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

Since the release of Pickaxes, I find it hard to go back to clubs. The Borovian Pick Axe is the middle of the pack, swinging faster than the Branx Pick Axe and harder than the Karsolas Pick Axe. It's rare in Darktide for the middle of the pack option to be the favoured one, but this is one of the situations where I find it true. The Borovian has access to both horde clear and single target combos. Heavy 1 - Light 2 is your horde clear combo, providing horizontal swings with disgusting levels of clear. Single target enemies are dealt with with Light 1 - Heavy 2 combos. Pretty simple to get your head around, and much easier to pull off than some of the more complicated strings. It can clear out hordes, whilst still 3-shotting Crushers at base, and 2-shotting them if enough stacks of Headtaker and Slaughterer are present. It can also deal respectable Monstrosity damage, something this build lacked when it ran Clubs. 

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 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealot) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to give a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes, owing to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina curio to make up for low Base stamina, and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a stamina curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to to ensure you have curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any curios, much less good ones. Oh and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martydom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will now heal less on you. I know some people like to take a wound curio 'just in case they go down', but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities which prevent downs as much as possible. 

For Perks, Always take Extra toughness and gunner resistance. 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 ability is multiplicative, so does have some diminishing returns. 0.80×0.80×0.80=0.512 meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument to only running two gunner resistance curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36 %) and opting for something else (potentially sniper OR Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%. 

For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build which relies heavily on your ability, then run cooldown reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds which make use of Voice of Command for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then run for extra health. Again you can tweak this to suit individual playstyle (and the mercy of the RNG-gods as Hadrons bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for. 

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. The Ogryn Bugger is also slightly on the squishier side, due to not taking Feel no Pain and missing out on several Toughness nodes other builds often grab.

Questions & Answers

Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?

Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.