Back Off, Ugly! and Staggering Force synergy?

Is there any?
I have ever been able to wrap my head around stagger not before WoM, not after.
The way I think it’d work is that you get helluva more thp per hit if you use these talents and the push strength trait, but it’s never actually worked out for me tbh…
Is it a bug, a feature, or am i doing something wrong?

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The purpose of staggering force is to hit stagger breakpoints, AKA stagger things you couldn’t before, eg shields being able to stagger a Chaos Warrior out of his overhead attack with staggering force + opportunist + some power properties.

Can also make light staggers heavy staggers with enough extra stagger, meaning the enemies are staggered longer.

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Could someone explain this to me? I was testing it days ago… with a Shield + Staggering Force + Tag Team + Enhanced Power + Opportunist + 20% Chaos + 10% Armored I wasn’t able to stagger a CW out of the overhead attack.

It’s been a long time since I’ve ran that specific break point honestly, but were you using push or heavy 1? Pretty sure heavy 1 has more stagger than push, so I don’t know if it’s possible to reach that break point for pushes.

@TmanDW As a shield lover perhaps you can give a more conclusive answer to this question?

With hard investment above, heavy 1 shield can interrupt CW’s overhead attack.

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Real question new health bar mod?!? Is it Approved???

I did other tests (Cataclysm). These are the results:

  • with a PUSH you will never be able to stagger the CW’s overhead attack;

  • with a BASH you can stagger the CW’s overhead attac; you need the highest investment (30% Chaos/Armored + Enhanced Power + Tag Team);

  • BUT, even with a BASH + highest investment (read above), you will never be able to stagger the CW’s diagonal attack (the diagonal swing from the below).

I feel that FK has many “wasted opportunities”… they reworked him, they improved him for sure, but at the same time there was much more to fix… generally Staggering Force is meant and used for shields… but it’s useful only to stagger Monks (and anyway you can stagger them also without that talent). Some other synergies would be appreciated (without direct and invest the entire build vs 1 enemy).

p.s welcome, Catpuccino

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Yeah this is why I think he could use some base stagger bonus as a passive or whatever. I would happily trade that extra shield for it without a second thought. Interesting and useful stagger break points already exist for him, they just need a little too much investment most of the time. Also reaching them often makes tag team borderline not optional, which certainly isn’t ideal.

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I swear that has to be a bug. It’s not a heavy attack, why does it get to be so strong?

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I think it’s deliberate, despite how frustrating it is to have a non staggerable attack be so fast. I only ever see them use that attack when recovering from being staggered. Maybe it’s there to punish people trying to stun lock chaos warriors.

Edit: for the overheads, remember that you can only stagger the first chaos warrior in the very center of the bash. If something gets in the way it can absorb the highest stagger.

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I think it is considered as “push”, the same as the Stormvermin push or the Chaos Warrior punch. As far as I understand these attacks are uninterruptbale aside from special actions (read: active skills, and Billhook’s broken stagger attack).

It is so that the enemies still have options to free them from being bullied by heroes. However, it does to much damage for that.

Yep, I agree… in my opinion this would resolve every problem.
I will probably do a separate thread on this0… if you want, take a look

I hope it’s a bug… anyway I agree: a so fast attack, must not be unstoppable and dealing so much damage.

Afterall CWs are so hard to stagger… there should not be a “punishment” for who invests “resources” to obtain the capacity to stagger them. Moreover CWs already have a punch and a kick to prevent the stun-lock.

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It kinda makes you think IMO. Why even invest into Stagger when it’d be faster to just burn them down with dps…

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Probably because you can’t burn anything with DPS when you’re dead, and to be not dead you kinda need someone to control peak crowds and keep them from overwhelming your party’s formation.

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Yep, this can be a problem… I mean, stagger should help to “slow down” hard enemies and let your mates to kill them… but CWs are easier to kill than stagger. It’s sad, playing with a shield, when some CWs come and you can just watch your allies vomiting their dps on them (I KNOW, it’s an exaggeration, something you can do).

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@alsozara : I never actually used that breakpoint in “real” gameplay (because the investment didn’t seem worth it), but I could swear I managed to do it in a test a few patches ago one time. I remember investing literally everything to see if I could do it just out of curiousity. So probably Opportunist, 35% stagger talent, 7% power talent, the old Taal’s Champion, and 40% vs Chaos / Armor. Has anybody tried that? It also just occurred to me that power vs. Armor and power vs. Chaos used to multiply instead of being additive, which was changed in a more recent patch. Maybe that is why it used to work but not anymore now?

And @souI23 : Just because you can’t permastagger a CW with your shield, it doesn’t mean you are useless against them for your teammates with it. If you are the first one in its face it will attack you, and a shield allows you to just hold in place (even with other enemies around), enabling your teammates to “vomit DPS over them”. Just because you’re not staggering it, doesn’t mean you’re not shutting it down effectively and helping your teammates. Shields can do that where no other weapon can.

The problem is that you can’t keep their aggro on you.

Anyway I wasn’t talking to permastagger them… but, at least, “stop” the super-fast diagonal attack… at least with Staggering Force. The overhead attack can remain unstoppable.

The problem I see with stagger in general (and Sir Kruber in particular) - why pick him if you can pick GK and literally oneshot CWs? I mean dead CWs also stop doing the “super-fast diagonal attack”…

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FK, IB, and Merc can achieve even more control with their ults. Ranger and Huntsman aren’t really the classes to shut down CWs (other than killing them) anyways. Handmaiden is the only one with a shield that can’t but maybe should, although she isn’t really about controlling anyways.

EDIT: Forgot about GK, but since he’s more the one that does the damage vomitting it’s okay for him.

The sad thing is that stagger can be very useful and very fun vs CW… if only Fatshark introduced those little changes we said…

Uhm if we introduce careers, the speech becomes a little bit complicated.

I haven’t problems with HS and RV: they can use shields, they can take some advantages from shields, but they can’t use shields like a tank can do… and this is fair. I love that tanks and shields have a special synergy.

I haven’t problem with IB… since, as you were saying, he can taunt CWs for 15 seconds while the other players kill them. Moreover he’s not the staggering tank.

But, since FK is more oriented to create space, and since he has Staggering Force, in my opinion he should have the possibility to stop the CW’s diagonal attack (that, as someone else said, it’s very fast… there isn’t reason to be unstoppable).

About FK’s ult, it’s a different speech… because, apart ult’s efficiency, again in my opinion, FK should have more stagger power as default… something always active… like e passive (indeed I really would like to see Staggering Force as passive).

This point is a little bit off topic from “shields’ topic”, but I will throw my opinion. I can’t consider FK and Merc’ ult so useful against CWs… and this thing is evident when someone attacks a chaos patrol. You see the CWs horde, you cast the ult, you stagger them for few seconds… and then you can just wait for the cooldown. It’s not like a “flow of stagger”, something to contain the threat. I can imagine you strongly disagree about this… I think it’s impossible find a common point.