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[umiman]

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.

Yeah I did but I only had about... 4 rangers total the entire game. And after two died one of my specialists actually got the random perk thing and got that skill that let her stay in concealment. So after that I had almost no use for rangers at all.

It's definitely super useful. Way better than that +2 blade damage, because honestly. Using the sword in legendary gets you killed so bad.

However, there is that scanning grenade that does every single thing the concealment ranger does with none of the risks of accidentally activating something.

----

Edit: I think you guys are forgetting my tips are for legendary. You can probably do whatever you want on the other difficulties. I saw a .gif on Reddit and troopers only have 3 health. Holy shit that sounds like heaven.

It's why I said don't bloody play on legendary. It's a total clusterfuck. At least the sectoids in XCOM: EU still could kinda die in one hit on impossible. AND THEY DON'T GET STRONGER.

[Creaca]

Experimental Ammo and Grenades are so damn good. Halfway through a campaign, struggling my ass off.

But the moment I started investing cores in experimental ammo and grenades it was like a weight being lifted off my shoulders. Neutering stun lancer hit-chance and move speed with poison, shredding 4 points of armor in a turn with acid, the amazing crit chance increase of reaper ammo. Ohhhh baby.

Not to mention equipping a gunslinger with Armor Piercing rounds have made his one glaring weakness disappear.

[Cthulhu]

That one HP is enormous.  That one HP made me unable to play Classic in XCOM:EW, cause it made the early game so fucking boring compared to Impossible.

[misko27]

You know, I really fixed up my performance by following some of the tips I found on reddit. Really bumped me up like 20 FPS and made the stuttering stop. Still have got issues here and there, particularly like slightly-too-long waits with the action cam, and Jane Kelly's baseball cap having some weird shadow on her face, but overall it looks pretty and feels good.

First Retaliation mission. I swear to god the Sectoids got nothing on Jane. Girl resists the Mindspin every time, and mocks the Sectoids for trying. It's too bad I decided I wanted a scout more though, I think she would be a cool Swordmaster. Meanwhile I might make my Sharpshooter a Gunslinger simply on the basis that she seems to use a pistol more often then not. It was pretty hilarious seeing her whip out the pistol and finish off the Faceless at Point-Blank range. And on that topic, does it feel to anyone that the class trees and sub classes are cooler this time? I really liked in EW when a class had options that were really synergistic and cool: Heavy gunner felt like something almost totally different from an explosives Heavy (Amusingly, I turned my very first heavy into a Heavy gunner, including doing things like Mayhem and Holo-targeting, entirely by accident, without thinking of the synergism at all. I only realized how useful it all was together on the very last mission, when I realized that suppression was dealing guaranteed damage.) The scout sub-class seems really cool, and but so does the Melee only version. Gunslinger seems dang cool, but the Sniper subclass is supposedly stupid-strong. And I don't even know what to do yet with the Specialists.

NINJA-EDIT: Apparently I forgot to post this, so I'll add a bit more. I had a convoy-raid-or-something mission nearly go south. Accidentally activated two pods at once with an overextended soldier (my biggest problem right now: Not knowing the dimensions of the map, and thus carelessly sending solidiers in one direction that is actually much bigger then I thought), and one of them had a Sectoid. I managed to take down most of the ADVENT troops, but the Sectoid mind-controlled Jane (I guess that's what I get for thinking she was good at resisting Sectoids ) and hid behind the face of a cliff where I couldn't kill him. Jane and the surviving troopers (both unfortunately Stun Lancers) then run over to my two soldiers at the bottom of the cliff. The Stun Lancers try to gangbang my Grenedier, while Kelly slowly dismembers the Sharpshooter. It could have gone worse though: Kelly managed to kill my Sharpshooter, but just after that the Mind-control wore off (meanwhile the Sectoid has been busy raising a zombie which walked into a corner, and running on top of the cliff to miss what I'm sure was an 80% shot), so she runs off to help the specialist take down the Sectoid.

Meanwhile the Grenadier fights off multiple Stun lancers at close range. That dude is literally amazing. Does having armor (Blast Padding) prevent you from falling unconscious? Because my Grenadier just took them out one at a time while the Stun Lancers tried (and failed) to knock him out.

[umiman]

That one HP is enormous.  That one HP made me unable to play Classic in XCOM:EW, cause it made the early game so fucking boring compared to Impossible.

It is.

And Advent Troopers get +2. Hue.

Sectoids start with 10hp.

------------

Downloaded all the mods! Woo! Time to actually have fun!

[PanH]

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.

Yeah I did but I only had about... 4 rangers total the entire game. And after two died one of my specialists actually got the random perk thing and got that skill that let her stay in concealment. So after that I had almost no use for rangers at all.

It's definitely super useful. Way better than that +2 blade damage, because honestly. Using the sword in legendary gets you killed so bad.

However, there is that scanning grenade that does every single thing the concealment ranger does with none of the risks of accidentally activating something.

----

Edit: I think you guys are forgetting my tips are for legendary. You can probably do whatever you want on the other difficulties. I saw a .gif of someone playing on normal and troopers only have 3 health. Holy shit that sounds like heaven.

How do you balance having enough flashs against sectoids, scanning to reveal, mimics as decoy and explosives ? Seems like grenades of some sort are the solution to everything, but I'm running out of them pretty fast, even in veteran difficulty. I just got the predator armor, so it might help though with extra utility spaces.

[umiman]

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.

Yeah I did but I only had about... 4 rangers total the entire game. And after two died one of my specialists actually got the random perk thing and got that skill that let her stay in concealment. So after that I had almost no use for rangers at all.

It's definitely super useful. Way better than that +2 blade damage, because honestly. Using the sword in legendary gets you killed so bad.

However, there is that scanning grenade that does every single thing the concealment ranger does with none of the risks of accidentally activating something.

----

Edit: I think you guys are forgetting my tips are for legendary. You can probably do whatever you want on the other difficulties. I saw a .gif of someone playing on normal and troopers only have 3 health. Holy shit that sounds like heaven.

How do you balance having enough flashs against sectoids, scanning to reveal, mimics as decoy and explosives ? Seems like grenades of some sort are the solution to everything, but I'm running out of them pretty fast, even in veteran difficulty. I just got the predator armor, so it might help though with extra utility spaces.

You can't. You can't bring everything.

I think it depends on you, but using one of my mid-game-ish loadouts for an example I would bring something like this:

- 2 Specialists = specced out totally in offensive hacking. 1 scanning grenade. 1 flashbang. 2 mimics.
- 3 grenadiers = all specced out in grenades (except for shredder). 3 Plasma. 1 EMP grenade. 1 acid. 1 incendiary. 1 smoke. 2 in that funky exoskeleton with the rocket launchers.
- 1 extra dude doing whatever.

That's how I did it anyway.

[PanH]

Ok. And you take Shredder ? I went moslty with Blast Padding atm, because I found that enemies don't have that much armor yet to warrant taking it. They'll need 2 or 3 hits with armor or not, but maybe it's just my difficulty. Also, my grenadiers seems piss poor at hitting someone with the cannon.

In fact, what builds do you go for every class ?

Edit : also, it's written Shred 2 for acid grenade, but I've never have it remove the 2 armor of a shieldbearer, is it just bad luck ?

[Flying Dice]

Shredder is pretty great. Just slap expanded mags and free reloads onto the cannons; at the end of the day grenades don't do enough damage to finish the job unless you blow your load on the first one or two pods. Your end-goal is simply to not allow the enemy time to do anything to your people.

[EnigmaticHat]

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.

Yeah I did but I only had about... 4 rangers total the entire game. And after two died one of my specialists actually got the random perk thing and got that skill that let her stay in concealment. So after that I had almost no use for rangers at all.

It's definitely super useful. Way better than that +2 blade damage, because honestly. Using the sword in legendary gets you killed so bad.

However, there is that scanning grenade that does every single thing the concealment ranger does with none of the risks of accidentally activating something.

----

Edit: I think you guys are forgetting my tips are for legendary. You can probably do whatever you want on the other difficulties. I saw a .gif of someone playing on normal and troopers only have 3 health. Holy shit that sounds like heaven.

How do you balance having enough flashs against sectoids, scanning to reveal, mimics as decoy and explosives ? Seems like grenades of some sort are the solution to everything, but I'm running out of them pretty fast, even in veteran difficulty. I just got the predator armor, so it might help though with extra utility spaces.

You can't. You can't bring everything.

I think it depends on you, but using one of my mid-game-ish loadouts for an example I would bring something like this:

- 2 Specialists = specced out totally in offensive hacking. 1 scanning grenade. 1 flashbang. 2 mimics.
- 3 grenadiers = all specced out in grenades (except for shredder). 3 Plasma. 1 EMP grenade. 1 acid. 1 incendiary. 1 smoke. 2 in that funky exoskeleton with the rocket launchers.
- 1 extra dude doing whatever.

That's how I did it anyway.

Its funny, but I've just coincidentally started bringing 2 specialists and 3 grenadiers (everyone else good is dead or captured) and its working out really well for me.

On the topic of rangers, I found that the +2 damage of blademaster is super valuable in the early game because it pushes you over a few key damage thresholds.  It allows you to one-shot stun lancers sometimes and it allows you to get guaranteed one-shots on sectoids (provided you don't miss).  It also makes the blade semi-useful against MECs even through armor.  If sectoids have 10 health tho then yeah, that makes blademaster useless.

On the topic of research rushes, I'd say predator armor might be at least as good as mag weapons.  Normally the argument for weapons > armor in newcom is that offense helps the entire squad but armor only helps that one soldier.  But armor near doubles your carry capacity, and that damn well helps the whole squad.  Unfortunately, you can't easily get the 20 alloys that are required for predator armor, so you STILL want to rush mag weapons.  15 alloys can be gotten from your first two rooms of alien machinery and that's enough for mag rifles and mag pistols, which is enough to arm most of the squad (and lets be honest, grenadiers don't NEED a fancy gun to be useful).

[Cthulhu]

Here's something I really like about the game:

In the poorer areas you see lots of old cars that've been very awkwardly retrofitted to use new power sources.  It's an interesting touch and shows they put a lot of thought into the visual design of the game.

[Neonivek]

Does anyone want to Enter a Bay12 Character Pack?

[Aklyon]

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

Theres a mod for that. Or this one,  if you value melee crit chance & doubled damage on crit over consistancy and insist on playing above Veteran. I don't see why you would, but its your rangers.

[umiman]

Ok. And you take Shredder ? I went moslty with Blast Padding atm, because I found that enemies don't have that much armor yet to warrant taking it. They'll need 2 or 3 hits with armor or not, but maybe it's just my difficulty. Also, my grenadiers seems piss poor at hitting someone with the cannon.

In fact, what builds do you go for every class ?

Edit : also, it's written Shred 2 for acid grenade, but I've never have it remove the 2 armor of a shieldbearer, is it just bad luck ?

Again, my advice is entirely for legendary so I don't know if it applies to other difficulties.

Shredder is mandatory simply because later on everyone has shittonnes of armor. Even the Shieldbearers have so much, not to mention bosses like Sectopods and um... others. You could grenade them but it's cheaper to shred them. Grenadiers later get a skill that guarantees a hit so it makes their shred super reliable. Their end game skill where they can blast an entire area ALSO shreds.

My builds for legendary are:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Grenadier - shredder and full grenade tree except for hail of bullets (super duper useful). Make sure to give everyone more ammo capacity and free reloads for that reason. The shooty-shooty bang bang tree is okay, but doesn't compare to more and better grenades.

Specialist - Full offensive tree. You're not going to be healing anything in legendary as they'll either be dead or fine. Seriously, I've never seen anyone "bleed out". That skill that does guaranteed damage is super good and does 4 damage in the late game or 8 to robots while bypassing armor. HOWEVER, when chrysalids show up it's probably a good idea to bring medkits...

Sharpshooter - Both are good. I kinda like gunslinger more because they're cooler but snipers will always be useful. I always give experimental ammo to these guys because they make good use of them. For example, a gunslinger with dragon rounds can ignite an entire enemy squad and make them useless + on fire. A gunslinger with bluescreen rounds can royally fuck up robots. There's also no invisible floating tentacle monsters to screw with your squadsight snipers this time around.

Ranger - Meh. Sword can't kill anything unless it's almost dead (seriously, enemies have way too much HP in legendary), and even then it has a chance to miss for some godawful reason whereas the shotgun does not in the same range. Better to shoot them with the shotgun. The other tree is okay but their role can be rendered entirely redundant with scanning grenades. Never levelled them up long enough to see the end skills in action. Bladestorm is decent I guess but again, every single one of my rangers died when they missed with their sword (or the enemy fucking dodges). Which they will. They also have no AOE clear unlike all the other classes and rely on grenades for that.

I think in modes where enemies have much less HP and crit chance, these guys would be more useful.

Psi Operative - Totally RNG what you get but make sure you have void rift, soulflare, and domination for the final mission. I like that mind control is permanent now. Or at least it says it is.

[Graknorke]

Melee is a bit useless as you get higher up, the damage is proportional in the early game but its damage just doesn't scale with the higher tiers and particularly skills you can get for shotguns.