Tank and defensive perk usage.

[bingo12345]

Enemies attack most vulnerable target(especially high hit chance and low hp). if you want to use defensive perks such as formidable and tactical sense, you need to know some tips.

1. if you have 3 high cover spot only, make vulnerable teammates use them. and make tanky teammates use spare low covers.
2. if some your teammates are so durable, you can use him/her as flanker or charger(more offensive). they can get huge reward from danger that weak teammate can't make it.

[trihero]

Yes, and a big tip is to look for

-high dodge
-negative defense

on your candidates for a tank spec. The negative defense acts as a passive "taunt" since enemies look for whoever they have the highest chance of hitting, which turns your tank into an auto-mimic beacon. The high dodge will help you to reduce incoming damage. Stacking dodge is extremely helpful for a tank since it results in 50% damage reduction, and then armor is applied after this which can easily get the most damaging hits down to a measly 1 or 2 points.

[trihero]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhhalDmR-no

xwynns demonstrating how armor stacking is OP, even without dodge stacking. (gets shot at 4 times while out in the open, taking 1 damage each time, on a unit with 22 hp).

[aedn]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhhalDmR-no

xwynns demonstrating how armor stacking is OP, even without dodge stacking. (gets shot at 4 times while out in the open, taking 1 damage each time, on a unit with 22 hp).

Its a brutal combo, pretty much running a danger close game, supported by HT snipers, specialists and support grenadiers.

[nightwyrm]

So what happened that made armor stacking so much better in LW2? I remember it wasn't a very useful thing in Vanilla. Blast Padding, the Vanilla equivalent of Formidable, was pretty much a non-entitiy.

[trihero]

My guess would be

1) alpha striking dominated vanilla - blast padding had to compete with shredder, and in general you would just saturate everything with plasma grenades + pew pew before they shot at you (you might toss in a mimic beacon, which is a pretty strong damage absorber)

2) less armor options in vanilla - warden only gives 1 armor, there's no "damage control" pcs, the vanilla tac vest (plating vest) takes up a valuable slot out of 2 possible slots in vanilla

[aedn]

So what happened that made armor stacking so much better in LW2? I remember it wasn't a very useful thing in Vanilla. Blast Padding, the Vanilla equivalent of Formidable, was pretty much a non-entitiy.

In long war 2 armor is basically damage resistance. Since it directly negates damage you take, it has no diminishing returns, and it improves almost at an exponential level. 1 armor point by itself really does not do much when aliens hit for 5 damage on average. 4 points of armor on the other hand will turn that 5 damage into a maximum of 1 damage, or 2 damage on critical hits.

Since defense values are higher in the game, aim is lower, meaning more alien attacks are going to miss in general, along with the graze band which means that low aim shots are more likely to do graze damage, which will default to 1 damage at higher armor value levels. critical hits are largely meaningless because base damage is so low they do not do anything. Toss in a field surgeon perk and you have in my case an assault who has 15 Hp, 3 armor base, 5 with damage control, and is only wounded for 6-8 days if he takes 5 HP worth of damage, which is typically 30+ alien attacks over the course of a mission, without bothering with standing in cover at all.

Anyone who played long war will remember the beta 14 goliath mec's who would stand around while they had 10-20 aliens shooting at them every turn, all doing 1 damage when they hit. The same thing currently exists in LW2.

[Jacke]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhhalDmR-no

xwynns demonstrating how armor stacking is OP, even without dodge stacking. (gets shot at 4 times while out in the open, taking 1 damage each time, on a unit with 22 hp).

Is Formidable an almost must-have perk then? All classes have it up against other good perks, but I can definitely see taking it in on Assaults, maybe Technicals. Other classes what you have to pass up is very very painful.