[Feedback] 1.2 Perk Tree: Tier balance (Wall of Text Warning)

[stefan3iii]

Formidable: I think you're undervaluing this somewhat in general, especially when you're prioritizing an extra grenade on a grenadier over it.

I don't think Heavy Ordinance is a great perk, but Formidable is weak too. Do you put 3 or 4 grenades on your grenadiers? If yes, then you're better off taking Heavy Ordinance, removing a grenade from your loadout, and equipping a Vest and/or Alloy Plate, which is better than 1 Armor you get from formidable.

ex 3 Ablative HP >>> 1 armor: The ablative prevents wounds, and is more effective HP for spikey crit damage, which is what is actually dangerous.
ex Tac Vest >>> 1 armor: 4 HP + 1 Armor is better than 1 Armor

I mean formidable would make sense if you were building a grenadier super tank, with a Tac Vest + Plate + Warden Armor, but I doubt you or anyone is doing that.

On top of all that, I find grenadiers are the easiest class to keep safe, because it's easy to keep them in good cover. They don't need to move to weird positions or out into the open to flank, their grenade range and AOE is really good, and they can sometimes fire completely from out of visibility like behind a high cover vehicle.

[stefan3iii]

Nice post! I agree with most of what you say, so I'll just write down my disagreements (L/I perspective)
...
2) Specialist. I think Combat Protocol is auto pick, it's very strong early game, mediocre the rest of the game. On the other hand, healing is very weak in this game, I think I've used a medkit like twice in my LW2 career, shortly before I stopped bringing them because they aren't worth the equipment slot. Your soldiers shouldn't take wounds often, and in the very rare case where they take heavy wounds and are still alive it's fairly straight forward to keep them in high cover to avoid taking any more damage. That all said, it's pretty moot because the specialist has no place on combat missions outside of greedy skull mining and tower hacking, their damage output is just way too low to justify their 'ok' utility.
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Specifically to some of this, but in general to the anti-medical protocol folks in general:

Disclaimer, not playing on Legendary. I'm not that great a player, but I find perks like medical protocol are useful to offset my mistakes and keep things from spiraling even worse. I also feel that the massive boost drones get on legendary early game changes the math.
Are you playing with red fog? Do you find that red fog increases the value of medkits and by extension medical protocol? I've found the couple of healing charges useful to offset the injury penalties, especially on my aim-reliant soldiers.

I don't play with red fog, I could definitely see how that option turned on would make medkits more attractive. I think healing effectiveness probably does scale with difficulty. On harder difficulties you don't want to get hit, at best you're going to take a wound, and soldier time is a very precious resource in the strategic layer. So my entire playstyle focuses around killing everything, and using sting grenades/incendiary to control what's left over, getting shot usually means I've made a mistake.

I would take a medkit on the Psi Gate mission, just in case someone gets a chrysalid poison.

[JoINrbs]

Formidable: I think you're undervaluing this somewhat in general, especially when you're prioritizing an extra grenade on a grenadier over it.

I don't think Heavy Ordinance is a great perk, but Formidable is weak too. Do you put 3 or 4 grenades on your grenadiers? If yes, then you're better off taking Heavy Ordinance, removing a grenade from your loadout, and equipping a Vest and/or Alloy Plate, which is better than 1 Armor you get from formidable.

ex 3 Ablative HP >>> 1 armor: The ablative prevents wounds, and is more effective HP for spikey crit damage, which is what is actually dangerous.
ex Tac Vest >>> 1 armor: 4 HP + 1 Armor is better than 1 Armor

I mean formidable would make sense if you were building a grenadier super tank, with a Tac Vest + Plate + Warden Armor, but I doubt you or anyone is doing that.

On top of all that, I find grenadiers are the easiest class to keep safe, because it's easy to keep them in good cover. They don't need to move to weird positions or out into the open to flank, their grenade range and AOE is really good, and they can sometimes fire completely from out of visibility like behind a high cover vehicle.

I aim for 3-4 armor on my Grenadiers and they fairly commonly end up being hunker tanks or shotgun tanks once they're out of consumables. It's less about it being a great role for them and more about it being an absurdly broken role for anybody right now because of how much mitigation stacking exists and how damage gets halved from grazes BEFORE armor is applied.

You can't really like, just magically give all your soldiers Tac Vests and Incendiary Grenades. I mean, if you're rich, sure, but in my current campaign where I'm rich enough to win I have I think two Tac Vests, two (three?) Warden Armors, and one Incendiary Grenade, and it's September already.

[stefan3iii]

You can't really like, just magically give all your soldiers Tac Vests and Incendiary Grenades. I mean, if you're rich, sure, but in my current campaign where I'm rich enough to win I have I think two Tac Vests, two (three?) Warden Armors, and one Incendiary Grenade, and it's September already.

Warden armors are very expensive, I find them bottlenecked on Elerium, like everything else in the end game. But tac vests? The only issue there is supplies. Big supplies start coming in July or so when I start putting several regions on all supplies to generate supply retaliations and supplies. You're at 0 supplies per month, and then suddenly you spike to 500+ and a couple months later 1000+. Can also do micromanagey nonsense like switching rebels from intel to supply after you find that ambush you were looking for in a region.

Alloy Plates are like 19 supplies total (10 supplies + trooper corpse + 1 alloy), and that's still better than 1 armor from formidable.

[JoINrbs]

You can't really like, just magically give all your soldiers Tac Vests and Incendiary Grenades. I mean, if you're rich, sure, but in my current campaign where I'm rich enough to win I have I think two Tac Vests, two (three?) Warden Armors, and one Incendiary Grenade, and it's September already.

Warden armors are very expensive, I find them bottlenecked on Elerium, like everything else in the end game. But tac vests? The only issue there is supplies. Big supplies start coming in July or so when I start putting several regions on all supplies to generate supply retaliations and supplies. You're at 0 supplies per month, and then suddenly you spike to 500+ and a couple months later 1000+. Can also do micromanagey nonsense like switching rebels from intel to supply after you find that ambush you were looking for in a region.

Alloy Plates are like 19 supplies total (10 supplies + trooper corpse + 1 alloy), and that's still better than 1 armor from formidable.

I didn't even have time to build the proving ground and do Muton autopsy until July or something like that. You're understating how much investment is required to get these items, and Formidable is an April perk that they're being compared to. It's impressive to have Predator when you're picking Formidable on your Grenadiers, let alone all these other things.

[stefan3iii]

You can't really like, just magically give all your soldiers Tac Vests and Incendiary Grenades. I mean, if you're rich, sure, but in my current campaign where I'm rich enough to win I have I think two Tac Vests, two (three?) Warden Armors, and one Incendiary Grenade, and it's September already.

Warden armors are very expensive, I find them bottlenecked on Elerium, like everything else in the end game. But tac vests? The only issue there is supplies. Big supplies start coming in July or so when I start putting several regions on all supplies to generate supply retaliations and supplies. You're at 0 supplies per month, and then suddenly you spike to 500+ and a couple months later 1000+. Can also do micromanagey nonsense like switching rebels from intel to supply after you find that ambush you were looking for in a region.

Alloy Plates are like 19 supplies total (10 supplies + trooper corpse + 1 alloy), and that's still better than 1 armor from formidable.

I didn't even have time to build the proving ground and do Muton autopsy until July or something like that. You're understating how much investment is required to get these items, and Formidable is an April perk that they're being compared to. It's impressive to have Predator when you're picking Formidable on your Grenadiers, let alone all these other things.

Depends on what you prioritize, but even a free ceramic plate vs 1 armor is a toss up when you have 10 HP at that point in the game. Late game the cost to buy tac vests or whatever isn't a problem.

[Arantir]

Formidable on grenadiers is good for short missions where an extra grenade won't make a big difference. On missions with high enemy count though an extra grenade equals one more turn of your grenadier being useful, especially if you didn't take any combat perks and that could often be a pretty big deal. There's also always a choice between putting an extra grenade or ablative HP in a slot and I don't mind trading ablative for a nade sometimes but I won't trade alloy plating for just 1 armor & explosion resistance.

From my experience I feel like Grenadiers are the ones who benefit from the defence the most and thus are the best candidates for defense PCS. If you can make them harder to hit then the rest of your team so AI won't prioritize them then you can put nades in all 4 slots, take only grenade related perks and just bobmard every turn. Pick good cover with mobility bonus from SMG, don't cluster other gyus near them to not provoke AOE and your only concern would be having enough nades. If you rolled a guy with -10 defense though... yeah, formidable can be quite helpful.

[trihero]

An extra grenade (ordnance) can also save you a lot of resources if it's used on something special like incendiary.

I'm saying this half-serious : are we going to see a nerf to hunker down? Those hunker down tanks OP ; p

[LordYanaek]

I'm saying this half-serious : are we going to see a nerf to hunker down? Those hunker down tanks OP ; p

That's the issue when you start to nerf something in the name of balance, something else will invariably end up being OP compared to the other options and you'll have to also nerf it until everything is equally bland and uninteresting. The best balance is achieved when everything is equally overpowered

I'm also half serious when i say this but still half serious anyway because i'm afraid by all the discussions about nerfing this and nerfing that.

[trihero]

I'm saying this half-serious : are we going to see a nerf to hunker down? Those hunker down tanks OP ; p

That's the issue when you start to nerf something in the name of balance, something else will invariably end up being OP compared to the other options and you'll have to also nerf it until everything is equally bland and uninteresting. The best balance is achieved when everything is equally overpowered

I'm also half serious when i say this but still half serious anyway because i'm afraid by all the discussions about nerfing this and nerfing that.

The only thing I'm afraid of is it's going to take 3 more patches before this game has any semblance of balance. Turns out the beta testers even though they logged in hundreds/thousands of hours missed tons of bugs and balance issues that are severely holding the game back as is. I'm extremely surprised they missed very obvious bugs (like kubikiri not working, master enemy not working, it's like do they even test skills at all?) and stealth/0% exploits in all that time of testing. Subtle things I can understand, but not these.

[JoINrbs]

I'm saying this half-serious : are we going to see a nerf to hunker down? Those hunker down tanks OP ; p

That's the issue when you start to nerf something in the name of balance, something else will invariably end up being OP compared to the other options and you'll have to also nerf it until everything is equally bland and uninteresting. The best balance is achieved when everything is equally overpowered

I'm also half serious when i say this but still half serious anyway because i'm afraid by all the discussions about nerfing this and nerfing that.

The only thing I'm afraid of is it's going to take 3 more patches before this game has any semblance of balance. Turns out the beta testers even though they logged in hundreds/thousands of hours missed tons of bugs and balance issues that are severely holding the game back as is. I'm extremely surprised they missed very obvious bugs (like kubikiri not working, master enemy not working, it's like do they even test skills at all?) and stealth/0% exploits in all that time of testing. Subtle things I can understand, but not these.

this is the most simultaneously insulting and stupid post i've read since the game released.

[stefan3iii]

The only thing I'm afraid of is it's going to take 3 more patches before this game has any semblance of balance. Turns out the beta testers even though they logged in hundreds/thousands of hours missed tons of bugs and balance issues that are severely holding the game back as is. I'm extremely surprised they missed very obvious bugs (like kubikiri not working, master enemy not working, it's like do they even test skills at all?) and stealth/0% exploits in all that time of testing. Subtle things I can understand, but not these.

A single long war campaign is very long, there are lot of perks and mechanics along with their interactions, and during development everything is constantly changing. Then you have a handful of testers donating their time for free to playtest. You should be impressed that it's as well balanced as it is.

[Jacke]

A single long war campaign is very long, there are lot of perks and mechanics along with their interactions, and during development everything is constantly changing. Then you have a handful of testers donating their time for free to playtest. You should be impressed that it's as well balanced as it is.

I've seen a lot of game development over the decades and whenever they're a lot of moving parts like in LW2, it does get hard to balance. It's why bigger budgets include more blind-testing. For Legendary, the things that JoINrbs and xwynns found were addressed. Other issues were being addressed at the same time and all these changes have interactions. It's why xwynns exclaims about many things during his video series: between the last run he did during testing and his current run during the video series, that much has changed. With modern computer games, even single-player, they've got a lot of details and it takes a long time to get them right. Especially for a game when the campaign runs up to 100 battles.

We still get irritated though. Just helps to remember it's to be expected.

[Jadiel]

Warden armors are very expensive, I find them bottlenecked on Elerium, like everything else in the end game. But tac vests? The only issue there is supplies. Big supplies start coming in July or so when I start putting several regions on all supplies to generate supply retaliations and supplies. You're at 0 supplies per month, and then suddenly you spike to 500+ and a couple months later 1000+. Can also do micromanagey nonsense like switching rebels from intel to supply after you find that ambush you were looking for in a region.

Alloy Plates are like 19 supplies total (10 supplies + trooper corpse + 1 alloy), and that's still better than 1 armor from formidable.

In my experience, campaigns where your income is $1000+ by September are already won, and it probably doesn't really matter what perks you choose by that point. So I don't know whether it makes sense to assess the merits of a perk choice in that scenario (especially one which is chosen at CPL). Which perk is better for reaching that point in a campaign? Which perk works well when your early/mid game doesn't go so well and you're still struggling for income in Aug/Sept? I think those are probably better scenarios to discuss perk balance in, as they actually affect whether or not you will win the campaign.

If you can consistently reach $1000+ income by August on L/I, there is a balance problem, but it's not with perks

[Sporadix]

I'm saying this half-serious : are we going to see a nerf to hunker down? Those hunker down tanks OP ; p

That's the issue when you start to nerf something in the name of balance, something else will invariably end up being OP compared to the other options and you'll have to also nerf it until everything is equally bland and uninteresting. The best balance is achieved when everything is equally overpowered

I'm also half serious when i say this but still half serious anyway because i'm afraid by all the discussions about nerfing this and nerfing that.

The only thing I'm afraid of is it's going to take 3 more patches before this game has any semblance of balance. Turns out the beta testers even though they logged in hundreds/thousands of hours missed tons of bugs and balance issues that are severely holding the game back as is. I'm extremely surprised they missed very obvious bugs (like kubikiri not working, master enemy not working, it's like do they even test skills at all?) and stealth/0% exploits in all that time of testing. Subtle things I can understand, but not these.

How is that even fair? XCOM 2, in keeping with Firaxis tradition, is a barely functional mess (lol no offense Jake!). Trying to catch all the bugs in this game is like trying to catch rain.

As for balance, well... I wish stealth hadn't emerged this powerful (because I'm sure it was even more absurd before release) but other than that I think the game is actually very well balanced. 0% Supply Raids have a very simple temporary workaround, which is to just not do them.

[Goumindong]

Medicial protocol just has much more value lategame. It doesn't end the turn and gives 4-10 HP to an ally. In combination with the other abilities its between 8 to 40 HP extra for the squad per mission.

Its true that taking wounds is not ideal, but you're still going to take wounds. Even without red fog this makes medical protocol super value in both keeping soldiers healthy longer(IIRC wounds are based on lowest HP value, so getting healed up then shot again effectively reduces the timer) and keeping soldiers alive.

[stefan3iii]

In my experience, campaigns where your income is $1000+ by September are already won, and it probably doesn't really matter what perks you choose by that point. So I don't know whether it makes sense to assess the merits of a perk choice in that scenario (especially one which is chosen at CPL). Which perk is better for reaching that point in a campaign? Which perk works well when your early/mid game doesn't go so well and you're still struggling for income in Aug/Sept? I think those are probably better scenarios to discuss perk balance in, as they actually affect whether or not you will win the campaign.

If you can consistently reach $1000+ income by August on L/I, there is a balance problem, but it's not with perks

You're probably right that you've already won, the end game of LW2 is considerably easier than the mid game I think. But $1000 income in August isn't too wacky.

I think about 60 level 1 rebels on supply, without any engineers, radio towers boost, or liberation, will produce about $1000 supply. Level 3 rebels are worth 2 level 1 rebels. So around august if you have a liberated a region and put a couple of other regions with 10+ rebels, you'll make $1000.

Income being so high isn't too bad balance wise though, Elerium becomes the new bottleneck. Was the same way in LW1, and I thought that was fine too.

[SilentJ]

I enjoyed reading the entire wall of text Thrair.

Don't be a jerk trihero

Even if what you said was true (which it isn't), saying so in the way you did doesn't help you at all. At least be more thoughtful when criticizing the devs/testers who worked hard.

[CasualGamer]

(IIRC wounds are based on lowest HP value, so getting healed up then shot again effectively reduces the timer) and keeping soldiers alive.

Is that the case?

So if you get hit for say 4 and healed, then hit for 3 damage, your recovery time is identical to having been hit once for 4 damage?

I hope it is accurate as it makes medics much more powerful.

[Tuhalu]

So if you get hit for say 4 and healed, then hit for 3 damage, your recovery time is identical to having been hit once for 4 damage?

I hope it is accurate as it makes medics much more powerful.

That's exactly how it works. Only your lowest hp total in a mission matters for wound timers.

[Goumindong]

(IIRC wounds are based on lowest HP value, so getting healed up then shot again effectively reduces the timer) and keeping soldiers alive.

Is that the case?

So if you get hit for say 4 and healed, then hit for 3 damage, your recovery time is identical to having been hit once for 4 damage?

I hope it is accurate as it makes medics much more powerful.

Medics are super powerful anyway.

At Sgt they will bring, 12 bonus HP to the fight with one medkit. At tsgt its 36. Each spark upgrade gives them +4 HP to the fight. And upgraded medkits are another 8. At the top end you can bring 11 HP per medkit for 44 extra HP/mission.