4e defenders, Who's Who among tanks

[Artanis]

Currently, I'd give it to the Fighter. In order to be a good Defender, you have to be able to make them regret not attacking you, and the Fighter currently has the highest damage potential of the Defender classes.

This is a misconception. You don't need damage output to make the enemy regret not attacking you, as there are lots of ways other than hitting the enemy really hard to make yourself an inviting target despite durability. The various defenders go about this in different ways:

* If you don't attack me, I really hurt you.
* If you don't attack me, I hurt you and heal them up.
* If you don't attack me, you don't hurt them, and I get to teleport stuff.

etc.

None of these is inherently better or worse than the others. There's also ways other than the Fighter's method of being "sticky". The Swordmage, for instance, has ways of making sure enemies can't get very far before being yanked back again. And like the marking effects, none of these are inherently better or worse than the others.

The difference comes in the end product, of how everything goes together. It appears that the general consensus is that the Fighter just happens to come out the best in this regard.


tl;dr: Having high damage isn't what makes the Fighter a better defender than the others. What makes the Fighter a better defender is that its damage is high enough and the other defenders' own methods are low enough that it just so happens to come out on top.


*Note: I don't know the Warden well enough to comment on it.