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Maybe someone can tell me what I'm doing wrong, but I don't get it. Psi class sucks.

You can't train all their abilities, and it takes forever to train them to begin with. So my current status is:

- in the month of December, I finally attained the Master rank (final rank for psis) for 2 psi ops. I have no other psis since they took both tube slots to train their abilities until now. In contrast many of my conventional troops reached max rank a couple months before that.
- neither of them have 100 psi offense (both have 93, ouch)
- neither of them have domination or bastion (the only 2 skills that make the psis worth it imo)
- one of them has void rift, the other doesn't. It does a whopping 2-3 damage with my psi offense.
- you are offered a lot of junky skills like soulfire's healing, render yourself invincible if you would otherwise have died, mind merge, upgrade mind merge etc, and these detract from your chance to get domination/bastion

The abilities they have are fuse, null lance, solace, soulfire, mind merge (soul merge upgrade), stasis (upgraded to be able to target allies as well). This is not a bad package in a vaccuum, but it is pretty bad in comparison to other classes. Fuse is a ghetto grenade that depends on whether the enemy is carrying one. Null lance is a very very ghetto shredder gun that has 1 tile width; I can't get more than 1 enemy with it usually. Solace is entertaining I suppose, but I tend to nix sectoid commanders pretty quickly. Soulfire is a ghetto hail of bullets (does way less damage). Mind merge is a ghetto aid protocol (I get something like 5 ablative hitpoints out of it....). Stasis is half decent I suppose to lock out the big guy in a pod, although arguably you can do the same thing by lobbing a fire grenade on an organic, or hacking a mechanical.

But I feel like all I have are ghetto versions of other classes's abilities, and they don't add up to a class that has taken this much training time, not to mention the services of a scientist, the psi lab operating costs, and their upgrades require ridiculous tech as well (gatekeeper for advanced psi amps, the final avatar shadow project for alien psi amps). And I didn't even get the opportunity to learn domination or bastion and there's no way I'm going to spend another 9 months to roll the dice on new psi ops to see if they can get it.

I don't care if the training time is increased, but they should be guaranteed to learn domination and bastion eventually. Otherwise it would be like a sniper that can't learn serial, or a gunner that can't learn saturation fire. You've taken away guarantees of learning their ace card, which makes no sense.

Someone please tell me I'm doing it wrong, because I'd rather just take a gunner instead (hail of bullets, sat fire >>>> soul fire, null lance, fuse). The only real thing my psis bring to the table at this point uniquely is....solace, which is a nice niche protection against mind controls, but that doesn't feel like it's enough.

Isn't it like in vanilla, that Psi Ops can eventually learn all abilities? After they reach master rank, they can still go into the tube and learn more, they just won't get promoted further.

Nope. Only 1 per rank. They start with 3 skills to compensate.

I forget what the ability is called, but the aura that prevents and cures mental ailments around the psi op?

That single skill alone has secured my lowly three psi a spot in a 10man rotation, then you get soulfire and the rest of the goodies (yet to train higher) on top.

Mind merge is great to put on the flamer technican as they run out to do a Firestorm or double flamer into massive pods.

That said, psi is very niche, but then again, it is more of a support than anything else. I treat them like specialists.

Daergar wrote:I forget what the ability is called, but the aura that prevents and cures mental ailments around the psi op?

Solace IIRC. A great ability.

Mal

Krzysztof z Bagien wrote:Isn't it like in vanilla, that Psi Ops can eventually learn all abilities? After they reach master rank, they can still go into the tube and learn more, they just won't get promoted further.

Nope. You start with 3 skills, and you can level up 7 more. You will miss 4 or 5 skills compared to the maximum number of skills. What's worse is they added 2 garbage skills in LW2 (mind merge and mind merge upgrade), to further pollute the chance you will get the good abilities.

You're not even guaranteed to get solace. Both of mine happen to have it and I might take it for the lulz against the avatars on the final mission, but I could also just take some mind shields and pick characters better at killing things.

Mind merge is great to put on the flamer technican as they run out to do a Firestorm or double flamer into massive pods.

Aid protocol/smoke is better, like I said I'm only getting 5 ablative hp from the skill. In b4 someone says you can use both aid protocol and mind merge, you're really missing the point.

What if you got a psi that was missing domination, solace, void rift, and bastion?

IMO the class should be balanced around having bastion and domination, not rolling the dice so that you either feel vastly underpowered if you don't get them or vastly overpowered if you get them. Retune it to make sense (tone down the extremes).

trihero wrote:IMO the class should be balanced around having bastion and domination, not rolling the dice so that you either feel vastly underpowered if you don't get them or vastly overpowered if you get them. Retune it to make sense (tone down the extremes).

Different tastes. I'm used to soldiers being different (hidden potential etc), so having varied psi strength and abilities on my psi operatives makes perfect sense to me. To me it makes logical sense from a lore perspective as well, given the mysterious nature of psionics, that we have less control over the actual outcome. Like how AWC training works, just for the entire class.

Hell, I'd even welcome a random event where a psi op goes mad during training, unleashing a burst of power and short-circuiting the Avenger's system, forcing a crash landing and then you need to defend against waves of naughty xenos as Shen tries to get the bird air-borne again. Not really relevant to the balance of it all, but still.

i agree and disagree with you.
a psi ops can be incredible powerful (domination/stasis alone), however the long training time, the training restriction (only two tanks) as well as the rng for level up perks and high strategic investments (research, buildings, scientist) make them hard to justify in comparison to top classes like gunner or grenadier. In vanilla xcom2 i ran a team with 6 psi ops (i dragged out the campaign) and it is incredible powerful to basically double your team size with domination and have total control with stasis spam.

with the increased enemy numbers in long war 2, the much more tight gameplay and strong alternatives i have to agree with the op's sentiment though: not really worth the investment

quick question:
what does bastion do?

I think you don't give Psy Ops enough credit. They were totally overpowered in vanilla which is probably why they look bad now that they are simply good.

trihero wrote: - neither of them have 100 psi offense (both have 93, ouch)

Did you equip them a mindwhip? -20 will is of no concern once you have solace and +20 psi offense is very good.

- neither of them have domination or bastion (the only 2 skills that make the psis worth it imo)

Sad for Bastion. As for Domination, i often found it to be a fun toy but hardly anything essential.

- one of them has void rift, the other doesn't. It does a whopping 2-3 damage with my psi offense.

Void rift was always bad without the mass insanity effect (and ideally the insanity damage). Of course the random training makes this harder to get.

- you are offered a lot of junky skills like soulfire's healing, render yourself invincible if you would otherwise have died, mind merge, upgrade mind merge etc, and these detract from your chance to get domination/bastion

You have a point on the random stuff.

But I feel like all I have are ghetto versions of other classes's abilities

But what other class have long range grenade (fuse), 100% reliable enemy disabling (stasis), survival support (mind merge, upgraded stasis), several auto-hit ignore armor attacks, AOE cleaner ... none of which are limited in number of uses per mission.
Sure other classes might have one ability that's better then one of the psi abilities, but none have them all in a nice one soldier package. Psi troopers are the ultimate Swiss army knifes of your squad. They have a trick in their bag for every situation, and very few rely on the RNG.

Training time might be an issue as is the random perks selection. I would rather have a semi-fixed, semi random selection of perks that would ensure you can get some perks at a given level, and then offer others as bonuses to keep them more in line with other soldiers (fixed perks + AWC bonuses) but that would probably require rewriting a lot of code.

Sounds like they are kind of OK but if they aren't better than regular soldiers, why bother with the big investment in research / power / supply / cores / scientist to get it going? I feel it should be like gauss rushing in LW1: the opportunity cost of the slow-burn investment makes a later phase of the game noticeably easier.

My balance suggestion is psi ops to have low infiltration times, like half a regular soldier, so they are somewhat additive rather than a straight replacement. Also makes sense narratively because they can be all 'these are not the droids you're looking for'.

My suggestion for flavour would be more variety in starting powers. Instead of always 3 of 4 initiate powers, there could be a chance to get a single high level power or one mid level power and one initiate power.

I find Psi Ops a good choice for Haven advisers. With some AWC and/or Officer training, they provide some versatility in Rendez-vous missions, able to adapt if something wrong happens.

Otherwise I spare my Psi Ops for second-picking if noone else fits or if the Op has a specific ability for that specific mission (Tower, VIPs...)

I have to agree with op.
Psi Ops are not worth the time and resources. They are incredibly weak compared to other classes.
They where op in vanilla yes, but long war makes them really a joke.
Why should i waste a slot for a Psi Ops when i have another gunner or grenadier?
Right now i don't even bother building a psi lab.

I think the really long training time is killing this class. With the way LW2 is going, 10+ days is an eternity. I put in a dude for Stasis training, just 18 days, about 4-5 days ago in real time and she's still in the tank. I'm starting to even forget I have a Psi Op. A squaddie who was recruited around the same time as her has probably gone on 2-3 missions in the same period of time and has leveled up 2 ranks.

The number of missions isn't really an issue since you can take them out of the tank and resume training when they return, what is an issue is the infiltration time that's basically lost time. I think with the way they now require normal levels to gain xp, the tank time could be reduced. It's probably a simple ini editing.

I also like the idea of easier infiltration thanks to their powers but one could argue that hiding psi powers from advent isn't easy so not sure about this.

EDIT. Looks like the psi training time is in XComGameData.ini Not sure how the scalar modifier works. As you can see, base time is not that big. The issue is the multiplier for learning higher level abilities. Unfortunately since the abilities offered for training are random you can very much end up with all high level abilities at your first level up and spend a reeeeeeeally long time in the tank.

Did you equip them a mindwhip? -20 will is of no concern once you have solace and +20 psi offense is very good.

Not guaranteed to get solace, and in my game mind whips are only -10 will and +10 psi offense. And yes I use them anyways. Woohoo, soulfire goes from 4-6 to 5-7. (and void rift stuck at 2-3)

But what other class have long range grenade (fuse), 100% reliable enemy disabling (stasis), survival support (mind merge, upgraded stasis), several auto-hit ignore armor attacks, AOE cleaner ... none of which are limited in number of uses per mission.

Mind merge to me is essentially garbage. I've tried it a couple times and sighed. +5 ablative hp? Really? And that's upgraded mind merge.

The long range grenade (fuse) is quite fun but depends on the enemy carrying grenades. Soulfire/null lance are reusable, but are nothing compared to hail of bullets/sat fire (which are also reusable....). Null lance is so hard to hit with, soulfire hits like a wet noodle, and by the late stage in the game your other troops are carrying weapons of mass destruction that dwarf those (or the sniper can just 100% hit through high cover at this point, and go on serial for killing 12+ spread out enemies). Domination/bastion are the only powerful class defining abilities I feel and yet I got neither having trained 2 psis for many months. Even if I had domination/bastion I don't think the psis would be OP considering how long it took to get there (meaning I can only really have 2 psi ops).

And like I said, what if your psis were missing

Solace, domination, bastion, and void rift?

(bastion extends Fortress to nearby allies; that is, immunity to poison, fire, and explosions. Maybe acid too I forgot)

The psi may have been powerful in vanilla, but the bar has been raised for the other classes in this mod as well. Randomness in skills was not the way to go. And in vanilla, at least on legendary, the training times were so long you could only field 2 psis with the best abilities. That would be an OK limiter in LW2, given that there's the whole infiltration system as well so they can't be used on every mission anyways.

I just started training, went on a mission and trained soulfire when returned since that was the only skill @ <20 days. Can't see any of the tree now, and I'm not sure if I can get either of the other 2 skill options next time - assumed it was like AWS.

Sounds like I should just not bother..

Hazelnut wrote:I just started training, went on a mission and trained soulfire when returned since that was the only skill @ <20 days. Can't see any of the tree now, and I'm not sure if I can get either of the other 2 skill options next time - assumed it was like AWS.

Sounds like I should just not bother..

You have to put them into combat before they can train the next level, and the last level they can reach is master.

You shouldn't pick the trait based on training time because the skills with lesser training time usually suck (soulfire is ok....I guess). The more sucky skills you pick, the less chance you have of getting better skills since you can't learn all the abilities.

trihero wrote: Not guaranteed to get solace, and in my game mind whips are only -10 will and +10 psi offense. And yes I use them anyways. Woohoo, soulfire goes from 4-6 to 5-7. (and void rift stuck at 2-3)

Just checked, you're right, it's only +10. Well, you wrote you had solace on those psi troopers didn't you?

The psi may have been powerful in vanilla, but the bar has been raised for the other classes in this mod as well. Randomness in skills was not the way to go. And in vanilla, at least on legendary, the training times were so long you could only field 2 psis with the best abilities. That would be an OK limiter in LW2, given that there's the whole infiltration system as well so they can't be used on every mission anyways.

Good point about other classes being improved. I still think learning all the skills is a bad idea not because they would be OP but because every psi trooper would end up being exactly the same as every other one. I have different sharpshooters with different perks so why should my psi troopers all be the same?
However, with a limited selection of skills, it's important that all of them are good. I haven't been particularly impressed by mind merge either. Soulfire does adequate damage but i'm still at laser. I was expecting it would gain damage with psi offense and/or better psi amps. If it only gains 1 point by the end of the game, of course, it's not great.

Something that could help with the random skills would be to have all higher skills depend on one of the initiate skills. Fortress would open all support auras, soulfire would open the direct damage, insanity the mind-control branch culminating with dominate. This way you could predict which skills you'll be able to train later once they finish their initial training. Since it's not very long, if you really don't like their choice of branches, you can put them as advisors in a haven.

I think the fact that when buying recruits you can see every potential stat except for psi power doesn't help. You can either buy a bunch of rookies and hope one turns out a good psi stat, or use a soldier with a low psi stat.

Its also hard to level them, until they are high level their abilities all have crap percentages to work (Insanity against an advanced trooper had a 60% chance) and it takes so long to train them up, then longer still to level them. I think Psi in general could use some work.

Psi ops definitely sucks. I elected to build the psi lab over the shadow chamber and lost the game. They come too late and max out too weakly to make a difference. It seems to me that they might even be always disadvantageous no matter what. The resource investment, building space, used up squad slot, perk pool/psi RNG, and simple time are the negatives you have to take on to train psi operatives. Think about all you can and should do just by ignoring the psi lab completely. They're about as useful as the fireman tree on technicals, which is not at all.

Some people are saying psi soldiers are like Swiss army knives or have situational uses but that seems wrong. Being a Swiss army knife has zero value if their abilities are worthless, which they are. Situational usage < other classes' capability to prevent those situations by slaughtering aliens.

speedmaster wrote:Psi ops definitely sucks. I elected to build the psi lab over the shadow chamber and lost the game. They come too late and max out too weakly to make a difference. It seems to me that they might even be always disadvantageous no matter what. The resource investment, building space, used up squad slot, perk pool/psi RNG, and simple time are the negatives you have to take on to train psi operatives. Think about all you can and should do just by ignoring the psi lab completely. They're about as useful as the fireman tree on technicals, which is not at all.

Some people are saying psi soldiers are like Swiss army knives or have situational uses but that seems wrong. Being a Swiss army knife has zero value if their abilities are worthless, which they are. Situational usage < other classes' capability to prevent those situations by slaughtering aliens.

You preach it, brotha. Snip snip goes the psi lab on my next play through unless they buff psi in 1.2.

I would like to see the PsiOps have the ability to get all the skills again. With the trade off that once the soldier hits master there is a steep time add for every skill added beyond that. So if you add one skill beyond master it is a three day training penalty. If you add two it is six days, etc (subject to balancing). So you can build a super-duper psi-op but it takes alot of tank time and reduces the number of useful Psi-ops you can have.

Eck... THe guys at pavonis have made Psi-Ops so worthless and such a waste this is going to be my first time giving myself resources back for this wasted psi-lab. Not even bothering with the soldier anymore, might just get them killed just to get their portrait on my memorial wall even. Pavonis should have warned us how useless Psi-Operatives were going to be this time around :/

They could let us tweak the psi ops in the ini files

They are still very strong. Most (all?) of their attacks ignore a lot of combat alien upgrades like defense or dodge so they scale well late game. Yeah, you roll on dice on their powers and it's possible to get a little bit screwed, but we're dealing with crazy psychics here.