Dear Fatshark: Talent Tree Changes Of A True Ogryn Geezer

[LVSpooky]

Thanks for the input on this. I agree with the toughness thing getting out of hand in hindsight. I’ve done some periodic edits in the last couple days about the rending, toughness on hit, and bleed parts along with a few other things if anyone is interested in re-skimming the OP.

Also I adjusted the section about the two mandatory 25 toughness passives.

@LVSpooky

I suggest altering the ogryn to have a default value of 75 maximum toughess and then replacing these two passives with 5% health on the left and 5% reload speed on the right. This would remove the weird spending bloat in the top of the talent tree and enable more flexibility and diversity in how ogryns allocate their talent trees and/or get tankier.

[LVSpooky]

I did a sweep of polishing edits to the OP. I think it’s just about in it’s final form.

I might make a zealot post like this one. That class has a lot of imbalanced talents too…

[LVSpooky]

I slapped on a couple extra aura alternatives.

@LVSpooky

This is pain. Currently the aura only increases coherency regeneration rate. I recommend changing this to a variety of separate effects that would match the protector thematic better. Honestly, we’ll take anything else…
Concept A; increase ALL toughness replenished by 15% or 20%. Just generally good for survival.
Concept B; reduce damage taken by 7.5% or 10%. This would be like a variant of the zealot’s Benediction since it’s weaker, but also applies to health damage taken.
Concept C; replenish 1% toughness per second. I’m low balling the numbers for this one since combat regeneration can potentially get out of hand.
Concept D; increase Impact bonus of everything by 25%. Synergy with the prerequisite passive Hard Knocks.
Concept E; you have +50% threat. This would help take the heat off of teammates, but I don’t recommend this option if other sources of the threat stat were also added onto the talent tree.

[Nish]

@LVSpooky

As a Path of Exile player, a game that has an insane amount of different stats along with very consistent keywords and terminology, it drives me nuts.

“Nearby”

[LVSpooky]

@Nish

“Nearby”

shivers

[LVSpooky]

The actual in game ogryn talent tree is getting changes on december 3rd this week. Minor hype!

[Murderer]

On the topic of Ogryn balance, Havoc sure is throwing Ogryn a curveball. Increased stagger tresholds ensure you can’t push elites anymore, the punches and slaps are all literally useless because of it too, the shooter changes seem handcrafted to mess with Ogryn the most due to his bad dodge and inertia characteristics, and he gets hit the hardest by the HP% reductions for obvious reasons.
I’m still working towards 40 but man way to basically just turn off everything that made Ogryn unique for the gamemode. A bit disappointing that they chose to balance it that way. Compare it to Vet who still has his gold overtoughness at 50 despite the max toughness reduction (and staggers everything still), and similar mechanics. Ogryn gets kinda uniquely put down by the Havoc adjustments.

At least the new stubber gives him a weapon that’s arguably on the level of a bolter

[dannylew8299]

@Murderer

At least the new stubber gives him a weapon that’s arguably on the level of a bolter

I keep seeing the bolter comparison but I’m not feeling it.

What’s the perks and blessings people are floating to? Maybe mine are just bad built.

[Murderer]

The Achlys one is definitely on the level of a bolter, except with better ammo and magazine economy. The one thing it can’t do like a bolter is hipfire, the hipfire is so inaccurate it’s worthless. The Krourk also feels good, feels like a headhunter autogun except with a decently usable hipfire mode too if you feel like emptying into ragers. The Gorgonum is inbetween those two, closer to the Krourk but with less ammo, some better damage and zoom. Overall excellent weapon for a melee ogryn, and while it’s not as strong as I first thought (it has some unfortunate almost-breakpoints you can’t overcome) it’s definitely the single strongest special (and if you want, elite) killing wep Ogryn has now. Their only downside is a very cumbersome reload animation, and the swap speed is bolter-tier.

Also the Gorgonum has a really cool model

[LVSpooky]

I made a small addition about the top right section of the talent tree as feedback for the newly updated ogryn changes.

@LVSpooky

As of the new live update Towering Presence is now a prerequisite to Steady Grip. I recommend swapping the location of Steady Grip with Lynchpin so that gunner ogryns have the choice to travel through Heavyweight and not take the coherency talents if they so choose.

@LVSpooky

This passive is alright when you can use it, but the activation condition is too limiting in when you can actually benefit. Lower the amount of enemies need to activate the buff to hitting 3 or more.

Also, since Pacemaker was moved to be a prerequisite to Reloaded and Ready i’m re-emphasizing my Pacemaker buff suggestion. (I accidentally deleted it before when i was re-organizing the OP)

[LVSpooky]

After the recent update where I played a bunch of maelstrom missions and the new content I decided to update my recommended section for Loyal Protector since I felt my before changes were still too clunky. Ogryn feels so much worse than the tiny humies for the new endgame content

@LVSpooky

This ability is by far the least desirable ogryn ability and has some serious flaws that not only make it inferior to the other two, but also prevent it from even fully fulfilling its primary function of redirecting enemies.
The prominent flaw of Loyal Protector is that it’s useless against further away and/or ranged enemies and can only affect the enemies in your immediate vicinity and will not impact any new enemies once spent. In higher difficulties where new enemies constantly spawn this becomes a glaring problem that makes Loyal Protector impotent. I highly recommend changing the effect of the ability to instead Stagger nearby enemies and increase your Threat by +100% for 15s. This would completely resolve the reach and consistency issue the ability faces.
The upgrade Valuable Distraction would need to be adjusted since the ability no longer applies the Taunt debuff. The new effect could be you and allies in coherency gain +15% damage for the duration of Loyal Protector.
Another large issue with the current Loyal Protector is that it is the only ogryn ability without an upgrade that replenishes toughness and will just leave you a vulnerable sitting duck in fights. Big Lungs wouldn’t be relevant with the above change and so could be replaced with Big Heart which would grant replenish 5% toughness a second for the duration of Loyal Protector. This would enable an upgrade option to help the ogryn survive the onslaught of enemies he has brought upon himself.

[Vodhawak]

I don’t like this change to Loyal Protector, It would mean serius trouble with gunners around, while his current iteration allows you to grab the attention of the melee enemys allowing your teammates to focus them down undisturbed, but I agree that the enemies should be constantly taunted for the duration of the ability, not just the ones in the radius when activated.

[LVSpooky]

The big issue is that with the way Fatshark coded Taunt it would break the game to constantly reapply it. Taunt forces all enemies into melee and breaks ranged AI a lot. If you have the taunt on block talent and use the slab shield to block a sniper then the sniper will get taunted and proceed to kick the air in place until it wears off as an example. It’s more of a coding problem then anything else and I can’t in good faith tell Fatshark to rewrite their mechanics on top of a talent rework when another viable solution is available. The point of this post is mostly to be easy and viable changes after all. That sniper bug should totally get fixed though.

Also I feel with all of the OP changes taken into account that a tank oriented ogryn would have no issue taking more aggro from ranged enemies for a few reasons: Firstly is that most ranged enemies including Gunners need line of sight and can’t shoot through melee enemies between you and them anyways. I also recommended new upgrade talents for Loyal Protector & Feel No Pain that give toughness sustain options that can work against ranged enemies. Sure an ogryn taking Loyal Protector without investing talent points into more durability could be caught lacking, but that just makes sense to begin with.

Threat is just the cleanest mechanical tool for redirecting enemy attention currently in Darktide.

[OchulOgryn]

Thank you for writing this post. I really hope Fatshark sees it!

[Vodhawak]

I still don’t approve of this change, it would limit build diversity, making loyal protector perform much better with a shield and and forcing a more defensive play style.

[LVSpooky]

You made a good point about too many ranged enemies forcing the player into either using a shield or playing passively. I’m fairly certain the Threat formula references distance anyways so I tweaked the OP with that in mind.

@LVSpooky

Stagger nearby enemies and increase your Threat by +100% against enemies within 15 to 20m for 15s.

By adding a range limit it will prevent gunners from unanimously targeting the ogryn, while still enabling the ogryn to help redirect gunfire away from teammates in a controllable manner.

I also added a 2nd conceptual option with a similar effect that would only draw enemy fire when you are near teammates

@LVSpooky

Alternative concept: Another similar implementation would be to have Loyal protector instead Stagger nearby enemies and reduce the Threat of your allies in coherency by 50% for 15 seconds. The outcome would be similar to the above concept with a few nuanced differences.

[LVSpooky]

I made a few small edits and polished the upgrade for the ranged keystone replacement concept.

@LVSpooky

If the above keystone change were to happen then this passive upgrade should be slightly adjusted to reduce the cooldown of Lucky Bullet by 1s when you hit at least 1 enemy with a ranged attack; allowing high fire rate weapons access to continued synergy with the keystone.