the party - the Knight cannot. So the lack of options - even with supreme base effectiveness - can backfire on essentials classes when an encounter tests their inflexibility. This is something to really remember here as well. AEDU classes are much more "swingy" I would say, but their flexibility is a huge amount of power and when AEDU classes get "abusive" they far outstrip essentials classes by miles.I think RangerWickett put it very well when he wrote this:This is exactly my experience as well.There are a couple of things here:1) Those modules are quite old and frankly very poorly balanced. While they can be fun, when I ran them back in the day before the time I started telling young people to get off my lawn - they weren't any harder (except Irontooth, Jesus that encounter was nuts back then if you dragged in two encounters at once). H3 for example was romped through by a largely PHB party of Warlord, Rogue, Fighter, Swordmage (FRPG, the odd man out), Warlock and Wizard. So really you shouldn't feel dejected if you aren't challenging your players - they weren't challenging back then either.2) The Hunter doesn't really remind me of a controller, he feels like a single target striker that does some controlling on the side to be honest. It's easy to optimize for damage and your player behind him clearly knows what he's doing. He's obviously using world serpents grasp there with the at-will slow. What mage do you have? An evocation mage is basically a striker-lite and the hexblade is also a fairly reliable striker (albeit he's actually a bit lower on the damage rung compared to thieves/scouts).To be honest I wouldn't be worried at all. You should see what a well optimized fighter or the original PHB ranger with a properly built twin-strike build does (shudders in horror at the thought).</blockquote>

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