The reason i was looking to do this was because of various play with regards to the center tree of shinobi which is actually very strong. While individually the skills are weak, in combination(especially with a high defense soldier) they're quite powerful. They synergize very well with AWC perks, and because the class has so many of the perks they're likely to get the better perks. The long and short of it is that the combination of lone wolf, evasive, and tactical sense (or hunkering down) can make your soldier almost invulnerable. Indeed at one point i hunkered a soldier in low cover against 10 uncontrolled enemies and they couldnt even graze me.. From two tiles away.
The strategy was simple, a core of defensive shinobi would anchor a number of clean up sword shinobi. It worked out kind of well, but not that well. Before you get hunter's instinct you're super weak, and after you're still at the mercy of being able to generate flanks. Which are not always possible. Additionally you uhhh... can't set up overwatch ambushes.
Its worth noting that this campaign was failed multiple times. Doing troop columns and supply raids is too difficult. You simply do not have the core abilities fast enough. Lone wolf does not scale with itself very well, making positioning much more difficult than it might seem otherwise. The inability to set up big reveals (early) and the fact that evasive and shadowstrike are on the same tier makes things difficult.
If I were to play things again I probably could win simply by rushing the network tower but not even attempting the HQ until super lategame, just doing troop columns when I had a good timer and then doing the forge early so that I could easily force down the advent timer with my never ending supply of nearly impossible to fail stealth missions. Then I could rush an HQ in a low strength region later when my soldiers were nearly invulnerable.
The sword shinobi were weak. They couldn't kill much more than the gun shinobi, being weak to robots and melee (and mutons) with the sole exception of sectoids. Even once they gain the core defensive buffs they have problems stacking enough dodge to guarantee grazes, given that they're unlikely to have the defense to make up for it. They don't actually do enough damage to justify their risk being inferior in consistency and damage compared to assaults. Their weapons are expensive to upgrade (hard to get enough corpses and you have to do a on autopsy) and on non-flèche slashes do worse damage than a rifle because a rifle will get exposed crit bonuses.
Overall I could actually see using a shinobi or two as a "primary damage" class. They have decent aim (26 over the levels if you proc lone wolf) and most importantly they can survive on their own while dealing damage. Once you get hunters instinct their damage is good and consistent (if weak against melee/robots) and most importantly fun. Then they end up with serial and so can make flanking BS "kill everything" plays.
When thinking about how I was leveling up the units I felt like was that the two trees were trying to complement each other and instead got in the way. If you put the defensive skills that the melee unit needed to have decent survivability then then you could probably make a unit in cover invulnerable. And that would make the stealth and gun versions even more bonkers.
So why is this a thread about Rangera? Basically the gun shinobi is almost everything a ranger ought to be. Complete with a stunning capstone in serial. And this playthrough kind of exemplified why it was the case that the ranger was underwhelming.
So why doesn't the ranger shine? Well mainly because there are two types of enemies to kill. Big defense low(ish) HP enemies and big HP/low defense enemies. Most "kill" units can take down big HP enemies and when that fails the rest of the team can easily finish it off or provide control. Most can also take down big defense enemies(so long as they're not in high cover and have defensive bonuses) fairly reliably too while non-kill classes have an issue with this. Rangers only deal with the exposed enemies well. Against covered enemies they have neither the height advantage that sharpshooters can attain nor the flanking ability of assaults nor the guaranteed damage of other classes.
Structurally they're like the shinobi. They've got competing ideas that prevent the class from getting the abilities each one would want. The overwatch build would want all the crit, but can't get it without being too strong. The tank build wants all the defense and dodge but can't get it because of light em up + hunker. The crit build would like aim and base damage and... But again it breaks the others.
So thinking about what you can give Rangers that doesn't infringe on the other kill focused classes I think that the answer is take the middle range flank and tank away from the shinobi. Assaults get close range, high risk flanks (and stun guns). Sharpshooters get long range damage that you have to set up. Rangers get middle range positioning plays. Shinobi lose hunters instinct and get a group of skills that focus on the type of tanking that sword shinobi need to do.
For the shinobi low profile becomes combat fitness, lone wolf becomes Resiliance, hunters instinct becomes formidable, tactical sense becomes untouchable. Serial becomes kubikuri*. Rapid fire becomes combatives. Now they can dodge/graze tank but they can't double stack defense/dodge to make them neigh invulnerable. They keep their scaling dodge per level.
Rangers get a massive tree revamp. They keep their overwatch secondary but instead of a focus on crit they focus on base damage and mobility.
Squadie: Free Ammo Slot, Lone Wolf
LCPL: Sprinter, Low Profile, Ever Vigilant
CPL: Hunters Instinct, Aggression, Cool Under Pressure
SGT: Deadeye, Shadowstep, Covering Fire
SSGT: Center Mass, Fortify, Grazing Fire
TSGT: Chain Shot, Will to Survive, Rapid Reaction
GSGT: Combat Fitness, Tactical Sense, Close Encounters
MSGT: Serial, Lethal, Killzone
The ranger now has three trees which focus on three fundamental things:
- 1) Getting to good cover
2) making that cover valuable when you get there
3) doing things valuable at that cover
Because Hunters Instinct only triggers on units that can take cover even with chain shot (on a longish CD) the ranger won't be killing exposed units super well. But they will still have a bit more than normal punch when doing so.
*look at that gorram shadow strike synergy! Exposed + strike = 90% crit. Talon rounds to 100%!
**this costs two actions right? Ideally only one.
