Good comments - I was worried about the duplicity of void strike and BB.
I’m thinking I might go an alternative route and use BB, Trauma staff with rending shockwave, venting shriek, and warp siphon. BB is there to snipe elusive specials or elites at range to start soul blazing - warp siphon and venting shriek with BB makes a nice loop of mass AoE soulblaze. I’ll think on this one a bit.
I did want to showcase making BB good. I feel like BB gets a bad rap because people expect to use it like Assail or Smite with a lot of uptime when its use is more situational IMHO. I don’t really want to lean people into using smite because it also irritates other players so frequently.
I think Martyrdom is trash unless you’re actually going to go all in on melee Zealot and be mostly selfish. Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude would be better served with Piety (either would work though I still think right Piety is superior). An example build would be this one.
As for stealth Veteran, which I didn’t look at initially, here’s a build that I made. It’s a lot of fun to play and really effective.
You took field improv over regenerating grenades? Not only is that a much, much worse pick, but also selfish as you’re now competing with your team for 'nades. You even took expanded radius for frags.
Add “Skullcrusher” blessing to the Shield(it increases the damage to the horde a whole lot), you can take out Brutal Momentum if you are going for more Light-attack build as the Shield’s light attacks don’t really benefit from it
I am pretty sad that you didn’t include The Rock
(I am just the hater of the Box, so take my opinion with a grain of salt)
Taking the Unstoppable(the modifier on the right) is wierd, it’s would be better spent on the Toughness nodes.
I personally wouldn’t make this build, but I understand that it’s not pretending to be the META build, just the one that outlines uniques of the Archetype, so I don’t have much of the problem with that.
And the only thing that’s really bugging me are the Blessings on the Shield, mainly that the Blessings don’t have synergy, one is Light Focused, another Heavy focused, but just taking the Skullcrusher would make things feel much better
Box > Rock.
You can mass cc/stagger things remotely and for a good amount of time, cover rez, give a large swath a time-out etc. Aim at ceiling if someone is stuck (pounded) on an upper level.
The best thing about box is it lets you take both Slam and Soften Them Up (debuff for the whole team like Skullcrusher).
@Mezmorki You must take Attention Seeker if you take shield, this is non-negotiable just like Bruiser for CDR.
Being able to block for a second or two and bring all the little shooters running to you for hugs is second to none, you can skip it if non-shield. It negates a lot of little shooter spam and uses your aggro magnet fat assedness to your advantage.
I personally prefer all toughness down the mid to Feel No Pain, but Heavy Hitter is fine, I’d go all HP curios on Heavy Hitter, and all TUF on FnP.
I do like box personally because it’s fairly flexible and useful across a range of situations. It’s not the big one time use like frag bomb. You can throw it sort of like a rock but it also has AoE explosion, etc.
I’d remove the red things and add green things. Some justification:
The rock or the frag bomb are almost always better choices than the box. The box doesn’t feature infinite anti-special economy as the rock, nor can it easily defuse heated situations like the frag bomb, at least to a degree that truly makes you/your teammates safe. Taking the box just to reach Soften Them Up is not worth it - I’d say it’d be more justifiable if you chose to go for both skills it unlocks, i.e., Slam and StU,
(I think StU in general is only realistic in exploitation against bosses and maybe in some obscure breakpoints - everything else that could benefit from that 15% damage increase doesn’t matter, if you have people with fine-tuned builds in your lobby; and even if you don’t, I wouldn’t treat it as anything more but “15% damage increase against anything that’s already been hit by your melee attacks”, and the melee portion is relevant, because what the skill doesn’t tell you is that it only applies on melee hits - not “all” hits)
Trample upgrade for Indomitable is hit or miss, and in my case it’s a miss. You need to hit a lot of enemies to get good value out of it, and with how finely weapons can be tuned on the base of properties and/or blessings alone, this upgrade is largely redundant, at least theoretically, but coming up with all the potential breakpoints it can grant, provided you can hit enough relevant enemies to stack the buff first, and use it against such enemies should they be present in the group you are charging into, is already barging into the “if all the stars align it has value” territory. I’d move that point to Payback Time, right below Attention Seeker,
I’d also recommend moving points away from Bruiser and Get Stuck In in favour of the small TDR node and a small Toughness node, but that TDR node is being moved down the path of BLO keystone next patch, so it likely will be out of reach of most Skullbreaker builds. The reason for that would be Indomitable gets relatively little value from Bruiser, and will continue to do so since Bruiser is also having its value nerfed from 5% points to 4% points. Get Stuck In is nice a boost in general, but I wouldn’t take it without Bruiser.
More general points:
Optional weapons listed in the description mention Brutal Momentum for Bully clubs - Bully clubs don’t have that blessing (unless you had meant to apply that text to the Shovel). Skullcrusher is a good blessing for it, though - the weapon attacks fast enough and delivers enough impact on blows to effectively chain-stagger things and make good use out of SC. Re: Shovel - Thrust is a decently good blessing for it, and so is Skullcrusher, much like is the case with Bully club Mk3b,
Very odd to see BB3 cleaver recommended but not the Mk4 one. Mk4 Cleaver is basically an upgrade over BB3 - it has lunging light for improving mobility while sliding, has much better synergy with HH keystone due to very flexible attack combinations (BB3 basically never wants to use heavy attacks and they are much slower than Mk4’s, despite using identical animations), not to mention generally better ADMs with its lights 1/2 against armoured enemies, and particularly against weakspots. Slaughterer + Confident Strike is OK for blessings, but Thrust is a choice that you can consider, especially since you have both “Toughness replenishment on heavy attacks” skills up on top, i.e., The Best Defence and Smash’Em,
Flechette is a garbage recommendation for the Ripper gun if you don’t have any crit chance (Cavalcade, BLO and/or Crit chance perk, and/or Massacre skill) to back it up. Fire Frenzy is a good alternative to Blaze Away, though, or can be comboed with it if you don’t mind losing Can Opener,
Pierce is a garbage tier blessing for any of the boomstick weapons,
Kickback can also use Infested in place of Flak, for easier handling of dogs, remotely exploded Poxbursters and generally exploding Poxwalker hordes from any distance,
++ edit
Unarmoured is also a solid perk for the shield, since it can grant you a breakpoint against Scab bruisers from the get go on weak spot hits, effectively transferring BM damage more reliably to more targets (which is very easy to do with H1 attack spam). CS is a garbage blessing for the shield - the weapon only has one sensible attack, being H1 (H2 being rarely handy if you can’t be bothered to spam-cancel H1), so it isn’t really capable of getting good value out of it, and it’s outshined by SC + BM in terms of SC greatly improving your capability of killing melee elites,
I’d replace all the Health base curios with Toughness ones - Ogryn has very good replenishment skills/blessing, and more Toughness typically means taking less chip Health damage if you can reliably replenish it with heavy attacks via TBD or Smash’Em, or other reliable means.
I may consider making more replies re: other classes, but that’s it regarding Ogryn. Challenge me over any of the above points, I think I can engage in a little discussion.
Before I get these fully polished for public consumption, I’ll get a bit more text drafted explaining the “why” and providing options.
For now I’ll leave the box as the blitz choice with the note that it’s largely up to player preference here and any option can work with a minor tweak to the talents following from it.
Trample vs. Payback … I can go either way on that. If the player doesn’t take the shield, then attention seeker isn’t as much of a pick, and Trample would be a bit useful. I dunno - charging into a big horde and getting 10 targets already beats out attention seeker, and scaling to 50% damage at max stacks is pretty fun.
Brusier is still pretty useful with the charge IMHO - and I do want players to get in the mindset of using talents to reduce ult cooldown across all these builds, since that is pretty important as a general concept. I’m going to wait to post to the guide until after the patch (and do any final updates accordingly) since things might shift a little.
Re Weapons - all super great points. It’s been a while since I messed around with different weapon marks, so if Mk4 Cleaver is the better one for this build, totally good switching to that.
Other changes to be noted from the weapons as well. All makes sense.
IF you have other feedback on other builds, happy to take that into consideration Trying to get towards a consensus build in a way
Now it’s the discussion on how to make the Bestest build while staying relatively on the line, or outright META build
I like it tho, I really like that most of the things you said I agree on.
Also, because I don’t really have much of any Ogryn mains close to me, I have always doubted if what I did was actually good, so thanks
This is what saved my life, I would have been playing Veteran by now but one day I decided that maybe trying this TRD build would be fun, and HOLY, fun it was.
That is a wierd recommendation, mainly because you later said that it will be out of date after an update. I have, also wanted to point this out, but because of the shift, thought it would be pretty pointless to have a build that will be outdated within 2 weeks.
But, if the shift wouldn’t exist, I would agree. (But I will probably not take points from Bruiser)
I had somebody in the discord that said that Inspiring Barrage is really good on the Ripper Gun(with 19 ammo). I have tried it, and while it regens all of your toughness within 2 seconds or less, it’s the gun I really don’t like… (Because post buff Kickback exists)
And I want to ask if it’s actually any good?
And that’s fine. I personally don’t need to use Indomitable that often to warrant Bruiser, but if somebody wants to use it and its upgrades more often, then that’s fine. Bruiser’s value definitely is higher the harder difficulty setting you are engaging.
It is a weird recommendation indeed now that I think about it, but it’s relevant for at least two more weeks And even then the point that would be allocated to TDR could instead be used for another small Toughness node, on the left/right row that branches from Slam/from StU.
That might have been me, actually
It is a good defensive/utility blessing, particularly on Skullbreaker (Gunlugger can reasonably replenish Toughness via PBB in heated moments). Having a Ripper gun with IB, and with 66 Ammo modifier (which is the highest value it can go before 19 magazine capacity becomes 20) is making the Ripper gun a panic button for Toughness, which can be handy when breaking gunlines, for instance.
Payback is more consistent in my experience, as I never really make long enough Indomitable charges to reasonably stack Trample. Trample is definitely a good horde fight opener enhancement, though.
With no antagonism intended (honest guv ), this thread was bound to end up like this
Will it be who shouts loudest? Or most often?
Still, this is potential gold dust. If someone could cohesively extract the thoughts that align then you might end up at something that’s utterly brilliant.
I prefer all TUF myself, but I do see ppl running all hp on right side, tried it myself as ogryn has massive base hp so going full meat-tank is OK (ONLY on Ogryn), seems very similar in the end.
And even then the point that would be allocated to TDR could instead be used for another small Toughness node, on the left/right row that branches from Slam/from StU.
), this thread was bound to end up like this 