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.