Valiant Force Forum

Given darrion and victoria's crusader(promoted to Holy Defender/Paladin) route's unpopularity in the arena, isn't it time to make taunt available in the arena?


As of now, taunts don't work in the arena, pretty much making these classes useless in the arena. Hence, I have 2 suggestions for how taunts can be revamped.


Number 1. Faye Holy Defender's AoE taunt that affect EVERYONE for that 2 turns, which means everyone that auto-attacks can only target the defender taunting However, SKILLS CAN STILL BE CASTED on other units, and taunts can be removed with cleanse from healers. This will also indirectly buff inquisitors with the AoE heal+cleanse.


Number 2. Everyone else's single-target taunt to affect the TARGETED UNIT for 3 turns, including his skill usage, which means the taunted unit can only auto attack/cast skill on the defender for 3 of the team's turns. Similarly, taunts can be removed with cleanse from healers.This will also indirectly buff archbishops with the solo-target heal+cleanse.


To a certain extent, this will allow guardians to fulfill their job of absorbing damage, promote hero diversity in the arena, and act as a counter to the rampant triple/quadruple archer abuse.

Edit: Added details to clarify one of the suggestions.

Taunt single target instead of all should work. Other guardians just completely useless in arena except for Chaos Knight and Faye guardian.

But some of the taunts are single target and some are aoe like faye HD. How to have either one suggestion only？

Taunt should be made available in arena and I do not see how it can make or break the game mode.
Other PvP games such as Blizzard's Hearthstone has taunt working well in the battles and did not make or break anything.

On a simpler suggestion, why not make the presence of guardian(s) in the party itself to override AI to target them for 65-85% chance instead of normally targeting the hero with the weakest defense?

I suppose it'll be easier for the dev to do this instead of changing how several buffs work in arena. They can do it to normal mobs on story mode, why not on arena AI?

I can see the intention of the dev to place the AI strats of either attack the one on point tile, if none, attack the one with lowest defense stat. It's to emulate human player strategy to by pass tanks instead of wasting time dealing with them, if you can. Also, I understand why they disable taunt effect on arena because if AI uses them on human player, how will that work? (as human player will just try to ignore the tanks altogether despite being successfully taunted). However, I must agree that this causes guardians (aside from Faye, BK, and CK) to be strictly PVE only, which is a pity.

Well, if the dev can make a taunted human-controlled unit to be restricted to only be able to pick the taunter as its target (except when using healing skill or buffs that target allies of course), then I'm all for this idea.

(Though I still don't know how that will apply to skills that target tile instead of unit.)

For megabosses, if the limb is dead, then it cannot be targeted no matter what you do right? then the same thing can be done for arena with taunting. I think. In Hearthstone you can't select anything else as long as the taunting unit is still present.

On a simpler suggestion, why not make the presence of guardian(s) in the party itself to override AI to target them for 65-85% chance instead of normally targeting the hero with the weakest defense?

I suppose it'll be easier for the dev to do this instead of changing how several buffs work in arena. They can do it to normal mobs on story mode, why not on arena AI?

I can see the intention of the dev to place the AI strats of either attack the one on point tile, if none, attack the one with lowest defense stat. It's to emulate human player strategy to by pass tanks instead of wasting time dealing with them, if you can. Also, I understand why they disable taunt effect on arena because if AI uses them on human player, how will that work? (as human player will just try to ignore the tanks altogether despite being successfully taunted). However, I must agree that this causes guardians (aside from Faye, BK, and CK) to be strictly PVE only, which is a pity.

Well, if the dev can make a taunted human-controlled unit to be restricted to only be able to pick the taunter as its target (except when using healing skill or buffs that target allies of course), then I'm all for this idea.

(Though I still don't know how that will apply to skills that target tile instead of unit.)

Actually, both of my suggestions could be implemented. Suggestion 1 could be applied be almost all of the guardians who have single-target taunts, while suggestion 2 applies only to faye holy defender, who has an AoE taunt and great utility with her party shield. Don't be mistaken; the single-target taunt I suggested is actually stronger than the AoE taunt; the 3 turns the AoE taunt is in effect can be wasted by simply getting healers to attack, thus "wasting" a turn of taunt, whereas the single-target taunt could force a high-DPS unit like an archer to attack/use skills on him for 3 of the archer's turns, practically doing nothing. The single-target taunt could also render a melee unit immobile if the defender is placed in the backlines (but at the cost of not holding tile positions), thus wasting his turns only being able to defend if his skill is on cooldown. Also, if positioned correctly, a defender could force a unit like a 9-tile skill (like kiera elementalist) to cast the skill onto him, massively reducing the number of units hit by her massive AoE skill. A taunted archbishop can no longer solo-heal/cleanse other units until she purges herself of the taunt, while an inquisitor may be forced to use her AoE heal/cleanse prematurely to rid herself/teammates of a single-target taunt, making it a huge waste.


Sounds pretty broken? Maybe? I am hoping this change would redefine the the current meta and boost the popularity of underwhelming units like victoria and darrion, as well as healers with their cleanse to purge the taunt.

To refine your suggestion,

It is even simpler to Implement Taunt as another CC, AOE or NOT, it will act as a kind of debuff like Stun/Silence, where affected target can only attack Taunt Unit and can not skill (the exact opposite of Silence)

And the duration will be the same as all other debuff, which is quicker and faster in Arena than PVE map.

All in all, thanks for suggesting this [Taunt in Arena] thing, I'm happy we all can discuss this here~

To refine your suggestion,

It is even simpler to Implement Taunt as another CC, AOE or NOT, it will act as a kind of debuff like Stun/Silence, where affected target can only attack Taunt Unit and can not skill (the exact opposite of Silence)

And the duration will be the same as all other debuff, which is quicker and faster in Arena than PVE map.

All in all, thanks for suggesting this [Taunt in Arena] thing, I'm happy we all can discuss this here~

Hmm... You mean "can skill(the exact opposite of silence)"?
But yea, I guess I suggested taunt to be a little too OP.