Ogryn Mk3 Shovel -- Brutal Momentum?

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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Ogryns of Atoma, do you use Brutal Momentum on your spades? In theory I think it’s really good, but unfortunately I haven’t had too many opportunities to test out similarly-powered Mk3 Shovels with alternate blessings for REASONS… so I’d appreciate your thoughts on the matter :slight_smile:

What I like about Brutal Momentum:

  • The wide sweeping Light + Heavy combo at Ogryn height hits a LOT of heads. How this translates to Enemy Hit Mass I’m not sure. My time in the Meat Grinder using my next-best shovel on poxwalkers shows that I’m going from 1 heavy clears to 2-hit clears if I line up the heads well, so there’s potentially a big difference here (but also could be due simply to a weaker weapon).
  • +% Weak Spot Damage is easy to take advantage of with the first Heavy – a nice downward smash. Great vs elites, specials, and bosses, though as I understand it Weak Spot Damage doesn’t translate to much damage especially on weapons that lack finesse

With that being said I’m not sure if I’m just biased towards Brutal Momentum as I haven’t played much without it. I’m worried that I’ll lose some horde clear and single target damage via headshots. And I love me headshots :exploding_head:

Other blessings I’m considering:

  • Thunderous (Target receives 1-4 Stacks of 5% Brittleness on Hit. Lasts 5s.) – my personal favourite as I enjoy applying brittleness for my team quite a lot.
  • Skullcrusher (Target receives 1-4 Stack(s) of +10% Damage if already Staggered. Lasts 5s.) – probably a close second as Brutal Momentum replacement I’m considering, although I admit I’m still a little fuzzy on the proc condition details (how many hits does it take to apply Skullcrusher??)
  • Confident Strike (+5-8% toughness on Chained Hit.) – I’m a toughness goblin (bask in the glory of my 3x toughness curios) but always seemed redundant given how good some of the Ogryn perks are at generating toughness, but I’m open to hearing the case for this one!

Here’s my chicken foot smasher for reference:

Screenshot 2024-06-03 134042
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TL;DR: Is Brutal Momentum as good as I think it is? Thunderous vs. Skullcrusher?

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Weakspot damage is extremely weak in general but its at its absolute worst on ogryn the simpleton with like 10% finesse damage scaling on his attacks. Even the brutal momentum secondary effect is like 2 damage here.

But its the secondary effect of BM that is goated, and actually gives ogryn a great mix of horde clear and elite killing. While the thundershovels are great Ogryn can kill every elite in 1 or 2 hits with the OG. I use taunt so I can hit multiple ragers in the same blow, and both heavy attacks on one moveset is very high value. BB3 shovel will kill shotgunners/gunners and other mid tier trash/elites the fastest of the group.

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I run Brutal Momentum and Skullcrusher on the OG shovel. Flak + locked Carapace, which isn’t a terrible pick anyway. Ogryn doesn’t get rewarded much for headshots sadly, but BM adds up nicely.

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Ignore Hit Mass, beside letting you swing through everything without having your weapon stopped, also has the effect of giving you first target damage to the next enemy hit. This can proc up to four times with BM IIRC. This essentially means any weapon with BM can cleave hordes faster than a weapon without, as BM weapons also ignore cleave damage distribution and can one-shot multiple enemies with a single swing.

Edit: Telopots has a very good video explaining what BM can do: https://youtu.be/VDAUhd4pgz8?si=KSxbKZLrdwOJnsZZ

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Brutal Momentum & finesse dmg bonuses

Bear in mind that all finesse buffs (weakspot, crit, critWeakspot) from any source apply only to the portion of extra dmg from those finesse hits.

  • For example my oggy’s shovel V (my favourite oggy shovel) does 247 body, 299 weakspot or crit, 333 critWeakspot against unarmored.
  • +15% weakspot dmg means (299-247)*0.15 = 7.8 points of extra dmg. So from 299 → 306.8. So in reality, +2.5% more dmg than before. The same bonus is applied as-is to the critWeakspot, so it would be a bit more there but oggies don’t do crits so nvm.

This might make all crit / weakspot bonuses seem useless, but that’s not the case either. All weapons, all individual attacks of each combo chain, light vs. heavy attack, hip vs secondary/ADS, special, potential unique special follow ups (knives etc), push-attacks etc. all have their own damage ratios. Usually most chains in a combo use the same dmg pattern, but not always. Just like many ranged have the same finesse modifiers on hip / ADS, but not all.

There’s a whole lot of other details too. But the point is that +10% weakspot/crit is never going to be 10% in practice, because it never includes the base dmg portion. And Brutal Momentum itself is really all about the cleave.

Skullcrusher

The description is just oddly phrased. What it means is simply that whenever you hit a staggered enemy, you’ll do X% more dmg. Or +40% with a T4 blessing. How good it is depends on the weapon’s (and build’s, talents can change this after all) stagger, speed and power ofc. Basically if the weapon doesn’t kill most things outright, yet keeps the enemies staggered long enough for you to hit them again before they recover, then Skullcrusher will work great.

Some weapons also have fantastic push attacks, and Skullcrusher is perfect for them. There can also be other minutiae, like weapon specials, or playing with a team likely to keep em staggered for you, etc. A regular contributor at Steam recently revealed that apparently Trauma blessing (+20% impact for 2s on hit, max 5 stacks) doesn’t just increase the stagger strength, but its duration too. So they experimented on it and found that Trauma & Skullcrusher would overall do far higher dmg simply because Skullcrusher was proccing way more often.

I don’t know whether that’s true or not but that person typically really knows what they are talking about. :sweat_smile: I did test it out a few times and at least the stagger animation doesn’t seem to last any longer, but my prior tests with No Respite already revealed that just because the enemy isn’t in a stagger animation doesn’t mean they don’t count as staggered. So Trauma likely increases the duration of the “staggered” debuff itself, rather than the animation.

Anyway… Brutal Momentum & Skullcrusher are my go-to oggy shovel blessings. They’re both absolutely fantastic, and the fact that finesse hits tend to do a lot of extra stagger adds great synergy to them. The BM makes the weapon cleave through heads, and the Skullcrusher then makes sure that whatever didn’t die from the first pass, very likely will from the second. Plus ofc. it’s a good bonus to those specials and push attacks which can stagger even enemy oggies.

As for the rest…

Imo Confident Strike and its like are only worth it for builds that won’t invest into the top left talents because they can’t afford them or don’t use heavies. I haven’t used Shovel III in ages but iirc it was mostly a heavy weapon. So unless your build desperately needs the talent points for something else, I’d rather get them and use another blessing for a ton of extra dmg instead. But that’s just me & my play style.

Also take my words with a grain of salt, but even if I don’t remember the details there was a reason I switched over shovel V. Its heavies are all fantastic & strong cleaves perfect for lopping off mixed horde heads, and it has that great special that makes the next attack ultra strong with a really high stagger. Tons of utility too between its lights, push-attacks, or pre-loading the special during a slide for a quick light to instakill a rager coming up etc. I love generalist weapons that can handle everything on their own, especially if they have a good moveset with lots of different things to do. And shovel V is definitely up there. All shovels are good tho, the right pick depends on the person and build ofc. :smile:

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@Frish You’re forgetting about thrust. Thrust is pretty damn good considering all of ogryns heavy attack buffs and the attack patterns on the mk3 & mk5 ogryn shovels. Even just getting the 20% power from one stack will generally result in more personal damage than using skullcrusher or thunderous, especially in horde clear.

My set ups are BM+thrust on the mk3 & mk5. And BM+confident strike on the mk 19, since that one is more suited to a gunlugger build.

This is 100% false and easily testable. Skullcrusher functions as it is written. When the weapon hits an enemy that is already in a staggered state they are given a 5s long debuff that causes them to take more damage from subsequent attacks.

Edit: This is not accurate. Please read below for more accurate statements.

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If that’s the case then I stand corrected, and thank you! I’ve never even tested that it might stay in effect as a debuff like that. But I’m very sure I’ve tested it plenty with push-attacks and it does proc on that attack.

I’ll test this out later and get back to this.

Ok so, I seriously appreciate the heads up, but 100% false? Really? :sweat_smile:

Here’s how it really works:

  • It really is a 5s debuff on the enemy
  • It’s applied by staggering an enemy (not hitting while staggered), and only benefits subsequent attacks while staggered
  • I can’t confirm whether your whole team, just you, or just those with Skullcrusher benefit from it. I’d assume it’s everyone tho since that’s how other debuffs work.
  • It caps at +80% dmg, or 2 stacks on a T4 blessing! I didn’t test whether lower tiers can reach the same cap with more staggers or not, there are examples of both cases in other blessings.
  • Staggering the enemy again while it’s already staggered adds another stack

So to summarize: A push-attack DOES do +40% dmg. The enemy won’t take any extra dmg for 5s after, unless you hit it while it’s staggered. Because it’s the stagger itself that applies it, you can for example push twice → attack, and get +80% dmg to that one attack. Or you can do a push-attack → attack, and get +40% for the push-attack itself, and +80% for the followup.

All of this was wonderful information!

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Push attack is broken on this weapon as I reported and had acknowledged. It never had the patch 13 buffs applied (d’oh!). They did give it a wonderful gong-sounding thwack but it still only hits 3 enemies and has massive cleave damage fall off on enemy 2/3.

Also yeah definitely run thrust on this, since the shovel strikedown is actually stronger than the club one (because the other moves aren’t as powerful). Its even great for taking the heads off several bruisers from the sweep heavy as well. Great value and Ogryn is the king of heavy attacking.

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Brutal momentum and thrust is what i got on a mk5 flippy flip shovel, its very epic and can 1 shot crushers on T5. I want to get a good shovel and try thrust and skullcrusher but havent had the roll yet

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Brutal Momentum is extremely strong on all of the three latrine shovel marks, yes! It turns the sweeping heavies into decapitation machines that can kill 4 Bruisers with every swing (assuming you have enough +dmg juice to oneshot them) and allows the folding shovels to multikill several Crushers at once with the special heavy attack.

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Yes, because what you wrote was this:

Original Quote

Which is verifiably incorrect. Simply loading up the psykhanium and hitting enemies both before, and after, knocking them down with bull rush quickly demonstrates that fact. Same thing for throwing a rock at the enemy, or using the bomblets from the box to stagger them, or even unloading into them with a ripper gun til they fall on their ass.

Again, it’s pretty easy to see via my above examples that this is not 100% the case. Only staggers applied with attacks from the weapon that has the blessing trigger the debuff. Btw, ‘pushing’ counts as an attack for these purposes. Bleed tics also used to count for this, but that was nerfed.

These are correct afaik.

This is a very misleading statement. Skullcrushers actual effect on damage is quite inconsistent.

Yes, pushing counts as an attack that can apply skullcrusher. And if that push staggers the enemy this can potentially allow the push attack to benefit from skullcrusher. However, in real testing with the Debuff Indicator mod there are certain targets I can reliably apply skullcrusher to with a push attack that do not see any damage bonus applied. Possibly due to their stagger state being so brief that the attack does not have time to connect inside the window.

It seems fairly clear to me that actually getting the bonus damage out of skullcrusher’s effect relies on the vagaries of enemy stagger states and possibly stagger resistance; which are arcane topics I am not versed in. Hopefully someone with greater insight into the games mechanics will reply with their knowledge.

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Yes, as far as I can tell, Skullcrusher bonus damage only triggers when the affected unit is still in its stagger state when you attack it while debuffed. Crushers are particularly resilient against this, who can flinch briefly when staggered (allowing you to apply the debuff) and then recover almost immediately, denying you any bonus damage. The duration on the tooltip seems to be merely a… suggestion.

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Hell, I was failing to get the bonus damage with a push attack on scab bruisers. Granted, that is with a testing setup with very few talents selected and a blue shovel. But still.

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Yeah thats one of the most messed up talents in the game. If it were like VT2 Mainstay it would be miles better. Possibly even too good, but it would be nice for a character to be benefiting a blessing that supports their intended play style. And not ‘lel what’s cleave’.

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I personally think it’s not great on the MK3 shovel. It has really good cleave stats but it rarely actually oneshots something, so BM rarely triggers without thrust at which point you could just be playing a folding shovel and have the same thing but better. This might just be a matter of me using a 70% damage shovel with shitty perks but I’m not gonna roll a new one. I’m just not gonna!
I like thunderous a lot due to how fast it is. Lately I’ve been using thunderous and skullcrusher and it actually destroys crowds almost as well as a knife (even on gunlugger ogryn without bleed) and if you actively try to make use of skullcrusher via the punch or smart pushes you can combo elites down pretty well. It also has pretty good light attacks which is pretty fun with heavy hitter and attackspeed (and unlike the other shovels, attackspeed actually functions on the MK3 - they forgot to copypaste they fix to this to the new shovels)

As for skullcrusher mechanics I have no idea how they work and stopped trying to figure it out but if you push attack then punch then overhead ragers they get absolutely destroyed so it seems to work

the thing I resent the most about recent changes is that the dickpunch no longer knocks bulwarks over. That was incredibly funny and didn’t feel OP

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Skullcrusher is extremely inconsistent. There are weapons with the blessing that are almost incapable of attacking quickly enough to gain a benefit from it.

It’s doubly complicated by there being multiple stagger-states, and that the duration of staggers in no way correlates to the animations. It’s further screwed up by FS going in and tweaking stagger resistance windows, meaning you can’t stagger them again even though you think you should be able to.

It works… OK… on some weapons, and on others you will very, very rarely be able to benefit from it.

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Peeps, I can’t thank you enough for all of this juicy information. Y’all are amazing! :star_struck:

Have an extremely long post for your efforts :smiley:

Very informative, thank you for sharing – nice rabbit hole there for sure :sweat_smile:

I’m finally starting to realise that I get more raw satisfaction than actual damage crackin’ skulls! Except for the cleave portion, of course!!

I’m beginning to see why – especially given my affection for push/push-attack/punching ragers in the bracket/etc. it could be super useful. However if I’m looking to power up against Crushers (I’ve died a couple times recently to Crusher packs) it’s not impactful. Rager packs however…

I feel you – when I got my hands on it at first it was love at first decapitation. After some combat use, I found myself feeling the slow-ness of the weapon and missing my almighty Mk3 smackdown attack (leading Heavy) – the versatile single/cleave attack moveset.

The nail in the coffin for me was that if I went for a (suuuuuuper strong :heart:) folded attack and missed, it was a huge PITA to transition out of it. Skill/experience issue I’m sure, and once I get over my extremely minor trauma I’m sure to give it a fair go :slight_smile:

Also @Elodie HUGE props for your Skullcrusher breakdown, I really really appreciate the knowledge bomb :sparkles: :exploding_head: :sparkles:

You’re right – though not so much forget as it’s my favourite Thunder Hammer blessing – I am sleeping on it for Ogryn for the following reasons:

  • Usually my goal is to get heavies out as quickly as possible for toughness
  • Thunderous potentially helps me and the team out more against fat armoured targets (Brittleness affects Unyielding, right??) – though I’m beginning to re-think it’s virtue
  • Skullcrusher might do more damage?

However I should especially not underestimate the Power stat provided by Thrust or the sheer satisfying brutality of a fully-charged smackdown on some fool’s head!

Honestly you’ve convinced me to significantly increase my weighting for the Thrust blessing – I’ve always kind of wanted it but didn’t think it stacked up :slight_smile:

Ah, really good point. I think it could still be worth having Thrust for big’uns and relatively (Mk3 vs Mk5) fast heavies for general use.

As you stated however, I do think it’s due to a lower-powered shovel as mine does one-shot head-shot chaff and it’s GREAT.

I assume that’s more Skullcrusher than Thunderous, though I’m sure the Brittleness helps on flak mobs. Just thinking about Brutal Momentum vs. Skullcrusher here!

Seriously, folding shovels have no benefit from Heavy Hitter??? Horrendous if so…

:sob:

I feel your extreme disappointment… I must have missed it in the patch notes, but I definitely have missed it in game…

FAATSHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRK!!!

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Reporting back with some initial testing… THRUST, damn!

With thrust alone, 3 charged heavies kills a Crusher down from 4 without.

Thrust + Thunderous doesn’t seem to make too much of a difference, still 3 hits but there’s a bit of setup involved with push + attack.

Throw a Can Opener initial hit into the mix and you get a 2-shot.

Also, and this is without significant playtesting, given that Thrust stacks start fairly rapidly I’m inclined to think that this is a buff across the board since I’m often holding heavies juuuust a little longer than necessary to make sure they land well.

Consider me surprised and delighted :partying_face:

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I use number 3 specifically because its so good on crushers with BM. Club doesn’t have that (or any amazing blessings really). The thundershovel is honestly a little greedy and super boring the rest of the game with their lazy moveset design (this is actually a big fear I have for the upcoming melee weapons too). You can 2 shot crusher with the shovel and heavy hitter tree. You can use the +damage taunt to 2 shot them from a cold start without heavy hitter stacks. It really only noticed the punch being powered down (oh man do I miss bullying bosses but I am glad I put my time in on that).

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If you have thunderous, you might as well also have thrust.