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It's an interesting interpretation of the rules.  I can follow the logic- let's look at the Fighter (Weaponmaster)'s Combat Superiority.  "You gain a bonus to the attack rolls of opportunity attacks".  It doesn't say "You gain a bonus to the attack roll of the Opportunity Attack Power".  Nor does it say "You gain a bonus to the attack roll of Opportunity Attack Actions".

The Rules Compendium version of Opportunity Attack has been verbally lambasted a great deal on these forums, and not without good reason.  This is, sadly, another reason.  An Opportunity Action that is also an Attack, does, in fact, fall under the definition of an "opportunity attack".  But not, necessarily an Opportunity Attack.

My brain hurt just writing that.

However, like the definition of "attack" itself, this is just a case where the rules use a term in multiple ways for no good reason.  Occam's Razor dictates that the definition of "opportunity attack" is the Opportunity Attack Power, because any other definition is overly complex. 

Other posters can no doubt cite official sources that back this up, and point you to them.  

People, we know the rules are confusing and misleading at times.  Look at all the arguments for what "speed" refers to.  If someone gets confused or misled, insulting them isn't the answer.  Present a logical response, cite a source, and if the person still doesn't believe you, put them on ignore or something.            

What I have seen of a Cavalier in play is actually rather surprising.  Despite having a lackluster punishment in Righteous Radiance (which, by rights, only a minion would fear), Cavaliers have strong secondary role abilities that do make for that.  

Most Defenders tend to be slower on the draw- Dexterity is rarely an attribute of choice and most do not get innate bonuses to Initiative, forcing you to spend feats and resources to be able to act before most of Team Monster.  The bonus to initiative that Valor gives you is welcome, and very useful.  This lets the Cavalier be more effective as a "first-in, first-out" warrior.  The mount's added mobility cannot be ignored either- being able to go early in the initiative order, and take the fight to the enemy is a huge selling point for the class.

Often, the Cavalier can move up and alpha strike an enemy.  This focuses enemy fire on them, which is just fine- their heavy armor and high surge values make them the perfect target for focus fire.  And it's kind of hard to ignore the guy who's up in your grill, dazing you.

The ability to redirect damage from allies to the Cavalier is very strong as well, and while, again, Righteous Radiance is fairly weak, being able to generate a defender aura from atop a large mount (let alone a flying mount) is huge.

They are far from the best Defender, if any class can really claim that title (as each Defender class has a specialty in what kinds of battles tend to be their strong suit).  They do have some unique advantages, and they are fun to play, from what I have observed. 

All this having been said, the only way you can determine if the Cavalier is for you is to play the class.  If nothing else, I do like the idea of a Sacrifice Cavalier serving as the party's backup healer, which is something I'd like to try out someday.                 

Mar 2, 2012 -- 12:01PM, erachima wrote:

The sky is green, the sun is black, every opp action is an opp attack. The moon is gold, the grass is grey, play the rules as I feel not as they say.

Metafictional: An attack that is an opportunity action is not, by any stretch of the rules, inherently an opportunity attack. The phrase you're casting about for is "Opportunity Action attacks" or "attacks made as an Opportunity Action", and that is not used here (nor, to my knowledge, anywhere in the rules). "Opportunity attacks" is quite specific and unambiguous, all the more so because Opportunity Attack was not a named power until quite recently, making it ungrammatical to give a bonus to "Opportunity Attack" rather than "opportunity attacks".

By contrast, there are multiple places in the rules where bonuses or rules apply to attacks made with an action type, and they're quite explicitly laid out as such: "make a standard action attack as a free action", "deal extra damage with standard action attacks until the end of your next turn", etc. etc.

I'm telling you that the two different cases (don't want to quote, the first being the one not used "anywhere in the rules" and the second being the "by contrast" one), are in some cases not intentionally made so by the developers. What I'm telling you is just that the developers sometimes use the mechanical terms of the rules in ambivalent ways, or simply in wrong ways that take a lot to be errata-ed. And I'm saying I can see through that error (which without arguing about "bigger" rules would just be the wording of Word of Diminishment, which should say "attacks made as Opportunity Actions") and you say it's impossible to determine that. Yes, it's impossible in a scientific way (unless you want to ask the devs, which by the way it's not that hard), but we're not doing rocket science here, and it's more important to play a power as it was intended than as it's written, when something it should clearly do is not being done as it's written. I don't think we can argue more on the subject.

On topic, I had chosen Virtue of Valor and I totally got the feeling that @Metafictional was talking about in his post above: I was the highest Initiative guy (and there was a Vampire in the party), and it served pretty well, since I couldn't mark from a distance. Another trick I added with Runepriest was the Word Of Blinding Shield power, that is a very paladinesque power that arrives just at the right level and nearly always negates an enemy attack.
So even without the Word Of Diminishment ruling in favor of Righteous Radiance damage, the Runepriest is IMO one of the best classes to combine with Cavalier for a fun hybrid that still feels/plays a lot like a Cavalier but is also arguably more useful to allies (mainly thanks to Rune Master).

Mar 2, 2012 -- 12:28PM, Rayous wrote:

I guess what confuses me is why half a class (hybrid) has to make equivalent to a top tier single class defender to be considered "good".

This. My character was good precisely because it could be many things at once.