Classes and perks discussion

[justdont]

Might as well start this thread - it's likely going to take a very long time to get everything balanced, so a discussion and info pooling could be helpful.

In my own feedback, I'm using a set of premises - these might not be very useful to different difficulties and so. My experience is based around Veteran and Legendary difficulties, with as much as possible balance fixes applied from 1.2 list (as long as these can be done with ini edits). Lesser difficulties provide much less of an incentive to "min-max" class builds and allow you to pick whatever and still be strong.

Premises:

1. Close combat is nearly always inferior to ranged combat. It's risky due to pod activation mechanic, and it may not be very reliable, leaving your soldier exposed. It is applicable when enemy numbers are low enough, but those cases are uncommon. As such, I generally expect melee perks and classes to show more potential than ranged ones.
2. The game requires you to build 2 distinctive types of soldiers: ones that infiltrate, move, and stealth well; and ones that kill stuff well. There's no reason to mix and match approaches, since only one of these two approaches will be applicable to most missions outside of early game (this is well-explained in other threads discussing the lack of middle-ground missions).
3. Heavy wounds are absolutely unacceptable. Whenever you play with Red Fog or not, getting severely wounded can easily lead to losing a timed mission outright, losing a soldier, or just losing a huge amount of time due to recovery. On the other hand, light (1-2 hp) wounds are not really a big deal.
4. Trying to depend on RNG won't get you too far in the campaign. LW2 allows you much less "wriggle room" compared to LW1, and things such as squadwipes of your A team will likely mean game over with no chance of recovery. If a tactic works perfectly in 95% cases but leads to wounds/dead soldiers/squadwipes in 5%, it's not a very good tactic.

With these premises, let's talk about classes now. I'm not touching SPARKs and PsiOps for the moment (haven't got enough experience with SPARKs, and PsiOps are so severely overnerfed that I lost any hope trying to make them work in current patch).

Shinobi
They serve a vital function, being the soldiers you need to take on infiltration missions, but at the same time this turns them into an extremely boring class that doesn't even fight in most cases, and even when the situation allows a Shinobi some combat, he can't perform well enough. While there are a few combat-oriented builds available, none of them work until MSGT, all are close-range, they're weaker than combat-oriented builds of better classes, and they prevent specializing in stealth.

There are a lot of defensive perks in the tree that can all be stacked on top of each other to nice effect, but in the end this effect is extremely pathetic. Most aliens simply attack the most vulnerable target (rather than trying to shoot your shinobi near them), but more importantly - no amount of dodge and defense will save you from certain attacks like Viper's constriction, and even a huge dodge score will only make a flanking crit a normal hit instead. Good luck surviving "only" normal hits from mutons, vipers, and other nasty critters.

There are quite some melee perks as well, but only straight stat-buffs (Cutthroat and Blademaster) are useful. Bladestorm is so terribly gimmicky that people make separate stand-alone mods to make it worthwhile, and even when buffed, it remains highly risky due to positioning - usually flankable and with lots of danger of pulling more pods, and interaction with certain enemies - using bladestorm against a muton, either voluntarily or not, can just harm your soldier. Coup de Grace is outright weak compared to damage-dealing abilities of other classes, and doesn't even work on a yellow move like Fleche. Sure, sometimes you can score a kill against a barely damaged sectopod, but sometimes you won't, and will spend soldier's entire turn doing nothing useful. And only Reaper makes melee Shinobi build somewhat useful, but Reaper chain usually goes around only until you hit a graze. Which might be your 1st attack as well.

Ranged damage build can function decently well, Hunter's Instincts + Rapid Fire is one of the most reliable ways to deal good amount of damage with a Shinobi. Serial works too, but pretty much requires you to pick a weapon other than SMG, thus forgoing mobility & stealth bonus. However, these builds aren't really compatible with stealth, as you're likely to pass on Ghostwalker, Shadowstep, and Covert. Making a ranged damage build "jack of 2 trades, master of none" - less effective and more risky on ranged attacks than, say, Ranger, and unfit to run full-stealth missions.

In the end, I stopped trying to use anything else than full stealth Shinobis. They aren't bringing anything to the table that can't be done more effectively with other classes. Stealth build is a must-have in the current metagame, but it's boring and skips most of the game's mechanics. Might as well make a "soldier" without any primary weapons at all, because it's not like they're needed.

Specialist
Very unique in what it can do, and thus being one of the most useful classes overall. Even if they won't even be near the fight most of the time. The perk tree, on the other hand, is utterly terrible and mostly it provides you with access to unique perks (useful) and a lot of filler (not useful in any situation). Overwatch tree is the worst offender here: first of all, OW isn't spectacularly useful in LW2 due to time constraints on many missions, second - it requires you to skip almost all unique perks, and third - Specialists get the weakest Aim progression, and it's unlikely that you'll get decent Aim even at MSGT.

As a whole, even while very useful, Specialist is just another extremely boring class - it doesn't do anything spectacular by himself. It doesn't need to be in the combat even, as GREMLIN abilities work on squadsight and Field Surgeon works simply by taking a soldier on a mission. Specialist can be a part of stealth missions, but primarily only for "greed" reasons, the only thing that your Specialist can do on a stealth mission that a decently-leveled Shinobi can't - is to hack the objective with much bigger hack score to get extra reward.

Initially I disregarded the idea of making Specialists into Officers, thinking that Specialists already have enough abilities on their plate to keep them occupied through both actions. Nope. They don't. Practically the best officers, with the caveat of being useless in direct combat, and thus requiring complicated positioning.

Assault
Another fairly unique but dysfunctional class. A shotgun specialist is quite unique (and better than a melee shinobi due to having effective range more than 1 tile and allowing 3+ weapon upgrades to be used), but usability of short-range skills is limited throughout the game. Arc Thrower tries to complement that, but is pretty limited due to cooldown and the fact that it's not dealing any damage. Even worse, shotgun-oriented build doesn't really function all that well until GSGT. On the other hand, MSGT Assaults aren't weak, their MSGT perk choices are all absolutely great and can be game-changing (well, except for Lethal, but it's still strong).

So what, am I expected to arm my Assault with a rifle until I hit GSGT? It's pretty bad balance that a shotgun-oriented soldier is quite weak with his shotgun until GSGT, but at MSGT it suddenly become quite strong due to extremely powerful GSGT and MSGT perks. Even worse, a stun gunner build is a joke until MSGT, and then suddenly MSGT stun gunner becomes one of the strongest crowd-control soldiers.

All in all, it's like PsiOps. Lots of babysitting is required, but the end result is quite useful (well, much more useful than max-level PsiOps right now). I'd very much like a smoother level progression.

Technical
Your dedicated haven advisors. Seriously, haven-related missions are the best for unleashing your powerful, but very limited "alpha strikes". Outside of that, it feels like an extremely overnerfed class "just because alpha damage can be game-breaking if you pool everything into it!". So, to make a Technical work, LW2 devs propose that we start with weak and terrible class that doesn't do anything good apart from 1 rocket per mission (that usually scatters away), and then we build it up until it's good.

Well... this approach actually works to an extent. A fully-leveled MSGT Technical equipped with a heavy armor provides pretty good explosive options for a mission, can be also good with grenades (especially if you luck out more grenade-boosting AWC perks), and generally brings something unique enough to be considered a part of a good crew. But for the most part you'll feel like you're leveling up your soldier just to make it less terrible (and not more cool, as with better classes).

On a good side, it's also one of the classes where perk tree holds the least amount of unusable fillers. As soon as Concussion Rocket will be improved to a level where it helps you more than it helps enemies - I think that Technicals will be decently good overall. But I'd still like to see more paced progression with rockets - weak starting rockets that could improve with R&D, which will in turn enable Technicals to be less bad at low levels without becoming overpowered.

(Grenadier, Gunner, Ranger, and Sharpshooters are all on the "better classes" side, and I'll write about them a bit later)

[trihero]

Shinobi
They serve a vital function, being the soldiers you need to take on infiltration missions, but at the same time this turns them into an extremely boring class that doesn't even fight in most cases, and even when the situation allows a Shinobi some combat, he can't perform well enough. While there are a few combat-oriented builds available, none of them work until MSGT, all are close-range, they're weaker than combat-oriented builds of better classes, and they prevent specializing in stealth.

I agree that when stealth shinobis learn more skills, it doesn't add excitement or depth to their role. Ok, reduce detection radius, erm, that's about all I need them for. Reconceal, ok it's op we all know it, hack objective whoops I'm stealthed again they can't get me. After that, they get very boring things like reduced infiltration times, reaper which you don't use, evasive which you don't use, etc.

There are a lot of defensive perks in the tree that can all be stacked on top of each other to nice effect, but in the end this effect is extremely pathetic. Most aliens simply attack the most vulnerable target (rather than trying to shoot your shinobi near them), but more importantly - no amount of dodge and defense will save you from certain attacks like Viper's constriction, and even a huge dodge score will only make a flanking crit a normal hit instead. Good luck surviving "only" normal hits from mutons, vipers, and other nasty critters.

While I would not advise a fully defensive build on everything, I think perhaps you may be undervaluing just how much damage a fully dedicated "tank" can absorb. If you turn everything into a graze (50 from hard target, 30 from sup pcs, 20 from officer bonus), you're only taking half damage from normal hits. Once you start taking half damage from normal hits, armor ridiculously helps in this case. Also, getting to 100 defense is not unfeasible - 45 from high cover, 20 from tac sense, 10 from a pcs, hey you only gotta flashbang them or aid protocol or just red fog or smoke grenade and they're not hitting you baby. I didn't even include NCE stats here which makes certain thresholds easier to reach.

To some extent I agree the enemies will prefer to attack lower defense targets, but this makes the game nontrivial for one thing (or else the best strategy would be to like infinitely put aid protocol on a spark for instance), and you can also control it for another by putting the "right" guy in range of the enemies or using NCE to make sure he has lower defenses (but higher dodge) than your other troops.

I've wondered idly if it's possible to make a "tank shinobi" (equip mindshield to block psi attacks, hellweave to block viper pulls, and tact vest maybe) to just walk up to the objective like punch out the vip and run away and shrug off everything. Maybe it would require some support from a couple specialists off the screen with aid protocol, but remember that aid protocol is mapwide and doesn't require line of sight.

Specialist

I think there's actually interesting choices here. The medical road is perhaps the least popular but eventually you do get to the point where your guys can take 10 damage hits and it's kind of nice to be able to heal that back remotely. The overwatch spec is indeed a little bit gamey but it's a WAYYYYYYY better contributer to damage output than the other specs, so you get what you pay for. The hacking spec IMO is good, but very overrated, because at the end of the day a combat hacker boils down to haywire (which everyone gets) and really, full override (which the overwatch spec can pick up easily). Failsafe is kind of nice, but it doesn't really make me take risky hacks I wouldn't take (I usually go for 80%+), and Trojan is ok but just extends haywire by one turn which isn't doing much if you aren't encountering mechs.

I agree that the Officer role really helps you be able to bring specialists to the table without worrying about their somewhat niche combat roles. The Officer role in general is one of the genius things in LW2 that lets a potentially "underpowered" class do something when their role doesn't come up.

Assault
Another fairly unique but dysfunctional class. A shotgun specialist is quite unique (and better than a melee shinobi due to having effective range more than 1 tile and allowing 3+ weapon upgrades to be used), but usability of short-range skills is limited throughout the game. Arc Thrower tries to complement that, but is pretty limited due to cooldown and the fact that it's not dealing any damage. Even worse, shotgun-oriented build doesn't really function all that well until GSGT. On the other hand, MSGT Assaults aren't weak, their MSGT perk choices are all absolutely great and can be game-changing (well, except for Lethal, but it's still strong).

Assaults MSGt chain lightning/street sweeper are RIDICULOUS. RIDIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIICULOUS. I also think they are hands down the best class for network tower assaults due to Close Encounters and them being able to take advantage of flanking shots during the console's stun effect. They are also very good in maps in general where there are just maybe 11-13 enemies and you don't risk pulling massive pods, because run and gun into flanking shot is just an instakill on virtually everything. I also think they have some potential when synced with support grenadiers who can cover give them the defense they need after they've unloaded in the open. I'm also a huge fan of lightning reflexes, it essentially gives your team immunity to overwatch shots without costing you any actions. I agree they are not the go-to class for long overwatch slogs but they get very very nutty in the upper ranks. I'm fine with that tradeoff.

On a good side, it's also one of the classes where perk tree holds the least amount of unusable fillers. As soon as Concussion Rocket will be improved to a level where it helps you more than it helps enemies - I think that Technicals will be decently good overall. But I'd still like to see more paced progression with rockets - weak starting rockets that could improve with R&D, which will in turn enable Technicals to be less bad at low levels without becoming overpowered.

Yeah I agree concussion rocket is an eyesore, but I'm OK with technicals overall. They're the most efficient soldier for the least investment, and even when everyone is fully decked out, having three cover destroying rockets is nothing to laugh at, and their "filler" moves can easily turn them into tanks (tactical sense, formidable, fortify, etc) that would cripple other classes if they took the tank talents.

[justdont]

Ranger
Serves quite well as a generic pointman and damage-dealer. Both OW and direct damage builds work well, although direct damage build starts being useful at LCPL, while OW build is very mediocre all the way until GSGT. Both builds can be complemented with middle-tree defensive perks as needed (although OW build is more "all or nothing", and if you don't pick all the related perks - it makes the build quite less efficient). Quite a low amount of filler perks, although perks that try to boost Ranger's sawed-off are generally just a terrible idea, due to a very low amount of cases where close-range sawed-off shot may be more relevant than normal shot.

Direct-damage rangers are the most universally useful damage-dealing soldiers. OW Ranger is a decently good build for a low-mobility high-aim soldier (snipers usually benefit a lot from good mobility when they need to reposition themselves fast).

One of the best balanced classes at the moment.

Sharpshooter
LCPL choice presumes three different roles for sharpshooters: a stationary sniper, a mobile sniper, and a holotarget supporter. All these choices work reasonably well, but mobile sniper is ultimately pointless. On a mission that allows prolonged sniping, stationary sniper is so much better. On a mission that is on a short timer - well, one choice is to take a mobile sniper. But a better choice is to avoid taking a sniper at all, as there are no particular need for it, both "destroy the relay" and "hunt the dark VIP" missions are solvable well enough either with stationary snipers or without snipers at all, depending on your approach. Mobile sniper works really well on relay missions, but building a particular class just for one mission type is questionable.

Holotarget supporter is yet another "boring but practical" class that might as well go on a mission without primary weapon at all. Starting at TSGT, it starts to "deal damage" even without shooting, as Vital Point Targeting boosts damage of other shots, and at GSGT it becomes one of the most "damaging" soldiers, even though he himself won't fire a shot. It's also a pretty obvious choice for officer duty, as this soldier will sit all the mission in concealment and will have plenty of opportunities to use his officer abilities. It's useful and even quite powerful, but I question the design of a soldier class that carries a sniper rifle around just for show.

Sharpshooter has a decently nice perk tree with minimum of filler, even though it's not without problems - holotarget build ends at GSGT and no MSGT perks complement it at all, and Long Watch is extremely useless, on par with Concussion Rocket, as there are no other perks in the tree that complement overwatch, and "steady weapon" is a far better action for snipers in most cases.

Gunner
While otherwise being a very strong class, with extremely good AoE (cone) abilities and immense damage output, Gunners have their own problems as well. First off, there's the knife. The knife is utterly and thoroughly useless, and serves only as bait for player to spend resources on it or even may be pick Combatives perk (forgoing much stronger perks on LCPL level). I don't know who thought that it would be a great idea to arm a gunner with an anemic melee weapon that doesn't do much and doesn't fit Gunner's role whatsoever. If there's any need to arm a gunner with a secondary weapon, well, give them "free" pistol instead. It would be so much more useful.

Secondly, there's area suppression with an associated OW-style build. Well, problem is, it's very dangerous to use it. If you rely on area suppression, at one point in the campaign one baddie will hit its 5% shot through suppression, thus removing the debuff from his friends, and this might as well cause a squadwipe, depending on how much enemies you suppressed and how scary they are. Even when this doesn't happen - area suppression doesn't always allow you to debuff enough scary enemies, because targeting can only be centered on an enemy. Even worse, it requires expanded magazine to not run out of ammo mid-enemy turn if enemies are running out and trigger OW.
All in all, it's another bait skill - rely on it too much, and it will eventually backfire on you. Big time.

Grenadier
Easily the most overpowered class of them all, until very late game, where enemies gain so much health that grenades drop in efficiency and "boomer" grenadiers become a little bit weaker (but support grenadiers will be hugely relevant all the time).
If anything, it needs nerfs all around. Otherwise, grenadiers are the answer to any crowd-control problem on swarming missions. Flashbang + smoke (not even dense smoke) makes you immune to most enemies for a turn, as their hit chances drop below zero. "Boomer" grenadier can just kill stacked enemies with a click, all while removing the cover for those that maybe survived. Combine it with an Airdrop Specialist for more grenades so that you'll easily have enough even for 40+ enemies mission.

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On a final note, personally I think only Ranger class can currently stay as-is, without any large changes to perks or the tree. All other classes could be improved, perk trees could have less filler options, and Grenadier can be probably nerfed a bit to avoid being an unstoppable AoE juggernaut.

[justdont]

If you turn everything into a graze (50 from hard target, 30 from sup pcs, 20 from officer bonus), you're only taking half damage from normal hits. Once you start taking half damage from normal hits, armor ridiculously helps in this case. Also, getting to 100 defense is not unfeasible - 45 from high cover, 20 from tac sense, 10 from a pcs, hey you only gotta flashbang them or aid protocol or just red fog or smoke grenade and they're not hitting you baby. I didn't even include NCE stats here which makes certain thresholds easier to reach.

The thing with defensive build is - this soldier won't be doing anything useful. While it's definitely possible to sit in a good position simply baiting enemies while your snipers murder them - it works only when you're in cover (meaning, you still need to keep distance) and only after lots of R&D (hellweave is a looooong way to unlock, and before that vipers can wreck you with either tongue or just constriction).

If you're flanked, it's GG - as soon as someone rolls a crit and downgrades it into "just" a normal hit, you're still going to take lots of damage.

And if your soldier "tanks" for the team that sits nearby - more often than not enemies will just approach and shoot other soldiers rather than defensive shinobi. Unlike CCS-based assault from LW1, defensive shinobi has no "presence" and can't punish enemies that are ignoring him (well, he can with melee, but usually only at a rate of 1 weaker enemy per turn).

[trihero]

Quite a low amount of filler perks, although perks that try to boost Ranger's sawed-off are generally just a terrible idea, due to a very low amount of cases where close-range sawed-off shot may be more relevant than normal shot.

It works out fine for low aim rangers. You take the middle row of talents and stick them into havens. They are good faceless hunters. I can imagine there might be an interesting stealth strategy with SMG/double barrels rangers as well like if you have to fight, you will end the 3-4 man pod very quickly, but I haven't really looked into it as just straight up stealth shinobi is better.

While otherwise being a very strong class, with extremely good AoE (cone) abilities and immense damage output, Gunners have their own problems as well. First off, there's the knife. The knife is utterly and thoroughly useless, and serves only as bait for player to spend resources on it or even may be pick Combatives perk (forgoing much stronger perks on LCPL level). I don't know who thought that it would be a great idea to arm a gunner with an anemic melee weapon that doesn't do much and doesn't fit Gunner's role whatsoever. If there's any need to arm a gunner with a secondary weapon, well, give them "free" pistol instead. It would be so much more useful.

The knife is actually surprisingly relevant in small-mid man missions (of which we don't see anymore); if you watch xwynns playthrough for instance there are a number of times where you stab through a wall to finish something off. A pistol wouldn't help in this case because of the cover, and of course the mobility/equipment slot is a negative towards the pistol.

I think combatives is not quite as bad as it looks; for one thing center mass is pretty overrated if you reach plasma tier, that 1 damage is rarely the difference between a kill and not a kill when the enemy's hp routinely hits 20+. If you are dodge stacking, then 10 helps you get high dodge faster. I once argued that the gunner's secondary sucks and I still believe it, but it's just not a big issue in the grand scheme of things. It just happens to be the one class that doesn't depend on its secondary as much as the other classes.

Sharpshooter

It's fine overall. Serial might be an autopick, but even recently I'm not entirely sure of that. There are many times where serial stops much earlier than you would like because of an 80% shot or a min roll, and it requires a ton of setup. I'm liking alpha mike foxtrot a lot as it essentially guarantees a one shot on 15 hp targets which are extremely frequent on legend.

Grenadier
Easily the most overpowered class of them all, until very late game, where enemies gain so much health that grenades drop in efficiency and "boomer" grenadiers become a little bit weaker (but support grenadiers will be hugely relevant all the time).
If anything, it needs nerfs all around. Otherwise, grenadiers are the answer to any crowd-control problem on swarming missions. Flashbang + smoke (not even dense smoke) makes you immune to most enemies for a turn, as their hit chances drop below zero. "Boomer" grenadier can just kill stacked enemies with a click, all while removing the cover for those that maybe survived. Combine it with an Airdrop Specialist for more grenades so that you'll easily have enough even for 40+ enemies mission.

They're pretty weak in the early game, when frags don't hurt cover much and their damage drops off severely compared to direct weapon shots. They almost have to use SMGs which are just piss-poor for taking down tough units like archons/mecs. Their aoe is not very exciting until both volatile mix and launchers are in play. And I don't know if you've tried to make exo suits; it gives everyone the shredder gun which can give you plenty of cover destruction as it is.

Flash/smoke are good, but it doesn't kill the enemies. I've gotten into situations where I locked them out for a turn but essentially I'm not making any progress because they're just hunkering down behind high cover and I'm running lower on flashes/smokes while they're not dying any faster. Grenadiers need to be supported by other classes or you typically run out of grenade ammo before all of them are dead.

They are not good picks against bullet sponges (zerkers, sectopods, elite mutons). And there is a dark event which makes some enemies pretty darn resistant to explosives.

I also rarely find that all grenadiers is a good solution. You start losing corpses/loot left and right and while things like cover destruction is good, there are other classes that actually take advantage of cover-less enemies much better than grenadiers do. While I think you probably should have 2-3 grenadiers on most heavy missions, I'm not very excited to take more than that due to their poor ability to capitalize on cover removal. Also, explosions attract enemies so you better be fully prepared to handle a chain of them.

What's interesting is that grenadiers have taken humongous nerfs compared to vanilla (decoupled powerful main weapon, grenades take a max rank perk to get to where they were in terms of cover destruction) and yet are great picks.

The thing with defensive build is - this soldier won't be doing anything useful.

My one response to this is - mimic beacons. A mimic beacon isn't a waste of time or not doing anything useful because it's defensive.

You've also contradicted yourself by saying flashbangs/smokes are useful, then turn around and say that soldiers with defensive perks aren't doing anything useful. The point of a tank soldier is like a perma mimic beacon. Yeah you need to use it intelligently, but it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Getting flanked isn't something that happens often, and you can counter it with smoke or also nanoscale vest (-25 crit) orresilience from AWC if you happen to get it. Viper constriction is pretty overrated, it has a 50% hit rate, and they don't always prefer to do it. A

And even if they constrict your tank, well awesome! Hallellujah. Now they're going to waste their time shooting at your highly defensive buffed guy. The damage from constriction is reduced by armor, and that viper isn't doing anything else like 10 damage shots at your team.

[justdont]

There's one extremely big difference between a soldier and a mimic beacon: enemies are compelled to attack mimic beacon, while they will often entirely ignore the soldier if there's another valid target. As such, I can imagine it working with squadsight (snipers), but with normal teams it doesn't work particularly well. I've tried. Yes, your shinobi "tanks" quite good, but he draws very little attention, and is completely ruined with lucky flank shots (and enemies WILL flank excessively, even if they're flanking themselves in turn).

An approach where you pull through the most missions until a lucky muton hits your MSGT shinobi for 8+ putting him in sickbay for a couple of weeks won't work all too well for the duration of the campaign.

Some AWC perks can boost defensive shinobi extremely well, but will you depend your campaign on getting a nice bunch of random skills? I don't think so.

[trihero]

Ok, I need to repeat this point a third time regarding defensive soldier

Yeah you need to use it intelligently, but it wouldn't be fair otherwise.

And again, smoke grenades remove flanking bonus, and resilience perk is -50 crit which removes the flanking bonus as well

It's not out of reach whatsoever to get 100 dodge/defense, and I hope you can see that's gamebreaking. Don't make me repeat the above quote a 4th time.

Maybe something constructive to understand your point of view is: what kind of buffs do you think defensive perks need? Do they need to give you 100 defense/dodge and 50 armor for a tier 1 skill? The way I understand your point is yes actually that is what you want because then enemies would just hit other guys.

And one of your quotes bothers me a lot which said something like "the defensive soldier doesn't go well in a normal team." Why should it? To me sounds like instead of finding a team /situation where it works, you are arguing theoretically it doesn't work with your one preferred combination. Well I guess my medical specialist isn't working in an all SPARK team, so should I argue that medical specialists need buffs?

And to your point about msgt shinobi going sick bay with an unlucky shot - better that than a squad wipe. Anyone can take an unlucky shot, better it be a tank specced instead of some other guy who would have be one shot! Much better, hallelujah.

Let me put it this way - sooner or later regardless of how many flashbangs/smokes you bring, the aliens will shoot at you and you will get hit. Wouldn't you rather it be on someone who is defensively specced? Let me give you one practical way you can control this - you put defensive skills on someone with negative defense, and high dodge. You put everyone in cover, regardless of high or low, the enemies will be compelled to hit your -10 defense guy because he has the lowest defense. Now all that dodge/armor comes into play.

But again I'm curious what kind of buffs you would expect on defensive perks to make them "viable." Then I can really assess where you're coming from.

[justdont]

It's not out of reach whatsoever to get 100 dodge/defense, and I hope you can see that's gamebreaking. Don't make me repeat the above quote a 4th time.

Maybe something constructive to understand your point of view is: what kind of buffs do you think defensive perks need? Do they need to give you 100 defense/dodge and 50 armor for a tier 1 skill?

100 dodge isn't gamebreaking in any way. There's even a perk that grants your that much (even if it's "until hit"). 100 defense makes enemies ignore that soldier a lot, which isn't all too useful in itself. Well surely, you can ironman an extremely light (so not many enemies to avoid "death by thousand cuts" which will happen to any kind of tank eventually) stealth mission by just walking around ignoring enemies and fulfilling objectives (but a snake will ruin your day, and after you get hellweave there will be nasty enemies anyway). You can draw enemies to one soldier, while the other one completes the mission. And so on. Point is - there's no need to do any of it, because any kind of stealth shinobi will do just fine.

Defensive perks don't need any buffs at all. They just need to be properly mixed with damage-dealing (or other useful) perks. Defensive perks by themselves do not make a good contribution to combat, AI is clever enough to avoid simple abuses of highly defensive units. While elaborate setups with highly defensive untis are possible, they are not any better than setups without defensive units at all.

[trihero]

Let me give you one practical way you can control the way enemies attack you- you put defensive skills on someone with negative defense, and high dodge. You put your tank in low cover, and everyone else in cover, regardless of high or low, the enemies will be compelled to hit your -10 defense guy because he has the lowest defense. Now all that dodge/armor comes into play. Hello mimic beacon.

100 dodge isn't gamebreaking in any way.

Sure it is, it cuts damage in half. Combine with some armor and you're taking 1 damage instead of 10. Of course no one perk gives you 100, but I'll list some options to show how easy it is to get a high dodge rating

-10 dodge from NCE
-hard target (up to 50, no I'm not saying it's 50 all the time but it's still quite a reasonable chunk when doing average fights)
-superior dodge pcs (30+)
-officer espirit de corps (maxes at 20)
-wraith/spider suit
-the graze band

And I was just idly considering a tank shinobi, there's no point in using that as the example of a typical tank soldier because yes of course I'm using stealth shinobi for objective missions. What I'm really talking about is fitting a tank into a regular fighting man squad, not a stealth squad.

Defensive perks don't need any buffs at all. They just need to be properly mixed with damage-dealing (or other useful) perks. Defensive perks by themselves do not make a good contribution to combat, AI is clever enough to avoid simple abuses of highly defensive units.

No, it's not clever enough. You need to spend some time trying to outsmart the AI, see my first sentence. You remind me a bit of my former self where I just theoretically thought AI always finds the weakest link. You can create the weakest link because all it does is look at who's in range and who has the lowest defense. You can manipulate who has the lowest defense, and improve their damage sponge capabilities with dodge/armor to the point where you are laughing at their 1 damage hits.

So I guess I have to repeat this point again

Of course you have to use defensive soldiers intelligently, otherwise it wouldn't be fair. It seems like you haven't put enough effort into finding a place where the tank soldier works, just hoping it blindly fits in and absorbs 100% of all hits no matter how you play.

Where are the defensive picks not "properly mixed" and we can see if we agree on those?

[justdont]

No, it's not clever enough. You need to spend some time trying to outsmart the AI, see my first sentence. You remind me a bit of my former self where I just theoretically thought AI always finds the weakest link. You can create the weakest link because all it does is look at who's in range and who has the lowest defense. You can manipulate who has the lowest defense, and improve their damage sponge capabilities with dodge/armor to the point where you are laughing at their 1 damage hits.

Um, yes. It works to an extent and always did since LW1. So? First off, crit immunity isn't reliable - AWC doesn't always work your way, nanoscale is not enough. Second, you're still gathering damage at the rate of 1 per hit - and depending on the amount of enemies, that may end up being quite a lot. Third, you made a dedicated soldier into this, while a dedicated support grenadier or a gunner can usually do roughly as much crowd-control while also dealing good opportunistic damage.

It's a good theorycrafting endeavor - but perhaps you should try in in practice before claiming its greatness? I did, and found it quite not so hot. If anything, there's a much easier way with tanking SPARK, which gives you a much better health pool, immense damage output with his gun, and a guaranteed protection of other soldiers (and even then it's good only vs. low-quality enemies and the amount of tanking you can do isn't infinite).

[trihero]

I have tried it, and it works great. When you tried it, what didn't work for you? All you did was say "it wasn't so hot." I'll repeat it here and you can tell me specifically what didn't work for you.

Let me give you one practical way you can control the way enemies attack you- you put defensive skills on someone with negative defense, and high dodge. You put your tank in low cover, and everyone else in cover, regardless of high or low, the enemies will be compelled to hit your -10 defense guy because he has the lowest defense. Now all that dodge/armor comes into play. Hello mimic beacon.

I felt amazing having a permanent mimic beacon, so what didn't work for you?

To your point about the support grenaider, it doesn't do good opportunistic damage, so to me it's just another way of achieving a defensive option. In practical use, I've had support grenadiers fail me quite badly. When the enemy hits, they still hit for 10+. Those 5% shots will eventually connect.

To your point about crit immunity, you deliberately ignored I said smoke grenade, which is guaranteed flank protection for multiple turns without relying on nanoscale or AWC. And with the AWC, the point of it is to fish for someone eventually who has the right perks, not to expect a particular soldier to have it. No one said it's guaranteed, but given the sheer volume of soldiers you go through, you probably will find one with one or two perks that work well enough. You put in work to get a good result, otherwise it wouldn't be fair.

The SPARK takes forever to repair, I've had it get down to about 5 hp once and it had a 60 day repair time. It can't get good dodge stats, so I consider that a major deficit, but I'm willing to hear how you make up for the dodge deficit? That's 50% damage reduction it's not getting. Instead of turning a 10 damage hit into 1, the spark takes 5 since it doesn't have good dodge. In practical use of the SPARK it gets gibbed FAST by big hits even with the 5 ablation and 3 armor.

Your point that a bunch of little damage adds up, ok so what? Would you rather your non-tank team be taking all those hits and outright dying? You're going to get shot at eventually and it will hit eventually, wouldn't you prefer it to be on someone who takes the damage well? All you points about unlucky hits or many hits are going to apply just as well to any soldier, and in the case of non-tank soldiers, they are much more likely to die.

[justdont]

When you tried it, what didn't work for you? All you did was say "it wasn't so hot."

Erm. You didn't bother to read that up I guess - I told you before that the whole endeavor depends on a) enemies shooting the one soldier that you'd want them to shoot; b) avoiding any flanks with that soldier. Achieving a & b together is a hard enough process that makes the whole idea not particularly appealing. Yes, it's possible. No, it's not stronger than your other options but at the same time vastly more bothersome (a sting grenade needs two clicks with some thinking in between, a sting + smoke needs 4, but finding proper cover for 10 soldiers is a considerably more long and annoying process).

In practical use, I've had support grenadiers fail me quite badly. When the enemy hits, they still hit for 10+. Those 5% shots will eventually connect.

Stunned enemies can't hit you at all. And most enemies can't hit you (negative to-hit) through disorient and smoke.

To your point about crit immunity, you deliberately ignored I said smoke grenade, which is guaranteed flank protection for multiple turns without relying on nanoscale or AWC.

Smoke grenade doesn't work when you need to carefully balance defense values. Or rather, it works only in "all or nothing" fashion - either everyone is covered by smoke, or you tanky soldier in smoke will be ignored by enemies because now he has better defense. Sitting in a single smoke is rocket-inducing behavior, so you'll need flashbangs anyway. Or sitting in multiple smokes requires you to spend many actions and resources on preparation. So again, you're employing a long and complex setup that's not any better than just sting + smoke or sting + suppress, or (personal favorite) sting + kill everyone not stunned.

[Postmaster]

I disagree with many of OPs sentiments on classes, I think they're more useful than he suggests.

One point I strongly disagree on is the idea that long watch is useless for snipers. Long Watch is a god-level power, yeah there isn't synergy with other overwatch perks, but a sniper in an elevated position doesn't need those. Their chance to hit, esp with a hair trigger, is really good. I will always take long watch on some sniper builds.

[aimlessgun]

Dunno if this is of interest for class discussion, since it mostly just reflects my personal playstyle, but here are the mission/kill stats from my legend run. Really wish I could run Lifetime stats but it gave me the landing strut issue.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... sp=sharing

As for OPs assessments, Shinobi may not slice stuff often but they're useful in an emergency. I had a few pretty clutch Reapers in my campaign. It's pretty nice when you pulled the whole map to have the option of damaging everything and then cleaning up with your scout. But yeah, MSGT perk.

And holo sharps still shoot stuff, since optimally you want to holo enemies right before activation so you can shoot on the combat turn

[justdont]

More replies:

It works out fine for low aim rangers. You take the middle row of talents and stick them into havens. They are good faceless hunters. I can imagine there might be an interesting stealth strategy with SMG/double barrels rangers as well like if you have to fight, you will end the 3-4 man pod very quickly, but I haven't really looked into it as just straight up stealth shinobi is better.

Sawed-off works in some cases, but it doesn't need any particular boosting, nor the boosting is going to make it much better. As for faceless hunters, there are other classes that work as well, and when you R&D incendiaries, faceless hunt missions stop being a problem for any class.

The knife is actually surprisingly relevant in small-mid man missions (of which we don't see anymore); if you watch xwynns playthrough for instance there are a number of times where you stab through a wall to finish something off. A pistol wouldn't help in this case because of the cover, and of course the mobility/equipment slot is a negative towards the pistol.

Anything can be made relevant in specific cases, but chasing those specific cases is not very practical. Small-mid missions don't require a gunner in particular, especially a gunner that needs to chase around enemies with a knife (because of other soldiers not performing all too well, I guess, or because of misplays).

for one thing center mass is pretty overrated if you reach plasma tier, that 1 damage is rarely the difference between a kill and not a kill when the enemy's hp routinely hits 20+.

Talking about irrelevance at plasma tier is the same as saying "soldiers are totally overrated, you don't even need them once you win!". When you're at plasma tier, a lot of things are not very relevant. The problem is how to arrive there. Also, you don't even need to get to plasma tier to fight through golden path missions. Coils will suffice.

[justdont]

I disagree with many of OPs sentiments on classes, I think they're more useful than he suggests.

I think I stated quite plainly that ALL classes are useful as of now. They aren't equally useful, though, and certain specific builds aren't very effective (but there are other builds).

Their chance to hit, esp with a hair trigger, is really good.

Their chance to hit after steadying instead of taking OW shot are better vs. half-cover even with a basic stock & scope. With elite stock and elite scope, chances are vastly better even vs. full cover.

[trihero]

I think this most recent xwynns video is a wonderful counterexample to almost every complaint about class balance (I'm not specifically aiming this comment at the OP, but some of the comments of the OP apply, and some are other complaints I've seen from other people)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWQQhpLFlHs

If you complain about gunner's knife, he is not even trying to chase to make knifes work, but he has THREE situations in which he knives through a wall. Again, he's not even trying to chase these situations or make them happen, and it's not the result of poor play, but they come up without him trying and it turns out great. This has also happened in at least two other missions that I've watched him play. In before someone says lucky crits, because the crits wouldn't necessarily have mattered. The gunner is a good pick and mainly used for demolition/hail of bullets and those are used in the mission. I don't understand any complaints about the knife or using the gunner in a mid man mission as a bad pick.

If you complain about defensive perks, the technical with 4 armor and 17 armor and burnout smoke runs out into the open and takes 2 shots that otherwise would have gone to injured/people who might have died. This is how you intelligently use defensive perks to minimize damage/wounds to the team instead of complaining that the enemy AI is so intelligent it's going to shoot your weakest guy. It is irrelevant that the enemy shots happened to miss, even if they had hit it would have been much less damage than going to other members of the team.

If you complain about rangers, they take amazing advantage of cover destruction, shooting at flanked targets efficiently from range. (this comment is more aimed at guomindong who thinks rangers are trash)

If you complain about technicals/flamethrowers/rockets, they save the mission. (in b4 someone comments the rocket roll might not have worked out well, this is just arguing for the sake of arguing, what if you get unlucky shots in general? you lose)

If you complain about specialists, it pulls its weight with both revival protocol and trojan.

The player is in no way chasing for these situations to work out, it's not even his best team available due to wounds/etc, and I'm not exactly going through every video looking for counterexamples (this just happens to be the one released today).

I think class balance is overall fine, and there's way too much theorycrafting about things that suck when in fact they come out fine if you know how to take advantage of them when the situation arises, without you even engineering or ambulance chasing the situations.

No, class balance is not perfect: psis still suck a ding dong and they will continue to if the 1.2 changes are the only changes are in, and I am willing to consider specific perks that are true autopicks, but I don't even see those being brought up in this thread.

[trihero]

Erm. You didn't bother to read that up I guess - I told you before that the whole endeavor depends on a) enemies shooting the one soldier that you'd want them to shoot; b) avoiding any flanks with that soldier. Achieving a & b together is a hard enough process that makes the whole idea not particularly appealing. Yes, it's possible. No, it's not stronger than your other options but at the same time vastly more bothersome (a sting grenade needs two clicks with some thinking in between, a sting + smoke needs 4, but finding proper cover for 10 soldiers is a considerably more long and annoying process).

No no no no no, I read your post very carefully. I have to return your statement straight to your face, let's go back to the central issue and maybe you'll read it carefully this time

a) I told you twice how to get the soldier shot at that you want to get shot at. The enemy shoots whoever has the least defense. You control this by having a tank soldier with negative defense. Since he has the lowest defense, he will get shot at. How did you not read this point when I said it twice?

b) you can hide your negative defense soldier behind low cover, and he will get targeted as long as everyone else is in cover, because he has the lowest defense. You don't get flanked behind low cover.

It's not only possible, it's easy, objective, and repeatable. Again

- find a soldier with negative defense
- he will get shot at the most. This isn't theorycrafting, this is me playing with NCE noticing that when everyone is hiding in equal (low) cover, my negative defense soldiers always get preferred to get shot at, so I said HMM genius I'll stack armor and dodge on them. It works, without effort. I would like to hear specifically why this approach does not work for you.

I think this is the key reason why you don't think defensive perks are good, because you don't know how to encourage the enemy to shoot at them. I'm eagerly awaiting you to try this and tell me where it fails.

Talking about irrelevance at plasma tier is the same as saying "soldiers are totally overrated, you don't even need them once you win!". When you're at plasma tier, a lot of things are not very relevant. The problem is how to arrive there. Also, you don't even need to get to plasma tier to fight through golden path missions. Coils will suffice.

This is a deliberate overexaggeration. I was only trying to say that center mass is overrated, not that it is bad. Yes coils will suffice, and +1 damage again will not make the difference between you one shotting a 20 hp elite officer, whether you have coil, plasma, magnetic, or laser equipped.

[justdont]

b) you can hide your negative defense soldier behind low cover, and he will get targeted as long as everyone else is in cover, because he has the lowest defense. You don't get flanked behind low cover.

What? You do get flanked in any cover, quite easily so if enemies are close enough.
This is going in circles. "It's easy to set up! - But there are flanks and crits - but there's smoke - but smoke isn't easy to set up - but just go sit in low cover somewhere!". Even this, erhm, "discussion" is quite a powerful argument that setting up tanking soldiers isn't particularly easy. And I'll continue to argue that such an elaborate setup isn't even particularly better than other "damage control" options.

PS: By the way, my next move will be "but sitting in low cover means that you're going to get hit a lot, and even if each hit is 1 damage, it'll stack pretty fast".

[trihero]

It's only going in circles because you're not acknowledging it's easy to control where enemies attack. You propped that up as your main point, I answered nicely and directly, then you ignored it until I pointed it out again. Your main point is destroyed.

What I meant by the flanking/low cover is obvious. If they shoot at you through low cover, you aren't getting flanked. I'm not imagining a complex scenario where you were stupid enough to get flanked, thus negating your cover.

I see absolutely nothing "long and complex" about finding a soldier with negative defense and stacking him with armor/dodge. Zero complexity. As long as you keep the tank soldier in low cover, he will be targeted, with no complexity, won't get flanked, no limited flashbang/smoke use, etc. Whatever weird arguments you have about smoke and flash are just sidestepping the issue. I only talk about smoke to give a way to avoid flanking, but honestly in the first place it's not that hard to avoid flanking to begin with. The game is very generous with cover.

Maybe you think I'm saying taking a tank soldier relieves your team of the need to bring flashes/smoke. No, that is not what I mean. You still need to find some way of disabling nasty things rockets/psi attacks, whether that's through abilities on the tank soldier or someone else or consumables.

And I'll continue to argue that such an elaborate setup isn't even particularly better than other "damage control" options.

This is just conceding the point in disguise. The original point you make is defensive perks suck, but now you're backpedaling by saying it's not better than other damage control options. What is the point you're trying to make, again? Is it that defensive perks suck, or that they are not better than other options? It doesn't need to be better than other options to be viable.

PS: By the way, my next move will be "but sitting in low cover means that you're going to get hit a lot, and even if each hit is 1 damage, it'll stack pretty fast".

I'm pretty sure you're intelligent enough to predict my next move which is:

The comparison scenario is you don't have a tank guy, and everyone's in low cover. You're still going to get a lot, or even if not a lot, it's sure going to hurt when it lands. That's another major point where your "alternative defensive options" like defensive grenadiers and SPARKs fail - when the enemy finally lands the blow, it's going to hurt a lot more than if a tank specced guy gets hit. Armor/dodge reduce damage by a lot. How can you possibly ignore this when looking at alternatives? I feel like you are living in a theoretical world where having a flashbang grenadier makes you invincible to damage. Does it? If a flashbang grenaider instead of the tank in this low cover (or even high cover, as long as we fix the type of cover for the comparison) offered the team complete immunity to damage, I would have to concede the point, but it doesn't. When you get hit, and it's going to happen, you're going to get rekt. With a tank spec, significantly less rekt. Even down to 1 damage on a regular, dependable, non complex basis. It's not hard to get get a tank with 16+ hp and unless you're doing nothing, that's not going down any time soon.

If you're not reducing damage, you're going to get absolutely trashed by crits, flanks normal shots, you name it at some point. You cannot completely prevent them from happening all the time. Any time you mention the tank getting unluckily flanked/critted/whatever, this applies equally to other alternatives, and in fact damages the other alternatives much more. Would you really rather the enemy land those hits on people who don't have any damage reduction at all? In other words, what's your plan when the enemy finally hits those 5/10/15/20% shots? Just let your people die? I'm plenty happy in my practical, nontheoretical use of tanks. Enemies get pretty close to 100% aim in the late game with dark events, and even high cover + flash "only" takes them down to 1/4th accuracy. Even if you stun half with STING, somebody's still going to hit eventually. It's going to hurt.

I'll repeat two points again

1) Defensive perks require intelligence to use, otherwise they would be imbalanced
2) Sooner or later no matter how much cover and flashbangs you put up, some of those 5% or 10% or 15% or anything literally above 0% will hit, and it's going to hurt a lot less if you control it to land on a tank-specced soldier

And I'm still waiting to hear specifically what you want changed. You say you don't want the defensive perks buffed, so I'm still waiting to hear specifically what you have in mind to make a constructive discussion.

[aimlessgun]

I think this most recent xwynns video is a wonderful counterexample to almost every complaint about class balance (I'm not specifically aiming this comment at the OP, but some of the comments of the OP apply, and some are other complaints I've seen from other people)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWQQhpLFlHs

xwynns is entertaining as hell, but it's hard for me to use his videos as examples because of how atypical his campaign and playstyle is (at least from the videos I have seen).

Also that video is like a prime example of technicals being subpar. They spend much of the mission doing almost nothing and never really had a turn which another class couldn't have done better in. I'm 100% confident he could have done better with say a grenadier and gunner instead. But then again, it's hard to say because of how atypical that playthrough is, it's October and his grenadier is using frag grenades (and is even being airdropped frag grenades), so who the hell knows!

As for the knife, between just two xwynn videos (this and K street) I think I've seen like 5 knifings, and my entire campaign where gunners on my roster has 143 missions between them, I had literally one situation where knifing a guy was appropriate. The guy gets into some weird and crazy spots and that's why I love watching him.

[justdont]

I see absolutely nothing "long and complex" about finding a soldier with negative defense and stacking him with armor/dodge. Zero complexity.

And it will just end up in 1 dead soldier. Stacking must meet certain breakpoints, otherwise all it takes is 1 lucky hit to end all the "tanking".

As long as you keep the tank soldier in low cover, he will be targeted, with no complexity, no limited flashbang/smoke use, etc.

It's an extreme simplification, that again, should anyone follow your "advice", will end up in dead soldiers. Enemies aren't limited to basic shots, more complicated abilities use different targeting principles, some abilities can quickly negate tanking (viper tongue, etc.) unless specifically counteracted.

Whatever weird arguments you have about smoke and flash are just sidestepping the issue. I only talk about smoke to give a way to avoid flanking, but honestly in the first place it's not that hard to avoid flanking to begin with. The game is very generous with cover.

I assume you're either not playing LW2 or do so on easiest difficulty. 0% supply raids can leave you out of good cover positions quite often, much more so if you require specific defensive setups.

The original point you make is defensive perks suck

This is another glaring case of not caring enough even to read up my posts. I stated that defensive perks stacked all by themselves are not contributing enough to a solid build. This doesn't equal to "defensive perks suck". I kindly suggest that if you want a discussion - try discussing my posts rather than your own ideas. You're literally arguing with yourself right now over you own ideas about what other people might think about defensive perks.

The comparison scenario is you don't have a tank guy, and everyone's in low cover. You're still going to get a lot, or even if not a lot, it's sure going to hurt when it lands.

You're basing your scenario on an flawed concept that it's normal and even maybe common to take fire and be hit in LW2. While the best option for taking hits is to avoid taking hits entirely. And failing that, taking only the weakest hits with lowest hit chances. It is entirely possible to base your playthrough on disabling enemies and/or killing them, rather than on "tanking inevitable hits" - and I'd even say that such an approach is vastly superior to "tanking strategies", but of course it's only my personal opinion here.
On average, I'm being shot at with >0 hit chances ~4-5 times per swarming supply raid mission, and almost all of those shots are "yellow alert" attacks, which are managed through soldiers' rotation, ensuring that frontline soldiers are those with ablative armor still intact and good amount of HP, sitting in high cover or in smoke. Furthermore, Field Surgeon provides a small safety margin for such shots.

Over the course of several dozens of missions I never got a single day of sickbay time out of taking such shots. Theoretically, I can get hit with a very nasty shot here. Practically, my estimation is that it's a rare enough chance to play through the entire campaign without worrying too much (and even if worst happens - just roll with it, a few dead soldiers over the whole campaign are easily recoverable).

[trihero]

And it will just end up in 1 dead soldier. Stacking must meet certain breakpoints, otherwise all it takes is 1 lucky hit to end all the "tanking".

All it takes is one lucky hit to kill your soldiers even when you flashbang/suppress them and sit in high cover. Doesn't matter whether you're tank-specced or not. I'm a little bit curious how you manage to disable all the enemies so consistently throughout the entire game. I know it's gets much easier once you get things like incendiary grenades and high level perks.

I assume you're either not playing LW2 or do so on easiest difficulty. 0% supply raids can leave you out of good cover positions quite often, much more so if you require specific defensive setups.

I play 0% supply raids on legendary. I don't appreciate your baseless insults, and I think it speaks very poorly of you to say things like that. My respect for you has considerably diminished, which is a shame because you seem to have more than average intelligence. You can research my old posts about it. Here I'll even make it easy for you

http://www.pavonisinteractive.com/phpBB ... 5&start=25

I took 4 wounds on my first April legendary 0% raid when we are nowhere near close to have access to perks like field surgeon as you flaunt. I use gunner suppression (along with 2 technicals which happens to be all the ones I can have trained by that point) to mitigate my chances of getting hit early in the game, since I can't rely on high level perks or enough flashbangs to last the journey. I'm not saying I'm a genius or I'm the first to do those kinds of supply raids at all, but I'm confident I know what I'm talking about and not based on "flawed concepts."

It's an extreme simplification, that again, should anyone follow your "advice", will end up in dead soldiers. Enemies aren't limited to basic shots, more complicated abilities use different targeting principles, some abilities can quickly negate tanking (viper tongue, etc.) unless specifically counteracted.

I never said you don't have to worry about things other than basic shots.

This is another glaring case of not caring enough even to read up my posts. I stated that defensive perks stacked all by themselves are not contributing enough to a solid build. This doesn't equal to "defensive perks suck". I kindly suggest that if you want a discussion - try discussing my posts rather than your own ideas. You're literally arguing with yourself right now over you own ideas about what other people might think about defensive perks.

I read your posts very carefully and take time to respond to every point both little and big, but I must admit I'm on the verge of ignoring further discussion because you keep accusing me of ignoring you while in fact, you are ignoring me.

I'm super fed up with accusatory and delibrate willfulness to slander me and ignore facts. So I'm going actually deliberately going to avoid going in circles and I'm going to not even try to respond to the rest of your post, in a straightforward and open-minded fashion to give you the opportunity to create a constructive discussion:

What specific changes would you like to see to defensive skills/perks? I would like to see what's really on your mind, so in your words that I don't "argue with myself." Here is an example of the type of thing I will read if you post:

Well, on the technical class I don't like that suppression is in the first tier, etc, and this is because...and I want it to be changed to....

And yes I agree the best strategy is not to get hit, you're not any different or have a better concept than me on that point.

which are managed through soldiers' rotation, ensuring that frontline soldiers are those with ablative armor still intact and good amount of HP, sitting in high cover or in smoke.

yawn, you're not doing anything different/superior to what I do in those situations either.

[justdont]

What specific changes would you like to see to defensive skills/perks?

It's starting to get funny when first you insist on reading my posts, and then asks a question where I can simply self-quote previous post:

Defensive perks don't need any buffs at all. They just need to be properly mixed with damage-dealing (or other useful) perks. Defensive perks by themselves do not make a good contribution to combat, AI is clever enough to avoid simple abuses of highly defensive units. While elaborate setups with highly defensive untis are possible, they are not any better than setups without defensive units at all.

Nice reading here.

One particular example of this (which sparked the entire discussion) is Shinobi's perk tree, which is heavy with stackable defensive perks (and it doesn't amount to anything good even if you pick everything), while being really low on damage-dealing or other generally useful perks.

[aedn]

Your premises are largely biased by your own preferred playstyle, and are largely incorrect or at least misleading.

1) Close combat does contain higher risk, but also has higher rewards. the rest of the statement is biased by your preferred playstyle. close combat as a whole can be extremely effective, but requires support, the same as any other squad composition. This video is a solid showing of quality squad play with assaults as the feature, on a wide range of missions from light to swarming. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/123997104

2) This statement is largely misleading, the only class that has a distinct stealth or not stealth approach is the shinobi, and a solid middle ground is available with the center part of the perk tree, allowing the shinobi to be a highly effective mid-range flanker, and the melee shinobi is extremely powerful with the right build even in late game.

3) This statement is incorrect as well. The only wounds that have a impact on missions at all, are bleed out which consumes time, and killed with reduces your overall ability to finish the mission. Other wounds only have an impact on the mission if you do not bother to bring countermeasures like medkits.

4) this statement is the only one that is remotely accurate.


Your class assessment has problems as well, mostly you view it through the bias of your style of play. The majority of the classes are fine where they are right now, gunners and grenadiers need some nerfs, stealth shinobis need significant nerfs or stealth missions need to be reworked, technicals need better scaling late game.