Tips And Strategies For Playing An Ogryn In Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

A massive stomping force of meat and metal, the Ogryn in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a large abhuman lad that lends quite the helping hand to whatever group of Rejects it’s assigned to. Vat grown to be big, simple, and easy to order around, Ogryns are a powerhouse in the underhive.

In Darktide they act as the tank of the party. Often wielding large weapons like twin-linked heavy stubbers, thick riot shields, and of course a big club for bonking. They’re a great pick for first time players and they’ve got some fun versatility once you dig into them. To help you get started, here’s a handy class guide for the Ogryns in Darktide.

The Ogryn Class

From the outside the Ogryn may seem like a one trick pony, but there’s a few things you can do once you get them a few levels. In general there’s three main ways to build an Ogryn outside of endgame tinkering, and that’s either a melee focused big boy, a mix of shielding and support, or a heavy weapons specialist that barrages everything.

Overall they’re not a fast moving class, so you’re going to be spending a lot of time around your teammates. Whether that’s clearing a path through hordes, tanking the attention of a big threat like a Plague Ogryn or Chaos Spawn, or deluging squads of specialists before they have time to do any damage. If you like heavy hitting and helping your team, this is a good class pick for you.

Ogryn Weaponry

In terms of weaponry, Ogryns don’t have the largest collection, but what they do go into a brawl with is simple to use and easy to understand. Just like the big boys themselves. It’s all oversized and slow, which suits them fine as they don’t get around too quickly after all.

For melee weapons, the big lads get to lug around a relatively large collection of lumps of metal. These of course can be customized with little trinkets and upgraded to further enhance their smashing potential. Here’s what they have;

• Bully Club.
• Power Maul.
• Pick Axe.
• Latrine Shovel.
• Cleaver.
• Slab Shield.

Whilst for ranged options the Ogryn don’t get many. There’s only five and they’re focused on dealing with crowds and whittling away at big targets. Ogryn’s aren’t good at targeted fire, so you’re looking at a lot of burst fire, timing grenade blasts, or suppressing areas with lots of bullets.

Here’s what they have to shoot with.

• Kickback.
• Ripper Gun.
• Heavy Subber.
• Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber.
• Grenadier Gauntlet.

The Ogryn Class Talents

When Darktide first launched, the Ogryn didn’t have a lot of toys in its box. But after a substantial rework there’s a lot of things you can do with these big lumbering lads now.

Their Talents have been broken down into a much more cohesive setup in an unlockable tree that you can work through with points earned through levelling. These are then split into further sub sections that allow further customization of your Ogryn.

These are the Active Ability, a Blitz, Aura, and a Keystone. The types of Blitz’s and passives you have can be tweaked through the Talents tree. As an example, one build would have a Blitz that tosses rocks, whilst another chucks a massive grenade. It allows for a bit of variety whilst also keeping you within a general outline for a useful Ogryn.

Ogryn Abilities

The Ogryns main abilities are focused on getting into a fight, drawing aggro, or point black barrages. To help you do all that as often as possible, they come with some fun modifiers once you get enough Talent Points sunk into them. Here’s each ability and its subsequent modifiers.

Bull Rush and Indomitable

An ability baked into the Ogryn by default, the Bull Rush is a stampeding charge into the fray that flattens all in its path. It’s a handy way to get into or out of trouble, or blast your way toward a downed teammate to revive them.

Over time this can be augmented into Indomitable, which increases the distance of the charge by 100 percent whilst also adding 25 percent attack and movement speed for five seconds. It has a base cooldown of 30 seconds, the shortest cooldown of all the abilities and it can be further modified with Talent Points.

Loyal Protector

If you decide to specialise into Loyal Protector, you’ll swap out your charge for a taunt. This draws all aggro right at you within a set distance whilst buffing the Ogryn with damage boosts.

So you get a little bit tanky for being very shouty. It’s a good pick for those kitting their large lad out with a shield, Power Maul, or a large Pickaxe, as those are pretty solid at taking the hits whilst chewing through hordes and armor. Loyal Protector, just like the others, comes with a few modifiers as well.

The cooldown on the Taunt Ability is 45 seconds.

Point-Blank Barrage

This is a great ability pick if you’re lumbering around a big gun like the twin-linked stubber as it really lets you open some rounds from what’s already a fairly slow firing weapon. When this activates your Ogryn will immediately swap to your ranged weapon.

Once that happens a buff activates that increases fire rate by 25 percent, reload speed by 65 percent, a 50 percent reduction in Braced Movement speed, and a 15 percent increase to Close Range damage. All of that goes for roughly 10 seconds before it then enters an 80 second cooldown phase.

Ogryn Blitz

As part of the Rework each class got a new feature known as a Blitz, in the case of the Ogryn this is essentially what flavour of throwable you want to invest in. Previously as many know well, the Ogryn didn’t really have a Grenade, just a big box of bombs they were too dumb to activate and just threw comically.

You can still do that for the first few levels as the Blitz is called Big Box Of Hurt, but with a few extra spicy alternatives. Here’s each Blitz that you can unlock once you get some Talent Points spent.

Just like the abilities, choosing one Blitz will lock you out of the others.

Big Friendly Rock

Instead of a Grenade, Big Friendly Rock replaces your throwable box with a big rock or collection of junk the Ogryn has scrounged up. You get four rocks at any given time, and you pick up a random new one every 45 seconds. However, they have a reduced effectiveness against carapace or armored enemies.

Big Friendly Rock can also be modified with That One Didn’t Count, which instantly replenishes a Rock Charge if you hit no enemies or a weak spot.

The rocks are essentially infinite grenades.

Frag Bomb

What’s described as an Ogryn-sized grenade, the Frag Bomb is a massive grenade that a Space Marine would happily carry around and comes with a huge blast radius.

It hits everything within a 16 metre radius, with increased damage dealt right at the centre. It’s great for annihilating hordes, or dumping and ungodly amount of damage on big target with a large bang. Worth noting though, you only get one of these grenades per box reload. So use it wisely.

Bombs Away!

This Blitz is a straight augment improvement of Big Box of Hurt, and essentially ramps up the damage and makes your chuckable box a lot more deadly.

When activated, your Ogryn throws his Grenade Box, but this time it deals a high amount of damage to single targets and drops six grenades upon contact. So you’ve got a big hitting cluster bomb that’s great for shredding mobs. With the modifier Bigger Box of Hurt added to it you’ll drop an extra three grenades.

Ogryn Auras

The Aura’s are a new system introduced in Darktide after the rework that are essentially big helpful buffs to your Ogryn and their team. There’s three of them and like the abilities and Blitz’s, selecting one locks the others and also helps funnel you toward a particular playstyle.

The three Aura’s you can unlock are the following;

• Bonebreake’s Aura: Gain a 10 percent melee attack damage boost for yourself and allies whilst achieving Coherence.
• Stay Close!: Gain 15 percent Toughness replenishment buff for yourself and allies whilst in Coherency.
• Coward Culling: Gain a 20 percent damage and 25 percent Suppression boost for you and your allies against enemies that are Suppressed.

There are also 49 unlockable passives split across three tiers of unlocks. These are mostly small to larger improvements to your character that supplement each of the three main builds and increase in effectiveness the further down the tree you go.

Ogryn Keystones

Last but not least we have the Keystones. These are essentially late game Passive Talents that can substantially powerboost your Ogryn, but they take a lot of points to get to as they’re right down at the bottom of the tree.

There’s three in total, and each one reflects the base stats above whilst also coming with a modifier that helps enhance your specialization. So for example, one is focused on melee, the other ranged, and one is about defence. Here’s each one and their subsequent modifier.

Heavy Hitter

Heavy Hitter is a Keystone for those going all in on the melee build. It keeps you horizontal with damage reduction whilst also piling on the buffs for damage for being right in the thick of the fight.

When it activates you’ll gain a three percent melee damage buff for seven seconds for each melee attack that lands a hit. This stacks up to eight times and stacks twice if you land a Heavy Attack. So it’s a fast little damage buff that you can build up fairly quickly.

Feel No Pain

Feel No Pain is for those that went all in on the taunts and drawing aggro from crowds. When it activates you’ll gain 10 stacks of Feel No Pain, each stack provides two and a half percent Toughness Replenishment and Damage Reduction.

You’ll lose a stack every time you take damage, but every three seconds a stack will auto restore. So it’s a rolling damage reducer that makes you a little hardier in between fights.

Burst Limiter Override

The top end unlock for those going down the route of barraging targets with lots of bullets, Burst Limiter Override pops off Lucky Bullet at a chance of 15 percent. This powerful little perk means that there’s a chance you won’t consume ammunition whilst shooting.

It also applies a 2 percent Ranged Damage boost on ranged kills in a stack up to a maximum of ten. This lasts a max of ten seconds before resetting again. So it’s a nice little boost for your guns. It can also be modified further with the following.

Ogryn Builds

Originally there were only three specific builds for an Ogryn, Skull Breaker, Bullgrun and Gun Lugger. They’re still there in the Talent Tree to an extent, but you can mix and match across all three original skill trees this time instead of locking yourself into one set build of either melee, support, or suppression.

Here’s a brief rundown of a few community inspired ideas for building an Ogryn.

Miner With A Meat Grinder

This is a kind of silly yet very fun build that focuses on two things, chunking through armour and crowd control. It’s easy to set up as all you need is a Pickaxe and a Twin-linked Stubber. Both of which you can get fairly early on if you’re starting from scratch. Then pour points into your ammo reserve, aim for trinkets that increase your ranged and melee damage. Finally, enhance your weapons with mods that bump your damage for attacking carapaced or armoured enemies.

The pick axe is a solid choice for cracking through armoured foes, and the Heavy Attack swing can absolutely hack through health bars of tough monsters and bosses once you get the rhythm down. Then there’s the Stubbers, these can easily two-tap or oneshot most Elites without modifications, but with some points in the Gun Lugger talent tree you can buff its potential exponentially.

The Brick Wall

A common weapon you’ll see a few Ogryns carrying, especially amongst the ranks of Chaos, is a shield. These are the size of a security door and can tank an ungodly amount of damage for you. Funelling points into Toughness will make you extra tanky, and picking up some trinkets that boost your health bar and damage reduction are also recommended.

The shield is also great for bottle-necking doorways, whilst their melee weapon handles crowd control with just a few swings.If you can get two or more Ogryns with shields stacked up, you’ll basically form a big phalanx that nothing can get through.

The shield also has a bash that is perfect for bonking back big groups that are overwhelming the fireteam.

The Bomb Farmer

If there’s one type of agriculture that Ogryns love, it’s farming big booms. With this build you can run around like a speedy ranch hand, popping off big bangs and slicing heads.

All you need is a shovel, and a Grenade Gauntlet. Then stick a bunch of Talent Points into Toughness passives and aim for Lucky Bullet for that extra free round. So when you start using ranged attacks you’ll be a tanky bomb spewing nightmare for those pesky Chaos corrupted Guardsmen to have to try and deal with.