I’ve edited this post quite a lot, I am sorry if you saw this post again. My mother language isn’t English, so I fix some tone of my writing to deliver my intention more clearly, and grammar error. (still there’s a lot of them.) And I added some stuff, and fix some proposition.
I’ve played Ogryn since open beta, I’ve finished many Damnation difficulty with random people, and friends successfully. (Actually +16 times, since I play this game on weekends mostly.)
Ogryn is not a total garbage, he’s useful and viable on t5 difficulty. But I think he can use some buff and tweak after all.
Many of his weapons are less competitive compared to the best one he got, especially ranged weapon, but I’ll focus on talking about melee weapons, since not many of Ogryn users talk about Melee weapons other than shield.
And His talents don’t give much choice and not fun, I think.
This is the my complete Ogryn skullbreaker buff/tweak feedback before new weapons come out.
How I play Ogryn on Damnation difficulty:
First I’ll talk how I play Ogryn on Damnation difficulty, this guide can give some idea that Lynchpin is actually good to Ogryn (I think many Ogryn users know it already though), and introduce Rumbler’s benefit to you.
Feats 113(or 1)233
Equipment
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Bull cleaver - The gear with Momentum blessing or/and Confident strike blessing (toughness regeneration blessings) and Savage Sweep, or Slaughterer blessing for more damage is just good to go. I am personally using Momentum + Savage sweep.
I didn’t test Slaughterer blessing can reach some breakpoint, since I don’t have good Bull Cleaver with it, but from my calculation, you can reach some breakpoint.
80% damage, and 79% first target make your first, second light attack have 184 damage, with 12.5% Slaughterer 5 stacks (2nd best blessing value), you can reach 299 damage, it’s 1 damage less to kill Poxwalker (infested trash) with perk you can reach horde breakpoint.
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Rumbler - Arguably the best cc weapon in this game. For CC purpose, any blessing works, but Shattering impact + any blessing without Pierce would be good. You can compare this weapon to the best CC weapon in this game, Surge staff.
Surge staff can stun specials, and elites, but it has limited target number, chain lightning can be random (as far as I know it doesn’t prioritize elites). Rumbler has wider range, so you can knock down elites with horde easily, Elites won’t knock down if they are far from epicenter of blast, but most of time it make them stagger anyway. So it’s arguably better when horde + elites situation than Surge staff. It has delayed detonation, so it’s risky sometimes to depend your teammate with stagger just in time, so you should be careful to detect Ragers and elites fast. And you should calculate their speed and your grenade detonation time to stagger them properly.
Use your ult to Ragers that lunging at your teammates if Ragers are too close to your teammates, then shoot Rumbler,
Also this is 1 of 2 weapons that you can kill shooters one shot on Damnation difficulty with direct shoot and detonation. The other one is Grenadier Gauntlet.
Tactic
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Stay behind generally for not blocking LOS of your team unless horde comes, normally shooting Rumbler or do some rear guard stuff for your team.
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Before getting into room, or site, you shoot Rumbler at shooters, gunners, and shotgunners just like your ranged teammates.
Sometimes support your charging Zealot by knocking down & staggering shooter groups with your Rumbler then charge together with your Zealot if there’s no dangerous enemies around your team. -
Ambush or horde situation, spamming your Rumbler to knock down Ragers, Bulwarks, and Crushers, and make some space for your team with arguably the greatest cleave melee weapons you got. Be ware of your teammates LOS.
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Killing & supporting to kill specials with your Rumbler sniping when you hear something.
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In events (defending until elevator comes or something), shoot shooters, and specials if there are no bunch of elites coming to your team.
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Shoot more, charge less.
Class name:
It’s quite odd that Ogryn’s class name is ‘Skullbreaker’. You don’t have useful finesse weapon at all. Krourk Cleavers’ light attacks have some decent weak-spot damage bonus, those cleavers are useless. And you don’t have any weak-spot related Feats.
Bone Breaker, or Flesh Tearer would be more precise for his class name now since he has 3 bleed related Feats.
It would be fun that he got some weak-spot Feats to match his class name. I will propose some weak spot related Feats instead of some less useful Feats.
Weapons
I’ll talk about base performance of weapons, and some blessing maybe. If I think they need fix, I use preformat for weapon name.
Melee weapons
There is a bunch of bugs about hit boxes, I mean some animation of weapon doesn’t match their hitboxes. Every single weapon got this problem. I reported it to FS. If you are interested, you can find my posts on bug forum.
And it would be appreciated that Ogryns got some fun blessings generally, the other classes melee weapon blessings mostly can compensate their weakness or enhance their strength. Ogryns weapons just don’t have variety of blessing, you can’t compensate your lack of mobility, can’t power up generally unless you are using Cleaver. (Latrine, club’s best damage feat is Thunderous for example, which works for armored only.)
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Overall melee blessing feedback:
Perfect strike: Ogryn don’t have method to increase your crit chance up. There’s Bash blessing, but it’s weak compared to Shred. At least Devastating Strike lasts 3~4 sec. It’s just useless.Mercy Killer: If Ogryns can get Mercy killer, Mercy killer and Blood and Thunder can have some synergy. But it would be too powerful, so weaker version would be better for Ogryn. -
Bull Butcher MK III Cleaver
The best weapon you got. With toughness regen blessing + light attack spam, you can use it on any difficulty, it has downside that heavy attacks have long wind-up time like the most of Ogryn weapons, light-heavy then light has some weird delay, you can’t cancel your animation with block fluently. Still the best weapon you got. You can’t kill Crusher with this, but you can get help from your buddies, or just spam your Rumbler. -
Krourk MK IV Cleaver
The worst cleaver you got. Every light attack is for a target. (light attacks have cleave, but weapon animations and their hit boxes are bad for cleaving purpose, and ‘strike down’ attack type makes it deal less to 2nd target than ‘slash’ type attacks which attack type Bull Cleaver light attacks have) Only 2nd heavy attack is really for horde.If Fatshark gives plain buff to this weapon, this weapon will be just inferior to Bull Cleaver, mostly because of its animation. I think they can make this weapon as Mobility + weakspot weapon for Ogryn.
Dodge distance: -15~ -5 → -5 to 5,Carapace armor damage: light attack should give more damage even with body shot, 50+ like Combat axe (damage +70%, penetration +70%), 1st heavy attack should give more damage even with body shot, 90+ (damage +70% penetration +70%),Weakspot damage: buff light attack weak spot damage to Carapace armor and 1st heavy attack overall weak spot damage. -
Krourk MK VI Cleaver
Light attack is for a target like the other Krouck Cleaver. Heavy attacks are impressive, but wind-up time is so long, it would be kill yourself on Damnation difficulty sometimes when shooters are shooting at you.You can regenerate more toughness with blessing + feat than Bull knife with your 1st heavy attack (this is the only weapon has a 1st heavy attack that can hit multiple enemies), but light spam is more safer to control hordes, ranged units. So it’s inferior to Bull Cleaver imo.
I think that plain buffs can make this weapon into distinctive between 2 Cleavers as armor-killer.
Overall Flak armor damage: Slight buff.Carapace armor light attack damage: light attack should give more damage even with body shot, 70+ damage with 70+% damage, 70+% penetration Cleaver.Carapace armor heavy attack damage: Make Weaker than Latrine shovel, but stronger than the other 2 Cleaver, but weaker than headshot with Krourk MK VI Cleaver. -
Latrine shovel
I used this weapon for Damnation difficulty before I got Momentum Bull Cleaver, it was useful, but I think it’s inferior compared to Bull knife still. But it has good property that you can make a Bulwark look back with your 1st heavy attack, I don’t know it’s a bug or not.If it’s a bug, you don’t need this weapon over Bull Cleaver completely. How about Crusher, OP? Just kill Crusher with your Ranged weapon.
This is supposed to be a Crowd control, and Versatile weapon, it’s versatile but not crowd control weapon, since every enemy that Latrine shovel can stagger, Cleavers can do too.
Heavy attack stagger: Make heavy attacks can stagger Ragers who are attacking, even targets are 2nd or 3rd target on Damnation or higher difficulty that will come out eventually.Easier head-shot: This weapon has the best head line in Ogryn’s weapon, but I think Fatshark can make this easier, this feature can have synergy with Brutal Momentum blessing, andHead CrusherFeat that I’ll write down below.1st heavy attack Weak spot damage: More damage to any other armor type but Flak armor. To flack armor it has 20% damage bonus when you hit their heads, but to the others it has 3% more damage (7% more to infested). at least gives 10% more damage to the other armor types.Maniac damage buff: Buff Maniac damage of light attacks and 2nd heavy attack, make Maniac damage slightly weaker than Unarmored damage, Shovel’s Maniac damage is too weak now.Edited: I don’t think extreme buff is needed now, I think 10~20% damage buff is enough. And I added proposition about 1st heavy attack weak-spot damage, every Ogryns’ weapons’ single target heavy attack has this same problem, Bull cleaver is okay without it, and with my proposition, the other 2 cleavers remake can cover this issue.
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Slab shield
I used this at my first Damnation run, after that I never use this weapon. This weapon special can be useful sometimes against shooters aggro for your team when you go first. Some open maps, no shooters composition in random match, it’s useful in that case. But most of time, you should swing your weapon like the others, and this weapon is very weak compared to Cleaver.Even without shield, Ogryn can stagger almost every enemies with just push, and his special attack. So you don’t need shield for staggering elites unlike VT2.
Normally I play Bardin in VT2, I can’t confirm below words can apply for Kruber’s spear&shield, and Wutelgi’s spear&shield.
In VT2, shields can stagger attacking Berserkers, and Monks easier than other weapons. IronBreaker Bardin normally carries Drakegun too, so shield is for some horde control in some case, in general he kills horde with fire. (or trollhammer for elites after DLC).
And Ogryn ranged weapon can’t compensate Slab shield’s cons unlike IB Bardin. He can’t kill horde fast and consistent like Drakegun (Ripper guns have small ammo, Stubber has long time to swap), Rumbler, and Grenadier Gauntlet can’t hit hard like Trollhammer since Darktide elites have more health, or his ranged weapon is just weaker than Trollhammer.
His 1st heavy should be the best attack of the weapon since it has the highest stagger power of Ogyrn’s melee weapon, and the best damage of the Shield. But his 1st heavy attack speed is just terrible to use. And furthermore, You can’t hit most of left side of his body with 1st heavy attack which doesn’t match animation of attack. This attack should cover more area.
Planting shield gives you too small visual range too. You can see nothing with your height through hole of shield.
But it has similar Breakpoint compared to Cleaver to horde enemies now (of course it has lower dps than Cleaver though), I don’t think radical damage buff is needed, since it can damage Crusher with 1st heavy attack unlike Cleaver.
1st Heavy attack: Make this attack hit more enemies at the left side of Ogryn, so it can match animation, and make this attack at least 10% faster.Planting shield: Gives Ogryn more visual range, Make Ogryn can see right side, and left side. When you are defending, make planting shield faster without redundant animation.Stamina: 3->6More unique blessing: Currently it has only 4 blessing which they are boring.Edited: I deleted proposition to increase ranged block efficiency, since there’s room to increase block efficiency with Curios and weapon. I think I should test with high block efficiency first. (at least 40% setting with weapon + curios)
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Bully Club
The worst melee weapon if finesse stat is low. With high finesse, it’s ok weapon, but it has bad
light attack animation for horde still. And long wind-up time heavy attacks. Make this weapon has good animation would be too much buff since it’s dedicated elite killing weapon for Ogryn with 1st heavy attack. With hitbox issue solved, some buffs would be good enough.Attack speed: 5~7.5% buff1st heavy attack Weak spot damage: More damage to any other armor type but Flak armor. To flack armor it has 20% damage bonus when you hit their heads, but to the others it has 3% more damage (8% more to infested). at least gives 10% more damage to the other armor types.Haymaker blessing: It’s works for Ogryn too, not only human-sized enemies, because of bug, I guess. But enemies other than Chaos-Ogryns doesn’t need to be killed immediately, the other elites don’t have much health anyway, and it’s dangerous to chain your heavies continuously to Ragers, since they ignore your attack, and keep attacking you.Even the fact that you can proc this blessing to multiple target with 2nd heavy in theory, I think they should keep this bug.
Because this blessing needs ‘chained heavy attacks’ that even pushing can cancel your stacks. With low dodge distance, and it’s suicide to maintain your stack without pushing in horde + elites, Ogryn who are trying to pop this blessing up risks his life.
And I think they should delete this blessing from Combat blade, so makes this blessing only for Ogryn. Combat blade has great other blessings, and very fast attack speed unlike Bully club. So Combat blade can pops this blessing up easier than Bully club to a target. Down side, It can’t pop blessing to multiple target, but it has the greatest mobility unlike every Ogryn melee weapons, so you don’t risk too much for this blessing.
And +1% chance would be great too.
Smackdown blessing: Delete this, most targets with high value don’t get staggered by your slap if they are 2nd or 3rd target. -
Power Maul
Since I am editing this post after 1.0.2 patch, I had a chance to use weak Power Maul, I don’ t have much to say since I haven’t tested it yet. But it seems the most versatile weapon we got (second most versatile, actually, we got Latrine Shovel). Slightly faster than Club even with low attack speed stat (Crowd control), heavy attacks have good animation to control horde, slightly weaker than Bully club’s 2nd heavy but, you can spam heavies to horde unlike Bully club. It can kill Crusher unlike Cleaver.It shares power weapons weakness that it needs time to charge up, and its 1st , and 2nd light attack share weak weak spot damage bonus with overhead swing on Ogryns weapon, but I think it’s not bad.
But again, I can’t say this weapon performance for sure since I don’t test this on Damnation difficulty in person.
Ranged weapons
Many of his ranged weapon needs blessing rework, I think, I don’t have specific idea yet.
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Rumbler
It’s just good, arguably the best CC weapon. There’s some downside, but I don’t think it needs buff. -
Grenadier Gauntlet
Sometimes, special attack’s explosion is weaker than your ranged attack, I think special attack explosion must be stronger than ranged attack, because it uses ammo, and risk some damage to do this job. Even Rev up Chain weapons, and powered on Power sword don’t need resource other than time.Remove its 3rd light attack, melee attack damage is slightly weaker than Slab shield 1&2 light attacks to Unarmored horde, but 3rd light attack’s animation makes more awful to use melee attack. And 5~10% Flak armor light attack damage buff would encourage to use melee weapon in emergency.
Blaze Away blessing: I don’t think it will work on 4 cartridge weapon well, delete this. -
Ripper guns
More ammo. Faster ADS. More Manic and armor damage. (around 5~10%)Remove weird shoot delay while you are sliding.
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Heavy stubber
More dense shot (less disperse) with more recoil, it will help you dealing some shooters when you shoot this gun as semi auto way. RemoveDeathspitterorDumDum blessing, and giveCavalcade, so you can shoot longer with Charmed Reload blessing.Remove weird shoot delay while you are sliding.
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Kickback
Same reloading speed, and mobility of Rumbler. Then take off Reload stat from weapon, and add Penetration stat. 40 to 100 for Flak armor, 10 to 33 for Carapace armor, so 65% of penetration gives you similar penetration efficiency to flak armor as it does now. It can gives a little bit of damage to Carapace armor.And some actual useful blessing needed.
Reload speed & mobility: Take off Reload speed stat, and make the gun’s reload speed and mobility equal to Rumbler.
Penetration: Give Penetration stat instead, 40 to 100 for Flack armor, 10 to 33 for Carapace armor.
Blaze Away blessing: I don’t think it will work on 1 cartridge weapon, delete this.
Expansive blessing, andFull Bore blessing: Need minor value buff.
Punishing Fire blessing: It gives ranged power on Multiple Hit special attack, but I think it should give reload speed or just reload speed, up to 10%.
Feats
If I want some fix, I use preformat for Feats name.
Lv.5
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Lynchpin
Works fine in high difficulty if you prefer to stay with your team. -
Smash 'em good & Best form of Defense
With Confident strike and(or) Momentum blessing weapon, you can farm your toughness with light attack spam. And light attack spam is more safer than using his long wind-up heavies. But it’s still useful.
Lv. 10
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Heavyweight
It’s bugged now, + 50% damage buff applies to ranged weapon too. Without bug, I think it has limited usage since it applies to only Ogryns. You can’t hit Bulwarks easily without Latrine shovel, You would kill Reaper with your ranged attack, you would be busy to spam Rumbler to kill Crusher since there won’t be a Crusher, there will be Crushers and other elites. I think damage buffs should applies to every bigger or almost same size of enemies, like Muntants, and Nurgle beast, because of this more versatility, damage reduction should be decreased to 25%. -
Blood and Thunder
it’s okay Feat, it’s good especially when you melee-ing Bulwarks. With damage reduction Feat ‘Bloodthirst’, it’s useful. But damage reduction Feat is sometimes unreliable. -
Bombs Away!
To me it’s meme Feat. I think FS should give this freely to us with some damage nerf of grenades. It feels good when you pop some grenades, but your grenade box is for Muntants sniping mostly, for weak spot sniping boss, and reaper sometimes. After use 2 bombs, I think Zealot or Vet should get bombs first. Your grenade is good for killing one of the most annoying special, and heavy dealing method to boss, yes, but Zealot’s stun grenade can be life-saver, and Zealot can get 3 bombs. -
Rampage -
instead of Bombs Away!
Each 5 Melee kills make Ogryn’s next non-blast(Grenadier gauntlet, Rumbler) Ranged Attack can pierce 1 more target for 10 seconds without cleave damage penalty (if there is cleave damage penalty). In the case of Blast ranged attack, Blast radius increase by 15% for 10 seconds.
Ogryn got no ranged weapon related Feat unlike Zealot. With this Kickback can knock out more enemies in dire situation, horde killing guns can shoot horde behind Bulwarks, and Crushers which are common in Lv.5 difficulty. 15% of blast radius increment for boom weapons is not too powerful, since these weapons are already powerful enough. (If power standard is Ogryn’s ranged weapon)
Lv. 15
No comment, it’s not perfect, but it’s not super bad.
Lv. 20
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Bloodthirst
I think it’s fine. -
Hard As Nails
Not that great, but it’s useful when your teams are dead (it happens normally in 5 difficulty), and you should save your teammate from Poxhound, or Muntant, or they are all dead. At least it helps me a lot when I was left alone and I should revive my teammates through hordes on one Damnation difficulty run. And if you don’t pick **Blood and Thunder, **you have no choice, but take this. -
Die hard
The most weakest in this tier, You don’t pick Blood and Thunder? And your teammates are your friends, you know they can survive? You pick this.But Ogryn got 100 toughness without Curios, so it’s not better than damage reduction, and 25% health is dangerous to Ogryn. Even though Ogryn can have over 100 health in this case with Curios.
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Skull for Ogryn -
instead of Die hard
On melee range weak spot kill, you get 25% toughness damage reduction against ranged attack and 5% move speed for 5 sec, it stacks 3 times.
With some skillful play, and weapon hitbox bug fix in future, it will help you deal with ranged enemies.
Lv. 25
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Raging Bull
The most versatile in this tier. No need to be fixed. -
Knife Through Butter
Fully charged heavy attack is dangerous to yourself, it has too much wind-up time, since Ogryn got terrible dodge distance, It’s not recommended to use fully charged heavies alone. Even with your team? Just spam your Rumbler would be fine and better. -
Knife Through Butter
Your heavy attack, 15% power, and 50% cleave with Charge Time, Stacks 3 times. And Fully charged heavy attacks have unlimited Cleave.
Making this feat being useful without fully charged would be versatile. And Damage buff is good too. -
Payback Time
First of all, in tide game, you don’t want to get hit. In Darktide, you will get hit eventually, but still I don’t think this feat is good idea, on high difficulty, you can be at low health, at low health you don’t want to get hit, so this feat is useless in that circumstance.And there can be more difficulty like Vermintide 2. Vermintide 2 has Cataclysm 2, 3 through mode, or Weave, and there’s twitch mode too. Eventually you will not want to sacrifice your toughness and health for this feat in more harsh condition than Damnation.
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Head Crusher -
instead of Pay back Time
Melee Weak spot attack increases Melee Weak spot attack damage by 15% for 5 seconds. Stacks up to 3 times.
His weak spot damage bonus (headshot multiplier in Vermintide2) is terrible generally, so damage buff would be better. And this talent matches your classname, the Skullbreaker.
Lv. 30
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Unstoppable & Non-stop Violence
They are fine. -
Bull Gore
FS should fix Bug, first, even then, it’s not useful than the other 2. Unstoppable can knock down many elites for your team, Non-stop Violence is really good for anything, anytime.I think 3s more buff time + bleed would be more competitive. So 8s 25% attack speed and 25% movement speed with some bleed
Or make Ogryn use this ability again freely in 3s after first charge with bleed would be good.
Edited: I called 5s to both proposition, I edited them to 3s.
like 90% I agree.