Well-rounded flamerish Technical build

[Undershaft]

I'm not sure how to make the most of the Technical class. Sure, the standard rocket is nice, but as has been said before, it seems weird to spec a soldier for a skill only usable once (granted, twice with special armor and thrice at the very end of his career - but still!). I find the flamer-side more appealing, but now I wonder if there is a more well-rounded middle ground, especially with taking skills from the... well, middle. So I'm looking for sensible alternatives to the default flamer path for a more balanced Technical and would like to hear your opinion.

1) Roust: Hasn't really awed me so far. Maybe Fire in the Hole to make your single rocket more reliable, despite not being specialized. Or suppression, to have some non-gauntlety usefulness to bring to the table?

2) Napalm X: Seems to be a logical pick since it makes him stronger in what makes him special. But maybe Fortify to provide some survivability when you get in close for flaming instead?

3) Burnout: Gives you the extra defense I argued for with Fortify. But maybe Shredder? More armour reduction is always good, especially if it allows your Technical to contribute to the fight in a non-depletable, meaningful way.

4) Phosphorous: Seems to be a logical pick since it strengthens your main line of attack. But do mechanicals get in the line of fire often enough to validate the pick? Aren't mechs more the domain of snipers, gunners, rangers and hackers? So maybe tandem warheads, even though it goes against the grain?

5) Incinerator: A must-have when you go flamer, I suppose. Or do you usually get more out of Fire and Steel?

6) Quickburn: Also a must-have, unless you reserve two Command points for the flamer exclusively.

7) Firestorm: Well, if you want to be a flamer, you should 360 it, I'd say, even if you can only do it once. One could argue for Rapid Fire, though, for sustainability. Or is the Bunker Buster too good to pass on, even without all the rocket perks?

Damn. The more I think about it, the harder I find it to get a sense of the right balance. Maybe the class is too much of a hybrid to be really convincing on either side - or in the middle of the road.

[trihero]

I'm not sure how to make the most of the Technical class. Sure, the standard rocket is nice, but as has been said before, it seems weird to spec a soldier for a skill only usable once (granted, twice with special armor and thrice at the very end of his career - but still!).

Eh, I fundamentally disagree with the premise. The standard rocket is not just nice, it's a lifesaver and the first two perks (accuracy, crits) make it reliable. To me it's the other way around - the flamethrowers are nice, but it's weird to spec a soldier into a skill that is essentially only used for ambushes.

But I'll play along: I think you need to decide fairly quickly whether you want to make your technical a tank or not due to the choices of formidable, tact sense, fortify. If you play with randomized statlines, you would want to make tank out of someone with negative defense and positive dodge, and here the technical does admirable. Quickburn is not an autopick if you want a tanky build.

If you're not interested in making the technical a tank, there is little reason not to just go down the right hand side for flamethrowers, except maybe get shredder because shredder is great. Only the gunner might have access to it but rarely does because of hail of op bullets. I suppose the SPARK might have it but they are pricey and terrible at infiltrating and you can't heal them more than once at a time. I would say phosporus is garbo because it doesn't allow you to put mechs on fire, they just take the initial damage.....come on now are you kidding me. It's pretty rare to get a pod with more than one mech in it on your first ambush anyways.

Bunker buster is a must have IF you don't have other sources of high cover removal. Remember that removing high cover is the quickest way to boost your dps; it takes off 45% defense and adds +40% crit from flank. That's absurd. If you have gunners with demo, grenadiers with combat engineer, then you can safely ignore it and go with rapid fire or fire storm. I think firestorm is more for roleplaying or like...if you want immunity to fire really badly without sacrificing a vest, because when in the heck do you actually need a 360 cone of fire? You done something weird if you got surrounded by enemies. I guess it's entertaining for pods of chrysallids and you lack other aoe.

Suppression is ok, but if you have gunners then you don't need it as much since they're likely area suppressing anyways.

[Undershaft]

Eh, I fundamentally disagree with the premise. The standard rocket is not just nice, it's a lifesaver and the first two perks (accuracy, crits) make it reliable. To me it's the other way around - the flamethrowers are nice, but it's weird to spec a soldier into a skill that is essentially only used for ambushes.

Irgh. You might have a point. Now that I think of it, two flamer charges aren't exactly a cornucopia either. I guess I'm a sucker for consistent resources. Maybe the Technical just isn't the kind of class you bring to a drawn-out endgame battle, but rather the one who lands the one decisive opening strike with his rocket launcher in a troop ambush. I just noticed that I always feel far more comfortable with Combat Engineer Grenadiers than with my technicals when it comes to blowing up cover, because they can be more generous with their mayhem. I just hate how the rocketeer seems to hang around semi-useful before and after he shoots his rocket, like a one-hit-wonder.
But then again, there is a more than decent chance that I'm just playing them wrongly.

So how do you build your rocketeers?

[Ketchup4684]

Roust is pretty good for forcing them to move, triggering Ranger overwatch or Gunner suppression, plus it gets an extra charge from High-Pressure tanks. Bunker Buster is amazing in that, while it does not damage as a normal rocket, it removes a HUGE amount of cover. Excellent in turning a fight around by setting up a Serial or Lockdown+Danger Close Suppression. Shredder becomes too good late game to pass up, and if you take Rapid Fire too you can whittle away a bunch of armor from a single target. Firestorm looks pretty good for flaming a huge pod of enemies, as long as the Technical has Fortify/Tac Sense/Aid Protocol to protect him, since he'll in the middle of everything.

Phosphorus and Napalm-X seem a bit too specialized to me. Phosphorus lets you deal a damage to mechanical units with the Flamethrower, but it's pointless. The reason to use the flamethrower is to burn the targets so they basically cant do anything, so unless it actually burns the robot it's bad. Plus, robots naturally have armor, so the little damage it deals will be mitigated. Napalm-X is pretty bad too, since panicking/disorienting them for a turn doesn't really matter if they're burning. Only must have Flamethrower perk imo is Incinerator, that extra range is huge. Roust is situational based on team comp, Firestorm is good as long as the Technical gets some defense on him.

[Ketchup4684]

TL; DR I feel like a midrange build for the Technical is the way to go

[Alketi]

IMO, it's the Stevie Wonder Rocket that badly needs fixing. It's just too damn unreliable to ever be counted upon and almost mandates taking Fire in the Hole. However, taking Suppression instead of Fire in the Hole makes this class more generally useful than having a 1/2 as wild single rocket shot.

Flamethrower builds, especially once the range is fixed in 1.2, are highly viable. Still, I'm not entirely sure how this class is better than an Incendiary-loaded grenadier.

[SRSChaos]

The technical build I like the most right now is:

1) Fire in the Hole - I don't find Roust to be very useful, but I still use the rocket almost every mission. So making it more accurate is a good thing. Plus the flamer isn't really great until higher levels, but you need a way to make your tech useful until he gets there.

2) Napalm-X - The entire point of the flamethrower is crowd control, the damage is secondary at best. Might as well make it as good at its job as possible. I can't count the number of times I've failed to set something on fire but panicked it instead.

3) Burnout - Running up to flame can put the tech in some dangerous positions, having smoke really helps out.

4) Formidable - This is mostly because the other 2 choices really don't do anything for me. So might as well make the tech harder to kill. Who cares if you can damage machines with Phosphorus? The damage is pitiful and you can't set them on fire/panic them. I'm not a fan of Tandem Warheads either because IMO your rocket is mostly for destroying cover which it doesn't help with.

5) Incinerator - Must have if you want your flamer to be useful.

6) Tactical Sense - I rarely find myself in a situation where I need to flamer twice in one turn. Plus Quickburn is not like Run and Gun. You can't dash and then flame. Moving after you flame just takes you out of your smoke. Since you need to give the tech an SMG to make full use of the flame thrower being able to shoot after flaming isn't a big deal either. Tac Sense + smoke means you bring your cover with you. Even standing out in the open you are basically in full cover.

7) Firestorm/Bunker Buster - Really you can't go wrong with either here. Bunker buster is probably more reliably useful, but Firestorm has more potential for amazing things to happen.

Bonus advice: ALWAYS send your technicals to the AWC to at least see all of their offensive options. If you can get lucky and get a technical with Run and Gun he is a god amongst mortals.

[cmdrspyker92]

This is how I've been building my technicals:

Suppression
Fortify
Burnout
Tandem Warheads*
Fire And Steel
Tactical Sense**
Firestorm!!!!!!!

1) Suppression -- This provides all the utility you need from the technical outside of the gauntlet and is a great pick up early. Slap some extended mags / quickmags and just go to town so you never have to spend the action reloading. This allows my gunners to focus on locking down groups of targets with area supression, while my technicals, if they're not burning something, are still contributing.
I think fire in the hole and roust have their place, but suppression is just generally more useful. Fire in the hole is a great way to initiate on huge pods when combined with tandem warheads for absolutely absurd damage, and roust should be considered if you don't pick up flush on your gunners.

2) Fortify -- Necessary I think for the danger close nonsense the technical likes to do. If you burn and die immediately afterwards, well that's not good. I think its mandatory (at least on legend) that a technical pick up at least 2 defensive perks, either via the AWC or through their own tree or they're just not going to survive through the campaign.
Napalm definitely has a big argument here as well, being able to provide the consistency of the flamer to just shut down groups of biological enemies. (remember, burning only has like a 25% chance of happening, then they roll two more times for panic/disorient)
Biggest booms I think is just garbage, needs more damage for such limited use.

3) Burnout -- THIS IS SO GOOD. OMG. If you ever played long war 1 you know how RIDICULOUSLY good smoke got in the late game. You fought every SINGLE major fight COVERED in smoke. Combined with Fortify and Tac Sense this can give your technical -60!!!! chance to be hit, its better then being in full cover!
Concussion rocket feels terrible and is unreliable. I wish it was better. Shredder has some argument if your aim is high enough, but the technicals poor action economy with guns makes me say no to ever getting it.

*4) Tandem Warheads -- SSGT definitely has the most flexibility in perk paths I think. And the one you pick here directly affects what you get at GSGT, everything here is *good* and I don't think there's really a *wrong* answer at this level, regardless of build path.
I pick up Tandem because I don't grab sapper on my grenadiers, meaning my technical is my primary cover destruction guy, but Formidable is an EXCELLENT perk on a character that's going to be frontlining as much as the technical. Phosphorous is a little over specialized (I'd personally roll it into another perk) but it has a purpose knocking out drones and providing additional damage to everything.

5) Fire and Steel -- More damage. Helps with cover destruction and killing things better. Javelins are bad because rockets are in a terrible spot right now, incinerator has its purpose (you can watch xwynn's vids and count the times he would love to have "1 more tile of range" to burninate things), but I never see it as a draw back. Plus, 1,2 is giving an extra tile of range, so I see the incinerator perk becoming just straight bad soon.

**6) Tac Sense - Like I said before, this level is directly reliant on what you get at SSGT. If you have two defensive perks already, Salvo and Quickburn are GODLY. If you don't, grab Tac Sense for survival. Quickburn particularly has a huge argument do it not being movement limited like Salvo. Free actions are always good.

7) Firestorm -- BURN. EVERYTHING. You need some ridiculous aim to abuse rapid fire, so it doesn't really stand up in comparison (though you can proc shredder with it twice, so thats a bonus) but I just don't see it. With shotguns technicals have no crit gain to abuse, and they don't have the aim gain of rangers or snipers, so rapid fire is kind of a dead perk. Not created equally and the AWC does make exceptions though, so you never know.
Bunker Buster has a place as the ultimate cover leveler (ITS RADIUS IS HUGE), but its damage to enemies is pretty mediocre overall, takes both actions and by that point of the game you should have other (more reliable/reusable) options to deal with cover. But its not a bad perk.

[trihero]

I just build my technicals as

fire in the hole - biggest booms - shredder - tandem warheads - fire and steel - tac sense - bunker buster

Not everybody needs to be the absolute best at long slogs. I view the technical as an early-game ass kicker who carries on low infiltration missions (whereas shinobis/specialists dominate high infiltration stealth missions). I use the rockets as a key cover destruction/apply area damage at the hardest parts in the mission where things are most likely to go wrong, and I use the other people to provide consistent damage or other effects.

[Tuhalu]

I have two Technical builds. One for rockets that requires high aim and does not particularly require mobility. The other is for flamethrowers and absolutely requires the highest mobility you can get with a lowered emphasis on high aim.

Flamethrower build:
Fire in the Hole - Napalm X/Fortify - Burnout - Formidable/Phosphorus - Incinerator - Quickburn - Firestorm

I'm a big fan of Fire in the Hole. It makes your 1 rocket do what you need it to do much more often. Roust just pisses the enemy off most of the time. Suppression is cute, but I don't see much use for it on a technical designed to charge in and burn things.

Napalm X or Fortify is more of a choice. On the one hand, you put more enemies out of the fight with your flamethrower when you use it (burn chance is only 60%, and setting the tile on fire under them is only 50%, so 20% of the time, you really want a panic or disorient on them). On the other hand, you can stack Fortify with your Smoke Cloud to make yourself very hard to hit.

Burnout is just a goto choice. Free smoke cloud every time you Flame? Yes. So much yes. Works with the basic flamethrower attack and with Firestorm.

Formidable/Phosporus is a bit of a choice. As others have said, robots are normally pretty easy to deal with since they don't take cover. But if you can clean up a robot with your flamethrower while killing other stuff, that's one less action the rest of your troops have to take. Taking 1 less damage every time you are hit is kind of OK too (letting rocketeers, grenadiers or mecs hit me with explosives is very low on my list of things to let happen).

Incinerator is amazing. Not only is your flamethrower AOE 2 tiles longer, but it's also 1 tile wider on both sides. This gives you better positions to flame from and the potential to hit more targets. And it will stack with the 1.2 fix. Fire and Steel is OK if you want to do slightly more damage with your one rocket and each Flamer, but it doesn't help you burn more things.

Quickburn is amazing. It lets you move out in the open, activate quickburn and use either your regular flamer shot or Firestorm and then move back into cover. Or you could move into a good position, quickburn flame and then shoot. Or flame twice. Stack it with command and your Technical could gloriously use 3 flame abilities in one round! Leave nothing unburned.

Firestorm is a great ability. Best used with a Command ready. If you have multiple pods activated and bunched up, you can charge the Technical into their midst from miles away (high mobility remember?), command him, activate quickburn, Firestorm the lot of them and then run back out through the flames without taking damage (it makes you Fire immune). Or maybe don't run away. You are standing in a Smoke Cloud surrounded by burning, panicked or disoriented enemies and burning tiles. What could go wrong?

Sidenote: My main Flamethrower technical came with an amazing 18 mobility and Run and Gun on the AWC. She is incredible above and beyond all the other stuff just mentioned.

[Daergar]

My flamers are straight down the fireman side, nothing to think about really. Rockets without javelin is truly useless in my experience, better to focus on every fire-boosting perk.

Area suppression on gunner and or overwatch on ranger, roust to make things move and maybe get set on fire.

Making things panic is really good, since it becomes a second crowd control roll. If the enemy is not set on fire they can still panic, taking them out of the fight for two turns.

Firestorm is the ultimate clearer, especially since it has massive cover destruction on its own. If needed, you can take down a building floor with it, suffering a little fall damage but ruining one or two pods completely in one move.

If used outdoors, bunker buster on one technical and firestorm into the open can accomplish awesome things on swarming maps.

Thanks for making me think about run and gun on the flamer, new awc priority on my next campaign.

[Hazelnut]

My flamers are straight down the fireman side, nothing to think about really. Rockets without javelin is truly useless in my experience, better to focus on every fire-boosting perk.

I quite like to get fire in hole & fortify myself - depending on aim and defence stats.

Thanks for making me think about run and gun on the flamer, new awc priority on my next campaign.

Oh, yes. Mmmmm, would be very nice. I have 2 RnG snipers, and it's occasionally useful when LOS messes me up to reposition the big gun, but on a flamer tech... yaaaas want!

[trihero]

I've changed my mind recently:

Fire in the Hole - Napalm X - Burnout - Tandem Warheads - Incinerator - Tac Sense - Bunker Buster

This is a departure from what I originally have gone with things like suppression/shredder. What I realized is that because a technical usually has an SMG equipped, things like suppression/shredder are very awkward/unreliable in nature, so the skills I choose enhance the role of the technical's rockets/flamethrowers.

For rockets, you want dependability so fire in the hole is a must. Tandem Warheads make it so the falloff damage isn't pitiful (even though the rocket damage in the late game falls off a bit, you still would like it to inflict big damage to apply some red fog at least). The fire skills I chose help with the crowd control aspect - napalm X will help contain those units that didn't get directly burned (or tile burned), and incinerator just makes the flamethrower SO much more usable. Tac sense is pretty ridiculous for a passive defensive move, and rarely if ever do I say "yeah I have more cover destruction than I need."

The burnout is to make the flamethrower less suicidal so at least you can tell the soldier's wife/husband they weren't technically flanked when they were shot down due to the smoke you covered them in

[aedn]

My default build for technicals is : suppression - napalm-x - burnout - formidible - incinerator - quickburn - bunker buster / firestorm.

I do not like rockets in general, they are good early game, and bunker buster is probably the best perk on the technical tree, but rocket damage falls off to fast, and the number of consumables is extremely limited. Ideally i would like shredstorm to be techincal only, with the ability to assign charges to either it or the rocket. i do have rocket technials but that is typically due to AWC perks like shadowstrike, BeO and RNG as a random perk list.

Napalm vs fortify - Fortify is a great skill, however, if your planing on using flames, having the ability to panic enemies that do not get the fire debuff, is superior for me. it does not protect you from enemies at range, like fortify would, but coupled with fire will reliably lock down whatever you burn, allowing for other enemies to be dealt with by the rest of the team.

Quickburn VS Tac Sense - this is a much harder choice for me, tac sense plus burnout and formidable really turns your frontline flamer into a defensive powerhouse, even in half or no cover. Depending on defensive AWC perks sometimes i take tac sense, but quickburn is just to useful, as it works the same way rapid deployment does for support grenadiers.

[Goumindong]

I'm not sure how to make the most of the Technical class.

So the biggests thing about the technical class are:

1) You're very non-weapon/item dependent: This means that you are very strong early, and that you're able to utilize some builds that others aren't

2) You're very movement dependent: You need to have not moved in order to rocket well. You need to move in order to flamethrower well. Additionally the range on flame means that you're very open to being shot and pulling new pods if not used smartly.

In terms of the strategy layer Technicals are the strongest early game carry and continue to be powerful later in the game. If you're not able to get a large number of exo suits they're your primary source of cover destruction since grenades are not strong enough until MGST (if you're training for that). At which point your technical will have 2 rockets one of which focused on clearing cover. Early in the game the basic equipment of the technical is like having three (better) grenades which have zero equipment cost.

Such there are three things that technicals need in order to be effective

1) Defensive abilities
2) Movement
3) Something to do when not using one of their CD's.

My strategy for technicals then is twofold

1) Equip an SMG and a pistol... never use the SMG(except early). Train pistol skills(and defensive skills if applicable) in the AWC when you can. An SMG and a Pistol is +2 movement total, in exchange for never having to worry about ammo (and -.5 damage from a pistol). Pistols are also cheaper to purchase than SMG's. No other class will use a pistol as much as a technical. (snipers have high aim... but also want to be at squadsight range... specialists and grenadiers really need their slots even if they take an SMG... Assaults, heavies, and rangers will want to use their primary weapons, and shinobi's can fleche)

2) Pick(essentially) all of the defensive abilities with the exception of rocket abilities[Fire in the Hole, Bunker Buster] that you need. This means Fortify, Burnout, Formidable, Incinerator(or javelin), tactical sense (or quickburn)

[trihero]

That's pretty good insight guomindong, I was thinking myself of pistol technicals. I think specialists are also prime candidates for pistols for redscreen debuff into hacking. I don't think that specialists are that strapped for item space; the only thing they need to carry is a skulljack. Lots of people skip medical protocol/field medic so medkits aren't entirely necessary. It's pretty easy to fit in skulljack/pistol/ammo. You can probably live without ammo if you really wanted a medical specialist as well, hacking for the first reward is pretty easy without requiring redscreen debuff anyways.

[nightwyrm]

A pistol Tech seems like an interesting build. But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

[trihero]

A pistol Tech seems like an interesting build. But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

Why? You can always learn all of the pistol moves eventually. IMO technicals suffer the least from tube time since they're already good to go with fire in the hole at lance corporal.

[nightwyrm]

A pistol Tech seems like an interesting build. But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

Why? You can always learn all of the pistol moves eventually. IMO technicals suffer the least from tube time since they're already good to go with fire in the hole at lance corporal.

Your dude needs to be higher rank to learn pistol skills further down the tree. So you need to take him out on missions from time to time, kinda like PsiOps.

[trihero]

Yes, everyone knows that. I still don't understand the comment

But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

[nightwyrm]

Yes, everyone knows that. I still don't understand the comment

But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

I want a quick bang for my buck. Soldier time and tube time is valuable and I consider things like Return Fire to be a waste of time.

[trihero]

I want a quick bang for my buck.

That's what she said!

Well, the technicals come with rockets by default so....there's your bang for your buck.

[Goumindong]

A pistol Tech seems like an interesting build. But that seems like it'd be very dependent on your Tech getting good pistol skills early in his career.

Kind of yes.... but also kind of no. Pistols as a weapon are -.5 E(damage) compared to SMG's but are cheaper to build and never run out of ammo.

Since you need mobility you've got two options really

1) Rifle/Shotgun + Ablative HP

2) SMG+ Ablative HP + 2 equipment items

If you go shotun you're very limited on range and you also have only the base equipment. Its also harder to get off a good ambush. If you go SMG you've got weak primary damage AND you've got ammo issues (unless you strip those expanded mags from your gunners). And at the same time you've got 5 consumables and might not use all of them.

But if you go SMG+pistol you've got 4 consumables and never worry about running out of ammo.

From there it really doesn't take much in the way of pistol skills to make the pistol better. Additionally you will eventually research higher tier weapons. Compare a standard rifle, laser rifle, and laser pistol.

Standard Rifle = 3-5 damage
Laser Rifle = +1.5 avg damage +5 aim (20/1/1 supplies/alloys/elerium)
laser SMG = +.5 avg damage +5 aim (20/1/1)
Laser Pistol = -.5 damage +5 aim (5/0/1)
mag Rifle= +3 avg damage (35/2/2)
mag SMG= +1.5 avg damage (40/2/2)
mag Pistol = +.5 avg damage (10/1/1)

The damage numbers don't look that impressive but the cost means that its super easy to equip your technicals with those pistols and bring them up to standard rifle damage range. From there it only takes maybe or or two skills, and they don't even have to be really good ones, in order to make the pistol worthwhile. The two weakest perks are Gunslinger and Return Fire... And since you're a high defense high mobility dude who is likely to be to close to enemies even those aren't so bad. After that you have quickdraw, lightning hands, faceoff, fan fire, and clutch shot. All of which are super good and make a pistol better than an equivalent tier rifle (even though rifles gain +.5 damage per rank on pistols as they gain +1.5 and pistols gain +1).

On top of this you can also use the shadowkeeper in order to give your technical concealment again... and since they have an SMG they're good scouts... and since they have a flamethrower (or gunslinger) they're good at pod ambushes. So you can potentially do your pod ambush twice.

[Jacke]

When putting Technicals on Haven Advisor, considering Rendezvous missions, do you tend to equip them with SMG's for the mobility and stealth, or do you go with Rifles or Shotguns for the greater mid or short-range damage?

[SRSChaos]

When putting Technicals on Haven Advisor, considering Rendezvous missions, do you tend to equip them with SMG's for the mobility and stealth, or do you go with Rifles or Shotguns for the greater mid or short-range damage?

For Haven duty I usually just go with the best weapon I have that is leftover after equipping the people who are actually running missions. SMGs are always preferable for a technical IMO, but if I have a higher tier assault rifle left over I'll use it. Not a shotgun though. If they are close enough to hit with a shotgun they are probably just going to eat a flamethrower blast.