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SPARKS too OP?

Posted: Fri Dec 07, 2018 7:31 pm
by nemesis205bw
My game got stupidly easy once I got spark unit and assist him with 2 specs for the buff and heres why:

30 defense + spec buff (another +30 defense) + pcs (+7 defense) + overwatch (+15 defense) = 82
additionally I can throw smoke granades for another +20/+30 def. This is crazy

even without smoke granades, most enemies have 0-5% chance to hit. I had 1 spark fight off 2 pods at once in 0% infiltration supply ride mission. Specs at the corner of the map were just buffing him and throwing smoke granades. With smoke, enemies have 0% hit and 0% graze chance.

Because of that stupid tactic the game got super easy because I can solve every mission with spark and anything else is a waste of resources.

Re: SPARKS too OP?

Posted: Sat Dec 08, 2018 10:16 pm
by prokolyo
That's an interesting idea. The enemy doesn't throw grenades, micro-missiles, etc on him?

Re: SPARKS too OP?

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 2:17 am
by Dwarfling
Gets harder as the campaign gets longer as SPARKs have a low aim progression, no weapon mods (no ammo mods hurts them the most) and their multishot skill, although you get it at the start, is on a long cooldown. Basically their damage output late on the campaign is crap and they have a hard time hitting high defense stuff.

Re: SPARKS too OP?

Posted: Sun Dec 09, 2018 4:38 pm
by nemesis205bw
prokolyo wrote:That's an interesting idea. The enemy doesn't throw grenades, micro-missiles, etc on him?
Sometimes they do, but he has 40+ hp points (including ablative hitpoints) and also has the repair skill. With all that he can probably tank all explosives that every enemy carry in given mission.
Dwarfling wrote:Gets harder as the campaign gets longer as SPARKs have a low aim progression, no weapon mods (no ammo mods hurts them the most) and their multishot skill, although you get it at the start, is on a long cooldown. Basically their damage output late on the campaign is crap and they have a hard time hitting high defense stuff.
I dont care about his dmg, he is there to tank. He can still delete sectopod with his overcharge 3 hits or delete entire pod here and there with shreddergun. I am already end game and he is close to immortal.

Re: SPARKS too OP?

Posted: Wed Dec 12, 2018 1:05 am
by Thrair
What other mods are you running? Sparks can't use a PCS in either vanilla or Long War. And they can't get that much base HP, either.

They'll have 12 HP base, with +8 more from end-tier chassis.

As to the defense buffing.... you have now encountered the defense-buff cheese strat. The AI doesn't handle it well when they can see only one XCOM unit and said unit has extremely high defense rating. Some high-level streamers abuse the strat with hunker tanks, among other things. That's the case no matter the mod, really. If I ever bother learning to mod, which I kinda want to try, my biggest goal would be a mod that changed aim/defense hit chances from flat +/- to a ratio (like it is with hacking). Defense and Aim both increase in value the more they go up, with the current mechanics.


But yeah, this is looking less like Long War Sparks being OP and another mod making SPARKS OP *in* Long War. Metal over Flesh, maybe? If anything, SPARKs are *squishy* come end-game in an unmodded Long War.