Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - Suggestions and Feedback Taunt being Block by Armour

IMO some other calculation should be used as it's impossible to use as intended since if the armour is broken, why not just CC the guy? Taunt should serve as a tool that can be used to protect everyone else from the guy who you can't break yet but since the status is blocked by armour, can't be used this way.

My proposal for the skill to fix this situation is instead of making it a debuff, make it a buff based on the characters armour. Enemies within taunts AoE can't leave the AoE until the taunting characters armour is broken.

I tended to agree with Larian's reasoning for requiring to strip armor to inflict status effects... but having Taunt blocked by Physical armor just makes it useless.

I think Taunt should be an exception to the normal rules. It should be a percentage based chance, and be resisted based on an INT check, so higher-INT characters have a higher chance of resisting Taunt, and lower-INT characters (the fighters) are more vulnerable to it.

At the very least, Larian could change Taunt to be blocked by MAGICAL armor, so it'll work better on physical attackers. EDIT: But that's honestly a poor solution anyway.

That would make it useless on warfare characters tho

To be of any use, it should be unblockable. The small range already reduces its usefullness anyway.

I agree. Taunt shouldn't require any armor/magic armor check to resist it. That's completely counter-intuitive to what tanking is meant to be - they soak damage as their primary motive, not deal it. Theoretically, if you wanted to run a tank in a mage party, it would be entirely up to the tank to strip the boss of its armor value alone, just to be able to do its job in the first place, because enemies will actively ignore the tank to the best of their abilities otherwise. Not to mention that tanks can't exactly run glass cannon, so getting enough AP to offset the investment needed to taunt something is ridiculous.

If it absolutely needs to pass the enemy's armor, give it a flat armor removal bonus so you can potentially strip the enemy of their last portion of armor to taunt, or let taunting ignore a percentage of armor for the purpose of 'bypassing' it.

Overall, in DOS2, I find tanking being pretty useless.
The AI is smarter than DOS1 and will target the characters with the least armor or hp.
Even if you bring your tank in the front lines, the enemies will slip pass him.
To compensate that, I picked taunt and yeah, it is just garbage by being blocked by armor...
I even picked the retribution skill to retaliate some damages I take but 5% per point is way too small.
It may be viable as a lone wolf but utter useless in solo.

After playing 50% of ACT 1, I feel like rerolling... and I am quite disappointed :(

I already posted a thread like this but got ignored. Having taunt not going through Armor is moronic consider the amount of setups you need:

*To be in range.
*To manage to survive enemies attacking you.
*To be tanky so you cant dps as much.

If it doesnt go through the armor then why not just cc the guy with battle stomp and what not, taunt is awful, awful ability. It is also currently bugged, AI just ignores it completely and proceed to attack my character EVEN HE GOT TAUNTED BY A SUMMON.

Buffing it also makes shackle of pain abit better since it is another useless skill, AI will never attack the shackled target.

Hi, for properly utilizing tank, you just have to engage correctly - split your tank from the rest of the group, and engage by your tank alone->when combat starts, attack with tank, and let enemy waste their attacks on him.

THEN you bring rest of your party, each one of them can make a free action (attack, heal, etc) before they are locked in combat order. This way, your tank took most of the initial damage, and your damage dealers got in the fight with advantageous position (and are possible buffed up). This also have an advantage that you will always know in time where will enemy summons/reinforcements come from, so you wont suddenly have bloodwasp or skeleton behind your mage...

I am already doing it :) but thanks for the tip anyways.

The problem is the 2nd round. All your characters are in fight and the enemies will all target the less tanky character.
That basically only delay the problem by 1 round, which is still nice but not sufficient.

Moreover, this tactic is considered emergent gameplay and not the intended design of a tank.

The thing about tanking is that it either works so well it's broken or it gets ignored easily it's worthless.

And in this game, with so many ways to get to the backline or circle around the tank because they made it so the AI always do the best possible move, pure tank will never work and I doubt Larian wants it to work either since you can always spec a single point into any other school and branch out.

If you really need a tank, play a Leadership aura tank with geomancer and hydra for tons of shield and recovery. That's the best one for negative damage for your team. Leadership with Evasive aura is +93-120% dodge rate, allowing your teammate to dodge anything that isn't AoE and since you can break the level 10 caps with gears, you can easily step into 42-45% dodge and resist aura. If your dodge rate and resist are high enough, the enemies will start to hesitate and actually attack your no-aura tank char instead. This is very easy to spot with the Evasive aura source spell where enemy will just attack everything instead because they can't hit anyway.

Taunt works really well on my summoner.. my max rank summon usually strips off all armor in the first attack and then i can taunt afterwords keeping the enemy focused on my summon and not me.. after which he continues to beat them down to death.

isn't that rather exploitative?

Edit: stuff like one character engage then rest sneak in and spam skills before being engaged in combat, or one start the convo while rest spam skills on the enemy.

Tbh, it looks more like a legit ambush strat as long as he doesn't constantly run back in and out for free turns.

There are plenty of enemies with 1k+ armor in act 2. You need like 13+ summoning for the incarnate to do 400+ damage.

Also taunt is aoe which is buffling, why bother at that point if you striped away that many opponents with armor?

Im just hoping taunt + shackle of pain to be a viable combo, because shackle of pain is a pain in the ass on bosses but utterly useless on your character.

[quote=Ellezard][quote=Cyka]
isn't that rather exploitative? [/quote]

Tbh, it looks more like a legit ambush strat as long as he doesn't constantly run back in and out for free turns.[/quote]

Legit and exploitive are two different things.
As I said earlier, this tactic is considered emergent gameplay and not the intended design of tanking.

EDIT : Can someone explain to me why all my quotes are f*ucked up when I use the quote button on the forum ? Thanks a lot.

I dont get it, Tyranny and Pillars of eternality both gets the concept of a tank right, why cant this game? Taunt is typically used in the begining of the fight on a meatshield character who sacrifices damage for support/retaliative strikes. So far the concept is here in the game with one hander/shield (they get ridiculous armors) and retaliation builds (Retaliation + shackles of pain/mass shackles) but taunt being the need of stripping off armor makes it that the moment of you using it, you better off using something else.

If people worry about aoe taunt being op, i dont mind it to be single target disable or have the range nerfed, as long as it PENETRATES ARMOR, so at least it is useful.

I dont really think so. If its fight I can predict it will happen, thats exactly how I would approach it in real life... try to bait enemy into exposing themselves, and than ambushing them from advantageous position. Its not exploiting any game mechanic, its just utilizing them, basically giving you chance to adjust your starting position.

Just like in real life, you should never take fair fight - you should always want to get maximum possible advantage and not give your opponent fighting chance.

The thing about PoE tank working is because the enemies just attack whoever is the closest to them. That's why the tank works, AI are very dumb in PoE and fights are won using immunity -> Put pure tanks in choke point -> Laugh because they can't hit it.

PoE doesn't have 3 different dashes on every char like we do and if the enemies in that game are actually smart and have their ranged attacker/mages always focus on your back line, tank would have been really weak too.

TAnk doesn't work here because enemies ALWAYS make the best possible damage option.

Shouldnt the point being, you can fight well without predicting a fight? does real life have save and reload too?

I don't find it exploitative but rather artificial meta gameplay. I don't like such tactics (that's why I don't play Tactician).

Anyway, it has nothing to do with taunting. A taunt is quite useless if blocked by armor. When armor is gone on all targets, the fight is usually over quickly. I would opt for armor ignore for taunting. We already have a very annoying exception of armor ignorance in the case of oil (I really do not like this), make another for taunting, in this case even with some sense in it.

On my tyranny experience, if you dont taunt, enemies go straight for backlines like this game, and tanks work brilliantly, even still you can only taunt for like 2 people, but it helps, it is viable, it is build diversity.

Shackle of pain is still worthless right now.

If you want Taunt to work, make it an Aura that works like smelly and that talent that makes melee less likely to focus you.

Taunt: While active, enemies within your range are more likely to target you. Also, enemies inside the taunt aura has a chance to deal less damage to allies.

That's one way to make a tank work that isn't just "Hard CC Damage sponge" that won't work anyway in tactician because fights in that mode is decided in like, 2 turns.

Don't forget that the combat is still purely turn based. Tanks really need real-time reaction for them to work so they can always react. Turn based tanks just watch their friends get whacked and can't do anything about it.

Exactly, making taunt ignore armor isnt making it op, you are sacrificing yourself and your defense for the sake of your team, that means your team have to keep you alive. Or you have to build pure defensive at cost of AP.

In fact taunt doesnt even work properly, i had a taunted magister/blackring just outright ignoring the debuff and start attacking my summoner instead of my summon >:(

A. That is more with the design flaw, why only pure dps matters on tactician?

B. A fully buffed tank in the current game can have nearly double his starting armor with regenerating armor each turn. This coupled with shackles of pain and heals is a real potential that is wasted right now. Let this be a thing so i dont feel so unfair when bosses uses shackles of pain on me while my version still sits in memory bank because i know it will do nothing.

Make no mistake, I dont savescum, its just tactic I use since trying honour mode in DOS1 - scouting with tankiest person, and using rest of the group as follow up. This way, you are always prepared for whatever may happen, and it doesnt violate any mechanics at all, and you dont even need to savescum (this is how you would play if you only have 1 save like in honour mode).

Again like in reallife - if you dont know whats ahead of ya, you should scout it first, so you dont walk in trap blindly.

Well tank might work in this game similary to PoE, if there was option to adopt "guard stance" at end of the turn - which could potentially double or triple the range of attacks of opportunity, so enemies can´t just bypass your tank... Using him basically as brick wall

Some fights are pure ambush in this game like the withermore Jar one, you have to know whats going on to prepare isnt it?

Instead of endless debate about tanks lets make a sensible suggestion: balance is where a skill does its job well without having too much advantage, sometimes you have to make sacrifices. Hence:

Taunt becomes a 2AP aoe armor piercing skill but only about 3/4m, sensible no?

More powerful disable than current one at cost of more ap consumption, but useful none the less.

Why? I did this fight without knowing whats ahead of me... I left my party at the entrance(as usual), and used my warrior to scout the place. Picking up jars triggered ambush, which locked my tank in combat, so I picked up rest of group and went to help. And I really had no idea whats about to happen, as I did not play EA. It works perfectly fine, and doesnt violate anything, its just clever tactics.

Only difference in EA was that I used my scoundrel/huntsman for the job, as even warriors could get instagibbed and scoundrel was better at spotting treasures, traps, switches, and was better at escaping from bad situation if needed.

I don't see the need to rebalance taunt, or that an aoe taunt is unbalanced, etc. Its current duration is only one turn of taunting, which, for a game like this where enemies frequently come in after turns, won't hesitate to teleport you away, etc, that is still practically irrelevant. If anything, it should be longer, given the 4 turn cd. All it is, is giving you a turn of breathing room - which you otherwise don't really need if you've reduced someone's armor to 0, as I can guarantee that each and everyone of you would have just knocked the enemy down, instead, now that they have no armor, which is better than taunt in most cases.

I don't care if there's a reverse-Stench talent. I don't care if taunt pierces armor. I do, however, care about the fact that tanky builds are otherwise irrelevant without the equivalent of cheesing fights. Yes, that is a viable tactic that's generally used to get past tactician, but it's stupid from a mechanical standpoint. In a game where fights are meant to be revolving around initiative, I shouldn't have to send one character in, start a fight with my tank's initiative, and then have everyone else attack the enemy regardless of initiative order in order to enter the fight, for the sole purpose of having my tank even do his job.

This game's balance is skewed by the fact that AIs will stop at nothing to CC the glass cannon, heal 'masked' undead without a care in the world, and ignore the tank completely. The purpose of taunt doesn't have to be to turn the fight into an MMO-esque tank-and-spank, it should simply be used as a way to give squishies breathing room, and to enable builds based on retaliation, shackles of pain, etc. Because, right now, there are more worthless skills and builds than there needs to be solely because the AI doesn't give them even a small iota of space to function unless they have literally no other option.

I like this suggestion. EDIT: ...but the simpler solution is still to just not have it blocked by armor.




Yeah, it turns out that sometimes just making the AI smarter isn't the best way to go. It's better to make AI that is a little less smart but a little more fair, instead of one which is very "smart" which really means that it cheats.

I don't know how well turning the taunt skill itself into an aura would work, because, as it is, enemies are allowed to move. They're just forced to focus their attacks on you. An enemy could very easily just walk out of your 'aura' radius and return to ignoring you. With the current AI, I know they would definitely do that, too.

Taunt should remain the same, just bypass armor. A talent should be added that's pretty much reverse-Stench, in that enemies are more likely to attack you regardless of where you're standing (but that doesn't mean they'll do stupid shit just to hit you - but if they're ranged and have the option between you and someone else, it should pick you most of the time, and a melee will opt to use less AP to actually hit something that turn, if you're closer, than spending literally all of their AP to change the glass cannon, only to not attack at all).

I would also be fine with a talent that just improves the chance of whoever you target, to target you. That way opportunity attacks, retaliation, etc, give a small.. 'aggro' gain, for lack of a better word.

Hmmm... that's because the effect is blocked from landing by armor, right?

Well, what if the EFFECT ignored armor, making Shackles of Pain land every time, but the damage returned WAS blocked by armor?




They could call it "Punchable Face"

on nexus there is a mod for taunt. But still can't understand Larian for doung such thins, making some skills just useless

Taunt being blocked by armor makes taunting lose it's entire core purpose.
Can't say I have much experience using it (and definitely wont now) but the entire premise sounds ridicilous

Come on guys, it's easy. Having physical armor = having "thick skin".
Seriously though, I don't understand why Taunt works this way when something like Slow (which has a much farther range) ignores armor, especially when you consider how close you have to be for it to even reach at all.

Tbh, Taunt is probably made for enemies once you see how they use it. The skill is just there for you as well because both side share the same skill pool.

The high armor enemies will jump in.
Then use Reactive armor, dealing massive damage that is likely more than enough to burn your armor in one go if you never hit them first.
And then, they taunt.

That sounds tough. Good thing that reactive armor was nerfed in yesterdays patch tho!

Oh well, RIP the tank combo. The fun part was that you could use it too and if you go full shield + physical armor + fortify + warfare and turn Tank build into a nuke build.

But if anything, it's a player nerf since enemies that do those have like 6 AP anyway so the AP cost increase doesn't do much to them.

The AI currently completely ignores your tank, saving him as last target for the most part. Taunt is useless compared to just CCing your target (knockdowns, blinds, chicken, etc), so I completely agree that taunt needs to work no matter what armor the enemy is at.

If the intention is to not make fights as boring as "Walk into the middle of the enemies and taunt" to win. That can be as simple as making certain enemies immune to Taunt, reducing the range of Taunt, or increasing the AP cost.

As far as Taunt effecting player characters. First off, you shouldn't lose control of your character like it is currently. It's taunt, not mind control. Either get rid of enemies taunting entirely, make it so enemies have to break your armor to taunt you or somwhow make it so your character is only allowed to use damaging abilities on the enemy that taunted you. (Like while it's his turn the rest of the enemies are immune to damage or untargetable)

They really should design some warfare skill works similar to Reactive Shot so you can actually *guard* an area and do opportunity attack to who ever try to enter the zone. That's a real-time reaction tank needs.

They should make taunt pure damage insteed, so you can taunt everthing

Taunt absolutely should work all the time, not only when enemy has no armor. In current form it is barely even useful. To make it balanced, add 2 types of taunt: single target that lasts few turns, and aoe taunt that lasts one turn

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1139858748

use this in the meantime, hopefully they will patch that in later