How does stagger work?

[Meme Turtle]

I have noticed that I often trade hits with enemies because my attacks dont stagger them. Is there any information on what and how affects enemy stagger for power level 600 on legend?

[Panda]

Some weapons have stagger/stun affect:
1) Any hammer, mace, flail, shields attack.
2) Any kind of headshot light attack, but it doesn't work with daggers/spear probably with 1handed sword,2 handed sword too.
3) Most charged attack in the head.
4) ANY attack with a crit, but again doesn't work vs CW with dual weapons ( works fine with charged attacks )
5) Maybe im wrong, at least for my dwarf and elf it's working.

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Meme Turtle:

I have noticed that I often trade hits with enemies because my attacks dont stagger them. Is there any information on what and how affects enemy stagger for power level 600 on legend?

Each attack of any weapon have its own stagger values for each type of enemy. So its not gonnna be easy to explain it all in short

Better use table of values

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l_3SqCM6Pb6YpI1oDgbL0wzgCs938l0aPoMt9qwrnCA/edit#gid=714950244

You can find all info there. Also keep in mind, that power bonuses do apply to stagger.

[Meme Turtle]

Thanks. Is there any dependency on how much damage your weapon deal? With ranged attacks I have noticed that headshots or just high damage usually stagger enemies or even make them fall to the ground.

About daggers and SnD. Does that mean that outside crits you cant stagger at all with heavy attacks?

[Panda]

Originally posted by Meme Turtle:

Thanks. Is there any dependency on how much damage your weapon deal? With ranged attacks I have noticed that headshots or just high damage usually stagger enemies or even make them fall to the ground.

About daggers and SnD. Does that mean that outside crits you cant stagger at all with heavy attacks?

you can stun any scaven ( some problems with monks, but it's possible if they don't attack you with their's combo ) with charged attack in the head, with or without crit, BUT vs CW it only works with charged crit attack. I don't use S&D, but i guess you can't stun with 1st charged attack even with a crit

[Tamren]

Stagger is really complicated because you have to factor in things like:

-Weapon
-Hero Power
-Talents
-Traits

Multiplied by which specific attack you are hitting with in your weapon combo, then calculated against:

-Enemy type
-Enemy difficulty
-What animation the enemy is in at the time
-Did you land a headshot or not

There's currently no spreadsheet or other calculator for this kind of data so you just have to play a lot and get a feel for what staggers and what does not. For instance I find that when I play with a shield if I shove a stormvermin the shield bash shove will reliably interrupt whatever they are doing. But shoving only works on plague monks and berserkers that are in the running animation and does nothing if they are already attacking, etc.

For a baseline, assume that you can always stagger fanatics/marauders/clanrats/slaves with light attacks. Bersekers and monks can NEVER be staggered when in a frenzy. What you have to keep track of is elites like maulers and stormvermin. Chaos Warriors can be staggered too but only with really high damage weapons like handgun.

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by GWJ Tamren:

Stagger is really complicated because you have to factor in things like:

-Weapon
-Hero Power
-Talents
-Traits

Multiplied by which specific attack you are hitting with in your weapon combo, then calculated against:

-Enemy type
-Enemy difficulty
-What animation the enemy is in at the time
-Did you land a headshot or not

There's currently no spreadsheet or other calculator for this kind of data so you just have to play a lot and get a feel for what staggers and what does not.

For instance I find that when I play with a shield if I shove a stormvermin the shield bash shove will reliably interrupt whatever they are doing. But shoving only works on plague monks and berserkers that are in the running animation and does nothing if they are already attacking, etc.

Whic is mot the case, cause you can buff your shield to innterrup all bers/monk attacks.

Also, stagger do stack and last for some time (so, applying stagger would weaken enemy for next stagger effect), so it become even more complicated

[Tamren]

Buff shield's how exactly? I've tried using Off Balance a few times but it didn't seem to make a difference. This is one of those game mechanics that's hard to test "Scientifically" because there are so many factors.

[Brother Frank]

20% power to cha/ska interrupts their berserker, is what he means.
Greatsword is one of my favorites for fighting zerkers as it will kick them out of their frenzy with charged attacks.

Crits stagger CW out of almost everything, the only things you can’t kick them out of with a crit is an overhead swing or an underhand swing.

[Meme Turtle]

>>>you can always stagger fanatics/marauders/clanrats/slaves with light attacks.
Does not happen all the time with marauders. Ex. marauder climbing up appears to be immune to stagger after the climbing animation finishes, so he can still trade hits with you. Either that or my connection has a lot of lag.

I guess the best thing to do is to test stagger against each enemy on a modded realm. It eludes me why devs have left 0 information about this important mechanic in the game.

[Brother Frank]

Enemies don’t get staggered while climbing, this is true for every enemy. Good opportunity for free hits on shield guys though.

[Tamren]

Yeah climbing enemies is a special case and one of the most dangerous situations because it causes hyperdensity if you can't kill them fast enough. Even if you are capable of staggering an enemy your shove/hit will often get soaked up my enemies still climbing up and the ones already on top can hit you for free.

But for the most part in my experience Marauders and lower can be staggered just by light attacks. You don't need crits or headshots, you simply have to keep swatting them in the body. The only times this doesn't work is if your weapon runs out of cleave. Weapons calculate cleave for number of targets hit and number of targets staggered separately, which is another reason why stagger calculations are so opaque.

Originally posted by Brother Frank:

20% power to cha/ska interrupts their berserker, is what he means. Greatsword is one of my favorites for fighting zerkers as it will kick them out of their frenzy with charged attacks.

Oh that's interesting, I suspected there were breakpoints for stagger but I didn't know people had discovered some already. There are so many variables it's hard to calculate.

That's one of the reasons why I have high hopes for the Armory mod. If all of the features make it in it will be able to crunch the numbers for stuff like this and basically combine all of the community spreadsheets into one tool.

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by GWJ Tamren:

Yeah climbing enemies is a special case and one of the most dangerous situations because it causes hyperdensity if you can't kill them fast enough. Even if you are capable of staggering an enemy your shove/hit will often get soaked up my enemies still climbing up and the ones already on top can hit you for free.

But for the most part in my experience Marauders and lower can be staggered just by light attacks. You don't need crits or headshots, you simply have to keep swatting them in the body. The only times this doesn't work is if your weapon runs out of cleave. Weapons calculate cleave for number of targets hit and number of targets staggered separately, which is another reason why stagger calculations are so opaque.

Originally posted by Brother Frank:

20% power to cha/ska interrupts their berserker, is what he means. Greatsword is one of my favorites for fighting zerkers as it will kick them out of their frenzy with charged attacks.

Oh that's interesting, I suspected there were breakpoints for stagger but I didn't know people had discovered some already. There are so many variables it's hard to calculate.

That's one of the reasons why I have high hopes for the Armory mod. If all of the features make it in it will be able to crunch the numbers for stuff like this and basically combine all of the community spreadsheets into one tool.

I can hope that armory would do that, but i would not count on that. Currently other mod of his, bestiary, contain mistakes and provide very basic info about such things as mass, stagger resistance and such. So, unless his approach would change, you gonna have only basic info in armory mod. Which is still good, ofc, cause at leas tyou would be able to check this info right in the game, w/o need to open spreadsheet.

Considering stagger and such - there are very old and still actual breed data sheets (it is included in most of community data sheets) that contains mass values of enemies and armor type explanations. Then you just need to take spreadsheet for weapons that contain stagger values for each attack. QUite easy to calculate needed power bonuses to reach breakpoints you need to stagger enemies. But jusst to warn you - there is not much of use for it. IMO it is better to jus tlearn which attack of your weapon do interrupt enemy attacks. And exploit it.

Also, as mentioned before, stagger do some kind of "debuff" that last on enemy for some time, so, you can stack stagger that dont usually interrupt enemy attacks to make them do interrupt it. IN case of shield and berserkers - you can take 24% power boost to interrupt them always or you can take 20% to interrupt them with second push. And so on. Same applies to CW, for example.

[Dunno]

Talking about in-game data, what exatcly are "lineman" and "tank" parameters? Solo-mob and when they form a group? Exactly the group that fills in the "cells" around standing character, like J-sat explained in one video, or just when there are many of them in one place?

[Ardariel]

Originally posted by Nuff_Said:

Talking about in-game data, what exatcly are "lineman" and "tank" parameters? Solo-mob and when they form a group? Exactly the group that fills in the "cells" around standing character, like J-sat explained in one video, or just when there are many of them in one place?

It is just a direct mob parameter. Like armor category or race. So it is 3 in summ: armor, race and mass modifier.

WHat doe sit mean in practical terms? Well, weapon with same mass modifier acts against this exact mob as it have reduced mass. For example - flail have 7.07 mas limit on light attack. Same to falchion. But falchion would penetrate more of mobs with linesmass mass modifier cause of this trat, cause flail have none of modifier on light attack.

Or 1h sword and great axe. both have around 9 mass limit, but sword would cut through more of trashrats cause of modifier. While aganst units that have no mass modifier they would act the same.

In reality weapon that have ANY mass modifier just have its cleave directly increased against most of target you can use cleave against. (fanatics maradeurs slave and clan rats have noth of modifiers on them) Only exception are berserkers and monks. bers have tank adn linesman modifier and monks have only linesman. But due to lower mass of monks even that does not matter in most of cases.

Dunno why they added that parameter, cause only difference between tank and heavy that have practical application is storvermins and CW that both have "tank" and yet only one weapon in game can cut through more that one cw/SV and that is flail. So with that thing in mind you could just plainly increase mass penetration of flail`s heavy and get rid of "tank" modifier at all.

[Dunno]

Originally posted by Ardariel:

Originally posted by Nuff_Said:

Talking about in-game data, what exatcly are "lineman" and "tank" parameters? Solo-mob and when they form a group? Exactly the group that fills in the "cells" around standing character, like J-sat explained in one video, or just when there are many of them in one place?

It is just a direct mob parameter. Like armor category or race. So it is 3 in summ: armor, race and mass modifier.

WHat doe sit mean in practical terms? Well, weapon with same mass modifier acts against this exact mob as it have reduced mass. For example - flail have 7.07 mas limit on light attack. Same to falchion. But falchion would penetrate more of mobs with linesmass mass modifier cause of this trat, cause flail have none of modifier on light attack.

Or 1h sword and great axe. both have around 9 mass limit, but sword would cut through more of trashrats cause of modifier. While aganst units that have no mass modifier they would act the same.

In reality weapon that have ANY mass modifier just have its cleave directly increased against most of target you can use cleave against. (fanatics maradeurs slave and clan rats have noth of modifiers on them) Only exception are berserkers and monks. bers have tank adn linesman modifier and monks have only linesman. But due to lower mass of monks even that does not matter in most of cases.

Dunno why they added that parameter, cause only difference between tank and heavy that have practical application is storvermins and CW that both have "tank" and yet only one weapon in game can cut through more that one cw/SV and that is flail. So with that thing in mind you could just plainly increase mass penetration of flail`s heavy and get rid of "tank" modifier at all.

Thank you.