NPC Taunt problem

So, I get into the first mission of the Magician's arc, soloing, and I run straight into a major fun-killing problem with NPC taunt.

Namely, if you have five or six NPCs all taunting you at the same time, it becomes impossible to attack anyone. As in, I was just mashing buttons on my two ranged attacks and spinning around in circles, and I couldn't get any attack to launch. It was worse than being Held, because there was NOTHING I could do to get out of it. And since I didn't have Assault (Leadership) on that character, none of my powers helped either.

Break Frees need to grant Taunt resistance, otherwise, this whole Infinite Taunt thing guarantees a total lack of enjoyment whenever outnumbered by Taunting NPCs. And that, in turn, means ignoring the new content.

---Dave

(ETA: War Mace/Invulnerability Brute)

What were your settings on that was getting you 5 or 6 Monsters at once?

From the patch notes:

I don't believe the patch notes actually meant Monsters as in the class of Devouring Earth seen on Monster Isle and in the Hive/Abyss.

Night Ward has no Monster class enemies, but plenty of enemies that Taunt you.

Ah.

If that is indeed the case then that's sloppy wording for the patch notes.

When there is a word in existence in the game for a specific entity or type of entitiy, you don't use that word elsewhere to refer to other entities or types of entities. It only creates confusion, as evidenced here.

I was envisioning Jurassik, Hatched Kraken, Devouring Earth Monsters in PI, and other entities already classed as Monster in the game. I was even willing to include Giant Monsters in that description.

For some odd reason I was thinking Minotaurs and Cyclops were in the Monster class but they are just Elite Bosses (are they just Bosses in the Sister Solaris arc that is part of the DA arcs?).

EDIT: I know why I was thinking that about Minotaurs and Cyclops. Part of the Mission Objectives text for some of the Solaris arc refers to them as "# monsters of Romulus Augustus to defeat".

What about the actual problem in the OP? Has anyone else experienced it? I've not run the new content yet but generally dislike mechanics that take control away from a player character, so I was leery about hearing it being added to CoH.

Not in the Night Ward but doing STF (lib tf, whatever).

Was doimg that last night, and as SOON as Black Scorp shows up..I get taunted. On a fire kin corr..standing well out the way. We ended up HAVING to kill him first, just cause we couldnt actually target anyone. Which I guess..makes some sense..but was really annoying when gw and scir are spamming their aoes, and we cant touch them.

I thought that this was going to be another thread about unique NPC costume parts

This happened to me a few times in Nightward. I ended up putting my hold on auto, scrolling my view out I far as it would go, and then hammering the tab button until an attack would finally fire off.

I guess mainly the Black Knights are using to taunt you during fights, as most of the minion classed ones use Staff Fighting - Which taunt is used, surprisingly, compared to other sets.

The only problem I found with them taunting me was sometimes it was hard to tell which one was taunting me, so I just used AOE attacks when possible to attack without direction. It would be helpful when being taunted to ALWAYS switch your active target atleast.

I was taunted on a regular basis running Night Ward / Black Knight stuff last night, and belatedly remembered this change. Whenever I got taunted, I'd do my only PBAoE (not having an AoE available to me) and that'd usually get whatever was taunting me, and one attack was generally enough to break the taunt so that I could go back to fighting whatever I targeted. Fortunately, however, I had a Grav dom with me, and Singy usually distracted the taunter if I missed him, and that solved the problem handily, too.

If taunt is going to steal my attention away from what I'm doing, I'd rather it completely steal my attention, rather than only partially.

Normally, it's a nuisance, but the "rapidly look around and shoot what you can" method works. But there's a mission (don't wanna spoiler) where if you're soloing it you STILL face very large groups of Eternal Warriors (with NPC help). Once three or four of them were full-time taunting at me, I literally couldn't attack anything. By the time I'd switch to one and go to launch an attack, the next one would taunt me away.

It probably wouldn't be as bad without Invincibility on (taunting them into taunting me), but it does mean that any attempt at tanking groups like that means you don't get to do much but stand there and be shot at.

Later in the mission, when only being taunted by one or two Hives of Anger at a time, it was hard but doable. I've figured out the key to that particular mission, but the fundamental problem remains: too many simultanous taunts equals unbreakable mez. :/ And that shifts from "challenging" to "might as well change it to a cut scene in which you lose".

---Dave

has anyone noticed that the taunt is getting more prevelant just as they are about to sell us something on the market to prevent it....

Coincidence I think not.

Black Scorpion definitely has it, was on triple-pull where the tank was unable to attack anyone but him.

If you're targeting someone other than the one who taunted you, the game puts a red reticle around the one you need to target. I'm not sure what happens when you're hit with multiple taunt effects at once. I'd assume that longest duration wins just like players taunting mobs, but haven't seen it in action.