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It seems like all the classes have anti-synergistic skills with the Boltcaster.

Sharpshooter, gunner cannot wield it.

Assault, shinobi, ranger have rapid fire and/or other skills that fire guns twice (and nothing that equivalently helps a 1 ammo gun)

Technical has suppression (wot)

Psionics, grenadier prefer SMG for the movement.

Specialist has suppression, sentinel. Also, reloading interferes with Ever Vigilant.

Can we get some reliably learnable skills (not pray for AWC deadshot for instance) to work well with this 1 ammo gun? I can't help but feel I'm playing the game wrong when I use the bolt caster.

The boltcaster seems to be purely about the stun. I'd recommend giving it to a Specialist or Grenadier who is not specced for rifle use. Personally I don't use it at all.

Devon_v wrote:The boltcaster seems to be purely about the stun. I'd recommend giving it to a Specialist or Grenadier who is not specced for rifle use. Personally I don't use it at all.

They're busy using SMGs though. 4 utility slots makes grenadiers so pokey I can't not us an SMG, and I only use specialists to stealth missions where they also need an SMG.

trihero wrote:

Devon_v wrote:The boltcaster seems to be purely about the stun. I'd recommend giving it to a Specialist or Grenadier who is not specced for rifle use. Personally I don't use it at all.

They're busy using SMGs though. 4 utility slots makes grenadiers so pokey I can't not us an SMG, and I only use specialists to stealth missions where they also need an SMG.

That would be why I don't use it.

Admittedly, I haven't finished a LW2 game since I just got half-way into it but had to restart today, but I gave up the Bolt Caster in LW2. It felt more useful in vanilla, but here, I have so many people that I don't feel as much benefit from the one-shot-then-reload cycle.

That said, I think that Specialists have the best synergy with it in early game LW 2 since they can do things if they are waiting to reload (I also often make my Specialists officers). In the late game vanilla, I used the powered bolt caster with my psi-ops and blue screen rounds so they had a major alpha strike against one target, but they had plenty of offensive abilities to back it up when they had to wait to reload.

Oh yeah in vanilla it was a carry weapon for sure on a specialist. It had +15 aim and hit like magnetic tier at rank 1. It's watery now with +5 aim and less damage. It has some armor shredding ability which is bizarre but it really doesn't work well with so many of the double shot skills, and it can't be modded either =.=

Yeah, this is reminding me why I mod out the mobility penalties. The mobility penalties don't provide a challenging fair tradoff. They just flat out limit character options . A lot more builds are possible otherwise, one of them being giving a boltcaster to a Grenadier or Specialist.

It's a poor man's laser rifle. Obsolete by the time you actually get lasers.

trihero wrote:Oh yeah in vanilla it was a carry weapon for sure on a specialist. It had +15 aim and hit like magnetic tier at rank 1. It's watery now with +5 aim and less damage. It has some armor shredding ability which is bizarre but it really doesn't work well with so many of the double shot skills, and it can't be modded either =.=

I didn't realize they had dropped the bonus to hit to +5. Now that I think about it, I remember not appreciating the new to-hit chances that were showing up. That was one of the major benefits of it in vanilla. The reload-rate was the balance already and with all the extra enemies in LW2, I don't understand why they nerfed it. I don't care enough to try to get it back though, but how can they stop you from modding the bonus back to +15?

Yeah I typically give mine to Specialists or high Aim Technicals/Grenadiers who rarely shoot but can make it count when they do.

The aim bonus (and other bonii) scales with tech level btw.

It's not so bad on a Specialist in LW2. However, it does suffer from being costly to upgrade, and the presence of SMGs gives Specialists and Psychics an alternative option from the Boltcaster which boiled down to "This is good on Overwatch" after you got Mag weapons (or laser weapons in LW2). I think it could be made to be more powerful. Make it feel like, for just one shot, your Specialist can hit like a Sniper or a close-range Shotgun. As it stands, most classes that could fit it into their build, just don't have enough reason. Grenadiers really need SMGs unless they rolled 16 mobility (and even then, more mobility can't hurt), Specialists are oftentimes made into Officers and have lots of 1 AP actions to take instead of reloading, Technicals need to be ready to get into position, and Shinobis are mostly invested in their sword, which wants an SMG for mobility.

As it stands, I think the Shadowcaster and Hunter's Axe are better handled. The Shadowcaster does the same damage, but has +10 Aim, +15 Crit and the conceal ability. Pretty good, but reasonably well balanced by how much you have to pay for it over a regular pistol. The Hunters Axe brings in a whopping +2 damage, +1 crit damage, and the Throw ability, but does come at the cost of -15 Aim, relative to the sword (at tech tier 3). And while the axe is more expensive, it doesn't require an Archon corpse, and so is more easily built.

Not sure about the Frost Bomb. It wasn't super great in Vanilla (as it wouldn't stun Gatekeepers or Sectopods fully), and there's so many other control methods available in LW2. Still, you don't have to buy or upgrade it, so I can't complain TOO much if I'm not using it.

I didn't know the sword had more aim than the axe! Nice to know.

The frost bomb is fairly useful; it's really good for small man "rescue from the vehicle" or hack the vehicle missions. There's usually a pod humping the van making it very annoying but you just straight up freeze them all and woosahhhh ez pz. Sometimes there's 2 pods, so my support grenadier gets to rapid deploy -> frost bomb -> flash bang the other pod that scampered. Frost bomb is also a very nice opener that prevents scampering in general.

trihero wrote:I didn't know the sword had more aim than the axe! Nice to know.

The frost bomb is fairly useful; it's really good for small man "rescue from the vehicle" or hack the vehicle missions. There's usually a pod humping the van making it very annoying but you just straight up freeze them all and woosahhhh ez pz. Sometimes there's 2 pods, so my support grenadier gets to rapid deploy -> frost bomb -> flash bang the other pod that scampered. Frost bomb is also a very nice opener that prevents scampering in general.

How exactly does it work now? I don't properly remember how it worked in Vanilla, now that I think about it. It seemed like it was just, in effect, a Stun Grenade with a small radius. Not sure on how long the frost lasts, or on what it's base AoE is (before you add all the bonus Grenadier radius).

trihero wrote:It seems like all the classes have anti-synergistic skills with the Boltcaster.

Sharpshooter, gunner cannot wield it.

Assault, shinobi, ranger have rapid fire and/or other skills that fire guns twice (and nothing that equivalently helps a 1 ammo gun)

Technical has suppression (wot)

Psionics, grenadier prefer SMG for the movement.

Specialist has suppression, sentinel. Also, reloading interferes with Ever Vigilant.

Can we get some reliably learnable skills (not pray for AWC deadshot for instance) to work well with this 1 ammo gun? I can't help but feel I'm playing the game wrong when I use the bolt caster.

You seem to have not considered something- the Boltcaster is a 1-off item from a DLC. ...why are you surprised that if you're trying to make it useless it will be so? Sure, if you take suppression on Technical or Specialist, Boltcaster becomes useless. But I haven't taken suppression on a single one of my Technicals or Specialists, because there are more useful options available.

Separately, I think the Boltcaster would fit great on a Psion or arc thrower specialized Assault. I dunno why you think Psions always need to carry an SMG, as most of their powers have range "sight." Like if they're not going to be shooting, okay, give them an SMG. But instead... you could give them a Boltcaster! I'd rather like to give it to my stun gun Assault, too; since the stungun has a 1-turn cooldown, only requires a single action, and doesn't need to reload, it seems a perfect fix for me; the Assault only needs 1 out of every 4 actions to perform his intended purpose, leaving you with plenty of free actions to move, fire, and reload. On top of this, every 4 turns you can reload, move, and stungun in the same turn.

It honestly almost feels to me like you're hunting for a reason to make the Boltcaster useless? Like sure, every class has some skills that won't work well with it, but are you really taking those skills on every single class for every single soldier? Do you never have a Technical with no suppression, or a Specialist who's a medic? Suppression competes with Field Medic for specialist; as long as you have one medic anywhere, you have a soldier who'd love to use a Boltcaster.

Kind of off topic, but the entire Alien Hunters dlc is garbage with LW2.

I'm playing on rookie even, doing very well. The instant Viper King shows up, total squad wipe.

I have found the bolt caster and the frost bombs to be useless. Shadow keeper is okay, although the lack of laser and coil upgrades makes its usefulness more sporadic, but is basically just a slight pistol upgrade since shadowfall is next to useless.

Only thing I find worth using is the axe.

An idea- this is pure theorycraft though because I don't have the DLC. Would it make sense to allow more than one (but still a very limited number) of the Alien Hunter equipment? In vanilla, you only ever had to equip 1 squad at a time. In Long War you can have 25+ soldiers on battle duty- so 1 piece of equipment seems much less important.

How exactly does it work now? I don't properly remember how it worked in Vanilla, now that I think about it. It seemed like it was just, in effect, a Stun Grenade with a small radius. Not sure on how long the frost lasts, or on what it's base AoE is (before you add all the bonus Grenadier radius).

It stuns them for their next turn (although sectopods/gatekeepers only lose 1 action point), and the frost effect gives you +10% aim against them. Base radius 2.

You seem to have not considered something- the Boltcaster is a 1-off item from a DLC. ...why are you surprised that if you're trying to make it useless it will be so? Sure, if you take suppression on Technical or Specialist, Boltcaster becomes useless. But I haven't taken suppression on a single one of my Technicals or Specialists, because there are more useful options available.

No, I did consider that. If you read my post very carefully, the point is that there isn't a skill set that makes it useful. There are plenty of anti-synergistic skills like rapid fire, suppression, but there are no skills that work WELL with a one ammo weapon, and that's the point. Even when you don't take suppression for technical/specialist, I wouldn't consider it the weapon of choice by far (hello, smg). I don't think it's worth the hassle of reloading compared to a regular rifle, even if you don't like smgs. It was definitely worth it in vanilla, but with the relative "power creep" of people having double attacks left and right, it doesn't feel worth it anymore.

You forgot a very important classe. Bolt Caster is great on rookies. Bonus Aim, assured kil.

If I'm training rookies, I put an smg on them and 2 frags. I'm not counting on their ding dong aim (and +5 aim is not really an "assured kill").

The Boltcaster works very well on an Arc Thrower Assault, as it also has 20% stun chance (up to 30% against alien rulers). So if you want to have a stun-orientated soldier, the Assault will be able to stun 1 target every turn in theory. You will probably want one with higher aim though.

I am currently training a Support Grenadier which with the advanced grenade launcher will have a frost grenade radius of 4. The frost grenade was very good against any Codex, Avatar or Alien Ruler.

It was also pretty nice opening against pods, as it could essentially stun all of them for 2 turns, giving you enough time to wipe them out.

[quote="8wayz"]The Boltcaster works very well on an Arc Thrower Assault, as it also has 20% stun chance (up to 30% against alien rulers). So if you want to have a stun-orientated soldier, the Assault will be able to stun 1 target every turn in theory. You will probably want one with higher aim though.

So uh. My stun-gun assault is sitting on -10 Defense and 85 Aim as a Staff Sergeant. Does that count?

Yep, 85 Aim is fine, just do not expect miracles like a Sharpshooter having 100% against someone in high cover.

If you still try to flank your target, you should be fine. And usually with the Stun Soldier you are aiming for big targets which do not need or use cover anyway.

P.S. Make sure that you train your pistol perks with said Assault and give him a proper gun. Sometimes you would need and want to have some crowd-control ability or pack a punch and the pistol will give you just that. You can even equip some Viper or Dragon rounds to make it even more nasty.

Overall, i found the weapons much less effective than they were in Vanilla XCom2, but it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I found myself rarely using the boltcaster, but occasionally i take it on a grenadier on non timed missions. Never on technicals because the flamer needs mobility but grenadiers can throw their grenades at a good distance and never need more than 1 ammo so it gives them a small added power when power matters. Of course by the time i have laser i only take it if i don't have enough laser rifles for everyone as it's basically a 1 shot laser rifle with some shred and low chance to stun.

I never used the shadowkeeper. I've taken it on shinobis for an additional conceal but never had a 1 hit point enemy to finish (and i won't try my luck on an enemy with more hit points than my minimal damage for a once per mission ability) so i gave up on this one.

The ice grenade is useful on non sting grenadiers but if you have a sting grenade you are usually better of opening with it. The larger radius means you will affect the whole pod so rather than freezing at 100% half of the pod and not doing anything to the rest, you'll disorient all of them and usually stun half of them. I guess it becomes better with advanced launcher and volatile mix thought.

The axe is actually useful when i want a little more punch from my shinobis like for a supply convoy.

If you're interested, there is a new custom class mod on steam that focuses on using those weapons. They start with the ability to reload for free after a kill. It's called Alien Hunter

Ithuriel wrote:An idea- this is pure theorycraft though because I don't have the DLC. Would it make sense to allow more than one (but still a very limited number) of the Alien Hunter equipment? In vanilla, you only ever had to equip 1 squad at a time. In Long War you can have 25+ soldiers on battle duty- so 1 piece of equipment seems much less important.

Not sure if by bug or design, but I got an intel package that lead me to a second set of Alien Hunter weapons. It seems when you activate it, the code sets the available inventory count for those 4 items to 1. Since I had all but the boltcaster equipped, I ended up with a second Frost Bomb, Hunter's Axe, and Shadowkeeper.

Ah, so that's why i didn't receive a second set when i scanned my second "recovered cargo" PoI. Well, i guess i'll have to equip them before scanning the third one
Pretty sure it's a bug. OTOH, I still havn't found the "nest" PoI.