Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Manbearcat" data-source="post: 6309437" data-attributes="member: 6696971">Quick (well maybe...ok, not likely) personal anecdote in my last game that touches on Defender-ing and GM targetting.  I've run tons of play time with a Fighter PC (and about 25 hours of play with an epic level Paladin) so understand that I'm well versed in the brutal action economy punishment of Combat Superiority; if movement provokes OA, the move action ends immediately upon provocation of CS.  The below anecdote doesn't entail actual CS but the tactics as a whole create a collage somewhat mimicking it.My game that recently finished possessed no true Defenders.  It did possess (i) an Eladrin Bladesinger, (ii) a Human Dueilist Rogue, and (iii) an Elven Swarm Druid.  Obviously only one pure striker amongst them; Rogue.  However, all 3 of them were outrageously survivable with the Druid having huge passive DR, the Bladesinger having passive Defender AC, the Rogue approaching it, and both the Bladesinger and Rogue having tons of activatable defenses to up their defenses dramatically (or adding DR).  Any of them could handle several enemies (or worse) by themselves.In play, a common power play for the group was to have the BS (who basically had perma-Bladesong due to all of his extending or recall abilities; + 2 power bonus to all defenses, + 2 to hit, + 15 damage.)1)  Have Stoneskin or Mass Resistance (giving him the equivalent of a Defender + HP pool) on.2)  Perma Bladesong on so a)  MBA's were extreme (2d8 + 39 *.8 hit vs 45 AC on OA - item bonus - 38.4 mean damage.)b)  He would (at his discretion - very common early in fights but not all the time) drop his guard and eat a melee attack (but mitigating 10 or more damage with Stoneskin or MR) in exchange for an auto-riposte (Steely Retort) as an OA (triggering a above).3)  Have Lightning Ring's secondary control effect on the target to punish movement; 11 lightning damage on movement from the target's current square.Now, like a good swashbuckler/duelist should, the Rogue had (i) means to shift in and out of a combat skirmish constantly and (ii) multiple encounter power immediate actions to either bump his defenses up dramatically or to deftly evade attacks entirely when the enemy approached him to try to attack him (immobilize + shift away).  And he had AC just below standard Defender AC.So consider the catch-22 above imposed on a GM.  Brutes, Skirmishers (and even many Lurkers), Minions are getting their brains kicked in due to this setup.  It was somewhat akin to what its like to GM a Fighter with Combat Superiority.  If they move away from the Bladesinger and attack the Rogue, they're taking a ton of damage to attempt to do so (roughly 50 or 1/4 to 1/6.5 of a level 30 NPCs total HP) with a very good chance of being totally unproductive (net loss in action economy).  The Rogue is still difficult to hit (akin to the creature being marked - especially with mark buffing that goes on at that level) and has activatable defenses galore to be near impossible to hit or to just not be there (sort of an inverted Combat Superiority).  The better option is almost always to just go after the Bladesinger.  In 2 - 3 rounds the target would be dead.  Wasting a single standard action uselessly chasing down the Rogue is asking to be laughed at.This is basically the Defender concept at work.  The idea that this had little to no function on my tactics as GM and that the better option would almost always have been to go after the Rogue is risible (at best).Now imagine that the Bladesinger is a Fighter with Combat Superiority and without Steely Retort.  No punishment for attacking the Fighter (outside of the higher HP pool), the defenses would be similar (or favoring the Rogue depending upon how the Fighter and his mark are built) with the mark effect, you eat a (surely buffed) MBA and endure an action economy beatdown with Combat Superiority or Combat Agility (OA triggers shift Dex + MBA + prone)...which pretty much universally amounts to a net loss for your side.  That isn't even counting various builds (such as Polearm/Spear + relevant feats) which synergize with the Fighter's base abilities such that they end the conversation entirely.The melee control of a well built Defender, or team-synergized Defender concepts, dominates a battlefield.  I can only assume that people who are disputing this have only dealt with paradigms where the Defender PCs they faced were poorly played + incoherently/poorly built and the Striker PCs they faced were optimized as one-trick-pony, paper tigers (which is difficult to do given how many ridiculously good, damage/lockdown avoiding utiltiies there are embedded in the Striker classes, PPs, and EDs) who could nova considerably and not much else.</blockquote>

Verification