Blocking practically useless

Blocking is kinda interesting in this game. First of all you have stamina that is practically invisible during fights and then it lasts like 3 strikes anyway. That would be ok, but when your guard gets broken, you get basically perma-stunned. You can’t even dodge. Another problem is that when you revive someone you don’t get any hint, like screen shake or somethin’, that some enemy is attacking you. So you’re reviving and out of nowhere you get interrupted and start getting hit by hostiles. Therefore it’s really hard to revive your teamates, because it is really risky.

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The whole stamina->block->dodge system loop is just worse version of what it was in Vermintide 2.

I still don’t get. Why taking somethnig that was perfect after years of testing (Vermintide 2 movement/melee system) and mess it up? Just leave it alone. If it’s good, you don’t need to touch it.

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Well they introduced sprinting into the mix which besides setting up that glorious forward slide I do not use. So it needed a resource.

This new dodge loop really punishes Ogryn who seems to have come back from the first beta with less dodges and a longer dodge cooldown than the rest of the cast? Seems to be half a second to the normal 0.33. He already moves like he’s attacking with an axe and shield with all his melees.

Dodge is based on your weapon not your class.

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Which is ironic cause range fire cancels sprint and stunlock you…

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Stamina is just in a weird place in general, mostly because dodging stops your stamina from regenerating unlike in Vermintide. If you end up blocking a few hits or doing some pushes when in the thick of a horde, then you no longer have any way to defend yourself other than to dodge. Then you get stuck in a situation where you will have zero or just a few percent stamina for the foreseeable future, until someone helps you get some breathing room or you kill everything around you.

So, the current system effectively takes the three defensive options from Vermintide and boils them down to one: dodging. Pushes and blocking aren’t very effective because once your stamina bar is gone, you can’t safely get it back while locked in combat. At this rate, Mobility is shaping up to be the most important melee weapon stat since good dodges are the only worthwhile defense.

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Exactly why dodging stopping stamina regeneration was an idiotic change. Very well put.

It’s especially a problem on Zealot. A class where you have to move fast and quickly. So you’re constantly sprinting. So you’re out of stamina for blocking all the time. It’s ok up to including Malice but the only way to circumvent this on heresy and above is to either use the tac axe or dagger as it allows to move around faster than sprinting allows whilst still saving stamina and not get hit by ranged.

Which leads to another problem: If you want to effectively do your job as ranged to melee converter you’re locked into those two weapons, as the F charge is useless against ranged due to getting staggered. So here I am either zigzaging across open fields to kill a group of scab shooters without getting shredded. The alternative is to use a different weapon and either spam ranged, which in itself is bad because you should conserve the ammo for specials or dangerous situations OR wait for your teammates to help you out.

All this could simply be solved by decoupling blocking, getting the range to melee switch on enemies work again, or giving zealot charge resist to staggering and/or 2-3 seconds of invulnerability.

Yes this is a zealot post now.

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really? i prefer this a lot , those skating forward strikes and the auto tracking enemies are gone it feels much more solid and like reacting to changes matter to me. its not just circle strafing dodge spam which i always felt v2 descended into , feels much more dynamic to me

yeah ogre is built different. ogre has stagger and tough regen for days i dont think hes designed to be a dodge master.

lot of people seem to be assuming this is another vermintide and expecting everything that worked there to work here . its nto quite panning out that way

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How inability to mix smoothly blocking, pushing and doding feels more dynamic to you? Currently the most optimal way to play melee to spam dodge since to get back stamina you need to stop dodging, which means you have: a) stop which means getting hit b) having to block but since your stamina was not regenerating your block will be broken 80% of time on Diff 4-5 c) no push attack smooth combos with dodging since stamina regen is blocked.

I can understand if you like it for some reason, there are different people with different preferences. But don’t please tell me it’s more dynamic where I can do less combo actions and mixed vs spamming one thing becasue it blocks my resources for using others.

Dodge was always tied to weapon dodge count and cooldown. It was idiotic to punish stamina regen with dodge as now there pretty much nothing better than just spam dodge all the time. Mixes went out of the window.

Right now, there is no downside to dodge.

  • Dodging is better and faster than sprinting, dodging sideway is a faster travel option and is free from stamina.
  • Does not seem that we have the same “dodge timing” as vermin tide did have and most melee is super slow in this game
  • Dodge spamming roll is maybe a little too good even in firefights.
  • Dodge spamming can make you dance around the map and horde, some weapons like dueling sword for psy is nuts.
  • You can tag someone with mindblast and dodge back into cover, still do the mindblast.

And so on, right now dodge is too good. Block should make more sense with X weapon and drains way to much stamina, stun is way to long.

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What about lvl 30 zealot with combat knife? Its stupid, especially with the highest stack of martyrdom… With psyker and dueling sword, you can get range, head pop, switch to melee to get range with dodges again, head pop etc etc. Really good design…

well obviously that wouldnt be but thats not what im experiencing it is very smooth for me.

i think you may be just trying to play V2 and spamming your sta on dodge. try relying more on push , alt attacks and whichever chains/moves you have that give small staggers. its way more about position and crowd control , the mob density is different they cant do that silly slide anymore and they dont track half as well as they did in v2
i almost never block , only if ive been surprised and have no time or options, and dodging is mostly reserved for ranged attacks and elite melee enemies

its more dynamic for me because i find im making more adjustments and decisions on the fly

1st and honest… NO OFFENSE, BUT…

Please let those game devs to make ONE game, just ONE game that is hard for whatever reason even if it is a bug…

In Vermintide (600 hrs of pure Kruber main tank shield) if you run out of stamina in fight on highest difficulty even with most tanky class with the best gear/tanky build you can possibly get… You INSTA DIE and that is from my POV amazing, that game pushed me to think twice about my position, about where I am going to move in next step etc… Unforgiving hard game it was for me for months and yet never raged, never blamed my teammates, coz thats what it is in Vermintide and once again with NO OFFENSE, such posts like yours are very dangerous to the game and people like myself, who loved that overall level of difficulty even though a lot of that was coming from terribly explained stats/mechanics or not explained at all…

360 degree block was OP, no more in their next game, blocking while reviving was OP, no more in their next game… LOVE IT

I hope there is a big part of community, who feels that same way, so please Fatshark, make that game hardcore unforgiving unbeatable game, coz we LOVE IT!!!

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It really is the one thing making melee combat clunky IMO.

Pushattack combo chains are a staple of Vermintide combat, and open up different combo routes by shortcutting to different followup moves. However, in this game you can’t do them often because you’ll zero your stamina due to the dodge penalty. So, you get fewer viable combo options compared to Vermintide, which simplifies the combat.

I feel the same about block canceling TBH. In Darktide it feels like you can’t attack out of a tapped block very fast or else you’ll get a push, even if you are no longer holding RMB. This slows down block canceling so much that it feels pointless to do, which takes away a lot of effective combo options.

It feels like the melee combat in Darktide has added only one thing (the special attack, which is only useful on some weapons) and taken away most other higher-level tricks/combos.

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Through both luck and time commitment I’ve managed to get 60% block reduction and +2 stamina from my equipment. Despite all of this, blocking only feels what it should be as a baseline. It’s clear that they’ve balanced it around you gearing up in order to make it a viable defensive tool.

There’s a world of difference between genuine difficulty and difficulty stemming from bulls***t/broken game mechanics though.

360 is literally not broken in ANY way, considering how absurd some enemy attack ranges and hitboxes were/are in VT2, it would’ve been a nightmare to play if you could only block from the front. Aside from that, there WAS a downside to getting hit from behind, it cost double the stamina cost of the same attack from the front.

And no, autoblock during revives isn’t even gone from the game lol, it’s just that the block has been neutered so much that a single trash mob is enough to mess up your revive attempt.

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Yeee, I want it hard and broken :-*