Veteran and Psyker usually keep their distance; Veteran in particular, and that class also has a feat crafted specifically towards dealing with riflemen fast. Zealot has it easier because of being faster and having more ways of staying alive. Ogryn though… dealing with riflemen is a chore; I’ve said that before and, after another 150 hours or so I’m saying it again.
Playing on Heresy, the difficulty I’m usually on, a single burst from enemy’s rifle takes down roughly 2/3 of my toughness. In order to avoid them I need to either play this game like a badly-made shooter, moving out of cover, shooting once or twice, hiding to regain toughness, repeat, or dash around like mad, twisting my fingers together in an attempt to pull off the crouch-dash move whenever I’m not attacking. Even when I dare to move out of cover - and depending on other party members this can be just difficult or straight-up suicidal - I need to get extremely close to enemy riflemen just to make them stop shooting me. You’d think that a large maniac with a cleaver running towards you would make you reconsider your choice of weapons, but you need to get to about 1.5 - 2 meters away from enemy to make them stop shooting you, and every shot hurts considerably and there is always so damn many of them…
You may say “it’s a skill issue, git gud”, to which I say no, make the enemy riflemen more fair instead. You may say “this is the new Tide, get used to it”, to which I say no, I won’t get used to over-tuned enemies that I have to face literally every minute of every game. You may even say “use Rumbler”, to which I say that yeah, Rumbler is good, but it is in no way a foolproof solution and I don’t want to be stuck with a single ranged weapon for every game. Back in Vermintide when I’ve got hit I knew it was because of my mistake - bad positioning, not knowing what’s happening around me etc. (or because an enemy spawned behind me…). In Darktide, I get hit because I have a huge hitbox and few means of migitating the danger coming from over-tuned enemies.
My suggestions, use either some or all of them:
put fewer enemy riflemen on maps,
make their shots deal less damage,
make their accuracy less than pinpoint (preferable),
make them change to melee weapon at further distance from players (also preferable).
My favorite class to play on Heresy and Damnation is Ogryn. I use a bonk stick and a ripper gun.
Sure I’m out ranged. I do think it comes down to positioning… Certain maps have very difficulty zones for the big ol’ brute. Its not an issue until its an issue. This comes down to how well the team is performing.
I think the first mistake for a team on harder difficulties is trying to take the range fight instead of charge into melee. The other difficulty is trusting your teamates to recognize you are charging in and charge with you. If you bum-rush a patrol others should jump in OR look to supress and deal with targets shooting you. This is very difficult to trust as players play their own game. As an Ogryn you need to be more aware of your team and let them go first to see how they are clearing a room. You have to support them first before you can trust them.
The last thing ill mention is sustain. How are you gaining toughness? The big man needs to have a melee that replenishes on hit (if he is being shot while in melee), he even has feats that replenish per heavy swing. If you cant sustain while being shot, you need to retreat and pull the treat to a better location where you can either lock them into melee, or get close enough for your weapons to burst them down. Again, this is back to positioning.
The Ripper, sadly, is bad in Heresy and terrible in Damnation (same goes for Stubber).
The reason you see so many Rumblers (to some extent a GGauntlet) is that it helps in exactly these situations, clear/stumble some gunners (the dreaded Dregs); shoot’n’scoot and close the gap to melee.
P.S. Don’t forget lil Dreg shooters are still bugged with their instant suppression recovery; they are the true threats.
That I already know but yeah, it is a good way of playing. It is usually a bad idea to be the first one to pull a group of ranged enemies.
Lynchpin and cleaver with +toughness on repeated hits. Wish I’d have the blessing for +toughness on hitting multiple enemies but you can’t have it all unless the RNJesus smiles at you.
I’d argue that Stubber isn’t so bad; it is very arguable whether it’s better than Rumbler and Grenade Gauntlet but Heavy Stubba’ sure has its merits aside from being just a cool dakka machine. It’s good at suppressive fire, allows you to kill most elites fast and keeping them knocked down or at least staggered as you shoot and doesn’t require you to reload every few seconds.
As for Ripper, I wanted to like it but I can’t, it just seems pointless. Maybe it’s good if you’re in a pre-made and know you can count on others for actual ranged fire.
It, like the ripper are fun and iconic, but they get you just killed on Heresy and Damnation, you don’t win the war of attrition an are over-exposed to return fire. I want to like them both sooo badly but they just let you down.
From my experience: Stubber takes too long to deploy, too long to brace, too long to actually kill fast and accurately enough (even after the slight dmg buff). The Stubber only seems to perform well in a pre-made or very strong random group where you can take pretty much anything.
It’s sad, but that’s the current state of the game. At the risk of repeating myself, they seem to be more “balanced” around the data-mined Gun Lugger class that has stuff to mitigate damage when brace firing for instance. OFC none of that helps the Skullbreaker we have now.
Coherency: +20% damage vs suppressed enemies
Talent Groups:
passive: 8% chance to shoot for free / 25% DR while braced / +50% max ammo
mixed: +12% damage for 6s after reload / 2% toughness on ranged kill / +25% magazine size
offensive: +1% critical chance for 6s on kill, max +12% / +25% suppression / 30% faster reload for 5s upon hitting 5 enemies
defensive: (no info) / +20% movement speed for 5s on ranged kill / 2% toughness regeneration while braced
coherency: +15% max ammo in coherency / +10% more damage (+30%) vs suppressed enemies / (speculation) 25% ranged damage reduction per ally in coherency, max 4 stacks, lasts 8s
passive spec: (speculation) upon triggering passive, 15% faster cooldown regeneration for 8s / passive trigger chance increased to 12% / (no info)
combat ability: +15% fire rate / (cannot speculate) / +25% damage to enemies in close range
Combat Ability: Cannot make heads or tails from the available info, most probably a special fire mode / a special weapon that lets you mow targets down
Passive: From the talents that improve the passive, I assume it’s some sort of buff with a proc-chance upon getting a ranged hit, maybe you are bound to get targeted by ranged enemies more. No clue, really
Ripper shreds Flak and Unarmored. Its very good if you want to make immediate space. It can attend to enemies a little bit farther than the flamer can. As far as dealing with the ranged yes, it’s close to pointless. It would take about 8+ shots (about half the clip) to deal with a sniper.
It has very limited ammo as well, and the Bayonet its never worth other than style points. The accuracy on the Ripper is underrated (maybe its because mine is 502 with one bad talent)
Long story short, it works for me, I have my club to deal with Carapace and ripper for flak. I know the Ripper has value because players turn around to check what gun I’m using. On Damnation though… the 20+ grenades with the Rumbler creates so much team value its rare if I bring the Ripper in. On Heresy, all day Ripper.
This doesn’t solve the range issue. The Rumbler can, barely. Its just one of those classes that will always suffer. Hopefully the rumored “Gun Lugger” can improve in this area.
I would like a more cinematic experience with ranged fire. Bullets wizzing over your head, chipping on the ground in front of you. But right now they keep rolling 6
This would be the more sensible approach, start by fixing Dreg shooters (we call them Archers in our groups, remember VT2 Beastmen Archers?).
I’ve said that Skullbreaker could use some extra innate small arms damage resistance vs Archers or at the very least some sprinting and sliding DR like Zealot has.
I haven’t had good luck with the big guy over malice myself, only class I haven’t, but it’s still worth nothing there’s a world of difference on the ripper between Mk2, mk5, and mk6.
Mk2 shreds up close, and the other two have a bit more reach. The 5+6 are pretty close, and someone who uses them more can likely tell more on the differences between them. Personally I prefer the mk2, but not if I’m looking at longer range fights.
Even so, the difference is enough it’s worth noting which you’re using.
Also, every class needs a way to remain in a ranged fight, and the Ogryn’s need to be in close is his biggest weakness, and one I hope they address if the game survives.
Mk 5 Ripper has the damage/range of the Mk 6 and slightly tighter shot spread. It has a 3 burst trigger like the Mk 2, with a much faster full auto on M2. This is supposed to be its real strength but it has less ammo per magazine (you need a perfect 80% roll for 18 shots) and around 24 less rounds total. For the lore accurate Ogryn gun that is out of ammo before any real fighting starts this checks all the boxes.
But considering you can just burst cancel the Mk2 before it wastes that third shot it will throw wide at mid range all the rippers need a serious rework. Particularly in ammo capacity and imo all shotguns should do heavy maniac damage. Give them some niche somewhere, they aren’t even great for point blank big damage in this game.
Just sprint, dodge and slide.
I have taken my ogryn into numerous damnation missions. In damnation a single dreg gunner can shred your toughness and potentially start doing health damage. They spawn in packs of forty. All you need to do is sprint, dodge, slide. That and maybe take advantage of good positioning and ambushes.
If anything I am starting to find damnation too easy and that is with the 5000000000 shooters and that is despite being a big honking Ogryn.
It doesn’t help that Can Opener(Rending) blessing is only applied by the Bayonet special attack; how is this ever helpful? My pet peeve is all these gimmicky mechanics in games that just don’t ever work, and ogryn seems to have more than his fair share.
Well whoop dee-do, congrats on being better at the game than me and being fine with annoyingly strong opponents. Most of what you said translates into “look at me, I’m so good”. “Numerous damnation missions”, jeez, talk about arrogance. Check yourself.
I do sprint, I do dodge and I do slide. I do my best to position myself well. Yes, I often pull it off, I often deal with shooters before they do any harm. That is not the point. The point is that dealing with them is not fun but a stressful chore.
Ogryn is just terrible Zealot in the general gameplay of moving cover to cover. Zealot’s faster stamina regen and shorter delay before stamina begins regenerating let him run circles around Ogryn and he’s even rocking 50% damage reduction in sprint/dodge state (and a complete immunity to damage while sliding). Killing things means a lot more than knocking them around, especially with how slow Ogryn’s single-entity damage is in melee. Also despite anyone’s best efforts his giant hitbox size and player’s blocking not piercing shots completely is an active detriment to the team you can’t make up for most of the time. You can’t lead the charge.
This is also a huge weakness of Ogryn melee in general, everything is hopelessly over specialized. Knives have horde clear and mobility but no armor/maniac damage whatsoever. Billy club has good single target damage on 1 heavy, but that attack is slow and its horde clear is terrible. Shovel is sort of in between, but still very weak on Maniacs and slow vs horde. Shield has safety and control but negative DPS. Power maul’s activation delay requires you to loop it to pull it off safely, with terrible single entity damage without being powered up.
Its also not as good overall as the Crusher that Zealot gets, which does the exact same thing but is slightly better at killing that target you just hit with a zap.
It really feels like they were so obsessed with making Ogryn different that they forgot to make him have an actual advantage. Even reviving I would throw to Psyker, since kinetic deflection + deflector lets you pick players up in hails of gunfire which Ogryn can’t do because of toughness breaking. FK Kruber and IB Bardin never felt weak in melee, they just weren’t as powerful as their classes that specifically boosted melee damage. This is not the design here, where Ogryn has terrible overall damage output for the sake of stagger, which other character’s already have tons of access to. His range weapons are also just whack and completely impractical.
I’m also annoyed how much stronger dreg shooters are compared to scabs. Immune to suppression (which is supposed to be a core mechanic), tankier due to much higher health pool that overcompensates for being unarmored, and their bullets make it less clear where shots are coming from compared to las shots. Favorite thing though is when any shooter begins walking backwards at near full speed while pelting you and slowing you to a crawl.
This post makes no sense. You have a weapon that completely negates shooters. It’s called the shield. You can literally walk up to them and bonk them on the head with it.
Also all these people saying ripper is bad are just wrong. It pairs extremely well with the shield. I use shield and ripper in heresy and completely dominate with them. There is no enemy the ripper can’t absolutely crap on and it does the most burst damage of any ogryn weapon. You guys have no idea what you are talking about