I feel like the special attack of the Ogryn shield needs an interaction that you can fail. Some sort of minigame perhaps.
Reason being is that it seems to me like the shield outclasses any other of the Ogryns Melee tools by a huge margain (Which, on a purely personal experience, feels like I am forced to play it if I want to use the class to it’s full potential) by having an ALMOST unbreakable block that you gain from simply holding down a button.
So it feels like the optimal strat for many a situation is genuinely doing nothing, soaking up damage, and finding a different passtime that doesn’t stop you from holding down one button. As you might expect this is incredibly boring.
I genuinely think this will over time ruin many peoples experience of playing Ogryn, and therefore reduce the amount of people playing the already least picked class even further.
Edit: Forgive my use of Hyperbole and dramatizing the matter, of course you don’t JUST hold special. But when you do it just feels cheap and boring.
The ogryn shield is actually pretty lackluster outside of niche applications involving its special move. Similar to shield weapons from VT2, it has a low effective dodge count and an awful dodge range combined with lackluster damage but good heavy attack cleave. They need to buff its effective dodge count and make its heavy attacks charge up faster, then idk maybe nerf the special attack but honestly who cares it at least has some occasional use which might make an idiot ogryn “tank” player do something helpful once in a while.
Improving the dodge while holding an Ogryn sized slab of metal seems counterintuitive to me, but it probably would make the use of the weapon more enjoyable, same with reducing charge time on heavy attacks. Also I know the shield feels lackluster because you’re not actively doing things, but in any situation, especially higher level missions that naturally come with higher enemy damage, the ability to take aggro and literally take 0 damage unless there’s certain elites / monsturms present is inherently busted, especially with a team that understands said strength and plays around it. Calling that a niche use seems outright wrong to me.
I feel like you might be playing on lower difficulties, because merely shielding till your team does the damage is only some of your job on the shield. Your main focus is horde control and stunning melee elites, not standing with your shield up. Even then flamers destroy your toughness and a single trapper or hound will break your special.
Plus there’s the fact that a mini game or whatever that delays and has a chance of bricking your special will just frustrate and not feel like a skill to be learned. The timing of it already matters a lot, as does position and retreating when there’s anything close that counters it or you get surrounded. I think balancing the duration, stamina damage and time to set up the special would be a better approach.
All they have to do is make other weapons viable on harder difficulties. The main problem is the skull breaker’s huge hit box takes so much range damage, the other options don’t work at the higher levels. If they had an option to spec into reduced ranged damage taken, people would have a lot more options for other skull breaker weapons.
In general, the Skull breaker’s weapons are lackluster. I just want to go back to iron breaker at this point.
I don’t agree with the suggestion that all you should be doing is using the special, but I do definitely agree it’s a pretty unengaging mechanic and I agree that adding something to it that makes it feel more active would be an excellent idea.
I’ve only taken my ogryn as high as threat 4, but I’ve had alot of success with the mk 3 bull cleaver and not so much success with anything else. I think every single melee weapon on the ogryn except for the mk3 needs a serious buff. His ranged selection isn’t great either in my opinion, with the grenadier gauntlet and the single shot grenade launcher being the only actually decent options from my experience. No other class has such lopsided weapon quality.
Yeah a minigame was just a haymaker idea. As this Thread is supposed to highlight the special and I tend to overuse hyperbole it does seem so, but I don’t want to say that holding shield is all you have to do. But when I do it just feels cheap and boring. Your aproach of balancing surely seems more fleshed out, thanks for discussing!