Looking at just the Shout ability I can see much of that, but with a shield and a talent point, you can also Taunt everything you can push (and boy can you push and stagger) for 8sec for as long as you’ve got stamina, can taunt shooters into melee by blocking, and survive all sorts of stuff you otherwise could not.
When I’m playing my tank build, I try and ensure I keep as much staggered or focused on me and not attacking teammates as possible. I’ve never had any complaints, and people don’t seem to think I’ve preventing them from doing damage. Granted stuff is still attacking (me) instead of standing still, but if someone is relying on dodges and getting stuck into melee for damage, I’d think they’d have just as much issue with ogryn tank builds as with smite builds.
Taunt, that is my preferred ogryn ability since I completed the penance, makes all enemies in its range first stopping any movement, then they will attack all together the Ogryn.
I use it as it gives a +25% damage buff.
But, the ability lasts 15 seconds. And the enemies are still moving, and the range is limited. It doesn’t forbid all enemies around to engage the others teammates.
My main use is to apply a debuff of +25% damage for 15 seconds, I use it also to stop an attack of elites (as they are stopped when you activate it for 1 second) and also to save teammates on floor as it gives an opportunity window for the other players to revive the guy on floor.
I can add that you compare a blitz that you can spam with an ability that has a 45s cooldown.
I don’t see how you can compare taunt with a psyker that use smite from the start of the mission until its end… and that will kill only by accident and will deal the least damages you can do as a player.
This comment summarize very well what I think:
I would just remove the word “the better”
I think that the majority of the players don’t want to play a walking simulator. When I see someone that is stunning everything without being able to kill anything, it is just, for me totally boring.
And here I don’t understand Fatshark. We had a surge staff that was working great… and they changed it and added something similar that is smite. Surge staff could kill things at least before the patch 13. But smite, this is really worse and especially used as primary.
Especially cause it gives the impression to a player that he can handle a difficulty for which he is not ready at all.
But there are players that use wisely smite. They don’t spam it, and use it brievely just to stun an enemy before killing it. Such player don’t use smite as main weapon.
Both of you compare a blitz used constantly with an ability that last few seconds. Chorus has a cooldown of 60 seconds and lasts 4 seconds (5 x 0.8 seconds). How can you compare something that will be spammed until abuse with something you can use for 4 seconds and as an important cooldown?
I am glad you love it… I just hope you have not specialized in it. I would answer you that if the psyker had a surge staff, a trauma staff, a voidstrike staff or even a purge staff, he could eliminate all this group of enemies ALONE.
Don’t you think that being 2 to get the same result of a single guy is not efficient?
Having a teammate that cannot play by itself, needs a baby sitter all the time and cannot kill anything alone can lead to a failure. It seems you have not seen it, but at an high difficulty you cannot baby sit other players.
I would not say the same if it was in low difficulty. Here I can understand that the guy doesn’t know how to play the game… I will try to say him that he should quit the smite, but anyways, at low difficulty there is close to no risk.
But in auric board, I expect any teammate to be able to manage itself, to be able to kill things and to be able to not be killed every times I turn my head.
People aren’t saying smykers bring literally nothing to the table, but the damage they do to other people’s enjoyment to the game is not worth the negligible benefit of CC in certain scenarios. Needing to play “Watch the smyker play the game” (and play it in a way that’s super boring to many people) isn’t really something most people are going to be happy with.
By all means, have fun with whatever build overall, but once you start expecting other people to enable you to then hurt their own enjoyment? That’s just some bizarre expectations. Same way some people expect others to let them have all of the ammo, for example. That’s just not a reasonable expectation to have. (And one of the issues with gunlugger with how ammo hungry it can be, even if you’re conservative with your ammo usage)
I’ll grant the 25% damage bonus from the F ability is definitely a thing, but to carry on from my comment above, paired with a shield and a single talent point investment, you can be basically taunting nearly everything the whole game as long as you can push it (or block shots from it), even potentially without the Shout ult at all. I guess regardless of the source of Taunt they can only stagger vs stun, but for the other teammates, if the enemies are still focused on the Ogryn and they’re wanting to get melee damage in, it sounds like they’d run into similar issues a lot more often than they appear to?
I use also this talent. And yes, you can spam it. However, you may have noticed that the enemies don’t stay staggered and that you will taunt the enemies in front of you. So, in fact, that won’t really change the output… especially cause after taunting them, they will get a pickaxe hit right in their face.
At contrary a smiter will try to stagger everything he can… but cannot kill.
When I play the Ogryn with taunt, I don’t need someone else to kill the enemies. My pickaxe can do it.
This is the major situation in which Smite is useful. Other situations, such as dealing with mixed hordes, would be better served using some other tool in your kit - and even when you are fighting groups of armor, you should still be using that tool until you have no other choice but to Smite to prevent your team from being eaten alive by the pack of armor. This is what the other two folks in this thread are complaining about but not mentioning.
Nobody likes a Smyker who uses it on hordes of trash mobs or groups of Ragers that would be killed much faster by just using his melee weapon, or his staff, or god forbid focusing on something else and letting his teammates deal with it.
Overall, while stun is a powerful status effect, death is still a preferable status effect to apply. Smite as a tool is optimally used as little as possible since it cripples the Psyker’s everything else while it is active, but its braindead ease of use leads a lot of Psykers to rely on it as a primary tool, causing them to fall behind with a team on a decent pace, get shot to death, or just mauled by the pack of whatevers they were too busy stunning to notice that they had full peril.
The problem is not what Smite provides, but the mindset it encourages of the players who use it. The niche it fills is very good, but something must be changed to prevent threads like these from happening and to prevent people from becoming overreliant on it.
that’s it, the player uses what the game offers him, and smite is effective for how simple it is to use, that is standing there and holding a button. and it will stop only when smite is changed to something that facilitates more interesting gameplay than just freezing enemies in place.
In reply to the OP; each tier seems to have it’s own natural pacing I’ve found.
I’m going to admit that the last few games I’ve played I’ve ended up occasionally about 50m ahead of the rest of the team and, once or twice, gone down as I’ve left myself isolated. In my defence, I think I’ve just gotten used to a certain “tempo” on Auric missions and the players I’d typically pug with. Before Havoc I didn’t find I was out in front at all.
With the return/advent of new players, and definitely in the few ‘teen level’ havoc missions I’ve done, I’m just finding that team-mates are not moving as fast as I’m used to. Could be they’re overly cautious; could also just be a lack of dps – for whatever reason –
Definitely hard to adapt back to slow and steady through a mission!
(How it feels sometimes when you’re in a fight, then suddenly alone…
That’s not an apt comparison but you’re also highlighting why VoC is great (OP) and smite is usually just a noob trap. VoC doesn’t stop the vet from killing crap after conferring a great AoE stagger and overshield to the team in coherency, I don’t feel I need to elaborate more.
Smite in most cases is the opposite of a co-op talent when it’s overused, which sadly is almost always. It makes runs slower and harder, not smoother and easier.
When it’s used sparingly and appropriately, it’s great and nobody takes issue with it.
The main difference is taunt, like VoC, doesn’t stop the ogryn from doing stuff other than taunting, and the mobs move and group up; this should be obvious.
On those counts they’re different yes, but in the context of “CC’d enemies aren’t attacking me so I don’t get bonuses from things like dodging or blocking” feels like this should be just as much of an issue with the various Ogryn taunts as with Smite.
You can’t ignore those parts though and just cherry-pick and focus on the CC part, taunt confers a 25% damage taken buff, bunches mobs for aoe/cleave, ogryn is still attacking AND moving (can’t ignore), can’t be spammed like smite etc. etc.
Yeah it can suck if people only choose to focus on the on-dodge stuff being moot, but it at least brings in an ~equivalent benefit. You also don’t see nearly as many tauntgryns as perma-smykers.
Players running ahead might have a different take on how they are helping, I heard one player mention they are creating a “fighting space” for us kite in, but its all a bunch of horse to me.
My rule is buddy system. You only need one person to rescue you, since Rambo wont do it, stay with your team and when Rambo does go down, there is no need to rush over to him but also don’t troll them either.
This, was going to reply something along the lines of this myself but FINally someone said it XD
Smite isn’t inherently bad, but there’s a reason on all the builds I happen to use it, it’s either just used as a pushing tool (using the primary fire for a second or two and then releasing does a ‘force push’ that knocks everything back and is great for spacing) or I put 1 point into empowered Psionics and keep that bad boy held until it looks like my team’s getting overwhelmed, then I pop it to give everyone a chance to breath, wipe out what’s in front of us, then drop it to continue forward.
Smite is a rather fun power fantasy, but one has to realize when their doing more harm than good. Holding the whole wave as it reaches you and letting your party advance into it without worry? Good stuff. CONTINUING to hold the wave as your team is now multiple meters in front of you and you at best are holding like 3 pox’s next to you you could easily melee? Not very helpful at all.
It’s about finding the balance with that ability, and as stated by most, the good teams with a none garbo director might never see the smite be used. But sometimes the director is buts or the team’s getting sandwiched, in which case then you break out the smite, get everyone out of the corner, and get commended instead of lambasted.
BUT
Also to the point of the actual topic at hand, yeah, the one rusher is usually annoying. I know for me I just wish one could ‘scout for ammo’ in the split parts of the map without spawning like 14 specials. The amount of time’s I’ve split off just to try and get some ammo or stims or find a med/ammo pack in a part of the map my team isn’t going down, only to then spawn said aforementioned 3 dogs, 2 trappers and a mutant like please, there isn’t even a horde right now why am I getting punished for wanting resources pleasssssse.
If you’re finding ‘the entire team’ is ‘running ahead of you’ though…then there’s probably something YOU are doing wrong. (unless it’s 3 zealots, then you’re just SOL and you’re forever playing the catch up game/have to learn to play by yourself xD).
Smykers need to recognize that their ability just does crap damage in terms of actually killing stuff and clearing mobs in a timely fashion.
If smykers used smite to stagger enemies after a brief charge, and then swapped to their own proper weapons to help kill stuff half as much as they spend complaining on the forms I think we’d all be a lot happier.
