8 years ago

The 'have to have' taunting tank revolution .. wonder what's next

This ended up longer than I planned ....... lol

We've seen a bunch of have to have tanks for arena -

First taunter - pretty useless

Chewie - toon you get to start with, nothing special, but helped toons stay alive - downside was that he was so slow he didn't get it off very fast so you didn't really have to plan against him. Worked in any squad

The tm taunters - fast taunters that manipulated tm

Poe - before tm removal could be resisted he was the ultimate toon, His perfect squad was Poggle lead with GS, 88 and 86. Only way to beat him at the time was another Poe and winning the coin flip.

STHan - under an AA lead was the fastest tank. tm boost to entire team when hit (and before they fixed his bug even if the taunt was dispelled he boosted tm. Best team was full rebels. Only real counter was a buff remover like QGJ.

The auto taunt - taunt when any toon gets under 50%

RG - his rework for auto-taunt and his stun on basic made him almost required in upper tier arena. Worked in any team. Only counters were to make sure that you killed toons without dropping them below 50%, timing killing at least the first toon or timing a dispel attack (like QGJ).

The pre-taunters - start the battle with a taunt

Shoretrooper - for a very short amount of time (until the release of Baze) he was the only counter to Raid Han. The continuation of the best tank works in any squad trend as he showed up for a short time on any/every type of squad. Only counters were a very fast dispeller.

Baze - even without his buddy Chir took everything the Shore had and improved on it by being more than just a tank, buffer, debuffer, high damage special, auto retribution. Make it Chaze and even better. Worked under any squad. No direct counters initially, just had to plow through/dispel. Now with Thrawn, his fracture is the counter to all tanks.

Auto taunt part 2 - taunt under specific circumstances

GK - the latest and greatest of the must-have tanks that work in any squad. Auto taunt, cleanse, foresight, etc. Only real counter was full Sith team under nihilus lead.

Sith Trooper - never actually meta and only useful in full Sith team.

A couple other types of taunts have arisen with the reworks of the rebels and resistance. The taunt pass - Poe to Finn and the retaunt - Old Ben. But as of now neither of them seem to be must-have. Finn and Poe need full resistance team to be arena viable (which is horrible on defense) and Thrawn fracture would stop OB from retaunting.

Eventually something will come along that is better, but I can't think what it will be.

11 Replies

korrasami7
8 years ago
"Tromedlov13;d-126408" wrote:
Thrawn fracture would stop OB from retaunting.

Eventually something will come along that is better, but I can't think what it will be.

Thrawn fracture will only prevent old bens taunt if a) it is not a zeta taunt or b)if it has already been dispelled once before.

Right now I'd say Old Ben is a good taunting tank. If he gets fractured and his second taunt pops up, then the opposing team has to choice but to attack Old Ben until he is dispelled again or until fracture expires.

That aside, very nice post!
tromedlov13
8 years ago
"Skycrawler1980;c-1219309" wrote:
Perma-taunt

That was the only thing I could think of - a non-dispellable pre-taunt.

but that seems so OP that it could only be for Grand Master Luke or someone like Snoke or Revan. Any toon with that would become the first ever 100% arena used toon.
Mkalmurphy
8 years ago
There's another kind of taunt. The pseudo taunt. First used in the zaul+zylo set up, now available via R2. It can only be dispelled with a team dispel. It can also be "put on" a fractured toon.
tromedlov13
8 years ago
"Mkalmurphy;c-1219331" wrote:
There's another kind of taunt. The pseudo taunt. First used in the zaul+zylo set up, now available via R2. It can only be dispelled with a team dispel. It can also be "put on" a fractured toon.

Good catch
LegendSpade
8 years ago
"Mkalmurphy;c-1219331" wrote:
There's another kind of taunt. The pseudo taunt. First used in the zaul+zylo set up, now available via R2. It can only be dispelled with a team dispel. It can also be "put on" a fractured toon.

B2 as well, although his can be stopped by daze.
gruey
8 years ago
I'm thinking Ben may be the progenitor of the next gen of tanking: side effects of dispelling a taunt.

Ben just retaunts, but I picture something more like "If Hoth Chewie loses his taunt before 2 turns, he adds 100% TM to allies and removes 100% TM from his enemies.". While that may be a little extreme, I assume you get the idea. Basically, they will make you choose whether to ride out the taunt or suffer the consequences. "If Nightsister Guard's taunt is dispelled, she gives 100% counter chance to her sisters for two turns". They could be a little more extreme by making it when it expires, dispelled or not, so you either kill the taunter before the taunt expires or suffer grave consequences. You can make it even non-taunting, like you see in AAT phases.

Another one we see in fleet is the partial taunt. Sun Fac makes anyone with a buff attack him and the only counter is a buff block, no dispel. Something similar in arena could be interesting... "Automatically taunts any character with a HOT active" for example.

Another one I'm surprised we haven't seen yet is a guard, where you can have a character take damage for another character, either all or partial, possibly with damage reduction. Example: Hoth Han can protect a character, negating 50% damage, but only taking 50% of the damage he negates. So, if you attack his guard, you do half damage to the Target and only 75% overall.
Darkheart16
8 years ago
Chewy was actually meta for a while at launch

Chewy + the goddess Barris meant you never lost on defense. Good times
justadolphin2
8 years ago
R2's Smoke screen is currently the best taunt. Stealth works much better than taunt as it can only be dispelled via AOE dispell, and CLS and boba can't ignore it. That's probably the next thing though... Ignore stealth.
tromedlov13
8 years ago
"Justicebp;c-1221293" wrote:
R2's Smoke screen is currently the best taunt. Stealth works much better than taunt as it can only be dispelled via AOE dispell, and CLS and boba can't ignore it. That's probably the next thing though... Ignore stealth.

Ignoring Stealth is something I've been expecting for a while, with Maul and now R2, it probably isn't far away. A jedi/Sith (unique called force sense), or some kind of trooper (LS or DS - with some kind of visor unique - or maybe Jango or a BH) would make sense to have this capability, maybe even a droid.

"LeftyTwoGuns;c-1220780" wrote:
Chewy was actually meta for a while at launch

Chewy + the goddess Barris meant you never lost on defense. Good times

Very true, until they nerfed Barris, Chewie plus Barris, Lumi (or any second healer really) and two damage doers was the meta for the first 2-3 months of the game.
KatGodeu
8 years ago
Actually there is a character in the game already who has leadership that provides similar ability to all of his allies, but he needs rework to be more viable...
Plo Koon leader ability: Each ally has a 55% chance to remove Stealth from each enemy at the start of their turn. If they dispel any enemies, they gain Offense Up for 1 Turn.