Quote Originally Posted by No brains View Post
The part about defending in 3.5 is that I hear about is that 1 Ac isn't too helpful unless optimized to hell and 2 casters can defend better than fighters. I also read that fighter is surprisingly NOT versatile, and that even when specialized, it falls far behind the bs in tome of battle.
In 3.5 1 AC is not much but it is very nice in 4e. 4e stays very true to its core math overall and so a +1 to AC (or to hit) is just as good at level 1 as it is at level 30. This is very different from 3e where there is no real basic math assumptions that hold true.

In 3.5 casters could "defend" better than fighters since fighters had few to no mechanics to defend anybody while casters had spells that would allow them to control the battlefield (which can be a form of defending) and had spells that let them do everything that fighters could do (a warrior class might put up more damage on an individual hit but the caster could do it almost as well and they would have additional stuff that the warriors could not do so casters were still ahead). 4e characters can not do that. Casters do not possess any abilities that allow them to do other jobs that a warrior type class could not take to make them like casters (ie you can multiclass but unlike in 3.5 the opportunity is equal for both you can make a caster about as warrior like as a warrior can become caster like). Further nearly every class is the best at some aspect and really good in others so you do not need to worry about being overshot just because of your class (optimization can still make a difference but the classes themselves are very close in power).

There are no tiers in 4e. Most classes are fairly close in power with different things they are better at doing within their roles. A warlord (leader class) is better at granting attacks to allies but a cleric (leader) is better at healing. Comparing a fighter(defender or striker) to a warlord does not really work since they have very different jobs (unless you are comparing how they work within a party due to what a role you might need. A fighter is better in a party lacking a defender while warlord will be better in a party lacking a leader). The closest to being a bad class in 4e right now is the assassin class (the original one) which is the weakest striker but even then it still isn't that bad it would be like playing a tier 4 class in a group of tier 3s (weaker but still easy to run with).