I should be more specific, ogryn at its core still feels fun to play. Its just that the way some enemies work I feel like it affects ogryns disproportionately to make things feel a little more furstrating than the other classes. I play all 4 classes at damnation or higher and while playing the improved gunners (whether its the elite or not) makes it so I practically never have any toughness built up while playing. When you combine this with trappers that have magic nets which will ignore solid objects or sometimes just trap you despite not being touched on your screen, the ice skating ragers that will spawn behind you, bulwarks that are making a roman phalanx by stacking into each other (and because you’re playing ogryn you’re not mobile enough to move around them at times) it can feel a little more frustrating than the other classes. I know the devs said that the wanted to make balance changes so that other things have their chance to shine but with ogryn I feel pigeon holed into playing with the riot shield. Its a real shame because I have been really loving the branx pickaxe, its a really fun addition but when it comes to survivability and actually being able to complete a high difficulty mission nothing seems to compete with the riot shield. Is it just me?
Been pushing myself into Auric Maelstroms more lately, but I only feel confident doing it with my Ogryn because of his insane survivability. Never touched the shield after trying it once in Heresy and feeling like I had a pool noodle to bash with.
Ogryn can dip, duck, dodge and dive like the rest of the classes, and I never feel especially oppressed by gunners or trappers or anyone really. It’s all about positioning.
Since the post did not touch on the active use of sliding around or sprinting in an angle to avoid gunfire I’m just going to assume that you are using the built in tricks for every class to avoid getting shot.
When it comes to added survivability based on weaponry there are a few key things to consider. First would be attack speed/reload speed, so that you can attack more times and then stagger and interrupt incoming melee/ranged attacks more often while also gaining more toughness (blessings and talents for ranged attacks) back then you would with a slower weapon.
Second would be stagger, knocking an enemy back or knocking it on the ground can make all the difference in the world from mitigating incoming damage. Third would be mobility, you take no damage if the enemies cannot hit you.
Last point to make would be weapons that have special actions, such as the shield that lets you block attack or allow you to move up while blocking gunfire is a great boon for surviving. Certain blessings could be added here aswell to further increase survivability.
While using a slow weapon, be it either in attack speed or mobility you might have to rely more on your teammates to help you fill the “gap” in defense. Fighting close by or with them should split the focus from enemies and having more attack that can stagger/knock them down.
I’ve been using the cleaver mk4 and ripper gun, it gives me good mobility and fast attacks meaning I can close the gap fast on shooters while keeping my toughness high while being in the thick of things. Cleavers might be the best weapon Ogryns have to combat ranged enemies, if you like a fast playstyle.
A gaggle of Bulwarks are always annoying regardless of class.
Carslapper pick is better for keeping up thoughness on trashmobs if you build for a regen on heavys.
Still downs crusher on like 2-3 heavys to the face.
That change has been reversed.
You likely know most of this stuff anyway, so its probably a matter of practice and the clash between your zealot/psyker vs Ogryn experience. It’s like switching between driving a sports car and a van.
Ditch the shield. It makes you even slower, your dodges even worse and blinds you and your team. It is also extremely boring with its attacks. I have seen people play well with it, but there is so much more to Ogryn weapons than the slab shield. You don’t need the shield to have high survivability.
Your dodges are really short when compared to other classes. Don’t get surrounded by trash or you will get netted or dogged. On the upside, you have shitloads of stamina, and your pushes can stagger a lot of enemies, including ragers. Some of your special attacks like punches on knives can stagger even Crushers out of their attacks.
Slide like mad to avoid ranged fire or to close the gap. Secretly your Ogryn is a ballerina, a whole 2,000 pounds worth of it.
Most attack combos are a mix of heavy and light attacks. There are few exceptions where you are likely to light attack spam more, like Cleaver Mk IV, which benefits from Confident Strike blessing quite a bit.
The new pickaxes have easily the most interesting attack rotations from all Ogryn weapons, but I wouldn’t get blinded by the raw Branx power. The other two have easier horde clear combos and still plenty of strikedown damage.
Feel No Pain is your friend. Heavy Hitter bonuses are nice and all, but with many weapons you really don’t miss those, also not so long ago HH was bugged and actually slowed down some weapons instead of speeding their attack animations.
Get yourself a good Mk V or even Mk II ripper. Those really help vs specials if you are a frontliner type. The OG shovel with BM and SkullCrusher is great for survivability. Cleaver Mk IV is pretty good. Cleaver MK VI is an acquired taste, as long as you have Unstoppable Force on it to deal with mixed hordes. Borovian pickaxe is crazy good, but then which pick axe isn’t, as long as you learn the combos and attack pacing. Clubs are fun also, MK I is good vs elites, Mk II with haymaker is a decent compromise. 3b is also pretty good, used to do insane boss damage / stagger.
Probably the most easy going build for Ogryn:
The frag bomb is a massive red reset button which can turn a terrible situation into a win. You can easily replace the shovel with Mk IV cleaver (Slaughter or Thrust with Confident Strike) or pickaxes. if you don’t mind the extra aggro and loss of mobility, the Loyal Protector with the talent which boosts your damage is quite fun also. I run that with the OG shovel.
Try to stack toughness towards 200 mark. HP is nice and all, but your toughness regen is crazy good in melee and less you get toughness broken, better in general.
Really sound advice here, just want to add my two cents.
I really hate gunners so I’ve built mostly to be invincible towards them. 2/3x toughness curios combined with snagging +toughness and TDR nodes in the skill tree means you can tank a lot of heavy gunners as long as you can keep heavy attacking.
Speaking of heavies, watch your Heavy Hitter stacks. The damage is good, but it’s the attack speed you really want. I’ve been experimenting with Feel No Pain, but I’m not an expert… yet 
. I run it on the Branx and it seems solid, but I’m still speccing on the left side of the tree until the end.
Echoing the Mk V Ripper advice – it’s the only gun I’ve managed to achieve decent elite delete on. Also Can Opener is incredible, and synergises surprisingly well with Heavy Hitter – at 5 stacks the stabbing speed is quite good, and it counts as a heavy for bleed and HH stacks.
Some slightly more original advice is Sprint Efficiency / Stamina Regeneration. A couple of these perks on curios will stretch your already ration-packed stamina bar a bit further which helps to avoid gunfire.
Also, as much as I’ve been enjoying the Branx lately my one true love remains the Mk3 shovel. It ain’t fancy but it sure gets the job done!! The riot shield is good, and you can do some cool stuff with it, but it does hinder visibility and if you can manage your toughness bar the gunner protection isn’t as critical.
Bulwarks can be annoying, but Bull Rush sends them flying and as a last resort the Nuke will make short work of them. I look for mass Bulwark + Rager packs, but if Bulwarks and something else are threatening to do some real damage give them a taste of boom. Otherwise, charge and try to position yourself opposite from a team mate – they can be annoying for sure!
Trappers are a pain as well, but if you remain vigilant and make plenty of space for you to dodge beforehand you can still bowl over a horde with push/attacks to give you some space to avoid the net.
As an Ogryn main, Its just you.
I feel good playing Ogryn, especially with Pickaxes, they are insane, literally nothing can stop them.
Basicly, I will recomend you to take as many Toughness nodes as you can, without losing your build of course.
Also, take 3 Toughness Curios(with +5% Toughness and Gunner resistance), I understand that 500hp Ogryn is fun, but really Toughness is more useful
Reasoning is pretty simple - Toughness blocks Ranged attacks and is easy to regen.
So, with a lot of toughness, you can pretty much play on the offensive(even more then before), and not worry as much about Shooters(well, they still are your biggest threat, but now you can deal with them easier).
Now, for the last, you really should take the weapon with easy heavies, you can take a weapon with vertical heavies and make it work, but really it’s MUCH easier to take one with horizontal sweeps, just because Ogryn regens toughness with them.
This is where I recommend Karsolas Pickaxe. 
(Karsolas Pickaxes has the easiest access to Ogryn’s toughness regeneration - Heavies).
Also, I want to say that I just recommend what I found the easiest and fun(for me) way to play.
If I were to summarize everything - Stack Toughness nodes , Toughness Curios with Gunner Resistance , Weapon with Easy Horizontal Heavies and some time getting used to things.
Good luck! 
PS:
To be honest, when I started to play and for the longest time, it didn’t click for me to take Toughness Curios, I just thought - “Oh wow, I should max Health because I have a lot of it”, and afterwards I was complaining why Shooters break my Toughness so easily.
Maybe it’s just me being stupid 
Here’s my chill Build if anybody is wondering:
All curios are the same
and I usually take everybody’s favourite Club, with Confident Strike because I don’t have the second toughness regen talent
PPS:
About the build, as you see you can either choose Shout(as I did) or Run, it really doesn’t matter
Yeah, I still run 2 or 3 gunner defence perks on my curios on most of my characters.
I think the Ogryn would be more fun if it wasn’t so reliant on heavy attacks to proc the talent tree/toughness regen. I know they made some concessions of late by allowing stacks to carry over in to lights, but I don’t see why we all have to “Sauron” the start of any new engagement.
Yeah, that makes a lot of light attacks fairly redundant. Sure, you can often run with Confident Strike…but that is a wasted blessing slot.
up until the pickaxe update this
was my most used and trustworthy setup.
got me through any auric maelstrom modifier with ample clutch and carry potential, provided you know the ins and outs of dodging, sliding and disabler pattern.
other than that it´s mostly smooth sailings.
now with the pickaxe i gotta upload my gear the next few days, but hardly anything changed except the melee weapon.
ogryn is the class i start with cold no matter the auric maelstrom modifier and i enjoy him a ton more than veteran as well despite the limited weaponry.
with the vet i only start my melk to-do list once warmed up for he feels far less forgiving when i f´up stuff even a tiny bit.
I still run confident strike blessing on cleavers and from time to time weapons that I use for gunlugger builds. That said cleavers have a more limited amount of good to great blessings and the extra toughness gain works well for countering shooters and gunners.
While this is true, I always felt that the weaponry Ogryns have are well balanced against one another and you can mix and match both melee and ranged weapons to make good builds with pretty much all of them in most combination.
except the paul + rumbler, you see those you run… far and fast 
Yes, Mk IV cleaver is the only weapon on which I feel I get value from that blessing.
well said
Thanks for all the advice rejects! Orgyn has always been my least proficient class (in terms of playing and builds), I felt like I got a handle on it then since the last update I have lost that handle lol I’ll have to try out the suggested builds and really start stacking toughness in my curios. I have a decent toughness regen build but I believe I did prioritize hp over toughness. Hopefully that’ll be the mistake where once I reverse it things will start to open up!
Dont know if this could be contributing to how you feel about Ogryn currently. But right now they are bugged as many of the talents related to toughness regen dont even work. I just made this bug
Many Ogryn toughness replenishment related talents not working
Don’t mix up the passive regen like Lynchpin (curios) with the replenish from kills and talents.
10s of google, back here Are +#% toughness replenishment talents working properly?
Wording issues and unclear swapped terms etc make things difficult, not your fault.
I think I saw this on reddit.
At the very least you should strongly consider going on the right side for the heavy talents and ditch those middle nodes under taunt, and putting 2 points to get Bruiser CDR (a must-have), you can ditch the side +15 tuf nodes if you need points.