For the uninitiated, the Ogryn Power Maul used to be a solid second place to the Cleaver mk III and was one of the best weapons for HiSTG for the CC it brought.
Not so much, at the moment.
Alright, so what should Paul do? New shovels do what Thunder Hammer does. Bully Clubs hit all of my beat stick related needs with the hilarious bonus of slapping monsters. I don’t believe there’s a need for Paul’s brand of CC anymore because, well, Ogryn’s melee arsenal is actually good now with exception of the Mk II brute pride club.
Should Paul have a niche? Does it need a niche? Does it need to get the same treatment that the Indycrusher got?
Should it be updated? My opinion is maybe, probably yes?
Problem would be that to “fix” it, you’d trivialize melee more than it arguably already is on Ogryn due to the comical stagger and CC you already get.
On Zealot the bonk stick is very good not just for opening up bulwark trains, but to make things like rager trains/mixed packs stop inspecting your gums by axe or club immediately, something nothing else really does on more than one target.
Buffing this aspect on the Ogryn maul and leaning harder into any Ogryn weapon having even more CC at this point seems… counterproductive from a balance standpoint based on how well they already do.
So my personal answer to the OP, no, it doesn’t need a niche at the moment, mainly because Ogryn melee is so versatile already. (as you said yourself)
But, a sloppy change to give it a niche would be the take the ability to open up bulwarks away, and give it a burn effect on anything caught in the field explosion during a charged attack while maintaining regular stagger.
It’s an Ogryn weapon, fluff it up by saying it’s the Ogryn using mauls discarded by regular troops because they were broken/hilariously dangerous to use for anyone without Ogryn strenght/tolerances due to the misfiring field effect.
Alternatively, instead of removing the ability to open bulwarks (which to be fair is kind of the theme of impact power weapons) you could remove the stagger on maniacs from the impact field.
Regular heavy swings should still slap around ragers and such, but by removing the immediate knockdown on ragers with the field, you couldn’t just afk special charge + heavy on a macro to deal with everything.
All of this would be if the dot effect was added, obviously.
Closest i get to an idea, back to hugging my Mk3b.
Good question/topic. One thing I’ll say for it as it stands is it’s very nice opening bulwark shields reliably while simultaneously clearing space for a follow up.
I don’t really know where you’d go with it but I feel like its safety and CC is still valuable it’s mostly just that its uncharged damage cleave is as of now essentially from a different era of the game. I’d probably still use it if it didn’t clear trash SO painfully slowly. The level of buff I’d personally give it would probably still be considered “uncompetitive” by most here though so eh not gonna go in too hard on suggestions for now.
Truthfully, I’m less worried about it being OP and more curious about the possible problem with it becoming too similar to other weapons.
FS would have to do quite a bit to make paul stronger than the mk 3b, i don’t think we need that.
I think the sweet spot for raw damage on heavy weapons starts between 200 & 300 damage before all finesse mods, armor mods, talents, perks, and blessings are calculated. I probably shouldn’t be making that claim while not home to double check in game, but I don’t think I am too off the mark.
With Paul’s attack speed left alone as is, I think the light attacks should be something like 210, maybe with light 1 having a good finesse mod and the last two lights having respectable cleave damage.
Heavy attacks, probably, should be 300 or lower. Maybe or maybe not as strong as the bully clubs’ sweeping attacks.
I’m pulling these numbers out of my ass, but I’m just guessing with Skullcrusher and Brutal Momentum (and any hitzone fix if it needs any) you could get some okay horde clearing without the weapon being bonkers, right?
I think it’s TOO valuable, in the same vein as Smite and somewhat indycrusher. Just spamming powered light attacks and being invincible is dumb. Indycrusher kind of gets around it by having a small area for its explosion.
I honestly don’t want it getting buffed without a change to the powered attacks. I’m still even dubious if the indycrusher should have the perm stagger in a small AoE.
Yea, this was my take too and what i was trying to say earlier.
Any modification to damage on top of having the spammable special stun would just make Ogryn melee nearly 100% free of risk as long as you have enough room to dodge + charge the special.
Tweaking the moveset a bit might be something, or as i said earlier, making the special do something more than just stun but with some kind of achilles heel on the stun effect.
Or maybe just shift the light moveset to make it more useful on horde clear and tie the stun bubble radius to your heavy charge by charge time?
Would make it a bit more engaging than just spamming two buttons.
Light Attacks are good how they are.
Charged Light Attack is a bit meh could use some bit more dmg.
Heavy Attacks are VERY Weak, one of the slowest Heavy Attacks of any Ogy Weapons and the Damage is just Sad. A Special Button Charged Heavy attack IS NOT WORTH IT, at all.
The Heavy Attack needs to be Faster, way Faster and Way more dmg, a very sad 150-180dmg is too Weak. It should be arround the 200-210.
IF it keeps the slow Attack speed on the Heavy Attacks it can go even up to 230-250.
The Special Charged Attack should aswell do WAY more Single Target DMG on a heavy Attack.
Since they added the VERY good new Shovels, it should easely oneshot a Mauler with Special Charged Heavy Attack.
Maybe even add the Thrust Blessing to its allready Weak Blessing Pool.
The whole wind up to Special Charge up the Weapon is fine. Like other ppl said, if it gets faster to charge, ppl just gonna spam that and would not learn the whole Weapon moveset if you can Stunlock the Horde.
The horde-clear of a lot of weapons is probably a bit too strong atm.
If hordies had 10% more body hitmass and staggering took a little more effort, there’d be more niche for weapons that smack everything around.
And I hate to say it, but the new shovels are probably a tad too good.
But for the Paul, just increasing its base (uncharged) damage by 20% would do it a lot of good.
The charged attacks work well, but the weapon feels horrible to use.
Charge, hit once, repeat.
A solid second place? Even if you consider its old CC values, it was at the bottom of the trash pile. It doesn’t matter much if you can stun lock most enemies, if you cannot kill them. The recent weapon updates totally missed it also, its easily the worst weapon in the game atm.
Light Special - Large stagger AOE attack with moderate first target damage increase (light power setting)
3a. Light Special - horizontal swing
Heavy special - High armor pericing damage attack with smaller stagger aoe. Can 1tap crushers with the right equipment.
4a. Heavy Special - overhead swing.
Power Mauls in 40K increase user strength and usually have enough pen to get through carapace. Unlike the funny folding shovel (which can easily 1tap anything that isn’t a monstrosity) the Power Maul would make perfect sense doing this in the hands of an ogryn.
You can’t be further from the truth:
As of the current version of the game Power Maul is already a beast of a weapon, with the right setup. The only “buff” that i would give it is the removal of that annoying slowdown that happens when you activate the special attack.
His horde clearing it’s just perfect. it doesn’t need any buff in damage or cleave damage, all it needs it’s to reach 1h.shot BP on on Groaners and Poxwalkers, Brutal Momentum and spammable orizontal swing with headshot priority. And it has them. While his armor damage is nothing exceptional is still nothing to be ashamed of considering it also has the best CC in the entire game after Zealot Chorus.
Many people think that any Ogryn’s weapon can stagger everything… I’m assure it’s not so
Sure, many weapons can inflict damage to big enemies, but when a bunch of Crushers come during a horde… few weapons can “control” them, wich is pretty different
I’d like to see the Maul like a control weapon. The powered attack should be a horizontal hit (even the light attack) and should come faster
I would like an AoE ground slam for the Hammer. the Single target attack would cleave through what is in front for heavy damage and electrify the ground stunning everything around. Maybe even give it a CD but that’s probably asking too much.
