Most Special Attack blessings are gimmicky, not useful and simply not fun. There seem to be more of these on ogryn weapons than on other classes, especially on the ranged weapons.
E.g. :
Can Opener/Rending on Ripper Bayonet Special Attack but not on shots.
Flechette on Ripper: always 1 stack only crits? This might actually be useful on other weapons, or better yet per-hit .
Pierce on Rumbler Special
Adhesive Charge only on monstrosities? More useful on armor or even ogryns+monsters.
Continuous fire blessings on single shot weapons
Next hit blessings on specials
Then there are the bugs like rending and penetration not working on AOE splash damage (rumbler+)
There just seems to be an attempt to add “different for the sake of different”, but it just doesn’t work in practice, other classes seem to have far fewer gimmicky stuff on ranged and more useful blessings.
Honestly half of these can just be replaced with their more standard cousins and call it a day. Some removed entirely…
P.S. It’s funny, looking at the data-mined Ogryn Gun-Lugger class, it almost feels like a lot of the ranged stuff is partially balanced around THAT class. I can’t say I’m a fan of that philosophy.
FYI whenever you get Rending, it applies to all attacks you make with that weapon. Concerning Can Opener, the stabbing is merely a requirement to get your Rending stacks - you can stab a bunch of poxwalkers with your Ripper bayonet and then go after the Crusher with ranged fire and it’ll be much more effective (for however long the stacks last anyhow). Or just stab the Crusher a couple times and then unload. That’s just how Rending works.
Pierce isn’t too bad on the Rumbler / Kickback since the special bash counts as a heavy attack, and then gets much, much more effective cleave with Pierce, and then can further benefit from various Ogryn Feats like heavy attacks applying bleed and damage reduction when near bleeding enemies.
Would be nice if Adhesive Charge also applied to Ogryns at least. Not like the Rumbler has many decent blessings anyhow, even if those it does have function correctly at some point in the future.
I agree that the cleaver special attacks are kind of meh, and the club’s slap is just memey and not really useful. However, the latrine shovel’s uppercut is actually good, and I mean really good. In one punch, it will send all human-sized enemies flying backwards in a most satisfying manner (including Maulers and Ragers!), and it will topple Reapers and Bulwarks as long as you don’t hit the latter’s shield. Now only if they could fix the stagger reset issues…
Yep, aware of the Rending stab+shoot but that’s my point, it’s gimmicky AF and not really useful. Same goes for the Pierce on Rumbler and Kicker (back), meh.
Like getting run’n’gun on the Kickback, ok you took your 1 single shot now slow down to reload.
I wouldn’t call it gimicky. It lets the Ripper Gun do things it otherwise couldn’t do if you make use of the special attack once in a while. That’s worth it. And Pierce just works for different builds, I see no reason why that shouldn’t be a thing.
As for Run n’ Gun, I am a proponent of adding reloading while running in addition to shooting while running - would work nicely for just about every gun that can roll the blessing, plus it just adds more value.
My point was it could just apply the Rending at range like other “normal” weapons do, it’s not “special poke or nothing”. Artificially limiting it to to “Special stab ONLY” is the gimmicky part.
I actually would dig it if the special + shoot was an intentional combo and was waaaay more responsive.
I mean what’s more 40k than a monster man ramming a bayonet into another monster man and pulling the trigger with the lodged bayonet anchoring the recoil?
In this case rending would be badass, it just needs the carapace armor hit graphic (you know, sparks) replaced with blood squibs so players know what’s happening without having to go to meat grinder first.
Shattering Impact, which gives Rending on hitting armored enemies, is generally reserved for ranged weapons that go boom - Grenadier Gauntlet, Bolter, Plasma Gun, etc, of which the Ripper Gun is not.
However, of all the blessings that grant Rending, Shattering Impact is probably the most boring and least interactive because it just procs whenever you shoot an armored enemy. At least Hand Cannon requires the revolver to crit for +50% Rending, or Decapitator requiring the axe to one-shot an enemy, rather than “it just happens” like Shattering Impact.