Gonna make a case for these being the worst attacks in the game *except the staff bonks. Especially when compared to the bayonet attack of the Lucius. Keep in mind the Ripper Gun bayonet attack was already buffed once in terms of damage.
For unarmored damage:
Lucius does 123.75 damage to target 1, 46.5 to 2, and 31.5 to target 3 with a bayonet attack (same damage model and targets hit despite different animations through the various models).
The Rippergun bayonet does 100, 50 and then 25. On top of having much, much slower animations and loops. Again, this attack was buffed and is still complete garbage. Why could this not be a powerful single target attack? Ripper is already quite close range DPS specialized vs his CC options, why not lean into that?
Next up is the lazy move they ported to 3 guns, the sweep of the Rumbler/Kickback/Stubber. It might look like a big move, but it may as well be a shove because then it would not have a limit on the amount of enemies you just knock away for no damage. For reference, there are 3 enemies that take 0 damage but stagger cleave. Target 1 takes 60 damage, target 2 takes 15. If they fix heavy attack bleed/toughness feats working with this I don’t know why you would ever use this function. It is terrible.
And finally there’s the weapon with an entire melee loadout moved to the M1 function instead. Surely they d something if they take up the main mouse function? Not even close. Target 2 takes 10 damage from light attacks, target 3 gets hit for a whopping 5 and the other 2 enemies loiter in the path of the swing and are stagger cleaved only. The heavy attacks are basically Ogryn shield H1 minus the hitmass. What?
Do these attacks have to be a complete waste of a function and horribly unusable? Does it make any sense to anyone that the Lho-stick smoking Veteran can hurl his rifle through a crowd with better damage than the actual giant? Ogryn cleave damage is a pretty sad note in general outside BB3 but these weapon attacks are just a waste of time to even include in the game.
Which chagrins me to no end because Ogryns should be just as capable of smashing enemies with their comedically oversized and idiot-proof durability weapons as with any poop scoop club or knife. Someone forgot why they included this at all.
Best feature of Ogryn weapon melee is, when you have to use the weapon bonk on the rumbler or the Kickback while you are reloading. The Bonk animation gets interrupted half way by the reload animation. And if you try to smack the enemy at that moment again, the new started reload animation gets interrupted again by the melee attack animation.
If you now spam the weapon melee, you get an melee attack with single target/no cleave/ultra speed/Ultra low dmg.
Ogryn weapon melee and melee in general should be deadly to any enemy of human size, if they hit their head. That human sized enemies stand up again after being smashed in the head by an Ogryn is just so god dam stupid
I’d make the argument that ranged weapon melee attacks are mainly there for the stagger, bolter has a shove that can come in handy if you are about to get hit and want to shoot stuff without going through the long pull-out animation again.
Staff bonks are more like placeholders since they are fast to get ready. FS just didn’t bother to implement an actual special action for those.
Yeah the shoves are handy because they are shoves, so there is no deadzone in the attack, pushes have no cleave limit. You do not do a weaker shove that is slower, loops slower and only staggers 5. These worthless swipes can’t even give you that much, honestly they would be better off as shoves because you have more stamina than you know what to do with most days as ogryn (unless you’re still smoothie brain sprinting). Especially on Stubber which has as much stamina as bully club (highest in the kit).
If its going to be that bad, replace it. But for thematic flavor and risk (shooter enemies don’t follow melee unless you have a melee weapon in hand) it should actually do something. Especially because its ogryn smashing, that should never be underwhelming or pointless to do. Whatever flavor of busting up fits your fancy would do a long way in making this limited variety class more interesting to play.
Ogryn is abhuman. Imperium of mankind hates mutants and freaks. Dev’s too. Just. like. Psykin.
But to be honest, ogryn seems to be made in a hurry. So many bad decisions with weapon balance, feats, blessings and such.
Again, vital aspect of serious issue, but since it separate from core issue, not sure fixing just one aspect would help sorting out problem.
Also it would be nice to see more special attack animation, from clumsy, but so strong Ogryn. Not just bayonet spam.
I was pretty disappointed to see M1 just hipfires the Rumbler after unlocking the Gauntlet first forever ago. Then again I’m hardwired to aim any grenade launcher in any game before firing, even if you often end up shooting grenades at your feet to make good on the insane CC. Please help.
OP doesn’t do a great job presenting the problem in a clear way, but it’s certainly true Ranged Weapon melee attacks are awful right now and need improvement.
Baseline DPS needs to be comparable to melee weapons. While this might sound extreme, remember that melee weapons will have perks/blessings relevant to melee attacks, and ranged weapons won’t (so melee weapons will always come out slightly ahead).
Because of that, they can back off on hidden properties. For example you attack like 2x faster when out of ammo with Ripper Gun bayonet attacks, but if those attacks are just good damage on their own then there’s less reason for them to get such a dramatic increase (though it’s fine for there to be a little increase, as long as it’s not better than the perks/blessings of melee weapons).
Damage should scale by damage attribute. (It may already, I’m not sure.) If other attributes scale other parts of those melee attacks, great, although I suspect that’ll be a little weird (since the attributes relevant to the ranged attacks probably won’t aesthetically fit the melee ones).
Blessings should worded more clearly. I’m thinking of things like Can Opener where bayonet attacks increase the armor-piercing damage of shots made during the melee attack, but the blessing’s description doesn’t inherently spell that out (“+1-4 Rending on Special Attack (Armoured enemies).”) I think it only lasts like 1-2 seconds too, so not including any details is weird.
If they want to go the extra mile and give these attacks interesting gameplay, all the better! For example Psyker Staff melee could either do more damage or discharge Peril on melee (or both). Bayonet attacks might be a stab with great weak point damage that generates bleed stacks the longer you swing it into an enemy, but if you hit special a second time you do a cleaving bash with the weapon (interrupting the generation of more bleed, but you might want to do it because there are lots of enemies around).