Point of defenders?

[Zedd]

Other then the taunt scroll I see no way to ensure the high hp high block guy is the one that gets mainly focused? I'm relatively new to this game so maybe I'm missing something. In a face to face confrontation those who can target the champion or vanguard making my defender a low damage alternate. I assumed there would be a way to taunt people to attack him but other then a scroll there isn't unless I'm missing something, kinda stumped and open to any advice.

[goober shmoober]

Mordred is more of an offensive Defender hence why he is missing the taunt ability, but other Defenders do have it. Other than that, there are relics which grant you to the ability to taunt enemies you attack.

That aside, it's mostly about positioning and making the weaker party members unreachable by checking how far an enemy can move. In the beginning champions might appear a little squishy, but later on they are beefy.

[Hellhound]

Many Defenders have taunt, but those without can still force a fight. For Mordred positioning is king. The best way to get enemies to attack him is to place him in such a fashion as to be the only target available. Start a fight with stigma and shield bash, then have him throw out some lightning to limit their ability to counter attack. Have everyone else position for a strong round two and reserve three AP. With Mordred being the only target in range, the AI will swing everything they got at him and come up with nothing given the man is borderline invulnerable to harm. Other offensively oriented Defenders, like Red Knight and Gawain, can be utilized in a similar fashion to Mordred.

Galahad, Percivale, and Pellas are much better reactionary Defenders that rely on a combination of taunt and guard to buy time for their allies. Two of these guys are also pseudo sages that grant bonus AP and weapon strength to the team. Move them forward, taunt, guard, counter attack, and come out swinging on turn two.

The key here is patience though. None of this matters if you can flatline the entire enemy team in a single round, but If you don't think you can then draw the enemy team and wait. Have Arcanist's debuff, marksman take out ranged enemies, vanguards find a place to hide, etc., and let them come to your defender. They won't kill him. Use the Reserve AP.

[Zedd]

Oh okay thats helpful guys thank you very much I didn't know the taunt was available just not on Mordred

[Fendelphi]

For Mordred specifically, I have set him up to snowball. So I gave him items that provided extra damage(either for 2 turns or until end of encounter) when he gets a kill.
His charge refreshes the cooldown if it kills the target. So I soften up a bunch of enemies with some of my other knights, and then he just chain-charge them, until the charge ability hits for 100+ damage(and by then, his chain lightning hits way harder).


As for Defenders in general, you can do some fun things with "deal damage when hit" items, as well as bleeding effects.
Defenders typically have a lot of armour, as well as reducing incoming damage on top of that(block) and reducing damage done to armour. They can basically survive in the middle of an enemy group like noone else.

Bleed deals damage whenever the target takes an action.
So, your defender simply needs to move away from a bleeding enemy that they have engaged. The target will make an opportunity attack(action=bleeding damage) hit you(you take 0 damage due to block+high armour) and the damage reflect hurts them. So even 1 yellow pip(movement) can help Defenders generate damage against multiple targets(if engaged with several).
Other classes can also do this combo, but they do not have Block to help reduce the damage.

It used to be, that any damage scaling you got from items(like, +5 damage on a kill for 2 turns) also worked with damage reflection, meaning every enemy killed would fuel your damage reflection even further. Not sure that is the case anymore though.