The Most Epic Fantasy and Sci-Fi Website

Call of Duty: Vanguard's TTK Explained


Credit: Activision

Sledgehammer Games' Call of Duty: Vanguard is coming November 5th, 2021, but after playing Vanguard's Alpha gamers are wondering what the TTK, or time-to-kill, is in Vanguard. In this article, we'll explain how Vanguard stacks up against other Call of Duty games in terms of average TTK.

The TTKs of Recent Call of Duty Games

click to enlarge
+ 3
Credit: Activision

After getting its first taste of Vanguard, the internet is coming to conclusions about the game's TTK: Some say the game plays exactly like Modern Warfare 2019, and others say it's a Black Ops Cold War reskin. The actual TTK in Vanguard is somewhere in between the two.

Modern Warfare 2019 is known for its incredibly fast TTK, but many mistake the Modern Warfare reboot for the fastest TTK in Call of Duty history. From Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare through Call of Duty: Ghosts, these games all generally had quicker TTKs than the Modern Warfare reboot.

Related: Call of Duty: Vanguard's Blind Fire Explained

This isn't a hard and fast rule, because guns have different damage drop-offs at different ranges, headshot multipliers influence TTK in certain situations, and some games have Stopping Power, a way to increase the damage of a weapon and drastically reduce its TTK. However, the Modern Warfare reboot definitely doesn't have the fastest average TTK for a Call of Duty game.

Treyarch Call of Duty games are known for their longer TTKs, but many also mistake Black Ops Cold War for the slowest TTK in Call of Duty history. This isn't the case, either. On average, Black Ops 4 has a slower TTK than Cold War, and Cold War has a large headshot damage multiplier that can radically change how fast a weapon can kill.

TTK in Call of Duty: Vanguard

click to enlarge
+ 3
Credit: Activision

Though, it is true that Modern Warfare has one of the fastest TTKs in Call of Duty, and Cold War has one of the slowest. So, where does Vanguard fit in? At a glance, with Vanguard running the Modern Warfare 2019 engine one would expect those games to be similar in terms of TTK.

While it's true weapons drop people faster in Vanguard than in Cold War, weapons in Vanguard have slower rates of fire and much more recoil than the average weapon in the Modern Warfare reboot. Cold War guns are generally accurate, though less so than Modern Warfare, but like Vanguard tend to have slower rates of fire and in turn do more damage.

Related: Will Call of Duty: Vanguard Have a FOV Slider?

In effect, it's a lot harder to delete people in Vanguard than in the Modern Warfare reboot, especially when using a sniper in the Champion Hill mode on display in the Alpha, but the TTK isn't much slower than Modern Warfare 2019.

On average, TTK in Sledgehammer's previous Call of Duty, WWII, is in the low 200-millisecond range, while TTK in Modern Warfare is in the high 100-millisecond range, nearing 200-milliseconds. In Black Ops Cold War, TTK is just over 300 milliseconds on average.

Call of Duty: Vanguard's TTK Isn't Set in Stone

click to enlarge
+ 3
Credit: Activision

TTK in general in Call of Duty: Vanguard then is likely to be very similar to Call of Duty: WWII, though maybe a hair or two quicker than it was, on average, in that game. Though, with slower weapons and more recoil than Modern Warfare 2019, the perceived TTK in Vanguard will inevitably feel slower than it was in Modern Warfare. This is also going to be influenced by the game's hit registration. When the full game launches, if there are tons of hitbox issues, the game could feel like it has a faster or slower TTK than it actually does.

Issues with hit registration plagued Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare, which made the game feel like the TTK was very fast while the actual TTK in Infinite Warfare is one of the slower ones in the franchise, only slightly faster than Black Ops Cold War. Other issues, like constricted map design with tons of corners and crevices to hide in, plagued the Modern Warfare reboot and made that game's TTK feel even faster than it actually is.

Though it's important to remember that TTK in the Vanguard Alpha isn't set in stone, and the Alpha doesn't give us a great idea of how headshot multipliers or damage drop-off at range will work, not to mention we don't know how the maps will play and what the options for Perks, Equipment, and other abilities will be, any of which might influence TTK.

Related: What Is Call of Duty: Vanguard's Champion Hill Mode?

For more articles like this, take a look at our Untitled page.