As title. Obviously I’m aware that you can kill Bulwarks just fine with any weapon. What I mean in particular is how Vet and Psyker have options that “hardcounter” Bulwarks. In no particular order:
-Psyker can damage them through their shields with Surge, Voidstrike and Trauma staff, and can obviously brainburst or smite them
-Veterans get refilling krak grenades and plasma goes through the shield
However, as for Ogryn and Zealot, if you want to “force the issue” with a Bulwark, your only choices are:
-Ogryn can charge to open them up
-Zealot can force open them with a Crusher (the weapon) special attack
That’s it. Obviously they’re way more limited. On Ogryn more so than on Zealot, since it’s tied to a cooldown, but Zealot obviously also is limited to just that wep to do it with. I guess they also have grenades to do it with, but the game generally throws way more Bulwarks at you than there are grenade pickups in a mission, so I think it wouldn’t be fair to consider those as actual anti-bulwark kit.
This was always the case but I feel like the Bulwark HP buff made this issue a bit worse. Since you’re most of the time as Ogryn/Zealot forced to engage with the open shield->deal damage cycle, the HP buff pretty much skyrockets time to kill for Bulwarks for these classes. Meanwhile Psykers and Vets have plenty of choices to circumvent this cycle entirely.
It would maybe add a bit of variety to Ogryn/Zealot gameplay if they could opt into some anti-bulwark prowess. Maybe finally buff the Ogryn power maul to actually do damage to Bulwarks. Maybe give the Ogryn slap/punch some utility back, since it lost most of it in this patch (since many enemies now dont care about being punched/slapped anymore, including opened bulwarks). Maybe allow certain other weapons to penetrate shields, like the bolter or grenade glove, who both suffered a bit in utility from the bulwark HP nerf to begin with. Or do something a little more interesting with the heavy sword special attacks on zealot. There’s a lot of ways to approach this and I’m just throwing things out there.
Overall I think the Bulwark changes are good though. They just became a lot more annoying to deal with for the classes that can’t hardcounter them though and I feel there needs to be choices to do so.
Use Slab Shield heavy attacks on the Bulwark with the Batter node (using Delight in Destruction for DR), and the Bulwarks will die from bleed damage while you run to the next pack.
Dealing with heavy units as a Slab Shield Ogryn is essentially playing the game in easy mode.
You can also use thr Rumbler to get that sweet booom.
GG punch special goes through their guard. Haven’t checked if normal GG shots or Paul special still open them up easily post patch but if so both trivialise them. Rumbler works well if you can place your shots just behind them from memory.
Zealot besides what you’ve said also has stun grenades, haven’t checked if bolter or T Hammer special still open them quickly but if so they should both still deal with them pretty quickly.
For both classes they also have plenty of options to kill them pretty quick just dodging an attack then countering with any number of melee or ranged options.
I dunno I don’t think Zealot or Ogryn lack effective options to deal with bulwarks.
You can double shield-push (old Ironbreaker trick) but the bulwark eventually regains composure so you have to repeat. It’s not as useful as it was on VT’s SV, it’s really meh (too slow, same as spamming heavies). I wish the shield push attack combo was more like in VT where the overhead swing can mess up their heads.
You can also Ripper poke them to death, Can Opener even applies through shield.
Poke-Shoot-Shoot works best though. Ripper poke has great stagger but it works once the shield drops.
Spiky shovel overheard (special) real close works too, similar to Zealot’s crusher. If you’re close it goes over the shield and bonks 'em in the head (no drop). Clubs (Mk1/2) too. MK1 Club is neat 'cause you can block-cancel and reset to H1 overhead.
P.S. It’s a bit different when they do thing rather than just standing still, you can use the Creature Spawner mod to spawn 1 and make it active to try things out in the grinder.
Right but he clarified “force” and not just a counter, i.e. hit em with shield up or force them to lower their guard, and you already mentioned Rumbler.
Right, but again OP was looking for a “force” rather than a counter option, which you already listed some.
Yes, it can open it up but there are ~recovery and ~immunity/threshold mechanics at play etc, it’s not very effective if you’re just wailing away with heavies unless you get counter shots in, it’s rather slow otherwise but it can be done.
P.S. Getting hits in when they swing obviously is much faster, dodge and counter or interrupt, which happens on heavy spam.
Yeah I know I just see it as less of a binary and more of a scale. Having high melee damage and impact means you’re more likely to combo into a kill after fewer cycles of dodge → counter attack, thus interacting with their mechanics less overall, albeit not bypassing them entirely. Hence even without bringing the hard counter options that have already been listed in this thread you can still deal with them pretty efficiently with a lot of setups.
So yeah I don’t really think there’s an issue here all things considered.
Admittedly, I do not play my Ogryn very often these days, so I could be completely wrong, but when I did, I just taunted + heavy attacked all the big groups of heavys (Mauler’s, Bulwark’s, Crusher’s) and they just died on their own after a couple of heavy hits to the face while I ran past them because heavy attacks open up the shields and then the next hit to the face puts the bleed on them.
Ogryn equals playing Darktide on easy mode, even with the most difficult modifiers.
The only issue I used to have as an Ogryn was disablers, such as hounds and trappers, who can sneak up and get you while you are Bull Rushing a horde; otherwise, it was like vacation.
Yeah no arguments here, the counter is super easy, barely an inconvenience. I think OP was just looking for new “tricks”.
Redditors/Pugs on the other hand…they just sit there making sparks on the shields, maybe hoping for an eventual fire or metal fatigue? IDK.
P.S. My favourite rando tactic, spin the bulwark so everyone gets a shield block!
Use the old school shovel and clubs, they can open up bulwarks with either punches or repeated heavies to the shield. If you tag them with a club they go into mid stagger state still too. Its just harder to then knock them down farther without punch.
Knife punch can’t iirc, but does always mid stagger them on hit.
Bolter works too and Zealot can use it. In fact, I’ve relied on this weapon whenever I need to win pubs at any cost and this is part of the reason why. I find it a bit strange you didn’t mention the most obvious trick for dealing with Bulwarks, which is to let them swing at you, dodge away and hit their exposed parts. It’s a free kill on any lone Bulwark, it makes groups slightly less annoying and any class can do it.
I don’t know, I feel like OP is underrating Ogryn and Zealot’s abilities to kill Bulwarks. Maybe he is thinking more particularly about groups of Bulwarks? The Rumbler is a free win, Kickback wrecks them if they’re opened up and Gun Lugger with Stubber can dot them to death; that last method is not ideal at all but sometimes there’s no time for maneuvering around them. The best exclusive tool Zealot has for Bulwarks is Stun Grenades. I would like to mention it would be great if TH could shove Bulwarks to the floor on Special Heavy Attack. It makes no sense you can hit them with such a powerful attack and all it does is open them.
I’ve been running Zealot a ton with shotguns lately and the buff to Bulwarks makes the Kantrael and Lawbringer even better (unfortunately Vet has mainly weakspot perks so he should stick with Agripinaa). 2 shotting bulwarks is pretty achievable still. They will stagger on the hit, Lawbringer needs to hit face.
I remember a long long time ago Overwatch players often complained that Bastion was very weak against enemy snipers; that Bastion’s survivability was too low and he lacked good enough staying power to really utilize his giant gun properly. After a while, the devs caved and made Bastion tougher and heal himself faster or something, I forget the details. But it always felt very strange to me, because from where I was sitting, Bastion had a perfectly adequate defense.
It was called “Reinhardt.”
It’s a bit depressing that no one’s mentioned the fact that you have a team in this team game. I guess it’s less of an option if you’re more used to the kind of job where everybody acts like they’re soloing and just happen to be in the same server as three other people, but my favorite strategy for Bulwarks is to poke them to get their attention and then run past them so they turn around and everyone else can shoot them in their giant squishy completely unarmored butts. Works every time.
First off, things should not be identical for all of the classes.
All classes can do something that the others can not.
On top of that, a bulwark’s torso and head are not armored, which means that you can use literally any weapon to deal with them, as long as you hit them in the right places.
So i immediately do not see the issue here.
Ogryn
You can
jump and bonk bulwarks in the head from the front, while they are holding their shield torwards you. If you are max size, you can probably even do it while standing.
open bulwarks with a single shot from the grenadier gauntlet or the rumbler
knock them to the floor with a single body shot from the kickback and kill them with a second shot before they can get up.
Zealot
You can
1 shot bulwarks with a single activated heavy to the head from either eviscerator model
1 shot them with a single bodyshot from a Mk2 thunderhammer (body, not arm)
shred them with a boltgun as soon as they open up
burn them from the front, while they have their shield up, by aiming your flamer at either of the 4 outer edges of their shield (when dealing with groups groups, you obviously aim at top or bottom).
2 shot headshot them with a combat axe, if you use Fury of the Faithful on the first attack (to crit and stagger)
This is just from a few minutes of testing.
I have not really played these two classes since the update.
Stealth zealot: Stealth and then heavy stab them in the back as they switch aggro and walk past you.
Any: walk behind them and either stab them in the back, or force them to expose their back to your team.
Any: wait for them to swing at you, then dodge to the side and hit them in the face. Hard to do with stacked group of shields though.
Ogrin: charge them to the ground and then hit them.
Bonus: You can snipe them in the head with the revolver and get a sneeky kill when they are standing around the map un-alerted. You need to burst them down before they turn and raise their shields. Ive been using surgical/ handcannon to get a guaranteed big crit, then a couple of quick follow up shots drop them.
To clarify the main reason I think this has relevance even though you can “open them up” with any weapons stagger is because there’ll be times where 3 bulwarks frontline a horde. A plasmagun or voidstrike staff or krak grenade or what have you can mess them up if they do that, but if you’re using something that doesn’t ruin bulwarks, you’re in for some very tedious kiting, very tedious kiting that this patch made more tedious by a good chunk due to the HP buff.
I very much agree every class has the tools to just remove one bulwark or one instances of bulwarks quick, it’s just that the relative power between that and just being able to voidstrike them down etc is very far apart and I think Ogryn+Zealot could use some more of it.
I’m the smallest Ogryn and you can bonk them with an overhead attack up close sans jump, as I mentioned above (MK1 club etc), but you bring up an interesting point about the height and jumps, gonna look at the height adjust mod.
P.S. After mod height adjust, it doesn’t really seem like height is extending the overhead bonk? It’s hard to say as the mob breathes but it seems to have no (or not really obvious) effect.