Toggle Escapes and Dead Angles

Now, I'm sure most of you know that toggle escapes and dead angles have been used for a long time in Dark Souls PvP. The thing is, does anyone know exactly how they function?

We already know how some other glitchy phenomena function- lagstabs occur because BSing is client based, so as long as they got the BS on their screen it doesn't matter if they weren't anywhere near your back on your screen.

However, I'm curious as to how Dead Angles and Toggle Escapes come about.

From reading online, Dead angles occur because the game detects block if the hit lands in front of you and the hit lands on their shield, but does not detect block if you are attacking behind you and the hit crosses their body while also landing on their shield. I'm not sure if this is entirely accurate, since some claymore/scythe attacks seem to need to hit marginally to your side (not behind you) while in motion to dead angle. I would like to know if anyone has additionally detailed explanations on this.

Toggle escapes on the other hand seem not to have a common explanation. I assume it is similar to how the dragon head glitch used to work, but I'm stumped as to how it functions.

Is there anyone familiar with video game testing who can carry out experiments to determine through inductive reasoning exactly how these two PVP-centric glitches occur? I know that the forum doesn't allow glitching discussion, but these two features in particular are so central to pvp, don't blatantly unbalance the game, and are so commonly discussed here anyway (search dead angle/toggle escape) that I assume they generally aren't regarded as glitches.

You're right about dead angles.

As I understand it Toggle escaping isn't really a glitch, by initiating the toggle as you're hit you replace the stun animation with the toggle animation, which ends more quickly and so allows you to move and so escape. The toggle animation has a higher priority, if you will.

Like Pirate said, the game prioritizes your toggle animation over the stagger animation. Try this in PvE: Jump from a cliff, try to switch weapon mid-air and then hit roll button right as you hit ground. Normally you would roll as you hit the ground, but like in toggle escape, you will switch weapon and continue running/walking normally without staggering or rolling.

Dead angles work just like you described. I don't really know how to convince you about it.

Forum Pirate wrote:
As I understand it Toggle escaping isn't really a glitch, by initiating the toggle as you're hit you replace the stun animation with the toggle animation, which ends more quickly and so allows you to move and so escape. The toggle animation has a higher priority, if you will.

FinPeku wrote:Like Pirate said, the game prioritizes your toggle animation over the stagger animation. Try this in PvE: Jump from a cliff, try to switch weapon mid-air and then hit roll button right as you hit ground. Normally you would roll as you hit the ground, but like in toggle escape, you will switch weapon and continue running/walking normally without staggering or rolling.

Really? I didn't know that, that's pretty cool. So that's why it's only practical for long staggers, isn't it? Because for short staggers it wouldn't matter anyway, since you're still eating the hit and roughly stunned for the same amount of time anyway.

FinPeku wrote:
Dead angles work just like you described. I don't really know how to convince you about it.

I want to know more about the deductive/inductive process that was used to arrive at this conclusion.

Yeah, for 0 poise a dagger or 2h scimtar is the bane of their excistance. Unless you have low enough poise for every hit to stun though (and even then for slower weapons), you'll get free naturaly in a couple hits even with faster weapons.

There are some weapons that have infinite stunlock though (as long as the attacker has stamina.) Shotel and murakumo for example.

Meh I hope both get fixed by DkS 2. Both are glitches in my opinion. Infinite stunlock should be fixed as well.

Wait dead angling should work if I hit you by the side or the back while you have the shield up. Shields should only work for front attacks.

Dead angle.

Basically the game is too lazy to detect the angle between the players and compare it to the angle the blocker is facing, so instead just compares the angle both players are facing.

It can't be a glitch in your opinion, it is or isn't a glitch. Its your belief that it is a glitch.

I like stunlocks, especially as they're escape-able. Its a means of offsetting the slow swing spead or high mobility of heavy weapons/lightish armor.

Saturday-Saint wrote:Basically the game is too lazy to detect the angle between the players and compare it to the angle the blocker is facing, so instead just compares the angle both players are facing.

I would thank you... but I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Couldja explain it a bit better?

FinPeku wrote:Like Pirate said, the game prioritizes your toggle animation over the stagger animation. Try this in PvE: Jump from a cliff, try to switch weapon mid-air and then hit roll button right as you hit ground. Normally you would roll as you hit the ground, but like in toggle escape, you will switch weapon and continue running/walking normally without staggering or rolling.

Actually, now that I come to think of it, if the game prioritizes your toggle over your stagger, how come there actually has to be a timing to execute it properly?

It would seem to imply that the game only prioritizes toggle over stagger some of the time. If so... what's the basis for this? Why is this point in the stagger so different or significant that the game chooses to allow you to prioritize toggle over stagger only then?

Toggling too early obviously doesn't work, and toggling later just allows you to switch out weapons as per normal. It's puzzling. In any case, does anyone know why or have any hypotheses as to why the toggle escape window is the way it is?

Since everyone and their mothers like to use greatswords in the forest and I've been practicing toggle-escape parries I'll talk about the toggle-escapes. To land the toggle-escape there is a certain time to hit it, but it's not really that bad. I've personally found that it is the exact moment you get hit, but a better method is to toggle at the moment you get hit and then toggle again. This has worked 100% of the time for me on UGS's and GS's - can't speak for lighter weapons.

An explanation I can give for the prioritization of toggling over most other things is that it is one of the simplest mechanics in the game opposed to getting hit (hitboxes and collision mechanics) or falling (see getting hit). While coding the game, I assume they prioritized toggling over other things for the reason of simplicity.

The Letter X wrote:An explanation I can give for the prioritization of toggling over most other things is that it is one of the simplest mechanics in the game opposed to getting hit (hitboxes and collision mechanics) or falling (see getting hit). While coding the game, I assume they prioritized toggling over other things for the reason of simplicity.

But the thing is that toggling only takes priority if you catch the correct timing after the hit. I find it's about a fraction of a second after a normal GS hit (say claymore). If you miss the timing (too early) you suffer hitstun as per normal and your weapon switch is delayed. If you miss the timing (too late) your weapon switch is also delayed.

I'm curious as to why this happens, while no other timing works. Maybe the character enters some kind of state and exits it, and during this process toggle is prioritized? I don't know, just throwing random ideas out there.

If we could find out for sure, it would help a load with getting the timing down for faster weapons (knuckles, falchions, etc) which I've been finding difficulty toggle escaping.

I really think there are three components to getting staggered. When you first take the hit and get staggered, the animation of getting staggered, and the finishing or stopping point of the stagger. When you first get hit, the coding's job is already done. When you're in the stagger animation, there is "dead area" that only serves a purpose to get you to the end product of the stagger animation. Now this last component is different, I think the way it was implemented into the game was that it was completely unable to be overrided by anything else until that animation is complete.

In those dead areas and initial stagger animation on the other hand, I think can be overrided since they are leading up to something more important. And I think this important thing is the mechanic that allows stunlock. I hope that is a good explanation for why there are only certain windows.

WyrmHero wrote:Meh I hope both get fixed by DkS 2. Both are glitches in my opinion. Infinite stunlock should be fixed as well.

Yes, I agree they should fix that but fix it differently depending on the weapon and how much poise the person has.

They should make it where having higher dex makes you stunned for a smaller frame of time, letting you dodge out of the attacks.

Str should boost your base poise? Like if you have 50 str it takes 2-3 hits with a dagger to stagger you naked, and 1-2 hits with a longsword, and small axes/maces should make you flinch just a little bit like a mace would just make your head would get smacked down and then you can easily block/dodge the next attack and axes would chop you and make you flinch to the side just a little bit for barely enough time to dodge the next attack. For greatswords and poking halberds, the person getting stunlocked should stagger back everytime you hit him until he/she is out of your attack range. For Huge weapons like UGS and such, after 2-5 hits depending on how much poise the person has, the person getting stunlocked would fly back from the sheer force and if they hit a wall, tree, etc they would take some damage, the people with medium poise would fly back but not as far and then the people with high poise would just stagger back out of the weapon's attack range.

Here is an old info-graphic I made explaining Dead-Angles:

I really should get around to updating this to look better. Open in new tab, if unable to see the entire image.

What people have been saying about toggle-escape is correct. It's simply a higher priority animation. Every time you get hit, the game chooses what animation you go into, if any at all. If I recall correctly, the staggers that lead into being floored has highest priority, followed by the kick stagger, then weapon switch, and finally by the other weapon staggers. I conjecture that the reason the knock-downs have highest priority is because it acts by the same mechanic a backstab does. A similar thing with animation priorities occurs for the instant-block where the lowering of the shield takes higher priority than the block-stun of a hit.

i personally think that toggling out is a glitch but i guess we'll never know since FROM never discussing stuff like that. im with wyr, on this stunocking thing, the most you should get stunned with a large weapon should be two, maybe three and small weapons shouldnt be able to stunlock, just like they do now actually.

OrnsteinBro wrote:I would thank you... but I have absolutely no idea what you mean. Couldja explain it a bit better?

Sorry, I linked to the wrong URL. Try this: https://i.imgur.com/slHha.jpg