Latrine Shovel - buffs please

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I shovel well. I shovel very well

So Fatshark, long have I wished for the Ogryn’s Latrine Shovel buffs and long have I labored in Discord discussing its merits and defended it from its detractors (of which there are many). I’m about 100-200 hours deep on Shovel / Kickback as a weapon combination in Damnation and have seen it all. It is glorious in its wanton destruction of the heretics and I wish to plead my case to make it ever more glorious as befits the Emperor himself.

Right now the Shovel can be pitched quickly as “like the OG club, but worse”; yes, there’s finer details, but it’s a great summary. It has very similar traits but simply lower damage. It needs some love and it’s pretty universally viewed as one of the worst weapons available to the Ogryn.

The Shovel, bluntly, is pretty darn bad at hordes. It’s a weapon with a mix of Vanguard attacks and Relentless attacks and so conventional wisdom would suggest its going to be very good at control and reasonable at damage. It’s not.

The attack pattern quickly becomes L2 - L3 and L3 has a meagre cleave rating of 1.2, which I’ve reported earlier here. Even with Brutal Momentum the pattern is relatively weak and there is a priority to hitting bodies instead of heads, even when the attack pattern clearly suggests headstrikes on L3 due to its arc.

Right now the Shovel limps along in horde clear. It has maximum damage target caps of 3 on L1 & L2, and L3 as above has a messed up cleave rating. Crucially the damage drop off is savage for the Shovel; the second and third target become quickly woeful damage and are very disappoitning.

Can I please ask that you consider:

  • “Fixing” L3 cleave and giving it headshot priority (for better BM uptime), and
  • Buffing the damage drop off (cleave damage distribution). Or
  • Or some other modest buff to horde clear, whatever you may see fit in your wisdom.

I don’t ask for this to be another Bull Butcher or similar; it has many great qualities of its own. I just ask if there could be a more middle ground for it so that it isn’t like pulling teeth in a horde.

Thank you

Your Shovelling Ogryn Pal Auf

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Yeah, latrine shovel horde clear is a bit sh…t, which is a shame as it is one of my fav weapons. Slightly more cleave / cleave damage distro wouldn’t hurt…

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Yes!

I would really like them to buff the shovel as I do like the moveset a lot.
Does Brutal Momentum even work on it? I thought the shovel is always capped at damaging 3 enemies… Atleast that’s what I’ve read on reddit.

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It’s not a simple answer RE: Brutal Momentum.

The attack pattern you can find on wartide here.

What happens is the pattern goes L1 → L2 → L3 → L2 → L3 → L2 → 3 and repeat. After the first L1 you won’t see it again. This is important to know because when you look at L3 you’ll see it has no damage target cap; it can hit as many targets as you can cleave.

Where the complications arise is that L3 has a cleave rating of only 1.2. I linked earlier my bug report about this since as a vanguard attack it should be cleaving more than that. That post is linked here.

In practical sense what this means is that your attack chain of light attacks is L2 → L3, and L3 hits 1-2 enemies at best. This is terrible for horde management.

If you have Brutal Momentum the cleave on L3 is unlimited, and that means you can hit (and damage) as many targets as your weapon swipes through. L2 is unaffected as it will only damage 3 regardless.

While this might initially seem great the problem compounds because it’s not easy to hit heads with a Shovel since it prioritises body shots instead of heads. H1 will reliably do so, however. In the end BM means 50% of your attack chain has unlimited damage targets (L3).

The last point to make is that the damage drop off per target for Shovel is savage. Your second and third target take tremendously less damage than the first, so even if the target cap is increased I don’t think this will “save” the Shovels horde clear. It needs a little more than just this singular buff to help it out.

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Yep I agree, latrine shovel should be a generlist weapon, it has nothing it really excels at should not have so big weakness like such poor horde clear.

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‘Ogryn melee’ buffs please. You could triple the damage targets 2 and 3 take with the shovel and it would still clear far slower than Bull Butcher. Mostly everything is far inferior to Bull Butcher because it hits 5 targets. Knives really aren’t giving up that much with their current elite stagger, its not like Slaughterer won’t let you stagger ragers with lights…well, Krourk cleavers do, because their lights are closer to Shovel than BB.

Also edit because I forgot to mention, shovel’s biggest issue atm is that the Brunt’s Pride is just an improved version. The punch on it actually does huge unyielding damage and doesn’t send bulwarks to the ground where you can’t repeatedly headshot them. Yes, this attack has working headshots on a club. It has much better swings for controlling horde. It is super shovel despite being tagged ‘bully club’. The relentless heavy is even better for coming off the opposite side of the screen.

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This is absolutely true; a lot of people propose giving it unlimited damage targets (which is a buff for sure) but it still has devastating damage drop off so the second and third targets are only barely tickled.

There’s so many intriguing ways to buff the Shovel via either H2 or L3 and keep Brutal Momentum as ‘good but optional’ for the weapon.

All in all this is a weapon that is universally considered poor and really needs some Fatshark attention. Can we get some love here please guys?

Thanks

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