And then very disgusted with himself. 
@Yokes @SpiteAndMalice of course they will be snipers. Whether they will actually move at all rather than just stand there rallying each other up is a different story…
I think that some modder should make teleport animation like in Star Trek when using a Dash.
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At least they won’t be assault/infiltrator.
Currently all classes are very powerful, but Berserk that needs a second class, and Assault without Rapid Clearance and perhaps Rally. Nerf both too much and you get a crap class.
From many posts here it looks like a drama if a soldiers kills 2 enemies in a turn, and implicitly over is OP hole. I don’t agree on that, firstly it’s no way easy and common to trigger it, secondly it’s the only real power to counter balance Assault versus other classes.
Who really applied those OP holes? And even more on a regular base?
Assault is a great example to pinpoint how cap can be wrong. Cap to damages won’t hurt Sniper/Heavy as much than Assault, and they are already the leading class for many reasons. And it’s plain bad as Sniper/Heavy > Assault. And I can add Priest/Tech > Assault, and quite possibly even with Stealth cap at 85% Infiltrator > Assault.
And I read here mainly only Assault nerf. Even multi class can’t justify it, in my point of view.
I’m ok that Rapid Clearance is dumb, it needs a diminishing return, but certainly not to limit to 2 kills. Such limit is forgetting the huge amount of penalties of closer range versus longer range.
For Rally, it’s not infinite, it is used once per turn, and costs 4WP. Limit it to one use per turn per team is pointless nerf. I’d be curious see a team of 6 Assault/Sniper better than using also Heavy/Tech/Priest/Infiltrator/Berzerk. Nope, no way, and from far. And it will be worth for the A/S 8 team.
This bring back to, paper and math is fine, but you should experiment suspected OP holes.
Also it seems that current trend is Sniper/Assault is OP, but with diminishing return for Rapid Clearance, I have huge doubts, I could not play them well, but until it is clearly shown, for me it’s from player not knowing play well other classes.
For a full Assault team (so each have Rally) it worth a consideration and probably the better context to verify how OP will be 6 or 8 Rally per turn.
Nerf somehow Rapid Clearance and Rally, ok probably, but huge nerf, nope until there’s a much better balance between closer range and longer range.
I think skills need complete overhaul, not just balance. The current skills are all just easy coded actions that return some points or make you shoot some extra or run further.
There isnt a single skill that has a unique animation. Its just math and simple coded. Anything difficult and unique has been avoided. Where is the fun in that?
Well the only fun is exploiting that system of endless reusability and stackability allowing players to find unrealistic unbalances and idiotic combinations.
I guess thats why so many people are against changing it. You remove the fun in current system. But its a broken system. And wont play this game anymore till they change it. And I guess for every shouter on forum who is against change are two ppl who just wait in silence.
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Agreed.
Don’t agree. In my opinion, assault’s main (cross) utility is still dash. Return Fire can also be very useful.
It’s not OP hole if soldier kills 2 enemies in a turn. It’s OP hole if a single soldier can kill many enemies in a single turn. What constitutes many is of course debatable. But if we agree on how many kills is just barely not OP and limit RC to that, any kills over it have to be OP.
It is quite easy with a specialized built. Give him top speed and top willpower. Have a couple of guys with RtT just in case. You might also need someone to collect WPs on the map if needed (depending on build).
Of course, you can say “all classes are very powerful, especially if you give them top speed and top willpower”. However, the difference is that other classes don’t have APs refunded for kills.
And I’m not even getting into what happens when you combine Assault with certain other classes, like Priests and their mindcrash.
Anyway, I think we agree that RC and RtT have to be nerfed somehow. The question is how much.
My opinion is that limiting all soldiers to 8 APs is not too big of a nerf. Consider berserker and adrenaline rush, which basically gives 4 attacks a turn. If all soldiers AP is limited to 8, that’s what RC would give you (4 attacks per turn at 2 AP cost per attack). And combined 8 attacks, which is still not OP.
And then there is no need to nerf rally the troops, because with a limit of 8 APs per turn there is no sense in casting it more than 4 times.
My only issue was… eg with Rallying troops was that I had to wait and/or move with others and then I had to use the skill with the given team member. It is a kinda reversed thought process, which is not comfy to the playe. It should buffer the given AP advantage to other team members instantly.
I don’t agree with the general approach here. You are looking at it from the PowerPlayer who is trying to find and abuse such loop holes.
I agree with the view that these loopholes exist and should be fixed.
However not at the cost of choice reduction. I would argue that the majority of players is not the type of player outlined above. Most of the regular players won’t even read here.
I enjoy it very much to plan and execute my turns and enjoy it very much if everything aligns now and then to allow a ‘super turn‘. But it’s not like I chain ‚super turns‘. Your suggested changes in particular in regard to Rally would really cut into my fun, and I would expect, much like the dash change , in the fun of a lot of others not so vocal people.
If this is an issue for some people, then create a mode with a special ruleset, but stop taking more and more choices away. It’s not like this are all topics that you can chain turn for turn and out of the box, making things trivial.
I’m very surprised to read this. Perhaps you are misunderstanding me: I’m advocating against nerfing specific skills and instead capping their excesses. The point is that a regular player will not even notice the difference, while the OP holes will be closed.
What I’m proposing for rally is that it doesn’t get nerfed at all, instead to limit APs to 8 per turn for each soldier. That means you can cast up to 4 rally the troops per turn just like you do now, and after that it has very diminishing returns.
Do you use 5 or more Rally the troops per turn? If not, you would not even notice the difference.
Or are you referring to Rapid Clearance?
Anyway, the point of my suggestion is precisely to close the OP holes while avoiding messing with the gameplay.
Skills are ok, the ones at level 7 need some love, but an overhaul is not needed. Devs should spend 95% of their time creating more content.
Nope.
- Dash - skill which should make Assault more mobile than other classes makes him like Flash running all over the map, just hurting his will a little bit
- Return Fire - skill to allow Assault cover his teammates, now only protects mentioned Assault and allows him to make full attacks outside of his turn
- Ready for Action - skill which should help Assault to focus more on combat by decreasing cost of his items management allows him to teleport items in his and between all his adjacent teammate’s inventories
- Rally the Troops - I won’t guess purpose or reason behind this skill but it allows all soldiers in your company to shrink time and do everything 2 or almost 3 times faster (situational with all soldiers multiclassing into Assault, but damn…)
- Rapid Clearance - skill which represents adrenaline boost after kills allows assault to be few times faster than he usually is when he will score more than 2 kills.
And this is one class. List more?
Jesus. When I think about all of them they are so fucking unrealistic and broken in terms of logic that it is almost unbelievable that they exist in tactical game.
4 Likes
It’s an OP hole when he can kill often many enemies, if it’s only some rare case and/or with serious preparation.
LW2 or XCOM had a totally similar tool, 5 kills was doable, it’s not OP hole.
That there’s some records at 8 or 10 kills change nothing because they are very difficult to reproduce.
No, it means +4AP max, that’s ridiculous for Rapid Clearance.
Yes, do you use 5 or more Rally the troops per turn? If not, how you can pretend nerf it.
It’s not only for dev, test your nerfs. For players, tests the op holes you would want nerf.
It really is the case at the moment. It’s more the rule than the exception, given the size of the maps and enemy deployment mid to late game.
And it ties to this:
I don’t use 5 RtT per turn, but I have experimented with 3-4 RtT and Rapid Clearance and a squad of 6. That’s why I approach RtT and RC holistically, because it’s when they are used together without any limits that OP holes arise.
I don’t understand why. You would be paying 5WP for potentially getting 4 AP. Adrenaline rush costs 6WP, if I’m not mistaken (or was it also 5?). What is a reasonable number for you?
I mean, you keep saying how hard it is to chain kills, how many kills do you expect to chain when you cast RC?
Mmm you don’t have crabs with armor 30 minimum on any part? Well ok that’s a point then if in most of your maps you spam 5 kills per turn or at first turn.
Mmm, that’s a beginning at least, I admit it.
Rage Burst, you gain 12AP.
AR you gain up to 8AP.
4AP for RC is on condition for max of two extra attacks, lol that’s ridiculous.
They usually have 20 on arms, but that’s besides the point. The thing is there are plenty of ways of dealing with armor in PP, such the buffs to damage. For example, I have one guy now, sniper/assault profficient in heavy weapons, with a deceptor. He can reliably one shot kill sirens and any crab no matter their armor for 2AP with quick aim.
And did I mention what happens when you have an infiltrator with some damage buffs (reckless + weapon buff)?
Have you tried assault/priest with top will and speed?
I love that you can have many different and interesting builds in PP, but it’s very frustrating (at least to me) how often you accidentally stumble on a build that is so completely OP that it breaks the game unless your restrain yourself.
No, these are not APs. This is dealing damage (with a 50% accuracy penalty, btw) as if you fired the weapon five times. It’s a very useful skill, but it’s not the same as gaining 4 AP to spend as you wish. Also, RB is not compatible with other skills except RC, while RC is compatible with any skill.
Again, you don’t gain any AP with AR, but the opportunity to deal more damage with the APs you have. And, again, AR is not compatible with any skill that requires WPs, unless cast first.
You are considering this skill in isolation, but its big advantage is how compatible it is with all the other skills, both from Assault and from other classes.
I disagree, no need go further, I explained why, you disagree, ok I don’t agree more with you.
And it’s even on the principle, you are dreaming to think you can fix plenty different skills with general rules.
I rarely used the skills, so I think the problem will be somewhere around mission/ui design. UI because I always forgot that there were skills :D.
Create instances of combat where you need to use the skills you have in your arsenal to win. That’s how you will force the player to use his brain.
The most annoying thing was facing fully armored top notch enemies all the time, plus the goo shooters was a low blow, especially that they were available from the get go. But in the end I got so powerful that I was literally walking over everyone. And not because assaults are running all over the map - which were small, compared to the original XCOM games. You don’t even need too much movement, because you spit out 6 spiders or fire one shot in the ground and everyone will come. Ah, they are destroying buildings, so what? I’m not gonna go in for nothing.
I mostly used rally the troops to reload my sniper infiltrator’s Arachni spider blasters and to give 1 more AP to mr Heavy to offer some extra grenade love. Plus the sniper’s mirror image, everything else was not needed for me.
I think balancing the overall experience and a better tutorial is more important.
Dash: Well, after a while will points deplete, so what is the problem?
Return fire is fine. When the assault gets attacked, each time he fights back. Why would you need the assault to shoot back for everyone? That’s bonkers.
I agree that some of the skills are problematic, but it’s a side issue for me.
Soldier having 20 speed + 4 uses of Dash (yes he won’t attack, but that is irrelevant here) gives 60 tiles of speed (whoops wrong number before editing). Maps have length of 48 tiles. You don’t see a problem here? Assault in his one turn can traverse WHOLE map in one direction and get the half way back - taking into account that he didn’t started from the edge of the map. That is… call it whatever you want.
Who said about shooting back for everyone? And why fighting back would be only limited to enemies attacking only him? He is blind and can’t see enemies shooting his brothers in arms? Return Fire should:
- be limited to only automatic weapons (up to medium weapons, so no machine gun for instance),
- use only half burst
- trigger at any attack in line of sight
- and cost at least 1 Action Point each time assault is returning fire, so player would need to leave him with some not spent AP to trigger that ability.
Interesting is that 3 of 4 above points were already in the early Backer Builds, and only last condition should be added. Now devs went in some strange direction. Overall there would be no such fucked up situaltions when your soldiers return fire with heavy cannons, sniper rifles, machine guns + do full damage with them + do it infinite (to the ammo limit) amount of times.
Oh. Maybe I would add another point:
- make it directional (cone like with Overwatch)… but maybe not… with AP limit it would be nerfed enough.
I’m not saying that only our soldier’s skills should be nerfed. Enemies also should be touched (with their stats and with their number on the mission).
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The “map” you talk about is usually around 2-3 buildings wide, so it is not a large area. Of course the assault guy can run around like a headless chicken. This discussion will bear no fruit. I don’t see any kind of blatant errors here.