The Ogryn is in a rough spot

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback
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I got my ogryn called “Daddy” to level 30 a few days back and i’ve been trying to “enjoy” him on higher difficulties for while. The following are my honest thoughts regarding the class current state, feel free to disagree boyos.

So…the ogryn…isn’t fun…when it comes to playing on higher difficulties (4/5), which is a problem since those difficulties are supposed to be the “end-game content”.

The class isn’t designed or balanced around the astounding number of ranged enemies that higher difficulties throw at you. Especially since even just a puny mob with a rifle can obliterate your toughness in just a couple of shots, which happens almost immediately during a firefight due to the ogryn’s size and hitbox. Forcing you, as the ogryn, to rely always on the same few playstyles:

  1. Use a shield and slowly woddle up to your enemies. This ain’t fun, and it’s not even reliable, since the stamina damage you take from range attacks is really bloody high, forcing you to take multiple brakes when engaging a distant enemy.

  2. Wait behind cover for your team to deal with ranged enemies. Granted, you as the ogryn can also help in this, but the ogryn’s ranged weapons are nowhere near as effective as the other classes at clearing distant shooters.

  3. Lerooy jekins into the fray and hope for the best.

The ogryn is also a confusing class in general, to the point where im not sure what kind of role he’s supposed to fit.

He’s clearly not a tank since you can’t agro anything, especially since if you do try to get enemies attention and hold them down, you usually just end up blocking your team’s line of fire and pi*s them off as a result. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times i’ve been insulted for blocking my team shots, to the point that i expect to get roasted at least a few times per match. And yes, i know, the shield “special attack” allows you soak up some enemy attention by placing youself in the middle of them, but this only lasts as long as a disabler doesn’t show up, which on higher difficulties isn’t very for very long.

The ogryn can’t even be considered the “tanky” class of the game, since the zealot is a far better choice for survivability and overall damage potential.

The ogryn also isn’t the best in melee, which he should be given that his knives are the size of fully grown man. Instead the title of best melee fighter goes to the Veteran with the power sword special attack spam, followed quickly after by the zealot.

The ogryn’s range damage potential is also pitiful, especially when you compare it to any other class.
Weapons that should be powerful and devastating, like the grande launcher and heavy stubber, feel underwhelming and like a nerf gun respectively. And in general they are all slow to reload and inaccurate.

Overall the Ogryn is only a good pick for either lower difficulties or for the quality meme potential, which granted, is a very good reason.

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You’re a CC machine. You have the largest melee range, the best cleave, the best shove, an ability that will fill in gaps between reloads/shoves/cleaving and gives you increased mobility/attack speed, ranged weapons that will stumble even those hordes of ranged enemies (grenade launcher/gauntlet are bae) while having very high health to survive bad situations. You’re the glue that keeps teams together.

And honestly I think the shield/mace are kind of a trap weapon on higher difficulties so far. Time spent shielding is time you’re not helping in either melee or ranged. Knock the ranged enemies down with grenades instead.

Can’t agree with that at all.

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The ogryn follows the tanking philosophy of multiplayer games where tanking is just piling on the CC, and the ogryn has that in spades. Almost everything that they have is some sort of AoE combined with a lot of stagger, so their tanking is less about “Hey! Hit me!” and more “Sit DOWN!”. It boils down to the same thing though, controlling the enemies.

I’ve also seen ogryn’s deal with grouped up ranged specials with their grenades. It’s a beautiful thing seeing a pocket of like 3 gunners and a bunch of scab shooters just go up in a cloud of explosives. Have also seen a sniper just get gibbed with a grenade launcher, but that all requires the ogryn to be really good at arcing grenades.

The problem that I see the ogryn struggling with (and tbf so does every other class) is when you have like a billion shooters all spread out firing from every angle. It’s worse on him though since he can’t really scramble behind cover and peek out to deal damage.

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ogryn awesome

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I’d disagree with that, as someone who has ran with a ogryn while using a flamer it’s fantastic to have him shielding and peeking just around him to flame, while the other two deal with the specials that aren’t charging into their doom. It’s situational but the heavies from the shield are nothing to sneeze at either.

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Shield feels like the only consistent strategy against the sheer amount of ranged enemies. Too often i have my toughness broken and i cant make the last 1 meter to the one guy shooting me in the face, let alone the rest of his unit randomly strewn around the room.

Never liked shield gameplay and as a result either I hide and let the better ranged careers handle the ranged enemies or I invariably take a lot of damage just advancing towards them, even using the charge.

Ogryn would really benefit from another passive.

Momentum
Loose half of your movement speed when suppressed, or half of whatever the debuff is.

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Ogryn to me is the best support character.

-He can revive while taking damage

-He can countercharge the mutant and other close range special and elite enemies.

-he has enough stamina to push attack and block a lot more than everyone else making him better at clearing hordes than most of the classes.

-his health pool usually makes him not the first one downed.

Ogryn just needs his guns changed. Most ogryn guns need more ammo.

-kickback shotgun should be buffed in reload speed or damage.

-Ripper gun shouldnt be a shotgun type weapon, it should be a gun that just fires massive shells kinda like an ork weapon and it needs a slightly bigger mag or better reload.

Single shot grenade launcher should have a lot more ammo.

Grenade gauntlet is almost fine as is, probably just needs more ammo.

Heavy stubber should hit a lot harder, at least harder than the recon lasguns bc it is still less accurate than they are, and it should have a crazy amount of ammo.

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Sure it feels good for the team, but that doesn’t mean you can’t (generally) achieve the same result by playing better with smart shoves/cleaving/ability use. The shield is just the basic answer, the price you pay being that you’re not actively contributing yourself, you’re just role playing as a mimic wall.

The times I wish I had a shield over using pretty much any other melee option is very rare. (And usually boils down the aforementioned 5000000 gunners, which even a shield won’t stop)

EDIT: Worth noting that a huge difference in terms of survivability is making sure to grab the chain hit toughness regen. Just keep swinging. I use that over the incredibly mediocre heavy attack toughness regen feats. (And use the 100% regen for the times you can’t reach things to melee) Sometimes I look like an idiot swinging at the air just so I can get to the later hit combos to get the toughness regen.

I’ve also noticed most other ogryn I see seem to be allergic to dodging.

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I dunno, I’m having success with the bleed on heavy and toughness gain on heavy, using that and the shield when there’s a billion shooters in a 180° arc in front of me. The amount of times that I wish I had anything but the shield hasn’t happened yet for me.

To each their own though, as long as you can control a horde and stagger any of the specials without dying, the job is getting done.

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As someone running Ogryn on higher tier missions I think he serves a good spot for CC, placing bleeds on armored elites/bosses, and taking care of the chaff.

What I can agree with though is that in higher tier difficulty is that you HAVE to run the slab shield due to the overwhelming amount of ranged enemies present which can take away your toughness in a single burst. There is no other gameplay option melee wise besides the shield.

As for the ranged options, the heavy stubba does not feel damaging enough to give up the stagger on elites from the ripper or grenade gauntlet. The ripper and gauntlet feels in a good spot currently for close ranged stagger/chaff and elite clearing and ranged stagger/aoe effect. The single shot nade launcher and the big shotgun though I will not be picking up again.

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He needs additional melee weapons; he has the fewest of any class.

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Ogryns should be tougher and stronger. Absolute melee powerhouse but not fast unless charging. Not saying they should steal Zealots job though. Increased toughness and resistance to small arms would help. If you read up on them they can shrug off small arms like it’s nothing. Takes a lot more than a lazgun to put down an Ogryn. They need an aggro ability like a taunt or something along the lines too. If an Ogryn can grab everyone’s attention and take the beating so his team doesn’t have to then he’s done his job well. My own personal gripes with Ogryn is it looks stupid when he cant push the hound off him when he’s a massive brute who could snap it’s neck easily. The knockback from mutant throws and explosions and the like feels a bit much to Ogryn. He’s a big guy I don’t think he would fly that far.

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Psyker is the CC machine

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Yeah, I agree. I feel like our melee options are pretty lacking, though I’m pretty happy with my Rippergun II. In terms of melee we have no two handed options, no armour piercing options, and no power weapons. I’m always green with envy when my Veteran friend gets to cut a Crusher in half with his power sword while I have to wail on the thing for a minute or two to get it done.

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Shields were trap weapons in VT2 as well. People seem to have this mindset that they should be blocking damage when they’d be getting FAR better result by abusing their monstrous CC capabilities. IMO, blocking damage is just about the worst possible use of the shield in the majority of situations.

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I don’t think the game is whatsoever balanced for difficulties above 3 right now.

Like not at all.

And even if you use the shield, by the time you charge a heavy attack to stagger a crowd in front of you, all your toughness and part of your health is already gone.

That + bleed through toughness ; not a good experience.
Oh and there is 1 sniper per encounter or more now so you need to get that shield up anyway.

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A lot of the issues with snipers (and ranged in general) for the shield is how long it takes to get the shield up. In VT2 it was near instant, even if you were in the middle of some other action. Here, it’s like the Ogryn has to get out his calendar and hopefully find an opening to get it raised a couple of months from now.

I don’t mind the animation locks on most abilities, but having them get in the way of raising the shield has been a bit of an issue for me.

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With the shield, I’m mostly unhappy with how much of the screen it takes up when you don’t have it up. When you have it up, fair enough, you are protected and use the small slit to see. But when its not up and hanging by your side it still takes up a good third of your screen. Its very frustrating.

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added to the chat

https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/the-ogryn-chat/58554

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We’re getting a 2h maul on release. It’s the same one that the traitor captain bosses use sometimes. It’s just one, but yeah, we’re getting one.

That aside, Ogryn’s biggest problems in Heresy+ are that he can’t deal with spread ranged enemies in open spaces and that his hurtbox is enormous. It’s hard enough for him to find cover due to his sheer bulk, and the abysmal dodge range on most of his weapons in addition to the big hurtbox means that it’s very easy for him to get clipped by the double sniper/double trapper/double mutant/double hound spawns that show up on higher difficulties (yes, this game does the Vermintide thing where it’ll occasionally spawn two of the same special at once and keep them close together).

As for the spread enemies problem, all of his guns are low accuracy, high commitment, or both. At best, you can pepper a few clusters of riflemen behind cover with the grenadier gauntlet or bonk an elite in the head with the Rumbler. It’s not a huge contribution to the firefight, though, especially compared to what the other classes can bring. It doesn’t help that Ogryn’s grenade is a literal joke, and I don’t say that lightly. Because it’s actually an “Ogryn is dumb” joke. Which is fine, but at least make the cluster grenade talent baseline so we can use our box o’ hurt as an emergency horde clearer for easy revives. Zealot’s nades do a far better job of that right now.

Playing Ogryn in Heresy/Damnation actually reminds me a lot of playing Engineer in VT2 high difficulty/modded, but for somewhat different reasons. They both excel at clearing hordes (Ogryn in melee, Engineer at range), but they have severe weakspots that are only made more apparent in high difficulties (lack of ranged options + huge hurtbox for Ogryn, lack of crowd control or survivability for Engineer). And while the other classes may not be able to clear hordes in melee as easily as the Ogryn, they can do a good enough job while bringing plenty of other tools to the table.

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