[Suggestion for 1.3] Adjustments to the Psi Ops

[Saph7]

Okay, so as things stand I think the Psi Ops is the only class in LW2 that's significantly underpowered. Patch 1.2 is intended to help a bit with training time, but from watching JoINrbs' 1.2 Twitch stream, while this let his Psi troops level up faster, it didn't seem as though it actually made the class any stronger (he made a comment along the lines of "yeah, going for these Psi soldiers was probably a mistake, wasn't it").

IMO, the biggest problem with the Psi Ops at the moment is that there are too many junky powers in the pool. Yes, there's the issue of RNG in which powers you get, but I don't think people would mind the random nature of psi powers so much if was a choice between good powers and really good powers. What's bad is when your level ups give you a choice betwen weak powers and terrible powers.

So at the moment, I think the Psi powers fall into the following categories:

Good powers: Domination, Bastion, Void Rift, Null Lance, Fuse, Stasis. These are the ones you want to see on your power list, since they have powerful, battle-changing effects. They're competitive with good soldier perks (though probably still not as good as the best soldier perks, with the exception of Domination).

Okay powers: Soulfire, Fortress, Solace. These aren't amazingly exciting, but they're useful. You're not going to be upset about having them.

Weak powers: Insanity, Schism, Soul Healing, Sustain. These are either unreliable, weak in their effect, very situational, or a combination of two out of three. There are some situations where they'll be useful, but for the most part if they were gone you wouldn't really notice the difference.

Terrible powers: Mind Merge, Soul Merge, Stasis Shield. These are bad enough that using them will typically produce a worse result than if you'd just spent the action taking a rifle shot.

So if you count these up, this leaves you with almost 50% of the Psi powers in the 'weak' or 'terrible' categories. This isn't a great ratio. My suggestion would be to buff the ones in the bottom two categories, with the goal of bringing them up to at least the 'okay' mark.

Suggested Changes to Powers

Insanity: Make Insanity work like the Arc Thrower with the Electroshock perk. On a success, have it inflict a disabling condition (maybe 25% Stun, 50% Panic, 25% Mind Control, or something like that). On a failure, have it disorient the target for 1 turn instead. (Reasoning: Insanity is just really unreliable at the moment, since alien and ADVENT will scales quite strongly and Psi Offence boosts are hard to come by. This adds some dependability so that even if you fail your roll, you don't completely waste your action and your cooldown.)

Schism: Have Schism additionally reduce the cooldown of Insanity by 1 turn. (This is in line with the Soul Merge perk and fits with the 'upgrade' theme.)

Soul Healing: Have Soul Healing additionally reduce the cooldown of Soulfire by 1 turn. (Same reasoning as Schism.)

Sustain: Also reduces wound recovery time, in a similar manner to Field Surgeon but affecting the Psi Ops only – maybe bump them up one wound category, so that 'gravely wounded' becomes 'wounded', 'wounded' becomes 'lightly wounded', and 'lightly wounded' becomes uninjured. (While Sustain is an interesting and unique effect, it has the problem of only being applicable in a really, REALLY bad situation that you want to avoid at all costs. So make it also do something in a non-disaster. This makes a 'tank' Psi Ops with Soul Healing slightly more viable.)

Mind Merge: Have Mind Merge additionally remove the Disoriented and Panicked conditions from the target. (This fits thematically with what Mind Merge is supposed to do, and lets a 'support' Psi Ops actually be useful.)

Soul Merge: Have Mind Merge additionally remove the Disoriented, Panicked, Unconscious, and Stunned conditions from the target. (Note that even with all these buffs, this is still probably worse that the Specialist's Revival Protocol.)

Stasis Shield: Have Stasis Shield additionally reduce the cooldown of Stasis by 1 turn. (Stasis is strong enough that I think this is enough of a buff.)

So those are my ideas. Thoughts?

[Stroggus]

Terrible powers: Stasis Shield.[/b]

What? It is the best.

[nightwyrm]

Terrible powers: Stasis Shield.[/b]

What? It is the best.

Stasis Shield is the one that lets you Stasis your own guys, not the basic Stasis power.

[Tuhalu]

Terrible powers: Stasis Shield.[/b]

What? It is the best.

Stasis Shield is the one that lets you Stasis your own guys, not the basic Stasis power.

Which is kind of amazing if you want to charge someone into an unsafe position, but you want them to survive the inevitable return fire on the alien turn.

[nightwyrm]

What? It is the best.

Stasis Shield is the one that lets you Stasis your own guys, not the basic Stasis power.

Which is kind of amazing if you want to charge someone into an unsafe position, but you want them to survive the inevitable return fire on the alien turn.

I would agree with you if this was Vanilla where I can get all the powers for my PsiOps. But it's much harder to justify taking this marginal increase in utility if I have to give up a more broadly useful power.

[trihero]

Suggestion is simply the cardinal rule of "do no harm."

Start with the way the psi class was in vanilla, you can learn everything with enough time. This 1.1 implementation is a huge step backwards - we have less variety of skills available. The point of long war is to increase variety (i.e. you can see this in the 3 columns for every class), but with the psi we have arbitrarily leaped backwards by the limiting skills system (plus, the couple skills that were added are GARBAGE - mind merge/soul merge)

[nightwyrm]

I honestly wouldn't hate Mind Merge as much if it didn't end your turn....

[Saph7]

Suggestion is simply the cardinal rule of "do no harm."

Start with the way the psi class was in vanilla, you can learn everything with enough time. This 1.1 implementation is a huge step backwards - we have less variety of skills available. The point of long war is to increase variety (i.e. you can see this in the 3 columns for every class), but with the psi we have arbitrarily leaped backwards by the limiting skills system (plus, the couple skills that were added are GARBAGE - mind merge/soul merge)

Just allowing psis to learn all skills would make them better in the very late game, but it would take them forever to train up that long, and until they did they'd have the same problem of having half their power list filled with junk. Plus I have the feeling that by the time you got anywhere close to learning every one of the 16 powers, you'd have won or lost the game already (LW games have a pretty definite soft time limit).

[wadeanthony]

I honestly wouldn't hate Mind Merge as much if it didn't end your turn....

I agree, In fact I don't think the below abilities should end your turn. (I can'r remember if Stasis does)

Mind merge
Stasis
Insanity

As for Insanity, the base version SUCKS. When I made my first 3 PSI troopers they had a 30% chance to maybe cause a status affect, I would rather shoot and try to kill them/give red fog then MAYBE give a disabling affect, if you are forced to actually use it it's a last ditch effort.. which has 2/3 chance of doing the bare minimum. It should do damage from the get go ([amp]1-2/2-3/3-4) and always disorient at the least with a chance to stun or panic. I wouldn't even mind if Mind control part is removed in favor of damage. My reason is PSI needs more damaging abilities, every lacking compared to the other classes. Psi Panic was much better then base Insanity.

Schism can then improve on it by giving it +1/+1/+2 damage and replace disorient with rupture with a chance for stun, panic or mind control.

--

Sustain, Bastion and Soul healing can shine if we are able to make PSI tanks and it's something I want to try out but it seems lightly depended on AWC rng (for +1 armor perks) and the rng for PSI lab. One way to fix this would allow us more then 3 learnable abilities- maybe 5 at a time.

I really really really think PSI troopers need less rng involved. You are already sacrificing time to research them, supplies to build the PSI lap and a spot to level them up, more time to learn abilities and for a lackluster investment. It's worst then leveling up a rookie because at least with a rookie Tech I can get a rocket, gunner at rank 3 can get hail of builds which will out damage soulfire by lasers, rangers can shot twice, 4 of any grenades i have, etc

As for getting it started in the first place, the research needs to have less of a time sink and cost or/and ability training needs to be lowered A LOT if kept at 3.
--

PSI troopers can also benefit from have their own armor like the Vortex from EU/EW/LW.
One for tiers 2 and 3, +PSI offense, +HP, + Will, +Shields based on PSI offense.

[trihero]

Suggestion is simply the cardinal rule of "do no harm."

Start with the way the psi class was in vanilla, you can learn everything with enough time. This 1.1 implementation is a huge step backwards - we have less variety of skills available. The point of long war is to increase variety (i.e. you can see this in the 3 columns for every class), but with the psi we have arbitrarily leaped backwards by the limiting skills system (plus, the couple skills that were added are GARBAGE - mind merge/soul merge)

Just allowing psis to learn all skills would make them better in the very late game, but it would take them forever to train up that long, and until they did they'd have the same problem of having half their power list filled with junk. Plus I have the feeling that by the time you got anywhere close to learning every one of the 16 powers, you'd have won or lost the game already (LW games have a pretty definite soft time limit).

Then adjust training time, that was simple. The point is even with all their skills they are not anywhere near overpowered. You can't even argue something like "well you can wait for their cooldowns!" because you can't anymore on golden path missions, and other classes also have (more) powerful cooldowns.

[nightwyrm]

I agree, In fact I don't think the below abilities should end your turn. (I can'r remember if Stasis does)

Stasis does not end your turn, which is why it's ridiculous that so many other worse abilities does.

[JulianSkies]

I see all those Soulfire complaints
Yet a lot of praise for Combat Protocol

What gives?

[nightwyrm]

I see all those Soulfire complaints
Yet a lot of praise for Combat Protocol

What gives?

At least for me, you get CP super early and it's an extremely good counter to the drones in the early game. As long as you upgrade your Gremlins, it scales decently into the mid game due to its double damage against robots. If in the late game you find you don't need it anymore, you always have the option of retraining out of it.

Soulfire is often too little too late and you're stuck with it.

[trihero]

Sure in a vaccuum combat protocol looks the same as soulfire. For one thing though, not everyone praises combat protocol. I would much rather pick one of the other two options, for instance.

But for sake of argument, you have to look at the context - where do you first get these skills, and what is the class expected to do.

For specialists, they get it at rank 1 and specialists are available immediately off the bat. Furthermore, they have very poor offensive potential, so combat protocol looks godly by default on them. And then there's the fact that it reks mechanical units pretty hard, which can be an issue due to the immense armor points of mechanical units. Although it has "only" 2 charges per combat, you can at least deploy those charges two turns in a row (or twice in one turn through command).

For psis, you are not guaranteed to get it at rank 1. In fact who knows when you'll get it. Psis are by flavor/design supposed to be "wizards" in the sense that "magical" attacks replace conventional weaponry. Does striking one enemy for minor to modest damage every 4 turns sound like a wizard to you?

I'll tell you what you already know - if specialists required the up front cost of psis, no one would be "praising" combat protocol. It's just that combat protocol happens to be very useful in that first tier of skills for the early game, and can even be occasionally OK in later stages of the game. The psi has a bunch of less than mediocre skills, of which you are not even guaranteed to learn in the course of their careers, and it doesn't even add up to a respectable member of the team if you could learn all the skills. But at least we should do no harm by letting them learn all the skills like in vanilla/perk pack.

[JulianSkies]

Sure in a vaccuum combat protocol looks the same as soulfire. For one thing though, not everyone praises combat protocol. I would much rather pick one of the other two options, for

But for sake of argument, you have to look at the context - where do you first get these skills, and what is the class expected to do.

For specialists, they get it at rank 1 and specialists are available immediately off the bat. Furthermore, they have very poor offensive potential, so combat protocol looks godly by default on them. And then there's the fact that it reks mechanical units pretty hard, which can be an issue due to the immense armor points of mechanical units. Although it has "only" 2 charges per combat, you can at least deploy those charges two turns in a row (or twice in one turn through command).

For psis, you are not guaranteed to get it at rank 1. In fact who knows when you'll get it. Psis are by flavor/design supposed to be "wizards" in the sense that "magical" attacks replace conventional weaponry. Does striking one enemy for minor to modest damage every 4 turns sound like a wizard to you?

I'll tell you what you already know - if specialists required the up front cost of psis, no one would be "praising" combat protocol. It's just that combat protocol happens to be very useful in that first tier of skills for the early game, and can even be occasionally OK in later stages of the game. The psi has a bunch of less than mediocre skills, of which you are not even guaranteed to learn in the course of their careers, and it doesn't even add up to a respectable member of the team if you could learn all the skills. But at least we should do no harm by letting them learn all the skills like in vanilla/perk pack.

I'd argue that doing no harm is, according to the state of the community prior to LW2, not letting then learn everything, also requiring missions to level. The hilarious part about so many complaints on LW2 is that they did what the general community wanted prior to it (like stealth missions).
That point aside, I see what you mean. I've mostly heard a lot of high end players saying combat protocol was the only choice, but I would imagine that it's availability is part of the reason. BTW given psi learn three out of four abilities when they turn to squaddies there is a very small chance soulfire is not there

[trihero]

I'd argue that doing no harm is, according to the state of the community prior to LW2, not letting then learn everything, also requiring missions to level. The hilarious part about so many complaints on LW2 is that they did what the general community wanted prior to it (like stealth missions).

Yeah I know, but they swung the pendulum way too far IMO with LW2. It seems vanilla had some ideas right after all.

One could argue psis were overpowered in the original, but they had a huge investment especially on legend. And you can easily argue that in LW2, all the other classes got better, and that infiltration restricts you from using too many psis anyways. So the nerf by forcing them to discard 1/3rd of their abilities is unnecessary.

[nightwyrm]

I'd argue that doing no harm is, according to the state of the community prior to LW2, not letting then learn everything, also requiring missions to level. The hilarious part about so many complaints on LW2 is that they did what the general community wanted prior to it (like stealth missions).

Yeah I know, but they swung the pendulum way too far IMO with LW2. It seems vanilla had some ideas right after all.

It turned out Firaxis sort of knew what they were doing. Who knew!!

[Jacke]

After reading this and the other topics on Psi, I can see why so many players now in 1.1 consider it not worth the expense for the Psi Lab nor creating Psi Ops, which is crazy. I'm looked at mods to fix this. Currently these, maybe all of them.

Faster Psi Lab Training

LW Psi Rookies

Partially Gifted

[PWK87]

Maybe Soulfire could set things on fire

[wadeanthony]

The problem is the 8 classes from the perk pack got much stronger, the aliens and advent got tougher and PSIs got a little worst (number perks able to learn which I don't have a problem with, I think that's fair) but the investment is more then doubled for much less gain (time, training, and resources).

One of the main issues I have with the time to train is that unlike in vanilla where the pause to do a mission is basically non existence if you don't take wounds making them overpowered, you have to infiltrate now and not come back wounded while your other soldiers lvl up on the spot. Maybe it will get better after the update but I still feel like 3 random choices don't help cause you can end up with 2 good skills with loooonng training times or mediocre skill #3. I think either 5 random choices or following an actual tree that you can plan your PSI around like the other soldiers would be better.

An actual skill tree path to follow doesn't even have to be ALL available perks but at least listed out so you if you are going to have a support PSI, tank PSI or damage dealer PSI you will know from the beginning.


Even when we look at their equipment compared to other classes-

GREMLIN Mark II ADVENT Robotics
Early in the game, hit robots for 7-8 (up from 4-5), +20 Hack, 3 Revival Protocol charges

Meanwhile look at the amp cost

Advanced Psi Amp - Gatekeeper Autopsy

For +15 Psi offense, ability to actually do "decent" damage on a base void rift 4-5 and +1 shield
That's far too late to be useful, I think it would be possible to get an Avatar corpse before even encountering a gatekeeper if you start hacking commanders early enough.

I feel like Soulfire is fine, 4-6 is decent in the beginning - more then CP. But by time you get PSIs online it's basically a weaker hail of bullets. You aren't upgrading it's damage anytime soon either unlike a Gunner's SAW.

EDIT: I actually started using Faster Psi Lab Training and still find the training time too long grouped with infiltrate time. SInce it's not as simple as before, you have to take them on missions to lvl them up, they start weak and stay weak for a much longer then your normal rookie. And unlike LW1, you don't have a seasoned soldier to make into a PSI trooper.

[Saph7]

I see all those Soulfire complaints
Yet a lot of praise for Combat Protocol

What gives?

Soulfire is actually okay. Not amazing, but okay. It's numbers aren't impressive, but guaranteed damage is always useful.

Combat Protocol gets more praise because:

1) You get it way way earlier. Soulfire would be great if you had it 3 or 4 missions into the game. Getting it 3 or 4 months into the game? Not so much.
2) Combat Protocol hits at squadsight range. Soulfire doesn't.
3) Combat Protocol does double damage to mechanicals. Soulfire can't target mechanicals at all.

And yet Soulfire is still better than most of the Psi Ops' low-level abilities.

[Goumindong]

The damage really is pretty low. Definitely too low.* I mean hail of bullets is doing 4-6/6-11/10-16 at comparable tiers. And gunners get a lot of other really amazing abilities (that also scale super hard)

*exception being maybe null lance.

[Ithuriel]

For psis, you are not guaranteed to get it at rank 1. In fact who knows when you'll get it. Psis are by flavor/design supposed to be "wizards" in the sense that "magical" attacks replace conventional weaponry. Does striking one enemy for minor to modest damage every 4 turns sound like a wizard to you?

...I mean, I hate to be that guy, buuuuuuuuuuttttttt Magic Missile is sorta Wizard 101. Guaranteed minor to modest damage every few turns? Yup. 8/8 gr8 b8 m8

[Saph7]

Of course, there's a 25% chance that your Psi isn't even going to have Soulfire at all. Have fun with your only active abilities being Insanity and Mind Merge . . .

[wadeanthony]

Maybe Soulfire could set things on fire

I also thought about this idea has well as either an alternative upgrade to Soul Healing or added with the base attack but with how powerful burning is now on a 4 turn cool down it would have to be a small chance or based on PSI offense.