TLDR: The problem is that the heavy sweeping attacks are pretty bad to begin with, and weapons with big heavy attacks are generally not the meta which lies currently with the Bull Butcher and its excellent horde clear. If you want people to use these feats increase the damage target cap on OG Club heavy 2 to 4 and Shovel heavy 2 to 5.
In the latest patch we received the following buffs for the first tier of Ogryn feats:
Unfortunately I don’t think these are going to get people scrambling to run them. Firstly, Lynchpin is pretty incredible and hard to go past. Secondly, Heavy attacks, especially for hordes, are bad.
Let’s look at H2 for the OG Clob and H2 for the Shovel, both of which are sweeping attacks you might use in a horde.
Bully Club:
Latrine Shovel:
Both of these attacks stop dealing damage after their third target. This means that attacking a horde with them is a matter of maybe killing the first target, somewhat injuring the second target, barely scratching the third and rearranging the rest of the horde. Compare it to horde clear from a Bull Butcher or anything else and it is laughably bad.
Strikedown heavies are fine but not really where you want your toughness regen to be found.
All in all we have a lot built into our heavies but the ‘meta’ is not with them - it’s with the Bull Butcher cleaver which isn’t interested in these feats to begin with. The sweeping heavy attacks from Clob and Shovel where you might want these feats are not very good and buffing the feat doesn’t change the attack itself being miserable. If you want people to use these feats increase the damage target cap on Clob heavy 2 to 4 and Shovel heavy 2 to 5.
PS Blood & Thunder is in the same boat. It’s attached to heavy attacks and, frustratingly, only causes bleeds to enemies that you damage (not just hit) with a heavy attack.
This means a sweeping attack is likely to kill the first enemy and cause the next 2 to bleed. Everything else is unaffected.
It just doesn’t stack up against Heavyweight and the cost of trying to use low damage heavy attacks in hordes. If you want Blood and Thunder to be useful then they need to up the number of targets damaged by the heavy attacks and/or make it so that its back to ‘enemies hit’ rather than ‘enemies damaged’.
Strong agree. That buff was a completely clueless way to try and increase feat diversity. Please talk to people who actually play your game above Malice, FS.
Best Form of Defense didn’t even need the buff TBH. It’s a perfectly fine feat to run with a weapon like the shovel while alternating L1-H2. As you say, It’s the H2 part of the equation that lets you down (that and the fact that Lynchpin is just good). If the ogryn had good sweeping heavys, Best Form of Defense would see more play.
Smash 'Em Good on the other hand just needs a complete redesign.
I prefer smash em good for not actually requiring targets or teammates. There’s a lot of indepedent ogryn gameplay I like that is predicated on the most avaliable toughness. I also find that weapons that are not the cleaver are so barely viable as it is you need both blessings for damage for them to even be worthwhile to run. Most of those weapons have a strikedown heavy and in a toughness pinch I can beat down an enemy with my gun for free blue bar. Most of his ranged weapon specials won’t kill an enemy any time soon.
I understand that a large part of this post is that Ogryn besides 1 melee weapon is mostly a meme, which is really hurting variety. Like at this point I’d kill for rending on the kickback.
Kickback? It already does great on pretty much everything that isn’t carapace, including mulching hordes and staggering a Reaper several kilometres away because a single pellet hit his pinky toe. Paul + Kickback is a perfectly good setup IMO.
On the Kickback thing I agree with @alsozara . Adding rending to the kickback is only pandering to BB’s dominance by allowing players to subvert the one (and only one) weaknessof the BB - it doesn’t do Carapace damage.
You mean like with a Rippergun? Which also does a lot of unyielding type damage with can opener? This is exactly what I mean, the BB dominance also stops me from using this same loadout with the Mk 4 knife which is the one I’m going to run regardless. Kickback is literally garbage, why not. It would at least be something funny to do, and still outclassed 100% of the time by Rippergun which is somehow not a big deal to have brittleness but a deal breaker on Kickback.
Maybe like +4 rending when every shot hits an enemy. So the Ogryn sized enemies liable to actually get hit by every pellet would get slapped hard. Give me something new.
I don’t want to get too much further into it and lose sight of the topic at hand so I’ll leave the Ripper bit etc. elsewhere. It’s a good conversation but I want this to focus on our heavy attacks.
Either massive exaggeration or unironically skill issue. Rippergun honestly might be too strong these days, but the stagger utility and immediacy after swap are genuinely big plusses on the Kickback. If you can’t very comfortably run Paul + Kickback on Damn, high int ot STG or whatever your preferred flavour of Damn is it’s a you problem.
Do we really want to buff everything up to the highest level? Remove every flaw from a weapon till it’s another boring jack of all trades to pair with our other bland jank of all trades weapon?
Like horde clear on non BB weapons I think we all agree are needlessly bad. But for ranged weapons I don’t think there’s a base that is genuinely bad.
Alright here’s the totally incompatible line of thought between Rippergun being way better, Kickback somehow not needing buffs and everything else being a skill issue. So here’s another thread that will quickly become garbage.
I’ve been running the Achlys a lot which gives the Kickback a solid thrashing despite easily being the worst ranged in his kit. Should really put the slot of ‘wait what’ into using the Kickback but everything is a skill issue. I use things like revolver and Columnus infantry and still think they’re horrible to where the only actual solution is improving them. Because you aren’t leaving any options between ‘skill issue’ and ‘everything else is just OP’. Going to leave it there.
As a weapon Kickback doesn’t even contribute anything unique. And its blessings are by far the least impactful even for ranged. On top of being underwhelming AF and extremely limited. But yeah, skill issue.
Not sure why you would say that.
It is a pretty great way to restore toughness when fighting bosses, elites and shooters.
Pretty much for every melee situation where you are not slapping around a bunch of small guys at the same time, in which case you would get a lot of toughness from kills (and weapon blessings) anyway.
Imo this feat is easily the best pick on that tier.
Unless you are one of those useless backline ogryn who spam their gun at everything, then you probably want more toughness from coherency.
I see your point but you could also help avoid escalating into this kind of argument by avoiding statements like “literally garbage”. Before the big buff patch a good while back now? Kinda fair. Clearly you can still perform well at top difficulty with it, so I don’t see an issue with there being more optimal options.
If your major issue is it doesn’t pen Carapace doesn’t making non BB weapons less bad at horde clear also indirectly improve it? Because then the options you have to pair with it to cover that weakness improve and the build as a whole improves. It seems like you want carapace pen so you can pair everything with BB. Hence the gulf between BB and other Ogryn weapons seems more at the heart of this issue than Kickback itself.
I’d also rather not devolve too deep into a kickback argument, but I fundamentally disagree that making weapons effective against every enemy type improves gameplay, quite the opposite, I think that simplifies things and makes the gameplay more bland overall. Do you disagree with that statement? Why?
If you where to make a list of all the things that has anything to do with survival. From the built in game mechanics , blessings and feats. The t1 feats that lets you regain 25% toughness on hit would be on the lower end or maybe even on the bottom of the list.
You claimed that I made up scenarios that would suit my reasoning, yet all the answers I got from you where “fight ranged and elites” without as much as a detailed beyond “slide and heavy attack into ranged enemies” and as soon as someone does not agree with you it turns into backline ogryns and do you even play damnation claims.
If you play aggressively, the one that works on single target hits, is probably very near the top.
Feel free to tell me a few options (especially for the ogryn, since it is an ogryn feat) that do a better job of restoring toughness when fighting bosses, elites or ranged units.
Anything that is not toughness related is absolutely irrelevant here, because
all lvl 5 feats are toughness related
the use of this feat and anything that is not toughness related, are not mutually exclusive
How much of a detailed explanation do you want, when it comes to a simple melee engagement with elites/ranged units, and making use of a feat that restores toughness on heavy attacks hitting a single enemy?
Nope.
Thing is, backline ogryn with their gun out, do not melee all that much. So coherency regen is definitely better for them.
If you want to regen toughness while fighting enemies with your melee weapon, coherency regen does not work all that well.
I asked you specifically if you play on damnation, and if you engage ranged units in melee. I asked this because i am pretty sure that you would see the high value of the feat, if you did.
You did not answer my question though.
I feel like his argument is just so needlessly hostile that it’s not worth responding to. Essentially it is “If you weren’t a bad Ogryn who stays in coherency then you’d know it’s good”, and it’s poisoning the well from the very outset.
Yes, I do play on damnation. And yes, I do play aggressively. And I’ll say it again, if there are to few enemies, the extra 25% toughness will do little for survival and if there are to many confident strike and toughness on kill will gve you more of a bonus, and thats even before thinking about all the cleave and stagger.
The biggest problem with both of the toughness feats are that they give bonus survivability in melee range, which the Ogryn is already very strong at and Lynchpin gives you extra regen for the rare occasions where you cannot safely engage in melee and have to fight with ranged weapons.
These unsafe situations are usually made relatively safe by the toughness on single heavy hit.
I have never really seen a situation, where i could not run in and melee the enemies (as ogryn). Of course i might lose some hp, but that doesn’t matter, when it saves the team a bunch of time, and keeps the teammates healthpools safe.
I still have no idea what you mean when saying this.
Even a single shooter on damnation, will allow you to slap him with 2 heavy attacks (which, since the buff of the feat, will restore 25+25=50% toughness + another 8% with confident strike).
Unsafe situations are when you get in a shootout, either that your team composition are not built to handle shooters or that they seemed to have amassed a large number at a drop off point backed up by gunners and reapers would be my scenario in mind when I say that lynchpin does give a bonus to survivability on a rare occasion.
Taking HP damage to advance and save on time is good. Medicae and healthpacks do alot of work so some health damage is okay. But if you do take time to slap a single shooter, his friends are not just going to stand there and watch and if there are to few you could have just used sliding to get around and pummel them regardless of any toughness gains.
