Best Freudian slip ever!! 

The Path of the Defender doesn't get enough ladies, so Derek didn't want to nerf him!!

I pick it as often as warrior or mage, and almost never pick gov or assassin.

Wizard1200 I like your ideas a lot, the summon ability feels like the child that nobody in the stardock house hold likes.

It's difficult to justify taking any of the summoning traits because I so rarely get any summoning spells, though that could just be bad luck on my part.

I use all paths.

True strike is almost useless, except when you fight really high dodge units.

Path of the defender have good unit buffs, shieldwall is amazing, need taunt so the defender trait becomes usefull as the units tends to attack lowest hitpoints units the defender usually never gets attacked +2hp per level and endurance makes them hardy as hell .Hobble should pin the unit not reduce the units movement.

Path of the assasin is perfect at the momment, you need double strike but in the end the damage output is excelent.

Path of the warrior, for me is the one i use less, inferior dps than the assasin, less hp and inferiror army buffs than the defender.

Path of the mage, blizzard...

Path of the governor, i ussualy have one or two heroes with this path so i can grow cities fast.

I think it shouldn't be changed, because it's the outstanding feature of a tank: lots of hit points.  Take away some of those hit points, and you have an underpowered warrior who's looks good in a suit of armor.  Give the champion Taunt, as has been suggested, and leave those hit points to define their rightful role, in my opinion.

That said, I think there's good reason to deduct from defense (as Brad suggested) when a unit is mobbed.  So the points would reasonably be less effective if they're being hit upon from three or four other units.

I almost never use path of the defender, I would rather kill my enemy than have 1 of my heroes do little in combat.

Now there is atleast a huge hp incentive to use it, although I will probably only use it with resoln or pariden heroes...

Might be personal flavour, but I feel everytime I have tried path of the defender I got nothing "worthwhile" the huge damage numbers that earlier atleast came off the other classes.

I don't think there was any nerf to path of the mage, so I can still blast stuff with that, I'd rather have a weak blaster than a hp tool with no damage

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

Try path of the assassin when a hero can use fire. 

Focus (next attack/spell is double damage) first round then the two strikes (at 30% less accuracy?) path of the assassin ability (I can't recall the name) on the 2nd turn. 

Throw in a the giant potion or spell from the life tree where you get +100% attack and that assassin can pretty much kill anything solo, that's how I complete the Dragon quests. 

Now you can't get powerful items from early huts. New abilities are added to some monsters and I heard new range attacks (abilities) will be added to monsters. So value of HP is increased. It is question of survival. If all items and quest rewards will be balanced, you can't have powerful items in early game. So you can't defeat powerful monsters alone. So good strategy: champions are tanks, trained archers/mages are damagers.

I'll pick Path of the Defender over Path of the Warrior everytime. The extra 30 health is amazing! So much so, that I saw the balanced the Adventurers Boon feat to grant 10 hp instead of the previous 15....and it's still a rare feat.

imo, defender should only have +1/lvl and maybe a bit of a higher initiative so that the hero can move into the enemies path quicker to absorb the blows.

I can't see how a warrior and a defender are similar in any way: One picks from offensive traits and one from defensive traits. 

They are also used very differently. At least when I play them.

About the taunting: Taunt would remove a part of the tactical battles that I enjoy. It's all about getting your defender up in front, in the path of the attackers. Attackers will attack the closest enemy, if they can't reach another one, so if your defender sits right in their faces, he will be taking the blows. Or she, of course.

True, but they could both be specializations of the same path.

Except Lethal, and thats it.

Sincerely
~ Kongdej