Absolute loser 90 hours gamer reject Ogryn main talks about skill tree and recommends changes

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I have been completely no lifing Darktide since the beta first came out and emperor damn it is the most fun I have had playing a game in ages. I’ve played mainly Ogryn with a bit of Sharpshooter and like to play on heresy difficulty once I get to level 30. Damnation runs are fun/challenging although they feel too hard for me without having any good gear, but alas we are in beta and don’t have most of the crafting yet. I’ve also played a ton of Vermintide 2. From my experiences, testing, and from what I’ve seen on these forums I have decided to make an analysis and recommended revision of the Ogryn talent tree.

Passives: All of the passives honestly seem fine to me (excluding the revive one having bugs) and I have felt the value all of them bring.

Level 5 Talents:
Lynchpin doubles the default toughness regeneration of everyone in your coherency range making it more of a team based perk and synergizes with curio toughness regen gear. Overall solid.
Smash Em’ Good! and Best Form of Defense… give you 20% toughness on hitting either only 1 or only multiple enemies with heavy attacks. I’m not the only person recommending these 2 are merged together into 1 passive that just gives like 15% toughness on any heavy attack hit or something along those lines.
Add a new talent that increases the damage reduction of your Thick Skin passive from 20% up to 40%. This would add an option to have more affective tankyness while lacking the in combat sustain that the other 2 perks provide, requiring you to rely mostly on gear to replenish toughness.

Level 10 Talents:
Heavyweight makes you take half damage from enemy ogryns (including the plague ogryn monstrosity) and deal 50% more melee damage to them. Essentially it allows you to have slap offs with big guys and win. Currently it feels a bit niche only affecting 1 monstrosity and will only feel more niche as Fatshark releases more monsters onto Terra. I recommend changing this talent to apply to all ogryns along with all monstrosities.
Bombs Away! is ass. On hitting a heavily armoured ogryn your grenade releases a bunch of shitty cluster bombs. There are a lot of ways to fix this like making it happen when you hit any enemy type, just removing it, or making it a default grenade affect and/or adding a new talent like more max grenades or something.
Blood & Thunder applies 1 bleed stack on heavy attacks. It’s not terrible, but it lacks buildup speed that other sources of bleed can easily match (and I don’t think I have even seen any of the Ogryn melee weapons roll bleed perks so maybe they can’t?). I recommend making it apply 2 bleed stacks. This would also help the more aggressive non shield users do bigger damage with their faster melee weapons.

Level 15 Talents:
Towering Presence is just well rounded. It makes it easier to play with the team and offers synergy with the level 5 Lynchpin talent. Fine as is.
Lead the Charge is garbage. 25% speed to allies in coherency for 4 seconds on ability use doesn’t do anything. I recommend making it instead give the 25% speed and attack speed for 5 seconds that the Ogryn ability grants also apply to teammates in coherency. Nothing fancy just more stats that are relevant.
Bullfighter gives 10% cooldown for the Ogryn on elite kills by you or teammates in your coherency range. Not useless, but rather weak considering the Bullrush ability itself doesn’t do damage to help get those kills. I think buffing this up to 15% or 20% would help a lot.

Level 20 Talents:
Bloodthirst gives 10% damage reduction stacking up to 50% based on how many bleeding enemies are near you. I’ve used it and it is nice for big fights and lets you play aggressive in hordes, but is less useful against single targets and ranged enemies. Allies can help bleed enemies giving it some potential team synergy although this isn’t reliable. This talent can be strong, but requires the Blood & Thunder talent to work effectively. I think it’s fine as is, but could also be changed to grant damage reduction for a duration after applying bleed rather than requiring nearby enemies. Would probably be a bit too strong though without a numbers nerf.
Hard As Nails has grown on me as I’ve started to use it in the higher difficulties. Taking 25% less damage per incapacitated or downed/dead teammate is great. It gives no benefits if your team is doing fine, but really pulls it’s weight when you really need it. Amazing for reviving teammates since Ogryn revives can’t be interrupted by damage. It also helps balance the lack of coherency regen from having less nearby teammates. Overall very nice talent that should stay the same.
Die Hard doubles toughness gained from any source while you are under 25% health. In lower difficulties this talent is very nice, but in higher difficulties it becomes very impractical since unlike the 2 other choices it doesn’t help you not get insta-killed. I would recommend 2 potential options. Grant 50% toughness damage reduction for the same overall values while also helping avoid instant deaths. Another option is to change the health threshold to be while missing 200 health. This would not only increase the threshold making the increased recovery while not dying to bursts of damage more practical, but also allow the use of max HP curios to increase how much health you can still have while benefiting from the talent.

Level 25 Talents:
Payback Time makes you do 20% more damage to enemies types that have damaged you within 5 seconds. It’s not bad, but the duration should be longer like 8-10 seconds. That’s all really.
Knife Through Butter makes fully charged heavy attacks have infinite cleave. I slept on this talent for far too long. It is amazing for situation where you have to fight groups with big armoured enemies eating your cleave. I’ve used it with shoves to stunlock 4 enemy ogryns 5 ragers and an entire horde at the same time. Great synergy with multi-hit toughness gain perks and heavy attack/stagger perks. The only downside to this is that it doesn’t give a direct damage buff like the other 2 options.
Raging Bull makes your melee attacks do 5% more melee damage per enemy hit with your previous attack. Overall well rounded melee damage talent that is great for killing groups and still gives a minor bonus for single enemies. No changes needed.

Level 30 Talents:
Bull Gore causes Bull Rush ability to apply 2 stacks of bleed. Really? This doesn’t do any damage as is and needs a simple numbers buff.
Unstoppable doubles your charge range and let’s you charge through anything besides a boss monster. Very fun to use and can help in tight spots. Fine as is.
Non-Stop Violence grants 10% toughness per enemy hit by bullrush. Solid talent that allows for aggressive plays without losing a lot of HP in the process. Fine as is.

This is my feedback and suggestions for the Ogryn as a complete Darktide addict who has played a lot of games and loves talent trees and build diversity in games.

8 Likes
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I believe the Bleed talent has an incorrect tooltip if I’m not mistaken. I believe in the patch notes it says it applies 4 stacks

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I largely agree with your overview. I do have a few things to add, though:

  • Agreed that Ogryn needs more talents that buff his base toughness, at least against ranged enemies. On Heresy+, you’re either the last man standing in a horde due to your CC + baseline toughness + good horde management, or you’re the first to go down in a firefight unless you play very cautiously. This is mostly due to the Ogryn’s huge hurtbox, and we have no baseline way to mitigate ranged damage like the other classes do.

  • Bombs Away! is actually more attractive now that we can carry two grenades max. Something you overlooked is that the talent actually triggers when you hit any type of armor. This includes flak armor, carapace armor, and even monstrosities! You can even hit the generic melee infantry who wear flak armor and the talent will trigger. The cluster grenade damage is huge, too. On Heresy, one grenade box alone will chunk about 20% (might be a little less, actually) of a Plague Ogryn’s health if he stands in all of the grenades. It’s also a super clutch crowd-clearing tool that affects a large area, and it can make a revive much safer provided there’s an armored unit to hit in the horde. I agree, though: this cluster grenade effect should be baseline. Box o’ Hurt is just terrible without this talent. Maybe the talent should be what adds the second box to our max capacity, and the cluster grenade effect should be default?

  • Bullfighter is one of those numerically strong talents that look good on paper and would be recommended in a Royale With Cheese guide for this reason. “Assuming a Damnation horde with so-and-so many elites mixed into it, you will get x more uses out of your ult over the course of a game” and so on. That’s not to say it’s bad. In fact, I’ve had more than a few moments where my charge is almost off cooldown and I regretfully didn’t have it up to stop a Mutant charging through the horde and into my Psyker. But you also have to consider the talent’s downtime, and also the fact that ult uses won’t perfectly align with when you need them. Just something for people to consider when looking critically at talents.

  • Hard As Nails really is underrated. I was able to clutch out several objectives in Heresy last night with this talent alone. In one Chasm Logistratum hacking event, I revived three people in a row using a combination of charge, Rumbler, and pushing — all while surviving with just 6hp. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without this talent, and there’s a chance that this still could have worked on Damnation. Of course, you could make the argument that good players simply won’t get downed… but that’s groxpoo logic. People will go down, and that’s when you’ll wish you had this talent. Bloodthirst is indeed very nice, but again, you may not always have 4-5 stacks when you need them. It’s also useless in shooting gallery firefights.

I think that’s it for now. Some more damage reduction or recovery talents would be nice, especially to help with Ogryn’s weakness against ranged chip damage. I still recommend giving Bombs Away a spin. It’s pretty impressive. I just wish that were our default nade. There’s no reason for it not to be when Veteran and Zealot nades are already excellent crowd control, and they get way more grenade uses than we do.

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A lot of good recommendations here, I do think ogryn talents need a balance pass just like the other 4 classes do and you gave some solid ideas

While this may be true, they either need to revamp bleed entirely or change this to be 10 stacks or even more, because the damage the bleed does from this talent is less than 2% more damage added to each swing. Its so low that it feels broken still which is odd because they claimed they fixed bleed stacking.

Im hoping they fixed the mechanic of it stacking in code but didnt bother testing the actual damage the bleed does because no one in their right mind would see that and think its worthwhile and should remain unchanged

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Your dismissal of the bull rush and bleed talents seems to me like you are missing the point of the Ogryn, which to me is crowd control/tanking. Bleed is decent at softening up enemies and applying damage to them between swings at the same time you juggle them, facilitating your ability to tank large hordes. Bull Fighter is great because anything that reduces the cooldown on it means you have your pocket rescue/mob disruption/bleed stack applying utility ability is up more often.

I agree that bleed damage seems rather weak right now, I would rather see it apply a debuff to damage taken on mobs stricken with it than adding more damage to it TBH though as that would add more to team synergy and much more with difficult boss encounters.

Additionally, I would like to see some sort of taunt/agro mechanic added that will allow an ogryn to taunt a boss to attack them. It would be very useful in Daemonhost encounters. I cant tell you how helpless i feel when someone else is getting pummeled by the boss while I am the best suited one to tank/manage the damage without any way of drawing that aggro reliably.

Finally, regarding hard as nails, I think it is decent but bullfighter is better because it works all the time instead of just when someone is downed.

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I basically agree with your assessment of the level 5 talents.
I’d suggest the merged talent gave 10% on single target and 20% on multi; it still leans into the niche of “ogryn are best for controlling hordes” without having two different talents to manage your melee playstyle or leaving you unable to quickly recover while running through a firefight. Cover will never be an option, so SOME kind of tool here seems necessary, and a talent that more generally says “those heavy attacks? Yeah, use them” feels right.
For the third talent, I’d propose stacking toughness damage resistance with each ranged hit. You’re giving up fast, reliable regeneration for the ability to just weather the storm until your toughness is fully depleted. This seems like an interesting choice for more aggressive playstyles, who would be more exposed due to not taking the shield, and trying to keep up with incoming damage through the kill regen and weapon traits exclusively. Seems like a cool choice, and if the stacks apply immediately (between damage instances, in other words), could help a lot with the frustration of losing all your toughness to a single burst fire at higher difficulty.

Level 10 talents:
Heavyweight SOUNDS cool- it does apply to everything your size or bigger, but those are, with one exception, also the things that Blood & Thunder really shines against. Most Ogryn weapons just don’t give enough base damage vs. carapace for this to give offensive value against Crushers, so really, if you take this talent, you’re taking it for that sweet 50% reduction in damage from autocannons. It needs a little more than that to hold a niche, but I’m not really sure what to suggest- something that further reinforces its anti-large functionality, or something that helps the ogryn handle a wider range of situations? Extending the +damage, but not the +resist to Maniacs would make the Ogryn faster on mutant rescue, and that’s the only other thing on the field that’s as big as him.

Bombs Away : as others have said, the increase to 2 grenades baseline makes this a little more likely to see use. I’m probably not the best person to comment on this, since I always avoided bomb-related talents like the plague in VT, and generally dislike talents that pertain only to such a limited resource.

Blood & Thunder : Gorgeous. I have no complaints about the talent in and of itself, but I don’t like it being necessary for Bloodthirst to work properly. If anything, I’d give the class itself a “Blunt Force Trauma” passive that caused enemies you stagger to take a single stack of Bleed, with Blood & Thunder applying the current four on heavy hit, and the Thunder part coming from “Attacks against bleeding enemies ignore their armor mass bonus for stagger cleave.” Negligible increase to damage, but gives a unique ability to bully mixed hordes. May be a little stronger, but a milder mechanic in the same vein would still secure a niche for this talent in a situation where it was no longer the Ogryn’s only bleed source.

Level 15 talents:
Towering Presence I’m inclined to agree. I run it pretty consistently, although that’s partially because it’s reliable, makes a TON of other abilities work better… and partially because the alternatives just aren’t that appealing.
Lead The Charge is… yeah. Not great. A lot of the times where you’re using Bull Rush, your allies are going to be shooting. I guess its intended role is for the whole party to follow you and reposition on the other side of the charge? Your solution seems viable. If they’re running after you, mopping up the trampled guys goes a little faster; if you used it on a boss, whole party gets a short burst window. Seems to play into concept.
Bullfighter is another of those talents that I don’t tend to use, since I mostly reserve the charge for clutch situations - it spends relatively little time on cooldown, and thus gains less from cooldown reduction. Like Bombs Away, it’s not my style, so I don’t feel too qualified to speak on it.

Level 20 talents:
Bloodthirst has a consistent place in my loadout. As I said above, I don’t love, from a design perspective, that it relies entirely on another feat and not some part of the Ogryn’s base kit. See my proposal re: “Blunt Force Trauma” on one way to address that. Other than that, I’d like it if stacks fell off over time rather than immediately upon the target’s death, like if it checked 1/second and decremented the stack if the number of bleeding enemies was lower than your current number of stacks, or set the stack to the current number of enemies if that value is higher. I gather that the current behavior uses the “set” response in both outcomes, hence the performance seeming very… bouncy.
Hard as Nails is a great example of a clutch feat. I’m… not sure how to feel about a feat that loses value the more skilled your team is, but it seems appropriately tuned for how niche it can be.
Die Hard the adjustment to toughness bleedthrough and its thresholds definitely improves the viability of this feat. I’m generally in favor of setting it to a “missing X hit points” threshold to improve synergy with itemization in either direction.

Level 25 talents:
Payback Time inclined to agree with OP. Damage is fine, just needs to stay up a little longer.
Knife Through Butter could use a little more clarity. It certainly isn’t applying full damage to all targets hit, so is it just taking the “last target damaged” value and applying it to “all subsequent targets”? Knowing the specifics of what this feat is meant to to will be very helpful in ascertaining if a) it is doing that and b) whether that is appropriate.
Raging Bull my testing in the meat grinder suggests that this may simply not be working. Has anyone found otherwise? From a UX perspective, would also benefit from a buff icon.

Level 30 talents:
Bull Gore I tend to agree with OP that this is undertuned. Tack on a decently meaty damage buff to the first attack made after charging and call it a day.
Unstoppable and Non-Stop Violence do what they say they do, and what they do is clear and satisfying. No complaints.

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Oh this did not age well at all.

HEHEHEHEHEHEAHAEHAHH

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Ogryns have issues besides their feats in my opinion.

I LOVE playing as an Ogryn but holy flipping hell do I hate playing with them. Can’t tell you how much of my ammo they’ve soaked up because mr. dancing bear wants to snipe that gunner/sniper across the map with his kickback or ripper gun. Then he just blunders in front everyone and I get nothing but blue crosshairs while I have counterfire up ready to take ‘em out.

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The main reason running plasma feels good on Vet is cos you can just shoot through the ogryn teammates. Then again if they run CC heavy it might also be pretty annoying since missed shots are a big issue on plasma.

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