After leveling Ogryn and Psyker to 30 (which went actually quite fast if you focus on lower difficulties and finish the missions instead of losing on higher difficulties ), I thought I’d give my perspective on their overall feel, their weapons, talents and synergies. I do think that these two are actually in quite a good spot, with only some very minor tweeks needed to individual classes. Most things that hinder both from being enjoyable all the time are mostly universal, meaning these are general issues that affect all playable classes, albeit possibly in different ways and/or to more or lesser extents.
General Stuff:
Overall, the game feels pretty tight and noticably different from Vermintide, which has both light and dark sides to it. I think it is common consesus that the game is in ALOT better of a state than VT2 was at a similar state in its development, and that most questionable design choices that were present in VT2 have been adressed. I’ll start out with some general thoughts on some core mechanics.
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Toughness: I think the move towards a shield-mechanic in lieu of temp health was a very smart move, as it makes health a more valuable commodity, puts more pressure on the group to push ahead and be careful at the same time, while still rewarding aggressive play (one could argue making it a necessity), and having two ways to regen toughness - melee kills and coherency - means you don’t get shoehorned into playing a certain way. It does benefit melee heroes with killing potential more than those who can only CC or focus on range, but again, the choice of giving each class access to truly unique ways of toughness regen that are not exclusively tied to melee combat gives the player alot of control over how to play.
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Coherency: Speaking of coherency, I was quite a bit skeptical about this, and I do think there is still some tweaking to be done, but overall, I think this is a mechanic that benefits the flow of the game. I do not feel that coherency is forcing you to hudle together, but it is more of soft coercion. Coherency radius is generous enough that you don’t need to sniff each others armpits in order to benefit from it (I am looking at you, auras from VT2!), and it does allow to split up in teams of two to do different stuff. I don’t share the criticism that this forces a certain style of play at all. Straying of alone is now risky, but the benefits you lose are nowhere defining your character in a way that having no coherency bonus would strip you of a large part of your kit. The only thing I would indeed change is not tying passive toughness-regen to coherency. The coherency-bonus is good as it is, but I would like to have passive regen without it. Make it small and insignificant, but make it exist. That’s all I have to say about this.
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Ranged Enemies: Not gonna add much more to what hasn’t already been said: Don’t give them perfect accuracy. Remember what the outrage was about beastmen archers when you couldn’t block their arrows without a shield? Remember how they are still despised by many people because even though they don’t have perfect accuracy, when a couple of them pelts you with an arrow while engaged in melee and the small stagger disrupts your rhythm and you feel you get punished for having done nothing wrong? Yeah, now imagine that with perfect accuracy AND beastmen archers still shooting at you while they stand 10 feet away from you. Ranged enemies are too plentiful and deal too much damage in order for them to have perfect accuracy. Also, they are still VERY prone to shoot at you from very close ranges, often still strafing away from you while you can do nothing but get blasted in the face while you try to catch up to them. The range in which they are forced to switch to melee should be ALOT larger than it is right now, and the switch should take priority over anything else they are doing. It still happens frequently that ranged enemies pelt you with half a salvo, then realize they are in melee range, and switch their weapon mid-salvo.
I do agree with the sentiment that regular ranged enemies are ALOT more dangerous than specialists and elites witch ranged capabilities, simply because they are so plentiful, engage you from longer distances than Gunners or Flamers do, an are usually alot more spread out in groups. On higher difficulties, you can hardly peek your head out of cover to take shots without immediately getting greated by a veritable barrage fired into your unexpecting visage. I think this results in a difficulty that is more frustrating than truly challanging. No need to change much, but some tweaks here and there should be done. -
Cover: While at the topic of cover, the perfect accuracy of ranged enemies also means that they will exploit even the most miniscule holes in the cover you are seeking to hit you. It does not happen too frequently, but there is hardly anything more irritating than thinking you are in cover, only for a random lasgunner threading a needle through the thumb-sized hole in the geometry of your cover. This is especially comical with snipers that will exploit even the smalles gap. Sharp they shoot indeed.
OGRYN STUFF
Now for the first of the two classes I’ve played to 30 so far, the Ogryn is actually in quite a good place. You rarely see them on higher difficulties, and the overall sentiment seems to be that Ogryn suffers the most from the overabundance of ranged enemies. I would agree insofar as the already mentioned problems with cover and the perfect accuracy of ranged enemies does seem to affect Ogryn the most due to his size, coupled with the fact that finding proper cover is deliberately limited. It always seems like when there has been multiple cover options placed in a level, there is usually only one large enough for the Ogryn. This does limit his playstyle a little bit, but I don’t agree that Ogryn is the weakest. Ironically, even though he has the most wounds and highest health, playing Ogryn can be the least forgiving with the smallest margin for faulty play. I know the meta is shield, which is understandable due to the fact that Ogryn with shield can create his own cover on the spot, he can hold doors with weapon special and he has good crowd control. However, his other melee options are equally as viable. You just have to play SUPER aggressively. Usually, you just gotta have the courage to charge in and start slaying - but of course, you need to know when the time isn’t right.
One thing I will get ouf the way is that I do find level 30 talents for all classes a little bit troubling when it comes to playing and understanding a class. The game isn’t paced too well in the progession in this regard, simply owed to the fact that the level 30 talents define you class ability more than anything before, and I would make the case that you can only truly start to understand the capabilities and limitations of your chosen class once you have access to the level 30 talents. This is especially true for Ogryn, but I will get to that in detail below. I also realize that the lore dictates some of the quirks the Ogryn has. While the writing suggests that our Ogryns are Bone’eads whose implants have run faulty, Ogryn, by lore, need to be a little clumsy and slow when compared to humans. It is for that reason that I will not critize the choice to make his attacks slow-ish and his gunplay a little clunky, but I do say that some of the weapons need to be looked into.
I’ll start out with the talents and try to give my perspective on how viable they are, not only when compared to each other, but with his overall kit, role, weapon choise and possible synergies with other classes.
Column I
Both “Smash 'em Good” and “Best Form of Defense” are viable, with the latter being the most sensible choice, given that Ogryn’s role is CC and horde clearing and this is the situation where he needs toughness regen the most. It also synergizes well with weapon traits that give some kind of toughness regen on different melee attacks. With a good weapon, you can realiably get about a third of your toughness back while using charged sweaps. With cleavers and knifes, once you figure out what the best attack pattern is, your survivability in melee is unrivaled. Also works well with the shield. “Lynchpin” falls flat. While 100% more passive regen sounds nice in theory, it would benefit Ogryn only in situations where there are ranged engagements from cover, where he is not at his strongest. It’s nice to give you the possibility to give you something to balance out your weaknesses, but Ogryn needs access to reliable regen in melee because you are often trading hits due to your slow attack speed.
Column II
Again, two talents take the spotlight: “Heavyweight” and “Blood & Thunder” are equally viable choices. In on itself, Heavyweight is definitely worlds better than “Blood & Thunder”, but once you get access to level 20’s “Bloodthirst”, Blood & Thunder is the more reliable choice if you don’t have a weapon that causes bleed. However, if you do, Heavyweight will help you against enemy Ogryn in melee, something Ogryn heavily struggles with, allthough more bleed-stacks always help in this regard, also. I do feel that, considering there is weapons our there that give multiple bleed-stacks, a single stack on heavy attack only seems a little bit lack-luster. Especially on harder difficulties, a single bleed stack applied in such a slow manner hardly makes any difference in your killing potential, so essentially, you’d only run this to get reliable access to “Bloodthirst”. This needs some tweaking imho.
“Bombs Away”, on the other hand, is a joke that doesn’t stand a chance against the other two talents in any way imaginable. Not only do the other talents provide bonusses that are either passive or readily available, they don’t require any skill or certain situation to come into play. “Bombs Away” gives a mediocre bonus that only applies under a very narrow set of circumstances, AND you have to be at least somewhat skillful to properly apply it, AND you miss out on the bonusses the other talents provide. The talent requires you to have a grenade ready, of which Ogryn only has two, AND there needs to be a carapace armoured enemy, AND you have to actually hit it with your grenade box (which isn’t THAT hard due to their size, but in situations wher the addes explosions would be helpful, there is usually alot of ther stuff attacking you), AND for the grenades’ explosions to be of any meaningful effect, there need to be additional enemies around the armoured enemy. And what do you get? Okay, you clear the situation, then what? Especially on higher difficulties, enemies are so plentiful, you don’t really gain much from the feat you just accomplished. You can’t even use it against monstrosities, so overall, this is quite a waste.
Suggestion: This talent needs to be replaced with something that can compete with the other two talents. Ogryn’s grenade box should always work like this: On a direct hit on an enemy, the grenades fall out and explode after a couple of seconds. I get the humour behind Ogryn being too stupid and clumsy to properly use a single grenade, but this humour would still be present if the grenades exploded all at once.
Column III
These talents are all a bit lackluster. Towering presence is always useful, but doesn’t really give much customization or synergies with your kit. It’s just nice to have. “Bullfighter” is more synergetic if you want to charge often (which you basically want, no matter how your kit is) and a good bonus, since on higher difficulties, you are usually within coherency with your squad and there are many elites running around. “Lead the Charge” is a small bonus that only affects your teammates, and while it might help them to catch up to you when you charge or make a coordinated retreat, it is still just 25% more movement speed for 4 seconds. I think “Lead the Charge” should provide something alot more useful than just movement speed for a couple of seconds.
Column IV
Bloodthirst reings supreme, due to how easy it is to apply bleeding against enemies and how big of a bonus it provides. Especially when paired with “Bull Gore”, you can charge into combat with reckless abandon and know that you will be pretty much set with 50% damage reduction for as long as you can keep the action up. “Die Hard” is, again, good on paper, but situational. Hard as Nails is also very situational, but can be a matchwinner if you are really the last man standing, as with 75% DR, reviving is alot easier. However, you are trading very situational potential 75% DR against quasi always ready 50% DR. Not a good trade imho.
Column V
Column five offers good variety. “Knife through Butter” is a good pick because of how punishing a bigger group of enemies is once a single carapace armoured enemy mixes in. Having to fully charge the charged attack does diminish its practicality, but can still be a game changer, depending on what weapon you use it on. Also helps with densely packed mobs, of course. “Raging Bull” is good offensive pick for Ogryn’s knives, considering how well they cleave. Triggers when you need it most and makes a big difference in horde clearing. “Payback Time” falls a littel short. It helps when you are trading shots, and a flat 20% bonus is a pretty serious buff, and the limitation on “enemy type” isn’t much of a detriment. Still, if you play your cards right, “Raging Bull” is the better pick.
Column VI
This is what I hinted at before. Column VI is a game-changer, because it gives your bullcharge the possibility to truly switch up the way you use it. Two bleed stacks is not a huge debuff, but it is applied to everything you touch and it goes without saying that it is a natural fit with Bloodthrist. This allows you to be more aggressive when charging into groups of enemies, due to the fact that you instantly get your 50% DR up. Non-Stop-Violence falls in the same wake, allowing you to use your charge to pretty much instantly replenish your toughness, so you can use your charge as a tool for repositioning and immediately re-engage. It also helps against ranged chips before and during your charge. “Unstoppable” is, by and large, the biggest game changer, because it allows you to close the gap against almost all ranged enemies, and I’d say this is almost a mandatory pick: You can knock down all carapace armoured enemies, who somewhat are your nemesis in melee, and allowing your team to get in alot of hits with impunity, and it allows for both safer engagements as well as disengagements, AND you are alot more capable of helping fallen comrades.
All in all, Ogryn is in a good spot, but talent choice is limited. His grenade talent needs to go and just switch to how his grenades to begin with, and if they always worked like that, having only the amount reduced to one wouldn’t be uncalled for. His melee weapons suffer from a surprising lack of anti-armour capabilities. I know that this largeley depends on how the stats are rolled, and my current mastercraft knife is actually rather decent. Still, a dedicated anti armour weapon would be welcome. His ranged weapons are also fine. Rippergun is a little low on the ammo-side, even when you get a good roll on the ammo capacity, considering the HMG isn’t that much worse of in close quarters, decent at medium range and generally has ammo for days. Kickback is not worth it, grenade launcher is very good, so is HMG.
Psyker will be next.
Edit Forgot one thing: Put Ogryn in dodged state during charge against melee and ranged.