Whoever designed Ogryn made the knives too close in single target damage to the clubs and shovel (one enemy type exception doesn’t make the clubs or shovel feel good) but the difference in horde clearing ability way too crazy to make up for the fact that you can hurt carapace armor instead of just permanently staggering them to death. You can hit 10+ enemies for 100+ damage each with bull butcher up to speed on slaughterer stacks. Your fall off target 2 damage with the club is 50, and you only hit 3 enemies total!
Though I’m also of the opinion that power maul crept the clubs hard, because of the AoE control. If you aren’t going to do much damage regardless controlling rooms is a pretty tough advantage to ignore. No, the tiny damage differences don’t really make paul feel worse or the clubs better. Still 2 strikedown hits to kill a scab…
Ewwwww. I can’t believe anyone still runs bleed on Ogryn. Also look at that image above the cleave damage sucks. And this is all assuming there aren’t also bruisers mixed in.
Nah I stand by my suggestion. It’s the most fitting for the archetype Paul is in and addresses the real issue with it which is overuse of charged attacks.
It’s not that it can’t, I simply don’t think it fits the weapon nor is it the change I’d want for it. I don’t think there’s anything else to say here I just disagree with you and have spent plenty long outlining reasons at this point. From wacky suggestions like getting 3 powered attacks consecutively or infinite cleave I really think you underestimate how strong this weapon actually is.
And I fully agree on this. This is also a generic way they introduced to all weapons.
However, we could also imagine a weapon that can be powered and that can swing 4 or even 5 times before the need to use again the special. It would mean that:
or they lower damages that powered attacks deal for this kind of weapon
or they create a mechanic that forbid the player to spam use this (so a cooldown). So, using the special would need that you don’t use again for a given time (1 minute by example). With such cooldown, I would say that 6 swings would be a good compromise. It would be a tradeoff between the possibility to spam use it to a possibility to use it to deal a maximum of damages in a short time.
You’re not wrong on this. I made a suggestion above…
Shovel would need love as, as you have pointed it, the shovel is a crowd control weapon that has nothing to deal with a crowd… but, I think that cleaver must be adjusted before tweaking other weapons.
I understand where you coming from, but let’s be honest. Ogryns weapons are really strong. And the cleaver should see its damages lowered significantly.
I think that the cleaver should get this change before adjusting other weapons, at least on the damage area.
Most ogryn weapons blow at actually securing kills. The cleaver has a great TTK but is heavily filtered by armor. It is the only weapon on Ogryn that says “hi, yes, i’m an ogryn in melee.”
It has a similar TTK to the power sword on poxwalkers but unlike the power sword it is weak against heavily armored elites and ragers etc. This is a perfectly adequate balance for the weapon and very lore accurate. The only thing that needs to happen is that other ogryn weapons need buffs.
Yeah the shovel is worse at killing maniacs than the knife. Thrust 4 and carapace 25% on a strikedown club with heavyweight doesn’t even 2 shot a crusher, you need a boost from the stagger feat. People use knife the most because the rest suck.
They should make the club stronger at killing single targets, cleave far more enemies in a swing but retain low cleave damage. Like 10 enemies damaged for fall off 40 at minimum. If you have thrust 4, carapace 25%, heavyweight champ and 25 stacks of the stagger power talent you should ONE shot a crusher on damnation with a headshot, which should also work properly. The ‘strikedown’ light attack common to all 3 and the p maul needs maniac penetration increased to 100%. Brunt’s basher is a grief pick because of this.
The shovel I would make damage 6 enemies, but with a high cleave damage coefficient like the knife. Then you wouldn’t have to make it good against maniacs…or anything else really, since I kinda like it as ‘a knife that can AP’. So make it more like a knife…
I don’t particularly want to derail so I’ll keep this brief and suggest we take this up in DMs or you make a thread if you want to discuss this more. I would agree with the statement that Ogryn overall is very strong. I would disagree that power comes primarily or even in significant proportion from melee weapons with BB being the single exception.
It’s not only about power maul, but also about almost all ogryn weapons.
Why are heavy attacks so slow? Because of their speed, they have lower dps and control than light attacks. The movement speed penalty while charge up heavy attacks leaves player too vulnerable to shooters and disablers. They are simply incompatible with tide games gameplay which requires react quickly to incoming threats.
It seems to me that fatsharks had an intention to compensate heavy attacks vulnerability by adding damage resistance feat “Bloodthirst” (which doesn’t work well, as it requires living bleeding enemies. Incompatible with the presence of power sword, flamethrower and other weapons of mass destruction in the team). But why take a weapon with significant drawbacks and few advantages, and try to fix it to usable level with ogryn feats? If you can just take a normal weapon
Ogryn in general are noticeably less ‘snappy’ than the other classes when it comes to melee combat, which is a general problem in terms of just not feeling great, regardless of balance. I’ve always been bothered by that slight delay between releasing a heavy attack and it starting, along with their awkward pauses around blocking (both going into the block from an attack and after dropping your block and trying to go into an attack). Even the bull butcher has this issue but it’s ameliorated by it being one of the faster weapons in the first place. It’s also part of why I’ve always preferred the knives (even prior to them becoming meta choices) as they work better with light attacks more consistently versus other ogryn weapons.
I assume (hope) it’s an issue with them bug fixing them way back in closed beta with attacking after pushing having a delay and Fatshark being Fatshark with Darktide managed to muck it up in some manner and have never gotten around to cleaning it up entirely. That awkward input delay where I go to block an attack after swinging feels really weird compared to literally anyone/any other class from VT or DT. (It also seems to queue it up more than others, even when I’ve then stopped trying to block but couldn’t due to animation locks)
You can read my original post to be reminded how I rate the power of the Power Maul. No need to become condecending.
We aren’t reliant on a nerf to the Bull Butcher to understand that other weapons are weak or have issues. A Bull Butcher nerf wouldn’t make me want to use a Power Maul, for example, because it would still revolve around chaining activations repetively which is boring to me.
This thread provides feedback mainly on why I find the Power Maul to be boring. So far the replies have been “your suggested fix sucks”, or “the Power Maul must be boring because power-attacks are powerful”.
While my suggested fix might not even be what Fatshark agrees with, I don’t see why the fun of using the Power Maul can’t be improved, and then tweak the balance as necessary afterwords.
I feel like the thinking here was “this will make him feel big and dumb.” but it just makes him feel “big and useless” instead. What makes him feel big and powerful is his enormous stagger on every attack. He doesn’t need to literally be painfully slow to use. Unless you use light attacks of course, then its just mindnumbingly spamming BBmk3 for mega meat mulching madness. Which is awesome and why everyone runs it.
The power maul needs to be more effective on basic swings. It seems like a lot of the weapons were designed around this concept of “it has a special that is strong so the rest of the weapon should be weak to compensate” which is just awful. Especially on Chain Weapons, which the Ogryn needs (chain cleaver WHEN!?). But I digress. There is and always will be a hierarchy of best and worst weapons. Right now the best weapon in the game is a cleaver for ogryn and an axe for everyone else. The power sword and force sword are the only RULE OF COOL toppers of the charts. All the other 40k iconic weapons are brutally kneecapped as weapons except their special attack. If we’re going to have a best and worst, which we always will in a game like this, at least let the iconic weapons be the best.
Fatshark has alleviated some of the slowness on the Ogryn by increasing the attack speed of some melee weapons (and ranged weapons btw), though a lot remains imo.
The Brunt’s Special Bully Club got an attack speed buff earlier this year, and now feels really good and solid to use. I wouldn’t mind seeing the same speed buff on the Power Maul and Shovel, for example.
I disagree here. Ogryns have already strong weapons.
Having a possibility to chain energized weapons, means it would have an impact on the DPS that the weapon deal.
My feeling is that the Bull Butcher needs to be nerfed. And to balance weapons, it is better to start by nerfing too strong weapons.
About the possibility to avoid to spam the special action, as I said if you could swing several times with energized attacks, it would greatly increase DPS of the weapon.
So you have to balance that.
Then, here comes my proposition (above).
Power attack is great vs. single targets and hordes, but deals f***-all damage against non-primary targets.
The two first light attacks are also good vs single non-elite/special targets.
Overall I don’t really like any of the Ogryns melee weapons besides the MkIII cleaver. You just end up knocking things around while often needing 4(!!) attacks to deal with a single Poxwalker. At least the cleaver gets s*** done.
Power Maul is best if you play Gungrin in my opinion. Ranged to deal with everything besides Bulwarks and Crushers and Power Maul to smack them around.
I’m not sure it needs a lot of changing. I mean, massive horde stagger is a legit alternative to horde damage - I just don’t enjoy that playstyle. I just wish the Ogryns had more damage alternatives than the cleaver.
Full momentum is retained while pressing the power button is the main thing for me.
Other than that, perhaps make charge attacks scale better with powered attacks. As is, a powered Light 1 is pretty much right on par with a powered heavy when it comes to damage, and it comes out a hell of a lot quicker.
why would the shovel need a “rework”. Making it cleave as much as the BB? That sounds like a really silly idea in the scheme of making it balanced. The shovel is in a perfectly fine place if you’ve actually played with it before and are skilled & familiar with playing with it.
Just to throw this out there, to see what people’s take is but… how do you feel about the Indignatus Crusher vs the Power Maul? Although they are on different classes, they effectively fill the same niche (with some minor differences).
Originally, I was all in on Power Maul and really disliked the Crusher (because of the attack pattern, I reckon), I’ve completely reversed my stance and the Power Maul feels painful to use by comparison
From my experience, the differences are mainly
Power Maul
has a more versatile light combo
better first target damage on its light attacks against an equivalent attack (approx 10%)
damages less targets on its lights* but falloff is less steep (99 → 57 → 37 → 15)
Crusher
has a more versatile heavy combo
better first target damage on its heavy
damages more targets on its lights* but falloff is more steep (85 → 33 → 26 → 19 → 24**)
activating the special feels much more responsive
re-activating the special is significantly more responsive, as it can be done before the attack animation completes
Both weapons
have a similar falloff rate for heavies (180/247 → 99/99 → 25/26 → 17/19 → 0 for Power Maul/Crusher respectively)
I’m not sure if there’s any noteworthy difference between what the special attack adds. However, as far as weapons that knock enemies around more than killing them, the Crusher feels far better to me. I’m curious if others have tried the Crusher and if there’s specific aspects of that worth incorporating into the Power Maul
EDIT: And I forgot about the fact that Zealot gets 10-20% attack speed and 25% damage very consistently, that probably plays a substantial role in making the Crusher feel/perform better IMO
All numbers are based on unarmoured, taken from Darktide Breakpoint Calculator, neither have a unique advantage against a specific armor type.
*It’s news to me that the weapons don’t fall off to 0 on light attacks (I haven’t tested the Power Maul lately, but the Crusher definitely damages 5 targets) although neither weapon has any way to improve cleave AFAIK.
**I’m not sure if this is a bug with the breakpoint calculator, or if the Crusher’s 4th target actually takes less damage than the 5th
The Crusher is less painful to use for me since its first light attack is Relentless, making it easier to hit with. The Stagger also seems higher on the Crusher, so re-activations don’t need to be performed as quickly.
Both weapons slow the player down during activation, which adds to the detriment of using them.
I don’t think either weapon appeals because both lack a playstyle to fall back on outside of power-attacks. But at least the Crusher is more enjoyable when chaining power-attacks.