A Knight's Tale or My 4th Rank 40 Character

Ok really. This isn't fair. The Knight of the Blazing Sun is simply far too easy to play for how strong it is.

For example, the Swordmaster mechanic is built around AP management. Every Perfect Balance attack is free. That's cool. Arguably the best tank channel in the game costs the tank no AP to use. On my Knight, I don't run out of AP...ever. Bellow Commands is just crazy. I can't spam abilities quick enough to drain myself.

The Swordmaster's main form of hard CC is the knockback. Yeah, Banish Darkness just isn't fair. I need a rank 4 morale to knock someone back like that on my SM.  Arguably a good single target knockback is better than an AoE knockback for cleaning Guard off a target. I have to slot a tactic on my SM just to get a single target knockback as good as the Knight's without Banish Darkness. The Knight's other hard CC is located 9 points up their Mastery trees. The SM's hard CC is located 13 up their Mastery. And AoE stagger. 'Nuff said.

One the signature things the SM can do is drain stats from an enemy group, and lots of them, including Initiative. On most targets, this will grant your group an extra 10-20% crit rate, but it's random. My Knight can run two tactics and achieve the same thing all the time...

Can my Knight do the damage of my SM? Not even close. Don't get me wrong, damage is important, but it isn't everything. My SM has some nasty burst that my Knight just won't be able to match. (Especially not at RR30.)

The only real downside to the Knight is I'm dependent on my group because all I can really do is make my group more effective and stay alive. That may change down the road as the Knight picks up more gear and renown. On my SM, since it's a more self centered class, I can more easily take the burden of the group upon myself. I'm never in a situation where I can say that I blew all my cooldowns and tell my group to pick up the slack.

In my opinion, a well played SM can outdo a well played Knight, especially in damage and debuffs. A mediocre Knight will beat a mediocre SM any day of the week. In my mind, this makes me want to play harder at my SM.

Or maybe I'm just full of crap and completely off-base. Feel free to tell me either way.