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Ronin
- a Battlemind build -

The shame of your existance is almost as old as you are yourself. Not that you were born in shame, far from it...
No, you are the offspring of one of the most noble, traditional and stubborn clans of Dwarves between the Snow-Top Mountains and the Far Western Sea. But shame came in the shape of the old enemy - the Giants - when you were young, so young you didn't even take your Trial of Fire that makes a child a Dwarf. Your clan was outnumbered and overrun, but even though you were at a disadvantage of ten to one, you almost managed to hold your ground. But the few and simple Giants had infernal backing - Demons cunning and treachous, springing from stone and lava itself, murdering the young and elder while the Warriors were desperately fighting in the front. You had no chance...
But instead of dying honorably you were caught under a rockslide and ... survived. Being the last of your clan, but left without both honor and rank you had to make do with what you had. You started with just the battle gear left on your body and your inner strength and determination. Soon you were welcomed by the long-legs making their life in the woods, who gave you food and shelter for protection of their homes. Later you started travelling the world and learning bits and tricks from every place and culture you visited, incorporating them into your natural fighting style, trading brute strength and learned tactics for intuitive understanding and inner composure. In your aggressive approach you even forsook your traditional Dwarven weaponary for the more versatile naginata.
But even though you successfully slew Giants, Demons and their ilk in the dozens, you never were to recieve the final grace of an honorable death. Not only there always seemed to be a bigger, stronger and even more important enemy to lay down to truely avenge your breathren, but you also found something different, unexpected... Almost like a new family, comrades joined you in your crusade, providing help in exchange for yours. You found their cause to be equally just as yours, and even more important they needed you to protect them in their battles - and you would never again fail to protect someone who relied on you. Not ever !

Build Explanation
Puh, where to begin. The core of the build is certainly a classic proning approach using Polearm Momentum, which Ronin can employ as early as level 4. It becomes special due the fact that he can repeatly do that trick as AoE in an ally friendly Blast 3 - both controlling many mobs at once and getting allies out ouf trouble. Against strong single mobs like Elites and Solos he learns a few much more devastating tricks over the course of his carreer.
Second multi-marking and attacks paired with Psychic Lock add even more debuffs to the game, cumulating to a very serious amount of to-hit penalties.
Furthermore by being extremely mobile and having access to multiple ways of between turn repositioning, paired with his forced movement / knock prone combo, Ronin can control the flow of battle very well. He regularly shuts down mobs completely, or at least forces them to use weak attacks, face only him, provides cover to his allies or actually even redirects whole AoEs only onto him.
It might seem his AC is a bit on the weak side, but if you consider all tactical options and debuffs Ronin throws around, the picture changes. He furthermore has access to a huge amount of surges, resists and self-healing, and considering the fact that sooner or later everybody will get hit, the build instead opts to put resources into mitigating conditions, which he can largely ignore later in his carreer. Accuracy seems average as well, but many situational bonuses more than make up for that.
At last I'd like to say that this build has very many subtle interactions, which are hard to catch in just this short explanation, so I hope you give it a detailed read.

Motivation
First and most obvious was the idea to prove that Battleminds are top-tier Defenders if built and played correctly (NB: that's not necessarily easy), and to show it with a detailed 1-30 build.
But this is also to demonstrate the three core principles and strengths of a good Battlemind build. First is the Battlemind's naturally strong defense, which let's us pull the stunt to survive playing such a tactically aggressive polearm build. Second it demonstrates that successful Battlemind builds pick their choice of favourite powers and abuse the hell out of them - all other powers are then taken to complement the core powers, either by enhancing their use or by covering situational holes. And third it shows that Battleminds (together with Swordmages) are extremely mobile, which gives them tactically surperior postioning - something armchair bashers tend to conviniently forget.
If you complain about the MC into Fighter and stealing some feats there, please mind that at the moment Battleminds still have recieved neither a Dragon article nor even their first Power book, and thus stand at 15 vs 180 Fighter class feats according to the compendium. Furthermore it's only two feats total, and only Polearm Momentum is crucial - and probably among the most "stolen" feats anyway. And at last remember that although there are some external tuning bits, the whole machine is absolutely Battlemind at its core, and wouldn't even remotely work with any other class.

Level by Level Discussion

OK, I won't do a full make over right now, as I'd like to see what the update in October brings (Psionic Power corrections; both new and updated feats due Essentials). Until then you can find a quick overview about the post-PsP Ronin here. Detailed comments can be found both in regular level by level discussion and in my regular Battlemind handbook.