When and what are you supposed to bull rush?

[Pwner1]

Yesterday I read yet another thread about split opinion on the ogryn. In it it was said that bad players will rush grouped enemies and this will mess up veteran's headshotting among other things. Did the devs really miscommunicate the skullbreaker's seemingly obvious utility this badly?

[Saltgrind3r]

Outside of the penance bull rushing trash mobs is usually a bad idea as it just scatters them all over the place. Depending on team comp and playstyle (i.e. is there a zealot or another Ogryn on the team with you who is also likely to press their "I'm going in" button after you do) decent for closing the distance and knocking over shooters who haven't noticed you yet. Obviously useful for clearing space around downed teammates and getting armor off of people to give space to kill it. Probably most useful for short bursts to get the attack speed bonus.

[Kaerakh]

You want to use it when it has utility for your team, which will come down to a subjective judgment call that you can only get better at over time.

IE,
1. Your team is focused on a Crusher and you see a horde of infested rushing up behind them out of camera view. A good application of bullrush would be to use it on the horde to delay them attacking your team focused on the other threat.

2. A psyker is trying to brain burst a special (or the mutant I'm about to mention), but a mutant starts its rush to grapple the psyker. A good bullrush would be used to interrupt the mutant to delay him from grabbing the psyker so he can get his brain burst off and hopefully help you kill the mutant after.

3. Your team is taking fire from a collection of shooters, gunners, and/or reaper(s) and there is no cover for them to use to block the incoming fire. In this instance, it's best to risk the ire of the Veteran and bullrush any clear clusters you see to reduce enemy damage output.

That's at least my take on some examples, but you'll encounter other situations. It'll just take experience playing and seeing more instances, but in my opinion this is the correct mindset to be in. I think very similarly when playing a surge staff psyker as well.

[Kaerakh]

A quick note, on scenario 3, shooters only really matter at Heresy and Damnation difficulty. Otherwise they don't do enough damage unless if you have special conditions making the spawns hairier.

[Krush]

On my ogryn I really only use bullrush as a last resort.... OR if I know I can rush the group and dispatch them quickly solo. It would be more viable with a team that are playing competently and aggressively.


Basically if you do it into the wrong group with no support youre ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[nakoda]

You can hit S at any time during the bullrush to stop yourself as well, so rather than rush in to a horde, rush up to it and then start swinging, piles them up nicely. also handy to stop yourself once you've hit your intended target instead of charging by.

most often i use it to stun beast of nurgle and plague ogryn, stagger packs of elites, and close distance to help the punies, and like above to get the speed buff charging up to a horde pack.

[Slurs! In the Discord]

I just use it to gap close/get out of a bad spot.

[Steinar]

I use Bull Rush for different things.

1. Cover distance quickly (I play with the Unstoppable feat).
2. Get out of dangerous situations.
3. Run up to a group of enemies, stop right before I touch them, and proceed to take them out with increased attack speed.
4. Knock over dangerous targets when we need more time before we can kill them.
5. Knock over targets that have cornered teammates.
6. Free teammates from Mutants.
7. Free teammates from Beast of Nurgle.
8. Last defence against Hounds when they're about to catch me.
9. Interrupt a Plague Ogryn's charge.

What I don't do is charge through groups of unthreatening enemies. This spreads them out, meaning our AoE attacks will be less effective at hitting them, consequently resulting in more time spent and less satisfactory moments.

[RadioGroznyi]

If some veteran player really complains about that, then use your bull rush precisely to piss him off even more. It is a game for 4 players, not a game for 1 player and 3 watching that one to play.

[Moffin Bovin]

Originally posted by RadioGroznyi:

If some veteran player really complains about that, then use your bull rush precisely to piss him off even more. It is a game for 4 players, not a game for 1 player and 3 watching that one to play.

mark this as the correct answer

[Knight_of_Gallifrey]

Counter charging a mutant has mixed results as, while it stops their charge, they have no actual stun so they're priming for their next charge immediately. Good way to at least give the rest of the team a chance to take it down.

Have also had some instances where a burster was coming up and horde is too thick to either shoot it or will make timing the push too awkward so bull rushed through, turned around and started smacking the horde from behind with the burster popping between myself and the rest of the squad.

As mentioned above, launching yourself at the shooters to get them into melee, then pulling them back towards the group makes things alot easier for the rest as now they're no longer being surpressed.

[Pride Lizard Pride Lizard]

A few people have already listend some examples, but I guess I'll put some of mine up:

Using it to interrupt specials that have put allies in a tight spot (Don't charge INTO trappers, mind. Use your charge to clear room around a netted teammate)
using it to interrupt a plague ogryn charge.
Using it to stagger a beast of nurgle if it swallowed a teammate (Vet with nades and Ogryn with charge can stagger BoN if it ate a teammate, if BoN staggers it spits them out.)
If using the level 30 feat that allows you to charge through enemy Ogryns:, using it to charge over shields to get behind them. Using it to knock down crushers if allies need breathing room.
Charging into groups of shooters and using the attack speed + knockdown to finish them off faster
Charging in front of (ideally) large groups of poxwalkers to kill them in melee with the bonus attack speed if an ally is in a spot of danger.
Closing the gap between you and teammates, or trying to get out of a bad situation

Generally, if something needs interrupted it's a good use i think. Sure, knocking over targets might irritate a Vet player but if it's just trash shooters a single ogryn can dispatch a group that they knock over *anyway*, meaning the vet can either provide said Ogryn with fire support OR focus on other things.

[Mattheson]

Use it however you see fit.
Just as long as you stop blocking my screen with your huge ass, you can do whatever you want.

[Alex]

I bull rush to get to special enemies that are hidden behind the trash mobs. Usually the pox bombers cause they tend to chuck grenades and then run. Hard for the Veteran to kill when there is a huge mob in the way so depends on situation. Why playing Ogryn is hard cause you gotta make people happy and do your job at the same time. Which is impossible so just focus on doing your job and leave them to whine.

[BigJ]

It increases your attack speed so:
- Anytime you will be horde killing for a bit, hold s to cancel it instantly
- Anytime there is armor in the horde, knocking down crushers, bulwarks and ragers/maulers helps give time to your backline.
- Anytime you see the team be overwhelmed
- Anytime you see someone about to be grabbed by a mutant/beast of nurgle, preventing damage is huge.
- To distract snipers on occasion or to "dive" specials if ur team is not dealing with them, just make sure to not dive into dogs or trappers.
- To dive shooters
- To potentially get stagger lvl damage if you are running the kickback versus bosses. Helps get their agro too if you are running high damage ranged after you cc to reset their stickiness.
- Mid revive, if an ally is reviving someone, charge right in to make sure their block stays.
- Before grabbing any carry object, the speed bonus stays after you grab it, so you go extremely fast.

That should be everything, prob missed a thing.

[Arani]

Originally posted by Pwner1:

Yesterday I read yet another thread about split opinion on the ogryn. In it it was said that bad players will rush grouped enemies and this will mess up veteran's headshotting among other things. Did the devs really miscommunicate the skullbreaker's seemingly obvious utility this badly?

It has a long:ish cooldown and it's an absolutely crucial CC ability. So besides occasionally using it for mobility or instantly knocking something off a teammate, I tend to never use it "just because". It's true that bull rush and nades and anything else that just knocks stuff around is typically harmful against trash hordes because they don't require any extra effort if you have even a single person capable of good horde clear (and oggies are almost always that person in themselves). It's not just vets but basically everything from flamers to trauma to voidstrike to most melee weapons benefit from having the horde in nice clean tight groups, with their heads at the same height where they can easily kill them. But that's not the real issue. Even if you just knock them around, they're fairly easy to deal with.

The problem is that at any time you might suddenly get tons of specials and elites. Oggies, shotgunners, ragers, etc. out of nowhere. That can happen very quickly, and your team can instantly be overwhelmed without even the time to take out their nades, especially since there are going to be bugs I mean dogs in there too. That's the moment where a good bull rush will effectively knock everything that matters down and buy your team a good 5+ seconds to act. Time they can use to reposition, kill priority targets, throw those nades, etc.

Those moments are the reason I tend to always save my bull rush. Because those situations are where the team tends to wipe.