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It displays as having higher damage, but Arc Throwers don't do damage, unless you have the Arc Pulser perk. Does this upgrade do literally nothing if you don't take that one specific perk?

Antifringe wrote:It displays as having higher damage, but Arc Throwers don't do damage, unless you have the Arc Pulser perk. Does this upgrade do literally nothing if you don't take that one specific perk?

Stuns for 3 actions instead of 2.

It's actually 3 *rounds*, not 3 actions. Basically, it will lose actions for 2 alien turns, not 1, which is a pretty big deal. On the 2nd alien turn, it will stand up and become un-stunned, but will have no actions.

nmkaplan wrote:It's actually 3 *rounds*, not 3 actions.

No, stefan3iii is right, it's 3 actions which means on the second turn the enemy will get only 1 action. Sometimes they will only move (often if they are flanked) and won't shoot but they still get an action point and for some enemies it's enough to be dangerous.
Only the T3 Arc Thrower with it's 4 actions stun really offers 2 turns of complete control.

But each one is still a big improvement over the previous one, and even more if you have the stun perks (they also gain higher aim bonuses with Stun Gunner)

Most enemies when flanked and with only one action will actually do an offensive action and stay flanked. The only two exceptions I remember are Sectoids/Sectoid Commanders and Najas. Stunning for 3 actions instead of two is useful against Sectopods and Gatekeepers, but not that strong against anything else.

LordYanaek wrote:

nmkaplan wrote:It's actually 3 *rounds*, not 3 actions.

No, stefan3iii is right, it's 3 actions which means on the second turn the enemy will get only 1 action. Sometimes they will only move (often if they are flanked) and won't shoot but they still get an action point and for some enemies it's enough to be dangerous.
Only the T3 Arc Thrower with it's 4 actions stun really offers 2 turns of complete control.

But each one is still a big improvement over the previous one, and even more if you have the stun perks (they also gain higher aim bonuses with Stun Gunner)

Huh, that has not been my experience at all. When I use advanced arc thrower, I see "Stunned: 3", the tooltip says "stunned for 3 rounds" and I have never seen an alien take an action on that 2nd turn. Do you have experience to the contrary?

Thanks for the answers. This one was really bugging me.

nmkaplan wrote:
Huh, that has not been my experience at all. When I use advanced arc thrower, I see "Stunned: 3", the tooltip says "stunned for 3 rounds" and I have never seen an alien take an action on that 2nd turn. Do you have experience to the contrary?

Here's a quick example:

Advanced Arc Thrower fired about here: https://youtu.be/agKW5g2L03g?t=16m
Enemy wakes up from stun and takes his single remaining action at about 27:50

I believe that it also does more damage to robotic enemies if you have the appropriate perk for that.