Can't unlock Soften Them Up as Ogryn.

[LeeRoyBrown]

I'm level 28, I'm 1 node away from it, I try to click on it, it doesn't work. It makes no sense, I'm not going through a locked "chained" node. I'm coming sideways from slam.

[tattledomo123]

You can't travel "up" the skill tree. If a node after what you can possibly get is on a higher elevation than what you currently have, it is impossible to get. Therefore, the ONLY way to have Slam and Soften Them Up is to get the Box of Grenades.

[kozerd.lb]

The famous Ogryn's Dilemma : Rock or Soften them up

[Stim Addict]

Originally posted by kozerd.lb:

The famous Ogryn's Dilemma : Rock or Soften them up

Rock

[Stim Addict]

Originally posted by metal detectors:

You can't travel "up" the skill tree. If a node after what you can possibly get is on a higher elevation than what you currently have, it is impossible to get. Therefore, the ONLY way to have Slam and Soften Them Up is to get the Box of Grenades.

^^^^
This right here. Those two perks are not connected.

[cith]

Originally posted by FE15 Illusion:

Originally posted by kozerd.lb:

The famous Ogryn's Dilemma : Rock or Soften them up

Rock

This dilemma plagues me daily.

[Stim Addict]

Originally posted by cith:

Originally posted by FE15 Illusion:

Rock

This dilemma plagues me daily.

No dilemma. Only rock.

[DLCI]

+15% damage from soften is like 1.5 extra stacks of skullcrusher, it isn't as good as it sounds

[功夫kappa]

Soften Them Up is probably the most powerful trait in the entire Ogryn tree for team synergy, and everyone taking Rock over it are just meming.

[varicose 'vascular' vinny]

as far as I can tell skullcrusher is very bugged and it is not a true debuff state, while the stacks carry over the bonus damage doesn't take place between actual staggers. whereas soften em up makes everything die really fast, because its like witch hunter's tag but applied to everything the ogryn hits. if the bleed from dash could apply it there would be no contest as to the best perk in his tree. but at least we can spread brittleness from thunderous with bleed that way, which is the same principle.

[boss_429s]

Stop taking rock. It was a terrible choice day 1; then the kickback got buffed to the moon and does the same thing 8/10 shots if you bless it correctly.

[Badgersbeard]

Originally posted by boss_429s:

Stop taking rock. It was a terrible choice day 1; then the kickback got buffed to the moon and does the same thing 8/10 shots if you bless it correctly.

But I likes me rock. It goes thud. Bang sticks is good 'n all.... but dey ain't going thud. And bang sticks need ammo.... never much ammo 'bout, der runties pinch it all.
plenty a rocks about and der runties, dey dont like rocks... least not der ones I met. 'times I show em me rock, dey dunt care.

[DLCI]

Originally posted by varicose 'vascular' vinny:

as far as I can tell skullcrusher is very bugged and it is not a true debuff state, while the stacks carry over the bonus damage doesn't take place between actual staggers. whereas soften em up makes everything die really fast, because its like witch hunter's tag but applied to everything the ogryn hits. if the bleed from dash could apply it there would be no contest as to the best perk in his tree. but at least we can spread brittleness from thunderous with bleed that way, which is the same principle.

what you said did get me thinking about something but after some testing i'm not sure it's a bug, this seems like the intended design

+80% damage is kind of a massive buff, so it seems like it should be a lot more noticable than it is

after doing some digging into the sourcecode i have come to the following conclusion

skullcrusher will add stacks on most regular hits that cause even a tiny flinch but it does not seem to add damage to regular hits at all

base_templates.staggered_targets_receive_increased_damage_debuff = {
	predicted = false,
	class_name = "proc_buff",
	proc_events = {
		[proc_events.on_hit] = 1
	},
	target_buff_data = {
		max_stacks = 31,
		internal_buff_name = "increase_damage_received_while_staggered",
		num_stacks_on_proc = 1
	},
	conditional_proc_func = ConditionalFunctions.is_item_slot_wielded,
	check_proc_func = CheckProcFunctions.on_stagger_hit,
	start_func = _add_debuff_on_hit_start,
	proc_func = _add_debuff_on_hit_proc

after then doing a little testing, i determined that it does indeed add the +80% damage, but this damage is only applied vs. a target that is currently in a staggered state

this is easiest to see with the debuff mod: whenever a target is in a 'stagger-state' this mod will list stagger 1, 2, 3, etc

in simple english - if you stagger or knock down a target with 8 skullcrusher stacks, all hits against this target will do +80% damage for the duration of the stagger effect

it is a bit like no-respite in how it applies any bonus damage

the main reason it does not seem to apply a ton of damage in most situations is that a typical light stagger vs. a larger target does not last more than 1-2 seconds, after which they become immune to staggers for 3-4 seconds

which means you have few opportunities to take advantage of the bonus damage, usually not more than 1-2 hits

however, that lead to another interesting thing I learned - thunderstrike, which adds stacks of +impact while staggered, seems to have great synergy here. while it might seem obvious since they work the same way, the extra impact greatly enables even small hits to chain into full knockdowns

with 8 stacks of thunderstrike, a follow-up strike on a simple flinch can now knock even ogryn sized targets off their feet, giving you the opportunity to utterly rip them apart with bonus damage and chained-staggers before they recover from the stagger or build up enough accumulative stagger resistance from repeat staggers to overcome this

anything that applies impact will apply stacks of either thunderstrike or skullcrusher, including: pushes, loyal protector, charges, etc. etc.

it looks like the max stagger state possible is 5, but after testing a lot of high impact weapons i discovered that the duration is not long enough to reach this on some enemies no matter what weapon you use, since the stagger duration is shorter than the stagger immune time

curiously, unlike almost every other enemy, bulwarks have a strange setting that causes them to have a 'reverse_stagger_count' which makes them EASIER to stagger repeatedly, and i was able to reach this with several weapons, rather easily with the tactical axe special combo

to summarize - skullcrusher is great for adding damage to small targets like horde, because they will easily get staggered on the first hit, and the second hit will do nearly twice as much damage and should kill them, but obviously it does nothing vs. targets if you kill them in 1 hit

this helps explain why this blessing is one of the main tools that enable ogryn weapons to slaughter horde enemies with light attacks, despite cleaving through less damage to many targets compared to zealot

it is quite a bit less effective vs. larger targets, as you will only get the bonus damage for the brief window while they are staggered. it is most effective vs. bulwarks due to how bulwarks are exponentially staggered with repeated hits

it is far more effective when paired with thunderstrike, as this will make it easier to overcome stagger resistance/reduction

it used to be a LOT more effective when paired with thunderous (applies stacks of brittleness), however, since patch 14, rending no longer adds any bonus impact above 100% of base, so there is a little less direct synergy to be found here.

finally, as an extra bit of information, i finally discovered the reason why the ogryn latrine shovel (and ONLY the latrine shovel punch) was capable of chain-staggering a daemonhost.

the latrine shovel uppercut punch has a stagger category of 'explosion' (instead of the uppercut for cleavers which is 'melee.heavy'), an impact multiplier vs. unyielding of 1.0, and an impact value between 30-60

daemonhosts have a stagger reduction of 50 (punch ignores reduction, though) but they have stagger thresholds of -1 for all categories EXCEPT explosions

giving them immunity to everything except explosions that exceed 100 impact

now since initially after the rending re-work, 100% rending could double the impact value of an attack, plus add 1% for every 4% extra rending, so this allowed the 50 impact ogryn uppercut 'explosion' to exceed the 100 impact threshold of the host under extremely specific circumstances that gave you >100% rending, which would stagger it for 1 second

yet the daemonhost has no 'stagger immune time' for explosions, so you can easily chain-stagger a host over and over by coordinating your grenades one after another - (useful information for sure!!)

hence, if you could reach the breakpoint to exceed their resistance to stagger from explosions, you could lock them down by punching them over and over because the punch staggered them for 1 second but takes less than 1 second to hit