What causes the "ripping cloth" melee noise?
 

You know, when you get hit hard by an NPC it sometimes makes a special "you got hit extra hard" sound instead of your character just grunting?

I always figured, without any extra thought, that it was when you got hit for a certain amount of your health or the monster's max hit or something. But just now I watched an 84 hit against me make the noise, then the next melee round an 88 hit me and did NOT make the noise.

Obviously a minor detail, but my inquiring mind likes to know.

Holy carps I'm actually really curious too now. Maybe it isnt random. I mean I never hear it on a 1 damage taken.

I always liked how the different races were distributed voices too. Only gnomes and halfling males have that real squeaky one. More females are shared

Typical patriachal 90s game design. Feh!

But yeah, it definitely seems connected to hits that are high for what the mob is capable of doing. Like if you are a lowbie getting crushed by a sand giant in oasis, basically every round sounds like the temple curtain splitting in two. But apparently not every max hit or near-max hit triggers the sound.

I have a hunch/guess that its either

1. A random element of some kind in the formula
2. Has something to do with the damage rolled vs the mitigation AC element.

The reason I suspect number 2 is based on how less frequently I hear it on my high AC classes with even and lower cons

I was just wondering about it being level based too. I recently made 41, but am fighting the same stuff I was at 40. This dude who actually fucking made me zone last level because he resisted 4 spells in a row and had me down to 40% hp from a ton of ripping cloth max damage melee rounds now rarely gets a max hit and/or ripping cloth sound in an entire battle.

On a slightly-related note, wow levels make a big melee difference. I seriously never tanked this guy from full to fleeing last level in dozens of kills fighting with the exact same method and pet level I use now. But now I can push him to fleeing HP with my HP at 90+% regularly, even though he's still solidly blue con.

Certain mobs seen to always make that sound. Zombies for instance seem to hit me with a loud rip sound. Ghouls to I think.

I think that's just them doubling up on a sound effect. Hitting zombies causes the sound too doesn't it?

That's why I hate fighting zombies. The aural cues are inconsistent with the rest of the game.

Sounds like a bone crushing kind of sound to me rather than a ripping sound.

The undeads like zombies seem to make the noise when hit more often and the higher damage hits on your character set it off

No really? Do you think anyone else knows these things? Maybe we should make a thread on the forums and explain what we believe so far and ask if anyone else knows more details! :p