Unique Play

One of the things that I really appreciate about 4th edition D&D is that the classes often play very differently from each other.  I must note that in all of this I am not talking about essentials classes, I am less studied on the essential classes and some of them were built to be simple and thus less unique in play style.  Each defender has a different marking system and a different form of punishment for violation of their mark.  Leaders have some clear similarities in that their base heals all work similarly, but the differences in what they bring to the table can be huge.  Druid's partial melee control game separates them from the rest of the controllers and the control through damage mechanic can be seen in the wizard more clearly than the others.  Strikers on the other hand have some of the least interesting play styles within their ranks.  Not to say that all strikers are boring, just that a couple have boring mechanics.

Ranger and rogue are the worst offenders as far as boring play styles go.  Rangers quarry and then proceed to hit their quarry preferably with frost weapons and the same goes for rogue.  Artful dodgers at least end up being mobile which makes them feel a little different from the rest of the rogues, but all in all they do what every striker does, try and get combat advantage and hit a guy.  Avengers on the other hand try to set up interesting lose lose situations or gain a benefit from specific positioning in combat.  Night stalker assassins only get bonus damage if they segregate their enemies.  Barbarians charge a lot and monks built in movement leads to a very mobile striker.  Warlocks have control elements built in.  Cosmic sorcerers may well change their tactics with their phases, but the rest mostly just aim to AoE the biggest pack of enemies dumb enough to clump up.  At the end of the day sneak attack, sorcerous power and quarry are not interesting mechanically.  Warlock curse while very similar to quarry actually does add to the play of the class as the rewards for a cursed target dying leads to the party choosing attacks differently so that the warlock can benefit from their actions.  Some may mention that the rogue gets preferential treatment for flanking, but once paragon hits and the frost comes out that more or less vanishes. 

A couple classes are actually made to be a different experience even when played multiple times.  To be clear I mean from a mechanics standpoint, of course from a role-playing standpoint no class dictates that you must play each character the same way.  I could play at least two clerics with almost no feeling of overlap mechanically.  I could play several warlords.  I could not play more than one rogue.  Most defenders were built to be able to reach striker or near striker level damage so each defender has at least two viable options for multiple characters.  Barbarian at least in stat line up offers three playable characters (even if whirling has some mechanical mistakes).  Which brings me to another point, Barbarian has 4 options and 3 stat line ups warden and sorcerer have 4 options and 2 stat line ups.  I feel that a different stat line up can lead to drastically different builds and thus more available replay value for the class.  Each time a stat lineup copy is made I lament for those stat lineups that could have been.  Maybe str dex or str int warden would have some neat tricks.  I can't imagine it would harm balance greatly for such a thing to exist.  That said I can see that by blah blah power 2 every stat combo would be represented (assuming two paths per book) and that perhaps some stat combos should be rare (for instance con is a very strong secondary stat).  I know I have seen players puzzle over what to play not because of a bounty of options, but rather a feeling that they have, "been there" and, "done that" and see this as a way to open up replay of classes to these people.