Among Ogryn weapons, the shovel feels inarguably the best

Of the 4 Ogryn melee weapons (Yes, there’s only 4 at the moment. The Mk designations are disingenuous. Yes, I know marks can have slight variations on attack patterns, but the differences end there as far as I’m aware.), the shovel truly feels like the most effective option with not a lot arguments for the others.

Against the club, the shovel has comparable light attack damage + cleave+ stagger but is faster and has a better light-heavy pattern with true horizontal swings for horde headshots. The shovel can also headshot elites more reliably, especially on Ogryns. Shovel’s vertical heavy swing is devastating.

Against the cleaver, which has good light attack dps against any non-Ogryn and has a comparable light-heavy chain, the shovel once again outshines with its heavies. The cleaver is seriously impotent against Ogryns.

Against the maul & shield, coming from Legend difficulty Vermintide 2, I still see killing things as the best utility. The shovel is just better at that. However, I could actually see some discourse between these 2 weapons because what they bring to the table can be debatable. But in Heresy and Damnation runs, in my experience, the shovel has far greater carry potential.

To cap off: there are only 4 melee weapons but 3 of them behave very similarly (with one being far better than the others currently). Here’s hoping more changes and additions are to come. I’d like to see attack patterns change along with some balance passes to make the melee choice an interesting one, and not by nerfing shovel into uselessness. Not to mention I think the Ogryn is in dire need of a 2 handed weapon that behaves like the thunder hammer or the greathammer from Vermintide 2.

tl;dr 3 of the 4 weapons are too similar, but 1 of those has better crowd control and elite killing power, the shovel. Please de-homogenize and rebalance these weapons and add more, including a 2-hander.

2 Likes

You don’t really give any examples as to WHY this thread exists, I never got to really use the shovel as my rng on the damage stat never gave any found ones a use compared to my knives before getting my slab.

1 Like

I’m saying the weapons right now are imbalanced because the shovel, at comparable item level and stats, seems like the best option. Maybe the listed stats aren’t as they appear to be, with them being displayed as bars and what those bars represent with respect to scale. Are they relative to something or absolute? So many questions.

I’ll concede this could just be a symptom of the UI problems and how far they extend.

1 Like

But WHY is it the best iyo?

Added a tl;dr.

1 Like

Shovels sure are good, otherwise they’d not be produced to the standards and quality that one can occasionally find. :stuck_out_tongue:
image

1 Like

Yes, there’s only 4 at the moment. The Mk designations are disingenuous

No, they aren’t disingenuous. They change the attack patterns, which can completely change the way a weapon performs in combat. The Mk IV cleaver is my favorite Ogryn weapon, for example, because you can chain Heavy1 → Light2 → Light3 for single-target Strikedown damage, and Light1 → Heavy2 for Vanguard horde clear.

Try inspecting weapons and give them a shot in the meat grinder before just deciding they’re all the same.

The attack patterns were just one aspect of this post. If they are different then mark that as another failure of the UI, because it does not (or did not, maybe it was patched) indicate different patterns, and of the loot system in its current state because cleavers of comparable stats but different marks aren’t easy to come by. I’ll re-emphasize that it’s not just the attack patterns but their effectiveness in totality.

If they are different then mark that as another failure of the UI, because it does not (or did not, maybe it was patched) indicate different patterns

It wasn’t patched, the info’s been there since at least the start of the pre order beta. Just inspect them and note the different symbols indicated in the chains, then go to the meat grinder and try them out, see which lights and heavies chain into each other, etc.

cleavers of comparable stats but different marks aren’t easy to come by.

The stat bars only mean anything in comparison to another instance of the same weapon. Trying to compare them with a different weapon is useless because the base stats of the weapons are different, so the bars aren’t scaling the same number.

I definitely agree the UI needs a lot of work, and according to the community manager on here they’ve apparently got something in the works for that which will display all the information in a coherent and communicable way. Until that releases though, we just need to Vermintide it and test stuff out ourselves. At least the situation is better on that front compared to VT2 since we get to see what attributes each attack in a chain has, and a testing arena with actual game-accurate opponents.

I don’t even necessarily disagree with you that the shovel is just overall better btw, perhaps the Ogyrn’s weapons could be balanced. I don’t really have enough playtime on him to say (~lvl17 iirc). Just noticed you were making some assumptions that I know to be inaccurate.

added this to the chat

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/the-ogryn-chat/58554