The ogryn should not suffer from this from any weapon frankly. The ogryn should treat everything like its a light weight foam boffer and just be implacable. He can be slow and clumsy but essentially feel methodical and unstoppable at the same time. Its so strange to me how fatshark seems afraid of making him awesome.
I have a level 30 ogryn i play rarely. I clear damnation hi-int with him. But i mostly want him to be better so i can enjoy watching him beat stuff up in my games when OTHER people play him.
Props to Fatshark for trying to capture the flavour of the slab shield, but gameplay wise it just doesn’t work: damage is significantly below weapon average, mitigation is too situational and expensive, even how enemies interact with players means that the slab shield feels horrible to use 95% of the time.
The shield lock is meant to be done by a team of slabgryns, locking the shields together to create an advancing wall, so it’s weird how it translates into being locked into place in the game, especially in a game that has such a large emphasis (intentional or not) on mobility and positioning.
It also just feels bad when something the size and weight of a bulkhead door does barely any damage. With the strength of an ogryn it should feel like being hit by a car. It gets half of it right in that it knocks everyone around, but the lack of damage dealt is jarring.
Blocking las fire and small arms shouldn’t deplete stamina that quickly, it just adds to the general weakness feeling of the weapon and ogryn when you can’t even hold it up against gunfire for 3 seconds without locking the shield.
Enemies walking through the shield and player characters seem like an engine/game logic issue that affects everyone, but it feels much worse with the shield out, locked or not.
Personally, I’d rather they made a new MK variant and keep the infinite block in the game. I like it and have used it to great effect. Literally pulling aggro from all shooters and a pack of demolishers with some gunner support. But yeah it can backfire, but that’s when the player had to make a smart decision. You can periodically release block and reposition, sometimes attack etc.
If you have a bad shieldgryn, you’re gonna have a bad time. Same with every class really. Some people can’t aim for shiz, are you gonna remove aiming from the game because idiots who can’t aim ruin your game? No, git gud.
Do you want any and all weapons and abilities to have no downsides, require no skill to use and always result in a brilliant outcome regardless of a players use of it? Of course not, that would be boring.
Not a bad take at all. The special definitely requires good judgement to use effectively, but using it badly often throws games and the people that use it well barely get more value than people that just don’t use it in the first place. I would like to add that most of the “good” shieldgryns almost never use the special. Having a stamina curio and stacking block efficiency is infinitely better than being stationary and let’s you actually advance with the team.
Totally agree with regard to the field of vision when using the special. I honestly thought it was my settings that had broke it but having seen other people struggling it soon became my least favorite weapon for Ogryn… despite playing all Vermintide2 sheilds without issue. I would love fatshark to come up with some sheild-gryn class with feats/perks/blessings and specials that would give him some versatility in that role… I’m surprised there isnn’t anything in the works for some force sheild to deal with the range enemies but, like gren gauntlet, can effectively used at melee range to shove people out the way…
Really wish they would buff the shield already. Why are they completely ignoring it? It’s the only shield in the game and yet we have complained and explained exactly what needs to be fixed with it and they haven’t done a damn thing since launch. They have given the Stubber and Ripper two updates, yet the single shield? Nothing. It’s a joke. Give light attack 20 more damage a hit (even if the weapon was 100% damage stat it still wouldn’t even be 100 damage, like are you kidding?), make the 2nd heavy hit stronger than a light attack ( there is literally no reason a heavy should deal less damage than a light attack), and make the shield continue to block when you push with it. It’s that simple and yet they are dragging their feet.
The only thing I disagree strongly about is the light attack combo. I’m fine with the maul being a CC-favoring weapon, and the shove->L1->H2 sequence feels really good and intuitive for making a big pile of bodies on my left. If only more of them were corpses…
In regards to everything else: I’m ok with the poor sprint efficiency, but blocking should not slow you down or blind you- the viewport needs to be bigger (or else give us outlines through the shield), and you need to be able to advance at normal speed with the shield up. Would be nice if it worked on sniper rounds, too, but I recognize that there would be implications to that change.
Shove releasing block needs fixed. Shove’s low impact, compared to the vermintide shields, is… a problem, but at least it would make sense with not flinging the shield out to the side if it didn’t lower your guard!
H1 coming out a little faster and H2 getting heavy attack damage alongside its heavy attack stagger and heavy attack input would go a fair way in regards to overall handling issues- I’m ok with the weapon being slow as long as it’s properly impactful.
Planting the shield for a special just… something’s missing. A shield with decent defense stats has enough block efficiency to usually get you out of the line of fire, but once in a great while I get to use it for a clutch moment like covering a revive in the open. I think it’d miss it a little if it were gone, but I’d consider it a net positive if it were swapped for something that didn’t encourage so much complacency.
Shield could use some love. Also the animations…all that shield waving is really bad for visibility, both for the user and teammates around them. As a bystander I actually do NOT want a shield user next to me. The game has poor visibility as it is. A new variant would be nice also, something far smaller, which would still provide some protection from range fire, but provide less obstuction.
They did a good job with shields that comes with DLCs in V2. That aspect you can hit and block at the same time (like priest’s shield+flail heavies) will work even better in DT, helping ogryn to defend himself from shooters and killing trashmobs at the same time.