This is a very polite way to say “skill issue”. You’re absolutely right, but it’s not really relevant to the discussion. With sufficient practice, you survive anything non-modded throws at you solo; that doesn’t serve as justification for every nerf to the game though.
I definitely think the reduced THP on stagger went too far; better where it is now than before, but big changes need tuning. The nerf diminished the role of tanks and stagger weapons. With most players finding easy breakpoints, that feeds into the annoying “shoot everything” and speedy DPS melee. To put it in perspective, I’ve had more success with “hit multiple enemies” on stagger weapons than using stagger. The only time Stagger THP works more efficiently is when you get a huge bash in the thickest chunk of horde.
As for taking damage, the “whoosh” sound is unreliable. Other players can drag elites into you (this doesn’t give you warning sound), and latency makes taking hits more likely. There are times (especially as a tank) where you got to have a health buffer to rush in and rescue a teammate.
Lastnight using Grail Knight with 2H Hammer / Bretonnian Sword & Shield, I tried switching to the “damage multiple enemies” temp HP talent, instead of stagger. It was noticeably worse for both weapons.
I quickly switched back to stagger. With the 2H hammer I can trade the occasional hit and still stay alive, but with the Bt S&S I become unkillable even eating quite a lot of hits. Yes, a thick stacked-up horde is the most effective, but I found I still got a solid amount of THP from small handfuls of enemies. More than I would have using either of the other THP talents.
Pretty much every stagger weapon but shields have been giving me better overall THP on hitting multiple enemies. Even on kill was doing better for me with Greathammer. It’s only during dense hordes that stagger was working better, and mainly with shields.
Even still, if you’re playing a frontline guy and stagger is working out better for you, the role of tanking, and looking out for allies was much more effective prior to the nerf; and that’s the kinda play-style the game is currently lacking. With the buffs to the other THP talents, the role of tanks is diminished.
Is it? People say this but I’ve never seen any video evidence of it. Yes, it was buggy on release, but got addressed eventually.
I think people just don’t notice it. When I was a newbie I had to have people tell me about it and even then it took me awhile to notice it at all; even now that I’m past 1k hours I’ll hear it without processing or reacting in time, only realizing after I got hit that I did in fact hear it but was too focused on something else. Goodness knows there’s plenty of other things happening to draw out attention
It’s like when you’re hyper focused on some task and then you realize someone has been repeatedly calling your name to get your attention for a few moments.
Not saying it can’t be bugged, but I haven’t seen video recordings to prove it is broken since the long-ago days. Anytime I’ve recorded my own gameplay and watched it again, it works as expected.
The hit warning sound often fails to play when enemies switch aggro or when an ally drags/dodges an attack into another player. This is especially noticeable with Shade or Huntsman after using their abilities, or when monsters do sudden mid-attack 180s. At higher ping, the issue worsens since both animations and sounds are delayed, making it hard to react when the warning sound only partially plays; or doesn’t play at all. Even on good ping, latency from the host or packet loss can still cause missing warnings. A good coordinated team can minimize it by spacing out, but it’s very punishing when playing with randos.
There are two things Fatshark might be able to do to fix this. First, implement a lag compensation system that many competitive and co-op already have. Improve enemy attack redirection logic; maybe don’t have enemies redirect attacks instantly; instead have the enemy briefly pause and then reset the attack when they switch aggro.
At 1k+ hours, you should be keenly aware of when you’re taking hits without warning. I’m at 3.5k hours, and it’s been bothering me for ages, I’m certainly not going to record a mission and go through the effort of clipping. It’s a well known issue, as are the causes I mentioned. People stopped posting videos of it when the issue went unaddressed for so long. There’s not that many players left.
I don’t think those situations are when the “backstab warning” sounds are supposed to play. It’s a “you’ve been facing one direction for a long time, and an enemy is sneaking up on you from behind” warning.
So it shouldn’t play, or can’t reliably, in situations like:
in the middle of a horde chaos, where you’re constantly changing your facing direction
teammate drags an AOE into you, makes sense because the attack isn’t targeting you and also this would happen very quickly so the sound wouldn’t even have time to play
Monster sudden mid-attack 180… what? Are you saying you’re facing away from the boss, but standing up against it in melee range, and it’s mid-attack-180-surprising you from behind? How are you even getting in that situation?
Ultimately the backstab sound warning system isn’t supposed to mean “if you don’t hear it, you’re completely safe from attack from behind”. It’s a warning of an incoming sneak attack when you’ve been faced a single direction for some time. For me, it’s especially useful when I have a ranged weapon out and am trying to snipe a special, or just blasting away as one does sometimes.
This is a great point. VT2 really suffers across the board as ping increases.
I don’t know what you’re even bothering responding. I explain the issue, and what I see in game, and you claim it’s not an issue. If you’re not experiencing the same thing, good for you. It doesn’t help anyone to argue and gaslight players.
Exactly, and a solution would be to have it play when you’re standing near an enemy attacking a player, and to have hits from enemies kiting into allies not deal damage to a nearby player.
It switches between, “I never see it happen”, “actually, it’s a feature, not a bug”, and “that makes sense, but we can’t fix that”. Are you just bored and looking to argue, via dismissing other’s concerns?
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no convincing way you could frame it that not having fair warning before getting hit would be okay; even if it’s not possible to fix. In any case, this whole discussion on the warning sound started with you saying “gotta listen for it” i.e. “skill issue”, now you understand that there are situations where it’s not reliable, beyond that, start a new topic.
My point was essentially "the backstab warning sound is reliable in situations it’s intended for”. The exception is if you’re having high ping / network issues… in which case it’s not a problem of the backstab sound per se, as the network issues will affect much more than just that.
But sure, no point arguing further especially since that’s not the point of the thread.
It’s intended to give fair warning, and when it doesn’t, then it’s not working right regardless. I don’t expect perfection, but there are solutions to the latency and targeting mechanics; whether or not it’s a priority or feasible for Fatshark to implement.
While this is sliding further off topic, I think the soundscape of VT2 is massive, with so much happening at once - especially at high difficulties- that there must be a hierarchy of sounds that a player must hear first.. a lot of these sound issues might be as a result of players in the past howling about not hearing hook rats, assassins etc. Higher priority might be hook rats, assassins, Other players pinging stuff, fire damage being inflicted, poison clouds causing damage, overcharge warnings, that are simply a higher threat and potentially more damage than the boop on the back of the head from the slave-rat. There must be a limit to how many sounds plays at once otherwise it’d being a cacophony of sounds playing simultaneously that would not only sound awful but also overshadow the wallop on the back of the noggin anyhow. I agree somehow with both @Flinlock and @Ensrick in that I feel the sound doesn’t always play and I get thumped for BS reasons AND it’s tied up in all kinds of other factors such at more important things happening, latency, and the various mechanics that change the targeting of a player by an enemy in tenths of a second if not faster.
I think the backstab sound also doesn’t deal well with attacks coming from instantly spawned enemies, especially noticeable on twins, chests and totems where they can spawn on you already having wound up an attack. It’s similar to the slave rat charge attack where the hurtbox appears at the beginning of the animation, so even if the sound plays you have about the same time to react to it as a chaos warrior punch.
Oh, I’m aware, though I didn’t think they had to be aggro’d to me specifically. Now that I think about it, at least in part, that could explain why I don’t hear the warning if they’re aggro’d to an ally.
I wish it played all the time, but I understand the intent is so you can react to enemies you can’t see in a horde, whether behind you, or obscured by the horde in front.
Sometimes enemies are hanging out under a ledge, or literally inside of a wall, or inside of each other like a little rat hiding in a black rat’s skirt.
Been playing around more with the different thp options (on legend). Dual or 1h hammer (opportunist) with stagger on zealot is much better than cleave. The 2h hammer had some unexpected results in a couple of games. I think it hits too hard for really good consistent stagger thp over multiple games. In the games where I was the main or only frontliner it was much better than cleave thp. But when shared with other certain builds or play styles, the 2h hammer ended up, I guess, killing more enemies each swing instead of knocking as many over, which lost stagger thp to enemies dying too fast. With the old stagger so powerful I never noticed this.
The quicker light swings of the 1h/dual hammers still get to stagger enough to be superior even among other frontliners. Having other aggressive high cleave melee builds on the team have become serious competition for stagger thp now.
I think a slight adjustment to the stagger thp value for kills could make stagger thp less of a gamble in terms of team composition, and wouldn’t require so much “greed” to get to groups of fresh enemies before other frontliners when needing lots of extra quick thp.
As for the woosh warning tangent, enemies also give themselves away with other sounds. Mostly quick grunts when they attack. Learn to recognize those too. And pan your view constantly to determine which sounds come from the front or rear. I tried to play without sounds a couple of times and the loss of awareness was… staggering… pardon the pun… time for bed…
Now when you mentioned Opportunist, suddenly a big part of this disagreement starts to make a lot more sense. I rarely use Opportunist on anything but shields, though I do have a few 1h hammers with it.
This kinda makes me think that the stagger THP simply needed a cap to the max hp you could get per strike. That was really the main issue.
