Ogryn has several blessings at their disposal that enhance, or benefit from, critical hits. Unfortunately, most of these blessings have very little utility, due to Ogryn’s low base crit-chance, the weak finesse multipliers on most of their weapons, and a shortage of blessings and feats that benefit from dealing critical hits.
Here I’ve listed all of Ogryn’s crit-related feats in order to explain their issues. Beginning with those that improve crit-chance, and then those that benefit from dealing crits.
-Bash for the Cleavers (15% crit chance for 3s on pushing enemies)
The duration of this blessing is too low, and its effect too small to be worthwhile. In theory this blessing would synergize with Devastating Strike, but Devastating strike isn’t even as effective as Savage Sweep, which gives 2.5X the bonus while only taking up a single blessing slot. Nevermind the fact that the Cleavers generally have enough cleave that they don’t need Savage Sweep or Devastating Strike.
-Cavalcade for Ripper Guns (+5% crit chance for each 10% magazine spent during continuous fire.)
Cavalcade is actually reasonably good. It pairs with Flechettes, which gives a significant bonus to crowd damage, especially at ranges where direct damage from the ripper falls off significantly. Plus, critical hits deal significantly more damage to armored enemies. There is a consistency problem with Cavalcade however. Its effectiveness varies wildly depending on the stats and mark of the weapon its on. Each of the Rippers has a braced fire mode and a hip-fire mode. Hip-fire will typically cause the weapon to fire in three-round bursts, while braced fire will cause it to fire automatically (with the exception of the MKVI Ripper). While in hip-fire mode, critical hits will trigger in groups of three, in braced mode, they trigger individually, significantly reducing the effectiveness of the Cavalcade blessing. Another quirk of the way Cavalcade works is caused by the relatively small magazine size on the Ripper. Ripper-guns with an ammo stat below 65% will have a magazine size of 19 or less. Each shot fired therefore makes up 5.26% of a mag, which the game rounds up to 10%. This means that Rippers with a low ammo stat will actually build Cavalcade stacks twice as fast, in spite of the marginal difference in actual magazine size.
-Smackdown for the Bully Clubs (20% critical chance for 5s on special attack.)
Smackdown is just Bash, but better in every way. This isn’t to say its good though. Like the Cleavers, the Bully Clubs only have access to one other crit-related blessing that unfortunately isn’t effective enough to justify the use of 2 blessing slots. Even if this blessing gave +100% crit chance, it might only break even with some of the alternatives on the Bully Club.
-Surgical for the Kickback (10% critical chance for every 0.20 seconds weapon is braced, resets upon firing.)
I have litterally nothing bad to say about surgical. Its great. It feels balanced, changes your playstyle in an interesting way, and synergizes with the weapon on which it appears.
-Devastating Strike for the Cleavers (+80% cleave for 5s on critical hit.)
See Bash above. Devastating strike is just Savage Sweep but worse. Not only is bonus cleave not necessary on the Cleavers, Devastating Strike has a more difficult activation conditon than savage sweep while also giving a smaller bonus. If it instead allowed you to ignore enemy hit mass entirely for 5 seconds, then it might be worthwhile alongside a significant crit-chance bonus for Bash.
-Flechettes for the Ripper Guns (+8 bleed stacks on critical hit.)
Flechettes is fine. Apart from its reliance on another blessing to be useful, its effect is quite powerful, and synergizes well with Ogryn’s bleed-related feats. The benefits of the bleed effect in long range firefights is noticeable, as enemies you have previously hit will sometimes die after taking cover.
-Perfect Strike for the Bully Clubs (Critical hits ignore hit mass bonus from armour.)
Prefect Strike is just sad. While additional cleave is useful on the bully clubs, Perfect Strike is ridiculously conditional. It essentially boils down to “20% chance to ignore SOME enemy hit mass IF you’re using Smackdown AND you’ve slapped someone in the last 5 seconds AND that enemy is armoured.” Compare this to Haymaker, which gives a 20% chance to instakill any human sized enemy, and also ignore their hitmass, while only taking up a single blessing slot.
-Reassuringly Accurate for the Grenade Gauntlet (+36% toughness on critical hit kill.)
Reassuringly Accurate feels like it was implemented by mistake. The Grenade Gauntlet has no other crit-related blessings to speak of, so this blessing is essentially “1% chance to gain 36% toughness on kill.” at worse, and “12% chance to gain 36% toughness” if you’re stacking every reliable source of crits, at best. If the Grenade Gauntlet could have roll Surgical or Cavalcade (for melee combat), then this blessing would actually be great, but alas.
Have you got any ideas what could be done to improve Ogryn’s crit blessings? What kind of place should crits occupy in Ogryn’s playstyle?