Ogryns are massive and physically powerful abhuman subspecies of humanity. The Ogryn is one of Darktide’s four classes, the others being Veteran, Zealot, and Pskyer. Ogryns are often employed as shock troopers in the Astra Militarum for their brute strength and unwavering loyalty.
In Darktide, players may finally step into the shoes of an Ogryn, inherent their hugeness and primal power to demolish their foes and protect their allies. Our comprehensive Ogryn build and gameplay guide will show you how to get started with him in Darktide.
Ogryn Skullbreaker Summary
Ogryns are robust and highly resilient fighters, capable of taking multiple blows that would kill an ordinary guardsman several times over. Their unique arsenal suits their defensive capabilities like the Slab Shield, but despite their traits focusing on being the frontline tank, their strength isn’t just for show.
Ogryn Skullbreakers are suited for the frontline. They are the first line of defense and act as the shield for the entire team. Read on to learn how to build and play with the Ogryn Skullbreaker class in Warhammer 40k: Darktide.
Ogryn Skullbreaker Abilities in Darktide
Ability – Bull Rush
Charge forward, knocking enemies back, and gain 25% Attack Speed and 25% Movement Speed for five seconds.
When activating this ability, the Ogryn begins a ferocious charge that knocks down/aside all smaller enemies in their path. Bull Rush knocks down smaller foes but will only stagger greater foes like the Bulwark or the Crusher, which also happen to be Ogryns. Bull Rush is extremely powerful because of its large knockback utility, allowing you to save your friends from being overwhelmed or needing to drive the horde back.
Besides its defensive purposes, Bull Rush is great for rushing to priority targets like a squad of traitor guardsmen firing down upon your team or any other ranged units cowering behind cover.
Bull Rush doesn’t sound like the most substantial ability from its description alone, but we assure you it’s beneficial when your backs are against the wall.
Iconic
Excessive Force: + 25% Melee Stagger
Excessive Force’s extra melee stagger makes swiping through hordes, especially with heavy attacks feel far more impactful than the other classes. This stagger increase also does wonders for knocking around heavily armored elites like the Scab Mauler, making them defenseless as they tumble to the ground.
Loyal Protector: Being damaged while reviving or assisting allies no longer interrupts you.
Royal Protector fits beautifully well with the Ogryn Skullbreaker frontline/protector theme. Allowing you to revive your allies without interruption is a very strong passive. Royal Protector also synergizes exceptionally well with Bull Rush in your Darktide Ogryn build. Together, they allow you to part a horde in two, then revive your teammate before the killing resumes.
Thick Skin: +20% Toughness and Health Damage Reduction
On Top of the Ogyrn having a significantly higher health pool than the rest of the classes, Thick Skin allows them to shrug off blows that no other character in Darktide can survive.
Related Article: Complete Darktide Beginners Guide
Aura
Intimidating Presence: +10% Heavy Melee Attack Damage(Allies in Coherency)
The Ogyrn’s Aura grants themself and all allies within their Coherency aura in Darktide more heavy melee damage, which also pairs with their ferocious strength. On top of the extra stagger power, Intimidating Presence makes your heavy attacks devastating, causing you to knock hordes around in one swing or stun locking some elites so long as you maintain your heavy attack chain.
Blitz
Big Box of Hurt: Throw the entire box of grenades with great strength and enthusiasm, resulting in a single targeting but high-damage attack.
Big Box of Hurt is interesting but completely fits the theming of an Ogryn because of their low intelligence. Unlike the Veteran or Zealot, who throws one of the four grenades out of the box, the Ogryn throws their entire grenade supply without pulling the pins. The grenade box is treated more like a gigantic rock, which you use to deal significantly severe damage to a single target.
This ability is excellent for eliminating one elite/special or dealing a good burst of damage to a Plague Ogryn. The Ogryn Skullbreakers Blitz ability is hilarious, incredibly powerful, and very fitting for this Darktide class’ build.
Ogryn Skullbreaker Strengths & Playstyle in Darktide
The Ogryn embodies the tanky playstyle of the Ironbreaker or the Footknight from Vermintide 2 but doesn’t sacrifice any offensive capabilities for defense. If it’s not apparent enough, the Ogryn Skullbreaker excels as the frontline tank. Their passives and abilities allow them to knock around hordes and elites, cut through lesser enemies like butter, and have great ways to close the cap on priority targets.
Hordes are massive, and elite enemies take longer to eliminate when compared to a Stormvermin, which makes the Ogryns crowd control extremely helpful, especially at higher difficulties.
Ogryn Skullbreaker Talents
During the beta, we sunk tons of hours into playing the Ogryn Skullbreaker, but we need more time to fully max them out to play test all of their talents. We will update our listing once we have a better grasp of this class in Darktide’s late game, but here are our Ogryn build recommendations for now.
Best Form Of Defence…
Replenish 20% Toughness on hitting multiple enemies with a single heavy melee attack.
The Ogryn’s strength is best used when chaining heavy melee attacks to cut through hordes or knocking around more formidable foes. Still, most of the time, you will find yourself outnumbered and hitting multiple targets, which makes this talent the stronger option for replenishing Toughness.
Blood & Thunder – One of the Best Ogryn Skullbreaker Talents in Darktide’s Late Game
+1 Bleed Stack on a heavy melee hit.
Blood & Thunder adds a little damage to your strikes, causing any enemy you hit with a heavy melee attack to gain a bleed stack. At lower levels, the bleed stacks won’t amount to much, but the synergy with the other talents in our Ogryn build will make Blood and Thunder one of the most important talents to use on the Ogryn Skullbreaker.
Bullfighter
+10% Bull Rush Cooldown when you or an ally in Coherency kills an Elite enemy.
Bull Rush has a long cooldown and bashing any Elite’s head in will give you cooldown reduction for your highly versatile moment tool. Bull Rush allows you to close the cap on a squad firing on your team or save a downed ally. The more you can have Bull Rush up, the more crowd control you can provide for your team.
Bloodthirst – Only Use this in Your Darktide Ogryn Build with Blood & Thunder
+10% Damage Resistance per Bleeding enemy in melee range. Stacks five times.
As we previously mentioned, you need Blood & Thunder in your Darktide Ogryn Skullbreaker build to make this talent work. Bloodthirst easily gives you 50% damage reduction for hitting five enemies with one heavy melee attack, that’s right, 50%. That’s 50% less damage taken from ranged, melee, and any other damage source. It’s an amazing talent that makes you the tankiest class in Darktide.
Raging Bull
+5% Damage on your next melee hit for each enemy hit with the initial attack.
As an Ogryn, the majority of your damage comes from your heavy attacks, and Raging Bull will ramp up your horde-clearing capabilities. It’s a wonderful talent that makes your follow-up attacks deal even more damage than the last because the more enemies there are, the harder you will hit.
Unstoppable
Increases the distance you travel with Bull Rush by 100 meters, and enemies except Monstrosities cannot block you.
Unstoppable upgrades your primary gap-closing ability with even greater distance and allows you to knock over any enemy that isn’t a Plague Ogryn. Making your Bull Rush strong enough to reach any ally that has fallen behind and trample through almost every enemy to save them is a great upgrade.
On the offensive side, you can stomp through hordes of greater size or chase down any Scab Gunners or other ranged foes who are too far for your gigantic weapons to reach.
Other Very Viable Ogryn Skullbreaker Talents
Heavyweight
+50% melee damage and damage reduction against Bulwarks, Crushers, Plague Ogryns, and Reapers.
Since you are an Ogryn, you know your kin better than anyone. Taking the Heavyweight talent gives you extra damage and defense when in combat in Darktide against enemy Ogryns. We found this talent beneficial in many encounters, but if you’re looking for better horde clear, we can also recommend Blood & Thunder as an alternative.
Towering Presence
+50% Coherency Radius
Towering Presence increases the radius of your Coherence and Aura, providing extra heavy melee damage. Increasing your Coherence also allows more passive Toughness regeneration for you and your allies since it’s difficult to always stay bunched up. However, That’s What Friends Are For is another great option that transfers a partial amount of damage to you when an ally is struck. We are a fan of both options, but time will tell which is better.
Die Hard
+100% Toughness replenishment while below 25% health.
The fourth row in the Ogryn talent tree focuses somewhat on emergency situations. Die Hard is very useful to include in your Darktide Ogryn build since the extra regeneration can save your life when you’re significantly wounded. However, Hard as Nails is another excellent option if you play on higher difficulties or with an inexperienced team.
Non-Stop Violence
Replenish 10% Toughness per Bull Rush hit.
Non-Stop Violence is an excellent addition to your Ogryn build for upgrading your Bull Rush. It’s powerful and rivals Unstoppable’s power, and we would easily agree this talent is viable. We picked Unstoppable because we loved Foot Knights’ ability in Vermintide 2, and this upgrade gives Bull Rush a familiar feeling.
However, Non-Stop Violence is a fantastic option if you want to fully replenish your Toughness by charging through a horde of Pox Walkers.
Good Darktide Class Synergies for Ogryn Skullbreaker Builds
Darktide has another massive change when compared to Fat Sharks’ Vermintide 2. In Darktide, multiple players can choose to play the same class so that you can have an entire squad filled with Ogyrn or Psyker builds. Aside from this lovely addition to the game, some classes synergize well with others. In particular, we found that Ogryns pair very well with Zealot Preachers in Darktide.
Due to Zealots’ fragile but highly damaging melee playstyle, having a friend in the front line pairs exceptionally well with their tank playstyle. The Ogyrn buffs the Zealot’s heavy attack damage, while the Zealot gives the Ogryn Toughness damage reduction.
Tips and Tricks for Playing and Building Ogryn Skullbreaker in Darktide
Ogryns are stronger, which makes them the best class to carry objectives on Maintenance missions. Unfortunately, you cannot use Bull Rush when carrying an objective, but they move significantly faster than the other tiny classes.
Ogryns are enormous, standing at least 10ft tall, which makes them difficult to fit into tight areas. There are many small openings that other characters can fit through, but Ogryns cannot, so plan your routes a little more carefully.
Since the Skullbreaker can revive allies without interruption, they are the best choice for picking up fallen comrades. Unlike in Vermintide, where your character uses their Stamina to block while aiding a fallen ally, in Darktide, you are completely vulnerable.
Be mindful of the delay between your heavy attacks. Since the Ogryns main melee strengths involve overwhelming the enemy with wide melee swings, there is a longer minimal windup to start swinging. Be sure to dodge back to the side when waiting for the delay between heavy melee strikes.
A good Darktide Ogryn build has more HP and Stamina than other classes. This allows you to take and block more hits. Don’t be afraid to get into the thick of the fight, and you can perform significantly better than others, especially with the Best Form Of Defence talent.
Be mindful of your size. Since you tower over your allies and some of your foes, being bigger means you are an easier target. Cover is difficult to find unless it’s against a building when playing as an Ogryn. Be cautious of ranged threats, or run them down before they have a chance to find cover to poke you down. You may find a strong synergy with Darktide’s Veteran Sharpshooter class, which can take care of ranged enemies while you provide melee cover.
Wrap Up on Our Build Guide for the Ogryn Skullbreaker
That’s our guide on how to play and built Ogryn Skullbreaker in Darktide. The Ogyrn is a beloved abhuman subspecies of the Imperium of Man, and lots of die-hard Warhammer 40k fans have been itching to play as one for years.
We are happy to say that Fat Shark has delivered on the weight and feel of the Ogryn, and it’s incredibly satisfying to play as one. Fat Shark has also said they plan to release additional classes throughout Darktide’s lifetime, so hopefully, we will get another Ogryn class in the future.
If you enjoyed our guide for the Ogryn Skullbreaker in Darktide, check out our tips and tricks guide for more Warhammer 40k: Darktide content. Good hunting, Rejects!
