Strategies against taunting teams

[konstifik]

I see a lot of complaining about taunting, but there are multiple ways to counter taunt heavy defending teams (most commonly teams with Mummy Eddie and/or Sentinel Soulless Demon). Taunting obviously prevents you from using power moves and leaves timing to the AI/RNG. It may also prevent you from using your toons in a certain desired order. By adapting to those circumstances wisely, there are a number of ways to excel against taunt heavy teams. Either build a team that will prevent the taunts or a team that will work well even when taunted (or both).

1. Immunity - Use Hell Hound or Artillery Dog to start the battle with Immunity on all your team members, thus preventing the enemy from taunting you during the first round. With the right set of other toons, you should be able to reduce the impact of the taunters. This strategy does not work if the defending team also have The Prisoner, Angel of Pain or Death Dog.

2. Perfect Hit passive - Desert Marauder and Assassin Pyro Soldier provides your team with perfect hit status for the first two rounds. This eliminates the problem with AI/RNG timing on attacks. Combine with some heavy hitters, preferably of the Warrior class, and the taunters will soon be sorry. You can also combine this with a multitude of talismans that only trigger on perfect hits. This strategy does not work if the defending team also have The Prisoner. Angel of Pain and Death Dog will hamper it but it can still be useful against teams with those toons.

3. Stun - Toons like Corrupt General, Angel of Fear, Angel of Strife and Wickerdog King can stun with their basic attack, so taunting them may end in the taunter being stunned, giving you some room to move. Just remember that the Corrupt General have affinity disadvantage against sentinels.

4. Warrior class heavy hitters - Sentinels do little damage against Warriors and take a lot of damage from them. Characters like The Nomad, Warrior COTD, Angel of Fear, Samurai Eddie, RTTH Eddie, Wickerdog King, Warrior Troll and Warrior Newborn Of Light all do a lot damage which, along with their other useful abilities and passives, will make the process short.

5. Accuracy Down debuff - Several characters can inflict the Accuracy Down debuff, and with that active, taunts are much less likely to happen.

These are some suggestions, from the top of my head. Look at what your characters and talismans can do and I'm sure you will find more ways. Be creative, be smart and it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Also, learn the patterns of the AI, which are fairly predictable, to make your fights easier once you regain control of your toons. And remember that taunts are cancelled when the taunter is killed.

[Tritium]

Awesome stuff here. I hadn't even thought of using the DM as a counter!

[Baba-8301]

PDK works well as a second round counter - at least it opens the opportunity for one of yours to do something useful. Of course if a prisoner is disabling your auras it's all a bit irrelevant...

[PIP]

Thank you for a very helpful post.

[CanyptianFit]

Taunt by itself, as noted above, isn't the challenge. It's when that combo is paired with the prisoner and the other team has no prisoner that it can becomes a nightmare.

Without a prisoner, 1 and 2 aren't viable, and all you can hope is that you can get some RNG stuff on your side for 3 and 5 as a counter.

I do have to applaud the creativity to put that group together...Similar to the Gunner team of death. If you go second without a prisoner and your whole team is taunted (seems "always" the case) sayonara.

We know this will happen...Someone puts together a difficult team and it quickly gets spread and used widely.

My only slight issue is the processing rate seems higher than advertised. My toons with other similar rates, don't seem to process with the consistency of the SSD. But maybe my "blinded view of the world".

[Tritium]

The one redeeming quality SSD has on defense is that he'll often use his dummy defense buff rather than taunting your guys again. The same isn't quite true for Mummy, unless he feels like using Bone Shroud or Sacred Sanction. When SSD uses his def buff, it gives you another turn to plan out how to deal with his taunt and maybe even allow you to CC him in some way. If only Mummy were so nice. He only wastes a turn like that when his HP is low (and by then, he's already not a problem anymore!).

[EnricoPalazzo]

One more tip to battling taunters:
Your taunted characters will attack in order from left to right.
Keep that in mind when setting up your team to get a chance at combo attacks or attack orders that make some kind of sense (should the automatic timing be nice to you).
One example would beto put a character with marking ability (like Axis Bomber Boys) to the far left, marking targets first so other attackers will follow to hopefully use the marks.

[Liebhild]

FFS the stun/taunt festival is ridiculous. If you meet the right team and go 2nd your lost. Had several games were I wasn't able to touch my device once. If the developers don't change anything on this, PVP is history for lots of players => also no money for them.

[ill]

I hoped to see some taunt fixes with the latest update. *sigh* If anything they trigger more often now. The immunity talisman was a great idea however it is still rendered useless by blue bat which all of the taunting teams are using now.

But hey, playing SSD and mummy 80% of the time is fun and exciting right guys?!

[Tritium]

I hoped to see some taunt fixes with the latest update. *sigh* If anything they trigger more often now. The immunity talisman was a great idea however it is still rendered useless by blue bat which all of the taunting teams are using now.

But hey, playing SSD and mummy 80% of the time is fun and exciting right guys?!

The immunity talismans also seems to widen the gap between those with Prisoners and those without. Now we are facing Prisoner teams with immunity and damage reduction perks on the first round. This makes it INCREDIBLY difficult to win when going 2nd, and even makes going first no longer a 100% win. I've even seen a Prisoner + Blue Bat team now. Shame, I thought these talis would level the playing field.