I am playing it for the first time now. Was kinda numb on the games I had so I decided to buy and play wotc. Starting playing at 1pm, check clock again: 8pm, holy shit I have a dinner in 20m, amazing game. I started on legendary level and it's the hardest game I have ever played lol
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 I can do C/I or L, get my ass whooped by L/I though. Though after watching this guy a bit I think I might be able to do it
My 2 main disagreements with this list would be lighting hands and reaper. Which is weird because i have the same opinion for both. Its strange that he spends the whole time going on about action economy but then put the free lighting hands into D tier. Thats crazy. And similar to reaper. It gives you the abilty to clear out multiple hostiles with 1 soldier which can dramatically turn the tide of a fight so you have less enemies shooting back at you next turn. Even if you just use it for weakened enemy cleanup. Id much rather have 3 dead enemies that arent gonna fire at me than say 2 weak and 1 dead enemy at the end of my turn. Reaper Templar is god mode.
bro i love how specific this tier list is xD I'm playing legendary heavily modded and hearing you rank slash, lightning hands, and bladestorm so low was a blast
@@n0xure sharpshooter is an investment, but they feel so good when you get them online and they pick off damn near any enemy you want whilst so far away that said soldier is basically immune Also pair it with a scouting reaper and many enemies (especially on non-timer missions) never stand a chance as they get picked off from a mile away
@@NyanDiamondjust hate how much using them effectively slows down the game . Could just blitz everything with cover removal and rangers in 7 turns . I don’t even touch sharpshooters until I have the dark lance so I can move and shoot in the same turn .
Fwiw, death from above is also nuts on sharpshooter *if* you get the hunter's rifle. It's 1 AP to shoot so now you're chaining kills like every other class but at a longer range with loads of aim etc to make it consistent. Now I understand that you don't often want to go for chosen fights but between that and the juiced pistol the hunter is great value if you can pull it off. Worth keeping in mind at least. Great list otherwise, was super interesting.
Squadsight is absolutely broken if you end up in an avenger defence mission and have a reaper. You can just destroy all the siege vehicles from across the map and stop the mission timer.
Slash and blademaster kicks ass for new recruits. They can't hit the broadside of a barn, but make excellent Cannon fodder that run in, slash a important enemy, take a hit or two then die for the glory of mankind.
I just love Shinobi class in Lwotc for that reason and always bring one or two with me for each mission as they expire quick but are super easy to train and just get full power almost immediately as all you need is bladestorm and their good to go.
You're confusing Void Rift with the commander's large AOE in the final mission. Void Rift only does damage once, however it then casts Insanity on all enemies hit. If you upgraded your Insanity with Schism, you'll do extra damage and rupture everybody, in addition to whatever insanity the enemies experience.
When you watch this understand that the list is made from the point of view of someone who plays insane challenge runs where he hits his head over and over against a wall until it breaks. Doing a four man legend ironman run has to rely on a lot of reaction skills so he values things like guardian way more than you would if you play normal 6 man campaigns. His defensive play style is absolutely inferior to alpha strike since it relies heavily on rng but the health pool of the enemies in the mid and late game is designed around a six man team and you simply can't alpha strike every pod with four guys. You can blow your cooldowns on one or two but you run out of consumables and single use abilities by the third. So he has to use overwatch traps and such like despite how infuriating XCOM 2 rng can be sometimes. For us mere mortals who play the game normally this list is meaningless more or less.
When this guy talks about a melee ability, I feel like he never used a templar... And when he talks about sharpshooter skills, I feel like he hates that class to death...
@@EdwinofEberron I understand that the sharpshooter is difficult to use playing with four soldiers, but the templar? At least in my experience it is one of the classes that performs best on its own.
Very thorough ranking for the most part, but I do have to say that I think you were too focused on the idea of having a squad composed entirely of the same class, which has affected your judgement of certain abilities. One that sticks out to me is homing mine. This ability allows the reaper to attach the claymore to a unit, which can then be triggered when that unit is fired upon, allowing you to deal damage with the shot and the claymore simultaneously. When ranking this you were assuming that you had an all reaper squad and had to maintain stealth and thus you ranked this ability relatively low because you'd have to fire on an enemy. Whereas if you were running a standard squad with say a reaper, ranger, grenadier, sharpshooter, specialist and skirmisher then this issue would never even cross your mind. Of course you would use homing mine to trigger the claymore because one of your other units will shoot the claymore or even the reaper because you've still got the firepower to take on the rest of the mission out of stealth.
True, although most cases if a mine is being thrown it's to aoe a pod, most likely I would trigger it with a grenade anyway, I'll need more experience, only used it in one playthrough
I just started playing XCOM2 WOTC a week ago and I gotta say finding your vids helped me a lot! As a new player, hearing you talk about the different utilities and use cases of abilities, items, etc did help me quite a lot already!
Death from above is actually quite solid for Snipers as generally you are planting them on any high elevation (as you can easily get sharp shooters to 100% no matter the squadsight penalty) and you can use the extra turn to reposition if need be, use a bond on said sharpshooter to give them an extra sniper shot, reload for effectively infinite clip, or just the aforementioned pistol shot to finish off a low health target
Nice list. I agree with almost all of the tiers except a few. I’d like to make a case for 4 abilities you ranked very low: Killzone, Deep Cover, Aid Protocol, Aim Killzone. On Sharpshooters (or any class, really) setup the Killzone in concealment before triggering an ambush. Like a standard overwatch this gives you overwatch shots on the whole pod during your turn AND another round of overwatch shots on the enemy turn. Best used in longer range where the cone is wider. Deep Cover: +30 cover, +50 dodge A ranger ability this can be useful for scout types especially with light armour types (+75 dodge total) Useful for a decoy move moving a ranger to draw fire, outflank, pursue a VIP or move to heal a squad mate. Deep cover on Sharpshooter with Aim: Reposition with a dash and get cover bonus, dodge bonus and +20 aim the next shot. Add in Death from Above and use the extra action for Hunker Down to reproc aim. Or to reload. Deep Cover on Support: This can be a crazy build. Use a scope and stock, Perception PCS, have ever vigilant, covering fire, guardian. Especially in arena scenarios, dash this support to a flanking move. This triggers Deep Cover and Ever vigilant. You now have a cover bonus, dodge bonus, critical overwatch ability with potential multiproc. Aid Protocol: I think you forgot this scales with the drone. So it’s +20, +30, +40 defense. So the equivalent of hardcover even for a squadmate in the open. 2 Specialists can basically keep this bonus ongoing for the tip of the spear squadmate.
Killzone (And long watch also) is even better outside of concealment than the strat you mention here. Because you can have a concealed scout and an unconcealed sniper, this lets you take shots at the enemy during their turn and they are unable to respond with anything at all. You only get the 1 shot per unit this way, but the enemy gets no actions on their turn and you can often easily clean them up without much effort. Bonus points if you line up other soldiers just out of LoS and overwatch them too so when the sniper aggros the pod and they all charge in your entire team (minus the scout) is shooting. Its a full ambush that is even better because the enemy doesn't even get a turn afterwards.
Ever vigilant is very valuable ability as it allows you to move maximum distance and use owerwatch plus combined with another one that allows to trigger multiple shots while owerwatching really good. Not top tier for sure but should be somewhere around A-B tier
run and gun felt essential back in EU when the Objective timers were incredibly tight and there were tons of units to slow you/bog you down, sometimes it really does come down to that clutch last turn dashing onto the bomb adjacient tile and getting an action to disarm it for example.
Combat Presence is strictly better than Inspire: does NOT end turn and works on SPARKS. Additionally, the class bringing their own Grappling Hooks makes it easier to get into LOS to preferred target ally.
I just started playing this gem bc is free on ps5. Holy crap...what a great deep combat system imo. I have gotten into turn based combat again thanks to bg3, but this may be the best ive played
I personally liked Squadsight despite it was almost kinda unfair in early game when most of your soldiers has poor aim stats and limited weapon upgrades, but if you already have tracer rounds, scope, and PCS aim it will be OP most of the time, Sharpshooter's aim with covert ops and at that point your Sharpshooter would negate squadsight aim penalty
Specialist is slowly moving up the ranks in my list. Almost every other unit has some sort of substitute except for the specialist (maybe the PSI units do not?)
Void rift is so much more, it casts insanity on any enemy that is prone to psyonic. So it can translate to panic, mind control, and desorientation as well as applying schism on 3 enemies. Pretty much squadwipe for regular enemy group.
Slash is a bit scary, yes, but the benefit is the accuracy is usually really high, very often 100 percent, and if you do have untouchable and you have a Templar with parry/reflect/deflect and such, even if you do trigger another pod, they'll usually tank it just fine, and if that's not available there's always mimic beacon. Also, some of these abilities have to be thought of as parts of a whole build. A grenadier with blast padding, a WAR Suit, and such where you're stacking tons of armor is going to be able to tank through so much. Same with sharpshooter and lightning hands, quick draw, return fire, fan fire, faceoff, death from above, sure one shot of a pistol doesn't do much, but it's going to be able to shoot so many times in a round, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't use any ammo at all!
I apparently like Deep Cover more than everyone else. It’s basically a passive benefit. If I don’t attack that turn, I get a hunker down for free. It’s not powerful, but it’s just free defense that makes it safe to move to otherwise sketchy positions. If you can manage to get Deep Cover and Aim together it’s actually fairly strong. Any turn you don’t attack, you get the hunker down and +20 aim the next turn as a passive benefit.
Deep cover and aim together, does sound pretty good, I do think most people like overwatching between pods (at least I do) for the free attack potential
I agree with most of the list, but for me shadow is the most broken ability in the game, with good positioning it basically negates surprise pods. A reaper with 2 sharpshooters is the core of my squads
Killzone on pod activations is S+ tier. Pair with squad sight and killzone can cover most of the map. It’s almost as good as saturation fire if you run it right. Also squad sight is killer with a stealthed ally providing vision - can kill a whole map with 0 risk of getting shot. Also steady hands stacks so well with the above.
Thanks, epic list. Would have liked to see Spark abilities too if u get a chance. Lastly I think squadsight is God tier vs Rulers if you have a cloaked unit scouting. Removes all danger essentially and if I am up against a ruler site 2 good snipers with squadsight and a claymore reaper to reveal and perhaps open a wall for vision and its done. Even just for taking out pods with them not being able to react it's great. Obviously better on some map types than others.
Launch grenade is much higher for me, simply because 1. early it carries the squad 2. later it carries the squad. One grenade from the distance then everyone has a clear shot with the other powerful abilities that need to hit against multiple enemies. Also shreds. It's not good standalone but needed to many other things. Makes good use of various special grenades too. And gives extra usage so not one time use like rockets, etc.
I do feel like squadsight along with sniping in general was way underappreciated. Ive had countless times where my snipers get a dead shot kill on a squads sight from high ground far back. Qnd all their abilitites in general are quite strong
I agree. The range makes them so valuable when you're hassling an enemy across the map. They rely on the Reaper a great deal to spot, but they can take objectives and deadeye, since it doesn't miss an objective, is really useful for doing that at speed. But XCOM 2 is pretty well balanced, so people's tier lists revolve on around how they play. I use hackers and snipers to great effect, but the ranger meta is also clearly established. I can't even post on reddit about my meta, the ranger crews get physically angry when I bring up assault rifle rangers. But really, you can make almost everything useful, other than a few skills I think everything has a place. Demolisher comes to mind, but even that is situationally useful if someone takes the time to utilize it. (Preemptively destroying cover before battles start to make enemies run through empty fields). There's always a use.
Demolition - removes high cover (trees) better than frag nades, has that 81% hit chance anywhere in line of sight, that can be a blessing more than a curse if you keep your grenadiers further back and leave the closer high cover spots for rangers or specialists. Suppression is reactive, Demolition is proactive and obviously you only use it if you can afford it - if you have multiple enemies to remove cover from use a nade, if it's just single enemy and you got plenty of actions left, save the nades or if the cover is a tree I prefer Demolition to a grenade 9/10. Demolition sees enough play in my games to make it a solid B tier. Shadowstep - I use phantom for scouting in only some situations, in others I get rid of the concealment on the first pod to put all my soldiers to work when it's necessary, so the alternative to this ability basically never ends up mattering all that much since the first triggered pod won't account for the concealed ranger and usually open themselves up to getting flanked by them with just a blue move, ensuring a 100% hit / crit anyway so the value in this is generally 1 shot per mission, because who the hell trades run and gun for concealment. Sometimes enemies take overwatch and having ranger that can still do his shenanigans prior to everyone else is just extra comfort I always take on all my rangers. Blademaster - you won't have enough DPS early on to handle pods with only 3/4 or 4/5 soldiers so you only get a single setup for flanking shot on the first pod and waste the potential of Phantom. 98% for 5-7 damage, saving on ammo, no cooldown and as soon as mission 2-3 in a playthrough is simply insane. Not to mention it hard carries Bladestorm since it deals decent damage in mid-game without spending resources and time on getting sword upgrades. Lightning Hands - you don't have the aim to take advantage of Deadeye until mid to late game so that guarantee damage can help a lot and grants you more kills/mission so you reach higher ranks faster where sharpshooter starts being good with Kill Zone unlock. Implacable - you won't have the HP or Untouchable to risk staying exposed after a flank and you won't have upgraded swords to make use of Bladestorm until late-game pretty much. There is no time for unlocking sword upgrades in my playthroughs unless I'm severely ahead in research. Extra move can save you in a real poorly generated council mission where every single move has to have a ton of value otherwise your squad gets left behind or wiped. You can even scout with it in late-game after securing a kill since you will have the Untouchable next turn, if you know you deal with this pod with 1-2 soldiers the rest can focus on the next pod already. I'd say the council missions are the peak of difficulty aside from the final mission (outside WOTC idk much about it) so anything that helps with that is at least A tier in my book, you even mentioned the value in that when you talked about Hacking on specialists. Also in combination with Unstoppable you can use Implacable as a budget mimic beacon, placing yourself literally in front of lone Andromedon/Sectopod/Archon and know your squad is 100% safe that turn is really nice. Kill Zone - It's the first high dmg AoE potential you'll have access to at rank Captain or lower, but at Major and higher which can be unlocked pretty soon after that I agree it lacks a bit. In regular missions while you wait for psi to train in late-game with 3 free reloads and 6 size mag it doesn't matter even slightly as you can still use Serial and then instead of shoot once take the benefit of shooting multiple times with fresh magazine, but on the final mission where high ground is harder to come by and the free reloads drain prior to the boss room, the shortcomings of sharpshooters became apparent to me and I lost my first run there due to relying too much on this ability that simply didn't do enough for me.
With the right set up, death from above can be OP for snipers. I give my snipers either a spider armor or the serpent ruler armor to reposition. And with the Chosen sniper rifle, you only need 1 action to shoot. So you can keep shooting as long as you're able to keep killing. Which is generally not too hard, especially if you have things like ap rounds.
I pretty much agree with everything here, and your ramble about grenades being limited is probably my biggest pet peeve in the game; the specialized ones you have to research yeah that makes sense for balancing, but grenadiers only being able to carry three mundane ones is just disappointing. Another reason I'd put demolition last is because missed shots damage cover, so even if you're unlucky trying to hit an enemy behind cover odds are the rest of the squad won't have to deal with it anyway. Mechs can be targeted with fuse funny enough, which is a nice option since psionics have limited options against robots. Also if void rift rolls insanity it also inflicts schism's rupture debuff. I agree the psionics can trivialize the game between their crowd control and range alone, though do you think they could pull off a 1 man army challenge? The reapers were probably the most disappointing class for me though, yeah their mobility is amazing and they have great utility in timed missions, your rant about the game cheating their stealth early just highlighted why I think of them as worse sharpshooters, that and the reveal chance I'd swear is a lie. Homing mine though makes the next hit against that target guarantied or buffed accuracy regardless if it's the reaper's attack and gets triggered from any attack that connects, so it's better as a setup for an ally out of position, I'd say it's just a better claymore since it makes it reliable in combat with how often they move; where it shines is dropping it on an enemy before take cover, or on an armored target near a car as they'll get hit with both explosions or three if you grenade them. The templars would've been frustrating with all the chance and setup required to be squad support, I agree they're better utilized as bait with rend & parry spam but running around for focus is simply annoying. While you can't make an enemy fall with invert, you can exploit the templar's hazard immunity to set someone on fire with it lol. The only time I got any use out of exchange was on a rescue mission and a wounded ally got ambushed by a faceless.
I love and hate templar. In early game its a borderline punching bag, on the other hand a late game bladestorm templar makes your squad feel useless as it solos full missions.
On top of shadow step not being useful, it’s arguably a worse version of the Lightning Reflexes ability in Xcom EU, because you can’t waste the enemies Overwatch for free like you can with Lightning Reflexes
It's situational. It has uses for positioning since LR only burns one overwatch. You could in theory reposition with shadowstep and remove multiple overwatches at once. It has a niche.
The Reaper ability i would say is an easy S-tier if u get it as an XCOM ability on a Templar. U combo that with the Arc wave passive and u can chip away at high hp enemys while at the same time setup multiple kills. Or instead of focus fire your squad on specific units u fire once on every unit and then use the Reaper and Arc Wave combo from your Templar to just clean up.
beta striking with skirmisher and as many reaction shots as possible feels like a pretty concrete later-game setup, peculiarly with longwatch and threat assessment, where you can give your lone skirmisher several, stacked reaction shots on top of max defense. on top of a hunker-down, they're practically unkillable (presuming an enemy doesn't decide to random just use an AoE, which - they really shouldn't).
I've never seen a serious player advocate for the ranger's phantom/conceal skills. But I love it because it really shows that every build is viable in this game. If you're able to beat lengendary/commander with it, it's viable!
My first ever templar was the best unit in the game for me, she had blade storm, reaper and fast hands, mixed in with how op her melee abilities were she took out entire pods on her own
Stasis shield is situational. VERY situational. But I had a run where my guy got surrounded by dashing Faceless's. I used stasis shield on them, and then I used the Plasma blaster heavy weapon. Killed everything instantly except for my guy. Was pretty big
Death from above is S+ I build my sharpshooter in such a way that she can vipe whole squads with this and the others on my team just look and do nothing. I have to choose to not shoot with my sniper so that the others can have a go at things.
Man, I feel like Heavy Ordinance, Volatile Mix, and Salvo should be ranked higher, especially if you love Saturation Fire. If you hit 3 enemies with one grenade, that is still 9 damage minimum. Thats before you take into account armor shred, upgraded grenades, cover destruction, and volatile mix. You set yourself up for saturation fire by clearing an area of cover and armor, plus you can do it all in the same turn with salvo
Grenades are pretty good but a limited resource, if grenades were cool downs instead of limited to the number you have I'd rank thier associated abilities higher
@EdwinofEberron I'm just saying grenades are better than you seem to be giving them credit for. Sure, they are limited, but not every turn is going to be a situation that calls for a grenade, especially since grenadiers have to reload more often than other classes. It's when you see grenades as a utility item with the bonus of damage that the items and abilities really shine through. Besides, if you really need more than 3 you can just bring a second grenadier, it's not like that class is dragging the team down
Oh man, Squadsight in E >.< It's definitely S tier at least for me. It combo's so good w/ phantom/reaper, I always keep a sharpshooter and a ranger/reaper on my team if I can. As long as your not on a timer you can just spot enemies from stealth w/ your ranger and then snipe them from across the map at your leisure. Even if there is a timer, for many of them you can stealth up w/ the ranger to clear the timer then re-conceal and get back out. You can take out entire lvls with entirely no risk to any of your soldiers because the enemies won't even know where you are. Even if you don't want to use to just sit back and cheese the game, it is also useful for taking out turrets or if you in a fighting retreat on certain retrieval missions, or anytime your squad might get spread out. But It can be situational so I guess that would knock it down. Also think the combo of pistols w/ ammo is entirely underestimated by most. W/ Lightning hands and Quickdraw comboing into fanfire or face off your getting 5+ attack actions off in a single turn. And while the pistol damage itself isn't the most incredible in the game the multiple applications of ammo bonuses can be insane. You can wipe out entire mech pods with blue screen. Not even considering ammo, compared to something like Rapid fire w/ a Shotgun doing 2x 8-10 damage, 5x 3-6 is still 15-30 damage! You can bump that even further w/ fire/poison/talon rounds. Pistols also don't use ammo so you never have to reload, and they are the best thing for dealing w/ Lost (I know you don't play with them :P) I feel like all these abilities should be in B at least. Look I'm not saying sharpshooters are the best class in the game, but I think they are getting a bit of a bad rap here. I'd say the biggest issue w/ them is they are a bit backloaded in terms of the power curve. They aren't as useful right out the gate as other classes, but if you get them leveled up they can be just as good or better. Otherwise, great list, I think I mostly agree. And yeah, really makes you notice how bad Templars are.
Yeah idk how he can talk constantly about action economy the whole tier list and then sleep on a skill that gives you the power to kill multiple enemies. Same with lighting hands going into D tier. It's literally a free shot. A tier power at least.
Yeah, I learned it from a random blog I found a while back. I can't link it obv, but if you google "XCOM2 blog Vigaroe" you'll see it. That guy goes into extreme detail on pretty much everything in XCOM in general.@@EdwinofEberron
One thing I disagree with is killzone's placement. Unconcealed killzone + a concealed scout of some kind is an amazing way to activate a pod on the enemy turn. I'm not sure how often it can be utilised during normal missions, but anything without a timer is just amazing for that combo. That said, I haven't done much legendary/4-man stuff so I don't know how much of an opportunity cost this kind of strategy has in those circumstances. (Edit, also applies to long watch somewhat)
Reaper is an interesting one. If you use grenades or saturation fire then Reaper clean up tremendously. You just have to play into it. If you set up for the domino effect I feel like it's at least A-tier and comes up quite frequently. But if you have to combo it to make it an A or S that is probably a B.
Once used Demolition on a trooper who was using a car as cover, the car blew up, dead trooper, a bit niche. You are right suppression is way tthe better option.
When it comes to sharpshooters. Yes. They are not bad for speed. However they are really powerful at max levels. What you should do with a sharpshooter is to find a place that gives good sight over most of the map so they do not have to move and use their ranged to an advantage. - Squadsight is not bad. During levels you want to place them high up on buildings to give them a aim buff but more importantly good vision over large areas. Squadsight allow them to attack halfway across the map, and at higher levels the aim penalty is almost negated. - Lightning Hands is actually a pretty good ability. You say it is bad because it is free damage on a cool down, and treat that as a bad thing. IT IS FREE DAMAGE FFS! It is always good for action economy. You do not have to use it to pick of weak enemies. You can use it to weaken an enemy so the next attack is a kill shot. Picking off weak enemies is also great since you do not want to waste heavy attacks on a enemy with 2 or 4 health left. Is it better than Deadeye? Yes and no. Early game where Deadeye is weaker. Lightning Hands is better. But Deadeye is better at late game. Getting both is 100% a good thing. If you bring a sharpshooter, you might as well get them with Lightning hands as well. - Death from Above is 100% not a bad ability for a sharpshooter. Yes. They are only refunded 1 action point. But that action point can be used to reload at no cost. Better to reload at the end of a turn than taking a whole turn to do it. You also unlock a really OP playstyle with it when you get the Hunters Darklance. Because Darklance only require 1 action point to be fired, this means that any kill that trigger Death from Above will allow you to shoot again. And after that shot DfA is triggered again, and again, and again. It is a free Serial ability but without the cooldown and at much lower levels. I use this a lot when I play the game as if a soldier fail to kill an enemy, but is within the lethal damage of a sharpshooter. The DfA ability ensure the sharpshooter can shoot again after that. And even if other classes can use this ability better than the sharpshooter does not mean it is a bad perk. Consider what you have to pick instead. Quickdraw which is not as good imho. Sharpshooters should be placed at a good location and not move much unless they have to.
I don't disagree with those, I just happen to play with 4 units only on legend Ironman, and that makes the sharpshooter harder to set up for me, regardless having used them more as of recently I would rank lightning hands a bit higher
Squadsight is s+ to me because it completely trivializes rulers. Frost bomb from out of line of sight, keep vision with a concealed unit, and snipe down the ruler 100 to 0. Because the shots come from out of LOS, it doesn’t trigger their action. You can skip turn with the rest of your units (who are also LOS). It’s so strong it’s basically cheating - so understandable to not use it - but I think that makes it s+
Just about the point where grenades fall off late game. I agree with that, but you should still bring them because a grenadier with frost grenades can be pretty good. If used on basic enemies you can shut them down for the whole next turn, which allows you to focus on something more important if you triggered to many pods at once. It have saved me a couple of times.
Bladestorm is an absolute S+ tier for me. However, bladestorm isn't a solo ability. It needs Blademaster for the extra 10 aim, Run and gun to get in there, untouchable to get invulnerable after a kill, and implacable to park yourself next to the second enemy. It's part of a melee build. Of course, judging things with a 4 man squad is different from a 6 man squad where you can afford a melee focus member.
You can make null lance go straight then go left one box, straight then one left box so it's easier to hit multiple units. The range is nuts plus it does 9-14. I one shot most stuff w it. Void rift is nuts when you get the ability to rupture and do damage with insanity. It goes to 10 damage in a decent aoe. To keep it short psy ops are op
Darklance with death from above is real good. darklance only uses one action. obviously, its late game. you need to completely kill the hunter after all
Now I believe I do something wrong... 3 pods are just annoying not squad wipe. I would put air burst grenades, volatile mix and flashbang I don't see myself not being able to deal with 3 pods I even deal with 4. Putting the face-off skill of my snipers to use and using chain kill skills only trouble is mechanical units cannot be flashed but there aren't many in the early game. My kill per turn is around 1.6 to 3.8 just because I use extended timers and don't have to rush to objectives (I hate missions with timers to begin with) I chained 4 kills with serial then missed and 8 kills with reaper. That's 3 soldiers used and the remaining 3 just shot at what's left behind (mostly andromedon shells and sectopods.)
Its interesting that you hate Templars. For me and my playstyle, a Templar lieutenant onwards racks up so many kills. Part of that is requiring that they access Bladestorn, but even still they regularly deal high damage with amazing defensive capabilities with Parry and Deflect. I rarely spend Focus, as I prioritise filling it out for higher damage and dodge chance.
I'm with you on Lightning Hands. That's free damage. Deadeye gives you 50% more damage but at a significant aim penalty, but lightning hand has the same opportunity cost. Lightning hands also lets a sharpshooter deal with a close range threat they normally can't, without wasting their sniper shot. The cooldown isn't an issue because you don't always need it, but since it has no action cost it's just gravy. No ammo cost either which is nice, whereas deadeye is slightly less ammo efficient due to the miss chance. Two pistol shots on a turn lets you do a move and attack - which you normally can't really do as a sniper. The key there is that you aren't wasting a turn moving, even if you're taking a sub-optimal turn you're still contributing every turn. Considering it can proc things like rupture and uses unique pistols like dark claw too, it's pretty useful. It rivals Deadeye naturally and you have to choose that, but I find early on Lightning Hands is much more useful until you have aim bonus's. Deadeye definitely becomes awesome late-game, but to me, lightning hands is so good early and personally I'm really against taking aim penalties in general. But sharpshooters are a specific meta in Xcom 2, I find there's a staunch camp that wants to aggress with Rangers and Shotguns - and I use assault rifles with them and people think I'm a blasphemer. The toughest missions you have to be aggressive, and tunnel missions are harder - but l've found an interesting meta with Hacking and Snipers. If enemies are crazy far away and your reaper sets up, you can complete controversial objectives by spotting with Reaper - and drawing enemies across the map with Snipers with squad sight and going for hack's. This lets you cleverly avoid scenario's you'd normally have to rush in with Reapers and keep pace. One other benefit to Sharpshooters and Specialists is really subtle - they don't often get as damaged as Grenadiers and Rangers, making them easier to continuously use mission after mission. Dark Claw offsets this a bit since you can ignore the upgrades for a long time though - if you're only babying 1 sniper, like a hacker, it sort of makes them better since you can spend all your science and upgrades on other playstyles. Though the cost of upgrading sharpshooters and pistols is definitely a factor, which rewards people to pick a style and stick to it, so... there's definitely a world economy advantage to dead eye, since you can just neglect your pistol entirely and still be in the butter zone, which is the secret reason why pistol-only sharpshooters tend not to be played. There's some interesting meta with Hunker Down + Quick Fire + Aid, allowing a sharpshooter to be a front liner with a unique meta, but that's getting into a whole 'nother thing. But like he said - even D tier is still useful, there's a lot of good abilities in xcom. I really appreciate how tight the meta is too, I've seen a lot of interesting meta play out because combinations make people viable, and 1 secret skill can totally change a whole class. Getting a lucky Sharpshooter with a crazy skill like Run n' Gun or something makes you really "think" about the opportunities.
Late game is all rangers and support for me. Grenadiers drop off and snipers. Well I take one with the best magazine upgrade and the best scope upgrade on certain mission types. Other than that they all sit at home twiddling their thumbs
@@Qlicky I've seen UA-camrs dominate with sharp shooters. So I do get your point. I've had a ranger clear half a map with Bladestorm cross trained with Ever Vigilant or similar. Take the obvious chokepoint leading to the rest of your team, and wait. And it wasn't even my turn. One mob after another attacking and getting cut down. I think my record for overwatch Bladestorm kills is 8 in one turn with one Ranger. It's like a fight scene from Kill Bill!! I enjoyed that (though in most games I prefer ranged weapons)
@@PaulRoneClarke Depends on what difficulty you play on. What you're describing is pretty much impossible on legend unless you use all of your remaining soldiers to soften up enemies. On legend difficulty there are very few enemies late game a ranger can one-shot with his blade. Chryssalids for example have 13 life on legend compared to 8 on normal. They also have 20 dodge compared to 10 on normal. I believe the best blade weapon in the game (Katana) can only do 11-12 damage with a crit. Rangers can miss with other blade weapons too while a 130+ aim sharpshooter is pretty much guaranteed to hit vast majority of enemies, even behind cover. A sharpshooter with bluescreen rounds and height advantage can deal like 100 damage in a single turn. Late game sharpshooters are so good that bringing 2 of them makes the encounters trivial.
I honestly feel like shredder is at best C tier. I know that may be a hot take but like best case scenario for it is: You hit a high armour target, shred 3 armour. Then two allies hit the target for a total of +6 damage. Which is... okay but not that great. After that the target should be dead. If shredder applied to the initial damage it would be S tier for sure. Also, between AP rounds and armour bypass chosen weapons and grenades it just seems very meh.
Demolition is almost useless - except when an early/mid game group of aliens decides to take cover behind a car, and for that reason alone it outclasses suppression.
Squadsight is NOT bad on timers; what's bad on timers is normal sniper rifles because they take two actions to shoot, making all Sharpshooters bad on timer missions, until you obtain chosen's rifle. And the aim penalty is not that much. So squadsight is actually good, like low B tier or at least C. One reason to put it lower is that it sucks completely on Reapers, while diluting their XCom skill tree with a "chance to fail" (chance to replace potential Shredder or Rigging). Because of this, im thinking C tier
Death from above surely does not deserve the hate if you just hate sharpshooters... its a good skill for them. The most obvious good use for it is to catch up with the rest of the squad, improving their viability on timed missions. Additionally, an action granting skill (probably Teamwork) may be used on Sharpshooter after Death from Above to grant him or her a second sniper rifle shot, and with hunter's rifle Death from Above just becomes op.
would rather deal damage then heal. combat protocol guaranteed damage is much better than a heal because damage is proactive while heal is reactive. easy way to think about it is if you do enough damage healing becomes unnecessary cause you win and extract or don't take any damage at all
@@ninegaggleofgeese7405 imo i get combat protocol after upgraded drones early on rather trust in the stocks, healing is great against purifiers and vipers
I recently decided to do the Legende Ironman challenge and i've tried to pass the first 3 missions but somehow my agents are missing 85% shots and ennemies are hitting me behind full cover with Crits making the challenge LITERALLY Impossible.. I've tried to play extremely careful in positionning but they always seem to have the upperhand in EVERY scenarios... Seems rigged, it's really frustrating.
Missing those shots are going to happen more frequently on legend, not sure if this is the case, but I heard on lower difficulties the hit percentages are not accurate and the game "skews" the results to make it feel more fair
@@EdwinofEberron it does, on rookie your chance to his is multiplied by 1.2 but the game doesnt tell you that, its also increase by 1.1 on veteran, you also get an addtional 10 aim for each consecutive miss up to a max of 95% chance, but only on shots that display a 50% or higher chance to hit. they even have that missed shots mechanic on commander difficulty, and its boosted to +15% per miss, but no other aim shenanigans are at play. its only on legend that the game stops fudging the results in your favour, but its also the point where the game decides its okay to let all enemies attack which is unfortunate because they boosted the average enemy count on each map by about 25% to 33% among other minor buffs like advent soldiers going from 70 to 75 aim, meaning even hunkering down in full cover doesnt fully negate their chance to hit you.
@EdwinofEberron you probably play at higher difficulty. I'm still learning so for me on vet the ranger fully bladed up seems to work wonders and not get himself into too much trouble. I could do every mission with at least 2. Using implaccable and untouchhable like a mimic beacon/bait is really good. Trying also to play with bladestorm in corners or chokepoin
I play legend, ironman 4 units only, so it does skew my rankings, use to play rangers more blade focused but i kept running into more trouble as i cranked up the difficulty
I respect that you made video about but putting without time stamps is very bad because I bet a lot of people will not watch full video because they want to know opinion on specific ability. Just like with your list about enemies.
Plays so much and still doesn't know the details of this game. Suppression is bugged, the game calculates the defense of the enemy behind cover when your guy takes the "overwatch" shot. So it's worse than taking a low percentage shot because with the overwatch penalty. If the defense of the enemy was calculated correctly when it leaves cover yes, it would be useful. But it's not.
![Red Alert 2: Luxury | 1 vs 7 Brutal AI | Superweapons [On]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/G7uA8ng-owc/mqdefault.jpg)
A Disclaimer - These rankings reflect my personal experience of these abilities not only in general but in 4Man/Legend/Ironman runs as well
I honestly love that people are still making Xcom 2 content
Timeless game
It's like the darkest dungeon and halo. Sometimes I just complete it at least once a year. Timeless.
I am playing it for the first time now. Was kinda numb on the games I had so I decided to buy and play wotc.
Starting playing at 1pm, check clock again: 8pm, holy shit I have a dinner in 20m, amazing game. I started on legendary level and it's the hardest game I have ever played lol
I’ve finally done commander Ironman. Trying impossible Ironman.
Such a good game, love games I can’t beat. Endless replay-ability.
@@misanthropicservitorofmars2116 I can do C/I or L, get my ass whooped by L/I though. Though after watching this guy a bit I think I might be able to do it
It's an amazing game
Bladestorm is the only reason I don't fear chrissilids
*miss*
Dodge: Grazed
@@J4ckmaestrolaughs in assassin katana
Don't fear the chrysalids
Chrysalids in xcom 2 are babies compared to xcom 1 chrysalids.
By the time you meet them you’re packin.
Bladestorm Templar is ridiculously powerful
It's good to the point you feel cheated when you are dealt a templar who doesn't get it. I honestly think it should be one of its CORE talents.
Straight dump a temp if I don't get one on it
My 2 main disagreements with this list would be lighting hands and reaper. Which is weird because i have the same opinion for both. Its strange that he spends the whole time going on about action economy but then put the free lighting hands into D tier. Thats crazy. And similar to reaper. It gives you the abilty to clear out multiple hostiles with 1 soldier which can dramatically turn the tide of a fight so you have less enemies shooting back at you next turn. Even if you just use it for weakened enemy cleanup. Id much rather have 3 dead enemies that arent gonna fire at me than say 2 weak and 1 dead enemy at the end of my turn. Reaper Templar is god mode.
bro i love how specific this tier list is xD I'm playing legendary heavily modded and hearing you rank slash, lightning hands, and bladestorm so low was a blast
the sharpshooter hate hurts me
Lol yea I'm a hater, I love pistol builds though if I get venom or dragonfire rounds
Yeah, I love sharpshooter - I get that it's not exactly the most versatile class but it's so satisfying if it works out tactically.
@@n0xure sharpshooter is an investment, but they feel so good when you get them online and they pick off damn near any enemy you want whilst so far away that said soldier is basically immune
Also pair it with a scouting reaper and many enemies (especially on non-timer missions) never stand a chance as they get picked off from a mile away
Real talk, Sharpshooters need scopes and perception PCS to snipe the way they did in the old days, but god fucking damn it's worth it
@@NyanDiamondjust hate how much using them effectively slows down the game . Could just blitz everything with cover removal and rangers in 7 turns . I don’t even touch sharpshooters until I have the dark lance so I can move and shoot in the same turn .
Fwiw, death from above is also nuts on sharpshooter *if* you get the hunter's rifle. It's 1 AP to shoot so now you're chaining kills like every other class but at a longer range with loads of aim etc to make it consistent. Now I understand that you don't often want to go for chosen fights but between that and the juiced pistol the hunter is great value if you can pull it off. Worth keeping in mind at least. Great list otherwise, was super interesting.
Squadsight is absolutely broken if you end up in an avenger defence mission and have a reaper. You can just destroy all the siege vehicles from across the map and stop the mission timer.
He did say it's quite good for hitting objectives. That's what he meant by "situational"
Lol the damn turrets u have set up can shoot the vehicles
Slash and blademaster kicks ass for new recruits. They can't hit the broadside of a barn, but make excellent Cannon fodder that run in, slash a important enemy, take a hit or two then die for the glory of mankind.
I just love Shinobi class in Lwotc for that reason and always bring one or two with me for each mission as they expire quick but are super easy to train and just get full power almost immediately as all you need is bladestorm and their good to go.
Bladestorm > my first born
You're confusing Void Rift with the commander's large AOE in the final mission. Void Rift only does damage once, however it then casts Insanity on all enemies hit. If you upgraded your Insanity with Schism, you'll do extra damage and rupture everybody, in addition to whatever insanity the enemies experience.
Thanks for the correction
Insanity is only a chance to void rift, although it does have a high chance to happen
Killzone and covering fire combo is absolutely devastating for using as ambush or at the end of the turn
When you watch this understand that the list is made from the point of view of someone who plays insane challenge runs where he hits his head over and over against a wall until it breaks. Doing a four man legend ironman run has to rely on a lot of reaction skills so he values things like guardian way more than you would if you play normal 6 man campaigns. His defensive play style is absolutely inferior to alpha strike since it relies heavily on rng but the health pool of the enemies in the mid and late game is designed around a six man team and you simply can't alpha strike every pod with four guys. You can blow your cooldowns on one or two but you run out of consumables and single use abilities by the third. So he has to use overwatch traps and such like despite how infuriating XCOM 2 rng can be sometimes. For us mere mortals who play the game normally this list is meaningless more or less.
When this guy talks about a melee ability, I feel like he never used a templar...
And when he talks about sharpshooter skills, I feel like he hates that class to death...
They're harder to use on no squadsize upgrade runs, running 4 units is what I play by default
@@EdwinofEberron I understand that the sharpshooter is difficult to use playing with four soldiers, but the templar? At least in my experience it is one of the classes that performs best on its own.
The Templar is fine, but using slash to do melee damage increases the risk of activating another pod, not something I can afford in this trying time
Very thorough ranking for the most part, but I do have to say that I think you were too focused on the idea of having a squad composed entirely of the same class, which has affected your judgement of certain abilities.
One that sticks out to me is homing mine. This ability allows the reaper to attach the claymore to a unit, which can then be triggered when that unit is fired upon, allowing you to deal damage with the shot and the claymore simultaneously. When ranking this you were assuming that you had an all reaper squad and had to maintain stealth and thus you ranked this ability relatively low because you'd have to fire on an enemy. Whereas if you were running a standard squad with say a reaper, ranger, grenadier, sharpshooter, specialist and skirmisher then this issue would never even cross your mind. Of course you would use homing mine to trigger the claymore because one of your other units will shoot the claymore or even the reaper because you've still got the firepower to take on the rest of the mission out of stealth.
True, although most cases if a mine is being thrown it's to aoe a pod, most likely I would trigger it with a grenade anyway, I'll need more experience, only used it in one playthrough
actually, if your shot+claymore kills combined, does that still give the roll or does it proc Silent killer?
I just started playing XCOM2 WOTC a week ago and I gotta say finding your vids helped me a lot! As a new player, hearing you talk about the different utilities and use cases of abilities, items, etc did help me quite a lot already!
Death from above is actually quite solid for Snipers as generally you are planting them on any high elevation (as you can easily get sharp shooters to 100% no matter the squadsight penalty)
and you can use the extra turn to reposition if need be, use a bond on said sharpshooter to give them an extra sniper shot, reload for effectively infinite clip, or just the aforementioned pistol shot to finish off a low health target
Nice list. I agree with almost all of the tiers except a few. I’d like to make a case for 4 abilities you ranked very low: Killzone, Deep Cover, Aid Protocol, Aim
Killzone.
On Sharpshooters (or any class, really) setup the Killzone in concealment before triggering an ambush. Like a standard overwatch this gives you overwatch shots on the whole pod during your turn AND another round of overwatch shots on the enemy turn. Best used in longer range where the cone is wider.
Deep Cover:
+30 cover, +50 dodge
A ranger ability this can be useful for scout types especially with light armour types (+75 dodge total) Useful for a decoy move moving a ranger to draw fire, outflank, pursue a VIP or move to heal a squad mate.
Deep cover on Sharpshooter with Aim:
Reposition with a dash and get cover bonus, dodge bonus and +20 aim the next shot. Add in Death from Above and use the extra action for Hunker Down to reproc aim. Or to reload.
Deep Cover on Support: This can be a crazy build. Use a scope and stock, Perception PCS, have ever vigilant, covering fire, guardian. Especially in arena scenarios, dash this support to a flanking move. This triggers Deep Cover and Ever vigilant. You now have a cover bonus, dodge bonus, critical overwatch ability with potential multiproc.
Aid Protocol:
I think you forgot this scales with the drone. So it’s +20, +30, +40 defense. So the equivalent of hardcover even for a squadmate in the open. 2 Specialists can basically keep this bonus ongoing for the tip of the spear squadmate.
Killzone (And long watch also) is even better outside of concealment than the strat you mention here. Because you can have a concealed scout and an unconcealed sniper, this lets you take shots at the enemy during their turn and they are unable to respond with anything at all. You only get the 1 shot per unit this way, but the enemy gets no actions on their turn and you can often easily clean them up without much effort.
Bonus points if you line up other soldiers just out of LoS and overwatch them too so when the sniper aggros the pod and they all charge in your entire team (minus the scout) is shooting. Its a full ambush that is even better because the enemy doesn't even get a turn afterwards.
@@Thundawich Yup, that’s another way to use it.
Ever vigilant is very valuable ability as it allows you to move maximum distance and use owerwatch plus combined with another one that allows to trigger multiple shots while owerwatching really good. Not top tier for sure but should be somewhere around A-B tier
Agreed, not bad, it's just one of those skills that don't fit into my plays
@@EdwinofEberron I usually have it on my engineers combined with mag capacity upgrade or warlock rifle
Happened upon the videos, didn't think there was almost anyone really making long form content on the game anymore. Cool to see, good video.
run and gun felt essential back in EU when the Objective timers were incredibly tight and there were tons of units to slow you/bog you down, sometimes it really does come down to that clutch last turn dashing onto the bomb adjacient tile and getting an action to disarm it for example.
Oh yea, felt like I got more use of it back then, especially when enemy pods ran back into the fog
One advantage of staying back with squad sight is that if you ever decide to put up a kill zone cone, your cone area of effect will be ENORMOUS!
Combat Presence is strictly better than Inspire: does NOT end turn and works on SPARKS. Additionally, the class bringing their own Grappling Hooks makes it easier to get into LOS to preferred target ally.
I just started playing this gem bc is free on ps5. Holy crap...what a great deep combat system imo. I have gotten into turn based combat again thanks to bg3, but this may be the best ive played
I personally liked Squadsight despite it was almost kinda unfair in early game when most of your soldiers has poor aim stats and limited weapon upgrades, but if you already have tracer rounds, scope, and PCS aim it will be OP most of the time, Sharpshooter's aim with covert ops and at that point your Sharpshooter would negate squadsight aim penalty
Yea if I have the option to buy a sniper in the late game from the market I often do to skip that early game slog
@@EdwinofEberron understandable, early game soldier poor aim is awful
Great tier list! Finally someone who doesn't endlessly shittalk specialists haha they are a great class!
Specialist is slowly moving up the ranks in my list.
Almost every other unit has some sort of substitute except for the specialist (maybe the PSI units do not?)
I honestly like throwing flashbangs on my grenadiers, just for that sweet disorientation debuff on a critical target.
That's a solid strategy
Void rift is so much more, it casts insanity on any enemy that is prone to psyonic. So it can translate to panic, mind control, and desorientation as well as applying schism on 3 enemies. Pretty much squadwipe for regular enemy group.
Wow, yea i forgot how much it actually does, been so long since I've used them
Slash is a bit scary, yes, but the benefit is the accuracy is usually really high, very often 100 percent, and if you do have untouchable and you have a Templar with parry/reflect/deflect and such, even if you do trigger another pod, they'll usually tank it just fine, and if that's not available there's always mimic beacon.
Also, some of these abilities have to be thought of as parts of a whole build. A grenadier with blast padding, a WAR Suit, and such where you're stacking tons of armor is going to be able to tank through so much. Same with sharpshooter and lightning hands, quick draw, return fire, fan fire, faceoff, death from above, sure one shot of a pistol doesn't do much, but it's going to be able to shoot so many times in a round, it doesn't matter, and it doesn't use any ammo at all!
Mimic beacon. Breaks the game and removes any danger
Best ability in the game
Makes the game soooo ez and boring
@@abd-animation-22 Honestly, you're not wrong.
I apparently like Deep Cover more than everyone else. It’s basically a passive benefit. If I don’t attack that turn, I get a hunker down for free. It’s not powerful, but it’s just free defense that makes it safe to move to otherwise sketchy positions.
If you can manage to get Deep Cover and Aim together it’s actually fairly strong. Any turn you don’t attack, you get the hunker down and +20 aim the next turn as a passive benefit.
Deep cover and aim together, does sound pretty good, I do think most people like overwatching between pods (at least I do) for the free attack potential
I may be wrong but I think Deep Cover still triggers when you overwatch. Been a while since I had it.
Its a shame that Deep Cover and Ever Vigilant are mutually exclusive (one cancels out the other)
@@NyanDiamond im sure theirs a mod for that
I agree with most of the list, but for me shadow is the most broken ability in the game, with good positioning it basically negates surprise pods. A reaper with 2 sharpshooters is the core of my squads
In that scenario it would be yea, it's not a combo I use
Killzone on pod activations is S+ tier. Pair with squad sight and killzone can cover most of the map. It’s almost as good as saturation fire if you run it right.
Also squad sight is killer with a stealthed ally providing vision - can kill a whole map with 0 risk of getting shot.
Also steady hands stacks so well with the above.
Thanks, epic list. Would have liked to see Spark abilities too if u get a chance. Lastly I think squadsight is God tier vs Rulers if you have a cloaked unit scouting. Removes all danger essentially and if I am up against a ruler site 2 good snipers with squadsight and a claymore reaper to reveal and perhaps open a wall for vision and its done. Even just for taking out pods with them not being able to react it's great. Obviously better on some map types than others.
Launch grenade is much higher for me, simply because 1. early it carries the squad 2. later it carries the squad. One grenade from the distance then everyone has a clear shot with the other powerful abilities that need to hit against multiple enemies. Also shreds. It's not good standalone but needed to many other things. Makes good use of various special grenades too. And gives extra usage so not one time use like rockets, etc.
I do feel like squadsight along with sniping in general was way underappreciated. Ive had countless times where my snipers get a dead shot kill on a squads sight from high ground far back. Qnd all their abilitites in general are quite strong
I agree.
The range makes them so valuable when you're hassling an enemy across the map. They rely on the Reaper a great deal to spot, but they can take objectives and deadeye, since it doesn't miss an objective, is really useful for doing that at speed.
But XCOM 2 is pretty well balanced, so people's tier lists revolve on around how they play.
I use hackers and snipers to great effect, but the ranger meta is also clearly established. I can't even post on reddit about my meta, the ranger crews get physically angry when I bring up assault rifle rangers.
But really, you can make almost everything useful, other than a few skills I think everything has a place. Demolisher comes to mind, but even that is situationally useful if someone takes the time to utilize it. (Preemptively destroying cover before battles start to make enemies run through empty fields). There's always a use.
Demolition - removes high cover (trees) better than frag nades, has that 81% hit chance anywhere in line of sight, that can be a blessing more than a curse if you keep your grenadiers further back and leave the closer high cover spots for rangers or specialists. Suppression is reactive, Demolition is proactive and obviously you only use it if you can afford it - if you have multiple enemies to remove cover from use a nade, if it's just single enemy and you got plenty of actions left, save the nades or if the cover is a tree I prefer Demolition to a grenade 9/10. Demolition sees enough play in my games to make it a solid B tier.
Shadowstep - I use phantom for scouting in only some situations, in others I get rid of the concealment on the first pod to put all my soldiers to work when it's necessary, so the alternative to this ability basically never ends up mattering all that much since the first triggered pod won't account for the concealed ranger and usually open themselves up to getting flanked by them with just a blue move, ensuring a 100% hit / crit anyway so the value in this is generally 1 shot per mission, because who the hell trades run and gun for concealment. Sometimes enemies take overwatch and having ranger that can still do his shenanigans prior to everyone else is just extra comfort I always take on all my rangers.
Blademaster - you won't have enough DPS early on to handle pods with only 3/4 or 4/5 soldiers so you only get a single setup for flanking shot on the first pod and waste the potential of Phantom. 98% for 5-7 damage, saving on ammo, no cooldown and as soon as mission 2-3 in a playthrough is simply insane. Not to mention it hard carries Bladestorm since it deals decent damage in mid-game without spending resources and time on getting sword upgrades.
Lightning Hands - you don't have the aim to take advantage of Deadeye until mid to late game so that guarantee damage can help a lot and grants you more kills/mission so you reach higher ranks faster where sharpshooter starts being good with Kill Zone unlock.
Implacable - you won't have the HP or Untouchable to risk staying exposed after a flank and you won't have upgraded swords to make use of Bladestorm until late-game pretty much. There is no time for unlocking sword upgrades in my playthroughs unless I'm severely ahead in research. Extra move can save you in a real poorly generated council mission where every single move has to have a ton of value otherwise your squad gets left behind or wiped. You can even scout with it in late-game after securing a kill since you will have the Untouchable next turn, if you know you deal with this pod with 1-2 soldiers the rest can focus on the next pod already. I'd say the council missions are the peak of difficulty aside from the final mission (outside WOTC idk much about it) so anything that helps with that is at least A tier in my book, you even mentioned the value in that when you talked about Hacking on specialists. Also in combination with Unstoppable you can use Implacable as a budget mimic beacon, placing yourself literally in front of lone Andromedon/Sectopod/Archon and know your squad is 100% safe that turn is really nice.
Kill Zone - It's the first high dmg AoE potential you'll have access to at rank Captain or lower, but at Major and higher which can be unlocked pretty soon after that I agree it lacks a bit. In regular missions while you wait for psi to train in late-game with 3 free reloads and 6 size mag it doesn't matter even slightly as you can still use Serial and then instead of shoot once take the benefit of shooting multiple times with fresh magazine, but on the final mission where high ground is harder to come by and the free reloads drain prior to the boss room, the shortcomings of sharpshooters became apparent to me and I lost my first run there due to relying too much on this ability that simply didn't do enough for me.
With the right set up, death from above can be OP for snipers. I give my snipers either a spider armor or the serpent ruler armor to reposition. And with the Chosen sniper rifle, you only need 1 action to shoot. So you can keep shooting as long as you're able to keep killing. Which is generally not too hard, especially if you have things like ap rounds.
Lightning hands has always saved me in a pinch
Having used it more recently, I agree, it could have gone a bit higher
I pretty much agree with everything here, and your ramble about grenades being limited is probably my biggest pet peeve in the game; the specialized ones you have to research yeah that makes sense for balancing, but grenadiers only being able to carry three mundane ones is just disappointing.
Another reason I'd put demolition last is because missed shots damage cover, so even if you're unlucky trying to hit an enemy behind cover odds are the rest of the squad won't have to deal with it anyway.
Mechs can be targeted with fuse funny enough, which is a nice option since psionics have limited options against robots. Also if void rift rolls insanity it also inflicts schism's rupture debuff. I agree the psionics can trivialize the game between their crowd control and range alone, though do you think they could pull off a 1 man army challenge?
The reapers were probably the most disappointing class for me though, yeah their mobility is amazing and they have great utility in timed missions, your rant about the game cheating their stealth early just highlighted why I think of them as worse sharpshooters, that and the reveal chance I'd swear is a lie. Homing mine though makes the next hit against that target guarantied or buffed accuracy regardless if it's the reaper's attack and gets triggered from any attack that connects, so it's better as a setup for an ally out of position, I'd say it's just a better claymore since it makes it reliable in combat with how often they move; where it shines is dropping it on an enemy before take cover, or on an armored target near a car as they'll get hit with both explosions or three if you grenade them.
The templars would've been frustrating with all the chance and setup required to be squad support, I agree they're better utilized as bait with rend & parry spam but running around for focus is simply annoying. While you can't make an enemy fall with invert, you can exploit the templar's hazard immunity to set someone on fire with it lol. The only time I got any use out of exchange was on a rescue mission and a wounded ally got ambushed by a faceless.
"I've been made a fool of * become Jamiroquai * ok Manual Override"
I love and hate templar. In early game its a borderline punching bag, on the other hand a late game bladestorm templar makes your squad feel useless as it solos full missions.
On top of shadow step not being useful, it’s arguably a worse version of the Lightning Reflexes ability in Xcom EU, because you can’t waste the enemies Overwatch for free like you can with Lightning Reflexes
It's situational. It has uses for positioning since LR only burns one overwatch. You could in theory reposition with shadowstep and remove multiple overwatches at once. It has a niche.
The Reaper ability i would say is an easy S-tier if u get it as an XCOM ability on a Templar. U combo that with the Arc wave passive and u can chip away at high hp enemys while at the same time setup multiple kills. Or instead of focus fire your squad on specific units u fire once on every unit and then use the Reaper and Arc Wave combo from your Templar to just clean up.
beta striking with skirmisher and as many reaction shots as possible feels like a pretty concrete later-game setup, peculiarly with longwatch and threat assessment, where you can give your lone skirmisher several, stacked reaction shots on top of max defense. on top of a hunker-down, they're practically unkillable (presuming an enemy doesn't decide to random just use an AoE, which - they really shouldn't).
I've never seen a serious player advocate for the ranger's phantom/conceal skills. But I love it because it really shows that every build is viable in this game. If you're able to beat lengendary/commander with it, it's viable!
My first ever templar was the best unit in the game for me, she had blade storm, reaper and fast hands, mixed in with how op her melee abilities were she took out entire pods on her own
I would disagree with about 75% of your placings but the Aid Protocol slander is too far
Stasis shield is situational. VERY situational. But I had a run where my guy got surrounded by dashing Faceless's. I used stasis shield on them, and then I used the Plasma blaster heavy weapon. Killed everything instantly except for my guy. Was pretty big
Untouchable is great because it's protects from any atack, even the AOE, but it's great with blade build, not consealment
I don't agree with a good portion of these placements, but it was still interesting hearing some of your takes on things.
Death from above is S+ I build my sharpshooter in such a way that she can vipe whole squads with this and the others on my team just look and do nothing. I have to choose to not shoot with my sniper so that the others can have a go at things.
Same. I had a sharpshooter on my last run that could wipe full pods just on her own. Love ya “Top Notch”
Man, I feel like Heavy Ordinance, Volatile Mix, and Salvo should be ranked higher, especially if you love Saturation Fire. If you hit 3 enemies with one grenade, that is still 9 damage minimum. Thats before you take into account armor shred, upgraded grenades, cover destruction, and volatile mix. You set yourself up for saturation fire by clearing an area of cover and armor, plus you can do it all in the same turn with salvo
Grenades are pretty good but a limited resource, if grenades were cool downs instead of limited to the number you have I'd rank thier associated abilities higher
@EdwinofEberron I'm just saying grenades are better than you seem to be giving them credit for. Sure, they are limited, but not every turn is going to be a situation that calls for a grenade, especially since grenadiers have to reload more often than other classes. It's when you see grenades as a utility item with the bonus of damage that the items and abilities really shine through. Besides, if you really need more than 3 you can just bring a second grenadier, it's not like that class is dragging the team down
Oh man, Squadsight in E >.<
It's definitely S tier at least for me. It combo's so good w/ phantom/reaper, I always keep a sharpshooter and a ranger/reaper on my team if I can. As long as your not on a timer you can just spot enemies from stealth w/ your ranger and then snipe them from across the map at your leisure. Even if there is a timer, for many of them you can stealth up w/ the ranger to clear the timer then re-conceal and get back out. You can take out entire lvls with entirely no risk to any of your soldiers because the enemies won't even know where you are. Even if you don't want to use to just sit back and cheese the game, it is also useful for taking out turrets or if you in a fighting retreat on certain retrieval missions, or anytime your squad might get spread out. But It can be situational so I guess that would knock it down.
Also think the combo of pistols w/ ammo is entirely underestimated by most. W/ Lightning hands and Quickdraw comboing into fanfire or face off your getting 5+ attack actions off in a single turn. And while the pistol damage itself isn't the most incredible in the game the multiple applications of ammo bonuses can be insane. You can wipe out entire mech pods with blue screen. Not even considering ammo, compared to something like Rapid fire w/ a Shotgun doing 2x 8-10 damage, 5x 3-6 is still 15-30 damage! You can bump that even further w/ fire/poison/talon rounds. Pistols also don't use ammo so you never have to reload, and they are the best thing for dealing w/ Lost (I know you don't play with them :P)
I feel like all these abilities should be in B at least. Look I'm not saying sharpshooters are the best class in the game, but I think they are getting a bit of a bad rap here. I'd say the biggest issue w/ them is they are a bit backloaded in terms of the power curve. They aren't as useful right out the gate as other classes, but if you get them leveled up they can be just as good or better.
Otherwise, great list, I think I mostly agree. And yeah, really makes you notice how bad Templars are.
Bladestorm my beloved
Reaper is such an insane ability. Imo it’s s+
Yeah idk how he can talk constantly about action economy the whole tier list and then sleep on a skill that gives you the power to kill multiple enemies. Same with lighting hands going into D tier. It's literally a free shot. A tier power at least.
@@VincentVanHalen55 I totally agree
Homing Mine doesn't say it but it also makes the shot you use to detonate it a guaranteed hit.
Really? That's actually sick. That would have put it up on the list, dang
Yeah, I learned it from a random blog I found a while back. I can't link it obv, but if you google "XCOM2 blog Vigaroe" you'll see it. That guy goes into extreme detail on pretty much everything in XCOM in general.@@EdwinofEberron
Banish is my favorite because I scream. I banish you to the shadow realm.
I say it to myself all the time
One thing I disagree with is killzone's placement. Unconcealed killzone + a concealed scout of some kind is an amazing way to activate a pod on the enemy turn. I'm not sure how often it can be utilised during normal missions, but anything without a timer is just amazing for that combo.
That said, I haven't done much legendary/4-man stuff so I don't know how much of an opportunity cost this kind of strategy has in those circumstances. (Edit, also applies to long watch somewhat)
where are this mans subs at
Reaper is an interesting one. If you use grenades or saturation fire then Reaper clean up tremendously. You just have to play into it. If you set up for the domino effect I feel like it's at least A-tier and comes up quite frequently. But if you have to combo it to make it an A or S that is probably a B.
I have had very few time that time saturation fire was useful to me.
Once used Demolition on a trooper who was using a car as cover, the car blew up, dead trooper, a bit niche. You are right suppression is way tthe better option.
so it was basically a jury-rigged remote start?
The only time the Templar's 'exchange' was really useful for me was going against the hunter with the tracking shot after I've taken an action.
I get blast padding for the aesthetic of having armor points. Makes my troop feel like a wall.
When it comes to sharpshooters. Yes. They are not bad for speed. However they are really powerful at max levels. What you should do with a sharpshooter is to find a place that gives good sight over most of the map so they do not have to move and use their ranged to an advantage.
- Squadsight is not bad. During levels you want to place them high up on buildings to give them a aim buff but more importantly good vision over large areas. Squadsight allow them to attack halfway across the map, and at higher levels the aim penalty is almost negated.
- Lightning Hands is actually a pretty good ability. You say it is bad because it is free damage on a cool down, and treat that as a bad thing. IT IS FREE DAMAGE FFS! It is always good for action economy. You do not have to use it to pick of weak enemies. You can use it to weaken an enemy so the next attack is a kill shot. Picking off weak enemies is also great since you do not want to waste heavy attacks on a enemy with 2 or 4 health left. Is it better than Deadeye? Yes and no. Early game where Deadeye is weaker. Lightning Hands is better. But Deadeye is better at late game. Getting both is 100% a good thing. If you bring a sharpshooter, you might as well get them with Lightning hands as well.
- Death from Above is 100% not a bad ability for a sharpshooter. Yes. They are only refunded 1 action point. But that action point can be used to reload at no cost. Better to reload at the end of a turn than taking a whole turn to do it. You also unlock a really OP playstyle with it when you get the Hunters Darklance. Because Darklance only require 1 action point to be fired, this means that any kill that trigger Death from Above will allow you to shoot again. And after that shot DfA is triggered again, and again, and again. It is a free Serial ability but without the cooldown and at much lower levels. I use this a lot when I play the game as if a soldier fail to kill an enemy, but is within the lethal damage of a sharpshooter. The DfA ability ensure the sharpshooter can shoot again after that. And even if other classes can use this ability better than the sharpshooter does not mean it is a bad perk. Consider what you have to pick instead. Quickdraw which is not as good imho. Sharpshooters should be placed at a good location and not move much unless they have to.
I don't disagree with those, I just happen to play with 4 units only on legend Ironman, and that makes the sharpshooter harder to set up for me, regardless having used them more as of recently I would rank lightning hands a bit higher
Squadsight is s+ to me because it completely trivializes rulers. Frost bomb from out of line of sight, keep vision with a concealed unit, and snipe down the ruler 100 to 0.
Because the shots come from out of LOS, it doesn’t trigger their action. You can skip turn with the rest of your units (who are also LOS).
It’s so strong it’s basically cheating - so understandable to not use it - but I think that makes it s+
Restricting squad size to 4 really hurts Sharpshooter.
I can definitely see why they rate so lowly on the whole given that condition.
Killzone + mimic beacon = win
Just about the point where grenades fall off late game.
I agree with that, but you should still bring them because a grenadier with frost grenades can be pretty good. If used on basic enemies you can shut them down for the whole next turn, which allows you to focus on something more important if you triggered to many pods at once. It have saved me a couple of times.
For sure, I usually try to bring the double frost, great for those pesky andromeddons
Reckoning combos w/ Justice as it's more reliable then shooting after you pull and enemy to you.
Bladestorm is an absolute S+ tier for me. However, bladestorm isn't a solo ability. It needs Blademaster for the extra 10 aim, Run and gun to get in there, untouchable to get invulnerable after a kill, and implacable to park yourself next to the second enemy. It's part of a melee build.
Of course, judging things with a 4 man squad is different from a 6 man squad where you can afford a melee focus member.
Would always build one like that for 6man, now that I'm streaming 4man deathless runs, I'm finding less room for it despite loving the combo
You can make null lance go straight then go left one box, straight then one left box so it's easier to hit multiple units. The range is nuts plus it does 9-14. I one shot most stuff w it. Void rift is nuts when you get the ability to rupture and do damage with insanity. It goes to 10 damage in a decent aoe. To keep it short psy ops are op
Darklance with death from above is real good. darklance only uses one action. obviously, its late game. you need to completely kill the hunter after all
Now I believe I do something wrong... 3 pods are just annoying not squad wipe. I would put air burst grenades, volatile mix and flashbang I don't see myself not being able to deal with 3 pods I even deal with 4. Putting the face-off skill of my snipers to use and using chain kill skills only trouble is mechanical units cannot be flashed but there aren't many in the early game. My kill per turn is around 1.6 to 3.8 just because I use extended timers and don't have to rush to objectives (I hate missions with timers to begin with) I chained 4 kills with serial then missed and 8 kills with reaper. That's 3 soldiers used and the remaining 3 just shot at what's left behind (mostly andromedon shells and sectopods.)
Its interesting that you hate Templars. For me and my playstyle, a Templar lieutenant onwards racks up so many kills. Part of that is requiring that they access Bladestorn, but even still they regularly deal high damage with amazing defensive capabilities with Parry and Deflect.
I rarely spend Focus, as I prioritise filling it out for higher damage and dodge chance.
Hatin on my sharpshooter abilities :( I'd say your trippin on some of these, like Lightning Hands but I don't play Legend/Ironman so...
It really affects them, I think I mention the difficulty in the description since it matters
I'm with you on Lightning Hands. That's free damage. Deadeye gives you 50% more damage but at a significant aim penalty, but lightning hand has the same opportunity cost. Lightning hands also lets a sharpshooter deal with a close range threat they normally can't, without wasting their sniper shot. The cooldown isn't an issue because you don't always need it, but since it has no action cost it's just gravy. No ammo cost either which is nice, whereas deadeye is slightly less ammo efficient due to the miss chance. Two pistol shots on a turn lets you do a move and attack - which you normally can't really do as a sniper. The key there is that you aren't wasting a turn moving, even if you're taking a sub-optimal turn you're still contributing every turn. Considering it can proc things like rupture and uses unique pistols like dark claw too, it's pretty useful. It rivals Deadeye naturally and you have to choose that, but I find early on Lightning Hands is much more useful until you have aim bonus's.
Deadeye definitely becomes awesome late-game, but to me, lightning hands is so good early and personally I'm really against taking aim penalties in general.
But sharpshooters are a specific meta in Xcom 2, I find there's a staunch camp that wants to aggress with Rangers and Shotguns - and I use assault rifles with them and people think I'm a blasphemer. The toughest missions you have to be aggressive, and tunnel missions are harder - but l've found an interesting meta with Hacking and Snipers. If enemies are crazy far away and your reaper sets up, you can complete controversial objectives by spotting with Reaper - and drawing enemies across the map with Snipers with squad sight and going for hack's. This lets you cleverly avoid scenario's you'd normally have to rush in with Reapers and keep pace.
One other benefit to Sharpshooters and Specialists is really subtle - they don't often get as damaged as Grenadiers and Rangers, making them easier to continuously use mission after mission. Dark Claw offsets this a bit since you can ignore the upgrades for a long time though - if you're only babying 1 sniper, like a hacker, it sort of makes them better since you can spend all your science and upgrades on other playstyles.
Though the cost of upgrading sharpshooters and pistols is definitely a factor, which rewards people to pick a style and stick to it, so... there's definitely a world economy advantage to dead eye, since you can just neglect your pistol entirely and still be in the butter zone, which is the secret reason why pistol-only sharpshooters tend not to be played. There's some interesting meta with Hunker Down + Quick Fire + Aid, allowing a sharpshooter to be a front liner with a unique meta, but that's getting into a whole 'nother thing.
But like he said - even D tier is still useful, there's a lot of good abilities in xcom.
I really appreciate how tight the meta is too, I've seen a lot of interesting meta play out because combinations make people viable, and 1 secret skill can totally change a whole class. Getting a lucky Sharpshooter with a crazy skill like Run n' Gun or something makes you really "think" about the opportunities.
Does faceoff stack with quickdraw and make it not turn-ending?
Not sure actually
Late game is all rangers and support for me. Grenadiers drop off and snipers. Well I take one with the best magazine upgrade and the best scope upgrade on certain mission types. Other than that they all sit at home twiddling their thumbs
While I love rangers, late game sharpshooters can clear half the map on their own.
@@Qlicky I've seen UA-camrs dominate with sharp shooters. So I do get your point.
I've had a ranger clear half a map with Bladestorm cross trained with Ever Vigilant or similar. Take the obvious chokepoint leading to the rest of your team, and wait. And it wasn't even my turn.
One mob after another attacking and getting cut down. I think my record for overwatch Bladestorm kills is 8 in one turn with one Ranger.
It's like a fight scene from Kill Bill!!
I enjoyed that (though in most games I prefer ranged weapons)
@@PaulRoneClarke Depends on what difficulty you play on. What you're describing is pretty much impossible on legend unless you use all of your remaining soldiers to soften up enemies. On legend difficulty there are very few enemies late game a ranger can one-shot with his blade.
Chryssalids for example have 13 life on legend compared to 8 on normal. They also have 20 dodge compared to 10 on normal.
I believe the best blade weapon in the game (Katana) can only do 11-12 damage with a crit.
Rangers can miss with other blade weapons too while a 130+ aim sharpshooter is pretty much guaranteed to hit vast majority of enemies, even behind cover.
A sharpshooter with bluescreen rounds and height advantage can deal like 100 damage in a single turn. Late game sharpshooters are so good that bringing 2 of them makes the encounters trivial.
I honestly feel like shredder is at best C tier. I know that may be a hot take but like best case scenario for it is:
You hit a high armour target, shred 3 armour. Then two allies hit the target for a total of +6 damage. Which is... okay but not that great. After that the target should be dead. If shredder applied to the initial damage it would be S tier for sure. Also, between AP rounds and armour bypass chosen weapons and grenades it just seems very meh.
My guy, you're sleeping on a uber templar and wacky ranger build. Look at them as "High risk, high reward unit"
Demolition is almost useless - except when an early/mid game group of aliens decides to take cover behind a car, and for that reason alone it outclasses suppression.
Suppression is good against rulers
Squadsight is NOT bad on timers; what's bad on timers is normal sniper rifles because they take two actions to shoot, making all Sharpshooters bad on timer missions, until you obtain chosen's rifle.
And the aim penalty is not that much. So squadsight is actually good, like low B tier or at least C.
One reason to put it lower is that it sucks completely on Reapers, while diluting their XCom skill tree with a "chance to fail" (chance to replace potential Shredder or Rigging). Because of this, im thinking C tier
Death from above surely does not deserve the hate if you just hate sharpshooters... its a good skill for them. The most obvious good use for it is to catch up with the rest of the squad, improving their viability on timed missions.
Additionally, an action granting skill (probably Teamwork) may be used on Sharpshooter after Death from Above to grant him or her a second sniper rifle shot, and with hunter's rifle Death from Above just becomes op.
New challange for you: can only use D- habilities
Hahaha, that's pretty guud
Medical protocol + field medic is S tier!!!
would rather deal damage then heal. combat protocol guaranteed damage is much better than a heal because damage is proactive while heal is reactive. easy way to think about it is if you do enough damage healing becomes unnecessary cause you win and extract or don't take any damage at all
@@ninegaggleofgeese7405 imo i get combat protocol after upgraded drones early on rather trust in the stocks, healing is great against purifiers and vipers
I recently decided to do the Legende Ironman challenge and i've tried to pass the first 3 missions but somehow my agents are missing 85% shots and ennemies are hitting me behind full cover with Crits making the challenge LITERALLY Impossible..
I've tried to play extremely careful in positionning but they always seem to have the upperhand in EVERY scenarios...
Seems rigged, it's really frustrating.
Missing those shots are going to happen more frequently on legend, not sure if this is the case, but I heard on lower difficulties the hit percentages are not accurate and the game "skews" the results to make it feel more fair
target priority the enemies that shot-back also grenades don't miss
@@EdwinofEberron it does, on rookie your chance to his is multiplied by 1.2 but the game doesnt tell you that, its also increase by 1.1 on veteran, you also get an addtional 10 aim for each consecutive miss up to a max of 95% chance, but only on shots that display a 50% or higher chance to hit.
they even have that missed shots mechanic on commander difficulty, and its boosted to +15% per miss, but no other aim shenanigans are at play.
its only on legend that the game stops fudging the results in your favour, but its also the point where the game decides its okay to let all enemies attack which is unfortunate because they boosted the average enemy count on each map by about 25% to 33% among other minor buffs like advent soldiers going from 70 to 75 aim, meaning even hunkering down in full cover doesnt fully negate their chance to hit you.
Cool list but wish it was done per class individually
Right, I was thinking the same, could have been much cleaner
I'm just half way through the video and i think I'm already finding myself disagreeing with a good half of these rankings.
death from above plus hunter rifle
should have just called the video "I tell you how I don't ever play rangers wihout telling you I don't play rangers"
That honor goes to the sharpshooter
@EdwinofEberron you probably play at higher difficulty. I'm still learning so for me on vet the ranger fully bladed up seems to work wonders and not get himself into too much trouble. I could do every mission with at least 2. Using implaccable and untouchhable like a mimic beacon/bait is really good. Trying also to play with bladestorm in corners or chokepoin
I play legend, ironman 4 units only, so it does skew my rankings, use to play rangers more blade focused but i kept running into more trouble as i cranked up the difficulty
@@EdwinofEberron 4 units only as in no squad size 2?
I respect that you made video about but putting without time stamps is very bad because I bet a lot of people will not watch full video because they want to know opinion on specific ability. Just like with your list about enemies.
lol as mid as squadsight is it’s one of my favorites 😂
Salvo OP
Its good for a alien hunter build with heavy ordnance
Hail of bullets is easily S+
you missed the SPARKs
Yea, I realized that later, my bad
Wowm bladestorm isnt even automatic S tier if not SS? You are not making any sense brahm
1:41:37 , Psionic Network Error 502: Bad Gateway
Plays so much and still doesn't know the details of this game. Suppression is bugged, the game calculates the defense of the enemy behind cover when your guy takes the "overwatch" shot. So it's worse than taking a low percentage shot because with the overwatch penalty. If the defense of the enemy was calculated correctly when it leaves cover yes, it would be useful. But it's not.
eKspecially
Shituation
Anderson Richard Lopez Donald Davis Larry
blade storl not on s + is a sin you schuld realy try going vor mele
Me no mele, me shoot