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[Man of Paper]

The optimal way to use snipers, in my experience, is to use them realistically. Get them on the nearest perch to cover your bros. Once your dudeskis clear space in front of the sniper, sprint him up to the best vantage point at the new line. Wash, rinse, repeat. It might not work great at low levels, but it's good enough, and once the sniper has some skills it feels like the last game's version of snipers (which is to say, overpowered).

[nenjin]

I generally find them less useful on most infiltration missions. However on the Avenger Defense, I brought two snipers and they probably won the mission for me at the end of the day. If you can't afford to move guys up into optimal range and/or flanking position, sitting back on overwatch and letting your snipers do the heavy lifting at range is a pretty safe way to play.

[EnigmaticHat]

I know the scout ranger is an unpopular option, but combined with a sniper focused sharpshooter you can provide a nice little "hello" to pods.  In vanilla those two classes are just flat weaker than the other two classes and upgrading them can cost some resources, which is why I like to use them as force multipliers to increase a squad's options rather than direct fighters.  The pistol path never really dominates, by the time you're shooting 6 enemies in one turn with a plasma pistol, low health enemies are no longer the problem any more.  On the other hand having a squadsight sharpshooter is very good at story missions, especially the final mission.  Scout rangers are absolutely useless for the final mission unfortunately, granted you'll probably just be bringing Psi Ops anyway.

For rush missions in an unmodded game, I would recommend that no matter how you upgraded your sharpshooter you just move them up like a normal guy but keep them in the back.  Maybe give them some flashbangs or smokes or something so they can contribute a normal turn's worth if things get real dicey.  The idea is that their sqaudsight could let them hit a dangerous enemy if it just *happens* to end up outside normal firing range.  Even with true concealment the penalty for going slow in a VIP mission is so harsh that fucking around with rooftops and squadsight can be flirting with disaster.

Now that I'm thinking about it... so on release you had two classes much better than the other two, and then a fifth class got added later in the game that was its own vastly higher tier.  Now we're going to have 4 base classes, then you add psi and robots, then you add 3 resistance factions.  That's 9 distinct units to build a 6 strong squad out of.  You'll probably get at least one leveled up soldier as a reward from each resistance faction, then you'll have a few base classes equipped with ruler weapons, that's RIGHT THERE a 6 strong squad of OP bullshit just from doing story missions.  Not even touching psi ops, and IMO there are single psi op abilities more useful than a maxed out ranger.  Lategame vanilla-with-DLC is going to get crazy and the ordinary soldiers are going to be left behind

[nenjin]

I feel like "hero units" are antithetical to XCOM's self made heroes. Way to take the piss out of your roster by just trumping them with a weirdo from a cult who is arbitrarily better. XCOM should never be playing second fiddle to someone else in the world except the aliens.

[GiglameshDespair]

Now that I'm thinking about it... so on release you had two classes much better than the other two, and then a fifth class got added later in the game that was its own vastly higher tier.  Now we're going to have 4 base classes, then you add psi and robots, then you add 3 resistance factions.  That's 9 distinct units to build a 6 strong squad out of.  You'll probably get at least one leveled up soldier as a reward from each resistance faction, then you'll have a few base classes equipped with ruler weapons, that's RIGHT THERE a 6 strong squad of OP bullshit just from doing story missions.  Not even touching psi ops, and IMO there are single psi op abilities more useful than a maxed out ranger.  Lategame vanilla-with-DLC is going to get crazy and the ordinary soldiers are going to be left behind

They are doing the will change, however, so you're likely to have more than one squad.

[Xvareon]

I feel like "hero units" are antithetical to XCOM's self made heroes. Way to take the piss out of your roster by just trumping them with a weirdo from a cult who is arbitrarily better. XCOM should never be playing second fiddle to someone else in the world except the aliens.

I look at it a bit differently. You need to actually take on special missions and make some effort to get these "heroes" on your squad, and that effort involves doing nice things for these different factions that actually hate each other's guts, so getting more than one on your side is likely to be quite challenging. I mean, when Shen's Last Gift came out, I thought the same thing as you for a bit, because it just seemed like the big robots could totally replace soldiers; they had armor, lots of health, powerful guns, could take three actions a turn thanks to the "Overdrive" ability, could leap up to high ground without a ladder or grapple, could take automatic Overwatch shots on revealed enemies, and all came equipped with heavy weapons like rocket launchers to boot. And you could build them for the cost of resources only. Still, you couldn't hide them in cover like you could your soldiers, you couldn't heal them mid-battle without the right ability, and you couldn't mod their guns.

But the point was, they let you change the dynamic. SPARKs could tank fire well, so they let you play aggressively, and not have to worry about taking damage on a mission so much. That made it more fun. And it didn't just make it cheesy because you couldn't just heal them up and bring them on every mission, you had to repair them at base first, which took time.

I feel like having these heroes like Reapers, Skirmishers, and Templars will also add their own dynamic changes to the game. More stealth-focused play, some let you stick it to ADVENT in a firefight by taking multiple actions a turn, and the psionic Templars look good for taking on major threats as long as you babysit them enough to gain power mid-battle. Seems legit so far.

[nenjin]

Mechanically I'm withholding judgment. It's just thematically, I'm not won over. It makes more sense for XCOM2 than 1 by a long shot, and it is a genuine attempt to broaden the # of actors in the world. I just feel like it detracts slightly from the awesomeness of XCOM a bit when they're now competing for attention with 'le factions.'

[Xvareon]

Thematically, I'm very much won over. I didn't like feeling like I was the only resistance cell worth a damn in the world who could actually make a difference, especially since we all saw that there were apparently others out there who could hit ADVENT trains, and there was a full-fledged black market going on where you could buy alien alloys and elerium-115 from. That they are finally fleshing out "Le Resistance" more, and not just having them be faceless background characters, is a big leap in the right direction. Of course, mechanically, they've still gotta prove that they know what they're doing, but it looks promising so far.

[nenjin]

See, I was kind of ok with faceless, less than organized non-XCOM resistance being the order of the day because that's how resistance movements tend to operate. All the better to recruit them in to your organized resistance cell, too!

But now we've got organized resistance outfits with really cliche names, and kick ass soldiers, and that kind of steal's XCOM's thunder IMO. Especially when it's "I really hate the aliens controlling earth, but goddamnit do I hate how much those guys REAP even more! I won't work with them!" routine.

[Flying Dice]

TBH I would have liked if they'd taken an approach where the new factions are potential sources of missions, maybe occasional enemies, and the new stuff comes divorced from hero units. If XCOM must have le speshul snowflake faction abilities, it should be something that you can add to one of your existing grunts-you run a mission for a faction, they give you the opportunity to send a dude to them for training that you can't get elsewhere, or they send you a package of equipment that you can't produce from your own tech base.

[Twinwolf]

There'll probably be mods for that sort of thing, if I had to guess. Because there's mods for everything.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

My two problems are the generic sounding details of the factions ("we like being psychic", "we like being snipers who feel only recoil", "we're racists") and the notion that their units are more powerful than the normal classes.

Like, if their classes were exclusive but balanced to the others, but filling a different tactical niche that you can't otherwise have? That's great. I'm super cool with that. But if they're all gonna be as overpowered as or even more overpowered than psi operatives, that's a problem.

I want tactical thought, not X-Com MOBA edition. Gunslingers are the coolest class in X-Com. They eschew everything about their sniper counterparts and not very powerful if you bash them against the enemy, but using their abilities in smart ways makes them a critical element of the team.

More Gunslingers, less Psi Operatives. Fix your game Jake.

[Xvareon]

Ok. What did we get in XCOM 2 vanilla? Grenadiers. How OP were they? Let's see:  Ability to use two explosives or heavy weapons in a single turn, check; ability to shred armor and obliterate entire groups of enemies, check; heavy armor and resistance to explosive damage making them very tough to kill, check; and ability to just be better at carrying 'nades than any other soldier, check. Grenadiers were f***ing insane, and everyone knows it.

Here is the gist of the "hero" classes we are getting:  "Psionic wildlings" who need to gain power mid-battle to use their really good abilities, so they likely need to be babysat to not die. Reapers, soldiers really good at cloaking and sniping and sabotaging, but how effective do you think they're going to be once they're actually found out and can't rely on ambushes anymore? Not very. They snipe good, but when you're chewing on Heavy MECs and Vipers at point blank range, all the stealth in the world's not going to save you. That seems to be where Skirmishers come in, being the guys who use multiple-action abilities to handle several enemies at once. But if you shoot three times at a Muton with 50 defense in heavy cover and still miss, those actions wouldn't help you anyway. And if they get poisoned or Mindspun by a Sectoid, you're in trouble. If Mind Controlled, you're in even worse trouble.

What we have here are units with unique abilities for a different kind of dynamic. But they are very limited in number, and the enemy also gets new units and "heroes" to send at you, too. Yes, these hero units have abilities that may prove extremely useful for the player, but will they be a do-everything solution? It doesn't seem so to me. Grenadiers already fulfill that in spades by having huge amounts of explosives that can inflict critical hits, heavy guns that shred armor and do insane damage, Suppression to lock any enemy down (except Codexes and non cover-using units), ability to carry Flashbangs to nullify enemy abilities and other status effect-causing grenades, great survivability... I defy you to name one situation where a full squad of properly leveled and equipped Grenadiers couldn't just stomp everything on the map. They wouldn't even need healing because everything would be dead before it gets a chance to blink. They would stroll down the block, blow up the block, mow down EVERYONE, and walk off into the sunset drinking Mountain Dew. 3 pods activate, they eat nade-nade-nade-nade-rocket-rocket-saturation fire-suppression-rocket and are dead-dead-dead-dead-dead dead dead ded da-ded-dead-ded-DEAAAAAD-DEAD. Because having armor shredding, cover nullification, massive aim penalty abilities and huge AoE's on the same character is just OP. But no one talks about that, nooooo. Pff.

[GiglameshDespair]

I always did want to try using a all-grenadier squad.

[Flying Dice]

The real disadvantage of grenadiers, especially in lategame, especially in LW2, is that they run out of grenades.

I sorta conceive of soldiers as being some combination of workers and showboaters. Stuff like Rangers and Gunners are pretty much pure workers, they're all about the bread-and-butter attacks and abilities. They're consistent. They aren't the most effective, but they never really drop below their peak level of effectiveness as missions grind on, either. Unmodified sword stat Shinobi are low-tier workers, they're good at rushing objectives you have to touch and countering chryssies, but don't really excel at any primary role. Grenadiers and Technicals are pure showboaters, they're all about the big, dramatic moments... but they can only do those a few times before they're out of gas, then you've essentially got another Ranger without any of the useful abilities.

Assaults, Specialists, buffed-sword Shinobi, and buffed sniper rifle Sharpshooters are hybrids. They've got the useful stuff they can do over and over, but they also have high-key stuff that's either on a long cooldown or limited use.

This helps explain why homogeneous squads tend to be less effective. If you don't have much in the way of big-impact showboating trump cards, you're going to start falling behind faster in each mission you run, and you're going to have a harder time dealing with the big threats. This is further reinforced by the way different classes fill different niches even when they have overlapping talents--Specialists, Grenadiers, and Gunners are all anti-mech, but in radically different ways, for example.

It also demonstrates why Psi Ops are fucking overpowered bullshit: they're showboat-style soldiers, except they have so many abilities on relatively generous cooldowns that they effectively never run out of high-impact actions, especially if you use multiples and stagger their ability uses. Their bread-and-butter is stronger than a lot of classes' high-impact limited abilities. This is one of the reasons I limit myself to a single one deployed on any given mission.