[feedback] Reduce Will scaling on enemies

[Jadiel]

As you move further through the game, Mk2 and Mk3 enemies get stat upgrades over their early game brethren. The most obvious one is that hp increase considerably. However, they also get small bonuses to Aim and Defense. They also get huge bonuses to Will. For example, the humble Advent Trooper on Legendary

Advent Trooper - HP:4 Aim:65 Defense:0 Will:45
Advanced Trooper - HP:9 Aim:70 Defense:5 Will:65
Elite Trooper - HP:14 Aim:75 Defense:10 Wil:85

I think HP progression is fine, and 5 Aim and Defense per tier doesn't seem unreasonable either. However, I don't understand the 20 point jumps in Will at all.

Now, XCOM doesn't actually have that many abilities that target Will. In fact, I can only think of 2. Napalm X and Psi abilities. Are there any others?

I think the Will scaling unbalances the game with regard to both these abilities. They both work well at the start of the game (with tier 1 enemies) and feel well balanced. Napalm X makes your Flamethrower work well as crowd control - if you don't set the enemy on fire, there's a reasonable chance they will panic and it feels like a strong perk. However, once you're fighting tier 3 enemies, it never ever procs. And that seems unfair - are there any other perks in the game which are rendered completely ineffective as you progress through the game?

For Psi, Psi Ops feel pretty good early game. Soulfire and Stasis are both strong abilities, and 4-6 guaranteed damage in the early game is really good (re Hail of Bullets). But even though Psi Offense scales throughout the game, so does enemy Will, meaning that whereas Hail of Bullets gains a huge damage increase as you move up tech levels (not to mention perks and ammo bonuses), Psi Offense is double countered by increases in both enemy hp and enemy will, leaving it feeling extremely underwhelming at the end of the game.

Do enemies need such huge jumps in Will? It seems like the game would be better balanced between the early, mid and late game if they had more moderate increases (like Aim and Defense), or maybe no increase at all?

[Saph7]

I've noticed this as well. One of the things that made Psi useful in earlier versions of XCOM was that there were certain enemies (e.g. Mutons) which were very strong and tough and hard to fight physically, but who were weak against psi attacks. It gave Psi a nice niche.

With LW2, it seems to be the other way around – trying to fight high-level ADVENT and aliens with mental attacks is harder than just shooting them to death!