I know that, for many of you, damage is king and in the forefront of what you consider to be priority when discussing balance. However, there is a growing problem with how absurdly strong Shield Ogryn with Loyal Protector has become. This class is about to be on the receiving end of many indirect buffs in this next patch and Shieldgryn was already, arguably, the easiest class to win the game with on Havoc 40.
Less Crushers = Shield Ogryn buff. One of the only things slowing this big guy down was walls of armor and the threat of taking an overhead. Any other melee unit simply gets pushed to the ground and instantly invalidated.
Uncanny nerf = Shield Ogryn buff. His massive push radius and applying brittleness in a cone to groups of armored enemies will become more valuable than ever.
Flame staff buff = Shield Ogryn buff. Way too many players are completely dependent on the flame staff to succeed in havoc. Shield Ogryn puts a set of training wheels on your crutch so you can be completely oblivious and still be safe in his mighty, taunting arms.
There once was a time where Shieldgryn required skill and finesse. It costed a tax node to get bracing toughness regen. The taunt only had the initial pulse and provided no toughness regen. You had to be very certain when diving gunners as there was no panic button other than a micro stun. You had to center yourself in groups of enemies to get maximum taunt value rather than just popping it and turning your brain off while it pulses and grabs the attention of every melee enemy in a 100m radius.
I love Shield Ogryn, I’ve been playing it since before Auric Maelstroms existed. Lately, I’ve seen more and more Shield Ogryns in the party finder and it’s only a matter of time before it becomes considered as the same tier of broken as flame staff. Fatshark, please slow down the big man. Bring honor back to the only real tank class in the game!
I think it’s too strong and should be nerfed. Not sure where the gatekeeping comment comes from. Noticing an uptick in shieldgryn players due to it being too strong isn’t gatekeeping.
Anything that is remotely popular or functional should/must be nerfed. In fact, they should remove classes altogether and only allow Heavy Sword to be equipped on everyone, no secondary weapons or curios. Remove all blessings as well as those make the weapons “interesting and fun” and we don’t vibe with fun on Sweden.
The Vet bots have been doing this since the beginning. Were we staring enlightenment in the face all this time and ignoring it? Was Amitabha with us all along? Has the way to the Pure Land of Ethical Darktide already been laid out?
90% of people who play shield ogryn just use a macro to block cancel into H1 endlessly and rest 10% just endlessly loop Heavy 1 → Heavy 2 in an endless loop. There is no skill or finesse involved with this.
Also it’s nowhere near as bad as flame staff, since that thing deletes everything from the screen faster before shield ogryn even gets to the horde. And only reason why bleed is so paramount on the shield is because its base damage is so abysmally low that you need the bleed + skullcrusher, even then like half of your damage comes from bleed.
Over all slab shield is good but it is nowhere flame staff.
Arguably it needs changes/minor buffs to the light attacks because there’s no reason to ever use them. Currently the only attack worth a damn is Heavy 1 and ONLY Heavy 1, and it’s been like this for 4 YEARS since LAUNCH, every other attack might as well not exist because they are genuinely that bad. The dev team could legit remove every other attack from the shield besides Heavy 1 and quite literally NOTHING would change to the weapon.
Of all the lower difficulties teammates can force on you with their loadouts taunt ogryn is the most wholesome, they’re there to pump everyone’s numbers not hog the feed. True communism. I find the shield really dull compared to arbites’ versions so I don’t use it much. And buffed bullrush is my preferred melee build after like 1800 og levels. I think their kit is in a pretty good spot for a vanilla character, I like all their options.
Of all the classes, weapons, talents, builds, etc available in this game…I never thought I’d see a seemingly serious “nerf shieldgryn” thread.
Also, I am compelled to state something in response to this statement
Havoc & H40 should have no relevance on balance decisions for the game as a whole. This is it’s own unique meta, intended to be different from the rest of the game, and attempting to balance around it will have very strange impacts elsewhere.
If you completely focus on the attack pattern you can certainly make that argument. The finesse I’m referring to with Ogryn is the ability to calculate the opportunity to dive forward into 500 gunners without taking any significant damage. That window has been so greatly increased by Ogryn buffs that it’s hard to remember what it was like, but when Havoc 1.0 first came out you had to be very careful as a single gunner unchecked could end you. Shieldgryn isn’t about attack patterns, it’s about awareness of where your team is and positioning.
I’m not exactly sure what “bait” means here but does that imply I’m saying things I don’t actually believe? Because I mean everything I said in this post.
