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<blockquote data-quote="Herschel" data-source="post: 5391725" data-attributes="member: 78357">In regards to AC and the Swordmage I find an interesting conundrum with the Assault version: How high do you want your AC? There’s a school of thought that says keep the defender’s AC just a point or so above the other party members. If you’re too hard to hit, you won’t be able to do your job as well because the –2 isn’t as big of a big deal. (Shielding pre-MM3 was all about boosting the D) &nbsp;I’ve found that with other fairly durable melee characters or a lot of backfield squishies on the board jacking the defenses is still good practice if also boosting accuracy. While the –2 may be a slightly lesser detriment, if you disobey my mark I am going to hit you and set up combat advantage for my melee pal. If the backfield has squishies, then I have to be able to take more attacks. For this reason I stick with a one-handed, +3 weapon (and usually a long sword because of feat shortages). I’m not missing the d12 damage die vs. the d8 if I’m hitting more often and gain non-die-dependent damage where I can. &nbsp;Plus, Swordmages generally do slightly less damage/attack because it behooves them to use a bit “smaller” weapon, so it only makes sense they have a slightly higher defense to compensate/balance it. </blockquote>

[QUOTE="Herschel, post: 5391725, member: 78357"] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=white]In regards to AC and the Swordmage I find an interesting conundrum with the Assault version: How high do you want your AC? There’s a school of thought that says keep the defender’s AC just a point or so above the other party members. If you’re too hard to hit, you won’t be able to do your job as well because the –2 isn’t as big of a big deal. (Shielding pre-MM3 was all about boosting the D) [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman][SIZE=3][COLOR=white]I’ve found that with other fairly durable melee characters or a lot of backfield squishies on the board jacking the defenses is still good practice if also boosting accuracy. While the –2 may be a slightly lesser detriment, if you disobey my mark I am going to hit you and set up combat advantage for my melee pal. If the backfield has squishies, then I have to be able to take more attacks. For this reason I stick with a one-handed, +3 weapon (and usually a long sword because of feat shortages). I’m not missing the d12 damage die vs. the d8 if I’m hitting more often and gain non-die-dependent damage where I can. [/COLOR][/SIZE][/FONT] [FONT=Times New Roman][COLOR=white]Plus, Swordmages generally do slightly less damage/attack because it behooves them to use a bit “smaller” weapon, so it only makes sense they have a slightly higher defense to compensate/balance it. [/COLOR][/FONT] [/QUOTE]

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