Please rethink this!

[Noober]

[*]Why are you listing enemies that are 100% vulnerable to flashbang in a thread about the incendiary nerf?

M3 Muton and M2 Sectoid are almost immune after flash nerf

[Noober]

I wouldn't necessarily put stun lancers in the "need to be controlled" camp. They're dangerous and annoying, but having one unit stunned for a turn is far less lethal than getting grabbed...

the real threat from lancer is not a temporary stun but a hard disable (uncons) until the end of the mission.
there was an example in xwynns video some time ago.

[NovaFlame]

the real threat from lancer is not a temporary stun but a hard disable (uncons) until the end of the mission.
there was an example in xwynns video some time ago.

Ah, that's right. Don't know how I forgot about that. At least it's a reasonably low chance, as opposed to the huge aim bonus on viper grabs or the perfect accuracy of grenades, but if it does trigger, you can easily be short two soldiers for the rest of the mission. Quite nasty if it does proc, but at least leaving a lancer uncontrolled for a turn doesn't mean near-guaranteed casualties - and if you do bring a revival specialist, it's much less painful, which is why I don't mind it as much. It's a good example of the game throwing a serious threat at you, while still giving you useful tools to deal with it.

[summerlion]

No! Just seen this in the patch notes:

* Arc thrower now has a chance to stun the user on a miss.

This is plausible enough that I checked the patch notes to make sure it was a joke.

The difference between RNG for gun shots versus RNG for incendiaries is that there are enough opportunities for shots that a typical missed shot doesn't actually change the outcome of the mission all that much. There are occasionally "cross your fingers and pray" shots that are important, but that is frequently because some sequence of low probability events has put you in a bind (eg, you missed a 90% shot, followed by an 80% shot, and now you've got to land a 60% shot for the kill). You can think of the RNG of individual shot chances as a well conditioned problem: small differences in individual events have small effects on the mission but enough small effects can create a big effect.

Adding a 1-in-4 chance to totally screw you on an an incendiary is a poorly conditioned problem: the difference between setting an enemy on fire or not is huge. That 25% chance has greatly increases the probability of a squad wipe, since you have failed to control a particularly threatening enemy AND you have one fewer actions left to deal with it. This is compounded by the fact that 75% of the time, the grenade is going still going to be so useful that it still more compelling than poison, acid, or explosive grenade instead. Very useful 75% of the time is still better than pretty useless all of the time (in the case of poison or acid).

If you absolutely must nerf incendiaries (which I still think begs the question -- I have not seen a convincing rationale for this change), I would rather see certain enemies get their own equivalent to a hazmat vest and be immune to fire, so at least I know when I have to adapt my strategy.

[fowlJ]

[*]Why are you listing enemies that are 100% vulnerable to flashbang in a thread about the incendiary nerf?

M3 Muton and M2 Sectoid are almost immune after flash nerf

Sectoid Commanders are still affected two thirds of the time, and that's still only 2/6 enemies on your list that aren't 100% vulnerable to flashbangs, both mid-lategame enemies that don't appear nearly as often as the other 4.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Or to balance the fire grenade you can always make it like the frost grenade and only be able to have one of it. You could produce it a a proving grounds project, and then that is all. It doesn't appear in the engineering list after that.

It is okay for the fire grenade to be powerful, as long as it doesn't eliminate the use of everything else. And if you only get a limited number of them it does that.

The same could be said about the mimic beacon. Image how fun it would be to have one earlier in the campaign, but only one of them. We could keep getting more cool and powerful items, and toys to use as the campaign progresses, but if they are limited, it doesn't eliminate the use of other items, and we have a fun arsenal of anti-alien gizmos.

Some of these OP items could be tied to the rare corpses, and are hard to find the material to make. (but a good fun goal to try to achieve) But regular equipment upgrades should not require rare corpses. We shouldn't be able to not upgrade a Shinobi sword because we don't have the right corpses. But if rare corpses are tied to fire grenades, or mimic beacons, then those items could be OP as f****k without issues, and a lot of fun to use.

But trying to balance items amongst each other otherwise is just impossible. There is always going to be some item that is better.

[WanWhiteWolf]

Fire grenades are very powerful. They need a nerf / change.

RNG based change is however a poor choice. Even Hearthstone has more strategy than XCOM nowadays.

I am pretty sure that 100% -> 75% change will make them pretty useless. I would rather go with a sting flashbang (50% stun , 50% dissorient). I personally prefer 50% chance to dissorient rather than 25% fire , 25% to do nothing to a single target. Also flashbangs come by default, have huge radius , works on MECs ...etc. Why would I even bother with fire grenades?

I would have preferred one of the options:
- make the fire grenades a 65% chance to proc but have big AOE. So you can hit multiple enemies and some of them will burn. This would change the fire grenade from single target lockdown to battle crowd control.
- keep them as they are but change fire not to restrict any of the abilities. Mutons can still throw grenades. Same for most advent soldiers. Rocketeer can still squadwipe you ...etc.

[Doctor Sticks]

Completely agree with the OP. Adding RNG is always bad, as it takes away control from the player.

If we want to encourage diversity, then improve the other grenades. Aliens are quite dangerous as they are, they definitely don't need buffs. Even if you wanted to nerft fire grenades, RNG is not the answer. It is never the answer.

[deducter]

Personally I am not opposed to a 75% chance to burn with incendiaries.

However, maybe this can be balanced by difficulty. On Legend, maybe Commander this is 75%, on other difficulties it is 100%.

[cola]

The issue was that grenadiers are pretty weak except as incendiary mules, when they were OP.

The buffs to gas and biggest booms is aimed at making other grenade types competitive.

We thought about reducing incendiary damage but it was the guaranteed "I won't even have to think about that enemy" that was deemed to be the stronger (and less interesting) aspect of incendiaries. By introducing some risk, you have to plan your turn differently in case it doesn't burn.

As to comments re balancing through RNG, it seems fair enough to me given all of XCom is based on managing risk.

The thing is because of the way grenadier skill trees are set up it's generally a "cover destruction/armor shred mule" with plasma/acid or "support/crowd control" with sting/bluescreen and incendiary. But because armor shredding and multitarget damage can be achieved by other classes, plasma and acid have limited use while soldier aim progression + unflankable enemies means cover destruction is less useful. These two reasons can be attributed to why grenadiers really shine for CC.

The guaranteed enemy shutdown by burning for incendiaries is balanced by the fact that it has small AoE and limited charges. Compare that to the other forms of burning like dragon rounds and flamethrower technicals. Dragon rounds have pretty much infinite use so long as the soldier can keep shooting which justifies it having a burn chance. Flamethrower gauntlets have limited charges, but are available to you from the very start and their chances can be improved with flank maneuvers/improved gauntlets/larger range. Flame gauntlets can also force additional CC in case burn doesn't proc thanks to Napalm X and force enemies to move through burning tiles from flanking. Because of these reasons burning status as a percentage chance rather than a guaranteed effect is justified for these items. Compare that to incendiaries which have limited AoE and can run out of charges. Very rarely will an incendiary catch 2 or more enemy units while a flamethrower technical can routinely ignite entire pods with the right build.

The problem with adding the burn percentage chance to incendiary nades on the argument of "risk management" is that there is nothing a player can do to tip the chances in their favor, more so on a utility with limited charges. Other charge-based CC utilities with chance to proc like sting grenades and flamethrower can get away with this because they still have a backup CC effect on a failed roll(disorient and panic/disorient with napalm + possible force move into burning tile respectively) and a large area of effect which helps mitigate the risk of using these valuable charges. The new proposed incendiary doesn't have any of that, all you can do is launch more fire nades and hope that the odds are in your favor.

If the problem is that it's too easy to stack fire grenades on grenadier, the appropriate solution is to make it either more expensive and/or more difficult to obtain. Possible solutions include locking it behind advanced explosives, additional costs like elerium cores, or requiring a rarer corpse(or even just 2 officer corpses instead of one.) The current proposed solution will just push people to either stack incendiaries more to force more dice rolls to stack odds in their favor or result in players just stacking the next best CC item on them like sting grenades, possibly stacking incendiaries on technicals instead. It won't make gas grenades nor acid grenades more appealing because neither of those can fill the CC that sting/incendiaries can bring, nor do the things that acid/gas currently bring worth it at the moment.

[Maebalzurakin]

Remember that LW2 is a mod. Nothing sacred about it. You can mod the mod.

Personally I will mod it to have 100% fire effect (burn over time), and remove the automatic inability to take a turn. If I am feeling ambitious and want to spend another 30 seconds on it, I will add a % chance to panic.

[NovaFlame]

Remember that LW2 is a mod. Nothing sacred about it. You can mod the mod.

Let's not bring the Oberoni Fallacy into this, please. We're fully aware that editing the .ini files is a possible method to "fix" this proposed change - multiple users have already made suggestions or comments to that effect. The point remains, however, that a problem that can be fixed with .ini edits is still, fundamentally, a problem. Is this particular change problematic? If you ask me, that point is still very much up for debate, but it's clear that some users (myself included) believe that it is.

Either way, though, if "you can make the gameplay work however you like" were a valid excuse for overlooking balance or design issues, Pavonis wouldn't have bothered putting huge amounts of effort into repeatedly updating LW2; they would have simply released some modding tools so each player could "create their own long war." However, they've made it clear that they want LW2 to be capable of standing on its own, unmodified, as a complete gameplay experience, and that they want to continue improving the mod through to its completion, so providing the kind of feedback seen in this discussion serves a purpose even if it would be possible to just locally revert the nerf and pretend it never happened.

[Lestat13]

But id rather recommend each one to make the adjustments they like for the game THEY like.

Remember that LW2 is a mod. Nothing sacred about it. You can mod the mod.

I hope you can see the appeal of the base game being quality, rather than placing the expectations on each player. It's important for even tabletop RPGs where the rules are a suggestion for the base ruleset to be conducive for play.

[DaviBones]

Just thought of an alternate nerf: If ADVENT Officers were made much more rare on corpse-gathering missions, it would limit the ability to stack incendiaries. Even if they were just taken out of Rendezvous missions entirely, and replaced with a trooper variant, it would cut down on available officer corpses considerably (probably not enough though, unless they were more rare on troop columns and supply raids as well).

Too bad there isn't really anything else that requires officer corpses, or their allocation could make for an interesting strategic decision.

[Saph7]

I'm kind of curious: given that the prevailing opinion of a lot of the posters in this thread seems to be that to win missions you need a 100% accuracy, high-damaging attack that automatically disables its target for a turn, what do you guys do when you don't have them? Do you just not attempt any mission where you can't bring at least 1 incendiary grenade per 2 enemies?

[Goofych]

fire nades can be limited to a "granade only" slot

[Noober]

Fire grenades are very powerful. They need a nerf / change.

Every class has its special strong abilities which allows them to carry its weight through all game till the very end.

Grenadier has nothing speciall (everyone can carry grenades) other than support tree.
Come on - poor nerfed to the ground gunner still can reliably destroy cover and THE rocketier even without bunker bust at MSGT do it much more reliably then two skills MSGT sapper just with gauntlet progression (Inv damage of basic gauntlet start with 20 and reach 25 at mag which is a guarantee (max inv health is 20) as opposed to 20-21 for full supper which is another RNG (+-20%) for trees and other strong covers). So FITH technic in EXO with 1 more rocket has 2 (3 - at MSGT) reliable mass cover distruction which means 2-3 flanked pods and thisi is somehow close to fire grenade in terms of power.

Removing fire restricts grenadiers to be the only flash mull (there is always Airdrop for 2 frag/plasma if needed) as only he has 2 pretty strong skills to improve flash.

So PLEASE set fire nades to be the only grenadier item (like ghost grenade) at special slot without nerfing it at all.

That way the grenadier will still be valuable against flash resistance mobs but has only 1-2 charges of 2 turns hard disable for just 1 (!) organic (!!) non-melee (!!!) target.
It seems kind of balanced compair to PSI as stasis doesn't has charges and works for MEC/melee too.

[Thrombozyt]

The issue was that grenadiers are pretty weak except as incendiary mules, when they were OP.

The buffs to gas and biggest booms is aimed at making other grenade types competitive.

We thought about reducing incendiary damage but it was the guaranteed "I won't even have to think about that enemy" that was deemed to be the stronger (and less interesting) aspect of incendiaries. By introducing some risk, you have to plan your turn differently in case it doesn't burn.

As to comments re balancing through RNG, it seems fair enough to me given all of XCom is based on managing risk.

The problem many have with RNG balance on a very powerful ability is the fact that it diminishes the skill component as engagements boil down to "did it burn?" and there is nothing the player can do to influence this. It is much better to allow for such a powerful ability but instead increase the cost of opportunity.

Suggestions include:
- Increase in grenade weight to slow down incendiary carriers
- Increasing the tech gate or the cost; Currently they come on so early and cheaply that it's viable to tech/rush straight for them
- A massive increase to the infiltration cost
- Making it a consumable like combat drugs (adjusting the price to something like Officer Corpse + 5 supplies)
- Not letting protector/heavy ordonance double the grenade

Do I currently fit every grenadier with a fire grenade in his grenade slot? Yes. Would I do this, if I didn't get a second fire grenade from it and if it would increase infiltration time and reduce grenadier speed? Probably only occasionally.

Would I bring fire grenades, if each use would cost the officer corpse and 5 supplies? Of course, but only as an emergency option.

[Jacke]

I wouldn't necessarily put stun lancers in the "need to be controlled" camp. They're dangerous and annoying, but having one unit stunned for a turn....

Stun Lancers can also knock a soldier unconscious for the rest of the battle. Better hope you have a Specialist with an unused charge of Revival Protocol or that unconscious XCOM trooper will have be carried, especially when evaccing.

ADVENT Stun Lancer (LW2)

[cola]

I'm kind of curious: given that the prevailing opinion of a lot of the posters in this thread seems to be that to win missions you need a 100% accuracy, high-damaging attack that automatically disables its target for a turn, what do you guys do when you don't have them? Do you just not attempt any mission where you can't bring at least 1 incendiary grenade per 2 enemies?

Given the sheer number and devastating capability that many late-game enemies have, Crowd Control becomes extremely valuable. For an item that is charge based it makes sense that for it to be reliable. People would probably just turn to the next most powerful and consistent form of CC if the incendiary is gutted to the ground, stacking sting/bluescreen on their grenadiers instead. We've already got crazy abilities like chain lighting which can shutdown entire groups of enemies of multiple types and that's a cooldown based ability, while incendiary normally no more than disables 2, and limited against bio, and charge based. It sounds like incendiaries are unbalanced because they are too readily accessible, rather than that a 100% burning effect is OP. A lot people seem to agree that making them more difficult to obtain/more expensive to manufacture is the better way to go.

[Noober]

- Increase in grenade weight to slow down incendiary carriers
- Increasing the tech gate or the cost; Currently they come on so early and cheaply that it's viable to tech/rush straight for them
- A massive increase to the infiltration cost
- Making it a consumable like combat drugs (adjusting the price to something like Officer Corpse + 5 supplies)
- Not letting protector/heavy ordonance double the grenade

NO!
with that much nerfs I would just never use it at all.
2 more flash + 1 PSI (well it seems like we FORCED to use PSI since then) would almost always be better than 1 fire aftert all of that.

It sounds like incendiaries are unbalanced because they are too readily accessible, rather than that a 100% burning effect is OP.

Just make it grenadier only for 2 max charges and most of the questions will be solved

[wobuffet]

NO!
with that much nerfs I would just never use it at all.

Pretty sure that poster was saying one, maybe two of those suggestions could be implemented.

It sounds like incendiaries are unbalanced because they are too readily accessible, rather than that a 100% burning effect is OP.

Just make it grenadier only for 2 max charges and most of the questions will be solved

Yep, restricting to Grenadier-only makes sense. Maybe even rename it Incendiary Device (cannot be doubled by Heavy Ordnance/Rapid Deployment).

Finally, the cost could be upped to something like 75 Supplies, 1 Elerium Core, 1 Officer corpse.

[LordYanaek]

I'm kind of curious: given that the prevailing opinion of a lot of the posters in this thread seems to be that to win missions you need a 100% accuracy, high-damaging attack that automatically disables its target for a turn, what do you guys do when you don't have them? Do you just not attempt any mission where you can't bring at least 1 incendiary grenade per 2 enemies?

Not sure where you got this idea from. Few people said anything even close to that. The majority of the posters seem concerned about either the need to nerf fire grenade at all (they don't think it's too strong, possible because they never played mass fire grenades on everyone), others (myself included) are concerned about the recurrent use of the RNG to "balance" various items. There was maybe one or two posts from people who seem to believe it will make missions impossible, i wouldn't call this the "prevailing opinion". I do agree with you that we don't need fire grenades to win missions, i don't use a lot myself as i use them only on grenadiers and only one squad has a permanent needle grenadier that always has some fire grenades.

The issue was that grenadiers are pretty weak except as incendiary mules, when they were OP.

The buffs to gas and biggest booms is aimed at making other grenade types competitive.

We thought about reducing incendiary damage but it was the guaranteed "I won't even have to think about that enemy" that was deemed to be the stronger (and less interesting) aspect of incendiaries. By introducing some risk, you have to plan your turn differently in case it doesn't burn.

As to comments re balancing through RNG, it seems fair enough to me given all of XCom is based on managing risk.

Does a +1/2 damage to gas really make that much of a change? I always felt the biggest issue with poison was that it can (almost always will) wear off at the start of the enemy turn and thus won't do it's CC effect. I didn't have a chance to test it of course but i'm really not impressed when i see this on paper. It looks like it will still be a low damage grenade with close to no CC effect (of course i hope to be proven wrong )
I'm also curious, why do you think the CC effect was the less interesting part of fire? I think exactly the opposite. There are multiple ways to deal guaranteed (heavy) damage to a target but very few effects that prevent them from shooting for 1 turn and it was a nice niche to have an ability that does both (fire was really unique for this reason).

To be clear, i don't think the nerf will break the game but i'm worried about the increasing use of RNG in LW2. XCOM2 is an RNG heavy game and i think it's the reason why it's important to keep some reliable tools that don't use the RNG. Limited use items/perks seem perfect to fit that job since they are limited. We already had Flashbang nerfed, i was totally ok with it as it's still reliable for most enemies. Now we see one of the few guaranteed disables not guaranteed anymore. The question is : where will this stop? Will we see a chance for enemies to break out of stasis at the start of their turn? As others pointed : each time you reduce the power of some CC effect without boosting another one you increase the power of vanilla style "level the battlefield and kill everything" tactics, which reduces the tactical depths of the game. Please keep that in mind as you progress.

fire nades can be limited to a "granade only" slot

That looks like a simple (i hope it's actually simple to code) and elegant approach. It might actually be expanded so that only grenadiers can equip "special" grenades (anything non basic) to give them a more defined role. Those special grenades can also be set to only one/soldier (many items are limited to 1/soldier so it's possible). It might make it easier to balance those grenades so they can be strong but not OP because of limited availability. I think fire grenades wouldn't be that much of an issue if you couldn't spam them on everyone but going on a very light (max 12 enemies) mission with 15 fire grenades (3/soldier) is definitely not a very interesting way to play and probably the core of the issue and the reason behind the nerf.

[RookieAutopsy]

Charge based should be reliable due to the opportunity cost. I am in agreement with the view to hard limit the number you can take (like grenade slot only, rather than soft-limit by making them more expensive to create/infiltrate to avoid success/fail snowballing).

[Noober]

The majority of the posters seem concerned about either the need to nerf fire grenade at all (they don't think it's too strong, possible because they never played mass fire grenades on everyone)

Never do this cause it's just look like console win the mission for me and so there is no nerf needed to prevent it.