Few Questions from a Legend difficulty veteran

[Pinkerson]

Hello, so far I loved xcom2 - LW2 mod. As a player who finished both xcom EW LW and XCOM2 in legend ironman. I've found LW2 quite challenging and it lives up to its reputation. But I've some suggestions and questions about the LW2 and I couldn't find my answers in current patchnotes.

First of all, PISTOLS
-When the invisible pistol bug will be addressed at?
-My Shinobi who has both Spec ops blade and Shadowkeeper from DLC. She tends to pull up her blade like a pistol and fire from it which is, awkward.
-Why pistol is now a full new AWC tree, was it needed? Nearly all companions can have it. But as a veteran I can easily say that without modding the pistol, they are pretty much useless and all you would see is %50 hit rate even on fanfire. I believe a full pistol class is needed and the biggest addition to game would be an empty hand posture for the models so we can actually use blade or sword or pistol as primary weapon. I'm playing on legend difficulty and I can easily say that I've never fired my smg on my shinobi. I just use it for movement+ and dmg- mods for her spec ops boost.
-I want to use pistols, but as far as I've noticed they are waste of time to train. The dmg they bring is mostly missed shots with the new aim system in game.
-Why EVERY class has pistol training as main AWC perk? Even spark can have a damn pistol, and believe me it looks weird in his hands. I see that that was missed in production. BUT honestly, I believe new AWC is VERY VERY dull regarding to LW AWC perks stand alone.

RANGER
-I simply do not know where to put this class. Cool idea to have an old gun, but.. The class is missing proper movement skills to be effective in close range. I tend to give my ranger a RUN AND GUN mod. But it's just a waste, I better get an Assault instead of ranger because assault tends to crit when run and gun is used. Ranger is very useless in early game until you mod it. JK, it's useless in endgame as well. I believe RANGER needs a proper recalibration and rewamp. Because I don't want to risk my squad on a guy who needs to be point blank range to the enemy for hitting some damage which is less than any other class can deal in last 2 turns. And it has a few shots to use. Honestly sometimes you go for missions where there are about 70 80 enemy in total. And you give this class only 4 shots for an entire mission. At least make her gun work like fleche, so the class would run to enemy to shoot it from its face. Please, check this out sometime. I do not use the class, but I would like to use it.

For as long as I've encountered yet, the mission variety is a bit dull and since it's long war, it takes a lot of time for us to reach class missions for a bit of change.. Some new kind of guerrilla warfare would be nice, like "There is 5 turns until the advent army passes from this region, and we need to hit them hard, prepare the trap to eliminate enemy movement" I would really like REAL ambushes. I used to have "NEW MISSION TYPES" mod in steam, and it had some different ideas like DEFEND the base about bla bla turns, etc. Maybe more missions like avenger defense..

I'm okay with grinding but game requires a bit more attraction to keep us from thinking that we are grinding same thing over and over. Bonus missions, surprise attacks, if not for grimmy's bonus box mod I would've given up because the vanilla weapons are boring after a while. But the game needs attractions like those boxes. Every box makes me excited because I can get a weapon with awesome mods etc.

This is it for now, I will try to update as long as I keep playing, thanks for reading.

[UraniumOverdose]

Rangers aren't really a "frontline unit" like the assault.

They are the center point of your formation and one of the most consistant damage dealers.

In fact a ranger with some shredder ammo (either the item, or if you were lucky enough to get the AWC perk)
is probably the best for taking down heavy mecs, sectopods, and other high armor, high HP units.

They tend to have respectable health, and aim. They are an excellent jack of all trades unit.

They also are fairly cheap to gear up, as rifles are the cheapest upgrades next to SMG's.

Rangers also make excellent officers, since they don't have a ton of "options" like other classes, you can pair up their respectable damage with the officer abilities.

I see alot of people unsure of what to do with rangers, and I think it has more to do with their class being "boring." They don't have a ton of flashy abilities so people think they aren't good. When your flashy abilities are on timers and you still have stuff to kill, the ranger is always there. Give their rifles auto loaders, and extended mags and they will never have a turn where they can't fire their gun.

[nightwyrm]

I like Rangers a lot more once I stop trying to use their sawed-off shotgun. They shoot a lot and that's all I'm asking them to do.

[Valaska]

Well, rangers... Where to start with rangers! OH MY GOD RANGERS!

Are freaking fantastic. They are your absolute front line workhorse class. I take at least two on most missions because they do so much damage, with rapid fire you can kill sectopods in 1-2 turns with just two rangers if one gets shred from AWC. Even withough, you shred it up with a Spark then those two rangers will put it down. Command and its a total of 8 shots in one turn! Just be sure to give them extended magazines.

Don't use the sawed off shotgun, give them an elite scope and elite extended magazine and watch things just die. Make sure to make high aim recruits almost ALWAYS rangers. Sharpshooters are virtually useless compared to a ranger, techncials are absolutely pointless compared to the ranger, the only classes you need to succeed are;

Ranger, Specialist, Spark, Shinobi.

These four can beat every mission in the game. I still take a technical here or there just because thats what a few of my better rookies turned into, but since DE's have given my enemies so much health and armor I just need the purest most damaging classes, and the utility of the medic/hacker specialist. Don't get me wrong, a technician has niche situations it comes in handy for... I assume Grenadiers aren't absolutely terrible... I mean I think they are but some people might prove me wrong lol. I guess they could be good for massive amounts of flashbangs or smoke but eh.. With DE's I need pure raw damage to do anything at this point. Gunners have limited use too, when they hit they hit hard but not quite hard enough, so again rangers with two shots are vastly superior.

The fact rangers get accuracy boosts for missing can ramp their accuracy up to the point you actually manage to hit Elite Officers. Seriously, without them I could almost never hit them. I don't have a fully leveled Assault, yet, but they do work awesome so long as she gets her close encounters, without that though she is a very high risk asset to take.

[Randal Miser]

>Ranger useless

The Ranger is one of the strongest classes in the game overall - if you play using volume by fire and aggressive defense.

If you build them towards overwatch, and field multiple at the same time, you can essentially just camp wherever and butcher entire pods who patrol into you, and then spend the following turn taking pot shots, supressing and overwatching and let the AI just kill itself trying to reposition or do anything (once they begin to rank up and you give them more accurate weapons, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is in cover or not, if they take an action against you, there is a pretty good chance they will die or be punished for it).

The Rangers ability to fire and then take another action is incredibly strong too, and lets them be really flexible in what they can do.
They can fire > overwatch, fire > hunker down, fire > reload, fire > throw flashbang, etc
This also makes them excellent officers (aside from Specialists) without sacrificing their ability to be useful in general.
They are also very strong candidates for the AWC pistol perks.

The sawn of shotgun is pretty trash to be honest, its very situational, but neato if an enemy rushes in, but isn't something you should really bank on.

Just give them scopes, hair triggers and extended mags and watch them carry your entire team.

[Valaska]

Agreed, the gauss shorty is excellent for a chrys rush as long as they have enough armor to survive initial poke-age. But generally fire, then rapid fire will do more damage especially when you have their each consecutive attack raises your aim skill. Have spark with a holo targeter on his main rifle and you have a death wall with two rangers and him.

I love to have a reaper shinobi around too, and specialists. Everything else is just... Secondary.

[dstar3k]

The sawn of shotgun is pretty trash to be honest, its very situational, but neato if an enemy rushes in, but isn't something you should really bank on.

Not just neato. I've only used it once or twice -- but in both instances, it was _critical_, and I couldn't have managed the same thing without it (enemy in full cover, so I had to move to flank them, and a single shot with the primary weapon would not have killed them without a crit -- and if the enemy lived I was screwed).

[trihero]

The sawn of shotgun is pretty trash to be honest, its very situational, but neato if an enemy rushes in, but isn't something you should really bank on.

Not just neato. I've only used it once or twice -- but in both instances, it was _critical_, and I couldn't have managed the same thing without it (enemy in full cover, so I had to move to flank them, and a single shot with the primary weapon would not have killed them without a crit -- and if the enemy lived I was screwed).

I second this, I had a couple clutch moments where I double barreled a full hp muton to death when no one else had any reasonable method of doing so (think about it, not that many people can in the early game one shot a full hp muton behind high cover). I wound up exposing my ranger to flanking shots but that muton was either going to plasma grenade my team or run up and slash someone to death.

[Pinkerson]

I do not sincerely agree with this, a gunner with proper traits can do everything and more of what ranger can do from high distance. I'm thinking to use my ranger as a commanding officer.. Other than that, having more than 1 shinobi and assault into melee with high density maps with bout 60 70 enemy is suicidal. The class doesn't have enough movement or defensive capacity to maintain a possible flanked forward position. All of my crew is Top level, My gunner kills sectopods in one single ability. And I do not know why people bother to go too much melee or single target. All I had to do is to give my 5 of 6 troops exo suit and shredder gun the enemy when they are a package. I tend to destroy all enemy in map bout 3 turns if they are in range of one another. Other than that, honestly ranger still feels suicidal.

None has to say anything but the ranger after all I've written? ^^