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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shin Okada" data-source="post: 5313113" data-attributes="member: 1956">You are not mistaken the basic role of a defender. But it is basically impossible to COMPLETELY making you the only target. A defender is meant to harass opponents (by marking) and either encourage them to attack you or make them hard to attack your comrades without including you as a target. Thus all the defender can mark. And defenders have the highest HPs. Also, depends on the defender's build and the party's composition, a defender's class ability can be used to increase damage-per-round. Because some defenders can either attack or deal damage to the marked opponent when it ignores the defender and attack others and such. In such a case, other party members may intentionally provoke OA for making the combat faster.Also, some defenders like warden with appropriate powers can use their mark for actively dealing damage (say, with powers which inflicts damage to all the marked enemies).A Shielding swordmage is not good at punishing the marked opponent. But very good at doing the very basic role as a defender. As the opponent can either attack the swordmage or not only they suffer -2 penalty to attack roll but also their damage is reduced.Regarding marking, swordmage is good at marking whichever opponent he wants. He does not need to attack the opponents nor be adjacent o it. But swordmage can, basically, mark one opponent at a time.So, in my experience, a swordmage is good at stopping one really troublesome monster, especially an artillery or a controller. But not so great to stop a horde of melee monsters.And, as you already noticed, your party has plentiful of rather tough melee combatants. They can deal with multiple mediocre-to-weak melee monsters easukt. So a swordmage works very well for your party I guess.</blockquote>

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