Grenadiers suck.

merkmerk
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Grenadiers suck.

Post by merkmerk »

Check out Joinribs latest video

I think we can all agree - Grenadiers are the biggest 'failure' of the class design which is otherwise pretty stellar.

It falls into the same trap that rocketeers did in LW1 - because splitting out the heavy is a tricky thing to do

Their middle tree is a mess - how would you fix them if you could?
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WanWhiteWolf
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by WanWhiteWolf »

I don't think they are weak.

They are the best CC class in the game. If you are into "but I kill everything on 1 turn anyway" camp, then sure, they don't have a usage. Otherwise ... they are pretty good.

Don't trust all that you see on JoinRbs channel.

First, because he didn't play LW lately and the "meta" / gameplay changes on every patch.
Secondly, he did not use a some of the perks he describes.Also makes wrong assumptions on some of them. While it is possible to judge something in "theory", it's usually the practice that is the convincing argument.
And last, that is his opinion and play-style.

Don't get me wrong, I am sure he is a very good player. I just have different view on a lot of perks he presented so far.

Grenadier suffer on "options". You always have 1 pick that is stronger than others. But they are not weak by any means.
caseywills
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by caseywills »

I like grenadiers.
I take one on most every mission and consider only a little less valuable when incendiary is nerfed to 75% burn.

I do all left hand branch except for chainshot and full kit. And all my specialists have airdrop.
I wear ablative most of the time, so with heavy ordinance at corporal level I have 4 grenades. 2 boom & 2 burn usually.
With airdrop I get 4 boom & 2 burn.
With full kit I drop ablative on big missions and have 6 boom & 4 burn.

Chainshot gives you a decent alternative to conserve grenades. If you like, equip with shotgun to mitigate bad aim, but that hurts overwatches.
Dwarfling
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Dwarfling »

merkmerk wrote:I think we can all agree
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Zork
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Zork »

I also like my grenadiers and curently uses at least 3 main builds and some variations. Perhaps you want make them good/versatile shooters?

Middle tree doesn't look fully bad to me.

Needle isn't pointless, and even useful during first parts. For me Needle is even good later for damages grenades builds (for example, Needle, Heavy Ordinance, Boosted Cores, HEAT Warheads, Chain Shot, Salvo, Combat Engineer)
Center Mass is pointless just because of two other skills.
Formidable is OK if you give up on support grenades or specialize on smoke grenades.
Tandem Warheads is fine, particularly if you target extended AOE.
Chain Shot is great if you give up on Sting grenades for the build.
Bombardier, not sure, I tend always pick salvo no matter the build.
Full Kit is epic.

I would only change Center Mass, but for what is another question. Perhaps not a grenades skill but a general skill or a gun skill.

Perhaps boost a bit Bombardier but also Volatile Mix then.

EDIT: How about replace Center Mass by Shredder? For me with late Full Kit it could be a fair temporary build until reach last level and get Full Kit, and then a good build.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
Exquisitor
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Exquisitor »

Sting grenades and Incendiary grenades pretty much the best items to cc your bad pulls...
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8wayz
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by 8wayz »

Grenadiers are great in general.

Offensive ones work miracles on timed missions - they can remove cover, shred armor, burn your enemies and damage whole pods.

Defensive ones can disable whole pods and protect you with smoke. They can be remarkable on non-timed missions, especially when your position gets attacked by 2 pods at the same time.

There are some good perks in the middle path and you should try to mix them either with the left or right one, depending on the type of grenadier you need. Needles grenades, Tandem Warheads and Full Kit are some great perks to take.
Zork
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Zork »

Damage grenadier builds are perhaps better if you activate the option Red fog. It's not a rule type I appreciate but after to have seen some let's play activating it and considering it in analysis, I decided it would be an advantage I should try even if I don't like the rule.

And the point is your damage grenadier can also apply AOE debuff on enemies, it's not a negligible aspect and can easily worth take risk to attract far pods (for the closer pods shooting will attract them anyway).
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
Noober
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Noober »

JoiNrbs is of couse a very skilled player, but it shouldn't prevent you from thinking your own style.

On legend in 1.4 (until fire grenade nerf) the grenadier is THE BEST CC you can found. THE BEST. Period.
And most of the time (other then fighting one pod of 2-3 at a time by all of your 6 mans team which is trivial) their CC is invaluable.
I alwayas beeline to have at leat 4-5 of them (one more than max number of squads I could deploy due to wounds).

Just try this path:
Rapid Deployment/Heavy Ordinance/Bluescreen/HEAT/Sting/VolMix/Full Kit

Rapid deployment allow you to flash 2-3 scattered ayys in the mid to long range AND disable 1-2 the most dagerous ones with fire.
And all - in one turn.
Don't give them plating - give him 2/3 fire + 2 flash + EXO (when available) and upgrade their launcher at mag weapon.
Don't even bother with any weapon on them other then ballistc SMG for mobility - they will likely never use it other then for OW.

At SGT your spec suddenly could control most mec/drone you ecnouter and even if fail - you don't have to worry about its missles cause they have being disoriented.
At TSGT you could stun most of ayys including MECs I've even seen M3 muttons stunned by this and those are very resistance to flush.
Due to launcher range no one other then grenaiers could have those power even if rolled some of those in AWC.
Icarus
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Icarus »

And flashbangs reducing hack resistance helps controlling big bad mecha without having to shoot at them, though this is more a welcome side effect. I had actually forgotten about this until it allowed me to control a heavy MEC on one of my last missions with no extra effort - had to flashbang the pod anyway.

They're my goto CCers as well.
lumber-chick
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by lumber-chick »

I also see Grenadiers being a super useful unit and I always wish I had more.

There are a few factors in this apart from what others have said above:
1. Needle = extra Supplies. Needle Grenadiers guarantee extra Loot, and increase corpse count on any mission with Materiel reward.
2. Because RNG is the king of the game, we must honor him by having options. A long range, large radius grenade that guarantees damage is way better than a 40% non flanking shot early game. Late game this becomes less of an issue as typically you have way more firepower than you need, and it's more about not getting hurt. Early game though, even the very extra grenade is super significant.
3. Sting Grenade is uber useful. It disables whole large pods and makes MECs reliably hackable.
4. MEC hacking is #1 CC in mid-late game when you have 100+ hack specialists. Grenadiers will make hacking those MECs easy at long range without the need for redscreen rounds or assault perks.

My builds:
#1 Needle + all left side (sometimes give them Sting to make them versatile).
#2 All right side except extre radius and maybe HEAT instead of Dense smoke. I don't use smoke.

I have equal number of #1 and #2. On some missions I take 1 each.
lumber-chick
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by lumber-chick »

Some of the points JoINrbs are super valid, however, it's hard for me to agree with these:
- He says the extra range on the grenade launcher doesn't matter. Really? I think it's the opposite: it's super useful. Cover is sparse. You can't afford not to be in cover. You don't control where cover will be, and where enemies will be. So someone with even 1 extra tile of range will make all the difference here and then. Also if your grenadier has negative defense (I do play with NCE), you want them further back anyway. That gives you the ability to pick +defense classes and put them closer to enemies, and still not get wounded too much.
- "The fact that they can launch grenades doesn't matter very much" [because other units early game will also have grenades in their slots] - except they get an extra grenade right away, and another at Corporal. 4 vs 2 guaranteed hits per mission is huge.
- He suggests that radius increase is worthless because enemy AI avoids clustering. Except radius increase doesn't only give you a chance to hit multiple enemies, it ALSO increases the range of the grenade by another tile.
- He doesn't care about Needle. He claims "Your grenadiers won't kill many enemies". My Needlers score a kill on almost all of their grenades early game, which is 3+ per mission. So Legend or overall gameplay style kicks in here. Not sure why. The more HP units have, the more often other waepons will leave enemies un-killed, which means even more opportunities for a guaranteed finisher, but can't argue without experience on this.
- He talks about Incendiary as a counterpoint to Needle. I'm not sure why, we're talking early game. Incendiary is considered early game?
- He suggests frag is to remove cover... except that's super risky.
- "It's perfectly OK to destroy loot sometimes". That's one way of looking at it. Or you can get 30+ supply per mission, every mission of the game, sometimes 80+ with elerium cores. Up to you!

Overall, it seems to me he mostly talks about his particular style on Legend rather than actual tactical possibilities. You can learn a lot about options you have and his gameplay style, but there's definitely way more depth and variability depending on difficulty level, perk trees etc.
Psieye
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Psieye »

Are people ignoring the scope of his latest video? It's early game only. Wait for his mid game video for Sting to be brought into the discussion. Incendiary too as you'll only have that in early game if you specifically rush for it.
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Noober
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Noober »

He says the extra range on the grenade launcher doesn't matter. Really? I think it's the opposite: it's super useful.
Extra range means you can flash/fire for quite close to visual range staying in high cover withoun moving.
Consider your grenarier is somehow behind in high cover as you trade his abblative for another fire/flash the range is matter.
I'm also playing Legend but surely not as skilfull as he is so I value quite high the abilite to disable distant dangerous enemy without moving to half cover.
- He suggests that radius increase is worthless because enemy AI avoids clustering. Except radius increase doesn't only give you a chance to hit multiple enemies, it ALSO increases the range of the grenade by another tile.
+1 tile make fire grenade AOE from cross to square and that means +1 ayys in AOE more often then not both in ambush and in breakdown. At least from my experience. Other than that - salvo is probably a better option.
- He doesn't care about Needle.
A'm the second to that as past early game your grenadiers are more for control than to damage/kill and needle also don't work for both sredder guns you definitely want asap.
And honestly - even sapper is better early game for cover destrution and niddle compete with such powerfull perk as Rapid Deployment which is quite relevant for the whole game.
Psieye
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Psieye »

Needle does work with the EXO suit. It also preserves corpses as well as loot drops. But this is questionable benefit.
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Autoclave
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Autoclave »

Look, Pavonis wanted to go massive on class and perk diversity. While you may agree that the vanilla firaxis version is a bit too condensed with class roles, Long War 2 has gone to another extreme. More is better .. or is it?

Grenadier feels like a one trick pony. I am not talking about perk variety. I am talking about lack of choices when you are using them in combat. While a you may consider your options with a gunner/assault/ranger what ability to use, grenadier feel more binary. You either fire grenades or you don't.

So in a way, the class is good, useful, but is not fun.

They could just as well merge grenadiers with technicals, remove that cringeworthy gauntlet and make the EXO an exclusive for them. There you go, you've got your demolitions expert class.
aedn
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by aedn »

Psieye wrote:Are people ignoring the scope of his latest video? It's early game only. Wait for his mid game video for Sting to be brought into the discussion. Incendiary too as you'll only have that in early game if you specifically rush for it.
Yes, as well as what he said about needle grenades, and some other things. I tend to agree with most of what he stated, outside of the points on incendiary which should not even be brought up, as on legend you won't have enough of them just like exo suits, or plasma grenades, and sting grenades to matter in the early game.
joebill
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by joebill »

If it's a quick mission I tend to find them very useful. If I'm clearing out an HQ or murdering some other large body of troops, he's gonna run out.

When you know there's only gonna be a few engagements and you wanna win 'em quick, a grenadier is certainly handy. Whatever flavor is up to you. All three of the Lance-corporal perks have done good things when I've tried em.

The middle branch of the tree is pretty boring though.
Swiftless
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Swiftless »

The only thing I can comment on is that even top players can get stuck in a rut or narrowly focused on their own play style.
merkmerk
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by merkmerk »

I'm not talking about Grenadiers being unable to perform

They're just the least interesting and least flexible class in the game

Their middle perk choices may as well not exist for much of the game because they're so bad

It feels like they're missing something - and LW rocketeers had the exact same problem.

XCOM2 fixed the sharpshooters by doing the whole gunslinger thing (which btw is another topic, pistols are crap in LW2 - I even tried having a technical with all the fancy pistol perks and they're just garbage due to the horrible range issues and low damage at that stage of the game)

Seems like they should have had something more like destruction vs offensive support vs defensive support with more grenade options and some better CD abilities - like a smoke grenade on a cooldown type thing

They'll never be a shooty class unless they were given some kind of SMG specific tree.
stefan3iii
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by stefan3iii »

Joinrbs is a great player, but has some funny ideas about perks sometimes. Like thinking that VPT is better than Dead-Eye, or that Tac Sense is really strong.

That said I agree that needle grenades just doesn't compete in its tier. Rapid Deployment is ridiculously good, the entire game, and Sapper is quite good as well. He's right that grenadiers usually aren't killing, they're often softening up many targets, or applying CC. On top of that, if there is a corpse you really need, you can choose not to kill the target with your grenadier.
Psieye
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Psieye »

Tactical Sense is only good if you make it a binary switch for the AI: if 15% is the difference between 8 enemies shooting or sheepishly OW camping, it's huge. But it requires a degenerate amount of Def buff stacking to make it good - circumstantial.

Grenadiers can use a rifle if the squad doesn't need to move. That's asking a lot, but if you make it happen then they make amazing tank enablers who can also off-tank in a pinch. The build for a Sting guy is distinctly different to the build for a Smoke guy. It feels weird to dedicate an entire soldier's build to just 1~2 consumable types, but that's what grenadiers excel at right now.
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hamds28
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by hamds28 »

My Needle Grenadiers lose a bit of steam before plasma. The Biggest Booms buff should help, and I think maybe if Boosted Cores gave 2points of damage to plasma but only 1 to special grenades, that might even up the playing field. I wouldn't bring my couple of needle grenadiers to a long HQ battle, but they're solid enough soldiers. I also don't do the SMG thing.
Zork
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Zork »

merkmerk wrote:I'm not talking about Grenadiers being unable to perform
They're just the least interesting and least flexible class in the game
Their middle perk choices may as well not exist for much of the game because they're so bad
It feels like they're missing something - and LW rocketeers had the exact same problem.
Woo your total fault if the thread totally ignored your topic, totally unclear thread title and OP.

That said you come back to Grenadier pointless with your comment on middle perks. And this comment is rather wrong, I already answered with explanations. The only one I would trash would be Center Mass.

But from the point of view of class diversity, and number of interesting builds that are rather different, it's clearly not the best LW2 class.
merkmerk wrote: XCOM2 fixed the sharpshooters by doing the whole gunslinger thing (which btw is another topic, pistols are crap in LW2 - I even tried having a technical with all the fancy pistol perks and they're just garbage due to the horrible range issues and low damage at that stage of the game)
Your point of view, I totally disagree, XCOM2 gunslinger is very powerful relatively soon because you can get blue ammo rather soon. For sure you can't play a sharpshooter glued in a position miles behind. I regret it in LW2 and for now find pointless this idea to put the pistol in AWC, it's tedious to build anything based on random, and it's not one or two random pistol perks that can justify bring a pistol.

But ok LW2 sharpshooter class has more finesse and diversity, but that's 3 columns, not 2, so it's impossible to compare well.
merkmerk wrote: Seems like they should have had something more like destruction vs offensive support vs defensive support with more grenade options and some better CD abilities - like a smoke grenade on a cooldown type thing

They'll never be a shooty class unless they were given some kind of SMG specific tree.
Well, destruction it's damages grenades perks, offensive support it's String grenade perks, defensive support it's smoke bombs perks.

The idea of a light smoke grenade ability with a cooldown could become a good idea. It could be quite weaker and with a smaller AOE than standard smoke grenades and bombs.

For the shooting, the Grenadier is penalized by the extra movement penalty coming from the extra item slot. Chain Shot is a very good shooting perk. That's it, Center Mass is crap in my opinion, except during beginning, and Formidable isn't really related to shooting.

Now there are shooting classes and non shooting classes shouldn't be able to steal their use. From play point of view I have no issue with Grenadier, I'm fine with their roles quite centered around grenades. And builds with chain shot can use a more important role in pure shooting.

Overall to summarize my point of view on your points:
- Firstly I totally disagree on middle perks but for Center Mass I would trash.
- I agree it's not the deepest/best class design of LW2, and from that point of view it's probably the weaker.
- I disagree on their fun to play them, I'm fine with them and their rather unique roles no other class can provide (range, AOE size, sting, number of grenades, improved smoke, improved damages, covert destruction, many more).
- How make the class deeper isn't easy, but the idea of some specific cool-down skill with some related perks is an idea, but the problem is the game force bring a shooting gun. So end with no skills related to it would be weird. But extend a bit their shooting building looks rather difficult. If I wouldn't bother on realism, I would allow them use special bullets with their gun, and try build some skills around it.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
Zork
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Re: Grenadiers suck.

Post by Zork »

hamds28 wrote:My Needle Grenadiers lose a bit of steam before plasma. The Biggest Booms buff should help, and I think maybe if Boosted Cores gave 2points of damage to plasma but only 1 to special grenades, that might even up the playing field. I wouldn't bring my couple of needle grenadiers to a long HQ battle, but they're solid enough soldiers. I also don't do the SMG thing.
The much better AOE of plasma grenades in my opinion totally counter balance other grenades special effects. For now only fire is challenging because you get a chance to disable an enemy with fire. But AOE dammages, AOE shredding, AOE cover destruction can be huge, so really I don't get all those comments about plasma grenades. For me they look fine.

Moreover with Red fog option I heavily doubt any other grenades can compare to Plasma. But it doesn't matter, if you prefer another type of grenade then use them.

For long battle like HQ, I will admit that when enemies are closing 40 there's more chance I play last pod or even last two pods without any grenade. But HQ allows a team of 10 and then offers much more flexibilities like to include 2 Grenadiers and even have one or two Grenadier dedicated to grenades with Full Kit perks, 16 grenades for an HQ, fine in my opinion. With less grenades don't waste all of them on first pods, keep them more to use them like jokers than like routine tools.
NOT a tactical/strategy expert player, playing LW2 at Easy. Rather old so I appreciate not be bothered by excessive familiarity, I'm not your friend and will never be. Refuse to learn English well so don't attempt learn it to me, thank you. :-)
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