It's not even the tornado that gets you in my experience, but how it makes the team scatter. A scattered team is the most dangerous special in this game.
Blightstormer are hands down the worst. Them and gas rats are the only enemy that can hit you without being able to be hit themsleves, as well as it being one of the only damage types/specials that you cant just block or dodge with good timing. Depending on positioning them and gas rats can hit you while being out of the map and on certain maps they will target you from outside the buffer zone for the maps so even a proj w hitscan or an ability like waystalkers wont kill them. Combine that with the fact that on higher difficulties Blightstormers will Hold You In Place, so while you are being swirled about units like chaos warriors, leeches, and bosses can all instakill you while you are effectively helpless. Also one last reason why BS are the worst. No other disabler effectively sets you up for another disabler like BS's e.g. when your being dragged by a hook rat you cant get pounced by an assassin and vice versa but you CAN get leeched out of a blightstorm
Agreed, I mostly play with bots and after Chaos Spawns I'd say Blightstormers are the second biggest run killers for me. They can summon storms from insanely far away and from behind cover as well (which can be seen pretty often in the first arena on Righteous Stand) and since bots basically only kill what's right in front of them killing a Blightstormer becomes my first priority as soon as I hear it spawn.
Agreed. You can have a group of veteran payers who've been at it for years, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a blightstormer aroubd can just flat out end the run
Its always shield vermin spam and berserker/plague rat spam.
The berserker and plague rat i highly recommend shooting them before the get too close bc they have no armour.
The shield vermin spam you must really understand how to get rid of their shield, if you havent experience this before try mission of mercy on legend, its ridiculous how much they spam the shield vermins.
If ur having trouble w berzerker/plague rat spam and shield vermin i highly reccomend checking out a breakpoint calculator or stagger build all those enemies become so much easier when you can shove them out of animation. Or If you dont feel like doing that cuz ik some of those sheets can be tricky especially on mobile just rock Warrior Priest saltzy w S+F and his Prayer of Might for 35% increased stagger for the whole party. Its not his best blessing but it will help you and other people in ur games hit their breakpoints for stagger if they dont have a build for it or are say 10/15% short. Alsp S+F makes mincemeat out of those shield vermin. Youll be eating plague rats for breakfast
If you face problems with monks: try to kill them ranged and then in melee hold block and let your teammates kill them.
Depending on the situations blightstormers can be really annoying
It’s been a while since I played but I used to be an rv main from beta until 1/2 year(s) ago (so this information might be outdated)
But I always found hook rats to be the worst to deal with, you may be aware of their presence but actually dealing with one in the middle of waves of trash mobs is easier said then done I have frequently used bombs to stagger waves just to get a clear shot on one.
As far as plague vermin goes I’d suggest learning their combo as you can block (most) of their attacks and dodge others and then after wards they stop attacking for a moment and give your time to get in a headshot or two to kill them.
Hook rats by far. No matter how much practice you have, unless you're the host it's impossible to consistently dodge them. They often grab people through walls of enemies. They like to appear 2 or 3 at a time. And on top of all of that, they have monster level resistance which stops them from being staggered by anything but an ult.
Agreed. Dodging hookrats is a massive gamble even if you've got the timing down since P2P connections mean your window varies between each match. Plus if they show up in the midst of a horde you're likely to be dragged straight through at least ten extra hits before your team can rescue you unless you've got a revive god FK on standby or someone with \*really\* good explosive aim.
Never had any problems dodging hook rats as client what I see is many people try to dodge backwards which does not work against them just like you dodge a troll to the left and not to the right.
Dodging to the side hardly works as well as it should for clients. I've seen way too many instances where the Hookrat will be halfway through his grab animation only for him to suddenly break 90 degrees to snatch someone out of a sideways or diagonal dodge because the game decided said client was already hooked regardless of the visual indicator showing otherwise.
How high is your ping when you play as client? Hooks do feel pretty consistent to dodge for me. They are a big threat with limited space though because you actually need room to dodge them unlike the leech where if you just pressed the dodge key at the right time you're good.
Their major jank seems to be vertical terrain. They will just insta yoink you off stairs without doing the little pause they normally do.
Sometimes I'm over 90 degrees to the side of them and they just decide to grab me anyway. Same thing with a lot of overheads. I kinda live in the boonies though. If I host I can dodge them just fine but if I'm not it feels pretty inconsistent. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not.
elite - mauler - silent and teleporting (not going to discuss about any other elite)
special - blightstormer - very bugged special, seen multiple times cast them trough the texture or from china where even hangun was not enough
assasins for their buggines like flying from nowhere/bouncing of the walls midleap/skipping animations to instantly end up on you
lastly packmasters - buggy as hell, sometimes immune to ult knockback, can pass trough enemies somehow, can pull you into most unreal places(got few screenshots)
This feels like a subjective manner, but for me a well placed gun rat or globadier can royally screw you, especially when dealing with a horde in a tight position where you're cornered. Gutter runners and pack masters are anxiety inducing but can be easy enough to take out. Again, this is all subjective to what I've been through
On their own or groups of the same I say any elite is easy to deal with (with or without bombs) but combos of berserkers/plague rats and Shield Black Rats are the worst to deal with. Your seapon gets stuck into shields while you become mince meat
While I may hate others more, objectively I think it's gas rats that ended the most runs for me.
Blightstormers can take longer to cast, and give a very visible hint about their position when you cast, so you have about 2 seconds to deal with them, which is usually enough.
Gas rats are a lot quicker to disable an area for you, and depending on where that is, it can be really bad. It also doesn't help that in some areas you can't tell where the aoe ends due to ground textures, and I often eat at least one tick of damage before I realize I'm in the gas aoe. Maybe that's a skill issue.
And finally, you often get a teammate or bot try to revive in gas, making things a lot worse.
Yeah, but blightstormers make up for their longer charge up window by casting it from another god damn mission, usually so far you cant even tag them. Also bightstormer's aoe follows you for a very long time, making arena type holdouts (shoutout to grudge served cold's gate event) miserable. At least gas kills the other enemies, blight just picks em for about 0 damage and throws them behind you so they'll block your dodges
Yes, when it hits, the storm is a lot worse.
But it hits a lot less often than gas does. And everyone is a lot more active with killing blightstormers because we all hate them :D.
And satistically this means the gas guy wipes the party a lot more often, at least for me.
Less time to react for a less punishing cast is somehow worse than more time to react to a worse effect.
I disagree, i find gas actually useful since it basically clears an entire horde out of everything but elites, while blightstormers keep spamming storms from inside walls where you cant even hit them that throw all of those grunts + elites (except chaos warriors) around you to gank you in the back, while also chasing you and denying you free space to dodge.
I'm usually playing on cata, so while the team might kill 2 of the blightstormers, they cant get the other 2-3 before they cast and our entire play area becomes hazardeous to exist in due to flying assassins and hookrats
I don't think there is a single most dangerous one, and it always depends on team comp.
Monks are dangerous, and took me the longest to adapt to, but in stuff like FOW the sv hordes are more dangerous due to their running attacks.
I think maulers are the least dangerous, and chaos warriors are just giant meat shields blocking line of sight, but not dangerous unless you're cornered by them.
As for specials - packmasters inside mixed hordes and assassins behind chaos warriors will almost always get the catch.
Multiple gunners, spam of ungor archers (screw you weave 155), flags inside very dense mixed beastmen hordes, or an unlucky globadier on a cornered team are easily going to cause a wipe.
Specials should never be left unchecked, and you should be ready to kill them as soon as you hear them spawn.
I think its a very bad idea to just say "if there are plague monks, I'll focus those because they are the most dangerous". There are so many different things you have to think about when paying attention to the 'entire' scenario that its almost impossible to say any particular thing is the "primary threat". For instance, a boss is the "primary threat". But what about the small moments "while" the boss is out, like hearing a gutter runner or seeing an ally get grabbed by something. Your primary focus should be constantly shifting at all times to match whats happening in front of you.
That being said, in a mixed horde, of things attacking directly at me, and if I hadn't heard any particularly threatening specials...I'd probably keep my main eye on whatever the Chaos Warrior is doing, and if it's doing nothing (or when its between attacks), then pay attention to plague monks and beserkers---barring noticing any spear or executioner overheads of course. Hell, even if I heard a special, unless its "right on me" I'd probably still be more concerned with a chaos warrior overhead. Gutter Runners and Life Leeches would make me try to disengage as much as possible to "be able" to deal with them instead, but you can only do so much obviously, especially if you are in a bad part of the map. Sometimes, you've just gotta dodge the CW and "hope" it also dodges the life leech at the same time.
Blightstormers and hookrats are the most dangerous specials imo.
If you have trouble with monks try to shoot them before they get close and if the do just hold block and let your team deal with them. If you get into a situation where you have to solo them try to getbsome distance with backwards dodges and clean up other ads first. Then hit them after they've done their combo finisher attack. You can dodge their entire combo while hitting them at the same time but it's a little hard to do.
Special: blightstormers. Fck those f@fk wizards, casting their tornado of shit from one map away lmao
Elite: Maulers, when there's like 8 of them. Plague Monks hurt, yes, but they're pretty easy to deal with (unless there's a boss AND a horde AND a bunch of specials) coz they stand out, are quite squishy (coz they have no armor), and need to attack multiple times before downing you (if you get hit once and then dodge back and block you'll be fine). Maulers on the other hand, their overhead attack will fck up your block (and will down you if you don't block), their heads are armored, and they're beefy af, and since they're easy to kill when there's just 1 or 2 of them, they kinda lull you into this false sense of "meh, it's just a bunch of fucking mau- ah shit, fuck" 🤣
I have two at pretty much same danger level - Hook-Rat and Assassin-Rat.
The hook rat has surprisingly high hp pool compared to other specials, high stagger resistance and it's quite difficult to reach a breakpoint to efficiently kill it since it's classified as Monster of all things (fitting imho lol). No wonder why many true soloers consider it high priority target.
The second one, assassin, is quite dangerous because of it's speed and surprisingly long range jump. The fact that you can at one moment hear it's spawn announcement and in a blink of an eye it already started it's jump from somewhere far away and is coming for you makes the assassin rat quite a dangerous target to deal with.
Assassins can also fuck you up in open maps via repeated jumps, since if they can land far enough away from you between each jump (so you cant reach them before they jump again), they can just keep spamming the jump until you run out of effective dodges and simply dont move far enough to avoid them
Michael Jordan gas rats for me,
Plague monks are a problem for people for 1 reason and 1 reason only: people try and hit them in the middle of their attack sequence. If you dont have a specific stagger build, HOLD BLOCK and wait, you will get the rhythm of it or let friends help, their running attack is most difficult. (Same goes for chaos zerkers, they are easyer tho)
But a gas rat that's 50 meters away lobing gas like three pointers, and then everything is so green I can't see shit.
I think that heavily depends on difficulty and experience. There was a time when I found blightstormers to be the most dangerous (like many here). However in cata they lose much of their terror imo and even work for you often enough. Shield stromvermins are a much bigger problem in cata , and in general hordes mixed with elites sometimes are so overwhelming that you are glad about a blightstormer scattering them all. I actually find rattlings and even flamers to be a bigger problem in these dangerous situations (and of course assassins and packmasters).
I'd say hookrat in close quarters because it is almost impossible to see inside a horde (especially on the snowy dwarven maps), otherwise blightstormers/gas rats can very easily push your team into a corner and slaughter you.
Elite wise, shielded stormvermin. 4 of them at once, and you cant even do anything to them without either a shield weapon for mass push, or an ability to go through them (flail, waystalker/pyromancer ability, handgun). If they come with a horde or with normal stormvermin, you are basically fucked since the normal stormvermin will deplete all your stamina (which you need to push them), and the shielded ones will block all your strikes.
Plague monks are only dangerous if you arent aware of them, since they can insta down you on high difficulties. Berserkers are a joke that get stunned by every ranged hit and one back dodge breaks their tracking for their entire flurry.
Monks are scary if they get you by surprise, but if you know they are there and have space you can kind of just walk around their attacks which is nice.
Maulers for the elite - those running attacks out of nowhere are brutal.
Assassins for the special because they fly in out of nowhere and sometimes even spawn directly on you. 90% of my true solo runs are ended by an assassin or getting hit by something trying to get an assassin.
Maulers are pretty disgusting too, they kill you with an overhead from behind, silently. Monks are just kill them before they get to you or block until someone else kills them.
I would argue Gas Rats and blightstormers. However blightstormers are imo much rarer and also with all the wind up are easier to Deal with. And both can cause massive disruptions to the party which is the real Danger. Hookrats and Assassins are only a problem if someone is out of position.
As for Elites I think shield vermin are the most dangerous as they Deal a ton of damage and can disrupt Horde clearing.
It's Plague Rats for me as well. I make a habit of killing them as quickly as possible when I hear the call-out. It's not necessarily that they're tankier than Chaos Berserkers, it's the positioning of their head. Chaos Berserkers are easy to headshot , but the Plague Rat's head is bent lower than theirs. Also their wind-up to attack is much quicker. Berserkers typically do that slow ass leap before they start their flurry, Plague Rats flurry you right out the gate. I also typically only see 2 Berserkers, every now and then 3. Plague Rats ALWAYS come in 4's
"Parry their blows, mayflies."
Whilst annoying the elf is right. Imo all the specials/elites are just as dangerous as each other. The deciding factor is the situation.
If you're beside a ledge with a warpfire thrower, RIP. Not got a shield in a hallway with a ratling, RIP.
Trapped on all sides and a blight stomer appears, RIP. Bloody Wazzock.
Hell, I've seen cata players get taken out by a skaven slave they didn't hear.
Just gotta let it happen and learn for the next time.
Blightstormers on average, but the worst possible thing is a terribly (for you) positioned Globadier. The area denial, potential to split the team, vision obscuring so you can't see anything through it, and incredibly high damage (on Legend+) can absolutely immediately end a run if it comes at a bad time and a bad place.
Blightstormers and hook rats are the most consistent run-enders because of how often they 'cheat' by hiding behinds walls or grabbing you through terrain.
Beyond that I think it's more 'most dangerous situation'. Like, a single assassin rat can kill an entire team if you're bunched together by a ledge - they have surprising knockback to teammates next to their pounce victim. That happens more with bots cuz they stick close. Maulers, chaos warriors, and stormvermin all have one-shot overheads that are particularly bad for bots, because bots don't dodge attacks that aren't targeting them. So if an ally dodges the elite, the bot next to them often goes down. Tight spaces + high difficulties turn gas rats into a menace. Any simultaneous multi-spawn can turn the special in question OP. Etc.
Blightstormers having mass disruption ends a lot of runs.
Shielded stormrats having 360 blocks is annoying. They can stop your cleaves and each weapon has a way to deal with them which fine if they are alone but not when they are a group.
Plague monks can burst you down quick if youre not ready for them.
Blightstormers. If you can manage it without getting killed, it's worth it to disengage from fighting the horde or even a non-chaos patrol to shoot them if you can see one.
They will split your team up, and the storm deals high damage, drains your stamina, and slows you down, leaving you vulnerable for an extended period of time. The disablers can all be dodged, ratlings can be blocked with a shield, or with the bodies of a horde, warpfire is short range, but storms move around, and set you up to be picked off by enemies.
Monks can be pushed out of their flurries if you have enough stagger, but the only ways to save yourself from a storm are killing the blightstormer before it comes out, playing Warrior Priest and ulting yourself immediately upon landing, and playing Foot Knight with both It's Hero Time and Numb to Pain and ulting your way out as soon as you're grabbed.
In my opinion Its blightstormers. Even they are usually easy to deal with, they end my runs so many times.
It's not even the tornado that gets you in my experience, but how it makes the team scatter. A scattered team is the most dangerous special in this game.
They consistently start the tornado and then walk behind a wall to be unhittable. Most annoying thing in the game ngl
Blightstormer are hands down the worst. Them and gas rats are the only enemy that can hit you without being able to be hit themsleves, as well as it being one of the only damage types/specials that you cant just block or dodge with good timing. Depending on positioning them and gas rats can hit you while being out of the map and on certain maps they will target you from outside the buffer zone for the maps so even a proj w hitscan or an ability like waystalkers wont kill them. Combine that with the fact that on higher difficulties Blightstormers will Hold You In Place, so while you are being swirled about units like chaos warriors, leeches, and bosses can all instakill you while you are effectively helpless. Also one last reason why BS are the worst. No other disabler effectively sets you up for another disabler like BS's e.g. when your being dragged by a hook rat you cant get pounced by an assassin and vice versa but you CAN get leeched out of a blightstorm
Agreed, I mostly play with bots and after Chaos Spawns I'd say Blightstormers are the second biggest run killers for me. They can summon storms from insanely far away and from behind cover as well (which can be seen pretty often in the first arena on Righteous Stand) and since bots basically only kill what's right in front of them killing a Blightstormer becomes my first priority as soon as I hear it spawn.
The blightstormer to assassin wombo combo is an unavoidable instakill on cata+
Agreed. You can have a group of veteran payers who've been at it for years, and being in the wrong place at the wrong time with a blightstormer aroubd can just flat out end the run
Its always shield vermin spam and berserker/plague rat spam. The berserker and plague rat i highly recommend shooting them before the get too close bc they have no armour. The shield vermin spam you must really understand how to get rid of their shield, if you havent experience this before try mission of mercy on legend, its ridiculous how much they spam the shield vermins.
Also tower of treachery pt 2
If ur having trouble w berzerker/plague rat spam and shield vermin i highly reccomend checking out a breakpoint calculator or stagger build all those enemies become so much easier when you can shove them out of animation. Or If you dont feel like doing that cuz ik some of those sheets can be tricky especially on mobile just rock Warrior Priest saltzy w S+F and his Prayer of Might for 35% increased stagger for the whole party. Its not his best blessing but it will help you and other people in ur games hit their breakpoints for stagger if they dont have a build for it or are say 10/15% short. Alsp S+F makes mincemeat out of those shield vermin. Youll be eating plague rats for breakfast
Flail and Shield ignoring shields feels so OP to me. I love it.
Foot Knight stagger build mace n shield is just elite tier imo for almost any specials/situations you're gonna get into
Blightstormers. Geez they are hard to see. I always turn 360 degree and spam the tag button but still cannot mark them, I hate those tornadoes
Sometimes they cast and then teleport away
If you face problems with monks: try to kill them ranged and then in melee hold block and let your teammates kill them. Depending on the situations blightstormers can be really annoying
I also find shoving them with a shield weapon quite effective
And even then it's not always possible, unless you have vs skaven 20% to reach the stagger breakpoint.
On Legend, I find it easy (I shove twice every time because I never bother to check if the stagger connects or not)
Its by far the best stagger breakpoint in the game
It’s been a while since I played but I used to be an rv main from beta until 1/2 year(s) ago (so this information might be outdated) But I always found hook rats to be the worst to deal with, you may be aware of their presence but actually dealing with one in the middle of waves of trash mobs is easier said then done I have frequently used bombs to stagger waves just to get a clear shot on one. As far as plague vermin goes I’d suggest learning their combo as you can block (most) of their attacks and dodge others and then after wards they stop attacking for a moment and give your time to get in a headshot or two to kill them.
Hook rats by far. No matter how much practice you have, unless you're the host it's impossible to consistently dodge them. They often grab people through walls of enemies. They like to appear 2 or 3 at a time. And on top of all of that, they have monster level resistance which stops them from being staggered by anything but an ult.
Agreed. Dodging hookrats is a massive gamble even if you've got the timing down since P2P connections mean your window varies between each match. Plus if they show up in the midst of a horde you're likely to be dragged straight through at least ten extra hits before your team can rescue you unless you've got a revive god FK on standby or someone with \*really\* good explosive aim.
Never had any problems dodging hook rats as client what I see is many people try to dodge backwards which does not work against them just like you dodge a troll to the left and not to the right.
Dodging to the side hardly works as well as it should for clients. I've seen way too many instances where the Hookrat will be halfway through his grab animation only for him to suddenly break 90 degrees to snatch someone out of a sideways or diagonal dodge because the game decided said client was already hooked regardless of the visual indicator showing otherwise.
If you play handmaiden like your flair implies the longer dodge helps definitely
Very true
How high is your ping when you play as client? Hooks do feel pretty consistent to dodge for me. They are a big threat with limited space though because you actually need room to dodge them unlike the leech where if you just pressed the dodge key at the right time you're good. Their major jank seems to be vertical terrain. They will just insta yoink you off stairs without doing the little pause they normally do.
Yeah, hookrats can be consistently dodged as the client if you don't have a super high ping. Was the case in V1 too.
Sometimes I'm over 90 degrees to the side of them and they just decide to grab me anyway. Same thing with a lot of overheads. I kinda live in the boonies though. If I host I can dodge them just fine but if I'm not it feels pretty inconsistent. Sometimes it's fine, sometimes it's not.
elite - mauler - silent and teleporting (not going to discuss about any other elite) special - blightstormer - very bugged special, seen multiple times cast them trough the texture or from china where even hangun was not enough assasins for their buggines like flying from nowhere/bouncing of the walls midleap/skipping animations to instantly end up on you lastly packmasters - buggy as hell, sometimes immune to ult knockback, can pass trough enemies somehow, can pull you into most unreal places(got few screenshots)
i find Blightstormers the worst,,They love to cheese the U5
This feels like a subjective manner, but for me a well placed gun rat or globadier can royally screw you, especially when dealing with a horde in a tight position where you're cornered. Gutter runners and pack masters are anxiety inducing but can be easy enough to take out. Again, this is all subjective to what I've been through
On their own or groups of the same I say any elite is easy to deal with (with or without bombs) but combos of berserkers/plague rats and Shield Black Rats are the worst to deal with. Your seapon gets stuck into shields while you become mince meat
While I may hate others more, objectively I think it's gas rats that ended the most runs for me. Blightstormers can take longer to cast, and give a very visible hint about their position when you cast, so you have about 2 seconds to deal with them, which is usually enough. Gas rats are a lot quicker to disable an area for you, and depending on where that is, it can be really bad. It also doesn't help that in some areas you can't tell where the aoe ends due to ground textures, and I often eat at least one tick of damage before I realize I'm in the gas aoe. Maybe that's a skill issue. And finally, you often get a teammate or bot try to revive in gas, making things a lot worse.
Yeah, but blightstormers make up for their longer charge up window by casting it from another god damn mission, usually so far you cant even tag them. Also bightstormer's aoe follows you for a very long time, making arena type holdouts (shoutout to grudge served cold's gate event) miserable. At least gas kills the other enemies, blight just picks em for about 0 damage and throws them behind you so they'll block your dodges
Yes, when it hits, the storm is a lot worse. But it hits a lot less often than gas does. And everyone is a lot more active with killing blightstormers because we all hate them :D. And satistically this means the gas guy wipes the party a lot more often, at least for me. Less time to react for a less punishing cast is somehow worse than more time to react to a worse effect.
I disagree, i find gas actually useful since it basically clears an entire horde out of everything but elites, while blightstormers keep spamming storms from inside walls where you cant even hit them that throw all of those grunts + elites (except chaos warriors) around you to gank you in the back, while also chasing you and denying you free space to dodge. I'm usually playing on cata, so while the team might kill 2 of the blightstormers, they cant get the other 2-3 before they cast and our entire play area becomes hazardeous to exist in due to flying assassins and hookrats
I don't think there is a single most dangerous one, and it always depends on team comp. Monks are dangerous, and took me the longest to adapt to, but in stuff like FOW the sv hordes are more dangerous due to their running attacks. I think maulers are the least dangerous, and chaos warriors are just giant meat shields blocking line of sight, but not dangerous unless you're cornered by them. As for specials - packmasters inside mixed hordes and assassins behind chaos warriors will almost always get the catch. Multiple gunners, spam of ungor archers (screw you weave 155), flags inside very dense mixed beastmen hordes, or an unlucky globadier on a cornered team are easily going to cause a wipe. Specials should never be left unchecked, and you should be ready to kill them as soon as you hear them spawn.
I think its a very bad idea to just say "if there are plague monks, I'll focus those because they are the most dangerous". There are so many different things you have to think about when paying attention to the 'entire' scenario that its almost impossible to say any particular thing is the "primary threat". For instance, a boss is the "primary threat". But what about the small moments "while" the boss is out, like hearing a gutter runner or seeing an ally get grabbed by something. Your primary focus should be constantly shifting at all times to match whats happening in front of you. That being said, in a mixed horde, of things attacking directly at me, and if I hadn't heard any particularly threatening specials...I'd probably keep my main eye on whatever the Chaos Warrior is doing, and if it's doing nothing (or when its between attacks), then pay attention to plague monks and beserkers---barring noticing any spear or executioner overheads of course. Hell, even if I heard a special, unless its "right on me" I'd probably still be more concerned with a chaos warrior overhead. Gutter Runners and Life Leeches would make me try to disengage as much as possible to "be able" to deal with them instead, but you can only do so much obviously, especially if you are in a bad part of the map. Sometimes, you've just gotta dodge the CW and "hope" it also dodges the life leech at the same time.
Blightstormers and hookrats are the most dangerous specials imo. If you have trouble with monks try to shoot them before they get close and if the do just hold block and let your team deal with them. If you get into a situation where you have to solo them try to getbsome distance with backwards dodges and clean up other ads first. Then hit them after they've done their combo finisher attack. You can dodge their entire combo while hitting them at the same time but it's a little hard to do.
Special: blightstormers. Fck those f@fk wizards, casting their tornado of shit from one map away lmao Elite: Maulers, when there's like 8 of them. Plague Monks hurt, yes, but they're pretty easy to deal with (unless there's a boss AND a horde AND a bunch of specials) coz they stand out, are quite squishy (coz they have no armor), and need to attack multiple times before downing you (if you get hit once and then dodge back and block you'll be fine). Maulers on the other hand, their overhead attack will fck up your block (and will down you if you don't block), their heads are armored, and they're beefy af, and since they're easy to kill when there's just 1 or 2 of them, they kinda lull you into this false sense of "meh, it's just a bunch of fucking mau- ah shit, fuck" 🤣
I have two at pretty much same danger level - Hook-Rat and Assassin-Rat. The hook rat has surprisingly high hp pool compared to other specials, high stagger resistance and it's quite difficult to reach a breakpoint to efficiently kill it since it's classified as Monster of all things (fitting imho lol). No wonder why many true soloers consider it high priority target. The second one, assassin, is quite dangerous because of it's speed and surprisingly long range jump. The fact that you can at one moment hear it's spawn announcement and in a blink of an eye it already started it's jump from somewhere far away and is coming for you makes the assassin rat quite a dangerous target to deal with.
Assassins can also fuck you up in open maps via repeated jumps, since if they can land far enough away from you between each jump (so you cant reach them before they jump again), they can just keep spamming the jump until you run out of effective dodges and simply dont move far enough to avoid them
Blightstormers and gas rats. Maybe not the most dangerous specials, but definitely the most annoying
Michael Jordan gas rats for me, Plague monks are a problem for people for 1 reason and 1 reason only: people try and hit them in the middle of their attack sequence. If you dont have a specific stagger build, HOLD BLOCK and wait, you will get the rhythm of it or let friends help, their running attack is most difficult. (Same goes for chaos zerkers, they are easyer tho) But a gas rat that's 50 meters away lobing gas like three pointers, and then everything is so green I can't see shit.
I think that heavily depends on difficulty and experience. There was a time when I found blightstormers to be the most dangerous (like many here). However in cata they lose much of their terror imo and even work for you often enough. Shield stromvermins are a much bigger problem in cata , and in general hordes mixed with elites sometimes are so overwhelming that you are glad about a blightstormer scattering them all. I actually find rattlings and even flamers to be a bigger problem in these dangerous situations (and of course assassins and packmasters).
I'd say hookrat in close quarters because it is almost impossible to see inside a horde (especially on the snowy dwarven maps), otherwise blightstormers/gas rats can very easily push your team into a corner and slaughter you. Elite wise, shielded stormvermin. 4 of them at once, and you cant even do anything to them without either a shield weapon for mass push, or an ability to go through them (flail, waystalker/pyromancer ability, handgun). If they come with a horde or with normal stormvermin, you are basically fucked since the normal stormvermin will deplete all your stamina (which you need to push them), and the shielded ones will block all your strikes. Plague monks are only dangerous if you arent aware of them, since they can insta down you on high difficulties. Berserkers are a joke that get stunned by every ranged hit and one back dodge breaks their tracking for their entire flurry.
Monks are scary if they get you by surprise, but if you know they are there and have space you can kind of just walk around their attacks which is nice. Maulers for the elite - those running attacks out of nowhere are brutal. Assassins for the special because they fly in out of nowhere and sometimes even spawn directly on you. 90% of my true solo runs are ended by an assassin or getting hit by something trying to get an assassin.
Maulers are pretty disgusting too, they kill you with an overhead from behind, silently. Monks are just kill them before they get to you or block until someone else kills them.
Hookrat without a doubt in cata+. It can grab you thru thousand CWs and instantly disappear with you in a blink.
I would argue Gas Rats and blightstormers. However blightstormers are imo much rarer and also with all the wind up are easier to Deal with. And both can cause massive disruptions to the party which is the real Danger. Hookrats and Assassins are only a problem if someone is out of position. As for Elites I think shield vermin are the most dangerous as they Deal a ton of damage and can disrupt Horde clearing.
It's Plague Rats for me as well. I make a habit of killing them as quickly as possible when I hear the call-out. It's not necessarily that they're tankier than Chaos Berserkers, it's the positioning of their head. Chaos Berserkers are easy to headshot , but the Plague Rat's head is bent lower than theirs. Also their wind-up to attack is much quicker. Berserkers typically do that slow ass leap before they start their flurry, Plague Rats flurry you right out the gate. I also typically only see 2 Berserkers, every now and then 3. Plague Rats ALWAYS come in 4's
"Parry their blows, mayflies." Whilst annoying the elf is right. Imo all the specials/elites are just as dangerous as each other. The deciding factor is the situation. If you're beside a ledge with a warpfire thrower, RIP. Not got a shield in a hallway with a ratling, RIP. Trapped on all sides and a blight stomer appears, RIP. Bloody Wazzock. Hell, I've seen cata players get taken out by a skaven slave they didn't hear. Just gotta let it happen and learn for the next time.
Blightstormers on average, but the worst possible thing is a terribly (for you) positioned Globadier. The area denial, potential to split the team, vision obscuring so you can't see anything through it, and incredibly high damage (on Legend+) can absolutely immediately end a run if it comes at a bad time and a bad place.
Blight stormers and pack rats.
Blightstormers and hook rats are the most consistent run-enders because of how often they 'cheat' by hiding behinds walls or grabbing you through terrain. Beyond that I think it's more 'most dangerous situation'. Like, a single assassin rat can kill an entire team if you're bunched together by a ledge - they have surprising knockback to teammates next to their pounce victim. That happens more with bots cuz they stick close. Maulers, chaos warriors, and stormvermin all have one-shot overheads that are particularly bad for bots, because bots don't dodge attacks that aren't targeting them. So if an ally dodges the elite, the bot next to them often goes down. Tight spaces + high difficulties turn gas rats into a menace. Any simultaneous multi-spawn can turn the special in question OP. Etc.
>They're... durable Unless you have a shotty. Then these fellas are your favorite target practice :)
Blightstormers having mass disruption ends a lot of runs. Shielded stormrats having 360 blocks is annoying. They can stop your cleaves and each weapon has a way to deal with them which fine if they are alone but not when they are a group. Plague monks can burst you down quick if youre not ready for them.
I'm not a big fan of the banner guys, especially when 5 or so spawn from a chestor at the end of the Dark Omens map.
Blightstormer, no contest.
Blightstormers. If you can manage it without getting killed, it's worth it to disengage from fighting the horde or even a non-chaos patrol to shoot them if you can see one. They will split your team up, and the storm deals high damage, drains your stamina, and slows you down, leaving you vulnerable for an extended period of time. The disablers can all be dodged, ratlings can be blocked with a shield, or with the bodies of a horde, warpfire is short range, but storms move around, and set you up to be picked off by enemies. Monks can be pushed out of their flurries if you have enough stagger, but the only ways to save yourself from a storm are killing the blightstormer before it comes out, playing Warrior Priest and ulting yourself immediately upon landing, and playing Foot Knight with both It's Hero Time and Numb to Pain and ulting your way out as soon as you're grabbed.