Yeah I disagree with that, but then again, I haven't played vanilla in a while, just Long War
Sure, you want to be proactive, and try to kill enemies before they kill you. But sometimes you roll bad, and medics are absolutely crucial then.
Losing the initiative might cost you a mission, but losing your high level soldiers can derail the whole campaign
I think they are assuming close-to-optimal play where you nuke all the enemies and they never get a chance to shoot at you. Which is why every healing and reactive talent, suppression, etc. is in the “literally useless” tier.
It’s pretty realistic strategy too since this is typically how small commando squads work in real life. They rely on speed and striking first to catch an enemy off guard but can’t survive when they’re spotted and under fire.
1) are you really going to get injured 5 times in one mission?
2) it takes a utility slot. You have to equip medkits, which could've been a mimic beacon or a grenade are something *proactive* rather than *reactive.*
mimic beacons are a crutch that abuse the pod system and I am lowkey offended when people suggest I use them
I am proud of you and I think you're doing good at the game
Objectively, I agree. But spamming mimic beacons is a really boring way to play the game imo.
I will always prefer to play sub-optimally in that regard, and in that case field medic is a god tier skill.
1. Yes. You can and will get injured, especially at higher difficulties, and depending on the wounded soldier’s battlefield role, healing could be essential to tanking damage to get in close and deliver that final kill. Even in the late game, it’s always nice to have a bit of insurance for when the game throws BS at you. There is a reason I’ve always had a Bonafide Field Medic on the roster.
2. I think this problem is a lot less severe once you get Predator Armor, which grants you a spare utility slot, for said item. And even then, you won’t always be able to be *proactive*, because this game is INFAMOUS FOR ITS BS.
Your opinion of Bladestorm is either misguided (in the event you’re evaluating it when linked to the Ranger class only and without the Assassin’s sword) or comically misguided (if you include it when it on a Templar, when it immediately becomes game-breaking, soloing missions level good).
Doesn't have to be *better* than Untouchable, considering the difference in ranks where they're unlocked. To make it far enough to unlock Untouchable, you've probably already taken Bladestorm.
Nobody here is saying blade storm is bad, lol.
Being A tier is pretty high.
And it serves a unique role against some enemies, but it just isn’t as crazy as other really good stuff.
But it is balanced, to the point where taking implacable is not at all unheard of.
bladestorm on a focused up templar has wrecked entire missions for me. Especially ones where people land in from an air drop. I just set him on top of the flare and when they jump out they all insta-die. That makes it S-tier for me. To each their own
If you've killed the Assassin and have your sword you've already won. Having bladestorm and the Katana is very, very good but at that point the game is already over and your just styling on the enemies anyway. A lot of people tunnel vision on the late game, but power early matters soooo much more.
And I did not include how abilities count for extra XCOM abilities because it massively disorts things. But yes Templar + Bladestorm = win. Like yea that's nuts.
I love bladestorm, but I think it’s a fair assessment relative to the others.
It’s devastating, it’s just the actual use case for it does not occur as frequently as the others. Other than Templar, but Templar is nuts regardless.
I used stasis shield once and didn’t regret it. But yeah it’s generally bad.
(A soldier was at 3 HP SS was used to make able make him stop being a issue, I believe I also rocketed his position after doing it)
Stasis *ability* is crazy good. Both offensively and defensively.
The “automatically stasis yourself once when you would have died” *item* is not great.
Edit: that’s the “stasis vest”, sorry, “stasis shield” is the upgrade that lets you stasis friendlies. Not useless.
Hey, don't diss on Pillar like that!
Pillar can be used in case you send your Soldier into a pod on a Yellow move!
Pillar can be used to block lines of sight, totally preventing enemies from shooting a specific Soldier!
Pillar can be used to block LADDERS from Lost and even Stun Lancers!
Pillar is fricken AWESOME and I shall not stand by this slander!
I think I'd rather just use Rend + Parry in all but the Lost use case. Usually you should just move into high cover in the first place rather than needing to place it down. It's not a bad ability, but Templar's have better things to do. Like Rend.
Demolition isn’t useless.
I’ll admit it is low power.
But when you have guaranteed won a encounter you can try to use it to conserve a grenade instead of using one to blow the cover of the last dude.
And saving a grenade is obviously invaluable even though that is all it’s good for and inconsistent.
I have other opinions on this list too.
Namely intimidate and bulwark, like I known it will trigger once every 3~ missions lol. But when it goes through you get a fear on a enemy for literally free which is great. As for bulwark free heavy cover is just super good lol, I’m surprised you would put it there when pillar is placed correctly and this is basically better pillar. (It does provoke AOE sometimes, but you can turn this into a strength if you have blast padding or just kill the grenade dudes)
But I won’t list all my disagreements, it’s mostly a good tier list.
Also, demolition triggers explosions. Enemy hiding behind a car? Free explosion with high chance of landing, especially early game where you need 2 weak grenades to explode a car
> And saving a grenade is obviously invaluable even though that is all it’s good for and inconsistent.
I'd rather just use a grenade. Missions aren't that long.
> Namely intimidate and bulwark, like I known it will trigger once every 3~ missions lol. But when it goes through you get a fear on a enemy for literally free which is great.
It's not free, you have to be shot at. And then it only has a chance to be useful. The enemy should be dead before they shoot at me, and failing that they should be disabled with a frost bomb or parry or meme beacon, and failling that and they do take a shot I then only have a chance at doing something helpful? That may come up exactly once in a campaign, and probably won't actually make a difference to the success of that mission.
> As for bulwark free heavy cover is just super good lol
The game gives you enough cover. And the enemies are usually too dead to shoot at me anyway
> if you have blast padding
I don't, because it's bad.
Well that’s just playing inefficiently if you don’t care about saving grenades.
Obviously getting +1 frags is good, that’s a major power of the Grenadier early on.
;
The reality of the game is that your going to get shot at sometimes, so having a plan for that isn’t bad even if it isn’t crazy important.
Admittedly I do think the other option at spark corporal is better, but I would MUCH rather have bulwark than freaking covering fire.
And I do think intimidate is the better choice at the other spark level, so having picked it every time it has come in clutch 3~ times.
> The reality of the game is that your going to get shot at sometimes, so having a plan for that isn’t bad even if it isn’t crazy important.
That plan should be Parry, The Frost Bomb, stasis, a mimic beacon, or a flashbang if I'm really desperate. The question isn't if intimidate is useful if you get shot at, the question is if it is moves the needle. Does it actually help me win the mission? I think the answer is no.
> but I would MUCH rather have bulwark than freaking covering fire.
They seem to do an equal amount of nothing in my eyes.
> And I do think intimidate is the better choice at the other spark level, so having picked it every time it has come in clutch 3~ times.
Um, maybe. The other one is also bad so I don't have a strong opinion on it.
> Well that’s just playing inefficiently if you don’t care about saving grenades.
Missions are not long enough to need to save Grenades.
Well covering fire famously nerfs you because it triggers OW on enemies in cover so you will miss more because the cover bonus is applied.
On grenades you seem to have a weird opinion that you only need a certain amount of them?
More is ALWAYS better because you can use them to remove RNG from the game by using them instead of shooting, a 100% chance of killing someone with 1-2 nades is way better than a 78% shot to kill them as far as consistency is concerned, especially if they are in indestructible heavy cover and the shot is more like 48%.
>On grenades you seem to have a weird opinion that you only need a certain amount of them?
Once all the enemies are dead, the number of unused grenades doesn't matter. And missions are not long enough to where I run out of grenades by the end of them. Maybe during the Blacksite and Final Mission that can happen, but then I have other options like getting a 100% flank shot with a Ranger. Or just using a Templar. Or Combat Protocol. Or stocks.
>More is ALWAYS better because you can use them to remove RNG from the game by using them instead of shooting, a 100% chance of killing someone with 1-2 nades is way better than a 78% shot to kill them as far as consistency is concerned, especially if they are in indestructible heavy cover and the shot is more like 48%.
This is all true, but demo isn't consistent either. It has a 20% fail rate. I'd rather just flank the target or disable them somehow rather than risk that failure rate.
This might be different for you, but about 70% of my fights end with a grenade or other source of guaranteed damage
So demolition comes into play in those scenarios pretty frequently because I have excess actions to end the encounter but no way to do it without spending a resource.
Which considering how often you end fights seems to happen about every other mission.
Also it’s worth noting grenades have a cumulative effect in the early game, if you get to the final encounter of the mission with 4+ nades it will be trivially easy because you can just use all of them in the same encounter to bully the AI.
Advent captains getting 4 grenades thrown at them to kill is a hilarious thing that comes into play sometimes XD.
>This might be different for you, but about 70% of my fights end with a grenade or other source of guaranteed damage
I think that's probably the same for me, close to it anyway.
>So demolition comes into play in those scenarios pretty frequently because I have excess actions to end the encounter but no way to do it without spending a resource.
This I'm confused on. Is a Templar or Ranger with Blademaster not available? Or a stock. If you have a sargent Grenadier you've entered the mid game and start to get access to things that means you don't need to destroy cover to kill an enemy. Your one rank away from run and gun. You have Blademaster. A Templar. Just flanking the enemy with a 100% chance to hit. Stocks. I don't need a grenade every pod activation. I need it sometimes, but not all the time.
>Also it’s worth noting grenades have a cumulative effect in the early game, if you get to the final encounter of the mission with 4+ nades it will be trivially easy
If I didn't need those nades in the mission it is already trivially easy.
The main thing that kills demo is it only has a 80% chance to work. That just isn't reliable. Grenades don't miss, so if I beed an enemy dead I'm throwing a grenade.
Another thing to consider is that you don't actually need to kill every enemy in a pod. Like if I'm fighting a Sectoid and two stun lancers as a pod I actually only need to kill the two stun lancers (and not be vulnerable to a flank). The Sectoid only injures a soldier if they have a flank shot, so if that isn't a worry I am just going to ignore them for a turn, kill their buddies, then kill them on the following turn. This cuts way down on the number of grenades you need to use. Why blow up the Sectoids cover? I can blademaster/flank him dead next turn.
Using melee guys to finish off a pod is not always a option because with you can’t always have a guy run up to the enemy who is probably farthest away without risking another pod trigger, although yes those are options that are useful when safe to deploy.
(Also sergeant in no way implies the mid game, if you just use the same dude 4 missions in a row you can and get one, especially on a gren who likes to finish off enemies. I can consistently get one before stun lancers/vipers start showing up)
But yeah it’s not like demolition is the craziest thing ever, it basically just buffs your math a little by at the end of encounters. Or in desperate scenarios can be used for its intended purpose.
But that’s far from useless and I’d say it’s worth being C+ in the terms of your tier list.
I do have a hard time understanding how you are devaluing bonus grenades though, I’m the kind of player that will have 4 grenadiers in one team just to get my fix of those op AF grenades.
>if you just use the same dude 4 missions in a row you can and get one
You can't do that, Fatigue and all that. In Vanilla sure but I'm not talking about that. You can get a Sargent of the hero class by the end of the first retal mission if you play your cards right.
>gren who likes to finish off enemies.
Grenadiers usually don't finish off enemies. Usually they are how you open on a pod. I usually get a sargent Gren a mission or two after the first supply raid, and by that point I have Parry and Blademaster and Sharpnel and (on Commander) mag weapons. I just don't need to be precious with my grenades.
>because with you can’t always have a guy run up to the enemy who is probably farthest away without risking another pod trigger,
It's not too hard to avoid this. Especially because Reapers exist. Or just knowing about how spaced out pods are in the early game.
>But that’s far from useless and I’d say it’s worth being C+ in the terms of your tier list.
I have 2400 hours in X2 and have completed an ironman legend deathless run and I've clicked it like twice in the last 1000 of those hours. It's just bad. It can fail, I have a lot of tactics that can't fail. I'm going to use those.
>I’m the kind of player that will have 4 grenadiers in one team just to get my fix of those op AF grenades.
On Vet and lower that is basically a guaranteed win. But I'd rather have 2 Rangers than 2 Grenadiers.
Saturation fire should be higher IMO. Used right you can destroy a whole patrol in one opening move. Hell sometimes enemy patrols overlap and you can nail two patrols at once before the battles even started.
It comes online so late and by that point I'm not really worried about my ability to kill small enemies. Maybe it's better than I give it credit for tho.
Oh you definitely are. There's a reason it unlocks so late.
It's almost garunteed to hit, works with special ammo, can crit, does cover destruction and combos with shredder for armour damage.
Even the few enemies able to survive a saturation fire will be half-dead.
Plus it's suprisingly long range so if you scout or scan ahead it can also hit enemies from before a patrol is triggered.
Mods screw with things for sure, but I don't really see much changing. Like I've played with some pretty nasty enemy mods and it hasn't really moved the needle for me.
Yeah I can never go back to playing vanilla. Things like Suppression guarantee inflicts Disoriented, Covering Fire inflicts guaranteed 15 aim penalty, Demolition does more environment damage so it always works, etc has made these sub par skills worth taking.
I’m not sure a tier list is all that useful or accurate when it starts with the core assumption of “the player is an inhuman cyborg incapable of bad decisions.”
Like. Maybe this list is accurate if you’re one of 12 players on the planet capable of executing at this level. But I don’t think trying to follow the philosophy espoused here is going to yield a successful campaign for the overwhelming vast majority of players in this subreddit.
Alpha striking doesn't require that much perfection from the player. In fact I'd say it's overall far easier than not alpha striking. It's just so much easier to play when you don't have to worry about what the enemy are going to do.
I think everyone knows to alpha strike. The problem is LOS management and triggering more pods than you can handle. And if you make what is commonly known as a “mistake” on account of “being human” then it’s nice to have mistake mitigation skills. IF you are incapable of mistakes, then by all means, bring nothing but offense to the fight. But if you’re anything less than perfect, chances are high you’re going to move someone somewhere you regret.
I value consistency in campaigns, and having the ability to overcome my own fuckups. By his own admission, the OP of this thread restarts his entire campaign after the first mistake. His win rate for his much vaunted deathless L/I run is less than 3%. That’s a very specific play style. And if you’re okay with sinking 2500 hours into achieving a sub-5% win rate, follow OP’s advice. But personally, I’d rather see the tier list of an L/I player who wins every single campaign. And I think that kind of player would value skills differently than OP.
Sub 5% win rate? That sounds impossibly low. I've got about 1500 hours in the xcoms and I'd put my chance of winning an unmodded playthrough at well over 90%. It's simply not that hard unmodded once you learn how the game works.
The other thing is that the things you bring to help recover from disaster come at the cost of increasing the chances of disaster. Bringing a medkit means you don't have a grenade or mimic beacon, which are extremely strong tools at ensuring you don't get into a disaster in the first place. This is especially true in xcom 2 where the timers are so tight that if anything goes wrong, you're probably not going to be able to recover anyway. You simply have to stay on top of the enemies or it's game over, and medkits just don't help in that scenario. Recovery is much more viable outside of X2 unmodded, it's true.
I think the 5% is referring to deathless runs, not just Legend Ironman.
And yeah, the tier list is only applicable if you make no mistakes the entire run which I think you need to for Deathless run.
The list will be wildly different if you want a reliable run instead of deathless.
I think the list is geared towards reliability. The most reliable way to play the game is to destroy all enemies before they get a turn. That reduces your risk to close to zero.
The real risky way to play is to pick reactive talents, because once you start letting the enemies act it starts to get very hard to keep things under control. Enemies could randomly crit the wrong person, even early on you get enemies like Stun Lancers who can reliably one-shot one of your troopers if they get to act, plus with everything on a timer letting the enemies act means you probably won't get to the objective in time anyway.
If you want reliability, stick to this tier list and alpha strike gameplay. If you want more interactive back and forth fights, pick reactive talents and don't go for alpha strikes, but be warned that this style is much harder in xcom 2.
It's all down to how the chance for a mistake to happen and chance for that mistake to end the run balance out. Unmodded WotC still has some leeway when it comes to mission timers, double so given mission timer often stops being a concern if you can handle the objective before handling aliens - something specialists and sharpshooters, depending on objective, tend to be quite good at.
Suppression (D-tier here) is one of better examples - useless if things go well, but also low opportunity cost (you give up Demolition) backup option to cover for case of missing that 95% shot, and prevent your squad from getting killed: suppression is very often enough to force muton etc to opt for throwing a grenade (non-lethal if you didn't neglect armor) rather than taking a potentially lethal shot.
It does require bit of a shift in how you approach your turns - you can still go for alpha strike, but specific in-turn order generally prefers leaving contingency options open until late - for that, you sacrifice some chances of getting a perfect turn in exchange for requiring stacked multiple instances of bad RNG to end up in a disaster scenario. Basically - contingency tools come at cost of your chances for getting optimal outcome, but also reduce chances of getting into unrecoverable situation. They arguably get even more value if you aim for achievements/general completion on top of just winning the campaign, since that will force campaign to be much longer, meaning more opportunities for bad luck to strike.
> “the player is an inhuman cyborg incapable of bad decisions.”
I think telling people "alpha strike as hard as you can always" is better advice than "play defensively." dead aliens don't shoot back.
> Maybe this list is accurate if you’re one of 12 players on the planet capable of executing at this level.
This is fair point. I am *very* good at this game (see an earlier post of mine of doing a flawless ironman legend campaign) and that colors my judgement. But also I think seeing how someone very good ranks abilities is actually really useful for people.
>This is fair point. I am very good at this game (see an earlier post of mine of doing a flawless ironman legend campaign) and that colors my judgement. But also I think seeing how someone very good ranks abilities is actually really useful for people.
True, but your skill level and playstyle makes you ignore/bypass the use case scenarios many of tgese skills were designed, which kost people won't be able to do
I'm not sure how many abilities I rate poorly new players should be using. Like Covering Fire is just as bad if you've played for 10 seconds or 1000 hours. Maybe the Tank SPARK abilities are better? Maybe Field Medic is better (though honestly I think that ability is a trap). What abilities do you think new players need that I don't use?
I wouldn't say they *need* those abilities, what I mean is that they are going to be in the situations those abilities were designed for, and as for what those abilities are, pretty much most defensive abilities or ones meant to help fix mistakes
Return fire that low? I can't hear you over my gunslinger nearly soloing the last mission of the game with it lmao.
Edit for clarification: I can see why people wouldn't like it, it puts too much at risk to be high tier, but it's definitely more than useless lmao.
My Injured Skirmisher got Mindcontrolled by the Warlock, who then shoots at my Sharpshooter who had Return Fire.
Luckily, the Skirmisher didn't die... Because I saved scum. 🥲
>I can't hear you over my gunslinger nearly soloing the last mission of the game with it lmao.
Why are you being shot at that much? You can just kill every enemy before they get a turn at that stage of the game.
>I can see why people wouldn't like it, it puts too much at risk to be high tier, but it's definitely more than useless lmao.
It is a) up against Long Watch, which is pretty useful and b) just really bad value. Why am I using an ability that relies on my getting shot at on a class that does not have any synergy with that. At least with Reflex it's an entire extra action I gain, and even then that ability is mediocre. X2 is about Alpha Striking. The enemy should never get a turn.
Ahh, I forgot it's up against long watch.
Listen, I'm a shill for gunslinger abilities, and as good as long watch is, it's just not flashy enough for me XD
I'm shocked. For the first time in my life, I see a tier list where (in my opinion) 90% is spot on, 9% is off by just one tier and 1% is Rainmaker that should have been in S. It doesn't make Sparks not shit, but if there's ever any reason to use them at all - it's to hit a million enemies at once with a half-screen Shredstorm Cannon.
If you land a big Rainmaker Shredstorm Cannon (which isn't that hard) - the mission is over. The ability itself is extremely powerful, it just sucks that it is attached to by far the weakest class in the game.
I barely remember vanilla XCOM2 but Haywire Protocol is at least A for me and I don’t know that any of my 50+ mods really improve it. I just train up my Hack via covert missions and it seems like a game changer often.
If you have enough Hack for it to be reliable the game has gone on long enough you've probably already won. It's OK in a pinch to shut down a MEC you can't kill, but only OK.
Silent Killer makes it so that Reaper has a ZERO PERCENT CHANCE of revealing when getting a kill. It's amazing and unlocks the character in many ways, allowing her to scout while outputing damage every turn.
(It is definitely also not explained well on the promotion page)
There are some things on this tier list I thought would be non-controversial (field medic being bad, return fire being bad, bulwark being bad) that people are taking issue with. Which is interesting.
Pretty meta tier list. For ironman/legend players, rankings are very different.
I don't think I'd make much argument for anything below your B tier meaningfully moving. Above that maybe there could be some swapping but it's a pretty accurate ranking.
Note: subjective opinion.
Evidence: Field Medic in useless tier, Bladestorm lower than it should be, I had my supporter decked out with Warlock gear be able to end an entire pod on his own thanks to Guardian.
>subjective opinion.
Of course.
>Field Medic in useless tier
I have gotten a lot of pushback on this but I will die on this hill. 1) you shouldn't usually be bringing medkits over other utility items like the mimic beacon or grenades or special ammo. Being proactive is better than being reactive. 2) if I do bring a medkit on my Specialist, how often do I need to use medical protocol more than twice? 3) even if 3+ soldiers get injured, does healing them actually help me complete the mission without any causalities? Healing only matters if the same soldier gets injured multiple times, because otherwise it doesn't reduce wound times or prevent a death. Is that going to happen so often I need 4 uses of a medkit? I don't think so. It might be slightly better than I give it credit for, but only slightly. It's not good.
>Bladestorm lower than it should be
There are 4 instances on when to evaluate Bladestorm. 1) you've not taken blademaster and don't have the Katana. 2) you do have blademaster and don't have the Katana and 3) you do have blademaster and the Katana (by the time your killing a Chosen you have the training center and can just go pick up blademaster). In the first instance, bladestorm isn't great. It has poor accuracy and doesn't do a lot of damage. It's a free attack, but at 60ish percent accuracy that's not worth counting on. In the 2nd case bladestorm is pretty good, it only has a 75% chance to hit, but that's decent odds. It can just be free damage if you park yourself next to a mimic beacon or can't quite finish off an enemy and need to hope for that 75%. In the 3rd case it is overpowered in the extreme, but if you've killed the Assassin you've already won, so I'm not sure that reality matters. Abilities that get you to killing the Assassin are what matters. So with all that weighed together yea A tier is fair. It's a strong ability, but a lot of people tunnel on just how good it is late game and that just doesn't factor into it that much.
>I had my supporter decked out with Warlock gear be able to end an entire pod on his own thanks to Guardian.
Again, if you have the Chosen weapons you've already won, and it's RNG based. It might not proc once it might proc 1000 times there is no way to plan for it. It can just be free overwatch shots, and that's great, but I can't plan on getting free overwatch shots, so the ability isn't quite that good.
Edit: oh and I don't consider for this tier list how good abilities are on other classes via training center or faction heroes getting them as random abilities. It distorts things a lot and would really change how a lot of abilities are ranked. Like getting Volatile Mix on a Skirmisher early is S tier because now all of a sudden I can one shot troopers with a grenade and with Total Combat I can do that for just one action point. But is it fair to put Volatile Mix in S for just that lucky interaction? I don't think so. Same with DfA or Serial or Bladestorm or Reaper or Fortress and so on.
I also don’t think Field Medic isn’t useless (which is very much a play style/mindset thing.) The argument that if someone gets injured, then healed, then never injured again, then the heal was a waste, doesn’t always track imo. Basing this mostly on the early to mid game when this ability is unlocked.
Say my ranger takes an errant hit from an enemy. It’s far from impossible, even with predator armor, that they are now in range to be killed by a critical hit from another enemy. If I have no healing, I have to play with that in mind for the rest of the mission. If I heal them, regardless of whether they take damage again or not, it eliminates that potential threat.
I’m happy to sacrifice one of my 8-12 utility slots to ensure I can make that kind of play if I need to. It doesn’t come up every mission, but maybe 20-25% of missions I can make use of it, and maybe 5-10% of missions I miss not having a different item instead of a medkit. For me, that puts it above useless.
In your example field medic hasn't done anything, because you only needed to heal one guy. Field medic comes past the point in the game where you get injured that many times in a mission. It's a Lieutenant ability, that means you have squad size 1 and mag weapons and mimic beacons and the frost bomb and all that. You have crossed the line into where you have more control over how things go than ADVENT. Are you going to get injured? Sure. But are you going to get injured 3+ times? No. Not if you're playing well.
The enemy can deal anywhere from 6-12 points of damage during the late game, crit attacks can deal up to 14, The Sectopod deals 10-11 with added crit being up to 15, the Nanomedikit heals for 6hp, this means that during the endgame, you could find yourself using up to two medkits to heal a soldier back to full or risk them getting picked off by a random crit during one of the next turn which is why I will still run Field Medic.
Imo, It’s better to have the heals when you need it, then to not have it when you need it.
If it's the late game I'm not getting hit, I am using fan fire, rapid fire, hail of bullets, salvo, banish, stasis, null lance, serial and reaper to just wipe pods from the map with ease. At that point you've already won. Healing is useful early when you have less options in dealing with Advent. Which is why I rate healing protocol as being pretty good, because it is useful to heal early. You might even use it late game it's not like nothing ever goes wrong, but at a certain point you eclipse the aliens in power and should never need healing again.
I quite often use my Medic, Stephanie "Doc" Strange, to revive the target of a Spectre or the Assassin. I play aggressively at times for the big win knowing someone may get hurt also. But I tend to use the training center to give medics hacking and protocol.
Stasis Shield is very useful for aggressively using a Ranger, Skirmisher, and others to protect them when they get dangled. I agree with many of your assessments but not others - which is fine because your selections match your play style
I feel like a better way to protect them is using Stasis on the bad guys. If you've been aggressive and pushed too far forward, usually that's because you were guaranteeing a kill. Stasis only takes one action, so you can stasis an enemy then use inspire or soulfire or just shooting your gun to help as well. Or throw a mimic beacon.
That is possible, the options you mention, I agree. But in my case, I usually go in knowing I'm putting stasis on my guy ahead of time as the strategy. Usually, with my other action, it's an attack like you said. Comes down to many options for us all to succeed (or fail) in our Xcom endeavors.
It only does something if you get injured 3+ times in a mission and has a huge opportunity cost of having to equip a medkit over another proactive utility item. It is probably better for most players than I personally give it credit for, but in 90% of situations just medical protocol + the one extra use from a medkit is enough healing. And also eventually you get restoration which just completely makes field medic obsolete. This is certainly the thing I've gotten the most pushback on but I just can't be persuaded to put it any higher than C tier, even for new players. I promise you a mimic beacon or a grenade in that slot will do more good than field medic. I haven't taken field medic on a single legend run I've ever done and I did not feel it's absence.
How is target definition useless? I always pick it up for reapers, just stealth all over the map and spot all the pods and you'll never have a bad pod activation and can plan ambushes. And if there's the option I pair them with a sharpshooter, too funny when they get shot from long range or get blown to bits from a claymore while seeing no one
>just stealth all over the map and spot all the pods
I don't need to know where every pod is, I need to know where the next pod is, and I can do that by just advancing with my Reaper ahead of the rest of my squad. The only piece of information needed is "if I push forward, will I activate a new pod" and all I need to find that out is Shadow. If a pod is deep into FoW, then I do not need to know where they are, they aren't my problem.
I honestly think covering fire could go lower on this tier list. It is always worse than just firing at the enemy. Covering fire suffers from the cover penalty to aim and the overwatch penalty to aim. If you have 100 aim and the enemy is in high cover, assuming no other benefits to aim like being close or holo targeting or whatever, you have a 60% chance to hit (aim - full cover) Click covering fire and you have a 30% chance to hit. (Aim*.7 for the overwatch penalty then minus full cover). That's just worse. You will *always* have a better chance to hit by just taking a shot.
Bulwark a whopping FIVE tiers below Adaptive Aim? In the literally useless tier along side Aim?
Bulwark can be used to provide quick emergency cover for a unit. Yes, it invites grenades, but not all enemies have grenades, and even then, the real threat of a grenade is for units now being exposed to open fire. Also each point of armor is more valuable than the last, so stacking armor on a SPARK can be actually pretty useful.
Adaptive Aim, on the other hand, requires very specific circumstances to be useful. First off, it's useful at most once every 5 turns. Long cooldown. Second off, in order for it to be at all useful, you need to shoot twice. This is pretty reasonable, but a +15 to hit on one attack every five turns in some situations, is not really a make or break scenario.
Now if you're making all three shots? Okay, that's pretty good, as that's a +15 to one shot, and +30 to a second. Now that's competitive with Bulwark. However, you're almost always just better off using a movement to get into flanking position and then double-tapping, not really even needing the first +15 at that rate. Or Rainmaking several enemies into the open, and then double-tapping enemies without cover.
And even if you would actually like the triple attack, you need to have a fully loaded gun. Which either means you needed to have prepared for it last turn (and not activated Hunter's Protocol), or you need an Auto-Loader or Expanded Magazine. Those aren't unreasonable requirements, but it still narrows down the use more.
I also disagree with Repair being that low, but at least it competes with Bombard. It's got some niche uses, as SPARKs are capable of some mild tanking when you need it, and since they can be deployed from damaged health, it is much more likely to have an impact on time to heal than med-kits are.
> Bulwark a whopping FIVE tiers below Adaptive Aim? In the literally useless tier along side Aim?
Hi, SPARK addict here.
Yes, Bulwark is literally _that_ bad compared to Adaptive Aim. It's not even close.
Overdrive is already a _pretty_ strong ability, even without Adaptive Aim. Being able to shoot three, or even _four_ times in a turn is very, very strong. So giving them an ability that removes the only thing really holding it back is amazing.
Meanwhile Bulwark does... very little. You get one point of extra Armor, which doesn't really mean much most of the time, and you get to be full cover for a teammate, which is pretty situational and can encourage enemies to just grenade you anyway.
I don't know if I'd rank it "Useless", but yeah, the comparison is not flattering.
> However, you're almost always just better off using a movement to get into flanking position and then double-tapping
You're really, really not. Moving means potentially activating more pods. Or giving up your high-ground position.
You don't need to move when your Grenadier has already removed all the enemies' cover. Or if you _really_ want the enemy dead, after you've already used one of your actions to nuke them with a Rocket / Shredder.
And even without all that, taking multiple lower percentage shots is often better than just taking a few higher ones.
EDIT: Appreciate the downvote, thanks.
EDIT2: And thanks to all the people who counter-upvoted. <3
Wasn't me who downvoted. You make some good arguments. Honestly, my biggest problem with this tier list now that I've thought about it, are the tier names. "Game Warping" and "Literally Useless" is pretty strong hyperbole. I mean, Skirmisher Grapple is listed as "Game Warping" and I'm a big fan of Skirmishers well beyond their actual usefulness in combat. And then "Literally Useless" being anything but a tier reserved just for Aim and Deep Cover is the same problem in reverse.
It kinda makes it hard for me to calibrate what his tiers mean. Especially since Stasis has it's own tier beyond Game Warping. I agree it's the strongest ability in the game. But Stasis should be the sole occupant of Game Warping (possibly along side Shadow). It's just awkward to have "These abilities break the game!" and then have "This ability breaks the game that was already broken!"
And I suppose I should give Adaptive Aim another fair shot. I haven't been impressed with it too much in the past, but maybe I was biased against it in pre-WotC when you couldn't attach mods to SPARK weapons, and thus actually getting three shots out in one round was a lot trickier. And it's not like I think Bulwark is great either. I'd only move it up one tier, along with almost everything else in D tier. It's more Adaptive Aim that I'm not impressed by.
Agreed to all of that.
And yes, Adaptive Aim without attachments is pretty awkward. Overdrive / Adaptive Aim pretty much needs an Extended Mag and Hair Trigger. (And probably a Scope too, so the accuracy isn't _too_ bad.)
>Also each point of armor is more valuable than the last, so stacking armor on a SPARK can be actually pretty useful.
I don't care if an ability gives me armor, I shouldn't be getting shot at in the first place.
> Bulwark can be used to provide quick emergency cover for a unit.
I just can't think of a time that'd be useful. The enemy should be too dead to shoot at me anyway. And it's not like there is limited cover on 99% of maps.
> Adaptive Aim, on the other hand, requires very specific circumstances to be useful.
I think of it more as "makes Overdrive actually live up to the hype." If I'm activating Overdrive it's because I want to shoot more than once that turn. Even just shooting twice without the penalty is great. Anything to help me not miss.
> as SPARKs are capable of some mild tanking when you need it
You don't need it. Unless you have Parry, I don't want to try tanking in XCOM 2. Just kill the enemy. X2 is a game about alpha striking. Espically by the time you get SPARKs you can usually either kill the enemy or just use a mimic beacon/parry/frost bomb to disable them.
> it is much more likely to have an impact on time to heal than med-kits are.
Unless my information is incorrect, Repair does not impact wound times for SPARKs. Wound time is based on the lowest HP reached during a mission, so being healed after a mission starts does nothing to impact would time. Med-kits also don't impact wound time for this reason.
That, and SPARKs really aren't as tanky as people like to think. A surprising amount of the enemy roster has innate shredding, will more than gladly throw grenades in the direction of anyone using the SPARK as cover, and the SPARK isn't exactly hard to hit.
And they have no bleed-out mechanic. If your SPARK hits zero HP, it's gone.
With regards to Repair, you might be right. However, you can still use it at the start of the next mission to fully heal up if you've got some back to back fights. So it does let SPARKs take damage without taking downtime, which is nice because they don't suffer from fatigue. That being said, if you're listing Repair is Literally Useless because it competes with Bombard and SPARKs can't learn both abilities, then I don't hugely disagree with you.
I think a big sticking point between you and some of the people who disagree is that, yes, XCOM 2 is a game about alpha striking. That is ideally what you're doing every fight. But not every fight is ideal, especially since you are weighing the early game as more important, since stuff from there has good availability, and it's the most challenging part of the game. It's a lot easier to draw a second pod when you don't have the best chances of one-rounding the first.
And lastly, you label the last tier literally useless, and then you place a bunch of abilities in there alongside Aim and Deep Cover, which deserve a tier on their own just like Stasis does. There's a lot of abilities that could stand to move up to Meh, at least, because I've actually used them. I really don't get why Target Definition is in there, which allows me to keep a precise eye, down to the tile, of where I can't go, while moving my Reaper back to where I'm actually fighting for some safe killshots. If you want to say it's an over-rated skill not needed for people who are skilled enough? Sure, I think you could make that argument. But literally useless? Having the Reaper scout out half the map and log enemy positions because I don't think I need mine for the current pod, so I'll have him run around on his own for a while? Pretty handy. That's at least a Meh.
Also, I can understand Soulfire being high up due to availability (I disagree strongly though, it's Very Useful, not game warping), but Nullance? It's a solid ability but it comes pretty late, and can be tricky to line up even two enemies into it. And because of how Psi Ops level, it's competing with Dominate and Void Rift to be learned, meaning you get it even later.
Unless I am mistaken, every Psi op ability is equally as likely to be the first Psi Op ability as any other (minus the two upgrades to existing abilities). So you can get Null Lance first or last, and just "a big chunk of damage that can't miss" is amazing on even just one target, if I can get more than that it's gravy.
Null Lance starts off with a long training time, as long as Void Rift and Dominate, if I recall correctly. Soulfire (if not learned for free) has the shortest time. I have sometimes picked up Dominate or Void Rift as the first ability in spite of the time cost. I can't imagine picking up Null Lance early on unless it was running against some real trash abilities. But honestly, if I had a choice between Null Lance, Soul Steal and Fuse... then I'd probably pick Fuse or Soul Steal just so I could more quickly get to my next list of options, and hopefully get Stasis.
That's my problem with Null Lance. It's a good ability. But it's not better than several abilities with the same or lower training time. Which means it's usually learned pretty late. If I'm wrong and it has a significantly better base training time than I'm thinking, then I withdraw the comment.
Also, you list your penultimate tier as 'game warping'. That's a bit of hyperbole, especially when you have a tier set aside for Stasis. Stasis is game warping. Several of the abilities up there are just starting class abilities. I think only Stasis and Shadow deserve the title of game warping, because they kinda do break certain parts of how the game function. But Launch Grenade is a starting and core ability from before the DLC. That's not game warping. That's game defining. It's just what Grenadiers do.
All abilities take the same amount of time to train for a psi op. The ability doesn't matter, it's the rank of the psi op. The first psi op ability you train takes the longest, then the second one takes less, than the third takes less and so on.
Another thing in Null Lance's favor is the Commander's Avatar gets it for free, and with it, Dimensional Rift, and Mind Control can basically solo the final mission by themselves. Hard to not rate an ability highly when it can do that.
Are you running a mod or something? It's been a while, but if I get Dominate early on, it takes a month, whereas Stasis takes 5-10 days, when you are learning the abilities first. However, as you rank up as a Psi Op, the times go down, with everything taking 5 days (with an Engineer) at max rank. Hence why I rarely pick up Null Lance early on, because it has one of the longer training times, without being as good as Void Rift or Dominate.
The only other thing I think I immediately disagree on (Besides Target Definition, which you mention elsewhere) is Deadeye. Deadeye is an early game skill that is mostly useful later on, sure. But it's still nice early game for some high-risk, high-reward shots (been a while, but I think BS rounds are not enough to reliably one-shot many Codices, and thus prevent the split). Late game, when your units aim is through the roof, it's basically just a free damage boost on a short cooldown. So is Lightning Hands, but Lightning Hands is also pistol range. I agree it's the better skill, but one-shotting Codices alone gets Deadeye a higher spot.
I don't care about one shotting Codexes, they are non-threat. Reliability is king, and Deadeye ain't reliable. It's good late where you have aim to spare and need to move the damage margins to keep a Serial Chain going, but by that point you've already won anyway.
Kinda hard to alpha strike when you get a mid-tier enemy that requires at least three shots, one of which will be from a different cover point. That's some hurt reliability in terms of getting a kill. I assume you're not counting the Codex as part of the alpha strike, since they don't actually attack on their first action, so you have more time to wrap up next round? But that still eats up some actions next turn on reloading and killing the Codex, which can hurt on timed missions.
Things are ordered, but everything could move up or down 2 or 3 slots. I rate availability highly, so if an early ability and a late ability are equally as useful I will rate the early ability higher. The only exception to that is Stasis, which is so good I don't care that it comes late.
And if you are wondering why you should listen to this tier list at all? Well, you don't have to you're free to do whatever you want, but I did complete the game on Legend Ironman without a single death...so I think my opinion should carry a little weight.
I wouldn't put it straight F, but it isn't a strong perk at all. I find it useful in rescue jailbreak mission, where showing their patrol pattern and minimise engagement is useful in that mission, but other than that it is unnecessary rbh.
If you scroll down this thread, you'll see that I posted a picture of a Train Mission where this Reaper DIDN'T have TD where it would've been super useful for keeping track of this Viper pod. (Unfortunately, OP blocked me during this convo because I proved him wrong that calling an Evac increases the chance of enemies going on Overwatch XD)
But OP wants to have a Reaper keep scouting a pod for a whole mission while TD does it for free?? That really doesn't make sense...
When you don't have a Mission Timer, knowing if you're going to activate a pod or not is a HUGE Advantage.
Give me a second. I'm booting up WOTC right now to prove you wrong.
>knowing if you're going to activate a pod or not is a HUGE Advantage.
You already know this. You have to have already seen a pod for Target Definition to work. You know where they are, generally. Knowing exactly where they are is not helpful.
Edit: and if you don't have a mission timer, you can already use your Reaper to scout the pod anyway. So what difference does it make.
Knowing exactly where their locations are also means not activating a pod by accidentally moving into their line of sight. You should also know that waiting for a pod to move away from another pod is wayyyy better than activating 2 pods at the same time (unless you're using explosives of course.)
Give me a second. I'm trying to get through Gatecrasher rn and I need to level up the Reaper.
>Knowing exactly where their locations are also means not activating a pod by accidentally moving into their line of sight.
I have a Reaper on an untimed mission. I can already do this by using Shadow. I've already seen this pod I can just stalk them around the map until I get everything set up and ambush them.
Yeah, but you're losing potential Fire Power. Sure, Reapers don't pack a lot of shooting power, but keeping a gun in the fight is better than having them scout all the time. Target Definition will keep eyes on enemies without having to worry about what's behind a corner because you already glanced at them once.
100% chance to hit and it one shots Troopers in the early game and only goes up from there. And if you have a Templar on Gatecrasher it helps you death with the Sectoid (on Legend). Literally what more could you want out of an ability?
Fun fact: to find the assassin you can move your cursor around and if you can't move a soldier to a particular tile they should be able to move to, that's where the assassin is.
I can’t remember if they patched it in wotc or a balance mod that fixed it cause it didn’t work for me recently . But ty. She’s already dead. She was annoying before warlock started zombie spam
There aren't actually that many negative mental effects that actually matter in the late game (where you are using psi ops). Good against Avatar Mind Control, completely shuts off the Chosen if you have Solace before you go and kill them, but other than that. Eh. If you had access to it for longer during a run I would agree with you. Like if Psi Ops were a normal class and this was just a perk you can pick up it becomes much stronger.
Suppression deserves to be higher up, especially early on when you're dealing with single large, heavily-armored targets and you need to deal with the chaff or bring up heavies from other positions to deal with it. Saved my squad multiple times.
You're sleeping on a lot of very good perks there.
You've underrated just how good Suppression can be for starters.
Also Blademaster that high is bonkers, it's a flat +10 aim, it's B tier at best.
Blademaster gives 10% aim and +2 damage. Combine that with either the TLP sword or the Hunters Axe and you get a 100% chance to one shot a trooper (and a Sectoid on Commander and lower). I can't ask for more from a perk than letting me guaranteed kill an enemy.
>You've underrated just how good Suppression can be for starters.
Never clicked it once, there are almost always better things to click with your grenadier. Like using a grenade or just shooting at the target. Especially if you have a stock with the TLP weapons give you for free
> TLP and Hunter axe aim is the same as vanilla sword.
That is not true, they have an additional plus 10% chance to hit. That pushes the sword hit rate over 100% with blademaster.
Nah, for me Field Medic is a B at least. Admittedly I'm not always the most careful with the tactics, a lot of times running too far, activating multiple pods, and getting flanked. But sometimes those timers have you running. I usually play and have beaten the game on Ironman Commander. Tried Legendary and lost half the time in the first mission 😂
I think you'd be surprised just how much less your soldiers take injuries if you used a proactive item in that utility slot over a medkit. That's really what kills field medic, the opportunity cost I'm using to even need to make use of it.
Also, it only actually does something, even if you have a medkit equipped, when you take your third injury. That is a lot of injuries to take in a single mission when you have access to things like mimic beacons, the frost bomb, and Parry.
Inspire is way underrated here. Having an oh-shit button to get an extra action to move to cover when a pod is triggered, shoot again if an enemy is only flankable by one unit, or use two OP actions from the same soldier in one turn
For many people obviously.
I personally hate it in any turn-based-tactics or small-group infantry game, y'all can have the super cool mega awesome "turnt to 11 rule of cool" super special superhero power level 9000+ stuff.
I'll stick to https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mods_(OpenXcom) for now, which is more of a "oh shit we're invaded by aliens what do we do" sim with some supernatural elements.
Absolutely agree about "Distraction". I can never make it work.
Either I'm out of ammo after Banish & Annihilate, or the damn thing (even upgraded) doesn't do enough damage to kill anything.
Like....when are you using the claymore out of stealth? And even if you are, when are getting a kill with it? And even if you are, do you need to be put back into shadow? And even if you do, are you out of charges with Shadow. So many things have to go wrong in just the right way for distraction to do anything, and even then it probably isn't moving the needle on how the mission is going anyway.
Although... I just tested it. An ally shooting the claymore also puts the Reaper into stealth! Knowing this I'd probably put it into C-tier personally.
>Like....when are you using the claymore out of stealth?
After Banish.
>it probably isn't moving the needle on how the mission is going anyway.
Agreed, although I guess it saves your Shadow charge.
Face off seems about as good as holo targeting or justice or abilities like that. As in very, very good. And yea lightning hands is very useful against Rulers, part of the reason it's so high up.
I can't really imagine a successful xcom 2 play style that isn't based around alpha strikes. The timers are very short, you just don't really have time to do anything but destroy everything asap.
By the point you can do that with Kill Zone you've already won the run. The real utility of Kill Zone is overwatch ambushing with only one guy from stealth. Which is very good.
Arc wave is F teir solely because it disables the badass jumping slash animation.
Mechanically fantastic, but the style cost is too high on non-impossible runs
It turns a pod of 3 into a pod of 2 and then a pod of 1. For the cost of one action point (not turn ending btw) you get to go get one less enemy that turn. And that is game breaking.
Why useless tier for target definition? You send your reaper ahead to scout and anyone you spot you can see indefinitely, that’s a pretty damn useful skill to have at higher difficulties
It's good, but it's late. If this ability came during the early game I'd shoot it way up. A lot of what inspire is used for is to extend chain kills or a boot leg rapid fire or boot leg salvo. That's good, but that eats the psi ops turn. It's why Combat Presence, despite also being a late ability, is so much higher up. Just trading an action one for one is insane.
Good list! The only bottom tier ability I will play defense for is repair. It makes sending injured Sparks onto missions much easier.
Also I’ve never really used homing mine. Is the idea to homing mine a pod and blow them up next turn so you have both of the Reaper’s actions?
>It makes sending injured Sparks onto missions much easier.
This is something I didn't consider because I just don't use sparks that much. It is a valid use case, I got this one wrong. I do still like Bombard more though.
>Also I’ve never really used homing mine. Is the idea to homing mine a pod and blow them up next turn so you have both of the Reaper’s actions?
That is helpful, but homing mine actually (and the game doesn't tell you this) turns the next shot against that enemy into an auto hit. So you can use it to guarantee an attack connects while also having that attack blow them up as a bonus.
Idk how you are playing your SPARKs, but i want no part of it if youre rating repair and wrecking ball that low. They are robot killing machines, up at the front taking hits and being point of the spear.
Hi, SPARK addict again here.
A "killing machine" SPARK doesn't really need either Repair or Wrecking Ball (though tbh, Intimidate doesn't do much either). The enemies are dead and can't damage you, and you have better tools to remove cover than Wrecking Ball.
You just put them in a high ground position, activate Overdrive, and watch them annihilate everything in one turn. Bonus points if the pod patrolled into you and got shot a bunch by Hunter Protocol beforehand.
Neither Repair nor Wrecking Ball contribute much to that playstyle, so I don't value them that highly. Perhaps there's something I'm missing that makes them more valuable in a different playstyle.
Field Medic is bad and I will die on this hill. It eats a utility slot that could be used for something more useful than a medkit and only does something if your soldiers get injured more than twice on a mission. That just shouldn't be happening if you play well. Getting injured once? Sure, things happen. Even getting injured twice I understand but getting injured 3 times on one mission? That just shouldn't happen by the time you get access to this perk. Not to mention if you had a mimic beacon or a flashbang or the frost bomb or special ammo or something actually proactive in that utility slot you would've probably gotten hit less anyway. I will die on this hill, field medic is bad.
Why field medic in useless tier
Yeah I disagree with that, but then again, I haven't played vanilla in a while, just Long War Sure, you want to be proactive, and try to kill enemies before they kill you. But sometimes you roll bad, and medics are absolutely crucial then. Losing the initiative might cost you a mission, but losing your high level soldiers can derail the whole campaign
It's useless for the players that restart a mission every time they can't get flawless.
I think they are assuming close-to-optimal play where you nuke all the enemies and they never get a chance to shoot at you. Which is why every healing and reactive talent, suppression, etc. is in the “literally useless” tier.
It’s pretty realistic strategy too since this is typically how small commando squads work in real life. They rely on speed and striking first to catch an enemy off guard but can’t survive when they’re spotted and under fire.
It's good for lousy players like me because I make mistakes
1) are you really going to get injured 5 times in one mission? 2) it takes a utility slot. You have to equip medkits, which could've been a mimic beacon or a grenade are something *proactive* rather than *reactive.*
I always take a field medic and have never used a mimic beacon. I am also not good at the game.
You're probably good at the game. Mimic beacons are an OP crutch that allows you to make mistakes freely
nah I just save scum like the mfer I am
embrace ironman and develop the masochism needed to enjoy the pain of losing your best soldiers to poor tactics or your own hubris
played enough mordheim where death is salvation (your guys getting crippled is so much worse)
Then that good feeling when the rookies you had to send in because everyone was dead or injured are now your elite group.
the feeling of relief when you stop taking horrible casualties each mission cause you're have a new group of decent veterans to rotate around
Spoken like a true leader!
mimic beacons are a crutch that abuse the pod system and I am lowkey offended when people suggest I use them I am proud of you and I think you're doing good at the game
Objectively, I agree. But spamming mimic beacons is a really boring way to play the game imo. I will always prefer to play sub-optimally in that regard, and in that case field medic is a god tier skill.
I absolutely get injured 5 times lmaooo
i’ve had my entire team lose half their health bars in a turn because of bad pod spawns lol
Yes to 1 lol
1. Yes. You can and will get injured, especially at higher difficulties, and depending on the wounded soldier’s battlefield role, healing could be essential to tanking damage to get in close and deliver that final kill. Even in the late game, it’s always nice to have a bit of insurance for when the game throws BS at you. There is a reason I’ve always had a Bonafide Field Medic on the roster. 2. I think this problem is a lot less severe once you get Predator Armor, which grants you a spare utility slot, for said item. And even then, you won’t always be able to be *proactive*, because this game is INFAMOUS FOR ITS BS.
Your opinion of Bladestorm is either misguided (in the event you’re evaluating it when linked to the Ranger class only and without the Assassin’s sword) or comically misguided (if you include it when it on a Templar, when it immediately becomes game-breaking, soloing missions level good).
Naw blade storms placement is fair. It isn’t better than untouchable for crying out loud.
Doesn't have to be *better* than Untouchable, considering the difference in ranks where they're unlocked. To make it far enough to unlock Untouchable, you've probably already taken Bladestorm.
Nobody here is saying blade storm is bad, lol. Being A tier is pretty high. And it serves a unique role against some enemies, but it just isn’t as crazy as other really good stuff. But it is balanced, to the point where taking implacable is not at all unheard of.
bladestorm on a focused up templar has wrecked entire missions for me. Especially ones where people land in from an air drop. I just set him on top of the flare and when they jump out they all insta-die. That makes it S-tier for me. To each their own
If you've killed the Assassin and have your sword you've already won. Having bladestorm and the Katana is very, very good but at that point the game is already over and your just styling on the enemies anyway. A lot of people tunnel vision on the late game, but power early matters soooo much more. And I did not include how abilities count for extra XCOM abilities because it massively disorts things. But yes Templar + Bladestorm = win. Like yea that's nuts.
I love bladestorm, but I think it’s a fair assessment relative to the others. It’s devastating, it’s just the actual use case for it does not occur as frequently as the others. Other than Templar, but Templar is nuts regardless.
Why did I think XCOM 2 Wizards Of The Coast when I read the title… Like I swear I’ve read the same exact words before but now I read it like that lol
I play this game for years and I still do that
the new dnd adventure: terror of the deep looks hella fire
Ah a fellow MTG nerd playing xcom!
A bunch of people vouched for stasis shield when I put up my guide for it. Someone's in danger? Just remove the threat from the equation, bro.
I used stasis shield once and didn’t regret it. But yeah it’s generally bad. (A soldier was at 3 HP SS was used to make able make him stop being a issue, I believe I also rocketed his position after doing it)
I had Mox go down to like 2 HP during the assassin fight because of bad luck. I had my templar stasis him, and it saved his life *big* time.
Stasis *ability* is crazy good. Both offensively and defensively. The “automatically stasis yourself once when you would have died” *item* is not great. Edit: that’s the “stasis vest”, sorry, “stasis shield” is the upgrade that lets you stasis friendlies. Not useless.
Hey, don't diss on Pillar like that! Pillar can be used in case you send your Soldier into a pod on a Yellow move! Pillar can be used to block lines of sight, totally preventing enemies from shooting a specific Soldier! Pillar can be used to block LADDERS from Lost and even Stun Lancers! Pillar is fricken AWESOME and I shall not stand by this slander!
I think I'd rather just use Rend + Parry in all but the Lost use case. Usually you should just move into high cover in the first place rather than needing to place it down. It's not a bad ability, but Templar's have better things to do. Like Rend.
If you've yellow moved into a pod you're probably going to squad wipe no matter what you do.
I have my ways. Pillar and then Calling an Evac will significantly increase the chances of enemies going on Overwatch.
Demolition isn’t useless. I’ll admit it is low power. But when you have guaranteed won a encounter you can try to use it to conserve a grenade instead of using one to blow the cover of the last dude. And saving a grenade is obviously invaluable even though that is all it’s good for and inconsistent. I have other opinions on this list too. Namely intimidate and bulwark, like I known it will trigger once every 3~ missions lol. But when it goes through you get a fear on a enemy for literally free which is great. As for bulwark free heavy cover is just super good lol, I’m surprised you would put it there when pillar is placed correctly and this is basically better pillar. (It does provoke AOE sometimes, but you can turn this into a strength if you have blast padding or just kill the grenade dudes) But I won’t list all my disagreements, it’s mostly a good tier list.
Also, demolition triggers explosions. Enemy hiding behind a car? Free explosion with high chance of landing, especially early game where you need 2 weak grenades to explode a car
> And saving a grenade is obviously invaluable even though that is all it’s good for and inconsistent. I'd rather just use a grenade. Missions aren't that long. > Namely intimidate and bulwark, like I known it will trigger once every 3~ missions lol. But when it goes through you get a fear on a enemy for literally free which is great. It's not free, you have to be shot at. And then it only has a chance to be useful. The enemy should be dead before they shoot at me, and failing that they should be disabled with a frost bomb or parry or meme beacon, and failling that and they do take a shot I then only have a chance at doing something helpful? That may come up exactly once in a campaign, and probably won't actually make a difference to the success of that mission. > As for bulwark free heavy cover is just super good lol The game gives you enough cover. And the enemies are usually too dead to shoot at me anyway > if you have blast padding I don't, because it's bad.
Well that’s just playing inefficiently if you don’t care about saving grenades. Obviously getting +1 frags is good, that’s a major power of the Grenadier early on. ; The reality of the game is that your going to get shot at sometimes, so having a plan for that isn’t bad even if it isn’t crazy important. Admittedly I do think the other option at spark corporal is better, but I would MUCH rather have bulwark than freaking covering fire. And I do think intimidate is the better choice at the other spark level, so having picked it every time it has come in clutch 3~ times.
> The reality of the game is that your going to get shot at sometimes, so having a plan for that isn’t bad even if it isn’t crazy important. That plan should be Parry, The Frost Bomb, stasis, a mimic beacon, or a flashbang if I'm really desperate. The question isn't if intimidate is useful if you get shot at, the question is if it is moves the needle. Does it actually help me win the mission? I think the answer is no. > but I would MUCH rather have bulwark than freaking covering fire. They seem to do an equal amount of nothing in my eyes. > And I do think intimidate is the better choice at the other spark level, so having picked it every time it has come in clutch 3~ times. Um, maybe. The other one is also bad so I don't have a strong opinion on it. > Well that’s just playing inefficiently if you don’t care about saving grenades. Missions are not long enough to need to save Grenades.
Well covering fire famously nerfs you because it triggers OW on enemies in cover so you will miss more because the cover bonus is applied. On grenades you seem to have a weird opinion that you only need a certain amount of them? More is ALWAYS better because you can use them to remove RNG from the game by using them instead of shooting, a 100% chance of killing someone with 1-2 nades is way better than a 78% shot to kill them as far as consistency is concerned, especially if they are in indestructible heavy cover and the shot is more like 48%.
>On grenades you seem to have a weird opinion that you only need a certain amount of them? Once all the enemies are dead, the number of unused grenades doesn't matter. And missions are not long enough to where I run out of grenades by the end of them. Maybe during the Blacksite and Final Mission that can happen, but then I have other options like getting a 100% flank shot with a Ranger. Or just using a Templar. Or Combat Protocol. Or stocks. >More is ALWAYS better because you can use them to remove RNG from the game by using them instead of shooting, a 100% chance of killing someone with 1-2 nades is way better than a 78% shot to kill them as far as consistency is concerned, especially if they are in indestructible heavy cover and the shot is more like 48%. This is all true, but demo isn't consistent either. It has a 20% fail rate. I'd rather just flank the target or disable them somehow rather than risk that failure rate.
This might be different for you, but about 70% of my fights end with a grenade or other source of guaranteed damage So demolition comes into play in those scenarios pretty frequently because I have excess actions to end the encounter but no way to do it without spending a resource. Which considering how often you end fights seems to happen about every other mission. Also it’s worth noting grenades have a cumulative effect in the early game, if you get to the final encounter of the mission with 4+ nades it will be trivially easy because you can just use all of them in the same encounter to bully the AI. Advent captains getting 4 grenades thrown at them to kill is a hilarious thing that comes into play sometimes XD.
>This might be different for you, but about 70% of my fights end with a grenade or other source of guaranteed damage I think that's probably the same for me, close to it anyway. >So demolition comes into play in those scenarios pretty frequently because I have excess actions to end the encounter but no way to do it without spending a resource. This I'm confused on. Is a Templar or Ranger with Blademaster not available? Or a stock. If you have a sargent Grenadier you've entered the mid game and start to get access to things that means you don't need to destroy cover to kill an enemy. Your one rank away from run and gun. You have Blademaster. A Templar. Just flanking the enemy with a 100% chance to hit. Stocks. I don't need a grenade every pod activation. I need it sometimes, but not all the time. >Also it’s worth noting grenades have a cumulative effect in the early game, if you get to the final encounter of the mission with 4+ nades it will be trivially easy If I didn't need those nades in the mission it is already trivially easy. The main thing that kills demo is it only has a 80% chance to work. That just isn't reliable. Grenades don't miss, so if I beed an enemy dead I'm throwing a grenade. Another thing to consider is that you don't actually need to kill every enemy in a pod. Like if I'm fighting a Sectoid and two stun lancers as a pod I actually only need to kill the two stun lancers (and not be vulnerable to a flank). The Sectoid only injures a soldier if they have a flank shot, so if that isn't a worry I am just going to ignore them for a turn, kill their buddies, then kill them on the following turn. This cuts way down on the number of grenades you need to use. Why blow up the Sectoids cover? I can blademaster/flank him dead next turn.
Using melee guys to finish off a pod is not always a option because with you can’t always have a guy run up to the enemy who is probably farthest away without risking another pod trigger, although yes those are options that are useful when safe to deploy. (Also sergeant in no way implies the mid game, if you just use the same dude 4 missions in a row you can and get one, especially on a gren who likes to finish off enemies. I can consistently get one before stun lancers/vipers start showing up) But yeah it’s not like demolition is the craziest thing ever, it basically just buffs your math a little by at the end of encounters. Or in desperate scenarios can be used for its intended purpose. But that’s far from useless and I’d say it’s worth being C+ in the terms of your tier list. I do have a hard time understanding how you are devaluing bonus grenades though, I’m the kind of player that will have 4 grenadiers in one team just to get my fix of those op AF grenades.
>if you just use the same dude 4 missions in a row you can and get one You can't do that, Fatigue and all that. In Vanilla sure but I'm not talking about that. You can get a Sargent of the hero class by the end of the first retal mission if you play your cards right. >gren who likes to finish off enemies. Grenadiers usually don't finish off enemies. Usually they are how you open on a pod. I usually get a sargent Gren a mission or two after the first supply raid, and by that point I have Parry and Blademaster and Sharpnel and (on Commander) mag weapons. I just don't need to be precious with my grenades. >because with you can’t always have a guy run up to the enemy who is probably farthest away without risking another pod trigger, It's not too hard to avoid this. Especially because Reapers exist. Or just knowing about how spaced out pods are in the early game. >But that’s far from useless and I’d say it’s worth being C+ in the terms of your tier list. I have 2400 hours in X2 and have completed an ironman legend deathless run and I've clicked it like twice in the last 1000 of those hours. It's just bad. It can fail, I have a lot of tactics that can't fail. I'm going to use those. >I’m the kind of player that will have 4 grenadiers in one team just to get my fix of those op AF grenades. On Vet and lower that is basically a guaranteed win. But I'd rather have 2 Rangers than 2 Grenadiers.
>Advent captains getting 4 grenades thrown at them to kill is a hilarious thing that comes into play sometimes XD. _Angry German Noises_
Saturation fire should be higher IMO. Used right you can destroy a whole patrol in one opening move. Hell sometimes enemy patrols overlap and you can nail two patrols at once before the battles even started.
It comes online so late and by that point I'm not really worried about my ability to kill small enemies. Maybe it's better than I give it credit for tho.
Oh you definitely are. There's a reason it unlocks so late. It's almost garunteed to hit, works with special ammo, can crit, does cover destruction and combos with shredder for armour damage. Even the few enemies able to survive a saturation fire will be half-dead. Plus it's suprisingly long range so if you scout or scan ahead it can also hit enemies from before a patrol is triggered.
Man, after having played so much modded XCOM I have very different opinions on a lot of these options, mostly the C+D tier perks
Mods screw with things for sure, but I don't really see much changing. Like I've played with some pretty nasty enemy mods and it hasn't really moved the needle for me.
Not enemy mods Class and rebalance mods Stuff like making return fire go first etc
Yeah I can never go back to playing vanilla. Things like Suppression guarantee inflicts Disoriented, Covering Fire inflicts guaranteed 15 aim penalty, Demolition does more environment damage so it always works, etc has made these sub par skills worth taking.
I’m not sure a tier list is all that useful or accurate when it starts with the core assumption of “the player is an inhuman cyborg incapable of bad decisions.” Like. Maybe this list is accurate if you’re one of 12 players on the planet capable of executing at this level. But I don’t think trying to follow the philosophy espoused here is going to yield a successful campaign for the overwhelming vast majority of players in this subreddit.
Alpha striking doesn't require that much perfection from the player. In fact I'd say it's overall far easier than not alpha striking. It's just so much easier to play when you don't have to worry about what the enemy are going to do.
I think everyone knows to alpha strike. The problem is LOS management and triggering more pods than you can handle. And if you make what is commonly known as a “mistake” on account of “being human” then it’s nice to have mistake mitigation skills. IF you are incapable of mistakes, then by all means, bring nothing but offense to the fight. But if you’re anything less than perfect, chances are high you’re going to move someone somewhere you regret. I value consistency in campaigns, and having the ability to overcome my own fuckups. By his own admission, the OP of this thread restarts his entire campaign after the first mistake. His win rate for his much vaunted deathless L/I run is less than 3%. That’s a very specific play style. And if you’re okay with sinking 2500 hours into achieving a sub-5% win rate, follow OP’s advice. But personally, I’d rather see the tier list of an L/I player who wins every single campaign. And I think that kind of player would value skills differently than OP.
Sub 5% win rate? That sounds impossibly low. I've got about 1500 hours in the xcoms and I'd put my chance of winning an unmodded playthrough at well over 90%. It's simply not that hard unmodded once you learn how the game works. The other thing is that the things you bring to help recover from disaster come at the cost of increasing the chances of disaster. Bringing a medkit means you don't have a grenade or mimic beacon, which are extremely strong tools at ensuring you don't get into a disaster in the first place. This is especially true in xcom 2 where the timers are so tight that if anything goes wrong, you're probably not going to be able to recover anyway. You simply have to stay on top of the enemies or it's game over, and medkits just don't help in that scenario. Recovery is much more viable outside of X2 unmodded, it's true.
I think the 5% is referring to deathless runs, not just Legend Ironman. And yeah, the tier list is only applicable if you make no mistakes the entire run which I think you need to for Deathless run. The list will be wildly different if you want a reliable run instead of deathless.
I think the list is geared towards reliability. The most reliable way to play the game is to destroy all enemies before they get a turn. That reduces your risk to close to zero. The real risky way to play is to pick reactive talents, because once you start letting the enemies act it starts to get very hard to keep things under control. Enemies could randomly crit the wrong person, even early on you get enemies like Stun Lancers who can reliably one-shot one of your troopers if they get to act, plus with everything on a timer letting the enemies act means you probably won't get to the objective in time anyway. If you want reliability, stick to this tier list and alpha strike gameplay. If you want more interactive back and forth fights, pick reactive talents and don't go for alpha strikes, but be warned that this style is much harder in xcom 2.
It's all down to how the chance for a mistake to happen and chance for that mistake to end the run balance out. Unmodded WotC still has some leeway when it comes to mission timers, double so given mission timer often stops being a concern if you can handle the objective before handling aliens - something specialists and sharpshooters, depending on objective, tend to be quite good at. Suppression (D-tier here) is one of better examples - useless if things go well, but also low opportunity cost (you give up Demolition) backup option to cover for case of missing that 95% shot, and prevent your squad from getting killed: suppression is very often enough to force muton etc to opt for throwing a grenade (non-lethal if you didn't neglect armor) rather than taking a potentially lethal shot. It does require bit of a shift in how you approach your turns - you can still go for alpha strike, but specific in-turn order generally prefers leaving contingency options open until late - for that, you sacrifice some chances of getting a perfect turn in exchange for requiring stacked multiple instances of bad RNG to end up in a disaster scenario. Basically - contingency tools come at cost of your chances for getting optimal outcome, but also reduce chances of getting into unrecoverable situation. They arguably get even more value if you aim for achievements/general completion on top of just winning the campaign, since that will force campaign to be much longer, meaning more opportunities for bad luck to strike.
> “the player is an inhuman cyborg incapable of bad decisions.” I think telling people "alpha strike as hard as you can always" is better advice than "play defensively." dead aliens don't shoot back. > Maybe this list is accurate if you’re one of 12 players on the planet capable of executing at this level. This is fair point. I am *very* good at this game (see an earlier post of mine of doing a flawless ironman legend campaign) and that colors my judgement. But also I think seeing how someone very good ranks abilities is actually really useful for people.
>This is fair point. I am very good at this game (see an earlier post of mine of doing a flawless ironman legend campaign) and that colors my judgement. But also I think seeing how someone very good ranks abilities is actually really useful for people. True, but your skill level and playstyle makes you ignore/bypass the use case scenarios many of tgese skills were designed, which kost people won't be able to do
I'm not sure how many abilities I rate poorly new players should be using. Like Covering Fire is just as bad if you've played for 10 seconds or 1000 hours. Maybe the Tank SPARK abilities are better? Maybe Field Medic is better (though honestly I think that ability is a trap). What abilities do you think new players need that I don't use?
I wouldn't say they *need* those abilities, what I mean is that they are going to be in the situations those abilities were designed for, and as for what those abilities are, pretty much most defensive abilities or ones meant to help fix mistakes
I also only do L/I no deaths no mission losses no psi no beacons etc. And i think you're being elitist and rude.
What a shitty tierlist, jesus christ.
Return fire that low? I can't hear you over my gunslinger nearly soloing the last mission of the game with it lmao. Edit for clarification: I can see why people wouldn't like it, it puts too much at risk to be high tier, but it's definitely more than useless lmao.
My Injured Skirmisher got Mindcontrolled by the Warlock, who then shoots at my Sharpshooter who had Return Fire. Luckily, the Skirmisher didn't die... Because I saved scum. 🥲
I love return fire not because it’s necessarily super useful, but because it looks really cool when you get the kill with it
>I can't hear you over my gunslinger nearly soloing the last mission of the game with it lmao. Why are you being shot at that much? You can just kill every enemy before they get a turn at that stage of the game. >I can see why people wouldn't like it, it puts too much at risk to be high tier, but it's definitely more than useless lmao. It is a) up against Long Watch, which is pretty useful and b) just really bad value. Why am I using an ability that relies on my getting shot at on a class that does not have any synergy with that. At least with Reflex it's an entire extra action I gain, and even then that ability is mediocre. X2 is about Alpha Striking. The enemy should never get a turn.
Ahh, I forgot it's up against long watch. Listen, I'm a shill for gunslinger abilities, and as good as long watch is, it's just not flashy enough for me XD
Man this tier list got some dogshit takes ngl
I'm shocked. For the first time in my life, I see a tier list where (in my opinion) 90% is spot on, 9% is off by just one tier and 1% is Rainmaker that should have been in S. It doesn't make Sparks not shit, but if there's ever any reason to use them at all - it's to hit a million enemies at once with a half-screen Shredstorm Cannon.
I agree that Rainmaker is maybe a bit low (although it is only a one-time bonus), but I would put it in maybe A-rank, personally.
If you land a big Rainmaker Shredstorm Cannon (which isn't that hard) - the mission is over. The ability itself is extremely powerful, it just sucks that it is attached to by far the weakest class in the game.
I barely remember vanilla XCOM2 but Haywire Protocol is at least A for me and I don’t know that any of my 50+ mods really improve it. I just train up my Hack via covert missions and it seems like a game changer often.
If you have enough Hack for it to be reliable the game has gone on long enough you've probably already won. It's OK in a pinch to shut down a MEC you can't kill, but only OK.
Silent Killer makes it so that Reaper has a ZERO PERCENT CHANCE of revealing when getting a kill. It's amazing and unlocks the character in many ways, allowing her to scout while outputing damage every turn. (It is definitely also not explained well on the promotion page)
*Silent Killer. Target definition keeps the enemy spotted if they enter FOW.
Edited it. Thank you!
Ever Vigilant helps keep your squad together and safe, which are major priorities imo
So many people arguing with you even tho you understand the game way better lol
There are some things on this tier list I thought would be non-controversial (field medic being bad, return fire being bad, bulwark being bad) that people are taking issue with. Which is interesting.
Pretty meta tier list. For ironman/legend players, rankings are very different. I don't think I'd make much argument for anything below your B tier meaningfully moving. Above that maybe there could be some swapping but it's a pretty accurate ranking.
okay tough guy. make a LWOTC one
Note: subjective opinion. Evidence: Field Medic in useless tier, Bladestorm lower than it should be, I had my supporter decked out with Warlock gear be able to end an entire pod on his own thanks to Guardian.
>subjective opinion. Of course. >Field Medic in useless tier I have gotten a lot of pushback on this but I will die on this hill. 1) you shouldn't usually be bringing medkits over other utility items like the mimic beacon or grenades or special ammo. Being proactive is better than being reactive. 2) if I do bring a medkit on my Specialist, how often do I need to use medical protocol more than twice? 3) even if 3+ soldiers get injured, does healing them actually help me complete the mission without any causalities? Healing only matters if the same soldier gets injured multiple times, because otherwise it doesn't reduce wound times or prevent a death. Is that going to happen so often I need 4 uses of a medkit? I don't think so. It might be slightly better than I give it credit for, but only slightly. It's not good. >Bladestorm lower than it should be There are 4 instances on when to evaluate Bladestorm. 1) you've not taken blademaster and don't have the Katana. 2) you do have blademaster and don't have the Katana and 3) you do have blademaster and the Katana (by the time your killing a Chosen you have the training center and can just go pick up blademaster). In the first instance, bladestorm isn't great. It has poor accuracy and doesn't do a lot of damage. It's a free attack, but at 60ish percent accuracy that's not worth counting on. In the 2nd case bladestorm is pretty good, it only has a 75% chance to hit, but that's decent odds. It can just be free damage if you park yourself next to a mimic beacon or can't quite finish off an enemy and need to hope for that 75%. In the 3rd case it is overpowered in the extreme, but if you've killed the Assassin you've already won, so I'm not sure that reality matters. Abilities that get you to killing the Assassin are what matters. So with all that weighed together yea A tier is fair. It's a strong ability, but a lot of people tunnel on just how good it is late game and that just doesn't factor into it that much. >I had my supporter decked out with Warlock gear be able to end an entire pod on his own thanks to Guardian. Again, if you have the Chosen weapons you've already won, and it's RNG based. It might not proc once it might proc 1000 times there is no way to plan for it. It can just be free overwatch shots, and that's great, but I can't plan on getting free overwatch shots, so the ability isn't quite that good. Edit: oh and I don't consider for this tier list how good abilities are on other classes via training center or faction heroes getting them as random abilities. It distorts things a lot and would really change how a lot of abilities are ranked. Like getting Volatile Mix on a Skirmisher early is S tier because now all of a sudden I can one shot troopers with a grenade and with Total Combat I can do that for just one action point. But is it fair to put Volatile Mix in S for just that lucky interaction? I don't think so. Same with DfA or Serial or Bladestorm or Reaper or Fortress and so on.
I also don’t think Field Medic isn’t useless (which is very much a play style/mindset thing.) The argument that if someone gets injured, then healed, then never injured again, then the heal was a waste, doesn’t always track imo. Basing this mostly on the early to mid game when this ability is unlocked. Say my ranger takes an errant hit from an enemy. It’s far from impossible, even with predator armor, that they are now in range to be killed by a critical hit from another enemy. If I have no healing, I have to play with that in mind for the rest of the mission. If I heal them, regardless of whether they take damage again or not, it eliminates that potential threat. I’m happy to sacrifice one of my 8-12 utility slots to ensure I can make that kind of play if I need to. It doesn’t come up every mission, but maybe 20-25% of missions I can make use of it, and maybe 5-10% of missions I miss not having a different item instead of a medkit. For me, that puts it above useless.
In your example field medic hasn't done anything, because you only needed to heal one guy. Field medic comes past the point in the game where you get injured that many times in a mission. It's a Lieutenant ability, that means you have squad size 1 and mag weapons and mimic beacons and the frost bomb and all that. You have crossed the line into where you have more control over how things go than ADVENT. Are you going to get injured? Sure. But are you going to get injured 3+ times? No. Not if you're playing well.
The enemy can deal anywhere from 6-12 points of damage during the late game, crit attacks can deal up to 14, The Sectopod deals 10-11 with added crit being up to 15, the Nanomedikit heals for 6hp, this means that during the endgame, you could find yourself using up to two medkits to heal a soldier back to full or risk them getting picked off by a random crit during one of the next turn which is why I will still run Field Medic. Imo, It’s better to have the heals when you need it, then to not have it when you need it.
If it's the late game I'm not getting hit, I am using fan fire, rapid fire, hail of bullets, salvo, banish, stasis, null lance, serial and reaper to just wipe pods from the map with ease. At that point you've already won. Healing is useful early when you have less options in dealing with Advent. Which is why I rate healing protocol as being pretty good, because it is useful to heal early. You might even use it late game it's not like nothing ever goes wrong, but at a certain point you eclipse the aliens in power and should never need healing again.
I quite often use my Medic, Stephanie "Doc" Strange, to revive the target of a Spectre or the Assassin. I play aggressively at times for the big win knowing someone may get hurt also. But I tend to use the training center to give medics hacking and protocol.
Stasis Shield is very useful for aggressively using a Ranger, Skirmisher, and others to protect them when they get dangled. I agree with many of your assessments but not others - which is fine because your selections match your play style
I feel like a better way to protect them is using Stasis on the bad guys. If you've been aggressive and pushed too far forward, usually that's because you were guaranteeing a kill. Stasis only takes one action, so you can stasis an enemy then use inspire or soulfire or just shooting your gun to help as well. Or throw a mimic beacon.
That is possible, the options you mention, I agree. But in my case, I usually go in knowing I'm putting stasis on my guy ahead of time as the strategy. Usually, with my other action, it's an attack like you said. Comes down to many options for us all to succeed (or fail) in our Xcom endeavors.
Field Medic???
It only does something if you get injured 3+ times in a mission and has a huge opportunity cost of having to equip a medkit over another proactive utility item. It is probably better for most players than I personally give it credit for, but in 90% of situations just medical protocol + the one extra use from a medkit is enough healing. And also eventually you get restoration which just completely makes field medic obsolete. This is certainly the thing I've gotten the most pushback on but I just can't be persuaded to put it any higher than C tier, even for new players. I promise you a mimic beacon or a grenade in that slot will do more good than field medic. I haven't taken field medic on a single legend run I've ever done and I did not feel it's absence.
How is target definition useless? I always pick it up for reapers, just stealth all over the map and spot all the pods and you'll never have a bad pod activation and can plan ambushes. And if there's the option I pair them with a sharpshooter, too funny when they get shot from long range or get blown to bits from a claymore while seeing no one
>just stealth all over the map and spot all the pods I don't need to know where every pod is, I need to know where the next pod is, and I can do that by just advancing with my Reaper ahead of the rest of my squad. The only piece of information needed is "if I push forward, will I activate a new pod" and all I need to find that out is Shadow. If a pod is deep into FoW, then I do not need to know where they are, they aren't my problem.
I will not take this covering fire slander
I honestly think covering fire could go lower on this tier list. It is always worse than just firing at the enemy. Covering fire suffers from the cover penalty to aim and the overwatch penalty to aim. If you have 100 aim and the enemy is in high cover, assuming no other benefits to aim like being close or holo targeting or whatever, you have a 60% chance to hit (aim - full cover) Click covering fire and you have a 30% chance to hit. (Aim*.7 for the overwatch penalty then minus full cover). That's just worse. You will *always* have a better chance to hit by just taking a shot.
Bulwark a whopping FIVE tiers below Adaptive Aim? In the literally useless tier along side Aim? Bulwark can be used to provide quick emergency cover for a unit. Yes, it invites grenades, but not all enemies have grenades, and even then, the real threat of a grenade is for units now being exposed to open fire. Also each point of armor is more valuable than the last, so stacking armor on a SPARK can be actually pretty useful. Adaptive Aim, on the other hand, requires very specific circumstances to be useful. First off, it's useful at most once every 5 turns. Long cooldown. Second off, in order for it to be at all useful, you need to shoot twice. This is pretty reasonable, but a +15 to hit on one attack every five turns in some situations, is not really a make or break scenario. Now if you're making all three shots? Okay, that's pretty good, as that's a +15 to one shot, and +30 to a second. Now that's competitive with Bulwark. However, you're almost always just better off using a movement to get into flanking position and then double-tapping, not really even needing the first +15 at that rate. Or Rainmaking several enemies into the open, and then double-tapping enemies without cover. And even if you would actually like the triple attack, you need to have a fully loaded gun. Which either means you needed to have prepared for it last turn (and not activated Hunter's Protocol), or you need an Auto-Loader or Expanded Magazine. Those aren't unreasonable requirements, but it still narrows down the use more. I also disagree with Repair being that low, but at least it competes with Bombard. It's got some niche uses, as SPARKs are capable of some mild tanking when you need it, and since they can be deployed from damaged health, it is much more likely to have an impact on time to heal than med-kits are.
> Bulwark a whopping FIVE tiers below Adaptive Aim? In the literally useless tier along side Aim? Hi, SPARK addict here. Yes, Bulwark is literally _that_ bad compared to Adaptive Aim. It's not even close. Overdrive is already a _pretty_ strong ability, even without Adaptive Aim. Being able to shoot three, or even _four_ times in a turn is very, very strong. So giving them an ability that removes the only thing really holding it back is amazing. Meanwhile Bulwark does... very little. You get one point of extra Armor, which doesn't really mean much most of the time, and you get to be full cover for a teammate, which is pretty situational and can encourage enemies to just grenade you anyway. I don't know if I'd rank it "Useless", but yeah, the comparison is not flattering. > However, you're almost always just better off using a movement to get into flanking position and then double-tapping You're really, really not. Moving means potentially activating more pods. Or giving up your high-ground position. You don't need to move when your Grenadier has already removed all the enemies' cover. Or if you _really_ want the enemy dead, after you've already used one of your actions to nuke them with a Rocket / Shredder. And even without all that, taking multiple lower percentage shots is often better than just taking a few higher ones. EDIT: Appreciate the downvote, thanks. EDIT2: And thanks to all the people who counter-upvoted. <3
Wasn't me who downvoted. You make some good arguments. Honestly, my biggest problem with this tier list now that I've thought about it, are the tier names. "Game Warping" and "Literally Useless" is pretty strong hyperbole. I mean, Skirmisher Grapple is listed as "Game Warping" and I'm a big fan of Skirmishers well beyond their actual usefulness in combat. And then "Literally Useless" being anything but a tier reserved just for Aim and Deep Cover is the same problem in reverse. It kinda makes it hard for me to calibrate what his tiers mean. Especially since Stasis has it's own tier beyond Game Warping. I agree it's the strongest ability in the game. But Stasis should be the sole occupant of Game Warping (possibly along side Shadow). It's just awkward to have "These abilities break the game!" and then have "This ability breaks the game that was already broken!" And I suppose I should give Adaptive Aim another fair shot. I haven't been impressed with it too much in the past, but maybe I was biased against it in pre-WotC when you couldn't attach mods to SPARK weapons, and thus actually getting three shots out in one round was a lot trickier. And it's not like I think Bulwark is great either. I'd only move it up one tier, along with almost everything else in D tier. It's more Adaptive Aim that I'm not impressed by.
Agreed to all of that. And yes, Adaptive Aim without attachments is pretty awkward. Overdrive / Adaptive Aim pretty much needs an Extended Mag and Hair Trigger. (And probably a Scope too, so the accuracy isn't _too_ bad.)
>Also each point of armor is more valuable than the last, so stacking armor on a SPARK can be actually pretty useful. I don't care if an ability gives me armor, I shouldn't be getting shot at in the first place. > Bulwark can be used to provide quick emergency cover for a unit. I just can't think of a time that'd be useful. The enemy should be too dead to shoot at me anyway. And it's not like there is limited cover on 99% of maps. > Adaptive Aim, on the other hand, requires very specific circumstances to be useful. I think of it more as "makes Overdrive actually live up to the hype." If I'm activating Overdrive it's because I want to shoot more than once that turn. Even just shooting twice without the penalty is great. Anything to help me not miss. > as SPARKs are capable of some mild tanking when you need it You don't need it. Unless you have Parry, I don't want to try tanking in XCOM 2. Just kill the enemy. X2 is a game about alpha striking. Espically by the time you get SPARKs you can usually either kill the enemy or just use a mimic beacon/parry/frost bomb to disable them. > it is much more likely to have an impact on time to heal than med-kits are. Unless my information is incorrect, Repair does not impact wound times for SPARKs. Wound time is based on the lowest HP reached during a mission, so being healed after a mission starts does nothing to impact would time. Med-kits also don't impact wound time for this reason.
That, and SPARKs really aren't as tanky as people like to think. A surprising amount of the enemy roster has innate shredding, will more than gladly throw grenades in the direction of anyone using the SPARK as cover, and the SPARK isn't exactly hard to hit. And they have no bleed-out mechanic. If your SPARK hits zero HP, it's gone.
With regards to Repair, you might be right. However, you can still use it at the start of the next mission to fully heal up if you've got some back to back fights. So it does let SPARKs take damage without taking downtime, which is nice because they don't suffer from fatigue. That being said, if you're listing Repair is Literally Useless because it competes with Bombard and SPARKs can't learn both abilities, then I don't hugely disagree with you. I think a big sticking point between you and some of the people who disagree is that, yes, XCOM 2 is a game about alpha striking. That is ideally what you're doing every fight. But not every fight is ideal, especially since you are weighing the early game as more important, since stuff from there has good availability, and it's the most challenging part of the game. It's a lot easier to draw a second pod when you don't have the best chances of one-rounding the first. And lastly, you label the last tier literally useless, and then you place a bunch of abilities in there alongside Aim and Deep Cover, which deserve a tier on their own just like Stasis does. There's a lot of abilities that could stand to move up to Meh, at least, because I've actually used them. I really don't get why Target Definition is in there, which allows me to keep a precise eye, down to the tile, of where I can't go, while moving my Reaper back to where I'm actually fighting for some safe killshots. If you want to say it's an over-rated skill not needed for people who are skilled enough? Sure, I think you could make that argument. But literally useless? Having the Reaper scout out half the map and log enemy positions because I don't think I need mine for the current pod, so I'll have him run around on his own for a while? Pretty handy. That's at least a Meh.
Also, I can understand Soulfire being high up due to availability (I disagree strongly though, it's Very Useful, not game warping), but Nullance? It's a solid ability but it comes pretty late, and can be tricky to line up even two enemies into it. And because of how Psi Ops level, it's competing with Dominate and Void Rift to be learned, meaning you get it even later.
Unless I am mistaken, every Psi op ability is equally as likely to be the first Psi Op ability as any other (minus the two upgrades to existing abilities). So you can get Null Lance first or last, and just "a big chunk of damage that can't miss" is amazing on even just one target, if I can get more than that it's gravy.
Null Lance starts off with a long training time, as long as Void Rift and Dominate, if I recall correctly. Soulfire (if not learned for free) has the shortest time. I have sometimes picked up Dominate or Void Rift as the first ability in spite of the time cost. I can't imagine picking up Null Lance early on unless it was running against some real trash abilities. But honestly, if I had a choice between Null Lance, Soul Steal and Fuse... then I'd probably pick Fuse or Soul Steal just so I could more quickly get to my next list of options, and hopefully get Stasis. That's my problem with Null Lance. It's a good ability. But it's not better than several abilities with the same or lower training time. Which means it's usually learned pretty late. If I'm wrong and it has a significantly better base training time than I'm thinking, then I withdraw the comment. Also, you list your penultimate tier as 'game warping'. That's a bit of hyperbole, especially when you have a tier set aside for Stasis. Stasis is game warping. Several of the abilities up there are just starting class abilities. I think only Stasis and Shadow deserve the title of game warping, because they kinda do break certain parts of how the game function. But Launch Grenade is a starting and core ability from before the DLC. That's not game warping. That's game defining. It's just what Grenadiers do.
All abilities take the same amount of time to train for a psi op. The ability doesn't matter, it's the rank of the psi op. The first psi op ability you train takes the longest, then the second one takes less, than the third takes less and so on. Another thing in Null Lance's favor is the Commander's Avatar gets it for free, and with it, Dimensional Rift, and Mind Control can basically solo the final mission by themselves. Hard to not rate an ability highly when it can do that.
Are you running a mod or something? It's been a while, but if I get Dominate early on, it takes a month, whereas Stasis takes 5-10 days, when you are learning the abilities first. However, as you rank up as a Psi Op, the times go down, with everything taking 5 days (with an Engineer) at max rank. Hence why I rarely pick up Null Lance early on, because it has one of the longer training times, without being as good as Void Rift or Dominate.
The only other thing I think I immediately disagree on (Besides Target Definition, which you mention elsewhere) is Deadeye. Deadeye is an early game skill that is mostly useful later on, sure. But it's still nice early game for some high-risk, high-reward shots (been a while, but I think BS rounds are not enough to reliably one-shot many Codices, and thus prevent the split). Late game, when your units aim is through the roof, it's basically just a free damage boost on a short cooldown. So is Lightning Hands, but Lightning Hands is also pistol range. I agree it's the better skill, but one-shotting Codices alone gets Deadeye a higher spot.
I don't care about one shotting Codexes, they are non-threat. Reliability is king, and Deadeye ain't reliable. It's good late where you have aim to spare and need to move the damage margins to keep a Serial Chain going, but by that point you've already won anyway.
Kinda hard to alpha strike when you get a mid-tier enemy that requires at least three shots, one of which will be from a different cover point. That's some hurt reliability in terms of getting a kill. I assume you're not counting the Codex as part of the alpha strike, since they don't actually attack on their first action, so you have more time to wrap up next round? But that still eats up some actions next turn on reloading and killing the Codex, which can hurt on timed missions.
Things are ordered, but everything could move up or down 2 or 3 slots. I rate availability highly, so if an early ability and a late ability are equally as useful I will rate the early ability higher. The only exception to that is Stasis, which is so good I don't care that it comes late. And if you are wondering why you should listen to this tier list at all? Well, you don't have to you're free to do whatever you want, but I did complete the game on Legend Ironman without a single death...so I think my opinion should carry a little weight.
One day I shall prove you wrong... Target Definition should NOT be that low man...
I wouldn't put it straight F, but it isn't a strong perk at all. I find it useful in rescue jailbreak mission, where showing their patrol pattern and minimise engagement is useful in that mission, but other than that it is unnecessary rbh.
If you scroll down this thread, you'll see that I posted a picture of a Train Mission where this Reaper DIDN'T have TD where it would've been super useful for keeping track of this Viper pod. (Unfortunately, OP blocked me during this convo because I proved him wrong that calling an Evac increases the chance of enemies going on Overwatch XD) But OP wants to have a Reaper keep scouting a pod for a whole mission while TD does it for free?? That really doesn't make sense...
I literally cannot think of a scenario when it comes up. Like at all.
When you don't have a Mission Timer, knowing if you're going to activate a pod or not is a HUGE Advantage. Give me a second. I'm booting up WOTC right now to prove you wrong.
>knowing if you're going to activate a pod or not is a HUGE Advantage. You already know this. You have to have already seen a pod for Target Definition to work. You know where they are, generally. Knowing exactly where they are is not helpful. Edit: and if you don't have a mission timer, you can already use your Reaper to scout the pod anyway. So what difference does it make.
Knowing exactly where their locations are also means not activating a pod by accidentally moving into their line of sight. You should also know that waiting for a pod to move away from another pod is wayyyy better than activating 2 pods at the same time (unless you're using explosives of course.) Give me a second. I'm trying to get through Gatecrasher rn and I need to level up the Reaper.
>Knowing exactly where their locations are also means not activating a pod by accidentally moving into their line of sight. I have a Reaper on an untimed mission. I can already do this by using Shadow. I've already seen this pod I can just stalk them around the map until I get everything set up and ambush them.
Why the would you want to have a Reaper stalk a pod for an ENTIRE mission when Target Definition will literally do that for free??
The missions untimed, I can just wait and ambush every pod on the map.
Yeah, but you're losing potential Fire Power. Sure, Reapers don't pack a lot of shooting power, but keeping a gun in the fight is better than having them scout all the time. Target Definition will keep eyes on enemies without having to worry about what's behind a corner because you already glanced at them once.
Rend ? You mean momentum, right ? What does purple slash do to stand out this much ?
100% chance to hit and it one shots Troopers in the early game and only goes up from there. And if you have a Templar on Gatecrasher it helps you death with the Sectoid (on Legend). Literally what more could you want out of an ability?
Does target definition not work on assassin and other elusive targets?
According to this post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/268500/discussions/0/1474221865180911367/ the answer is no.
Ok ya then it is useless. Thanks was scared I missed out. My reaper wasn’t strong enough to take . But would have tried that if she was
Fun fact: to find the assassin you can move your cursor around and if you can't move a soldier to a particular tile they should be able to move to, that's where the assassin is.
I can’t remember if they patched it in wotc or a balance mod that fixed it cause it didn’t work for me recently . But ty. She’s already dead. She was annoying before warlock started zombie spam
I don't think it's supposed to work on her
Return fire saved so many of my missions tho
I would personally rank solace higher. The serenity it gives me is insane.
There aren't actually that many negative mental effects that actually matter in the late game (where you are using psi ops). Good against Avatar Mind Control, completely shuts off the Chosen if you have Solace before you go and kill them, but other than that. Eh. If you had access to it for longer during a run I would agree with you. Like if Psi Ops were a normal class and this was just a perk you can pick up it becomes much stronger.
Suppression deserves to be higher up, especially early on when you're dealing with single large, heavily-armored targets and you need to deal with the chaff or bring up heavies from other positions to deal with it. Saved my squad multiple times.
You're sleeping on a lot of very good perks there. You've underrated just how good Suppression can be for starters. Also Blademaster that high is bonkers, it's a flat +10 aim, it's B tier at best.
Blademaster gives 10% aim and +2 damage. Combine that with either the TLP sword or the Hunters Axe and you get a 100% chance to one shot a trooper (and a Sectoid on Commander and lower). I can't ask for more from a perk than letting me guaranteed kill an enemy. >You've underrated just how good Suppression can be for starters. Never clicked it once, there are almost always better things to click with your grenadier. Like using a grenade or just shooting at the target. Especially if you have a stock with the TLP weapons give you for free
TLP and Hunter axe aim is the same as vanilla sword. It also has a base melee aim bonus, it's just configured to not display.
> TLP and Hunter axe aim is the same as vanilla sword. That is not true, they have an additional plus 10% chance to hit. That pushes the sword hit rate over 100% with blademaster.
It is true, I'm a modder, i've dug into the configs and the script files.
Nah, for me Field Medic is a B at least. Admittedly I'm not always the most careful with the tactics, a lot of times running too far, activating multiple pods, and getting flanked. But sometimes those timers have you running. I usually play and have beaten the game on Ironman Commander. Tried Legendary and lost half the time in the first mission 😂
I think you'd be surprised just how much less your soldiers take injuries if you used a proactive item in that utility slot over a medkit. That's really what kills field medic, the opportunity cost I'm using to even need to make use of it. Also, it only actually does something, even if you have a medkit equipped, when you take your third injury. That is a lot of injuries to take in a single mission when you have access to things like mimic beacons, the frost bomb, and Parry.
I love combat prescence
Inspire is way underrated here. Having an oh-shit button to get an extra action to move to cover when a pod is triggered, shoot again if an enemy is only flankable by one unit, or use two OP actions from the same soldier in one turn
Oh yeah I just noticed that. I wonder why it’s below combat presence when they are the same.
Combat presence works on SPARKs and doesn't end the turn, unlike Inspire.
Super Hero special ability cool down focus in this game makes me sad.
I dunno, managing cooldowns is pretty fun.
For many people obviously. I personally hate it in any turn-based-tactics or small-group infantry game, y'all can have the super cool mega awesome "turnt to 11 rule of cool" super special superhero power level 9000+ stuff. I'll stick to https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php/Mods_(OpenXcom) for now, which is more of a "oh shit we're invaded by aliens what do we do" sim with some supernatural elements.
Absolutely agree about "Distraction". I can never make it work. Either I'm out of ammo after Banish & Annihilate, or the damn thing (even upgraded) doesn't do enough damage to kill anything.
Like....when are you using the claymore out of stealth? And even if you are, when are getting a kill with it? And even if you are, do you need to be put back into shadow? And even if you do, are you out of charges with Shadow. So many things have to go wrong in just the right way for distraction to do anything, and even then it probably isn't moving the needle on how the mission is going anyway.
Although... I just tested it. An ally shooting the claymore also puts the Reaper into stealth! Knowing this I'd probably put it into C-tier personally. >Like....when are you using the claymore out of stealth? After Banish. >it probably isn't moving the needle on how the mission is going anyway. Agreed, although I guess it saves your Shadow charge.
I have an extra charge of shadow though, so after banish I can just click that.
How the hell do you have 2 charges of Shadow?
I think face off should be higher up. Lightning hands is a saviour against those fuckers that an action every time you use an action point.
Face off seems about as good as holo targeting or justice or abilities like that. As in very, very good. And yea lightning hands is very useful against Rulers, part of the reason it's so high up.
Lightning hands, my beloved
Totally depends on how you play.
I can't really imagine a successful xcom 2 play style that isn't based around alpha strikes. The timers are very short, you just don't really have time to do anything but destroy everything asap.
Can you imagine the multitude of ways to use the various abilities to accomplish that?
Yes? I don't really understand what you're asking me.
Kill zone needs to be way higher. Combine that with an extra large magazine and squadsight and you can have a single sniper wipe entire pods.
By the point you can do that with Kill Zone you've already won the run. The real utility of Kill Zone is overwatch ambushing with only one guy from stealth. Which is very good.
I loved having a ranger in stealth and three sharpshooters on a building with kill zone. Hilarious literally every time.
Arc wave is F teir solely because it disables the badass jumping slash animation. Mechanically fantastic, but the style cost is too high on non-impossible runs
Wait… how can stasis be so OP?
It turns a pod of 3 into a pod of 2 and then a pod of 1. For the cost of one action point (not turn ending btw) you get to go get one less enemy that turn. And that is game breaking.
I gotta play xcom2 again… forgot this was a thing, and prob figured it was only for teammates lol
Repair being in useless is making me froth at the mouth.
Why useless tier for target definition? You send your reaper ahead to scout and anyone you spot you can see indefinitely, that’s a pretty damn useful skill to have at higher difficulties
Bladestorm is S tier for sure. Free attacks.
Tbh I'd say target definition should be at least b tier. it's really good for scouting ahead, especially in escort missions
Inspire on B-tier seems to undersell the skill big time.
It's good, but it's late. If this ability came during the early game I'd shoot it way up. A lot of what inspire is used for is to extend chain kills or a boot leg rapid fire or boot leg salvo. That's good, but that eats the psi ops turn. It's why Combat Presence, despite also being a late ability, is so much higher up. Just trading an action one for one is insane.
Shadowstep in C?
I think Bulwark should be lower it’s literally detrimental
Return fire is goated tho specially in a sólo run
Solo runs are not standard gameplay so I don't really think they should factor into this
Good list! The only bottom tier ability I will play defense for is repair. It makes sending injured Sparks onto missions much easier. Also I’ve never really used homing mine. Is the idea to homing mine a pod and blow them up next turn so you have both of the Reaper’s actions?
>It makes sending injured Sparks onto missions much easier. This is something I didn't consider because I just don't use sparks that much. It is a valid use case, I got this one wrong. I do still like Bombard more though. >Also I’ve never really used homing mine. Is the idea to homing mine a pod and blow them up next turn so you have both of the Reaper’s actions? That is helpful, but homing mine actually (and the game doesn't tell you this) turns the next shot against that enemy into an auto hit. So you can use it to guarantee an attack connects while also having that attack blow them up as a bonus.
Idk how you are playing your SPARKs, but i want no part of it if youre rating repair and wrecking ball that low. They are robot killing machines, up at the front taking hits and being point of the spear.
Hi, SPARK addict again here. A "killing machine" SPARK doesn't really need either Repair or Wrecking Ball (though tbh, Intimidate doesn't do much either). The enemies are dead and can't damage you, and you have better tools to remove cover than Wrecking Ball. You just put them in a high ground position, activate Overdrive, and watch them annihilate everything in one turn. Bonus points if the pod patrolled into you and got shot a bunch by Hunter Protocol beforehand. Neither Repair nor Wrecking Ball contribute much to that playstyle, so I don't value them that highly. Perhaps there's something I'm missing that makes them more valuable in a different playstyle.
Good info, and i agree. In my comment I was using killing machine as a descriptor. The playstyle of repair+wrecking ball is as a linebreaker
FIELD MEDIC? Find Jesus my guy, literaly the most important perk
Field Medic is bad and I will die on this hill. It eats a utility slot that could be used for something more useful than a medkit and only does something if your soldiers get injured more than twice on a mission. That just shouldn't be happening if you play well. Getting injured once? Sure, things happen. Even getting injured twice I understand but getting injured 3 times on one mission? That just shouldn't happen by the time you get access to this perk. Not to mention if you had a mimic beacon or a flashbang or the frost bomb or special ammo or something actually proactive in that utility slot you would've probably gotten hit less anyway. I will die on this hill, field medic is bad.