I mean, yeah, we can all see them. Metal plate helms with chainmail underneath.
But did you know these are not just cosmetic adornments? Chaos raiders actually take LESS DAMAGE if you shoot them in the noggin.
Shoot them in the torso for reasonable damage.
Tested this with the long bow, swift bow, and repeater handgun. Headshot damage was between 7-10. Body shot damage was between 25-50.
Posted Jun 25, 2021, 8:00 PM UTC
It used to make the heavy armor 'dink' when you hit them in the head in beta (or just an early patch? I can't remember)
I think their helmet was heavier armor back then though.
I found it very confusing when they took that away.
That would be nice feedback, there's no real way to tell. You might otherwise just think they are very tanky or you messed up the headshot.
I agree. It looked like an executioner hood to me so i just figured they were extra tanky so i made sure to go for the head...
Thor would be proud
Not sure if this is satire or an actual attempt at giving advice.
I'll go for the latter. Ideally everyone who plays this game long enough would eventually learn this but TBH I thought the same thing as well for quite a while. My thought process was "oh so they are just a thicker marauder, since those guys also have thick helmets but almost no armor on the body."
I started playing ~2 weeks ago and I thought you had to target their heads as well. I figured everyone's heads is their weak point.
I'm glad OP posted this!
Some melee weapons have big headshot modifiers, like the exe sword and engineer hammer (a headshot is a oneshot even on high difficulties), so they actually get better damage on headshots (although not too much). Ranged weapons with conservative shooter still get ammo back, but also do less damage.
Moral of the story, don’t worry about hitting maulers on the head unless using exe sword/engineer hammer or a ranged weapon with conservative shooter.
Are you trying to kill the thing or save your ammo? I'd say spend the ammo to kill him faster rather than risk a more difficult shot just to have to take another shot but this time against a moving target because he's aggro'ed.
Yeah I have 500 hours in and I just learned this sort of by accident. You don't see damage numbers in actual gameplay so it's not super obvious in normal combat situations.
My friends and I call them hotdogs
Bucketheads.
Yeah Maulers have Super Armor on their heads, same armor that Chaos Warriors do.
Mind you, with headshot bonuses and high armor piercing, there's a large amount of weapons that still do more damage against the head than the body.
Yeah I found it super weird that a handgun (that does more damage to armor than flesh) could 1 shot them with a body shot but not with a headshot.
Not the real question is, do you get more damage for headshots with power vs armor properties?
Witch hunter crits go brrr
Just depends on the weapon and class, whether you want to go for the head. Whc can still one shot them with a critical headshot, for example.
Right, but that doesn't have anything to do with the damage profile of his weapon. You could hit him with the weakest melee attack you have, but as long as it's a crit headshot you'll kill him.
I love one shotting elites with a rapier light attack.
With longbow, I usually go for the head first. It'll kill them on a crit, and if not, it'll stagger them and the second shot goes to the body, killing them for sure.
Unless your weapon has the armor piercing trait. Then you are better to hit the head.
Not necessarily. Handgun does more damage to armor than flesh but still ends up doing more damage to body than head.
Hmm, yeah you are right.
It defo feels the way to go with melee weapons though. Its a shame there isnt a mauler training dummy.
Totally depends on the range and build. Huntsman with headshot damage and handgun? Go for head. BH with BOP? Body shot.
swift bow lol
I knew my tactic of aiming directly at the centre of mass and shooting way too many bullets into them was valid, beyond making them fly away like in a cartoon.
Maulers. Not that the characters ever call them that, but the game calls them Maulers, so that's what you find in the breakpoint calculator and stuff.
And yeah, they're armored on the head, and infantry in the torso, but you do still get the headshot bonus damage and stagger if you hit the head, so for a lot of weapons it's still best to go for the headshot.
Plus saving ammo with conservative shooter.
You can build a handgun to one-shot them on the body in legend difficulty. It won't however one-shot them if you shoot them in the head. So while it might be nice to get your bullet back with conservative shooter, it's probably less efficient to take a more difficult shot for less damage. At best it takes you twice as long to kill them. More likely you'll aggro them and have to shoot a moving target. At worst you miss because it's a smaller target and you aggro them anyway.
Sorry they're called chaos_raider in the code and in the monster spawner mod so that's what I went with.
I usually just try to kill them, which is better than staggering IMO, especially when there's four or five of them.
Man, I really wish there were call-outs for the Maulers like every other elite. Stormvermin, Chaos Warriors, Bestigors, Plague Monks and even Savages all get called out but not the big lad with the axe.
Maybe the call-outs could hint that they've got less armour on their stomachs, like "An Azdumi! Go for its belly!"
I believe most of the characters call them rothelms. Occasionally I hear them call out armoured rothelm which would be a CW.
I thought rothelm exclusively referred to chaos warriors but I could be wrong. I do know that when you highlight maulers the character you're playing as won't say anything, unlike other elites.
Rothelm, Scunner, Kazaki-Dum and Chaos Warriors are all the big armored guys. I don't think there are callouts for these guys.
However, they did just recently fix patrol callouts! So maybe we'll get some for this enemy as well?
Plus conservative shooter, etc.