Seeing as Ogryn is the least played class, and understandably why after playing him in Damnation, it would be great to have him buffed (sensibly). As we all know, He is granted much less cover due to his size, and fighting in the open and attracting damage should be his strong point.
+50 points to Base (Maximum) Health
Seeing as he’s more than twice the size of a human, it doesn’t make sense for him to only have 100 more hit points. An increase of 50 points to Max health would be a decent compromise. Ex. 350 health + Three 20% Max health curios would yield a health pool of 560.
+ 20 points to Base Toughness
Ogryns have skin that’s tougher than leather, so for them to only have 100 toughness (the same as humans) doesn’t make sense. Giving them a pool of 120 base toughness seems right.
Breaking a Poxhound’s pounce after 5 seconds
It just doesn’t feel immersive or accurate to see an Ogryn struggle helplessly on end to the pounce of a pox hound who is a fraction of his size. Having the ability to break free after 5 seconds seems more reasonable. Of course, pox hounds would still be very deadly to him as surrounding enemies can still hit you while pinned.
Tweaking the Animation and throw distance of Mutants towards Ogryns
Another immersion breaking feature is watching an Ogryn getting ragdolled by a Mutant, then being tossed like a sack of feathers 20 meters away. It would make sense to only use the pummeling animation (Where the mutant tackles the player to the ground and punches him several times) and lower the toss radius to 1/4 the distance. Mutants are strong, but they’re not strong enough to do the things they’re currently doing to Ogryns.
Adding a Chain of Melee Attacks to Ripper Guns
Much like Psyker Staves, the Ripper guns (And Heavy Stubbers) should have the ability to use chain Light and Heavy Attacks. Holding your special attack key should let you perform blunt, sweeping crowd control attacks, while light attacks should remain single target bayonet stabs. Much like in the Dawn of War RTS games, I and many others expected Ogryns to be able to beat their foes to a pulp in melee with their Ripper Guns.
These are only some sensible suggestions to make the Ogryn feel more immersive to play as. Feel free to add more ideas in the comments. Please nothing too OP or game breaking.
I really appreciate the thought you’ve put into this but I don’t think Ogryn are at all lacking at even the very highest difficulty content. It would be nice that a few off-meta melee weapons got a bit of rebalancing since they can be ‘weak’ but overall we’re in a great place as a class itself.
Well your opinion seems to be in the minority when saying Ogryn’s are in a great place. There’s a reason why the Ogryn is the least played class. If you’re an Ogryn main who is extremely adept at this game with 5-600+ hours, then more power to you. However, noticing the average player on Heresy or Damnation as an Ogryn seems to be more of a handicap. This is actually a very common complaint, and adding these minor buffs would not be game breaking.
I agree that Ogryn are probably more difficult to just pick up and play at a highly competent level but I don’t think that’s because we’re bad and in need of buffs, it’s more that we’re different to people’s usual gaming experience.
When you play a Veteran you can bring in almost all of your ‘generic FPS experience’ and it all translates pretty darn well into the class. You aren’t starting from scratch, you’re starting with a world of experience already in similar style games and so you aren’t relearning all the basics.
The Ogryn is different. You are starting from scratch with this class. You state that in your first post it is good at fighting in the open and attracting damage - and it’s not. It’s quite terrible at that. You’ll get shredded by gunfire if you aren’t thinking strategically about how to engage and using the tools in your arsenal such as laying down gunfire that suppresses or crowd controls your enemy, charging at opportune times and charging at the right enemy and not into certain death. It’s a class that despite its huge size has real finesse to it and choosing your engagement is very important.
I apologise if this feels I have derailed the thread however I simply don’t think we need what you’re suggesting.
" You state that in your first post it is good at fighting in the open and attracting damage - and it’s not. It’s quite terrible at that."
That’s actually the point I originally intended to make. Thank you for pointing that out. Many people, including myself, are under the impression that the Ogryn is supposed to fill a “tank” role within the team, much like how Crushers and Bulwarks soak up damage for the enemy. And I think many people would actually prefer that.
VT2 had Bardin and Kruber as tanks who could take tons of punishment, even on Cataclysm difficulty, while simultaneously fulfilling his crowd control duties. As of now, The Ogryn just feels like too much of a chore, as he does get absolutely shredded as quickly as a vet in crowds. When I do see good players, they’re usually very passive and are the last to die since they rather hide than revive downed team mates. I find myself in longer, more sustained combat as a Zealot than Ogryn, and actually live to see the end lol.
I’m used to playing as a Kruber Footknight in VT2, and was looking to have the Ogryn fulfill a similar role. Charging into the thick of hordes whenever multiple team mates are down and reviving them with increased speed, all while soaking up tons of damage. They are supposed to be bodyguards, after all. Hopefully we’ll at least get a class more geared towards being a tank.
I think most of these are decent suggestions, though I really like the suggestion of Ripper Gun (and ranged weapon melee special attacks in general) having chains. I do, however, think that the suggestions for Pox Hounds and Mutants are a bit too much to have as an “on-demand” thing. Especially the Pox Hounds. However, if you tied the ability to escape disablers into his Bull Rush ability, I think it could be quite balanced and make the Ogryn better at being the “clutch savior” that he more or less fills the role of at the moment.
Personally, I think Ogryn’s biggest issues at the moment are mostly to do with his Feats all feeling like they don’t synergize well or promote build variety. Ogryn really only has one good Feat combo, and it’s not as powerful as some of Veteran or Zealot’s best setups. He also lacks a Feat that allows him to passively regenerate Toughness outside of Coherency (such as At Arms Length or Enemies Within Enemies Without), which really hinders his sustainability in combat.
Tbf you´ve no data about that and claiming such stuff in general to start your argumentation makes all following pretty much obsolet.
I see Ogryns permanently on damnation and they do everything else but suck, a lot don´t even take much damage.
Actually such difficulties shouldn´t even be played by the average player. I´ve played 3 games with a friend yesterday and in 2 of them both randoms have been like… . And they´ve played Vet / Psyker. A lot just don´t know how to play properly and think their melee weapon is decoration. They can´t even use basic stuff properly and lack hard in decision-making.
So Ogryns…
have a lot of tanky basestats and get even more tanky through the most feats.
can´t be interrupted.
can do the most events better than anyone else.
have weapons to taunt enemies.
have the safest waveclear in the whole game since you´ll stagger and throw everyone throw the room but enemy Ogryns.
have huge singletarget-damage.
etc…
They´re fine if not too strong already if a bit well played. The tankyness don´t even justifies the damage-output on several weapons like the minigun. They´re not 100% tank-classes and i highly doubt that the game needs that, but they´re tanky support classes which bring its own class-specialized utility, a lot of stagger and group interaction.
Your suggestions would just exeggerate what is fine. Way more tankyness, the whole class that can ignore disabler etc… there is no need for that. Poeple who claim it´s weak should actually get better at the class or the game itself. Psyker got overbuffed because of such claims, and there are also still poeple around being like “Zealot is weak, please nerf shooters” or “Veteran can´t be played in melee without a broken PS”. Player-made issues, nothing else.
Maybe there will be another class in the future matching your expectations better, but even than this class shouldn’t be tankier than the current Ogryn is.
Aliens Fireteam Elite has a QTE for when you get pounced, grabbed or a facehugger is wanting some alone time with your face to escape the disable, but I like the idea of tying disabler escape with the F ability, although mutants (when they get fixed) and hounds would just grab you again immediately anyway.
While these ideas aren’t really all that bad, I sadly can’t agree with them.
This one in particular stands out to me:
That would entirely inundate Pox Hounds and their one job, which is pinning you down and eventually ending the run if everyone is pinned. Sadly a bad idea from a gameplay perspective, even though it would make sense lore wise.
Type in Ogryn in the search bar and you will see countless threads of people complaining about Ogryns. Sorry I didn’t include every thread in here.
All I play is Damnation, and I clear 8/10 runs with all other classes. In fact, Damnation is the only difficulty worth playing.
"So Ogryns…
have a lot of tanky basestats and get even more tanky through the most feats."
No they do not. They have an extra 100 base health and 20% damage reduction, which is barely noticeable. They get downed just as easily as any other class in Damnation, if not faster than Zealots. And what feats make them tankier? You sound like you have absolutely no experience with this class.
But it’s okay, you’re entitled to your opinion.
“* have huge singletarget-damage.”
What weapon has huge single target damage? Single handed axes and Chain weapons deal more damage than anything the Ogryn has in his melee arsenal.
Except its not fine. Many people choose Ogryn because they want a TANK. Not just a character with 100 extra hit points, aka 2 extra pox walker slaps.
That’s how the game functions as of now, but adding an extra layer of depth with a chance to turn the tide would make things more interesting.
Implementing a mechanic like this would be really cool. In fact, adding extra intricacies and more special perks to each class would make them feel more unique and immersive.
I do agree that Ogryns do not need more survivability and they are in a great place overall. But most of the non-cleaver melee weapons need some love, perhaps not alot… but some. Increasing the cap of targets you can damage would be nice, just even if it is only by one. Perhaps also a small damage increase by around 20 more damage on light/heavy would be enough so that Ogryns don’t just knock around even poxwalkers and groaners in melee.
Yes, I totally agree. I’m sure even the devs know that the Ogryn needs some all-around fine tuning. Not to say he’s completely unplayable or that you can’t win a run as him, because I’ve won plenty. He just doesn’t feel like he excels at any particular role at the moment. The Zealot has him beat in almost all aspects, whether it be horde clear, damage, or survivability. He’s really only good at objectives with his uninterruptable perk.
I get what you mean. Its either give him more survivability or more damage. But can’t have both. I was personally fine with just knocking things around, but when you’re getting shot to pieces in the middle of a horde, you’re pretty much useless. Hopefully they’ll give Skullcrusher a rework so that he can live up to his name, and we can get our Range-focused and Tank-focused subclasses soon.
This is basically my current ‘crusade’ for the Ogryn; outside of the main meta weapons our melee drop off is a bit rough for horde clear. There’s artificially capped targets for damage and they feel too low. It’s no big secret that the popular weapons are the ones that clear hordes: I don’t want all of our weapons to be god tier for this task but just nudging them up even slightly would be very welcome.
I think the tools for surviving are mostly there for Ogryn, some feats are uninspiring or reads alot better then they actually play in a game. But the core for surviving, for any class, in this game is make sure that the enemies cannot hurt you back either by crowd control or damage, and from these two damage is the better way to go about it.
Ah yes, that’s the only point I’m trying to get across in this thread. He doesn’t feel quite right yet. Its like he just needs a little extra something. Hopefully through discussing ideas, threads like these can find out what that something is
Ogryn has functionally 20% health DR as well as 36% toughness DR just from his passive (his 20% DR gets applied twice multiplicatively for toughness). Considering his base health pool and exceptional toughness regen with Lynchpin and melee blessings I really don’t think he needs any buffs in that regard.
Some quick math to expand on this. If you stack health curios (just the blessings not even factoring extra health perks) you end up with an effective HP value of over 600, while still having a bit over 150 effective toughness. This is without factoring in further DR from feats and curio perks no less. So I think your assessment of how his HP and Toughness stats measure up to other classes is rather off base frankly.
Neutering the whole purpose of a disabler enemy is a big no no for me.
Yeah fair enough, I could get behind this though mostly for flavour, I don’t think it’d affect much in practice.
No argument that gun melee attacks are needlessly bad. Would also enjoy seeing them improved.
Mostly I’d just like to see the disparity in horde clear between his melee weapons narrowed significantly. BB is so much absurdly better at horde clear than his other melee weapons, fighting hordes with most of them feels unnecessarily awful.
But playing the ogryn… he is just big and bulky. Everything except the Bullbutcher hits like a wet noodle. You just throw stuff around and in the worst case throw stuff behind your teammates.
Balancing in this game ain’t great but with the ogryn it becomes very obvious as he has the least amount of weapons to choose from.
It’s not really that I think his traits are bad or something for me he just lacks variety and balancing between the miniscule weapon arsenal is pretty bad.