SPARKs Feedback

[stefan3iii]

Joinrbs and Xwynns basically don't use SPARKs, and so I rarely see much discussion on them. I've used them in my campaigns, I even built a second one in a couple of them! I play with the DLC, so I always get the "free" one from the Shen Tower mission.

Firstly, cost wise they're probably not too expensive, but, they generally unlock at a point in the campaign where it's very hard to justify spending money on a SPARK. Given their cost, the time it takes to build them, and their infiltration penalty, it seems fair that a SPARK should actually be stronger than a regular soldier. There is a natural limit to how many you can feasibly build, so I don't think it's too dangerous if they ended up a little OP.

There are two things that SPARKs are very good at:
1) Attracting enemy fire away from the rest of your team. Their large HP pools help here, but the most important thing is that they can be deployed on a mission while injured, AND they can use Repair on themselves while stealthed. That means injuries don't really mean anything to them, you just deploy anyway and heal yourself on turn 1.
Suggestion: Just remove the injury mechanic from SPARKs all together. Right now it feels like it just makes Repair a mandatory pick. I know the more obvious option is to nerf repair, but I really like this aspect of SPARKs, it sets them apart from other soldiers.

2) Burst. On most turns a SPARK is rather mediocre for damage output, with low aim and average mobility. But when things are bad, the SPARK hits the Overdrive button and can take 3 yellow actions in a single turn. For example, Shredder, Bombard, and Standard Shot. They are one of the most bursty classes, along with Shinobi. One or two of these are good in a squad, because combat encounters vary a lot in difficulty, it's helpful to have the oh shit button.

Perks:
Rank 1: Body Shield and Combat Awareness work directly against tanking, increasing defense means the AI is less likely to shoot the SPARK, so I always just take Adaptive Aim. Adaptive Aim is meh, since the SPARK shooting is so bad in general, but the other two are worse.

Rank 2: Rainmaker is very strong, particularly early in the campaign as it increases shredder damage to where it's outright killing many enemies, I usually take this. Bulwark is one of the only very good tanking perks, and opens up all sorts of great tactical opportunities, allowing your soldiers to take high cover in odd flanking positions. Shredder is meh, it can be difficult to actually hit your target, good luck shredding a Gatekeeper for example. I kind of wish Bulwark was a base ability on the SPARK, just because it makes him so interesting to use in the tactical layer.

Rank 3: All reasonable and fair perks. If anything I might buff strike a bit, its damage is underwhelming compared to fleche or skullmining, and doesn't scale well late game. I believe it's 9 damage end game with a tier 3 bit. An interesting buff would be to make it destroy cover, the way the Andromendon's robot punch does.

Rank 4: Repair always. This is what makes a SPARK worth using, you can eat 10 damage on a mission, and then bring them on the next one and immediately repair them. The shooty perks like Guardian are just kind of bad, because the SPARKs' aim is too low.

Rank 5: Bombard every time. This ability is amazing, it seems to have a near 100% chance to destroy cover on every tile it touches, and has squad sight range without even needing line of sight. It's an incredibly flexible power, and is the best cover destruction tool in the game. Also, you can use it on a Haven Invasion Defense mission to one shot the transmitter on the roof, just need to get a Shinobi to spot for you. The other two perks involve shooting, and are thus meh.

Rank 6: Wrecking ball is neat in theory, in practice it's very hard to use. I cannot get it to reliably destroy cover I want in any way. Maybe if I could just practice with it for 30 minutes I'd figure out how to get it to work, but as it is now I've given up on it. Damage control is an ok tanking perk. Nova is a really cool perk, that I've tried hard to make work, but have given up on. The radius is small, and aliens like to spread out, and nova is blocked by cover. It's hard to get even 2 enemies in a nova, and the damage is not impressive.

Rank 7: Hunter's protocol is a good way to lose all your ammo whenever you find a pod, without hitting anything. Ok maybe if you took cool under pressure it would work better, I've never tried, but I'm pretty skeptical of anything involving a SPARK shooting (if you've noticed). Impact fields seem very underwhelming to me, I'm honestly not sure if it applies before or after armor. I generally take Sacrifice, and have gotten use out of it, but I'm really unclear on the mechanics. How does it interact with AOEs? Melee attacks? When taking shots, does it use the target's defense, or the SPARK's defense?.

SPARKs also have a remote hack, which is handy when no specialist is around, for getting hack rewards.

Overall, the changes I'd make to SPARKs:
1) Add some +Aim to their shooting perks, or provide aim for them in some way. A shooty SPARK might be fun, but it's not really feasible to build one with no way to stack aim on them. Another issue with SPARKs is the lack of a weapon at coil tech, which means they are especially bad at shooting for like 1/3rd of the game.

2) Fix odd quirks/bugs. Sacrifice targeting is odd, game pretends you can place it anywhere on the level, but then the SPARK will only run so far to do it. Enemies take cover on your SPARK when using bulwark. Sometimes when using overdrive, you can take 2 out of 3 moves and your turns ends.

3) Remove/replace the useless tanking perks (Body Shield, Combat Awareness).

4) Make them available earlier in the campaign. Don't have to make them cheaper, if they're significantly buffed.

[Steelflame]

To be honest, sparks being able to use weapon mods fixes most of these issues. +15 aim to reaction buffs guardian/overwatch builds, or scope enables the more offensive one.


Considering they are enabling sparks to use mods in vanilla, I'm assuming LW will probably also do so.

[JulianSkies]

Sacrifice actually makes usage of the SPARK's defense, meaning if you buff it and cover an area enemies are easily shooting at a target they have a very low chance to hit since they don't believe they're hitting the SPARK.
And the way it works with AoE damage is that it redirects all of the hits towards the SPARK, so if you're covering five soldiers and they get hit by a grenade, all five grenade 'hits' instead hit the SPARK with all the bonuses and penalties (such as channeling field) that has with it.

[stefan3iii]

Sacrifice actually makes usage of the SPARK's defense, meaning if you buff it and cover an area enemies are easily shooting at a target they have a very low chance to hit since they don't believe they're hitting the SPARK.
And the way it works with AoE damage is that it redirects all of the hits towards the SPARK, so if you're covering five soldiers and they get hit by a grenade, all five grenade 'hits' instead hit the SPARK with all the bonuses and penalties (such as channeling field) that has with it.

What about damage done? Does it use the SPARK's armor or the target's armor? For AOEs, does it apply armor once to the final total or to each piece of damage?

[JulianSkies]

Sacrifice actually makes usage of the SPARK's defense, meaning if you buff it and cover an area enemies are easily shooting at a target they have a very low chance to hit since they don't believe they're hitting the SPARK.
And the way it works with AoE damage is that it redirects all of the hits towards the SPARK, so if you're covering five soldiers and they get hit by a grenade, all five grenade 'hits' instead hit the SPARK with all the bonuses and penalties (such as channeling field) that has with it.

What about damage done? Does it use the SPARK's armor or the target's armor? For AOEs, does it apply armor once to the final total or to each piece of damage?

As far as I have observed, it utilizes the SPARK's armor (hence why it gives +armor when used), and each individual hit is affected by armor separately. Of course, of said AoE hit shreds, each hit will shred for it's full value so eating an andromedon acid bomb will likely immediately leave you bare.

[Zork]

The aim increases well with level up, just checked, 90 before last level in my current campaign. So I tend disagree with you, adaptive aim is a good skill, that myself I pick most often. The problem isn't the skills or attributes but that the Spark weapons has no mods. But it's damages level has no match, so I don't know, but in coming XCOM2 extension their weapons will allow mods.

For repair I sort of agree with you, I tend always pick it. But the number of repair is only 2 times so your arguing to not have healing for Spark doesn't work. For me repair mechanism is fine, but repair time is too long, at least in XC2 because you have less tools to lower it than for healing soldiers. In LW2 I had the feeling it's more balanced, but in my opinion you should be able to repair more than one Spark at same time, perhaps two.

Otherwise for the reflex/overwatch skills, you should try a build oriented to this, perhaps it worth more than you imagine. Myself I haven't tried yet. But if the clip size increase with weapon upgrade, again the lack of weapon mods, in this case to increase clip size or have auto refill, seems a potential problem for such build.

Still for me the Spark in LW2 looks stronger in comparison with soldiers than it does in XC2 and it justifies that their infiltration cost seems like 1.5 of a standard soldier. But a Spark doesn't play like soldier classes, and I don't think I'd like play a team of Sparks. In my current LW2 play the only Spark is in a team with 2 specialists, and aid protocols plus hacking abilities including the ability to hack a drone to heal the Spark support well the Spark.

[Dwarfling]

The only SPARK that's good at shooting is the one that does it with proximity bonuses. So I go down the middle except to pick Bombard. Also just because it's a "tank" doesn't mean you're gonna leave it on its own like it's invulnerable. I still play to leave nothing uncontrolled. If it happens that something in the back couldn't be disabled, then it can take some hits instead of your flesh bags, but I try not to abuse my poor robot.

Body Shield is a niche skill that lets you run an overwatch or be selective about what enemies you allow to fire at the SPARK. It's not amazing, but I think it's a better pick over Adaptive Aim because AA only works if you actually shoot twice with the Overdrive. Most of the times, when I use Overdrive is to:

1. Double move into a flank with proximity bonus.
2. Move > Shredder/Bombard > Shoot
3. Reload > Move > Shoot.

I tried Sacrifice, didn't work for me because my SPARK is usually ahead of the soldiers I want to defend and they're usually not packed close enough to get all of them in the bubble. I pick Impact Fields and sometimes use it on turns when you can't move+flank. Helps with the stray shot that manages to hit or graze. Damage Control is... okay I guess, but Wrecking Ball is just so annoying to use.

[JulianSkies]

I tried Sacrifice, didn't work for me because my SPARK is usually ahead of the soldiers I want to defend and they're usually not packed close enough to get all of them in the bubble. I pick Impact Fields and sometimes use it on turns when you can't move+flank. Helps with the stray shot that manages to hit or graze. Damage Control is... okay I guess, but Wrecking Ball is just so annoying to use.

The best usages of Sacrifice i've had I basically had to set it up, generally it was an excess of activated enemies uncontrolled i'd huddle my units together and cover them with a Sacrifice. The particularly good thing about that is that they will always hit against the SPARK's Defense, meaning any buffs to it will make enemies miss pretty often (like a T3 Aid Protocol), plus Sacrifice gives +Defense and +Armor.
'course that isn't a move you use all the time, but when you know you're definitely going to take a huge beating, but just like Restoration Protocol it's a move that you have basically no use for, until you do, then it saves your squad.

[gimrah]

Combat awareness, or its LW1 equiv, was quite a good tanking perk on MECs. The enemy would shoot the MEC anyway but hit it less often and less hard. And in LW1 enemies didn't like to run OW so it helped control them too.

Never tried a Spark in LW2 so I don't know if that tactic is still effective.

[Dwarfling]

One problem with Combat Awareness is that it assumes that you don't have anything better to do than to end a turn overwatching. Another one is that they simply won't shoot the SPARK, which defeats the purpose. And then you have issue that AI might just run the overwatch, SPARK misses with its crap aim and then you wasted a turn.

[Skyro]

I think one of their biggest issues is their gear:

1) They only get upgrades at Mag and Plasma tiers. This basically means when you get them their damage is relevant only during the mid-game with mag weapons as nobody in their right mind is going to rush Sparks early game and Mag weapons don't do anything vs. M3s late game.

2) Their upgrades are exclusive to them, so you are spending on upgrades that only affect one of your characters since there's very little reason to build more than one Spark. This also makes it so you don't even get the chance to experiment with many Spark builds.

My solution would be to give them a SHIV type role. Give them automatic upgrades at each tier based on your research, and adjust their cost and power accordingly. Make them expendable so they serve as a temporary fill-ins for your roster due to injury/deaths, and make their respec instant (it is a robot after all). Them give them unique abilities to create interesting dynamics in missions, for example remove shaped charges and make that a Spark ability, which can be used to create alternate routes on jailbreaks or make breaking into the buildings on Smash and Grabs a lot easier.

[DerAva]

One problem with Combat Awareness is that it assumes that you don't have anything better to do than to end a turn overwatching. Another one is that they simply won't shoot the SPARK, which defeats the purpose. And then you have issue that AI might just run the overwatch, SPARK misses with its crap aim and then you wasted a turn.

Not only that, but since you are now no longer on overwatch (since your overwatch shot was triggered) you lose the extra defense and armor from Combat Awareness

[Psieye]

Combat Awareness as a PCS is great. Combat Awareness on a SPARK is much less valuable.

[8wayz]

No matter what perks you can get them, SPARKs will eventually lag behind both by your soldiers and the aliens due to limited equipment.

I think it is vital to get a few additional mods to be able to enjoy SPARKs :
-Moddable DLC Weapons.
-Tactical Rigging.

This allows you to add weapon mods and use special ammo on a SPARK. Hence they will maintain their cutting edge even in late game skirmishes.

The moddable weapons is coming as part of next expansion. No matter how hard Pavonis try to balance SPARKs they just need additional options to be able to survive during the whole campaign.

[1Warmonger]

With all due respect to Xwynn, who is a very skillful player btw, I don't think he is a good reference as far as Sparks go.

I am following his 1.5 campaign, and I think there is a flawed assumption that SPARKS must be "tanks". They are not. In fact, I don't think there is a "natural" tank in the game, but that is another story.

Spark is a "shooty" troop. VERY expensive. For the SPARK to shine you have to research the proving grounds projects, especially Close Combat Specialist.

Perks like Rainmaker & Guardian are extremely powerful. Coupled with Overdrive, awkward activations are a thing of the past. SPARK can move and use Plasma Blaster twice, which will net aprox 10 hp damage per hit, plus almost certainly destroy the cover.

I am currently playing a 1.5 campaign, just stretching it out as much as I can. I have 13 squads equipped with the highest tier equipment (Commander), I have liberated 12 regions and destroyed 5 facilities, in addition to the story missions up to the point Network Tower has been unlocked.

I have equipped 4 squads with 1 SPARK, and inevitably, the SPARK has one of the highest kill counts within the squad. Furthermore, I created a "Heavy Metal" squad of 4 SPARKS, Spec, Sharps, Assault, Shinobi. This squad can pull 0% missions, of ANY type. Sparks can take some damage, but more importantly, can remove cover and execute aliens. 4 SPARKS gives you a potential of 12 shots, including up to 8 Hw strikers. Think about that.

[JulianSkies]

1Warmonger, some of the stuff you mention sound like features of the Metal Over Flesh mod (Close Combat Specialist, heavy weapon with two ammo). You sure that isn't the case?

[Zork]

It wouldn't hurt that sparks could use weapons mods, myself I consider them quite more powerful than any soldier until last level gears, and even with last level gears, no soldier class can fill their roles. But they can fill no soldier role either and their repair mechanism naturally limit their number. Moreover they lost too much of their lead when there's last level gears.

If I would fix something it's:
- Give them last level gears too. It would bring speed to 15, aim to 100, keep the damages quite higher (but no critical?) than for soldiers.
- Give them the weapons slots.
- Provide an option to make the hacking ability less fake, perhaps allows replace the cannon with a hacking enhancer, or just provide and option for a bot hacking specialist, or both.
- Add a second slot for repairing them.

This wouldn't target the weapon range if there's any "problem" relative to that. For the skills I didn't investigate many possibilities so it's hard to argue but often it looks more a matter of preferences. The mech is a sort of jack of all trades merging specializations of multiple classes at lower ability. Some players don't like jack of all trades, but the mech shouldn't replace any class, that's also the deal in my opinion.