Krak Grenade Suicide Bombing

The Problem

A common in game experience: you stick a krak grenade to a melee enemy, and instead of standing there and dying, the enemy immediately rushes toward you, closing the distance so that when the krak detonates, you eat your own grenade's splash damage. In extreme cases, your own krak kills you. It feels like the AI is intentionally suicide bombing you with your own grenade.

The AI is not doing this on purpose. There is no code in any enemy's behavior tree that detects krak grenades, sticky grenades, or explosive attachment. What's actually happening is the standard RangeThreat recovery system, the krak grenade's impact damage triggers the enemy's ranged threat detection, and for melee enemies, the ranged recovery response is almost always a gap-closing attack (charge, leap, sprint, burrow). The enemy is doing exactly what it always does when shot from range — it rushes the shooter. The krak grenade's fuse delay just means the enemy arrives on top of you right as the grenade detonates.

How It Works

1. Krak grenade sticks to enemy — the impact/stick registers as ranged damage (dmgtypeexplosive, defaultDamageScale = 120, abilityType = equipmentkrakgrenade)

2. RangeThreat knowledge module detects the damage — if it exceeds the enemy's threshold within the time window, RangeThreat is set on the blackboard with the thrower as the source

3. Recovery system fires — the recovery behavior tree interrupts whatever the enemy was doing

4. Melee enemy's ranged recovery = gap-closer — the recovery response for most melee enemies is to charge, leap, or sprint toward the RangeThreat source (you)

5. Enemy closes distance during fuse delay — by the time the krak detonates, the enemy is in melee range

6. Krak splash hits you — you take damage from your own grenade

Affected Enemies

High Risk (Aggressive Gap-Closers)

Low Risk (No Gap-Closer in Recovery)

Note on Hormagaunts: They have no recovery system, so krak grenades don't change their behavior. However, they were ALREADY running at you — the krak suicide bomb effect still happens, it's just not triggered by the grenade. They were coming regardless.

Safe Krak Techniques

The key insight: you need to prevent the enemy from executing its gap-closer recovery during the krak fuse delay. Any stagger, stun, or incap that lasts longer than the fuse delay prevents the rush.

Technique 1: Gun Strike → Krak → Detonate

1. Wait for a gun strike prompt (enemy in melee range, staggered, or incapped)

2. Throw the krak grenade to stick it

3. Immediately trigger the gun strike — this staggers the enemy for a significant duration

4. The enemy is locked in the stagger animation while the krak fuse burns down

5. Krak detonates while the enemy is still staggered — they had no opportunity to gap-close

This requires patience and setup but is the safest method. The gun strike stagger duration exceeds the krak fuse, so the enemy never gets to execute its recovery.

Technique 2: Krak During Attack Animations

Throw the krak while the enemy is committed to an attack animation with DisableInterruptions active. A few examples of attack sequences that set this flag, which prevents the recovery system from interrupting:

• During turret mode on the Ranged Terminator, interruptions are disabled during turret fire

• During Crazed Combo on Helbrute's Phase 2 while he is committed to the multi-hit sequence

• During Circular Saw on Tzaangor Spearman while they are committed to the spin

Technique 3: Team Stagger Chain

1. Player A throws the krak

2. Player B immediately hits the enemy with a heavy melee attack or another grenade to trigger a stagger

3. The stagger prevents the recovery gap-closer

4. Krak detonates while staggered

This works well against enemies with long grenade stagger durations (2s for most elites).

Technique 4: Krak at Maximum Range

Many gap-closer attacks have range limits:

• Tyranid Warrior Jump Attack has a max range on the leap

• Melee Terminator Gap-Closer has a max range of 20m

• Carnifex Charge needs a traversable path to the target

Throwing the krak from beyond the enemy's gap-closer range means even if recovery fires, the gap-closer can't reach you before detonation. This is especially effective against enemies with shorter recovery ranges.

Technique 5: Krak + Immediate Dodge Behind Cover

Throw the krak and immediately break line of sight. Many recovery gap-closers require:

• Vision to the target (BhvNodeDecoratorCheckVisionToActor)

• Path to the target (BhvNodeDecoratorCheckPath)

If you're behind cover when the recovery fires, the gap-closer may fail its vision/path check and the enemy stalls.

Non-Aggro'd Enemies

A common instinct: "the enemy is fighting my teammate, I'll krak it from behind while it's distracted." This is actually still dangerous.

The RangeThreat system sets the damage source (you) as the threat target. The recovery then executes BhvNodeSetEnemy = RangeThreat, which force-swaps aggro to you. The gap-closer then targets you specifically.

So krakking an enemy that's fighting a teammate:

1. Triggers RangeThreat with you as the source

2. Force-swaps aggro from your teammate to you

3. The enemy can still charges/leaps directly at you with the krak attached

4. Arrives on top of you right as it detonates

This is worst case scenario because the enemy not only kills you, but your teammate loses their engagement and potentially any contested health they may have been expecting to regenerate during their engagement with that enemy.

Exception: Enemies with no RangeThreat module (Hormagaunts, Termagants, Cultists) don't aggro swap from krak damage. They stay on their current target.

Per-Enemy Timing Notes

Melee Occult Terminator (Extreme Risk)

• Grenade stagger duration: 2s

• Recovery gap-closer range: 20m with Endurance + standby shooting

• Safe window: Krak during heavy hit stagger (0.1s is too short — use grenades for 2s). Gun strike setup is ideal.

• Avoid: Raw krak throw from range. The Terminator sprints at you with Endurance AND shoots while approaching.

Lictor (Very High Risk)

• Recovery gap-closers: Blink Strike (teleport), Side Jump Attack

• Safe window: During vanish animation (if active), or while incapped. The Lictor's teleport-based gap-closers are nearly impossible to avoid with distance alone.

• Avoid: Krak at any range without stagger — the Blink Strike ignores distance.

Tyranid Warrior (High Risk)

• RangeThreat threshold: 1 damage (any hit triggers it)

• Recovery gap-closers: Jump Attack, Combo Slash

• Safe window: During their own attack animations, or gun strike setup. The 1-damage threshold means the krak stick alone triggers recovery instantly.

Chaos Spawn (High Risk)

• RangeThreat threshold: 1 damage

• Recovery gap-closers: Variant-dependent (Beast combo, Tentacle gapcloser, Warp Hole)

• Safe window: During block stance (if shielded variant), or when already in melee recovery. The Crab variant's block may absorb the krak stick without triggering range recovery.

Krak Value Ranking

All data is for Absolute (hardest) difficulty. Krak grenades deal dmgtypeexplosive with defaultDamageScale = 120. On Absolute, the SCALEGRENADEABILITYTYPEDAMAGETOENEMIES modifier (bonus 220, PERCENTMULT) scales this to 384 base damage. Final damage = 384 × enemy's dmgtype_explosive sensitivity.

The ranking uses an efficiency score based on three factors:

• Damage dealt as a percentage of the enemy's HP (higher = better)

• Overkill waste — damage beyond the enemy's HP is wasted potential

• Resistance waste — enemies with low explosive sensitivity waste your krak's damage potential

The ideal krak target takes close to 100% of its HP from a single krak — zero waste in either direction.

S Tier — Best Krak Targets

A Tier — Good Krak Targets

B Tier — Acceptable but Wasteful

C Tier — Mostly Wasteful

F Tier — Never Krak These

Key Takeaways

1. Zoanthrope is the perfect krak target — 96% HP from one krak with zero overkill. One follow-up bullet kills it. If you have a krak and see a Zoanthrope, use it.

1. Lesser Sorcerer is the highest-priority krak kill — the #1 kill target in Chaos encounters dies to one krak (107%). The 7% overkill is negligible for instantly removing the enemy that revives Rubric Marines.

1. Extremis enemies at 1.0x are the sweet spot — Lictors, Raveners, Terminators all take 384 damage (74% HP). Meaningful damage without overkill, on enemies that are actually threatening.

1. Majoris enemies are acceptable but wasteful — one-shot kills on 280-308 HP enemies, but 25-37% of the krak's damage is wasted as overkill. Use kraks on Majoris only when you need the instant delete (e.g., a Chaos Spawn mid-charge, a Warrior about to grab a teammate).

1. Never krak Terminus enemies — the best case is Neurothrope at 6.3% HP. The worst is Trygon at 1.3%. Every krak thrown at a Terminus enemy is a krak NOT thrown at a Zoanthrope or Lesser Sorcerer. The Carnifex is the worst trap — it's big and scary but the krak does 4% of its HP AND triggers an Endurance-buffed charge.

1. The efficiency sweet spot is 360-520 HP at 1.0x — this is where kraks deliver 74-107% of an enemy's HP without excessive overkill or resistance waste.

Why Hormagaunts Still Kill You

Hormagaunts have no RangeThreat system, the krak grenade doesn't change their behavior at all. They don't gap-close BECAUSE of the krak; they were already sprinting at you. The "suicide bomb" effect with Hormagaunts is pure coincidence, they're always closing distance, and the krak just happens to detonate when they arrive.

Game Files

• {SERVER}/ssl/weapons/throwable/grenade/grenadekrak/grenadekrak_server.cls — krak grenade definition (damage scale, ability type)

• {SERVER}/ssl/damage/damager/damagerdescriptionslibrary.sso — damager descriptions including krak explosion

• {SERVER}/ssl/damage/damagable/damageprocessing/damageattributemodifier.sso — grenade damage scaling by difficulty (SCALEGRENADEABILITYTYPEDAMAGETO_ENEMIES)

• Per-enemy threat thresholds and recovery behaviors are defined in each enemy's server .cls and behaviour*.sso files — see Aggro & Threat System for the full threshold table and individual enemy writeups in findings/enemies/ for recovery details