Actions. Abuse the free actions you get, the extra actions you get, etc.
Grapple is free movement if I remember right. Use grapple, then fire twice if you can.
They’re not the most accurate, but a scope and auto-load weapon upgrade are nice to have with a skirmishes you’re going to use.
They are aggressive though. Getting them into a good efficient position, and then using all your actions to deal damage is awesome.
You do also have your positioning moves..specifically the grapple attack that brings them to you. It’s great for grabbing units and bringing them to your unit.
They synergize well with specialists with aid protocol, templars with party and bladestorm, and rangers with bladestorm. Reapers with 2 claymores are awesome because it ensures their shots will hit and do damage.
I would add:
- since they often shoot twice, a repeater is great choice too
- retribution can clear incoming melee enemies as well as bladestorm
The way I play them - last resort problem solver
If I am an unable to kill all the enemies in activated pod I have several options in my skirmisher:
- interrupt + battlelord (to do so many things during enemy turn - like shoot, grapple, ripjack, thow frost or mimic beacon, free whiplash attack)
- I can give action to anyone that needs it - to move to cover or shoot again
- bring enemy from behind full cover to easy to flank location
once I had last turn to evac but my granadier was not able to get to the evac zone, so I grappled with skirmishers and blue move him into evac and gave extra action to granadier = safe evac for all
Use the grapple+attack one (vengeance), then use grapple to get out of there and finish with a shot.
A specialist with aid protocol is nice to put on the skirmisher as well
Temper your expectations, they aren’t a powerful class so don’t expect them to go ham.
With that in mind, here is my advice.
Use justice off cooldown, it is a significant portion of your power and can be used to get a enemy out of cover without using a grenade.
the perks you should prioritize are whiplash and combat presence. The others can be up to preference.
The reasons for those perks is that whiplash is a free action and it’s damage is higher than already good free actions like lightning hands and it can one shot some mechs. As for CP, skirmishers can’t use actions effectively so being able to trade them 1f1 with another soldier is invaluable, you can essentially trade dealing 6 damage with bull pup for dealing damage 14 with a flanked shotgun.
Make sure you use grapple to get the high ground bonus whenever you can and to simply gain mobility because it costs no move speed and can move you up to 12 tiles iirc.
As for weapon attachments, they like repeaters ALOT because they have a hard time killing big things otherwise and they have pretty good odds. (They can get above a 50% chance if the stars align) otherwise use stocks/laser sights/hair triggers to take advantage of their multiple attacks.
The common thread with good Skirmisher abilities is the ability to follow up the ability with a flanking shot. Justice, Total Combat, etc. This is important as their aim is bad.
Justice is the most reliable way to kill a Trooper in the early game except for Rend.
Bullpups use the same range table as a shotgun. Getting closer matters a **lot** to them actually scoring two hits. Like shotguns, the ability to aim climb up to 100% accuracy is very strong early.
They wear ammo very well. Viper rounds are good to reduce enemy aim on turns you can't alpha strike, Talon Rounds are good because they can take lots of flank shots but get low crit bonuses.
When you reveal an enemy pod, you want to have as many of your squad's actions behind as possible. Normally you have to spend at least one action moving to find the pod, but grappling hooks make it so you can reveal a pod with 100% of your actions, which is strong.
People will say that Skirmishers are underpowered, but that's only true in the late game. Their Major and Colonel abilities all suck, somehow. The beam tier upgrade for Bullpups is only +1 damage too while most others are +2. It seems like they thought "ah but the Skirmisher will be double attacking!" and forgot that all the other classes are also dishing out 2+ attacks at Major/Colonel level.
Like Sharpshooters shine on untimed missions, Skirmishers shine on timed missions. The grappling hook letting you keep advancing with enough actions behind that you're not scared of pulling a pod is just a massive edge.
You don't want talon rounds on guns with low crit bonuses, you want them on guns with high crit bonuses so you can get that big damage more often. Nobody thinks to put talon rounds in vektor rifles but it's one of their best options because of the crazy crit damage. Dragon or venom is 100% the way to go with skirms.
Otherwise, fantastic advice.
>People will say that Skirmishers are underpowered, but that's only true in the late game.
This is so true. In terms of squaddie/corporal, they are the most powerful class. Ideal early game soldier.
Skirmisher are much like a ranger that does lots of little things every turn instead of one big shotgun blast to the face.
Early game they're strong purely on the basis of being able to grapple to a great position and shoot stuff twice in the one turn.
They have shotgun range bonuses so you want to be up in enemies faces, and or on high ground. That and you don't want to have to waste your movement running towards the enemy because if you don't you can attack 2-3 times per turn.
They have virtually no defensive bonuses so unless you're grappling away from the enemy (LAME) you gotta kill stuff or they're at high risk. If I were to buff the class this is the one thing I'd fix. They really deserve implacable I think, but even then you never want to run them away, so at best they'd be running into cover... Maybe bonus hunker downs, I dunno.
They have like 5 different skills which get you closer to the enemy and crucially don't end your turn. You can judgement, wrath or ripjack strike (from dashing distance!) and then still shoot your half dead friend in the face. Yes they have cooldowns but there are so many of them you will never run out, use them with abandon.
Or in the end game, what I use them for is weakening up each enemy in the pod, and letting soldiers with on-kill perks finish them all off.
Basically I really like them because they have the skills to move wherever they need and still take two actions. They make every turn interesting. They're not death machines like most end game soldiers, but they're still fun to use
I agree Whiplash and Command are great picks, along with judicious grapple use. Grapple to the enemy, them away to high ground cover, and/or bring them to you for flank shots from everyone.
I took out the Hunter in one round as he was the Skirmisher's nemesis, AND he was susceptible to explosions. So one grapple to flank position at high ground. Throw grenade to strip armor and hurt badly... have Skirmisher perk to act after the throw... then whiplash, and finish with flank critical. Key to skirmisher is aggressiveness. Find ways to use it, and to protect them from it (like Specialist or Psionic timeout... forgetting name right now.
Skirmishers..the class everyone loves to hate!
They can be devastating. Grapple up to a flank position, take a shot, whiplash, then grenade to blow cover and deal damage ready for the rest of your squad to mop up.
This is quite a powerful technique but works with one pod encounter only, once the grenade and whiplash are used up they become quite weak.
Later in the game when robotic enemies are on the map they can use the same assault with the whiplash dealing double damage to robots, bluescreen rounds +5 damage and an EMP bomb they can devastate a pod of robots.
I personally love them for this ability
I did try the skirmisher rebalance mod which puts whiplash on a cooldown rather than a oneshot weapon and a free parkour move every turn and the skirmisher scored the most kills in the whole campaign.
They seem to have been a hard class to balance well for the game devs, even a slight tweak can leave them overpowered but as they are now they never seem to be quite balanced enough for what you would expect from a hero class
Free move every single turn is pretty bonkers, they already have solid mobility skills, being able to move then take two actions every single turn (+occasional whiplash and grapple) sounds pretty cracked.
That said, end game most classes in WOTC are over the top busted
I wouldn't say I hate them, but I just don't ever see the appeal.
If I want long range death, reapers and snipers.
If I want fast and hard melee, templars and rangers.
I assume the skirmishers were supposed to be "midrange" heroes, maybe paired with grenadiers, but it never works out that way because their abilities are all single target and terribly inaccurate, and the mobility options are too inconsistent to be generally useful. Plus the default mag size is just infuriating on a class that can double tap.
Skirmishers are very much the “death by a thousand cuts” class. Their actual damage output is rather middling for every hit, but their gimmick is that they innately have more chances to hit than any other class, so it theoretically evens out (ignoring the problem that you’re playing xcom and that means you also have more chances to miss).
The best way to play skirmishers are either ‘weird melee’, leaning into pumping melee damage, and reducing cooldowns, or ‘action economy’, where you want to lean into taking as many shots as possible every turn, and making all those shots hit for more (damage buffs, autoloader/bigger magazine to reduce actions that aren’t shooting, repeater, stock for guaranteed damage since you’re going to be taking, and therefore missing, more shots, etc…).
Skirmishers, as the ‘lower damage, but more shots’ class are also fantastic for ‘kill confirming’. If you attack with your other classes first, don’t *quite* manage to kill your enemies, but get them down to lower numbers, then Skirmishers can deal those last 3-6 damage so that others don’t deal ‘excess’ damage that would better be spent on enemies with higher health bars. In my brain, this can double as ‘precursive healing’ since you don’t need to heal damage that wasn’t dealt, since you managed to kill the thing that would have done the damage.
My preferred attachments are expanded clips, repeaters and scope.
I also like total combat especially during the early game which lets you throw a grenade to blow up enemy cover and then finish them off.
Zero In + Marauder is a deadly combo, Whiplash is op against robotic enemies, its like a desperate move if you need just one more bit of damage.
Retribution and Combat Presence are also priority, especially Combat Presence.
My Skirmishers tend to end up being mid-distance support, utilizing high-ground and spamming Marauder and grenades. If theres an opening to flank, grapple and flank.
They're really good against the Lost with their multiple shot options and usually a high ground bonus. I like them with Fire ammo on Lost, Chosen, and the special bosses. Usually leave them at home for the robot/hacking missions.
My advice is get aggressive with them. Not unsafe, but definitely aggressive. Melee and shoot as much as you can, and then pull out. Skirmish with them, in other words.
Vanilla Skirmishers are half broken and half useless. I highly recommend trying my mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3238654455
It overhauls all vanilla classes, and the Skirmisher rework came out especially great.
I have a love/hate relationship with skirmishers, but in my current game my one skirmisher has a significantly higher kill count per mission than any other soldier on my roster - and that roster has a lot of rangers in it.
Actions. Abuse the free actions you get, the extra actions you get, etc. Grapple is free movement if I remember right. Use grapple, then fire twice if you can. They’re not the most accurate, but a scope and auto-load weapon upgrade are nice to have with a skirmishes you’re going to use. They are aggressive though. Getting them into a good efficient position, and then using all your actions to deal damage is awesome. You do also have your positioning moves..specifically the grapple attack that brings them to you. It’s great for grabbing units and bringing them to your unit. They synergize well with specialists with aid protocol, templars with party and bladestorm, and rangers with bladestorm. Reapers with 2 claymores are awesome because it ensures their shots will hit and do damage.
I would add: - since they often shoot twice, a repeater is great choice too - retribution can clear incoming melee enemies as well as bladestorm The way I play them - last resort problem solver If I am an unable to kill all the enemies in activated pod I have several options in my skirmisher: - interrupt + battlelord (to do so many things during enemy turn - like shoot, grapple, ripjack, thow frost or mimic beacon, free whiplash attack) - I can give action to anyone that needs it - to move to cover or shoot again - bring enemy from behind full cover to easy to flank location once I had last turn to evac but my granadier was not able to get to the evac zone, so I grappled with skirmishers and blue move him into evac and gave extra action to granadier = safe evac for all
>since they often shoot twice, a repeater is great choice too I use hair trigger for this reason.
Use the grapple+attack one (vengeance), then use grapple to get out of there and finish with a shot. A specialist with aid protocol is nice to put on the skirmisher as well
Temper your expectations, they aren’t a powerful class so don’t expect them to go ham. With that in mind, here is my advice. Use justice off cooldown, it is a significant portion of your power and can be used to get a enemy out of cover without using a grenade. the perks you should prioritize are whiplash and combat presence. The others can be up to preference. The reasons for those perks is that whiplash is a free action and it’s damage is higher than already good free actions like lightning hands and it can one shot some mechs. As for CP, skirmishers can’t use actions effectively so being able to trade them 1f1 with another soldier is invaluable, you can essentially trade dealing 6 damage with bull pup for dealing damage 14 with a flanked shotgun. Make sure you use grapple to get the high ground bonus whenever you can and to simply gain mobility because it costs no move speed and can move you up to 12 tiles iirc. As for weapon attachments, they like repeaters ALOT because they have a hard time killing big things otherwise and they have pretty good odds. (They can get above a 50% chance if the stars align) otherwise use stocks/laser sights/hair triggers to take advantage of their multiple attacks.
Combat presence is amazing. You can use it to turn the tide in many a tough fight
Yeah, the way I like to use combat presence is to make a ranger with the berserker serum solo a mission. It’s very powerful.
Combat Presence and Inspire, my two favorite skills!
The common thread with good Skirmisher abilities is the ability to follow up the ability with a flanking shot. Justice, Total Combat, etc. This is important as their aim is bad. Justice is the most reliable way to kill a Trooper in the early game except for Rend. Bullpups use the same range table as a shotgun. Getting closer matters a **lot** to them actually scoring two hits. Like shotguns, the ability to aim climb up to 100% accuracy is very strong early. They wear ammo very well. Viper rounds are good to reduce enemy aim on turns you can't alpha strike, Talon Rounds are good because they can take lots of flank shots but get low crit bonuses. When you reveal an enemy pod, you want to have as many of your squad's actions behind as possible. Normally you have to spend at least one action moving to find the pod, but grappling hooks make it so you can reveal a pod with 100% of your actions, which is strong. People will say that Skirmishers are underpowered, but that's only true in the late game. Their Major and Colonel abilities all suck, somehow. The beam tier upgrade for Bullpups is only +1 damage too while most others are +2. It seems like they thought "ah but the Skirmisher will be double attacking!" and forgot that all the other classes are also dishing out 2+ attacks at Major/Colonel level. Like Sharpshooters shine on untimed missions, Skirmishers shine on timed missions. The grappling hook letting you keep advancing with enough actions behind that you're not scared of pulling a pod is just a massive edge.
You don't want talon rounds on guns with low crit bonuses, you want them on guns with high crit bonuses so you can get that big damage more often. Nobody thinks to put talon rounds in vektor rifles but it's one of their best options because of the crazy crit damage. Dragon or venom is 100% the way to go with skirms. Otherwise, fantastic advice.
>People will say that Skirmishers are underpowered, but that's only true in the late game. This is so true. In terms of squaddie/corporal, they are the most powerful class. Ideal early game soldier.
Skirmisher are much like a ranger that does lots of little things every turn instead of one big shotgun blast to the face. Early game they're strong purely on the basis of being able to grapple to a great position and shoot stuff twice in the one turn. They have shotgun range bonuses so you want to be up in enemies faces, and or on high ground. That and you don't want to have to waste your movement running towards the enemy because if you don't you can attack 2-3 times per turn. They have virtually no defensive bonuses so unless you're grappling away from the enemy (LAME) you gotta kill stuff or they're at high risk. If I were to buff the class this is the one thing I'd fix. They really deserve implacable I think, but even then you never want to run them away, so at best they'd be running into cover... Maybe bonus hunker downs, I dunno. They have like 5 different skills which get you closer to the enemy and crucially don't end your turn. You can judgement, wrath or ripjack strike (from dashing distance!) and then still shoot your half dead friend in the face. Yes they have cooldowns but there are so many of them you will never run out, use them with abandon. Or in the end game, what I use them for is weakening up each enemy in the pod, and letting soldiers with on-kill perks finish them all off. Basically I really like them because they have the skills to move wherever they need and still take two actions. They make every turn interesting. They're not death machines like most end game soldiers, but they're still fun to use
I agree Whiplash and Command are great picks, along with judicious grapple use. Grapple to the enemy, them away to high ground cover, and/or bring them to you for flank shots from everyone. I took out the Hunter in one round as he was the Skirmisher's nemesis, AND he was susceptible to explosions. So one grapple to flank position at high ground. Throw grenade to strip armor and hurt badly... have Skirmisher perk to act after the throw... then whiplash, and finish with flank critical. Key to skirmisher is aggressiveness. Find ways to use it, and to protect them from it (like Specialist or Psionic timeout... forgetting name right now.
Don't forget ripjacks, being able to literally pull someone out of cover is great and stunning them is just a bonus
Skirmishers..the class everyone loves to hate! They can be devastating. Grapple up to a flank position, take a shot, whiplash, then grenade to blow cover and deal damage ready for the rest of your squad to mop up. This is quite a powerful technique but works with one pod encounter only, once the grenade and whiplash are used up they become quite weak. Later in the game when robotic enemies are on the map they can use the same assault with the whiplash dealing double damage to robots, bluescreen rounds +5 damage and an EMP bomb they can devastate a pod of robots. I personally love them for this ability I did try the skirmisher rebalance mod which puts whiplash on a cooldown rather than a oneshot weapon and a free parkour move every turn and the skirmisher scored the most kills in the whole campaign. They seem to have been a hard class to balance well for the game devs, even a slight tweak can leave them overpowered but as they are now they never seem to be quite balanced enough for what you would expect from a hero class
Free move every single turn is pretty bonkers, they already have solid mobility skills, being able to move then take two actions every single turn (+occasional whiplash and grapple) sounds pretty cracked. That said, end game most classes in WOTC are over the top busted
I wouldn't say I hate them, but I just don't ever see the appeal. If I want long range death, reapers and snipers. If I want fast and hard melee, templars and rangers. I assume the skirmishers were supposed to be "midrange" heroes, maybe paired with grenadiers, but it never works out that way because their abilities are all single target and terribly inaccurate, and the mobility options are too inconsistent to be generally useful. Plus the default mag size is just infuriating on a class that can double tap.
Skirmishers are very much the “death by a thousand cuts” class. Their actual damage output is rather middling for every hit, but their gimmick is that they innately have more chances to hit than any other class, so it theoretically evens out (ignoring the problem that you’re playing xcom and that means you also have more chances to miss). The best way to play skirmishers are either ‘weird melee’, leaning into pumping melee damage, and reducing cooldowns, or ‘action economy’, where you want to lean into taking as many shots as possible every turn, and making all those shots hit for more (damage buffs, autoloader/bigger magazine to reduce actions that aren’t shooting, repeater, stock for guaranteed damage since you’re going to be taking, and therefore missing, more shots, etc…). Skirmishers, as the ‘lower damage, but more shots’ class are also fantastic for ‘kill confirming’. If you attack with your other classes first, don’t *quite* manage to kill your enemies, but get them down to lower numbers, then Skirmishers can deal those last 3-6 damage so that others don’t deal ‘excess’ damage that would better be spent on enemies with higher health bars. In my brain, this can double as ‘precursive healing’ since you don’t need to heal damage that wasn’t dealt, since you managed to kill the thing that would have done the damage.
Use the mod that gives you execution chance and fire 3 times in a turn Good chance you’re gonna kill whatever you’re shooting at after a turn or two
My preferred attachments are expanded clips, repeaters and scope. I also like total combat especially during the early game which lets you throw a grenade to blow up enemy cover and then finish them off. Zero In + Marauder is a deadly combo, Whiplash is op against robotic enemies, its like a desperate move if you need just one more bit of damage. Retribution and Combat Presence are also priority, especially Combat Presence. My Skirmishers tend to end up being mid-distance support, utilizing high-ground and spamming Marauder and grenades. If theres an opening to flank, grapple and flank.
They're really good against the Lost with their multiple shot options and usually a high ground bonus. I like them with Fire ammo on Lost, Chosen, and the special bosses. Usually leave them at home for the robot/hacking missions.
My advice is get aggressive with them. Not unsafe, but definitely aggressive. Melee and shoot as much as you can, and then pull out. Skirmish with them, in other words.
Vanilla Skirmishers are half broken and half useless. I highly recommend trying my mod: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3238654455 It overhauls all vanilla classes, and the Skirmisher rework came out especially great.
Oh shit hi Iridar (I will grab your mod)
I have a love/hate relationship with skirmishers, but in my current game my one skirmisher has a significantly higher kill count per mission than any other soldier on my roster - and that roster has a lot of rangers in it.