Hounds are still the most obnoxious enemy in the game

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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While the change to help dodge better was good Pox Hounds still remain the most random enemy in the game. Hitting them makes them recoil out of melee, sometimes they just fly into the sky, sometimes they just run in a circle at mach 20 then leap at you. And to make it worse, sometimes they just ignore hits. Shooting or hitting one doesnt guarantee it will stagger even if the attack hit. They even ignore surge staff for some reason. Then when you do finally get the damn thing, its weirdly tank for some reason and with all the issues combined, its really common to push one off during a horde, and have it escape because it got pushed behind the horde into safety in damnation difficulty.

As someone who played V1 and V2 I can see they basically copy and pasted the assassin rats. But the assassin rat was kept balanced by actually reacting to hits and dying incredibly fast as well as having a brief pause before they leap. Hounds just make a 90 degree turn and leap.

EDIT: I forgot something. Assassin rats would teleport away if they got attacked giving you breathing room. Hounds just run away and try again 3 seconds later.

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If the hound clips map geometry during their leap, they will either go back to their home planet or teleport onto you even if your movement would have broken line of sight.

If they went to their home planet and are on the way back, then it’s 50/50 on whether they get stuck or teleport onto you.

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The assassin rat probably has all the same problems as dogs, you just don’t see it in V2 because they die to a stiff breeze.

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They (Edit Assassins) really don’t.

  1. They have a clear sign for when they are about to pounce.
  2. They are very concistent/non-frantic in their behavior.
  3. They are easy to dodge but you gotta time your push.
  4. They have low HP
  5. If you push they are in melee range, if you dodge they are not
    → Pushing requires skill, but there is a reward for doing so

These are all points, which almost all run contrary to how dogs behave except for (3) to a degree.

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Actually yeah that’s all fair. Dogs are f’d.

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you almost had me there hahaha
Thought you meant the dogs initially

The thing that gets me, is when the snap on you from miles away.

Runners had way more interesting behaviour.

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We’ve got our best and brightest dogonaut aerospace engineers looking into it!

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yeah dogs aren’t all that similar gutter runners at all, they only function similary on surface level,

pounce into pin-down thats about it.

you forgot lethalty, dogs aren’t all that dangerous with no enemies around, where if an assassin touches you, depending on class, can be dead in a second just from the dmg of the assassin himself.

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They have low HP

Something that can survive a Brain Burst with warp unleashed and 6 stacks is low HP to you?

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read everything

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If Sarumane has an issue with my comment he can tell me himself. You dont need to coddle him.

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I don’t think I totally agree with this - Yes, agreed, assassin rats are janky, but they normally attack in a straight line when they do, whereas these dogs bound around in random directions and have insanely high stagger resist and health.

Honestly I’d rather they replace the dogs with the actual assassin rats from VT2, I’d have a better time against them.

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I don’t mind that the pox hounds actually require putting some damage on them to kill or knock them off someone. Thats fine.

The issue is the closer they get to you the more sporadic jittery their movement is to the point that the last couple of metes it’s like they just go invisible and then appear on you. Or they appear to run/leap past you, only for you to then magically get hit.

I think this is all related to server lag and latency issues with the movement being too fast to keep up and getting out of sync between server and client or something.

I like the idea of building in a standard delay before they pounce where they just stop running for a second, pause, and then leap in a predictable arc at you. If they miss have them run away and then repeat.

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Well… what he (@Riku ) said.

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I’d probably be more aligned with that thinking if you could (as I think someone previously mentioned) block push to stop them pouncing on you, or dodging out of the way. The fact that it MUST be damage related in some way I think is ridiculous, considering everything else in the game can be avoided [to an extent] by pushing or dodging.

Plus, since gunners and enemy grenades can ARREST ALL MOVEMENT for some reason, it makes it even more of an issue. Can I ask why a gunner behind me shooting me stops me from continuing moving forward? Or why a grenade stops you in your tracks AND removes all toughness? proceeds to throw a temper tantrum

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Yes, absolutely.

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No they don’t

They have two types of pounce:

  1. running pounce

    which they should use from afar
    2.from the spot pounce

    which they should use up close

But it’s not consistent at all, because they often use running pounce up close


which is really hard to react to.
Because pounce startup is too fast and dog dont have to spend time flying through the air to get to you.
It also happens at a random time, which you can’t really predict. contrary to normal running pounce, that can be predicted by distance.

Edit: I can give one hint tho.
It seems that there is a fixed timer between pounces.
So if you stagger a dog a couple of times or even once, after unsuccessful pounce, then you should expect that 360 insta pounce, if dog starts running away.

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You gotta read to the end. These descriptors referred to assassins in V2

I now edited my post a bit so that confusion doesn’t happen again hopefully.
In the end I completely agree with what you say and am not disputing the evidence presented - quite the contrary actually.

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ok, didnt get that

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