Assuming we're talking about OG Xor Rohan, or I-Rohan from 2006-2009, Str Defenders were just as good as Str Guardians. They were really one of the best melee characters you could play, tbh. A Str Defender can equip a shield, switch from Empower to Ward, and it is now extremely hard for any other melee class to kill them. Rangers basically have no hope of killing them, but they can easily kill any Dex Ranger with Rush, Shout, Fix, Blue Suction, Extinction...
Watch
. Fixation is basically making this Defender hit 4x harder. Out of all the damage spike skills (Fast/Moving Shadow, CS+OS, SS+SW, Berserk), Fixation is easily the most consistent in how useful it is. It doesn't have to be paired with another skill like CS with OS, or SS+SW. Dekans have Shadow, but they can't stun an enemy as long or as reliable as a Defender can.
As for Str Dekans, the ones that actually used ZHENS as primary weapons, they fizzled out after 2010 and onward. Why? The advantage of the Zhen is its high Weapon Damage, it is the highest in the game after Polearms. Then you look at the 40% melee boost from Dragon's Power, and the 35% from Evolve that act on this high Weapon attack... Str Dekans were very powerful. This advantage became more and more non-existant as YNK and P-Servers added + Attack on every goddamn thing.
At first, Str Dekans would hit 300s very fast with a Dagger, or 750-800s slightly slower with a Zhen. Daggers couldn't meet Zhen damage output, unless it had high Crit % on it, then it could surpass it. A Zhen could not surpass the output from a crit Dagger, but you could use DD on the Zhen, while hitting higher regular hits.
If you look at I-Rohan at around 2013, People have Walter's Medals with +150-270 attack, Talismans that give 100, Rings that give 100 melee each with a 4-set bonus of 250 more, Eyes, ears, costumes that give 100 each with another 250+ pure attack bonus (Verdict/Nocturnal gear), etc. Now instead of people having 600 pure melee only from the Glac Dagger, and 1k from the Glac Zhen, people can have like 2,000 with the dagger, and 2500 with the Zhen, now the attack proportions are all fucked up.
600 pure melee with Dagger Att Speed VS 1,000 with Zhen Att Speed? Kinda fair in different situations. What about 2,000 pure melee with Dagger Att Speed VS 2,500 more with Zhen Speed? There is no contest here, the Dagger is better in all scenarios, even if it doesn't have crit % on it. But of course, this isn't what really killed Str Dekans entirely.
All of this Pure Attack boosted some classes way too much while some were left in the dust. Str Dhans were now able to basically 1-2 hit anybody that was not full Vit, without fail. In the old days, a Str Dhan would outdamage a Str Dekan in the first seconds of PP and DPP... but a Str Dekan's Fast Shadow would quickly bring his damage above the Dhan's on a high HP target... this was no longer the case, since everybody was a 1-shot for a Str Dhan. Str Dhans could simply Hide, DPP, run away. Rinse and repeat. Guardians and Str Dekans-classes that required a good stun setup, were screwed. They were too exposed in this new hit-and-run type of fighting. Their power was meaningless. It's like taking a person from the 1400s who studied martial arts for 30 years, and putting them on a 21st century battlefield where any shooter can take him out in the blink of an eye from hundreds of feet away.
