Quote Originally Posted by Yukito01 View Post
Why would they change it so much? Was the game that unbalanced?
As Kurald Galain explained, it wasn't a change made because of balance concerns. The Wizards PR explanation is that their data indicated simpler (if there's a better word I could use here, I'm open to suggestions) character classes, so they cut down on level-by-level choices and tried to focus on reliable and safe decisions. The optimist says it was to make the game more accessible to people unfamiliar with the mechanics, the pessimist says it was to reduce the amount of pages it takes to make a new class to sell more books with less work.

In regards to balance, it's kind of fair to compare Season 1's Alvenor to Season 4's Brandis: Cavalier was an essentials paladin that remained a defender (some subclasses switched their original class roles, so you can't always compare apples to apples as easily as this). Alvenor has to actively call out a single target to mark and stick to that target to get his 4 HP punishment to go off, but Brandis can activate an aura that could stay up an entire battle to treat any enemy that's adjacent to him as effectively marked (doing more damage on a violation, to boot). Season 1 Barcan to Season 8 Anja are also in a similar situation... Kinda weird that the classes got duplicated in Encounters Pregens were the classes that had a rough start getting established, now that I think about it.

There was a balance concern that Essentials addressed, but it wasn't to do with classes. The weapon Expertise Feats (and Implement Expertise) grant a +1 to hit per tier of play with a side effect depending on the weapon. Enemy defenses increase slightly faster than player accuracy, so these feats "fix the math" of enemies becoming harder to hit as you get stronger. A popular alternative was to give PCs a +1 to hit on levels 5, 15, and 25 if you don't like the taste of those feats being that important.

Quote Originally Posted by Yukito01 View Post
Anyways, that sucks for what I want! Guess I'll have to make the pregens on my own then.Thanks for the help!
Any specific rules or ballpark you want the pregens to target? Someone that has access to the old offline Character Builder might be able to make something up quickly.