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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5514658" data-attributes="member: 78116">Let's just look at powers that the Blackguard might be able to take (theoretically), but just the paladin in general for now. You also appear confused because the Blackguard isn't a defender - it's actually a striker (Much like how the slayer is a striker build of the fighter, not that fighters can't adequately pull off a secondary striker role anyway). But none the less:Holy Strike (Paladin): Which grants a bonus to Wisdom damage against marked enemies (Damn solid that one). That's far better.Valiant Strike (Paladin): Grants a bonus to the attack roll equal to the number of enemies adjacent for you (good for multimarking paladins).Strike of Hope (Paladin): Grants 5 temp HP to an ally within 5, grants an additional 5 temp HP to the ally if they are bloodied.Vengeful Strike (Paladin): Does radiant damage right off the bat, grants extra radiant damage and does +charisma damage if a bloodied ally is within 5.Now 2 of these are what I think are situational - in the same category as this power. Would you rather have a poor at-will that basically might let you get CA - easily got in a wide variety of ways - or would you rather at-wills like the above that are useful in a wide variety of situations? All 4 of the above are paladin at-wills, so I didn't need to go far to easily show you four much better powers. When Valiant strike is required, it is amazing and serves a multimarking paladin well. Vengeful strike deals one of the best damage types in the game off the bat and can deal extra radiant damage. Those are 'conditional' at-wills, which are still far better than this.Noting that - this is important - nothing stops a blackguard taking these at-wills unless he's pigeonholed into at-wills by his vice (which would just be a shame). The simple thing here is if you're another paladin or let's just say this was a fighter power: Do you honestly think this power would in any way stack up to other at-wills of these classes? Would normal paladins take this power? Quite frankly, it's not stacking up against paladin powers and we know the Blackguard can take them (theoretically of course). When you rely on CA for class features, there are much more reliable ways of doing it and my point about wintertouched/lasting frost is that will turn all of your powers into doing this by default.Take a feat like <a href="http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/feat.aspx?id=3518" target="_blank">cunning stalker</a> and then you get CA against any isolated creature. If you have friends, it's likely you have flanking and against everything else that might be isolated - automatically - you have CA. This feat is just far more generally useful and will serve the function most people who have tried to defend this at-will have used: Attacking "isolated" strong targets. Well now you don't need to worry in the first place. Cunning stalker is also terrific for a blackguard who wants to charge an isolated enemy, gain CA on the charge and potentially hit far harder (+1 charging, +2 CA if the enemy has nothing else adjacent to it is very solid - all without ever needing to hit in the first place!).Sure, if it was the general standard of at-wills it wouldn't be terrible. You compare it to the above and tell me out of say, those 5 choices - what would you take? Look at the two situational powers above and tell me what you'd rather have. This power: Or would you rather Valiant Strike? Or would you rather have Vengeful Strike? Both are equally situational, but they are far better for what they do.For me, I wouldn't be so harsh on this if: The CA was an effect - or - the CA was granted to all. As it is the other at-wills the blackguard has have to be pretty bad for this to be a good choice. Alternatively, if it could be used as a MBA I would totally see and understand the point.Cunning stalker. Good at wills last 3 tiers of play, not just heroic and even then, not until you take a single feat <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

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