v1.3 Gunner Skill Balance

[trihero]

In my current playthrough, I have a couple gunners I've been trying out overwatch style and I noticed at Tech Sergeant the choices are

Cyclic Fire - Danger Zone - Cool Under Pressure

It feels wrong to me that you have 2 overwatch perks at this tier. I always pick Danger Zone for an overwatch gunner because it allows so much more suppression coverage, and I feel like CUP will not be chosen ever. To me I see no choice between the two skills, it would be like putting CUP and Rapid Reaction on the same tier. You would always pick Rapid Reaction.

Additional reasoning is as follows:

You should be able to pick both Cool Under Pressure and Danger Zone together (at different tiers), this makes for a cohesive overwatch build, and the precedent is set by other classes. For instance, specialists can pick both cool under pressure and sentinel, and rangers can pick both cool under pressure and rapid reaction. It seems strange that we cannot get both danger zone + CUP. I don't think it would be overpowered, considering enemies have to run an area suppression to make use of this combination, which is much more difficult to accomplish than say triggering rapid reaction/covering fire on a ranger. Since it is much harder to activate, it probably won't be overpowered.

My suggested solution is simple: swap Demolition and Cool Under Pressure. Currently at Staff Sergeant (one rank below Tech Sergeant) you can pick

Chain Shot - Iron Curtain - Demolition

By switching Demolition and Cool Under Pressure, the following would result

- you can get both danger zone/CUP for a cohesive OW gunner build
- BUT, if you choose to go with a cohesive OW gunner build, now you have to give up the power of demolition, since demolition now competes with Danger Zone

So even if Danger Zone + CUP is overpowered (which I doubt, it's hard to trigger and if it were overpowered you would already see it with lockdown/mayhem), the proposed suggestion has a built-in nerf in the form of having to give up demolition.

I welcome other suggestions, but at least I hope I conveyed that the current skill choices at Tech Sergeant really isn't a choice at all. Again, choosing between Danger Zone/CUP isn't a choice, it's always in favor of Danger Zone.

[DaviBones]

I disagree. Maybe I'm a scrub that goes for non-ideal builds, but imo there are two distinct OW builds for gunners:

• Suppression Gunner: Grazing Fire, Lockdown, Mayhem, (anything), Danger Zone, (anything), Traverse Fire
• OW Tank Gunner: Combatives, Formidable, (anything), (anything), CUP, Kill Zone, Traverse Fire or perhaps Combat Fitness

Second build is useful if you have other methods of CC and so you don't care too much about suppression. Throw a Combat Awareness PCS on him and some good armor and he makes a damn fine tank. Shines when using Kill Zone.

Had a Gunner get Guardian in the AWC, did the OW non-suppression spec, probably my most OP soldier ever.

I get the thought behind your idea, and I want to like it, but I'm thinking it might decrease the number of viable builds rather than increase it.

EDIT: don't forget that the most important part of CUP is that it enables crits on OW. This is especially significant, because on an OW build scopes don't do anything, so you use laser sights instead. With a Danger Zone gunner, scopes and laser sights are both practically useless.

[crimsonsun]

My Overwatch Gunner takes CUP and Killzone instead, you can also get covering fire in the AWC which makes Killzone so much more effective.

As upgrades go my gunners run expanded mags, auto loaders and hair triggers. While I appreciate that crits are awesome I want my gunner to lay down large area fire to control an area of combat, its why I always put shredder in there as well as being grazed by my big gun means you can be picked off by someone else easier.

I've found the new skill set ups to be fairly interesting but if anything I've noticed an increased focus to builds and a lack of effective generalised set ups, especially with my Technical builds I'm really struggling to get anything I'm happy with that's not dedicated to one role.

[trihero]

@davibones, my suggestion doesn't affect your playstyle at all. You can still pick between tanky OW vs suppression OW. I'm not sure why you disagree? Do you feel having both CUP and danger zone is overpowered?

[xwynns]

CuP + Danger Zone is wildly overpowered, to that point that it invalidates all other builds if you can combo them both imo. Being able to shoot with a heavy hitting gun, against 4+ things per turn, plus debuff, plus cancel overwatch, plus crit... plus comboing with Roust or even just a simple flank to trick the AI into moving against the OW.
It's not just the most efficient thing you could do, it's also broken in that it's extremely boring and repetitive. DZ is more utility, CuP is more damage. If you combo utility and damage, why on earth would you ever do anything else?

[DaviBones]

@davibones, my suggestion doesn't affect your playstyle at all. You can still pick between tanky OW vs suppression OW. I'm not sure why you disagree? Do you feel having both CUP and danger zone is overpowered?

I don't think I have the experience to say that it's OP without even trying it, I guess I just personally find Danger Zone vs. CUP an interesting choice, rather than an auto-pick as you see it, and I think the removal of interesting choices should generally be avoided. I should clarify that I'm not necessarily against your suggestion, I'm more just being the devil's advocate here, presenting a rebuttal based on my (quite possibly naive) playstyle.

[trihero]

CuP + Danger Zone is wildly overpowered, to that point that it invalidates all other builds if you can combo them both imo. Being able to shoot with a heavy hitting gun, against 4+ things per turn, plus debuff, plus cancel overwatch, plus crit... plus comboing with Roust or even just a simple flank to trick the AI into moving against the OW.
It's not just the most efficient thing you could do, it's also broken in that it's extremely boring and repetitive. DZ is more utility, CuP is more damage. If you combo utility and damage, why on earth would you ever do anything else?

I appreciate your feedback. Can you answer the following, which I alluded to in the original post:

Why is danger zone + lockdown + mayhem not overpowered then? If CUP + danger zone is OP, then lockdown/mayhem + danger zone is more overpowered. And you can already learn lockdown/mayhem with danger zone. It's everything you said, hitting 4+ things a turn, debuff, cancel overwatch, can be comboed with tricks/rousts, and even though it can't crit, +25% damage from mayhem is nothing to scoff at, and +15% accuracy from lockdown is more than CUP's 10% accuracy.

Perhaps what you're saying is that CUP on top of what you can do with DZ/LD/mayhem is too much, but removing CUP from the mix is balanced? I'm not arguing or being cynical or anything here, just trying to understand the argument.

If anything, I remember from your videos xwynns that the overwatch gunner is fairly underwhelming (besides when danger zone had way too much radius, but you already lobbied to change that a while ago). Would adding CUP to the mix bring an underpowered spec to overpowered just like that, really? And don't forget the proposition I'm making removes a very powerful ability, demolition, from the overwatch gunner's toolkit.

And also xwynns, even if CUP is overpowered with danger zone, do you see an interesting choice at the danger zone vs CUP tier for an OW gunner build?

[xwynns]

It's not one or the other, it's when you combine both and effectively eliminate your chance to miss. While you're at it toss on the potential to crit stack to nearly 100% (40 exposed, 20 get some, 20 holo, 15+ laser sight, 10 talon, 10 Adrenal rush, (others I can't think of off the top of my head).
I feel very strongly that CuP is one of the most swingy and powerful perks in the game. If you randomly pick it up and don't build around it, it's just a minor buff. If you build everything around it you can basically hit 100% and crit 100% of the time. Combine that power with the ability to take 4 to 8 shots per turn? Ridiculous. If you had that option available and you weren't doing that every single turn you'd basically be playing the game wrong.

Anyway, yes I always struggle with CuP vs DZ for overwatch Gunners. I've taken both various times and I still can't decide on which is better. I generally favor CuP though, as I build all sorts of various specs and I'll typically take DZ on some low-aim utility gunners. This way I have both, and I can complain every time I wish I had the other one in every situation where it comes up.

[trihero]

Anyway, yes I always struggle with CuP vs DZ for overwatch Gunners. I've taken both various times and I still can't decide on which is better. I generally favor CuP though, as I build all sorts of various specs and I'll typically take DZ on some low-aim utility gunners. This way I have both, and I can complain every time I wish I had the other one in every situation where it comes up.

I appreciate the humor, but can you explain why you prefer CUP over DZ? Extending Danger Zone's radius to me is a no-brainer since it lets you shoot at least 1, and more commonly 2+ extra targets with your area suppression. That is a massive massive efficiency increase over 10% aim/crit on 1 or 2 shots from a normal area suppression. To me taking 2, 3, 4, 5 additional shots is better than 10% aim/crit on 1 or 2 shots. To use your words, it'd be "doing it wrong" to choose less damage.

If anything, I would prefer high aim gunners to go DZ so they can take advantage of the extra shots. Imagine exposing a bunch of targets with a frag grenade then DZ'ing them.

[Tuhalu]

I appreciate the humor, but can you explain why you prefer CUP over DZ? Extending Danger Zone's radius to me is a no-brainer since it lets you shoot at least 1, and more commonly 2+ extra targets with your area suppression. That is a massive massive efficiency increase over 10% aim/crit on 1 or 2 shots from a normal area suppression. To me taking 2, 3, 4, 5 additional shots is better than 10% aim/crit on 1 or 2 shots. To use your words, it'd be "doing it wrong" to choose less damage.

If anything, I would prefer high aim gunners to go DZ so they can take advantage of the extra shots. Imagine exposing a bunch of targets with a frag grenade then DZ'ing them.

A CUP gunner is capable of critting things (and does it a LOT if you build for it), which can result in more actual deaths, which reduces the number of enemies the rest of your group needs to kill. Obviously, this isn't as important on lower difficulties where things die in one shot regardless.

[trihero]

Lots of things can't be crit, or run through cover which negates crit, and even when gearing for CUP crits (and trust me I've tried this a lot with laser sights, talon ammos, etc etc etc) seems to hover around 40-60%, and you can't even guarantee they run the area suppression. At least with danger zone, you will be debuffing more enemies for sure rather than maybe getting an extra crit on one or two guys.

Hitting more targets can also result in quite a few more deaths, especially if you soften them up first with say a frag grenade. To me this makes DZ a clear pick.

Hitting like 8 guys is better than 3, and I don't see how CUP makes up the difference by any stretch of imagination.

[Tuhalu]

The whole idea is they are both situational and work better in different compositions. The thing is, as long as the developers are doing their job balancing the perks (and they are), every perk has some situation where it is better than anything else you could be doing.

Danger Zone is better when you are dealing with vast swarms of enemies, have sufficiently expanded Magazines equipped and cannot kill the bulk of them in one turn. This only happens on a few very specific missions (heavy to swarming supply raids, HQ assaults, golden path missions) and only if things go wrong. Its also better when you don't have Flash Bangs, Sting Grenades or other methods of locking down the same target more effectively for those critical turns.

CUP is better when you are dealing with only small groups of enemies (in Guerilla Ops) or can have 2 or more Gunners (ie, every mission where DZ is good). CUP also works on normal overwatch shots, giving you a better chance to kill an enemy as they patrol into you. This happens in nearly every mission you can bring an overwatch gunner on. So it's worth less in those missions, but it isn't worthless either.

[trihero]

Why would they allow classes to have both sentinel/rapid reaction with CUP, but no CUP with danger zone? I don't see the logic.

[sacho]

Infantry and Sentinel can't use LMGs. Even if your overwatches don't proc, DZ gives you a bunch of other benefits(aim debuff, removes overwatch). You can get an aim debuff with overwatch but now we're talking about 2 perks instead of one. Troopers with low aim won't even bother to shoot, whereas overwatch/CF can miss and leave you with a bunch of wounds from 30% shots.

I feel like DZ's effectiveness is directly correlated to the fact that the AI is blind to it. I prefer not picking it.

[trihero]

Yes the other OW classes can't use the LMG, but area suppressing costs a lot of ammo, and the damage for LMGs was nerfed recently so it's only 0.5 damage over an AR. The LMG has its own set of problems, such as having lower accuracy at close range, as well.

Why not give CUP/danger zone a try? As xwynns himself has mentioned many times in his videos, the OW gunner is slightly underwhelming. I doubt that allowing this one skill (at the cost of demolition, which is +45% to hit and +40% to crit for dangerous single targets, mind you, and often times is the OW gunners only contribution against OW immune units to begin with), would bring the gunner to overwhelmingly powerful. It's not like I'm asking for a buff to the best spec in the game. The other direct damage side of the gunner remains valid with chain shot, hail of bullets, center mass allowing you to down dangerous targets quickly on your own terms

And you know what? It's totally ok if you have holo (sharpshooter), bring em on (officer), roust, cover destruction (technical) and gunner all together to bring destruction to a group of mobs. The most powerful tactics should involve a lot of skills coming together, there's nothing wrong with that! I don't understand arguments that list like 5 different classes coming together to maximize the use of area suppression/crits, that doesn't say much.

At the end of the day, even if CUP/danger zone would be OP, I still would be picking DZ all the time over CUP, and that's really the core issue.

I'm very surprised literally no one agrees with my pick. Wouldn't you want to suppress more units, removing more overwatches and doing a lot more damage overall? I can barely catch 1 unit with the regular suppression, but with DZ even an increase of just 1 unit is more worth it than CUP on average due to the debuff and extra shot. With CUP you're gambling that you might crit, which might make the difference between life/death, and even when you stack crit as high as you can the gamble is not very good (like 60-70% in reasonable situations; if you have to factor in holo targeting + get some then you are simply "doing it right" by using a lot of abilities and classes together, and I actually imagine you would still be doing better with DZ hitting 4+ extra targets without having to rely on crit equipment).

[gimrah]

Agree with xwynns on the CuP + danger zone combo. Basically CuP is the most powerful OW perk as it gives you aim and damage applies to all reaction shots not just suppression.

My preferred choice for OW gunner is CuP. Because if I'm going to make something run suppression then it absolutely has to die, otherwise it's going to be uncontrolled (without red fog). So I'm inclined to overkill it. There is a good argument for danger zone still but CuP goes nicely with kill zone too (which is now much more useful).

Danger zone is my pick for utility gunners, ie the ones with poor aim who can still be really useful with that, HoB and demolition.

[DaviBones]

The reason that CUP + Sentinel/RR is allowed and CUP + Danger Zone is not is because Sentinel only allows 2 shots, Rapid Reaction allows 3 sometimes. Danger Zone makes it much easier to attain the maximum number of area suppression shots you can take if you have an elite expanded magazine, 5 shots. Additionally, with Danger Zone and even just a normal Expanded Magazine, it is trivially easy in many engagements to cover 3 enemies with area suppression, and a smart player can also easily force all three to move, as Xavier said, with a roust or even a simple flank.

Adding CUP would make this skill dwarf both Rapid Reaction and Sentinel in the following ways:

• Can guarantee all three shots in many situations, as opposed to Rangers with RR, who always gamble, and Specialists with Sentinel, who can only ever be guaranteed 2 shots.
• LMGs do more damage than anything a Ranger or Specialist can equip (besides a shotgun )
• If enemies are NOT fired upon, they get a large penalty to their aim, and cannot use many dangerous skills
• Combo with Mayhem for +25% damage on all shots, which scales beautifully with higher tier weaponry thanks to not being a flat bonus
• +15 aim from Lockdown not achievable by other OW classes
• Once larger magazines are available, 4 or even 5 OW shots become possible

OW Rangers and Specialists would retain the following advantages

• If enough ammo, can use Ever Vigilant to sprint and still get their 2 or 3 shots.
• Can be comboed with covering fire to apply a small aim debuff to the 2 or 3 targets.
• Plasma Rifles can equip an extra weapon attachment (really digging here)

Can you see how simply adding +10 aim and capability to crit to the bottom list, as it is currently, evens out the OW classes quite a bit? In fact, I feel like Lockdown itself may have been added to Gunners as a nerfed version of CUP because critting on top of Mayhem on top of natural LMG damage was just too powerful.

[trihero]

Danger Zone makes it much easier to attain the maximum number of area suppression shots you can take if you have an elite expanded magazine, 5 shots. Additionally, with Danger Zone and even just a normal Expanded Magazine, it is trivially easy in many engagements to cover 3 enemies with area suppression, and a smart player can also easily force all three to move, as Xavier said, with a roust or even a simple flank.

Simple flanking is pretty hard in practice, and you know what, if you combine 2 classes together you SHOULD get a good result. You should be rewarded and encouraged to roust + DZ, but does anyone actually do it? What's funny is with an OW ranger you don't even have to roust to get 3 shots, himself will guarantee covering fire malus and all the shots.

Also, your point here simply reinforces that you should take DZ every time since it makes it easy to cover 3+ enemies. Even if allowing CUP to be chosen with DZ is overpowered, the core problem remains that you should always pick DZ over CUP in that tier since "combining it with roust" or "being smart" allows you to take so many shots that CUP can't even begin to keep up.

On another topic, what do you feel about Flush? While I recognize and am appreciate of the recent changes to both accessibility of the skill, I still feel it is not quite desirable. It is somewhat difficult to explain but I think the skill simply isn't worth the action you spend on it, and we can do so in comparison to other similar moves: holo targeter, demolition and Focus Fire. They generally help your accuracy just like Flush.

The two major problems with Flush are action economy and also unintended movement.

The easier one to explain is unintended movement. From having used the skill many times in practice, I've seen the enemy many times move back even further into deep cover, which doesn't help the situation. It is just like that Fallback skill that no longer exists which sent your ally on an unordered move. It could help, and yes you can combine it with OW fire, but the point here is it also backfires. Seeing as how fallback was removed entirely, it is not unreasonable to suggest a similar reworking of Flush.

Action economy - what are you doing with that action point? Spending a whole action point to make one enemy easier to hit, well it better be worth it. And Flush isn't worth it, compared to the alternatives.

-demolition, wow removing high cover = +45% to hit and +40% crit? Holy moly. How does 10% to hit and 10% dodge compare against that? Not really, for 1 action point spent. If the target was already flanked to begin with....why not just shoot? Is flushing a flanked target going to help or just send him into cover again?

- Rapid Targeting costs you 0 action points. Even when RT is on cooldown, you can still use it as a first action and then target something else, but flush consumes your turn if used as a first action. With higher tech and points, golo is also a better debuff

-Flush can miss - focus fire and holo targeting can't. Although the +30 aim is quite generous on flush, it is still infinitely far away from being 100% as reliable as FF or holo.

-Focus Fire is probably a better debuff if you are having a hard time hitting something. Both FF and Flush are meant to be followed up by volume of fire, and FF with the stacking aim and armor point reduction is just going to get you better results if you attack the target more than 1-2 times following it. FF can also be pushed sky high with free attacks like lightning hands, making that 1 action point yo used to debuff extremely worth it.

Now I anticipate someone will say "BUT you can stack both flush with holo/FF/demolition"! Yeah it's true it's a unique buff, but again here's action economy. Can you really think of situations where you spend 2 or more characters simply debuffing a single target? It's pretty rare because at most you would want to spend 1 guy's action to debuff, while the rest are actually shooting/killing. Flush's damage is negligible and doesn't apply ammo/debuffs. When you hit that guy, he might move into a worse position for you to fire at.

Someone else might say well what if all those other skills are on cooldown. Well it's pretty rare that a single target is so hard to hit and you have absolutely none of the other options up. And even then, the unintended movement might make things worse.

Flush is a cool idea in general, but some tweaking might make it see more use. Simply replacing it with the passive holotarget may be one approach, since it removes the unintended movement and gives it passive action economy. Flush is trying too hard to be an accuracy improver but not competing well against the other alternatives and not combining smoothly due to unintended movement as well as the buff not being that big compared to the alternatives.

[Alketi]

Am I the only one who thinks DZ is overrated?

It only provides a benefit if enemies fall into the exact extra area suppression tiles (+1.5 radius), which in my experience, does not happen all that frequently. If the enemies don't fall into those tiles, the skill has absolutely zero marginal value and, in reality, negative value as you've conceded another perk for it.

All the Roust + Area Suppression tricks only benefit from DZ if the exact enemies you're rousting are enemies that wouldn't have fallen into a regular Area Suppression.

Whereas Cool Under Pressure provides a benefit on every single OW shot of any kind, including from plain OW, suppression, and area suppression.

All in all I think both skills have their merits, which tells me that the Gunner tree, at least at the Tech Sergeant level, is pretty well balanced.

[DaviBones]

No, Alketi, I agree completely. I may have been coming off as though I think Danger Zone is OP but actually I agree that the tree seems pretty well balanced right now. My point was that Mayhem + Danger Zone + CUP + Lockdown would be pretty overpowered if it were possible. Mayhem + CUP is actually very powerful in terms of damage potential, the limiting factor is the radius of Area Suppression which cannot be expanded by Danger Zone if CUP is taken.

[Saph7]

I prefer CuP as well, mainly because I only rarely use Area Suppression.

[bingo12345]

I disagree. Maybe I'm a scrub that goes for non-ideal builds, but imo there are two distinct OW builds for gunners:

• Suppression Gunner: Grazing Fire, Lockdown, Mayhem, (anything), Danger Zone, (anything), Traverse Fire
• OW Tank Gunner: Combatives, Formidable, (anything), (anything), CUP, Kill Zone, Traverse Fire or perhaps Combat Fitness

Second build is useful if you have other methods of CC and so you don't care too much about suppression. Throw a Combat Awareness PCS on him and some good armor and he makes a damn fine tank. Shines when using Kill Zone.

Had a Gunner get Guardian in the AWC, did the OW non-suppression spec, probably my most OP soldier ever.

I get the thought behind your idea, and I want to like it, but I'm thinking it might decrease the number of viable builds rather than increase it.

EDIT: don't forget that the most important part of CUP is that it enables crits on OW. This is especially significant, because on an OW build scopes don't do anything, so you use laser sights instead. With a Danger Zone gunner, scopes and laser sights are both practically useless.

gunner can't be a tank. they don't shoot suppressioner first not like lw1 suppression. LW2 tank get the attention with close position.

[DaviBones]

Uh... well, yes you're right about the suppression thing, but they can still tank. They just need to be a bit closer, and you need to screw around with Defense scores (basically choose a soldier with low defense from NCE and/or put them in low cover while the rest of your squad is in high cover).