Ogryn Bugger | Frag Bomb | Indomitable | Burst Limiter Override | Auric Ready
Build for Darktide

Ogryn Bugger

What happens when you cross a Bullgryn with a Gunlugger? Why do you get the Ogryn Bugger of course! Gunlugger Ogryns can dish out tremendous damage. However, I was always disappointed in how ineffective they become once the ammo runs dry, something that will inevitably happen, especially if you do not have a veteran with Survivalist Aura on your team (and even when you do after the Nerfs). This build seeks to combine the strongest elements of both to create a powerful Hybrid. 

Playstyle

The Gorgonum Mk IV Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber is best utilised to shred mixed hordes. It has enough stagger to knock back Maulers and most mid-tier enemies, whilst the bullets penetrate several targets to make sure you are always hitting the intended targets. By taking the 5% Rending node on the left side of the tree and Dominate, A significant portion of its impressive damage through Flak armour. Whilst I would not recommend using it to deal with Crushers due to how ammo inefficient this method is, if you can kill a lesser elite or special immediately preceding it, it is possible to use this weapon to take out even crushers.

Build Path

We pick up most of the nodes at the top of the tree. Furious is not the greatest node, but allows access to The Best Defence, A node absolutely vital for keeping us alive during horde situations. Heavyweight is just a flat damage buff against reapers, bulwarks and crushers. We are a big boy, so being able to survive an overhead Crusher is great, as they are much harder to dodge than with other classes. It also helps us to mash Crushers much quicker. Smash em! serves a similar function to The Best Defence, except that it allows us to better deal with Crushers and Monstrosities reliably.

Soften them up is one of the best nodes in the Ogryn tree, and it is a crying shame that taking Big Friendly Rock locks us out of this option, otherwise, I would take the rock far more frequently. The extra damage this node provides benefits us as well as our allies, and helps to ramp damage up on repeatedly hitting the same target. I maintain that Indomitable is the best ability for Ogryn as it allows us to reposition when we get overwhelmed. Point-Blank Barrage is best utilised with Light 'em Up, which I think benefits more from a faster rate of fire. The Gorgonum Mk IV Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber does have a decent rate of fire, but is still the slowest firing of the heavy stubbers. As such, I think this build benefits more from the Bullgryn line. 

Indomitable, Stomping Boots & Pulverise - Loyal Protector is the go-to for tanky Ogryn's but I prefer running the bull rush ability. Yes, a 25% damage debuff is nice, but the extra mobility and hard crowd control Indomitable brings to the table allows you to provide far more support for your team. The best defence is a good offence as they say, and the fact it has a much shorter cooldown is a nice bonus. Indomitable lets you reposition if you are in a bad spot, CC priority targets such as a line of crushers or that Monstrosity voring your friend, and lets you get to downed teammates quickly. Pulverise also synergises amazingly with Delight in Destruction. 

Taking the middle talent also lets us move over to the right side and pick up Ammo Stash. More ammo means it takes longer to run out (obviously), but also means we gain more ammunition from pickups as it is based on total ammo pool. Both of these factors make it less likely we will run out of ammo in a run. Crunch! is necessary to hit the one-shot threshold of Crushers. Bonebreaker's Aura provides a significant damage increase and I consider it more useful than Stay Close! as most players at higher levels will not be relying on coherency regeneration. Batter and Delight in Destruction provide a nice damage boost and damage reduction, and synergise with each other amazingly. 

Down the right tree, we pick up Unstoppable Momentum. This is not massively useful, but these two skills are more useful than the left two nodes. Massacre increases our already hefty critical chance of going down this tree. Mobile Emplacement helps us better deal with ranged firefights. Burst Limiter Override helps to make our ammo go further and with More Burst Limiter Ovverides!, this is increased to to 12%. Good shootin' means that this is converted to extra critical chance, increasing our overall DPS. The Ogryn crit chance is naturally lower than other classes at only 3%. With this, it has increased it to 15% overall, and with Massacre, this has the potential to increase further to 23%.  Having on average every 4th shot crit deals tremendous damage and allows us to absolutely carve through hordes. 

Weapons

The "Brunt Special" Mk I Bully Club is an incredibly versatile weapon, able to deal good damage to armoured enemies and clear out hordes effectively. Some people like to weave in light attacks, but I personally like to just keep using Heavy attacks to replenish toughness and deal with threats. The heavy attacks are on the faster side of things, and help you to stack up bleed stacks with Batter to add even more damage, and damage reduction. Skullcrusher lets us deal more damage, as chances are we will be staggering most enemies. The second blessing you go for is personal preference. I like Haymaker as it can occasionally one-shot Ragers and maulers, although going for a talent that increases even more toughness is certainly viable. Our ranged weapon struggles most with Crushers and Monstrosities, so I like to pick up damage buffs to these targets. 

The Gorgonum Mk IV Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber deals the highest damage out of all the stubbers with the best accuracy, in exchange for a lower fire rate and longer pull-out time. This will take a bit of time to get used to this. It is not necessary to brace all the time and targets can be hit reliably from medium range whilst hip firing. Shots can penetrate multiple targets in a horde, so squishier horde enemies can be cut down whilst bullets penetrate through to the elite and specialist enemies you are trying to hit. This makes it king at destroying mixed hordes. I take extra damage to flak and maniac as these are the most common armour types of the mid-tier elites you want to be taking out. Blaze Away increases our overall damage per second in fights, whilst Charmed Relod synergises well with the already high critical chance this build offers, decreasing how often you need to reload and improving our firing uptime. Despite the temptation to further increase our damage, I find that Overhwhelming Fire does not work great on the Gorgonum due to the high cleave of each individual shot. 

Curios

After 500+ hours in Darktide, I have a simple rule of thumb when it comes to Curios. For melee classes (Ogryn and Zealot) Take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios. For ranged classes (Veteran and Psyker), take 3x Toughness curios. Veteran benefits massively from Toughness and Ogryn massively from health, with the other two classes falling somewhere in between. There are a few niche builds that might require Stamina Curios, but this is a pretty safe rule to stick to, and means that you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds. Wound curios should only ever be used by Zealot Martyrdom builds. Even then, I consider Martyrdom builds a bit gimmicky and less effective than other Zealot builds, which is why I only ever run them for banter and memes.

For perks, I opt for raw stats. +20% Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds, and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The difference between running 3 of these perks compared to running none is night and day, and arguably the single most useful perk you can apply to your curios. +5% Toughness and +5% Health provide us with raw stats that you can never go wrong with. If you have to pick between one of the two, go for Toughness. This is because the Health Curio provides 21% Health, and the Toughness Curio provides 17% Toughness, meaning that the Toughness Perk is a better value proposition. 

Strengths

Mixed Hordes melt under your sustained fire and Hordes get battered by our melee. Provided there is a horde of things to smash, it's difficult to lose health. Ragers, maulers and crushers can be staggered by either of our weapons and the time to kill is very low even with how great our crowd control, meaning that these kinds of threats (usually the biggest run enders), are quite simple for us to deal with. If ever we get backed into a corner and surrounded, we can use our ability to charge through any density of horde to set up in a better position. Also, there is a fun factor. Blazing into a crowd as a heavy gunner is one of the most cathartic experiences you can have. 

Weaknesses

Gunluggers are ammo hogs by nature. Whilst we can deal pretty well with threats when down to our melee (that was the whole point of this build), your damage output will be massively increased if you have a friendly Veteran with survivalist aura, or a team of psykers that allow you to pick up all the ammo. Also whilst our Monstrosity damage is adequate, it is far from exemplary.