Longtime player first time GM here and my party has no defender. They are five players and party composition is as follows:

- Two strikers, monk and rogue
- Two leaders, artificer and bard
- One controller, druid

Everyone, with exception of the druid who is a brand new player, are playing pretty strategically and are more or less optimized.

Anyways, I was surprised at how well they are doing without a defender. I expected that to be a big hindrance to them. I have done nothing to make up for their lack of defender, other than encourage them to build more defensively than they might would have, which they really haven't done alot of.
I'm not complaining, I am having fun, they are having fun, encounters are interesting, everything is gravy, I am just curious... What's so great about defenders?

Honestly? Not all that much. For what its worth fourth addition is all about Strikers. So long as they are supported (either with Defenders keeping things of there backs or Leaders buffing them up) Strikers can pretty much take on any encounter they come across. This is especially true if the group knows what they are doing and have built there characters to be optimized or with the strengths and skills of the other team members in mind.

A party of melee strikers can do fine without a defender. But ranged strikers will tend to get shut down pretty easily in a fight with melee opponents.

Of course having a class like a bard in the group that lets you slide players around to get them away from enemies and out of flankings helps emensily. Personally I'd prefer to have two AoE strikers in the back than two defenders in the front any day.

I was about to say this was asked on GiantITP too but it looks like the OPs are the same person, haha.

Oh man. Brand new to both sites and already have a stalker.

I think a lot of 4e games fall into the pit of thinking that they need 1 Defender, 1 Leader, 1 Striker, 1 Controller and a wildcard. You can mix and match and still be just fine. Dont have a defender? Pump up the strikers and you'll be fine.

I think a defender's presence is felt more by the DM than by players. For me as a DM, a defender and defender-like abilities makes me have to pause and weigh options whereas with strikers, I only think about if they've killed one of my monsters or not.

Of course, if a defender isn't in range to punish enemies for violating his mark.

Are there any defenders that are more AoE based?

I'm still a bit fresh on the 4E scene, and currently playing my first defender which is a Battlemind.

I've seen that Wardens get an AoE mark, but really only have enounter and daily powers to deal with multiple foes. The battlemind has an ability that lets it do CON mod damage to a few adjactent foes as well... but are there any with more powerful AoE?

Not really I'm afraid. AoE are, for the most part, the Controllers thing. This is mostly a result of how poorly they handled the introduction of controllers in PH1 - the designers weren't entirely sure what the controller was supposed to be doing and so settled on 'killing minions and status effects'. So no one but them got AoE effects so they could find a niche to contribute too (which in turn led to really weird combat situations). Which would have worked if Warlocks couldn't easily annihilate hundreds of minions with a minor action and some cheap gear.

It's a little better balanced in later books but that the long of it.

Take a good striker and beef up its AC, you wont get the marks but if you make things dead fast enough it wont matter!

Swordmages are defenders that get a respectable array of AoE attacks. But, to chime in with everyone else, Defenders are not needed if you have decent support for your Strikers.

Word! Thanks for input everybody!