Ogryn's Power Maul is still bad and has awful blessings

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
1

Now that I’m done with my mastery for the Power Maul, I don’t think I’ll ever bother using it again unless it gets some changes done to it.

It has a solid heavy attack pattern for heavy spam, though I kept whiffing hits on human-sized enemies for some reason (enough that I made my Ogryn shorter), but it also has worse stagger that almost all of Ogryn’s options - especially if you account for the others’ special action. Add insult to injury, and the energized state of the Power Maul can’t even interrupt Crushers - something the Bully Club Mk3 and others can do just fine with their heavy attacks.

How does that make any sense? You “stunlock” yourself for nearly 2 seconds to power up the weapon, and it performs worse than others. An animation that you can’t interrupt, you can’t perform blocks, you get slowed down significantly during its animation and if something attacks you during this animation you’re just screwed.

The only use I can see with this weapon’s energized state, is to pop open the bulkwarks’ shields.

The blessings don’t make this better.

If you’re gonna give it Supercharge, which applies Brittleness on energised hit, at least make it seem worthwhile. At level 4 that’s +4 brittleness, no mention of how long this lasts and it honestly seems like a waste because you spent time doing “nothing”, when you could just be hitting like normal.

Power Surge straight up doesn’t work, there is no secondary explosion or anything.

Perfect Strike has no business being on this weapon, as you don’t even have a way of buffing your crit chances with another blessing. Why would you waste a blessing slot for … maybe 7% chance something happening?

The only viable blessings from what I can tell is Brutal Momentum, Skullcrusher, and I could see some arguments for Confident Strikes, and maybe Opportunist. But I’m not even sure if the latter is worth it, as Skullcrusher seems more than good enough.
Don’t see the merit in Thunderstrikes, as the only thing you can’t already stagger is Crushers and probably monstrosities, and it won’t trigger unless you stagger them.

So that’s a weapon with a near useless special action, only 2-3 blessings out of 8 that are worthwhile - What exactly are you guys so afraid that this weapon will do?

I can’t think of any good reason why I would bring this weapon over ANY of the Ogryn weapons to a mission. It feels like I’m actively griefing myself by using it.

6 Likes
2

power maul is my personal A+ tier. It has a slower attack speed but can stagger more enemies than any other weapon and works well with bleeding.
The combination of “Skullcrusher” and “Thunderstrike” is amazing, even a mauler can be knocked down in two attacks, and a crusher can be killed in three heavy attacks.
It has become much stronger since its attack power was buffed in the previous update. Basically, Power Mole’s special attack is slow to start up and has gaps, so we don’t use it that often.
It is possible to clutch even with damnation HISTG.

the activation condition for skullcrusher is unclear, but its evident that skullcrusher’s effect is more likely to activate when thunderstrike is present.

2 Likes
3

Stagger (no TStrike) seems behind vs a shield H1 by half for openers? And picks have hook attacks It still lag behind depending on things. Those 2 also ramp up more quickly, picks for instance with 2 power blessings ramps up very quickly.
Nothing special about bleeds and Paul?

Furthermore you can swap out thunderstrike now for another damage blessing, there are more options since the last update.
It’s still relatively slow to land swings to kill a crusher, but the optimal combo is still light powered->light follow up and repeat I believe because of the fast follow up and landing headshots. This means no tuf from talents ofc.

Skullcrusher suffers from the heavy-handed and somewhat shortsighted stagger increases threshold I think in the spring (?), it hurts ogryn most of all and some weapons can’t hit the new stagger thresholds, so no AoE skullcrusher from Paul explosion unless it staggers. The slow, lumbering bullying class bullies a lot less. I think you’re still likely to get more mileage out of a new damaging blessing over t-strike I think, try Opportunists (be sure to take slam).

Charging and knocking things down seems to be the way to go and helps with stacks of stuff that require stagger. This is another huge reason on top of many not to sit on your ults and not to skip CDR node (bruiser). Bull charge early, bull charge often.

Light powered->Light follow up->repeat seems the way to go for single target, and shockwave may keep smaller stuff to the sides staggered. Opportunist seems better companion to Skullcrusher?
Sadly the explosion and physical hit doesn’t apply a double stack of a Brittle debuff from supercharge, intended? This is a big deal imho.

The Paul still needs love, at last on the same level as the zealot’s crusher got a while back. It’s basically a shield & maul without the shield part and still feels like it’s lagging behind quite a bit.

Still, it feels like C or D tier to me. I’m not sure what it brings to the table.

P.S. IDK, it’s late and I shoulda been in bed hours ago, and these are quick-ish tests, I could be wrong and looking at numbers sleepily; will have to revisit fresh.

4 Likes
4

and my karsolas deals with em in 2 at most after “hooking” them close, all the while i stay mobile and move around the engagement at will.

why should i stagger what should have been dead “long ago”

thats another thing, base game mode for me is auric maelstrom and i got quite a few weapons that do more than fine there.

why burden myself with a club that´s so far below all others?

additionally, with certain weapons come a certain “fluidity” of my playstyle.
so far the karsolas gives me the most “quake” move-set followed by the bully I club while being pretty fast in repositioning AND whacking crushers and bulwarks in a few hits.

the paul feels like i´m ever preparing and tendering the meat for others to finish off, only my credo is “if i want something done right, i do it myself” and not wait around for others to do my work instead.

not only would that feel wrong in terms of pacing, most pubs cant be arsed to kill bigger stuff, let alone lowly trash mobs.

power maul could be up there if at least the charge was done as an integrated part after a certain heavy attack point.
not spammable but not as clunky as having to drag it to the end.

this way one could have the power part of the maul to make up for other shortcomings.

5

I consider myself a power maul expert, i have loved the weapon since it was first released even if it was objectively kinda bad at the start.
But things have changed since the class overhaul patch.
Paul has always been very misunderstood by yhe playerbase imho.

For me Paul blessing have always been Brutal Momentum and Sullcrusher, it has been since patch 13 heads in hordes pop like balloons.
Sullcrusher hepls with the bleeds and to kill elites with the powered attack. And the recent buffs gave him a much needed boost to put it on par with other weapons since it was kinda lacking in that aspect thanks Fatshark.
It’s a quite versatile weapon that really has no decisive weakness and one excellence, the area control.
White the power attack can’t permastagger crushers it staggers everything else and it’s radius it’s a whopping 7.20 meters at 80%, if you want to compre to the zealot crusher explosion radius, it’s 2.60m, that’s the size of the Paul epicenter explosion.
It permastagger hordes giving much breathing space to you and your team. I love yo use it with loyal protector, popping the ult as soon as ragers/ maulers or whatever elites get mixed in.

On the negative side, yes the rooting on activation is hella annoying and the new blessing are really not that useful. On that i can agree on.

6

Is really that bad?, i tried it one time months ago and didn’t like it, why it is so bad?, lack of damage or bad attack pattern?

7

Long animation and massive movement penalty when powering up is my main dislike of it.

8

I wouldn’t say that it’s bad, but it is one of the worst Ogryn melee weapons.

The blessings didn’t do much for PM besides for Opportunist, but even then I do not see much of the change.
Also, I thought that Power Surge would be interesting, but it turns out that just increases the Explosion Radious by 25%, I am not sure if it’s bugged or just wierdly described.

It’s only good at killing hordes(with Brutal Momentum) and staggering said hordes(with Elites tho), which is, funnily enough, is what Ogryn by himself is very good at.

It’s just fine at killing stuff and is slow in every regard, holy hell that rooting on Activation is killing me.

Power Maul, while being usable on Damnation and above(well, you can use any weapons on Damnation and pass, but you know what I mean), is not on par with other weapons like Pickaxes and Shield, you will not have a good time, especially with a skilled team.

There is a reason why there are almost no Power Maul users at Damnation