Ogryn problem

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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Ogryn has only one viable weapon and one viable build to use on heresy/damnation, and if you deviate from that build you’re dead weight. It’s also very antifun in a lot of cases because you just sit behind your shield and don’t participate while everyone else gets to actually play the game.

First, his only interesting melee weapon is the shield. The rest is cool but totally useless since enemies with rifles will destroy you.
You have to play on with it, it’s slow, the heavy attack has terrible damage. This need to change, create more weapon with shield, or big melee weapon.

Secondly, he needs a real ranged gun. It’s really hard sometime when you are surrounded by soldiers because when you’ll try to kill them with a certain distance, your weapon lost 90% of his damage.
The only weapon you can use in those cases, it’s the grenade launcher. The rest is cool but only if you are close to the enemies.

Thirdly, Ogryn has big shotguns & a big rifle. But for some reason, they are completely useless against armour.
Those guns have the size of a human, or almost, the bullets are the size of a hand but even with this, you can’t break through it.

I tried the big rifle, the Heavy Stubber, against armour & against boss / mini-boss, it doesn’t no damage. It’s insane, the gun is enormous, bullet are enormous, but it’s only good against horde ? Why ?

Last point, Ogryn is way too dependant to the team.
If you don’t have a veteran or anything else, and you end up in a team with three ogryn, it’s pure pain. Of course, you can finish mission, but it’s really hard to manage all elites, with flamer, rifles, sniper etc.

When I’m in a mission I feel like I’m useless, one veteran can do all the job. I’m not even talking about Psyker, because it’s a one-man army when you have correct weapons & build.

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Agreed 100%

The design of the Ogryn feels like a rushed afterthought with no real use outside of just existing to offer buffs and knockdown/stagger for the better classes to have an easier time. I mean imagine a team of 4 Ogryn in Heresy or above… it would be a painful slog. But have a team of 4 Psykers and you have special killing machines with short cooldown conal knockback, CC and AoE burst damage, and the ability to push BETTER THAN THE OGRYN CAN.

The weapons need a damage buff and to be armor-piercing.
Melee damage needs to be increased.
Melee heavy attack speed needs to be increased by a minimum of 15-20% to be even moderately useful.
The Bleed talents make absolutely no sense and shouldn’t exist. I’m not using three separate talent slots to create some new synergy that has nothing to do with my base kit while the other classes talents simply make their base kit better.
And why the ever living hell do Ogryn not get two handed weapons? Why? WHY? Nobody thinks of a Skullbreaker and says “Ah yes. I see this class using a Shovel and a Knife as high-level weapons.”

Ogryn need to have some numbers and effects tweaked because after hitting level 26 I just do not want to play it anymore.

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First, his only interesting melee weapon is the shield. The rest is cool but totally useless since enemies with rifles will destroy you.
You have to play on with it, it’s slow, the heavy attack has terrible damage. This need to change, create more weapon with shield, or big melee weapon.

I agree with it being mandatory because of ranged enemies, but it is far from weak. Most of its use is meant to be crowd control, it has MASSIVE stagger and you absolutely man-handle the ever-living sh*t out of every enemy besides Mutant and Monstrosities. Chain this with the bleeding heavy attacks at level 10 and the “Raging Bull” feat at lvl 25 and you can essentially handle hordes solo as long as you know how to do the doge/shove/heavy attack dance.
I do agree that it would be nice to see more melee options with the shield though.

The heavy-stubber is a great ranged weapon unless you’ve used one with bad stats. I am constantly getting ranged kills with it at pretty crazy distances and if they don’t die they aren’t shooting back due to suppression. The heavy-stubber also has a good amount of stagger and I shred armoured enemies with mine.

I agree with this to an extent, but I’ve had plenty of 2 ogryn, 2 preacher or 1 ogryn, 3 preacher games and we just sail through them. It really comes down to good use of slab shield and your F ability.

As ogryn you’re there to be an absolute crowd-control monster, and abuse the AI aggro with your shield. Trust me when I say if you do it well you take SO MUCH pressure off your team and allow for EZ Malice+ clears.

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To be fair, it’s a team-based game and the line for “too dependent” is rather blurry. The veteran struggles with concentrated hordes where the ogryn shines, to provide a counterpoint.
As I read this, I sense that you’d want more of a bruiser build for the character, rather than the tank that Fatshark provided. Hopefully they will add some more build diversity, given time, but the other roles on the team certainly appreciate the blocking and damage-soaking as we have it now.

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Sorry, but have you seen or used Veterans powersword? Electrified charged attacks melt hordes, even with armored elites in it. One of the best anti-horde weapons in the game. Veteran has problems with stagger, which the Ogryn can provide beautifully. Though its understandable that people wouldnt like a career that mainly provides stagger, especially since it is not really needed when the damage can kill the enemies before stagger does something.

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Honestly, as someone who went Vet and Power Sword first. Ogryn with the right knife can do the same thing with more stagger and staying safer while doing it. Ogryn are fine if played well and geared for the fight. They get A LOT more survivable as they level up and get compatible gear for the players chosen playstyle. They lack accurate long ranged attacks, but they can suppress, knock down or close the distance fast and chew through everything along the way.

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I play Ogryn with Knife and Bleed stacks + Defense when enemy bleed. Works perfectly fine, sure you won’t be able to handle every scenario there is by yourself, but that why it’s a coop game and not a solo campaign. Learning to use the environment, run/slide, swapping from ranged to melee and back is key to make it work.

But yeah, the shield is just more straight up and easier to utilize.

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a minor thing i’d like for the ogryn would be a choice between the Box throw and the Frag Bomb.

The Ogryns in TT had frag bombs as their grenade equivalent, basically larger versions of the normal Guardsman’s frag grenade.

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Agree with some points, disgree with others. Added some unasked suggestions.

Came to use same setup (shield&club + grenade launcher).

  • +1 to speed up and improve shield heavy attack
  • heavy stubbers not piercing heavy carapace armor is “lore correct”.
  • long range precision fire is not the Ogryn way.
  • The shield is the only option to draw and endure sustained fire. It does this excellent. Maybe even too good. This might be its own bane, because as pointed out, there are no good alternatives.

EDIT: Shield is not the only option to play in higher difficulties, as demonstrated on several youtube heresy runs. Rather, the shield allows a different playstyle (taking fire) which does not translate well to other arms.

suggestions for shield:

  • needed: when stationary, increase allowed motion of vision. (If you cannot do stuff, at least see the action)

  • nice to have: combination of shield + ranged weapon (lore correct)

  • nice to have: combination of shield with other melee weapons, plus option to not have any ranged weapon (second melee weapon of choice)

  • nice to have: shrapnell and glancing shots: create a damage aura around the shield bearer when being shot at. This adds participation to the killing, emphasize positioning while also keeping it close and tanky.

suggestions for ranged:

  • add bigger boom option to grenade launcher
    (think troll torpedo; more damage on larger area); lower ammo count; longer reload;
  • increase mag size and fire rate of heavy stub gun (it seems to have around 600rpm, it easily could be around 800-1200)

shield alternatives

  • not easy to implement but if you want alternatives to shield play (taking fire) you need alternatives to draw/evade/endure direct fire. List of options is finite: take vision (smoke, blinding), take air (gas grenade), provide false targets/distraction, provide cover, improve and prolong suppression. (EDIT: as stated above, alternative playstyles without shield have been demonstrated)

suggestions: score board/feedback

  • note damage blocked and enemies staggered
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When I first tried heresy, I had the exact same perspective, the shield being the only viable weapon to counter the much more lethal ranged fire squads with. As my equipment got better and I ‘learned to adapt’ to the different play style required for the higher difficulty tiers, I can say that I respectfully disagree. All weapon are viable on the higher difficulty tier.

Nah, the weapons that the Ogryn has, fit its more crude and heavy handed style weapons, which lacks ‘finesse’. They are best suited for short to medium range engagements and they are very efficient against soft targets, your typical unarmored and flak armored opponents.

Weirdly enough, the kickback, yes that one-shot-shotgun-with-slow-reload you might find god awful when your start out as an Ogryn, is darn ‘accurate’ at range. It’s the quickest to swap to and get ready to fire and among your current list of weapons its also the quickest to reload. It obliterates pretty much anything that doesn’t have higher tier armor and if it doesn’t kill a special, it for certain going to get knocked over, with the exception of the mutant of course. And at the higher tier, having a quick swap, ready to fire and foil a special his attack becomes surprisingly more useful compared to have blast multiple rounds in to it, to get it staggered and potentially killed.

This had me confused also, due to perks/blessing boosting armor shredding or more damage to armored targets. Despite lacking armor penetration, they excel at dealing with other type of foes, much more efficient, which doesn’t require an accurate headshot for a swift kill.

Each class has a role and excels in certain area’s, the ogryn is no different and if match making pairs you with 3 other Ogryn’s you have to adapt and play your strengths. I don’t recall if I actually completed a mission with an all Ogryn team, but I can’t say for certain I was having a blast.

I’ve already put an unhealthy amount of hours in to this game already, I don’t dodge dance my way through range fire, I didn’t unlock most min/max equipment or perk/blessing combination and by no means do I have a good handle on attack chains, block push combo’s to protect my Ogryn skin from harm. Yet, I play heresy without a shield and able to finish it with a success with random players.

With the game being new, I can say that many players adapt the same most direct route play style when they try heresy, aggressively hacking and slashing their way across the map, often unaware of what is happening around them, this works just fine on the initial three difficulty tiers, but becomes really challenging on the higher tiers. There are multiple routes and the less direct route offer more advantages. Often this means you ride out a pox wave horde and fall back to more advantages area where you have more hard cover or can funnel the enemy better, before you progress and deal with the next threat. The pace of the game changes.