I played Ironbreaker because I liked to be able to play a support heavy build, I loved to be able to give up flashy damage for major tankieness via passives and still have a wide selection of viable weapons. I felt the class got better the farther I pushed it, the more time I spent playing ironbreaker the better it got.
Ogryn, on the other hand, is okay on the easy difficulties but soon starts to fall off when compared to other classes in Darktide. So, here are 3 things the Skullbreaker could use improved the most. Starting from the worst/what needs changed the most.
Huge hitbox (takes far too much ranged damage at higher difficulties. You are pretty much forced to go shield if pugging).
Worst, most useless Aura in the game. (Does not even make sense for a tank).
Terrible meme grenade. (I don’t see this as a big deal, even if it was a good grenade, you’re only going to use a few each match. That’s also why spending a feat point to buff it is pointless, and a wasted feat slot, imo).
Maybe a support focused grenade option would be nice but that’s low priority.
Soultions for the glaring issues.
A single solution for the first two problems could be to change the aura to something that reduces ranged damage taken. Even if it was just reduced toughness damage taken from ranged, it would help. I would not mind having to spend a feat point for reduced ranged damage, but I could see that becoming a must-have perk if it did exist.
I understand the game still in beta and that there will be more weapon options and stuff in the feature and regardless of what happens I’m glad I picked up a copy!
I agree, I think it would be dope if skullbreaker had Ironbreaker’s passive as an aura, where you and allies in aura ignore one attack every X seconds. Would give him tankiness and insane team value
I’m personally pretty disappointed at people not realizing how great the Ogryn’s grenade is in terms of game design. All your melee and even ranged weapons perform crowd control that makes a normal grenade pale in comparison. The only thing you don’t get in your weaponry is a way to pick off specials - this is completely fine, as your team specializes in it instead of you - but you get a single shot of equipment that can nuke any special with a headshot, even at long range. I love it to bits.
The problem is you only get ONE of them. It doesn’t scale up well when the frequency of elites and specials increases at higher difficulties.
Ogyrn doesn’t really scale up well for higher difficulties in general.
His bulk becomes meaningless because ranged enemies are numerous and will instantly deplete it on sight. He only has a fraction of the cover options as the other three classes as well. Meaning most encounters in open areas are extremely dangerous.
His ability to deal with mixed hordes (of which there are numerous of at higher difficulties) is very poor. All it takes is one Mauler to gimp his mass stagger/cleave. Let alone three Crushers and a Bulwark surrounded by 30 poxwalkers.
In VT2, bulky classes like Ironbreaker and Unchained were not fundementally less capable of evading attacks like the Ogyrn is. Their bulk was a contingency that allowed them to make riskier plays with less precision (less backpedaling against hordes/elites, etc.).
Ogyrn needs much stronger defensive potential to offset his massive weakness in performing a fundemental aspect of the game (don’t get hit), IMO. Things like:
More passive damage resistance
Faster sprint speeds (to allow him to relocate/close the gap easier).
Some way of recovering health so that he can really leverage his health pool (it’s kind of weird that Zealot gets the delayed damage talent and not Ogyrn).
Not necessarily ALL of the above, but some combination, or other tweaks in general.
If it was something I could use more often, I could see it being more useful. The value of killing 3-4 elites is not much at the higher difficulties. Maybe if it had a 50% chance to refill grenade ammo if you last hit with it or something.
Now that Skullbreaker has 2 grenades, I think grenades are in a good spot. I’d update the first post, but there must be a time limit on when you can edit posts.