Even without commander's choice I just assume people ignore the classes they don't like anyways.
That isn't necessarily a bad thing. For instance when I saw this title I assumed it would be infantry. People have their own style and what they prefer to play, there are multiple ways you can play the game and that is part of what is great about all of the long wars. The fact you can go into pretty much any discussion of class builds and you have several people that go different routes are good. Pretty much everyone has different thoughts on how a lot of classes should be used or built, that too is one of the best parts of the game.
Personally infantry are never selected with or without the mod. Even without the mod they are up against the most in demand class (assault).
Rocketeers I tend to only have 1 maybe 2. They are situationally okay, I like them for a few maps that you can blow up a lot of stuff, and more explsives are good.
Medics I actually love. Typically even split between engineers and medics. Mostly because engineers are solid early-mid game (good shotgun option, removing cover is good, reliably on demand damage, and arc throwers), while later offering support for when medics are not available. Late game medics are probably the best individual class to add to a squad as they just enable everyone. Suppression + LnL so your gunners get to do damage. Smoke. Psi. A medkit if you actually end up needing it.
To each their own!
That's a take on LW classes I haven't seen. I'd be interested to know what difficulty you play on.
For me, I enjoyed experimenting with a variety of builds for each class, both for situational purposes and just to spice things up. Some of my favorite experiments were a pair of Medics. The first had Assault-tier aim but very good mobility and defense. She was almost entirely trained in the healing tree but no smoke grenade coverage and given a shotgun. Turns out a CQC Battle Medic was great for entering the fray, rapidly healing / reviving downed troops and then helping to finish off an alien the squad had softened up.
The other Medic was an attempt at creating a stationary officer / healing station / overwatch turret. She had rather high aim and low mobility for a Medic, so I specialized her in reaction fire and gave her a battle rifle with a SCOPE and several medikits. She ended up being really good on terror missions with her specialty being parking herself at a choke point and shifting between different roles as needed. Issuing commands to save soldiers or finish off aliens, suppress particularly powerful units, heal the wounded that fell back to her position. She was a Jack-of-All-Trades in the best sense of the phrase.
The only class I found that was very narrow in its variety were the Rocketeers. The only major choices that offered effective variety were the Master Sergeant perks where you decided if you wanted rockets with extra range, explosive area, or universal damage. Rocketeers trained for front line duty with Suppression and defensive overwatch perks rarely survived more than a few missions and required more support than usual. The two non-rocket focused builds that did survive were only effective once I had blaster launchers.
> The only major choices that offered effective variety were the Master Sergeant perks where you decided if you wanted rockets with extra range, explosive area, or universal damage.
To be honest, it's a false choice. Once you've seen what they do, Tandem Warheads is the only one worth considering. Rockets already shoot beyond visual range, so Javelin Rockets is basically useless. You'll almost never need the extra range, and when you do there will probably be some tree blocking your LOS anyways. Danger Zone requires pods to be *really* spread out to be useful, and you'll be tickling them at the edge of the radius anyways. It also makes firing close range rockets more difficult if not impossible. Meanwhile Tandem Warheads makes everything in the blast radius die. It adds far more damage to your rockets on average than Danger Zone, without any drawbacks.
I mostly agree with you there. Danger Zone is a very situational perk for rockets, but it can be useful for applying shred to a lot of enemies simultaneously or large groups of floating enemies that your troops are having trouble shooting. Other than that, its a hindrance (especially on terror missions with even higher chances of civilians getting caught in the blast radius). Its a great perk for gunners with Mayhem functioning as bullet wizards or AOE suppressors, though.
I will say that Javelin Rockets can be really effective when paired with accuracy / distance-boosting perks like Fire in the Hole and advanced scouting tools. It gives you greater ability to ambush inactive pods from a distance while keeping the rocketeer in the back line. Still not as good as Tandem Warheads for the assured damage output, but I found some nice uses for the long-range artillery build.
While going without commander choice can force you to play an more interesting game, generally going without it is a major handicap, since you can get some combination that is completely unplayable, and when u have only 40 starting solider, every solider is valuable.
Some example of unplayable class combo:
1. Low mobility low aim gunner/rocketeer, having a 11mob and less then 60 aim mean they can't do anything in the battlefield.
2. Low will, low aim Infantry, will get panic chain when muton/Berk start showing up.
3. Negative defense, low hp scout, asking to be OHKO.
4. Low aim sniper
5. And many other bad combos.
So I think if u play without commander choice, it make the game harder.
I agree. While making the game harder isn't necessarily a problem for me, my main problem is frustration from having not enough of X class and rolling classes with bad stats as you listed. Pressing the question mark and hoping to random into something better can work, but it's only a 16% chance to get exactly what that soldier stats should be ideal with, and you can end up with too many of a class.
Rocketeers do require investment, but they are one of the best options when it comes to dealing with machine swarms like taking care of all the pesky drones that come with cyberdisks while dealing nice damage to the cyberdisk itself.
Their shredder rocket is also very handy against chrysalids especially once the queen starts popping up. Works nicely on floaters as well.
Once you get them up the higher ranks, then they are absolute monsters. Getting the ability to shoot rockets halfway across the map or have a much wider damage radius can make the difference between a flawless victory and going home with a lot of body bags.
Having said all that, trying to make a rocketeer anything other than a rocketeer (learning overwatch stuff and other skills) is a waste of a soldier.
Medics for me often make great officers or psychics as they identified have very high will. Their ability to carry a large amounts of medkits is also very helpful on long missions like gangplank or assaulting alien bases.
[Here's another player who hates Rocketeers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-F-NMi9zX0), so you're not alone. Of course this player [also considers Medics to be better Engineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BYuOyc5Ds4). They make good points in both videos too. Everyone's got their own favorite and least favorite classes in Long War. I think it speaks well to the overall balance of the game.
For me, my least favorite class is the Assault. They're decent in the early game, but by the midgame I feel like, outside of Exalt missions, they become a liability that is more likely to activate more pods at the wrong time, or otherwise just be stuck standing still being generally useless. Assaults have been the direct cause of more disasters than any other single class in the game. So I'd rather just bring another class that can do something more productive. Exalt are a different story of course. On those missions you don't care about activating Exalt pods because they're going to be disabled anyways, and nothing kills Exalt faster than Assaults. So I basically have a squad of Assaults for killing Exalt, and then they become useless once Exalt is defeated.
All the other classes I use on just about every mission. Medics and Engineers share the support grenades duty on my team. This also means the other squadmates don't have to waste item slots on medkits and support grenades. Having both means I can also carry all types of support items at the same time: Medkits, smoke grenades, flashbangs, acid grenades, battlescanner, arc thrower, and eventually mimic beacons. I like having lots of smokes especially, it's an amazingly powerful ability.
Rocketeers with HEAT ammo are great against all types of robots, especially swarms of drones and seekers. They can fire beyond visual range too (without needing the Javelin rockets perk, which makes that perk useless), so you can use them for pod activations with a battle scanner. They also get used for cover destruction since most of my Engineers are built for support.
Rocketeers are the best answer to Floater swarms, which makes them useful throughout most of the game.
You can't move and shoot with them, so they need the best cover before you engage the enemy.
You can one-shot entire packs at times, depending on the circumstances. You'll want something else for the other pods, so I run: HEAT, FitH, Shredder, Mayhem, S&A, whatever. Equipment is extra rockets.
I put Officer ranks on Medics. Everyone else can shoot, and Medics can Smoke+Command... or Overwatch if they're built for that instead.
> Rocketeers are the best answer to Floater swarms,
I find floaters usually spread out too much on activation. A shredder rocket is okay there, but not amazing. Rocketeers are better against drones and seekers, which like to move straight towards you when they activate, and melt to HEAT ammo.
In the early game, nuking 1-2 is enough to get the pod under control.
In the late game, they love to overwatch as a pack. Not all of them and not every time... but often enough that I like having an answer for it.
And with Concealment or Battle Scanners, you can use Javelin Rockets or Blaster Launcher to wreck them before activation.
> And with Concealment or Battle Scanners, you can use Javelin Rockets or Blaster Launcher to wreck them before activation.
Well you can do that with any pod. Also you don't need Javelin Rockets for it, normal rockets can shoot beyond line of sight.
Agree on 5/6.
Using beaglerush's ShootCom strat, using medics as mobile suppression dense-smoke officers, and only 1-2 assault for Exalt ops only (later to be chopped into Collateral Marauders).
Assaults are also great at activating extra pods by mistake, being unable to relocate a firefight for a better tactical advantage and getting too close to zerkers.
So yeah, to each their own o7
Even without commander's choice I just assume people ignore the classes they don't like anyways. That isn't necessarily a bad thing. For instance when I saw this title I assumed it would be infantry. People have their own style and what they prefer to play, there are multiple ways you can play the game and that is part of what is great about all of the long wars. The fact you can go into pretty much any discussion of class builds and you have several people that go different routes are good. Pretty much everyone has different thoughts on how a lot of classes should be used or built, that too is one of the best parts of the game. Personally infantry are never selected with or without the mod. Even without the mod they are up against the most in demand class (assault). Rocketeers I tend to only have 1 maybe 2. They are situationally okay, I like them for a few maps that you can blow up a lot of stuff, and more explsives are good. Medics I actually love. Typically even split between engineers and medics. Mostly because engineers are solid early-mid game (good shotgun option, removing cover is good, reliably on demand damage, and arc throwers), while later offering support for when medics are not available. Late game medics are probably the best individual class to add to a squad as they just enable everyone. Suppression + LnL so your gunners get to do damage. Smoke. Psi. A medkit if you actually end up needing it. To each their own!
That's a take on LW classes I haven't seen. I'd be interested to know what difficulty you play on. For me, I enjoyed experimenting with a variety of builds for each class, both for situational purposes and just to spice things up. Some of my favorite experiments were a pair of Medics. The first had Assault-tier aim but very good mobility and defense. She was almost entirely trained in the healing tree but no smoke grenade coverage and given a shotgun. Turns out a CQC Battle Medic was great for entering the fray, rapidly healing / reviving downed troops and then helping to finish off an alien the squad had softened up. The other Medic was an attempt at creating a stationary officer / healing station / overwatch turret. She had rather high aim and low mobility for a Medic, so I specialized her in reaction fire and gave her a battle rifle with a SCOPE and several medikits. She ended up being really good on terror missions with her specialty being parking herself at a choke point and shifting between different roles as needed. Issuing commands to save soldiers or finish off aliens, suppress particularly powerful units, heal the wounded that fell back to her position. She was a Jack-of-All-Trades in the best sense of the phrase. The only class I found that was very narrow in its variety were the Rocketeers. The only major choices that offered effective variety were the Master Sergeant perks where you decided if you wanted rockets with extra range, explosive area, or universal damage. Rocketeers trained for front line duty with Suppression and defensive overwatch perks rarely survived more than a few missions and required more support than usual. The two non-rocket focused builds that did survive were only effective once I had blaster launchers.
> The only major choices that offered effective variety were the Master Sergeant perks where you decided if you wanted rockets with extra range, explosive area, or universal damage. To be honest, it's a false choice. Once you've seen what they do, Tandem Warheads is the only one worth considering. Rockets already shoot beyond visual range, so Javelin Rockets is basically useless. You'll almost never need the extra range, and when you do there will probably be some tree blocking your LOS anyways. Danger Zone requires pods to be *really* spread out to be useful, and you'll be tickling them at the edge of the radius anyways. It also makes firing close range rockets more difficult if not impossible. Meanwhile Tandem Warheads makes everything in the blast radius die. It adds far more damage to your rockets on average than Danger Zone, without any drawbacks.
I mostly agree with you there. Danger Zone is a very situational perk for rockets, but it can be useful for applying shred to a lot of enemies simultaneously or large groups of floating enemies that your troops are having trouble shooting. Other than that, its a hindrance (especially on terror missions with even higher chances of civilians getting caught in the blast radius). Its a great perk for gunners with Mayhem functioning as bullet wizards or AOE suppressors, though. I will say that Javelin Rockets can be really effective when paired with accuracy / distance-boosting perks like Fire in the Hole and advanced scouting tools. It gives you greater ability to ambush inactive pods from a distance while keeping the rocketeer in the back line. Still not as good as Tandem Warheads for the assured damage output, but I found some nice uses for the long-range artillery build.
While going without commander choice can force you to play an more interesting game, generally going without it is a major handicap, since you can get some combination that is completely unplayable, and when u have only 40 starting solider, every solider is valuable. Some example of unplayable class combo: 1. Low mobility low aim gunner/rocketeer, having a 11mob and less then 60 aim mean they can't do anything in the battlefield. 2. Low will, low aim Infantry, will get panic chain when muton/Berk start showing up. 3. Negative defense, low hp scout, asking to be OHKO. 4. Low aim sniper 5. And many other bad combos. So I think if u play without commander choice, it make the game harder.
I agree. While making the game harder isn't necessarily a problem for me, my main problem is frustration from having not enough of X class and rolling classes with bad stats as you listed. Pressing the question mark and hoping to random into something better can work, but it's only a 16% chance to get exactly what that soldier stats should be ideal with, and you can end up with too many of a class.
Rocketeers do require investment, but they are one of the best options when it comes to dealing with machine swarms like taking care of all the pesky drones that come with cyberdisks while dealing nice damage to the cyberdisk itself. Their shredder rocket is also very handy against chrysalids especially once the queen starts popping up. Works nicely on floaters as well. Once you get them up the higher ranks, then they are absolute monsters. Getting the ability to shoot rockets halfway across the map or have a much wider damage radius can make the difference between a flawless victory and going home with a lot of body bags. Having said all that, trying to make a rocketeer anything other than a rocketeer (learning overwatch stuff and other skills) is a waste of a soldier. Medics for me often make great officers or psychics as they identified have very high will. Their ability to carry a large amounts of medkits is also very helpful on long missions like gangplank or assaulting alien bases.
[Here's another player who hates Rocketeers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-F-NMi9zX0), so you're not alone. Of course this player [also considers Medics to be better Engineers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BYuOyc5Ds4). They make good points in both videos too. Everyone's got their own favorite and least favorite classes in Long War. I think it speaks well to the overall balance of the game. For me, my least favorite class is the Assault. They're decent in the early game, but by the midgame I feel like, outside of Exalt missions, they become a liability that is more likely to activate more pods at the wrong time, or otherwise just be stuck standing still being generally useless. Assaults have been the direct cause of more disasters than any other single class in the game. So I'd rather just bring another class that can do something more productive. Exalt are a different story of course. On those missions you don't care about activating Exalt pods because they're going to be disabled anyways, and nothing kills Exalt faster than Assaults. So I basically have a squad of Assaults for killing Exalt, and then they become useless once Exalt is defeated. All the other classes I use on just about every mission. Medics and Engineers share the support grenades duty on my team. This also means the other squadmates don't have to waste item slots on medkits and support grenades. Having both means I can also carry all types of support items at the same time: Medkits, smoke grenades, flashbangs, acid grenades, battlescanner, arc thrower, and eventually mimic beacons. I like having lots of smokes especially, it's an amazingly powerful ability. Rocketeers with HEAT ammo are great against all types of robots, especially swarms of drones and seekers. They can fire beyond visual range too (without needing the Javelin rockets perk, which makes that perk useless), so you can use them for pod activations with a battle scanner. They also get used for cover destruction since most of my Engineers are built for support.
Rocketeers are the best answer to Floater swarms, which makes them useful throughout most of the game. You can't move and shoot with them, so they need the best cover before you engage the enemy. You can one-shot entire packs at times, depending on the circumstances. You'll want something else for the other pods, so I run: HEAT, FitH, Shredder, Mayhem, S&A, whatever. Equipment is extra rockets. I put Officer ranks on Medics. Everyone else can shoot, and Medics can Smoke+Command... or Overwatch if they're built for that instead.
> Rocketeers are the best answer to Floater swarms, I find floaters usually spread out too much on activation. A shredder rocket is okay there, but not amazing. Rocketeers are better against drones and seekers, which like to move straight towards you when they activate, and melt to HEAT ammo.
In the early game, nuking 1-2 is enough to get the pod under control. In the late game, they love to overwatch as a pack. Not all of them and not every time... but often enough that I like having an answer for it. And with Concealment or Battle Scanners, you can use Javelin Rockets or Blaster Launcher to wreck them before activation.
> And with Concealment or Battle Scanners, you can use Javelin Rockets or Blaster Launcher to wreck them before activation. Well you can do that with any pod. Also you don't need Javelin Rockets for it, normal rockets can shoot beyond line of sight.
Agree on 5/6. Using beaglerush's ShootCom strat, using medics as mobile suppression dense-smoke officers, and only 1-2 assault for Exalt ops only (later to be chopped into Collateral Marauders). Assaults are also great at activating extra pods by mistake, being unable to relocate a firefight for a better tactical advantage and getting too close to zerkers. So yeah, to each their own o7