A bit offtopic and maybe useless but I just wanted to comment about something regarding oggies & shovels:
A few weeks ago after realizing just how crazy the Ripper V can get with a pure ranged crit & burn build, I had to find some way to get a melee that was good for hordes, specials and especially crushers, but didn’t rely on heavies since I didn’t have talents for them. And I was really surprised by how great the XIX (I think) shovel was with Confident Strike & I think Skullcrusher or BM, don’t remember which. Point is, I’d basically disregarded Confident Strike since the talent overhaul but it’s actually fantastic, and easily saves those 2-3 talent points from the top left talents. I also love that shovel’s super simple moveset: light spam for hordes & clearing, heavies for specials, and special for stronger elites and muties.
Cleaver IV is similar ofc but has a very different moveset and while it’s faster, it does struggle against crushers more.
Cleavers got forgotten about. The light attacks of the Mk6 are still abysmal in terms of cleave damage fall off (3 targets total, 2nd target takes almost 1/3rd the damage of the 1st). A club does more damage with the same hitmass, and hits another target too. The almost 30 hitmass before slaughterer vanguard heavies don’t have 8 targets damaged like a power sword, just 5 enemies. They didn’t even buff the bull butcher light damage, despite cutting slaughterer down from 75% bonus and massively buffing the hitmass and health of medium tier horde entities like bruisers.
The brutal momentum redesign just makes the shovels turbo knives unless you really value that boost in mobility (as ogryn who can hold corners against every entity in the game). Clubs are still good specifically because they’re like 2 weapon types that can actually utilize skullcrusher. I know a lot of people rightly criticize it for being badly designed but the clubs can inflict staggers easier than every weapon in the game, and quickly send most enemies to the floor as well, so they’re actually able to damage targets better under most conditions with lights. Especially with bleed dash and thunderous, as long as brittle bleeds are around we should incorporate them.
That’s another huge shot against the knife, despite not being better at horde clearing than the rest anymore it doesn’t get brittleness. Ogryn should probably identity more into melee and having less impact on what melee he chooses. The ogryn knife already can’t destroy bosses and elites, so 40% brittleness would just be a pity buff to give it a reason to exist. Especially with the uptime I get on the dash most days thanks to bruiser, like I feel slowed down running a knife and not able to use ult freely when screens of elites are up.
Unless they want to make it the ogryn horde weapon of choice again, its in such a bad spot.
At least the Krork 4 is not in a “bad spot,” I can’t speak for the other cleavers because I haven’t used them in awhile. The cleavers are what melee weapons should be. Absolutely hate their recent design trend of making every melee weapon good for every situation.
But what is it supposed to excel at? The shield and shovel dumpster its entity clear. It barely sits ahead of a club, thanks to slaughterer blessing. It has almost no damage against elites. The punch can’t reliably send elites into stagger state 2 and has no effect on bosses, along with a tiny hitmass of 3.0 and more whiff punish frames.
That’s why I advocate for them not suffering such a low target limit and cleave damages anymore. They should have adjusted their cleave targets upwards if they were going to literally double the hit targets in a shovel swing, along with making brutal momentum hit 4 enemies for first target damage on procc. Make it ‘the ogryn horde weapon’ because unless you really like that tiny sprint speed advantage in-game they do nothing currently. While having a ton of weaknesses and removing most of your ogryn strengths too.
Personally I agree with this buff idea much more than the previous “just slap yet another way to ignore armour types on it”.
As a side note it’s hilarious to me that brittle is good on a weapon as armour agnostic as club just because of the funny bleed heavies/charge. I’m not exactly advocating for more bleed nerfs but it’s kinda annoying how much of Ogryn melee meta revolves around bleed application.
Well club is still 4 targets max, or 3 targets you can bleed while also doing good damage. The problem has always boiled down to the poor targets cleaved, but for some reason in ye grande adjustment to the game only clubs and shovels got target increases, and shovels got 3 times the amount of extra targets as the club. Club horde lights should really hit 5 enemies so they have reason to be used outside Mk3b and this single brittleness case. I think the power maul hits 5 but who cares it does no damage and is slow.
Cleavers, the weapons with ‘cleave’ in their name, hit less targets than a shovel. They clearly coped with the high cleave damage of the ‘vanguard’ moves, but they gave the shovel brutal momentum so its cleave damage falloff that is supposed to be poor is totally irrelevant in the game. And it can dumpster elites thanks to the fold.
I wouldn’t even do much, I’d just add 2 targets to the vanguard profile and 3 to the assassin ones the knifes have. If the move was a stab the targets take poor fall off damage, if the move was a sweep add like a 75 and 50 damage entity hit before their current fall off points. The cleaver should be sort of like an always on power sword for killing horde, because it has so many weakpoints vs elites as the character who can just stack and invalidate them day long. And no boss bullying either.
