(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); Alright, I'm copy and pasting. I don't want to go through the effort of explaining this (along with a lot of other mechanics). This is really good and useful information and I feel you all should know about it if you get far enough into this thread. If you dislike Riley (the dog), then read further. I do not take credit for these findings and information. I give full credit to the guy that put effort into this, unlike TmarTn.

Also, I put something in bold for ResistTheSun to read. Though, I'm sure he'll find it somewhere in this thread lol.

Credits:
You must login or register to view this content.

Original Thread:
denkirson.proboards.com/thread/6756/ballistic-vests-call-duty-ghosts

Some references he's worked with:
denkirson.proboards.com/thread/3455 by fred
callofduty.wikia.com/wiki/Ballistic_Vests
docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AlLq9YAWClZPdGJHdjJ2aElXNFBYV2VoMm1XUmRuZ 3c#gid=0 by Corpsecreate and Pwnsweet
denkirson.proboards.com/thread/6723/ghosts-damage-multipliers by Marvel4

---



With Infinity Ward's latest Call of Duty title, the ballistic vests have made a return. They had some pretty specific mechanics in mw3, but a lot of things are different now.

For starters, even though it's still a support streak, it now takes you 8 kills rather than 5 to earn vests.

Now, if you thrown down a stack of vests it'll disappear in 90 seconds. Also, the stack of vests consists out of 4 vests now and will vanish once someone has taken the last one.



Some of the good stats first:

Ballistic vests will add 150 armour points to people that pick them up. When you see a name hoover over someones head, someone wearing vests will have a small emblem there to show this to you. If you're dealt exactly 150 damage, the vest will fade from your screen after roughly a second. This is purely a visual thing, the mw3 thing where the last point of armour would infinitely absorb any damage source is not present anymore.

You will find that vests absorb 100% of the damage thrown at them, however for each source of damage 1 damage will 'bleed' through (I can not confirm for shotguns if it will bleed 1 damage per pellet or per shot). As an example I will state the following, know that the Ameli deals 50 damage up close and the AK-12 does 49. If someone is wearing a vest, and gets shot by the Ameli three times, only the first two bullets will show a vest hitmarker. If you shoot twice with the Ameli and then one more bullet from an AK-12, you will see three hitmarkers. This would also mean 3 damage bleeds through to your actual health, and will regen over time.

Vests will protect you from some unexpected things. It seems as though dogs deal roughly the same amount of damage as is the normal amount of health. Thus in core gamemodes with 100 health, if you're wearing a vest you will survive 2 jumps from a dog before it kills you in a third jump. If you play a custom game and set health to double (200) however, a dog will destroy your vest in one attack and kill you the next. Then strangely for Touch Football or miniscule (30) health, you would expect the vest to absorb 5 attacks. However for some strange reason it will let you survive 6 (!) attacks by Riley before the vest is destroyed and he will then shred you to bits. If you look back at the example in the previous paragraph. If you're dealt 149 damage and your vest still has 1 armour point remaining, you will still be able to survive one attack from a dog.

Though I'm told the official guide for ghosts tells otherwise, vests will also make you survive explosives such as c4, frags and ieds.

Ignoring the dog anomaly, in Touch Football the vests seem to work exactly the same as in core. Therefore in HC ballistic vests are even more amazing as they are in core. Effectively making you live through 5 times additional damage. However since there is no health regeneration, the single damage values that bleed through can in rare cases make an impact.



Now some of the downsides or counters to the ballistic vests:

You are not protected from bullets to the head or the neck. You can go prone and let a dog attack you front on, or have explosives go off next to your head and the vests will deal with that all fine and dandy, but a few well aimed bullets can still get you killed quickly. Thankfully Call of Duty is more of an "aim for the chest" kind of game, but it's still something to be aware off.

Next, armour piercing bullets completely ignore your vests. If you ever run into a full party running this streak, now you finally have a reason to run this attachment.

Wearing body armour does not in any way influence or absorb fall damage. Though in a positive light at least this means that fall damage will not take away your armour.

You will see a vest hitmarker when knifing someone, however they will still get instantly killed. I believe this is the case for a few more things such as the throwing knife or the kastet, however in most situations when these hitmarkers are seen, the target will survive the damage. Also, when you hit someone to the head/neck, or when you're using the armour piercing attachment, you won't see such a hitmarker.

Melee with riotshield will still kill in 2 hits, regardless of wearing vests.

I'd like to state that though the ballistic vests are incredibly powerful and easily one of the best streaks in the game, there are still a few things you can do against them. Shotguns up close are still capable of outputting enough damage to kill you in one or two shots. A sniper bullet to the head will still be frustrating as always. Still, for all other weapons being able to survive one more bullet can make the difference and these vests are definitely going to help you with that.



Now to illustrate some things through examples. I mainly used the Ameli and AK-12 since they conveniently deal 50 and 49 damage up close respectively, however to keep it clear I'll just specify damage per shot in the examples below. Also know that a 9-bang will deal exactly 1 damage. Some of these examples may seem a bit redundant or double tested, however I placed them here to hopefully help people understand how the damage bleeding mechanic comes to effect. Also note that these first examples may lead you to believe you can take between 246 and 249 damage, however a K7 at range deals only 15 damage so it would be able to get 9 damage to bleed through the vest. So you can say that in a way you'll be able to withstand between 241 and 249 damage. Ironically with this example of the K7 dealing only 15 damage, you would only deal 240 damage with 16 hits which still makes it a 17 hit kill. Further testing has shown me that there is not a single weapon in the game where damage bleeding will make a difference when only one gun is involved in any of the minimum or maximum weapon damage values. However, during the damage drops or when multiple people are firing at the same target bleeding can still affect results.

In Core:
Deal 149 (50+50+49) damage + 100 (50+50) damage, target dies.
Deal 149 (50+50+49) damage, regenerate and then 100 damage and the target will live.
Deal 148 (50+49+49) damage + 100 damage, target dies.
Deal 148 (50+49+49) damage + 99 damage, target dies.
Deal 148 (50+49+49) damage + 98 damage, target will live.
Deal 148 (50+49+49) damage, regenerate and then 100 damage and the target will live.
Deal 147 (49+49+49) damage + 100 damage, target dies.
Deal 147 (49+49+49) damage + 99 damage, target will live.
Deal 147 (49+49+49) damage + 98 damage, target will live.
Deal 245 (35+35+35+35+35+35+35) damage, target will live.
Deal 245 (35+35+35+35+35+35+35) damage + 9-bang, target dies.
Deal 235 (50+50+50+50+35) damage + direct impact 9-bang, target dies.
Deal 150 (50+50+50) damage, regenerate and then 85 (50+35) damage + direct impact 9 - bang, target will die. (for some reason during one of these tests this lead to an assisted suicide, though I was unable to recreate it)

In Touch Football:
Deal 175 (35+35+35+35+35) damage + 9-bang and the target will die, note that the first four bullets are within the vests 150 range, so four bullets are bleeding through on damage. Effectively this means you deal 179 damage and the 9-bang finishes the deal. As expected when doing the same test, but pausing after four shots and letting the bullet indicators fade away still leads to the same result because there is no health regeneration in this game mode.



I also figured I would put the trivia I found on the wiki for ballistic vests to the test, since a lot of things have changed (a few things I can not confirm since I haven't played certain Call of Duty titles):

When acquiring the Ballistic Vests, the sound file when acquiring a Sentry Gun from Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 is heard.
Maybe?

Though an infinite amount can be taken from it, the bag of vests will disappear after several minutes, regardless of if they were used or not. The bag will burst into flames and disappear, which also happens when the Ballistic Vest duffel bag is destroyed by enemies.
You can only take 4 vests from a stack.

Players can easily destroy their own bag of Ballistic Vests by knifing them.
Correct.

Players may only pick up one Ballistic Vest per duffel bag per life.
Partly correct. If you earn a new stack of vests yourself, you can not grab a new vest from that if you're still alive since you grabbed the last one. You can however take new vests from a teammates stack.

Excluding the perks granted from the Specialist strike package, the Ballistic Vests are the only killstreak/pointstreak reward that the player can use when an enemy EMP is active.
The EMP reward has been removed, however Ground Jammer (being an absolutely useless streak) does not affect vests. KEM strikes will destroy them however.

Even though it is possible to pick up more than one Ballistic Vest at a time via different Ballistic Vest Duffel Bags, the effects do not stack.
Correct.

If a player is wearing a Ballistic Vest then obtains a Juggernaut or Juggernaut Recon, the Vest will disappear and can not be obtained when wearing Juggernaut armor.
Correct.

The yellow tint around the player's screen while using the Ballistic Vest is the same tint used with the Painkiller Deathstreak in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.
Who cares?

Knifing an enemy that is wearing a Ballistic Vest still causes instant death.
Correct.

While the player is near death (screen flashing red) in Touch Football mode, they can pick up a vest and "regain" health as well as the extra hit points the vest itself gives.
If I had to guess this was never correct in mw3, incorrect.

It is possible to survive being stuck with a semtex with the Ballistic Vest on.
Incorrect.

Ballistic Vests can be destroyed by a Trophy System.
Incorrect.

There is sometimes a glitch where dropping the bag of vests in a corner causes the vests to be unobtainable, rendering the pointstreak useless.
Correct.

If the player uses their knife when the Ballistic Vest duffel bag is in their hands, they will appear to melee with the bag in third-person.
Incorrect.



Random findings:
Completing field orders not only earns you a care package and ammo refill, it is also the only way to restock on lethal and tactical equipment.
Direct impact of certain lethals & tacticals still deals 15 damage and though you might expect otherwise, a full charged 9-bang will still only deal 1 damage.
Knifing would not work while you're sliding and knifing, despite the animation. After the patch that hit consoles 22-11 this seems to be (mostly) fixed though.

^_^ a reason why I run these bad boys and even more deadly in HC like in MW3.
Also hope this puts to bed the whole idea of armour piercing bullets increase your damage output.
Also changed how these work before it just added 25 health to you now it adds another 50 O-o
I was going to make a post on this information soon but you beat me !

Poor K7

Yes, the K7's minimum damage is a let down. Though if I ever lose a gun fight far range and happen to die from all seven bullets, I will bow my head.

Yeah oh well sort of sucks these vests had been nerfed, 8 points now not 5.
To be fair I abused the hell out of these on MW3 for good reason.

or you can just turn up the volume so you can hear the dogs, and just shoot them in the face after you kill the enemy. i dont understand why people always complain about the dogs they arent hard to kill.

Best wishes to you when you kill someone and hear a dog around the corner.

well try not jumping in like rambo, i know COD is fast paced... wont kill you to slow down a bit, not to mention camping is really bad in this COD.

unload everything in its face, whenever you get within close proximity of a enemy dog it barks, so you can hear them.