News - Is The Ninja Vest Any Good Warzone 2. Full Breakdown
This is the Ninja Vest and Diving.
Ninja vest basics
Right in, let's have a look at what this is meant to do based on the description, and then we'll actually get into the detailed testing that I've done with this. The first thing it states is that it eliminates footstep sound, so it's essentially a replacement for covert sneakers.
There it also states that you're immune to movement reduction effects, and it doesn't go into any more detail there, so that's where a lot of our testing today is going to be going. It also mentions that you get a bonus shuriken and throwing knife, assuming you're using those in your class, and you're able to resupply both the shuriken and the throwing knife every 25 seconds.
It doesn't work for any other equipment, though only for those two specifically, and then, of course, finally, it states that duplicate effects don't stack, so if you're using covert sneakers, it doesn't stack with this, and instead you'll gain the effect of running sneakers. If you try to combine these two together, and that's just a normal thing that we see with many of the vests that have a perk that overlaps with a piece of gear, now finally something else that's worth mentioning with this vest is that it does block off the gloves category, so you can't use a glove perk.
No glove perk?
With this, which you might be a little confused about because when they released the road map for season 2, this is an image that I screen-grabbed from that blog post, and it clearly states to get three gear slots, gloves, boots, and gear, so initially I thought this was a bug, but I went back to that blog post and it looks like they amended that and it no longer states that you get gloves, so that seems to confirm that this is in fact intentional, and they either pivoted on this because they thought the ninja vest would be too powerful and too overused, or whoever typed that out initially just made a mistake.
Assassin vest bug
Also, just a super quick note here on the topic of restrictions that are unexpected. With a vest, a lot of you guys have noticed since the launch of season 2 that the Assassin vest no longer allows you to use lethal equipment. Sledgehammer has confirmed this is a bug, and they do have a fixed schedule for this, so it shouldn't take too long before we're able to use lethals again when using the Assassin vest.
Ninja vest vs covert sneakers footstep audio
And with those basics out of the way, let's dive into the actual testing with this. The first thing I wanted to test was the footstep audio. I was just curious to see if this is exactly like covert sneakers or if it performs somehow differently from that. First, I'm going to be playing a clip where the enemy has covert sneakers, and then we'll fade straight into a clip where the enemy is using the ninja vest. Instead so if you have a decent audio setup and you were listening very carefully there doesn't appear to be any apparent difference between covert sneakers and the ninja vest when it comes to making you quieter, now with both of these if you pay really close attention you can hear a little bit of the enemy players's gear wrestling around as they move, but you don't hear the footsteps themselves and these appear to be identical, also keep in mind I was using bone conduction headset just to make it a little easier so you could actually hear what was going on so it isolates those sounds better but just like with covert sneakers bone conduction will not be a counter to the ninja vest you won't be able to suddenly hear their footsteps it just makes it slightly easier to isolate certain sounds, so there we go that's the footstep part out of the way and on honestly no surprises here it's identical to covert sneakers , now let's get into the immunity to movement reduction effects.
Movement penalty immunity?
Since they were quite vague on this, this could apply to a wide variety of things. The first thing that I thought of was the stun grenade, and I went ahead and did the testing here, and I noticed that when I was using the ninja vest. I wasn't getting slowed down much, if at all, when hit by a stun grenade.
You would still see the visual stun effects, but the movement was totally fine. However, when I tested without the ninja vest, I ran into the exact same situation. Keeping in mind that I wasn't using a Tac mask in either of these situations. After that, the tear gas will also slow your movement speed down, and in this case.
I made sure I wasn't using the Tac mask as well, just to isolate things a little bit here and there with or without the ninja vest. It seems to slow you down the exact same amount, so it doesn't have any apparent impact on the tear gas. Then I thought about the hollow point ammunition, where if you shoot somebody in the legs without the ninja vest, it will stop you from sprinting.
Now it no longer has that crazy stun effect that it used to have, but it will still stop you from sprinting or tack sprinting. However when you're using the ninja vest this is one area where finally it does something, hollow point ammunition will not stop you from sprinting, if you're using the ninja vest and there we go that's at least one benefit we get there from moving effects, and then finally something I was interested in testing since this vest seems to be geared toward like Melee players especially with like the shuriken and throwing knife being on there something that many melee players like to use is a riot shield on their back and a while back I think this was with the launch of season 1 they added a movement penalty if you have the riot shield on your back and so I wanted to see if maybe this eliminates that movement speed penalty when using a riot shield, and it turns out no it doesn't have any impact on that the riot shield will still be slowing you down just like if you weren't using the ninja vest .
Extra shuriken & throwing knife
And there we go. That's pretty much it when it comes to the Ninja Vest as far as things that required testing.
Is the ninja vest any good?
When it comes to my thoughts on this vest, I really like the addition of it simply because it opens up the boot category and allows you to branch outside of the covert sneakers. Now as for whether or not I'm going to use the ninja vest, probably not on most classes; however, if I have a really niche class setup where I really want to use stalker boots, for instance, then yes.
I will likely use that combined with the ninja vest so I can still have quiet footsteps, but now I can strafe a little bit faster, so in a way, it is nice they added this vest because it allows us to use some of the other boots, but it doesn't address the core issue there.
Footstep balance still needs work.
And this is where I wanted to sort of address this topic.
