Blocking... lack thereof

Before rage quitting the game a year ago I had accumilated some 1500 hours and was able to breeze though legend. Coming back a few months ago I was pleased to see that some of the issues that made me rage quit had been fixed whereas some was still nowhere be to found like the big O lie about dedicated servers. Now though I’m having a somewhat hard time breezing through anything as blocking doesn’t seem to work half the time. at first I thought I was just rusty and It would get better but I’m no longer rusty and it hasn’t. I’ve been testing this over the course of the last two days spending some 15 hours playing and at least a few times each game there are times where I have blocked a long time in advance to be hit anyways. I have been hit by just about any enemy right through the block without stamina being affected. Other times I have noticed that the block works but that the hit completely removes the stamina and removes health as well. just now 5 minutes ago on into the nest my bardin with 9000 stamina gets hit by a monk which removes all 90000000 stamina and takes a chunk of my health.
So I’m sitting here wondering if some of the updates I haven’t been a part of over the past year has somoething to do with it or Is it a bug or maybe the block system has been changed?
I have been experiencing a few strange things in general over the past month or so like quests and challenges refusing to be completed but this goes back to the first day of playing after coming back.
Any takes ?

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Any recording of it ?
Probably some SV or something pushed you and in same time monk connected his hits that you didnt saw that hand animation of being pushed.

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No recordings sorry.
Can’t deny that couldn’t be the case but not in all cases though. I can think off at least a few cases where no other enemies where present. The monk case I presented is one of them. was 3 where one of them got caught behind a beam. after killing the first two with arrows I was out and move towards the third. My plan was shield bash and hit but as I came close it hit me and removed the stamina completely and took a chunk of health as well.
All things considered it doesn’t happen a lot but on cata and legend it’s something of an issue when it does during a horde for example.

I can try and make a recording and see if I can catch it.
any other takes on the issue ? Could it be hardware related ? the cpu has something to do with the amount of hordes/specials i believe ? If so then maybe this could be related in some way as well

Well outside of something overheading you outside of your front block and breaking your block I don’t see much of possibilities for getting destroyed stamina that quickly

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Recently it seems like this issue has become worse, to the point where my friend doesn’t want to play until it’s fixed.

I can only assume this issue is coming from lag because of strain on ISPs.

In my own personal experience (not as host), I’ve started being hit with block up quite a lot, and have started experiencing taking damage before enemies even start their animation. Especially Bosses.

It also doesn’t help that when joining QP you can be put with people hosting from the moon, with no way of lowering it. I have my QP search range to ‘Medium’, which apparently includes California, from the UK.

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What weapons have you been using? I normally run Bardin 2h hammer and have never had an issue with things hitting through block. Might be weapon specific.

Alternatively, I’ve seen a video many moons ago where someone showed that Bardin is susceptible to being hit outside his block range by SV overheads, despite looking directly at them.

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It could be an issue of your connection.
Could be an issue of ping
There is also an issue i’ve encountered where you are blocking well in advance and you still see shields but suddenly you get hit without releasing block, and i think this happens because the stamina shields are bugging out or not updating. Could be an issue with connection/ping or some kind of lagg aswell.

Sometimes i press block and i like get hit in the same frame as my block comes up. But this is again an issue with my connection/ping/host/input lagg etc.

I switch weapons quite often, so i want to say hammer and Shield and 2h hammer these last Two Days. Im Rolling with salt atm and in getting the same thing. Hook Bill, rapier and flail. It Feels like the flail is the worst by far and adding to that ghost swings as well.

I very rarely join lobbies. Cant remember when I did last time so I Guess I should have a good ping since im hosting? There could be a generel strain om the ISP though since the country is in lockdown so everybodys om the net. Anyway to test this?

I Geels like the game is really close to unplayable atm. Even though it’s only here and there it really annoys me big time.

And my phone Constantin auto corrects every single word i write.

I never have this problem when I’m host except when I get stun locked by rapid consecutive hits. Off host there’s a delay for putting up your guard due to ping. Getting pushed or guard broken and hit immediately after by another attack is intended though so if that’s happening, don’t expect to just be invincible while holding block.

Does it still happen when you are the host?

Game performance has decreased quite a lot lately, which increases the burden on the hosts’ CPU, which results in lag being even worse then your ping. It’s bad enough that I literally never play Legend+ anymore unless I am the host.

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Apart from when i’m playing with some really odd host with crappy pings i really don’t notice this behavior ever. Perhaps trying to host couple games yourself to see if there is any improvement?

I am gonna go with Mattie on this one. Most usual culprit is usually connection. And tbh I myself am trying to figure this out through the last week. Some times I use BH ulty, I get the 80% cdr and right on the same time I see on the feed that someone else scored the kill. Now that wouldn’t be possible on a Legend SV. So it must have something to do with the code pinging the server to verify an event. Cause in my case I notice 2 events getting place simultaneously like the above mentioned rather than one overlapping the other. If it was just lag e.g. elf scores the kill then my ulty hits the wind, but that’s not how it rolls. So my guess is that all attacks we get though block is something happened but not seen on our end. E.g. A SV push you some trash hit you and you are back on blocking. Now on your end you see yourself holding block the whole time but that’s not what happened server side.

Since you “very rarely” join lobbies, ping cannot be the issue. Case closed. Getting hit through block has been a problem for quite some time now and we don’t really know why it happens(apart from bad connection but this can happen even with good connection) when it does. That whole 1 monk removing all of your stamina and damaging you, you mention in the post, is literally impossible. I am willing to chalk up the insane stamina consumption to being a bug but the only enemy, when by itself, in the game that can simultaneously guard break you and hit you during your guard break is the Minotaur. A single monk is damn fast but not fast enough do this.

Assuming there are no bugs affecting the game at the time, there are 3(as far as I know) ways you can take damage, from a blockable attack, while blocking. But because you have quite a lot of hours in the game I’ll focus on the one most likely affecting you.
Elites can push. And these pushes are deadly. These elites include Bestigors, CWs, SVs, and Maulers, not sure about Wargors. Berserkers/Monks do not have push attacks. Monks can “nudge” you as they are rushing past you, while attacking, towards somebody else. This nudge is similar to what happens when an assassin lands on a nearby teammate but on a much smaller scale.
Being pushed by an enemy (for lack of a better term)opens up your guard for a few moments. During this time, any attack you could normally block, will hit you. An example of this would be to get pushed into an overhead.

This is as far as I can speculate without any recordings. Show me, and the others, a bit of gameplay and we might be able to figure things out.

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Is it just a coincidence that this problem became prominent after tracking was introduced?

I played a bit yesterday as salt and both the block malfunction and stamina removal occurred more than once within an hour. I did however notice that the situation where it happened was very similar.
Both during hordes and both on athel yenlui during the pillar alignment. After the second time I played the map exclusively for maybe 3 hours to try and catch it on record but as described in the original post, it doesn’t happen often. So maybe it’s Athel Yenlui that has some bug and yeah that could be it but I’ve experienced it on just about every map I feel like.

So since I was playing as salt we can rule out the idea of bardin being the sole issue.

This wasn’t an issue a year ago or when I began playing again. Not at first. With the rate that it’s occurring now I would have noticed it. So I’m thinking there might have been an update introduced that could have potentially done something. As far as I remember FS had just uploaded new cosmetics that were ridiculously overpriced which they then removed again and uploaded different cosmetics again when I noticed it. Around that time.

Jut occurred to me that I’m on wireless internet. I’ll try and connect to the landline directly.

Any how I’m hopeful that it’l be fixed at some point, either by accident or direct assault.

I posted about this issue, maybe a few months ago. Lately it rarely happens, but it does happen. Inevitably it’s some delay between what the host CPU sees and what we see on screen.

Not sure why it’s improved for me, but I generally use lobby browser and limit it to “Near” hosts. Also I got a new fast computer with an instant response time screen, which probably helps some - it certainly helps my play.