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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Aegeri" data-source="post: 5392944" data-attributes="member: 78116">I am aware of that and it's not the argument. It's the timing of the damage (before the attack) and the overall effect (eliminating the monster and preventing effects).I am restricting my examples to epic <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Also, I personally believe you should be able to get away with almost anything in heroic and it's really late paragon the damage starts to kick in. Then again, heroic monsters are getting pretty ridiculous these days, so I'm not really sure what to think.This is precisely my point. A shielding swordmage can't do a lot of damage on his own turn - but he does have some substantially good controller effects - so if he can't control or force a monster where it has to attack him, if given a choice it won't.But if it leads to the attacked character still dying, it's a completely hollow victory. I can name so many cases where finishing off a chronically wounded monster with a mark (or the battlemind going LIGHTNING RUSH, HIT ME !!!) has made a huge difference. A hospitalier for example can not only prevent damage (in the form of healing), he does it every attack and if it hits or misses. Plus he doesn't give up doing damage at the same time.Compare a Shielding Swordmage with a Paladin Hospitalier in preventing damage. The shielding swordmage is ignorable completely, the Hospitalier cannot be ignored (unless you're a Klurichir, then you don't care).I actually disagree, because most strikers - aside from Barbarians and such - are pretty squishy (noting that Avengers are technically trying to be secondary defenders). In such a case as this, it's not the -2 penalty but whatever the mark punishment is that draws the attack away from the striker. This again, is what the swordmage cannot accomplish, because MM3 creatures are doing damage through: Base damage, effects (ongoing) and auras. It is incidentally why as a DM to effectively make epic challenging, remembering things like effects and auras are so essential. They make up a big and important part of epic monsters DPR.</blockquote>

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