Long ago I did a post regarding on how I felt the Ogryn could be improved upon, little did I know at the time that the talent tree update was coming. I once more feel that I should make more suggestions on how to improve Ogryns.
This post is a response to what I see unfolding in the patch notes for the upcoming, much anticipated, crafting update. Some of the new blessings for weapons that’ll be added is giving said weapon rending or brittleness, meaning that Fatshark is making weapons that was good against unarmoured targets ( any non-flak or non-carapace enemies really) and having them just be good against all enemies in the game now.
I see this as a way to muddle the weapon identity and purpose, having a clear strength and a clear weakness makes it so that there are choices to be made, most which can be overcome by just having the second of the two weapons that you’ve chosen to help mitigate the weakness of the first chosen weapon. Meaning you’d have weapons that pair well together to help give you a balanced all-round loadout.
The reason I am bringing this up is because I have always seen the Ogryn as a heavy centric melee character to help make it different from the Zealot, most of the talents given to Ogryn only really affected heavy attacks, so a clear identity was given to Ogryn, slow and steady to grind out enemies, where as Zealot could leverage speed for a fast paced, kill them before they kill me line of play.
The second thing I assumed about Ogryn relates to the ranged weaponry given to him. I always felt that the lower ammo reserve was meant to be offset by having Burst Limiter Override, so that there would a difference between ranged and melee centric builds.
But from the recent proposed changes, I am no longer so sure what to think about the intent behind anything (weapons, classes, talents and so on). Should Ogryn be given talent changes so that we’ll see a greater effect on melee attacks and just not heavy attacks in general? Should the ranged weaponry receive a increase in ammo reserve so that they’ll function without the use of Burst Limiter Override?
Another thing that the coming update puts into focus is how few weapons the Ogryn actually have, and while not alone in having bad blessings, it feels bad to see cleavers, shovels and clubs not really getting any love in the blessings department or no real update at all, but changes to pickaxes was still something that made it into the update.
I’d love to see cleavers get Headtaker blessing, while shovel and clubs get Slaughterer (if you don’t feel that blunt weapons is a good “fit” for this blessings, please look at Thunder hammers and the upcoming addition to Crushers blessing pool). The new Bladed Momentum from heavy swords would be nice on cleavers aswell! Come on, what could go wrong! or perhaps what could go more wrong would be more accurate. Could it be that different weapons and blessings could have different interactions between classes? oh no!
Cleavers and clubs, perhaps shovels aswell, should be given an increase in how many enemies they can damage per attack with an increase in damage target cap. This would result in a damage increase against hordes of smaller units, while making sure that the one-shot potential of the two-handed pickaxes still remains as a valid option. I’d also like to see a rework on Cleaver MkVI and Club MkIIIb, so that they’ll get the Karsolas pickaxe/Crucis thunder hammer treatment of having a overhead heavy attack after special action activation.
Seeing the rework on talents that is coming aswell left me with a few questions aswell.
No Pushover: Your Pushes have +250% Stagger. Can only trigger once every 8s.
From the way I see it this increase in stagger on pushes only really affect Bulwarks, Crushers and to a certain extent Maulers. I don’t feel that Ogryns need more forms of keeping units crowd controlled, not to mention that it just boils down to the age old question, why should I crowd controll something that I can just outright kill? and having a internal cooldown on this is just icing on the “not needed” cake.
Big Boom: Explosion Radius: 22.5% to 27.5%.
Can you stop making talents that only really affect one weapon? would it hurt to add something more general to this talent to make it a more compelling pick? Since it is named Big Boom perhaps let the talent grant you +1 Bombs away!, let’s your Big Friendly Rock get some cleave and increases Blitz damage by 15% so that Frag Bomb doesn’t feel left out?
Bruiser: Combat Ability Cooldown: 5% to 4%.
Are the other classes also going to get a reduction in cooldown so that we’ll see lower usage of abilities on all classes? I can’t help but feel that this was done because of the Point Blank Barrage buff and you are trying to get people to use Burst Limiter Override with Maximum Firepower keystone modifier instead.
Massacre: Duration: 6s to 10s.
Ogryn have a few uses for crit, not saying that it is inherently bad. But would it hurt to increase it to 10 stacks and letting it have +2% cleave (to a maximum of 20%) on the stacks aswell. Most of the weapons Ogryn have are effective against a large number of enemies, increasing cleave will mean that we’ll see better ammo efficiency against them.
Steady Grip: Toughness: 3-5% toughness regeneration per second.
Bracing comes with a movement penalty and another animation to finish before you can start to shot, only weapon I find myself taking it with is the Achlys Stubber. Perhaps let it have +1% toughness on close range kills aswell as the regeneration over time? Limiting the amount to 1% and having it only be close range kills makes it narrow but good with more weapons.
Too Stubborn to Die: Health Threshold: 25% to 33%.
Any chance you can make it so that it is a 66% threshhold with a minimum of 40% increase in toughness replenishment to a maximum of 100% at 33% ( a sliding scale if you will) so that it’ll be less all or nothing and you’ll get some use out of it without being on your last life?
Surprise Crunch! edition
While not in the patch notes, would it be so hard to make it into a scaling bonus, much like the Thrust blessing so that it’ll be 10% damage and impact per stack, up to three stacks (for a maximum of 30% damage and impact)?
Double surprise! Burst Limiter Override is back again.
Make 12% chance of triggering lucky bullet and having it crit be baseline. More Burst Limiter Overrides! now gives +13% lucky bullet chance for 3 seconds after reloading a weapon, meaning it’ll give weapon such as kickback and rumbler a massive 25% total chance to trigger. Don’t like how it will affect kickback and perhaps the new bleed rumbler? can it afford not too in this buff patch economy?
Good Shootin’ now gives 5% toughness back on luck bullet trigger and an additional 10% toughness over 5 seconds per stack, up to three stacks (for a total of 30% toughness over 5 seconds). Trying to close the gap on survivability from Burst Limiter Override and Feel No Pain.
And Feel No Pain aswell
Having Strongest! keystone modifier give you two stacks of Feel No Pain back. In its current form, when there is a hectic engagement you’ll start with full stacks but gradually lose them the longer you fight and the less survivability you’ll have as a result. Weighing your options between pushing enemies or just attacking them instead pretty much always favours just attacking, It’ll damage and kill enemies, gaining you toughness back and having interactions with the heavy attack talents in the Ogryns talent tree while not costing you staming as pushing do.
I might have forgotten something, but I’ll call it here and perhaps add it in later on. Thanks for reading.