So what if a Knight can taunt? That's way better than what a Paladin can currently do, which is look shiny and hurt things that happen to be evil (and not, for instance, giant ants, velociraptors, elementals, or demons, I guess). It spreads some of the control abilities around, which is good. Right now, Fighters get pretty much nothing in that direction besides the idea that causing tons of damage makes things hate them. There's nothing forcing you to do the math for agro control like WoW does; it's an extraordinary ability that mimics a weak spell.
Except that it has a significantly higher range, no hit dice limit, and ignores spell resistance and immunities (due to its not being a spell). The lower level control spells are significantly more limited than Test of Mettle is. (Note that I would consider Test of Mettle somewhat more tolerable if monsters could take something like a level/4 penalty to attack and damage rolls if they chose to ignore the Knight even with a save.)
Opposing it is like opposing Monks on the principle that they can have high AC without having to wear armor.
The balancing point with monks is that they suck.
I've played a monk before, and while he had a 54 AC (IIRC), his actual combat abilities were much weaker compared to the fighters and barbarians in the party. I imagine this is why monks aren't making the initial cut in 4e.
Pretty much every base class that is not Paladin, Fighter, Ranger, or Barbarian has some way of either taking the heat off or turning it up. These classes are helpless, confined only by "attack of opportunity" rules, the CC spells of others, and the whim of the DM.
Well, the fighter can trip or grapple it too.
If the DM decides that a monster should attack the nonthreatening Bard instead of the Fighter that is kicking its ass, there is nothing that the fighter can do to stop it except kill it (which he will do, since the ant let him attack for so long).
Assuming you’re talking about Trever’s bard: In that situation, the monster was in the single digit hit points and would have died if the bard had done a bit more than minimum damage. It seemed entirely reasonable to me for the creature to retaliate against the one who nearly killed him before reengaging the fighter who had retreated from combat at that point.† While I didn’t intend to do enough damage to kill his character, I generally won’t pull punches when someone does something completely reckless.
Why wear all that armor when all it does is get monsters to attack the lower hp characters in your party? Why play a fighter at all?
A DM who has a policy of always attacking the weakest characters is abusively metagaming. It would be a sign to me that I should find a better DM or go play something else.
As far as dictating the flow of combat goes, compare this taunt with a Sleep spell or a Web spell. With either of these, you shut down certain characters for one or more rounds. Under certain circumstances, they can even be hit with a coup de grace! A taunt doesn't even come close to that kind of power. The higher level arcane CC spells are so much nastier, that successfully casting one pretty much ends a combat in your favor right there.
I would expect higher level magic to be nasty. I would also expect that there are things a magic user can do that a melee user can’t. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be many things a melee fighter can do that a magic user can’t.
Being threatening is something a fighter-type should be able to do, and none can do it currently except by smashing things so hard that they can't ignore it.
I might be reading this wrong, but it seems to me that you’re wanting it so that fighters should be able to stop people from going after the most dangerous target when they aren’t. That seems rather silly to me.
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Counterspelling sucks because of the same spell/same school requirement, not because it requires the counterspeller to prepare it in advance. If I want to counterspell some other mage's fireball, I either need to have dispel magic or fireball prepared, or some higher level evocation spell if I had the improved counterspell feat.
I could be convinced to give improved counterspell to magic users in addition to doing the other change, which is pretty close to (though not exactly like) Reactive Counterspell.
None of these options seems particularly good, especially not if I decided to take evocation as a forbidden school.
That’s one of the downsides of specialization.
Why not give a mage a counterspell ability that works like turning undead? The counterspelling mage makes an Int (+caster level?) check vs. 10 + the challenged spell's save DC (or perhaps a higher DC?), and then rolls counterspell damage dice to see how many spell levels were countered (a partial counter resulting in saving throw bonuses, damage mitigation, or other effects). The mage would only be able to do this a few times a day or something, and this would replace his familiar class feature.
I think high target DCs in that situation would make counterspelling still non-viable.
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†I’m not sure I was doing leaving combat correctly Saturday. Upon checking the PH, it says that leaving a threatened square always provokes unless it is a 5ʹ step or a withdraw action.
Edit: Only needed one asterism.
