Bulwark of Defense + Epic Defensive Fighting?

[Bjond]

Is the Bulwark of Defense feat triggered by Epic Defensive Fighting stance?

By description, it should, but wiki doesn't list it as one of the defensive stances that triggers Bulwark. Is this WAI? Broken? Based on melee play in epics and reaper versus ranged, not only should it trigger, but it wouldn't do enough to win over other feats for most melee dps builds.

I happen to have a melee build with a L24 feat slot that oddly doesn't have any compelling other choices, which lead me to consider this one.

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edit: finally hit epic levels on my latest build and checked this one. Epic Defensive Fighting is not considered enough of a defensive stance to trigger Bulwark of Defense. So, another bug, though perhaps only textual if SSG likes this behavior.

[jsm123]

Yep. I just realized this one today. It's a poor choice of wording. So the way it seems to work is that the stance has to have the words "Defensive Combat Stance:" in its description in order to trigger Bulwark of Defense. Epic Defensive Fighting should work though in my opinion. It's kind of ridiculous that it doesn't. If it's intended to not work, it needs a name change because calling it Epic Defensive Fighting is super misleading and makes zero sense in this context.

Pretty old post I know, but I had to say something. It's bad design.

[jskinner937]

Is the Bulwark of Defense feat triggered by Epic Defensive Fighting stance?

By description, it should, but wiki doesn't list it as one of the defensive stances that triggers Bulwark. Is this WAI? Broken? Based on melee play in epics and reaper versus ranged, not only should it trigger, but it wouldn't do enough to win over other feats for most melee dps builds.

I happen to have a melee build with a L24 feat slot that oddly doesn't have any compelling other choices, which lead me to consider this one.

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edit: finally hit epic levels on my latest build and checked this one. Epic Defensive Fighting is not considered enough of a defensive stance to trigger Bulwark of Defense. So, another bug, though perhaps only textual if SSG likes this behavior.

For the purposes of this feat, "defensive stance" is considered to be only Defensive Fighting, Combat Expertise, Resilience, a fighter Stalwart Defender stance, or a paladin Sacred Defender stance.
Epic Defensive Fighting does not activate this feat.
Activating Power Attack will temporarily deactivate this feat's bonuses even if a Stalwart Defender or Sacred Defender stance is currently active.
Unyielding Sentinel stances or other stances (including Nature's Defense from Nature's Protector) will not currently activate the feat.

[Fauxknight]

Defensive stances existed before EDF and EDF had to stack with defensive stances, hence it couldn't actually be one itself. Bulwark also existed before EDF and and continues to work with those pre-EDF defensive stances.

The only thing that confuses me is that the Wiki says Bulwark doesn't work with Nature's Defense. I don't know if this was ever patched, but they clearly should work together.

[jsm123]

For the purposes of this feat, "defensive stance" is considered to be only Defensive Fighting, Combat Expertise, Resilience, a fighter Stalwart Defender stance, or a paladin Sacred Defender stance.
Epic Defensive Fighting does not activate this feat.
Activating Power Attack will temporarily deactivate this feat's bonuses even if a Stalwart Defender or Sacred Defender stance is currently active.
Unyielding Sentinel stances or other stances (including Nature's Defense from Nature's Protector) will not currently activate the feat.

Really? Okay so my assumption that the stance has to have "Defensive Combat Stance:" in its description is wrong. That's disappointing and there should be some notes stating this in Bulwark of Defense's description. Or there needs to be a change that includes all defensive stances to activate Bulwark of Defense.

[jsm123]

Defensive stances existed before EDF and EDF had to stack with defensive stances, hence it couldn't actually be one itself. Bulwark also existed before EDF and and continues to work with those pre-EDF defensive stances.

The only thing that confuses me is that the Wiki says Bulwark doesn't work with Nature's Defense. I don't know if this was ever patched, but they clearly should work together.

So I just checked in-game with my Paladin. Sacred Defense can be active with the heroic Defensive Fighting so not all pre-EDF defensive stances are exclusive to one another. I'm not sure why it would be different for Epic Defensive Fighting in the sense it couldn't be a defensive stance itself unless there is some tight coupling going on in the code that classifies defensive stance feats and defensive stance enhancements separately. If that's the case, it seems you can only have up to one defensive stance feat active at a time and up to one defensive stance enhancement active at a time hence the reasoning that Epic Defensive Fighting couldn't be considered a defensive stance and the Epic Destiny stances couldn't either. That kind of coding would be difficult to undo since it would almost certainly affect many other parts of the code that rely on it. A workaround could be to add more classifications such as defensive stance epic feats and defensive stance epic destinies. But that's difficult to say since I don't know how the code was written.