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[Flying Dice]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA

Guess what, folks? You know the Repeater? Chance of insta-kill when you damage an enemy? It apparently also applies to DoT damage applied by the weapon.

So for example if you use Dragon rounds on a Repeater-equipped weapon, every tick of the fire has the same chance of insta-killing the enemy it's on. Found that out because it just saved a Squaddie I was training up on a base defense from meeting an untimely end--she was flanked, and my Ranger (who had the last move of the turn) missed a 90% flank shot. Was all ready to lose that trooper, 'cause she was on ~4 health, the Officer had way too much health to die to the fire tick... but then that little "Executed" popped up. Hehehehe.

[Aklyon]

...I should make some experimental ammo. Since both of my specialists have a repeater due to the drops I've gotten.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, I'll admit that they did a damned good job of making all the different equipment choices good this time around. In EU I basically just used the same 3-4 for everyone through the whole game.

Do the armor too. There's a vest you can get that heals the soldier every turn (in addition to the normal health boost).

[misko27]

Completely unrelated, but can anyone identify Lily Shen's accent? It's pretty thick, but I can't identify what it actually is.

[Aklyon]

Andromedons are quite the thing.

[Flying Dice]

Spoiler: By the end the corpses were making the game stutter so badly that I was scared it would crash. (click to show/hide)

[Greenbane]

Theres also a new mod that might interest you guys: True Concealment. Its supposed to halt the timers until you get revealed, but also shortens them for some reason.

Now that's an interesting way to tinker with timers. Not the shortening, but it's true it doesn't make much sense for (at least some) timers to start ticking down when the enemy doesn't even know you're there.

However, I'm skeptical about using any timer mods, given it's such a fundamental feature and I fear that diminishing it might just make things too easy.

[umiman]

    @umiman: congrats.  What are you going to do now?

Mod, but definitely not make it harder.

Legendary mode is really bullshit. I highly recommend nobody play it. I only beat it by cheesing mimic grenades, grenadiers, and psi operatives.

But here are some tips for anyone who wants to try it:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1. Mimic grenades. Get like... 6 of them and put them on everyone. This is priority one. They're super effective and make all the AI morons, basically buying you a get out of jail free card.

2. Grenadiers are your bread and butter. Just get tonnes of them. The only other class you need on legendary is specialist (for hacking stuff and dealing with robots.) This is because there are so many aliens and they have so much HP. Because they all like to bunch up, you can apply lots of the grenade DoTs on them like incendiary grenades or acid grenades. In the late game, make sure to give everyone the free reload mods and extra clip size mods. HOWEVER.

3. Grenadiers are useless in the final mission. There are too many enemies, you won't have enough grenades. Thank god I only brought one for some reason on the final mission.

4. Same rules as usual. If you can't kill an enemy group in one turn, don't do stupid things like go into overwatch or hide in half cover. Always try to kill on the same turn you see them.

5. Psi ops are the strongest class. Only problem with them is they're really hard to train up due to how you're limited to training two at a time and how their skills are RNG. There are three skills you need on them. Void rift, soulfire, and domination. Void rift is the most important as it's easily their strongest skill. Domination is permanent. Bring at least two of these guys into the final mission with those three skills.

6. You know those kidnap the VIP missions? Just kill them. Don't even bother getting near them as it takes too much time. As for all the other timed missions, a specialist can usually do the thing from range.

7. There's no real build order this time unlike in XCOM:EU I think. All the buildings are kinda worthless early game until you've ranked up a bit and have more money. For example, the lab is useless unless you get scientists, which you don't have. So just get whatever, or don't get anything. You don't need anything they provide until mid-game anyway.

8. Research priority is the same as XCOM: EU. Better weapons > everything. Just rush railguns and when tier 3 comes around, rush that as well.

9. In terms of the other stuff.... hmm... experimental armor mods are kinda a waste of a core. Grenades are the best I think, followed by ammo. Don't bother with the experimental heavy weapons because shortly after you'll get experimental power heavy weapons which make the previous tier completely redundant.

10. Lancers: Make sure you never let lancers near you. They may do really low damage but they have a really high chance of making your soldier unconscious, which takes them out of the entire fight. It's total bullshit. Kill them ASAP.

11. The MECs are kinda derpy. They don't really do anything scary honestly and their base accuracy is kinda crap. In terms of all the enemies, it's fine to leave them for last.

12. Vipers are piss easy and they get easier as you go along. They're vulnerable to everything except poison. The only annoying thing about them is how they like to dodge everything but don't worry. You brought along a ton of grenadiers right?

13. Sectoids are a problem until you get plasma, then they become fodder. Remember you can flashbang them to disable almost everything they can do (or did). For example, if there's a psi zombie running around, just flashbang the sectoid and it's dead.

14. Faceless are weak to scanning. Which is why you always bring specialists with scanning skills / grenades to terror missions. If you scan them, they auto reveal and will blindly run at you even if they're on the other side of the map.

15. Archons are a massive pain in the ass. I highly recommend using psi operatives against them as everything else is a crapshoot. They don't really have any weaknesses other than being mind controlled.

16. Andromedons are weak to psi in the first phase, and weak to specialists in the second phase. Just don't stand near them and you'll be fine.

17. Codexes don't really do anything other than use their rift ability. Just make sure not to stand in the rift and you'll be fine. Sometimes they like to teleport into their own rift and kill themselves.

18. Sectopods are why you should always have at least one specialist in the late game. They're easy to deal with when you can disable them with hacking, but super annoying if you can't.

19. Shieldbearers are a massive pain. Kill them first.

20. In those "defend the point" missions, it's a good idea to purposely fail a hack on one of those streetlamps. This alerts all the enemies to your position and they'll just charge you instead of the point.

21. Remember in terror missions you only have to save 6 people regardless of how much Bradford whines. Save 6, then take your sweet time. Just make sure to scan them first. Also, later in the game be very aware of chrysalids. They can royally screw you over.

22. To make your life in fallen UFO missions easier, just blow up the UFO walls and hack from range. Saves you walking into an ambush.

23. Same with VIP escape. Blow up the walls.

24. In the end game, I think the W.A.R. suit is better than the wraith suit. This is simply because you can put blaster launchers on the W.A.R. suit whereas the wraith suit's ability is kinda pointless. When in doubt go for the standard armor as you can carry more items.

25. Always hack the objectives with your specialist. You need their good hack score to get the good stuff. As in, they can singlehandedly decide if your game is boned or not as they can dramatically reduce timers or give you a ton of intel or whatever.

[Flying Dice]

One note: the Wraith suit gives, what +25 to Dodge? Combine that with Superior Agility and Integrated Warfare on a top-rank Ranger with the healing suit and they're basically immortal; every turn they get a kill they're immune to one attack and will take half-damage from a good chunk of the others that follow. If they don't die outright, they heal and run away.

And that top-tier skill is broken if you have grenadier support. Blast a pod enough to get them all low (better yet, use their cone-of-fire shredding skill), then have the Ranger run in and combo-chain like this is Dynasty Warriors or some shit.

That said, I concur about the active abilities being trash. Like, I keep thinking, "Wow, this could be so useful!" but then I just kill things instead of being cheeky.

[umiman]

One note: the Wraith suit gives, what +25 to Dodge? Combine that with Superior Agility and Integrated Warfare on a top-rank Ranger with the healing suit and they're basically immortal; every turn they get a kill they're immune to one attack and will take half-damage from a good chunk of the others that follow. If they don't die outright, they heal and run away.

And that top-tier skill is broken if you have grenadier support. Blast a pod enough to get them all low (better yet, use their cone-of-fire shredding skill), then have the Ranger run in and combo-chain like this is Dynasty Warriors or some shit.

That said, I concur about the active abilities being trash. Like, I keep thinking, "Wow, this could be so useful!" but then I just kill things instead of being cheeky.

Ya, but using rangers on legendary is suicide. Every single one of my rangers is dead. There's only so much shit they can survive before running into melee with enemies with more HP and damage than god becomes a bad idea.

Even being in range of the shotgun is generally suicide, I found. Not to mention just like in XCOM: EU, when they run close they have a tendency of aggro-ing more enemies.

I haven't had one survive to reach colonel and get that blitzing attack. Highest I've had was captain's rank afaik and he died in the defense of the avenger mission.

Note: All my rangers died the same way amusingly. They missed a sword slash.

----------

I had two wraith suits though. I gave them to my sniper and my gunslinger. You can see it in the picture. The grappling hook is super useful. But I think I would have preferred having more grenades or more blaster launchers.

[Sirus]

Have you tried training your rangers to focus on concealment rather than swords? Give them an assault rifle instead of a shotgun, let them sneak around to flank already-activated enemies.

[SOLDIER First]

concealment rather than swords?

Disgusting.

[Rolan7]

Have you tried training your rangers to focus on concealment rather than swords? Give them an assault rifle instead of a shotgun, let them sneak around to flank already-activated enemies.

That side of upgrades is even called "Scout", and I heard it can be used to detect pods without them scattering.  So that the rest of the team can engage...  Ambushing from concealment has been mostly disappointing.

Also, lol, I did a search for "xcom 2 workshop" to see what facilities can be staffed, and the second result is the Timer Tweaks mod.  Seems like the dang timers are a common concern!
(The first result is the rest of the XCOM 2 Steam Workshop)

[Flying Dice]

The thing is, shotgun range is about the same as rifle range, and it's not Aim-crippled like it was in EU. Stick on a scope and laser sight with AP or Talon rounds (especially if they one that rolled the shred perk) and they double as lethal mid-range flankers for taking down big targets. They're not what you close a turn with, and basic melee is only for when you can't blue move or R&G into a flank.

For one, I'd never play a terror mission without a Ranger to bladestorm the free-attack 'lids.

[Cthulhu]

The shotgun is perfectly serviceable now, which is way nicer than back in the old game where it was useless.

I consider the initial scout perk to be mandatory though, where you stay concealed.  Especially in retaliation missions you can run ahead and grab all the dudes.

Also anybody working on compiling big lists of custom characters?  The customs seem to crop up very frequently (I've seen Raiden show up twice) so it'd probably be better to have some giant lists.