Questionable Perks

chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by chrisb »

rifleman wrote:Is Will to Survive good? None of the classes have this perk. The only way to get Will to Survivein is from AWC. Reducing 1 damage from gun while taking cover sound not that useful for me.
Its certainly a decent perk. Not the best. It's better to get it on frontline soldiers. As long as you are in cover, it acts like armor. It's not quite as good since armor works when flanked, but armor can also be shredded where WtS cannot. I'd call it a decent perk, there are certainly worse perks in there.
Icreatedthisforyou
Posts: 27
Joined: Sat Feb 04, 2017 4:42 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Icreatedthisforyou »

chrisb wrote: Either way, neither perk is stellar or game changing. I could easily do without either and wouldn't lose a campaign because of it. The only reason I take specialists at all is for the super cheesy long range hacks and rewards from hacks/towers.

I guess this is just a matter of different playstyles. My officers are holobot sharpshooters with Phantom.

As for the rest of their perks, yes, they are not useless, but there are other classes that are far more useful. I guess for people that like the one-of-each type of squads they can do things. I'm not one of those players. I think stacking classes is far more powerful since you can get some pretty awesome offensive synergies, like I mentioned above with the holobot.
I think this summarizes things pretty much. I used to use holoofficers, and I used pretty much the set up you used. It is stupidly good and a lot of that is just how strong gunners are in every single situation and the fact you can just kill pods from squad sight with snipers. It was fun...but also got boring because it felt so safe and honestly kinda cheesy.
chrisb wrote: As for restoration being the strongest perk in the game, I have a hard time taking that seriously. It doesn't even come close to Serial, let alone a number of other MSGT perks. Rupture, Kill Zone, Street Sweeper... Restoration... Really?
As with every game healing is overlooked in favor of damage.
chrisb wrote: As for Shinobi. The words Dead Weight and Crutch come to mind. Ever since I stopped doing Shinobi (it is kind of like an addiction), my squad kills more aliens faster than ever before.
Yep. I hate shinobi's, I hate that for several months the only option for vision, and I think it is one of the weakest aspects of LW2 that through a significant portion of the campaign you feel compelled to take a single class on every mission and you miss them when you decide to go without them. Battle scanners really need to be available from the start of the campaign or way earlier. So yeah shinobi's totally are a crutch.
aedn
Posts: 71
Joined: Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:12 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by aedn »

chrisb wrote:
JoINrbs wrote:failsafe is very very bad. i have no idea why people like that perk. the relevant consequence of failing a hack in any situation where you care about the hack is always that you didn't get the hack success reward, not that you have to suffer the hack failure punishment.
I think your missing the point of the perk. It's to get resources more reliably. Getting bigger guns, better ammo, stronger armor, lower infiltration times is ages better than 1-2 days less in the infirmary and will likely lead to less time in the infirmary over a campaign.
JoINrbs wrote: meanwhile field surgeon is passively strong in much the same way that the awc scientist is strong, or stay frosty is strong in LW1. it isn't quite as strong as either of those perks, but in a game with considerable strategic pressure having your soldiers active sooner than they would be otherwise always carries some benefit. it's very uncommon for any of my soldiers to have downtime in my campaigns, field surgeon is more-or-less a pure force multiplier for the strategic layer, even if it's only a small one.
I don't get why you argue this is a good perk. Taking a specialist on a fighting squad seems silly, sort of like taking a Shinobi, they're dead weight. They provide no offensive firepower other than being able to tickle the aliens twice per mission, and provide a single target defense buff. Just about any other soldier/spec would serve better and likely reduce wound times more than Field Surgeon ever could.

Every time I took a Specialist on a combat mission, I regreted it. All I would think is, damn I could sure use another Gunner/Infantry/Sniper/Grenadier... even an arc thrower speced assault would provide more value. Ever since I stopped using Specialists for real missions, I've never thought, damn I could use a Specialist right now.
Wound times are based on overall health, and significantly less random then vanilla xcom 2. Its a far more linear curve. At higher health levels the bonus from field surgeon does impact wound times by a decent margin. I have had multiple missions where my tanking technicals or assaults take 30-40% damage and come out with only 8-12 days wound time with field surgeon, which is a significant reduction in downtime. additionally, the perks it are up against are largely average or below average, with limited utility. If you fail a hack on a robot, you typically kill the robot anyway, so its a moot point. taking the perk for a chance at a tower hack once per mission is not a signficant value for specialists on combat missions.

Since you use alpha strike squads, you wont see significant use from specialists. Once you are not able to kill everything in one turn, the game changes dramatically, and specialists provide exceptional utility for a combat squad. Since many of the actions they perform do not end turns, this makes them natural officers, since your trading low value actions on a specialist for high value actions on a offensive class like an assault.

You also undervalue shinobi's as well, but that is largely due to them not fitting into your squad composition. they are reliable at killing flanked enemies, and able to secure flanks easily while using ranged weapons, and are superb at tanking/melee if they roll good defensive perks. The high dodge allows them to minimize damage in most cases. While melee is a little weak in some respects namely bladestorm being bad, they are effective at combat depending on squad composition.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by LordYanaek »

aedn wrote: Wound times are based on overall health, and significantly less random then vanilla xcom 2. Its a far more linear curve. At higher health levels the bonus from field surgeon does impact wound times by a decent margin. I have had multiple missions where my tanking technicals or assaults take 30-40% damage and come out with only 8-12 days wound time with field surgeon, which is a significant reduction in downtime.
I have already asked this but nobody could (or wanted to) answer. How does Field Surgeon exactly work? The description clearly states it reduces wound times by 1 hit point. Going by the description alone this would make it strong early when you usually have 4-7 HP per soldiers and are hit for 2-5 but quite poor once you have predator+vest and almost useless once you have ~20 with warden+vest and you are often hit for 6-10 unless you stack armor like crazy.
However i have observed my squad with a field surgeon often had short times out, rarely more than 6-10 days after suffering some wounds.
So is it one less hit point or one less wound.
Also does Field Surgeon apply to the surgeon himself? Soldiers barely hit in battle usually had no infirmary time but when my field surgeon herself was wounded (feedback from failed skullmining) for exactly 1 hit point she was out for 6 days.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by stefan3iii »

Shinobis are good if you build them with pistols + shadow strike. Also helps if you have the hunter's Axe from the DLC. You can do silly things like face off from stealth, command, restealth, throw 100%hit/crit axe, lightning hands, and then start a reaper chain.

Specialists though... as the game is currently balanced, their purpose in life is to do stealth missions and skullmining. For both stealth missions and skullmining failsafe is very good, while field surgeon is not. Yes field surgeon is better on a troop column ambush, but that is irrelevant because you should've brought basically any other class in the first place.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 61
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:43 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by JoINrbs »

Specialists with good hack are very good in combat missions because hacked drones are almost identical to vanilla on-release mimic beacons.
Tuhalu
Posts: 433
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 9:02 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Tuhalu »

LordYanaek wrote: I have already asked this but nobody could (or wanted to) answer. How does Field Surgeon exactly work? The description clearly states it reduces wound times by 1 hit point. Going by the description alone this would make it strong early when you usually have 4-7 HP per soldiers and are hit for 2-5 but quite poor once you have predator+vest and almost useless once you have ~20 with warden+vest and you are often hit for 6-10 unless you stack armor like crazy.
However i have observed my squad with a field surgeon often had short times out, rarely more than 6-10 days after suffering some wounds.
So is it one less hit point or one less wound.
Also does Field Surgeon apply to the surgeon himself? Soldiers barely hit in battle usually had no infirmary time but when my field surgeon herself was wounded (feedback from failed skullmining) for exactly 1 hit point she was out for 6 days.
Field Surgeon can add 1 hp back onto a character after a battle (that's definitely all it is doing). If there are multiple characters with the ability in a squad it can apply multiple times, although the chance for application reduces according to the follow schedule (each successful application advances you once through the list):

Code: Select all

[LW_PerkPack_Integrated.X2Effect_FieldSurgeon]
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[0]=100
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[1]=50
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[2]=33
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[3]=25
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[4]=20
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[5]=15
+FIELD_SURGEON_CHANCE_FOR_NUM_EFFECTS[6]=10
I'm not sure how you got feedback for 1 hp from skull mining. I've never seen it do only 1 (the damage is the same as vanilla afaik).
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by stefan3iii »

JoINrbs wrote:Specialists with good hack are very good in combat missions because hacked drones are almost identical to vanilla on-release mimic beacons.
That's just too situational, often there is no drone. Often you fail the hack. For every time that a specialist hack saves the day, another class would've saved the day twice. I have no idea what the actual day saving rate is, but all I know is perpetual disappointment with specialists. You don't seem to be using them either in combat missions, on your stream.
JoINrbs
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 61
Joined: Sun Jan 08, 2017 6:43 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by JoINrbs »

stefan3iii wrote:
JoINrbs wrote:Specialists with good hack are very good in combat missions because hacked drones are almost identical to vanilla on-release mimic beacons.
That's just too situational, often there is no drone. Often you fail the hack. For every time that a specialist hack saves the day, another class would've saved the day twice. I have no idea what the actual day saving rate is, but all I know is perpetual disappointment with specialists. You don't seem to be using them either in combat missions, on your stream.
I'm not using many specialists this campaign because I haven't had many with good hack. I have one on Waterworld though. There are plenty of times that Drone Mimic Beacon has done more than any other class could for me in my campaigns so far.
Ithuriel
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 10:18 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Ithuriel »

Arantir wrote: Long Watch is extremely poor choice cause it goes against the idea of what sharpshooter should be doing in general and there's no synergies in the perk tree to make it work. Without some AWC shenanigans it's pretty worthless. There's always better things to with a sharpshooter than take a random overwatch. If it would at least work with Specialist's Threat Assessment then it could've been somewhat viable but currently it's not the case.

Flush while somewhat useful in specific situations is underwhelming when you've got Demolition on the same rank. Perk description is misleading, it does no damage whatsoever. It looks really silly by the way when you shoot & see the blood and then the enemy calmly runs to another cover like it was nothing. LW1 version of this perk (and also the animation) was perfectly fine, why completely strip the damage off? If it is for the sake of not being similar to Walk Fire then consider it's 2 ranks higher and Gunners also have more uses for their ammo and not always can afford to spend extra 2 rounds and still have optimal actions available next turn. It needs some damage to have at least some amount of flexibility so it won't be so useless until you level up your troops to have OW multishots.
I think Long Watch isn't so much against the idea of what the sharpshooter should be doing as it is rendered obsolete by Scopes. The idea of a soldier with extremely high aim and a high-damage shot Overwatching half the map? That's strong, even if it's only at times where you can't get a reliable shot. But at the end of the day, the DfA/Scope combination is just too strong. Having +20 aim and +20 crit on every shot just trumps everything else.

It's interesting because Flush was often the default choice for the Gunner in LW1. Tbh though, I think the difference here is that Gunners in LW1 had HEAT ammo; it's possible that Flush in and of itself has always been kinda useless.
Ithuriel
Posts: 176
Joined: Sat Jan 21, 2017 10:18 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Ithuriel »

chrisb wrote: I don't get why you argue this is a good perk. Taking a specialist on a fighting squad seems silly, sort of like taking a Shinobi, they're dead weight. They provide no offensive firepower other than being able to tickle the aliens twice per mission, and provide a single target defense buff. Just about any other soldier/spec would serve better and likely reduce wound times more than Field Surgeon ever could.

Every time I took a Specialist on a combat mission, I regreted it. All I would think is, damn I could sure use another Gunner/Infantry/Sniper/Grenadier... even an arc thrower speced assault would provide more value. Ever since I stopped using Specialists for real missions, I've never thought, damn I could use a Specialist right now.
...errr. Wut? I dunno about you but Specialists are my most in-demand class; it's not uncommon for me to take two specialists, out of eight soldiers, on a combat mission. The ability to buff the defense of a soldier every other turn, hack MECS, provide grenades, and heal allies is simply invaluable.
User avatar
Arantir
Posts: 33
Joined: Mon Jan 09, 2017 7:20 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Arantir »

Ithuriel wrote:I think Long Watch isn't so much against the idea of what the sharpshooter should be doing as it is rendered obsolete by Scopes. The idea of a soldier with extremely high aim and a high-damage shot Overwatching half the map? That's strong, even if it's only at times where you can't get a reliable shot.
There's very little benefit of overwatching half the map if you can't get multiple shots and you won't have extremely high aim either without any reaction-shot boosting perks, also no crits without CuP. You might as well end up overwatching half-dead troopers who would run for a better cover cause the lack of one is often the reason they ended up half-dead in the first place while full-health high-priority targets can just stay in their comfy full-cover futher away from the front line and do their thing. Sharpshooters should really take care of the guys at the back row cause those ones usually can't be safely flanked by the rest of your team and closing in can pull more pods. Well... yeah, scope + steady aim from higher elevation pretty much gives you 100% shots so there's no reason to ever pick Long Watch without AWC multishots.
Ithuriel wrote:It's interesting because Flush was often the default choice for the Gunner in LW1. Tbh though, I think the difference here is that Gunners in LW1 had HEAT ammo; it's possible that Flush in and of itself has always been kinda useless.
True, drones & seekers were pretty common and with Flush + HEAT you could one-shot these things while countering their flight defense bonus. Flush + Shredder Ammo was also a thing so you could have a good % to apply the important effect. It was also usable with Double Tap. Feels really useless in LW2 without all this options...

Regarding specialists - they've got plenty of uses and also are the ones who can squeeze extra resources for your strategy layer out of the missions. Take at least one on every mission and they would bring you more income than your havens can produse during the first few months. Combat mission doesn't mean that there's nothing to hack and the sole Field Surgeon effect is still something that actually extends to the strategy layer.
If you need more firepower - OW specialists is actually quite OK, even more so if you've got spare +3 magazine. You're likely to roll some guys with decent accuracy and the difference between Specialist and Ranger is only 4 aim at max rank. Give them a rifle with extended mags, hair trigger & laser sight / autoloader and some talon/venom rounds, Sentinel would come fairly quickly. You would end up with slightly worse OW Ranger who got utility of a Specialist and it's pretty fine.
Goumindong
Posts: 193
Joined: Tue Jan 24, 2017 11:04 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Goumindong »

In long war 1 flush has a higher success rate, demolition and hail of bullets were not on the tree, and active overwatch trapping was more valuable because opportunist entirely eliminated the aim penalty when using reaction fire.

Edit: and flush did 50% instead of 10% damage. (And no cd)
josna238
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:09 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by josna238 »

Goumindong wrote:In long war 1 flush has a higher success rate, demolition and hail of bullets were not on the tree, and active overwatch trapping was more valuable because opportunist entirely eliminated the aim penalty when using reaction fire.

Edit: and flush did 50% instead of 10% damage. (And no cd)
I can't see the tactical value of this, why should I want a shot that could do or not 1 point of damage and move the alien from high cover to high cover?. I am really curious if somebody uses it. If somebody does it would be fantastic if he explain us how.

I don't think the cooldown neither the ammo would make some difference. Maybe if it had any especial feature like "set the enemy dodge to zero during one turn" or "remove one point of armor" or "using flush set the gunner into ovrwatch automatically at end of the turn"
Jacke
Posts: 623
Joined: Sat Jan 28, 2017 1:10 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by Jacke »

Flush also requires a hit to work, so it's very weak. Roust does the job better as it will autohit multiple targets and set some of them and the tiles on fire.
stefan3iii
Posts: 319
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2017 3:49 am

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by stefan3iii »

The more specialists you bring, the more likely you're going to need their healing, because you're going to get shot more often because enemies aren't dying as quickly. For the oh shit moment where you need defensive actions, a grenadier with sting\incendiary grenades is just far superior to everything else.

For example, a gunner will shoot 2-3 times almost every turn (Traverse + Some Cooldown Ability), and his weapon does +2 damage over the standard rifle a specialist would use, because Cannons are good and he gets Center Mass. Assaults/Snipers also put out huge damage and can fire on multiple targets each turn. The amount of damage a specialist does is rather pathetic in comparison, and the utility you get in return is not worth it. If you find yourself regularly needing healing from your specialist, then you're constantly suffering wound time. Instead, just bring more firepower, and sting grenades, and don't get shot.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by LordYanaek »

Not being shot is a great strategy ... until someone shoots you ;)
Having a full alpha strike team certainly works well as long as everything works as expected, but sometimes RNGesus will just screw you and you need a plan-B.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by chrisb »

Ithuriel wrote:
chrisb wrote: I don't get why you argue this is a good perk. Taking a specialist on a fighting squad seems silly, sort of like taking a Shinobi, they're dead weight. They provide no offensive firepower other than being able to tickle the aliens twice per mission, and provide a single target defense buff. Just about any other soldier/spec would serve better and likely reduce wound times more than Field Surgeon ever could.

Every time I took a Specialist on a combat mission, I regreted it. All I would think is, damn I could sure use another Gunner/Infantry/Sniper/Grenadier... even an arc thrower speced assault would provide more value. Ever since I stopped using Specialists for real missions, I've never thought, damn I could use a Specialist right now.
...errr. Wut? I dunno about you but Specialists are my most in-demand class; it's not uncommon for me to take two specialists, out of eight soldiers, on a combat mission. The ability to buff the defense of a soldier every other turn, hack MECS, provide grenades, and heal allies is simply invaluable.
Sure, there are things that the Specialist can do, I'm not saying they have no value at all. I used to take them all the time as well. Even considered them "vital" to a squad and wouldn't take a mission if I didn't have one. Then one day I had a Supply Raid that I really wanted to do, but only had 3 specialists so far and both were also out on important missions, and my 4th was 2 days away in the rookie tube. So I put on my LEEROY hat and decided to get crazy. Took 3 Gunners, 3 Infantry, 2 Snipers a Sapper and a Support. Basically it was all I had in the barracks. Boy was this fun!

On turn 1 I pulled a pod on my first blue move with me stuck in the corner on a ledge with very little cover (that 0% infil detection range is no joke!). Thought damn I'm screwed. Managed to kill 2/8 (snipers missed both shots...), and put out 2 Area suppressions on the rest of them but only managed to flashbang 3. On the ayys turn, 3 of them died to running suppression, 2 hunkered down (supression + flashbang will do that), and 1 shot at me with a low % shot that missed. At the same time a second pod of 8 shows up. On my turn I move to a better position and end up pulling a 3rd pod of 8. 19 active ayys... I thought squad wipe was inevitable at this point and actually considered just restarting the campaign right there instead of going through the awfulness of watching my squad get slaughtered on the next turn. Turns out that didn't happen. Managed to kill 6/19 on my turn and 3 more from supression running. Out of 10, 3 went on overwatch, 2 sectoids decided zombies were a good idea, I think 1 hunkered, and the rest fired low % shot missing all of them. With 10 ayys to go, I went for broke, popped 3 of them with 3 Hail of Bullets, dropped 2 more with the snipers, managed to take out a 3 with a grenade, and two more picked off by the Rangers.

I only remember this so well because it was such a pivotal moment for me. I think each turn took like 10 minutes to plan out, people complain about turn limits, imagine if they added time limits per turn!

3 Turns, 24 Dead aliens, only got shot at 4 times, none hit. This is the moment I stopped taking shinobi's and specialists on combat missions. Since then I've added a full specced holo target sniper to the squad to replace the sapper, which makes things even more obscene being able to buff aim/crit/dmg on just about every shot, pods of 8 simply melt.

And this wasn't just a one-off event where I got lucky on the 2nd turn. I have since done many missions with this squad setup, pulling pods of 8-16 in a single turn and managing to survive with typically no damage at all. I think out of 12ish missions with this squad in 8/10 man forms I've been hit 4 times 2 grazes that didn't penetrate ablative, and 2 hits for 1HP.

If I had two specialists on this mission, what exactly would they have added, and who would I have dropped to add them? There were no mecs to hack, at best they could do 2 dmg with the drone since they can't shoot well with everything in high cover. Aid Protocol would not have helped at all because of the way the AI works, they had vision of at least 4 guys in low cover (had no better options) which would have forced the AI to focus fire on someone else. And it would have meant taking 3-6 shots instead of 1. Because I didn't take specialists, I didn't need the healing. There's literally nothing else a specialist would have done for me in that situation, or the many more missions I've done since then without them.

Bottom line is, I do not miss Specialists(or Shinobis) at all on combat missions. I think they only lead to more wounds not less because they do nothing to stop the aliens shooting at you! I don't buy the 'they control mec' argument. Controlling anything more than a drone is typically a coin toss or less. You could shut them down, or you could take a Gunner with Cyclic Fire and just kill them.
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by chrisb »

LordYanaek wrote:Not being shot is a great strategy ... until someone shoots you ;)
Having a full alpha strike team certainly works well as long as everything works as expected, but sometimes RNGesus will just screw you and you need a plan-B.
That's what's great about Gunners, they are both Plan A and Plan B. And having the Support grenadier is key. Even just having double flashbang in the early game is great, you really don't need them that often because things just tend to die. RNGesus is mitigated by the fact you have Demolition/Saturation Fire to blow cover, +10-15 aim/crit and +1 dmg from holo. Combined with anywhere from 10 to 20 shots per turn, Plan A seems to work an awful lot.

But.. it seems we've kind of hijacked the thread here... sorry about that OP! Got carried away I guess...

I guess the point of all this is, on the topic of Questionable Perks, Specialists are simply a Questionable Class. And I'm glad I'm not the only one with that opinion, seriously you should try it out sometime. I know it seems totally crazy to load a squad with nothing but Gunners, Rangers and Snipers, but it's really something awesome to behold when you manage to wipe pods off the map, it's almost as if you just lowered the difficulty of the tactical game by at least 1 notch if not more. Maybe something needs to be nerfed I'll admit that. I'm not sure exactly what because the power is not in 1 class in particular, it's the synergy between the classes that makes the squad so strong. I feel like people focus too much on comparing classes in a bubble of their own (Gunner vs Ranger for example) and don't consider the synergy between the two (Demolition/Saturation Fire + Crit stacked Infantry)
chrisb
Pavonis Dev
Posts: 364
Joined: Mon Feb 27, 2017 8:43 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by chrisb »

josna238 wrote:
Goumindong wrote:In long war 1 flush has a higher success rate, demolition and hail of bullets were not on the tree, and active overwatch trapping was more valuable because opportunist entirely eliminated the aim penalty when using reaction fire.

Edit: and flush did 50% instead of 10% damage. (And no cd)
I can't see the tactical value of this, why should I want a shot that could do or not 1 point of damage and move the alien from high cover to high cover?. I am really curious if somebody uses it. If somebody does it would be fantastic if he explain us how.

I don't think the cooldown neither the ammo would make some difference. Maybe if it had any especial feature like "set the enemy dodge to zero during one turn" or "remove one point of armor" or "using flush set the gunner into ovrwatch automatically at end of the turn"
I think the point was that Flush in LW1 did more than 1 point of damage, had a higher Aim buff and overwatch w/ Opportunist had better aim. Because of the nerf to Cool Under Pressure and the nerf to Flush, this strat no longer works, and Flush is basically a trap perk. It still works, it's just not a good use of action points anymore and it's up against Demolition, which is just stronger in every way.

Flush simply needs a buff, it's a really useless perk right now. Even if you brought back the LW1 version of it, it would still be less useful then Demolition due to the nerf to Opportunist/CUP.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by LordYanaek »

chrisb wrote:
LordYanaek wrote:Not being shot is a great strategy ... until someone shoots you ;)
Having a full alpha strike team certainly works well as long as everything works as expected, but sometimes RNGesus will just screw you and you need a plan-B.
That's what's great about Gunners, they are both Plan A and Plan B. And having the Support grenadier is key. Even just having double flashbang in the early game is great, you really don't need them that often because things just tend to die.
Well, I tend to suffer wounds from yellow pods more often then the pod i actually engaged and there is only a few things you can do to prevent those. A concealed shinobi to spot them can help plan ahead. OW specialist/ranger can soften them and hopefully force them to take defensive actions. Of course smoke will help you but you probably won't throw smoke unless you know there's an uncontrolled pod nearby.

A purely offensive "rain of bullets" squad is certainly very strong when nothing unexpected occurs but it seems like it's also much more vulnerable to bad move/luck. Of course playing with Red Fog affects my point of view as those heavy hitters won't hit the broad side of a barn once Red Fog start reducing their aim to crappy rookie level.

But it's going quite off topic so back on topic : yeah Flush is really bad. The HEAT ammo from LW1 was an important part of why it was useful (HEAT damage wasn't even reduced). Making enemies move was never terribly useful as often they will trigger the OW shot while they still have cover anyway. It could only be useful for enemies hiding behind 1 tile full cover if you have a multi OW soldier ready or they are suppressed but as you said, in such a situation you're better using demolition anyway so in addition to being weak on it's own, it's in direct competition with the perk that obsoletes it. If it was a LCpl perk it might be more useful as you could use it when demolition is on cooldown. Swapping it with Hail of Bullets would also offer a more interesting choice at Cpl rank : either you deal guaranteed damage (good on low health enemy) or you expose the target so others can kill it (could be more useful on high health enemies).
seananigans
Posts: 88
Joined: Tue Feb 07, 2017 3:03 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by seananigans »

Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections. This is not at all a bad thing. Some of you who are arguing things like "this perk needs a change, removal, whatever" might not realize it, but going through with a lot of the suggestions would simply reduce available variety in strategy, and/or even force YOU to change YOUR current preferred playstyle, such that 3 months down the road you're complaining that your previous go-to ability sucks and needs a buff.

The vast majority of the class/perk balance is solid. There's definitely some small tweaks to be made, but that will come with time, just as it did with LW1. They create complex class/perk systems, they take awhile to shake out.



-edit- to add, my favorite argument back and forth currently is the "never take damage" alpha-strike approach, vs the "I actually use specialists/medics and round out my squads with 1 per class" styles. Personally, I love that both are valid, which they clearly are. I'm the latter style, and I'm doing just fine. I find fulfillment in utilizing a variety of tools, and get bored quickly if my squad is just 5 gunners chain-suppressing shit while 1-2 others rotate hail of bullets or whatever. Yawn.
gimrah
Long War 2 Crew
Posts: 422
Joined: Fri Jul 15, 2016 12:25 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by gimrah »

seananigans wrote:Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections.
Totally agree. Personally I'm not good enough never to get shot, whether because of bad activations, yellow alert shots or just the fact that even 'controlled' aliens have some chance to hit you. I always sprinkle a few medkits around the squad. I tend to lean away from medic specialists because they have to give up so much (combat protocol, airdrop) but I'd lean back towards hybrid builds for any late specialists.
josna238
Posts: 182
Joined: Sun Feb 05, 2017 4:09 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by josna238 »

gimrah wrote:
seananigans wrote:Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections.
Totally agree. Personally I'm not good enough never to get shot, whether because of bad activations, yellow alert shots or just the fact that even 'controlled' aliens have some chance to hit you. I always sprinkle a few medkits around the squad. I tend to lean away from medic specialists because they have to give up so much (combat protocol, airdrop) but I'd lean back towards hybrid builds for any late specialists.
I mainly agree in with the idea of that most of perks are very useful/very useless depending on playstyle. And when I say "what use could have this perk? I don't find one" I like to read people who say "I use this perk in that ocasion with that playstyle" But also think that there are others that are currently totally worthless. Meaning for example Flush. I really beg for somebody who tells a realistic situation where flush is better than demolition/curtain.
LordYanaek
Posts: 940
Joined: Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:34 pm

Re: Questionable Perks

Post by LordYanaek »

seananigans wrote:Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections.
Apart from the fact that i didn't really notice any heated debate, i totally agree with you ;) The perks selection should definitely allow for different ways to play the game and it's great that different builds are equally valid for different players.
There are a couple of really "questionable" perks thought that nobody cared to defend so far : Flush, Infighter and Bladestorm are among the biggest offenders. Concussion Rocket is also a good one, most argument's i've seen in favor of this one involved cover destruction which is definitely not what it's supposed to do.
Post Reply