It is that the umbras attack on the same turn as they rise up that makes infiltrator/sniper build so much better than anything else.
My shorter range soldiers are always in danger of getting Umbrated but the inf/sni build is always safe since they remain invisible and at long distance. Combine that with their strong damage output and there is little point of using anything else.
I was trying to diversify my teams to for more fun but those umbras make sure that shorter range soldiers just are not good enough.
Either its the umbra that kills them or they have to try and move away to a worse position and then something else gets them.
This never happens with the invisible snipers, you just stand there and kill everything from range which gets boring fast.
They are very dangerous for anything in their range, nevertheless I use close range soldiers also against Umbras, but only if I can make a nice overwatch trap close to their spawning point. 2 Shotguns, 2 Deceptors or 1 Shotgun + 1 Deceptor are enough to kill it when it spawns (or with a full stealth Infiltrator one Shotgun or Deceptor is enough when it is placed at least 5 tiles away from the spawn, so that he is not getting revealed by the spawning Umbra).
Edit:
I’m also trying to kill Umbra Arthron with explosives, that way the Tar Shadow ability won’t trigger. But I don’t know if this is intentional or a bug.
Bring flamethrowers and pyro grenades - kill these buggers that have the shadow ability with fire. They will not spawn. One of reasons why i have heavy/assault hybrids, so they can jump and nade or jump and have someone use onslaught on them to use their flamethrowers
I’d however appreciate if there was some more info in game on the weaknesses of this mutation and what to use to kill it. I know that fire works, not sure if poison or virophage will do the trick as well.
It is not that they are too difficult to handle but that Umbras make the all ready very strong infiltrator/snipers even better compared to shorter range troops. you don´t need fire with them just the same bullet for everything.
After getting infiltrator tech you don´t need other classes anymore. Just make everyone in to invisible double damage stunning snipers with exploding recon spiders.
The reason i am not suggesting nerfing the snipers is that at the later stages they are the only ones who can reliably solo kill enemies in one turn. Other classes can do it but not as reliably.
I mean i had an assault/heavy with +20% melee and combined +3 move bonus so he had total +70% melee damage and best weapons/grenades and cyborg parts but he was not even close to the snipers in damage output even with frenzy speeding him up.
He could run through most of the map in one turn but still eventually he died and i have not lost a single invisniper the whole game.
He was more fun than the whole sniper core combined though. Shame that it is not viable to spend resources on such fragile soldiers in the later stages of the game.
Until the umbras start to appear other classes are still ok but after they just start slowly dying out. and the scarcity of resources does not encourage using any classes that are likely to die.
Try Assault/Infiltrator with Vengeance Torso and the ancient Scyther melee weapon, 600 damage with AOE effect without any personal perk. Double or even triple kills if the enemies are close together → all 4 AP restored.
OP as hell and let you forget about the Sniper/Infiltrator, that is strong of course, but this Assault combined with Frenzy is stupid OP.
Heavy/Infiltrator as Grenadier can kill whole packs of enemies alone and if you bring him close to big targets then Rage Burst them to hell, even Scyllas are close to oneshots, with assist of Marked for Death pretty sure.
My 5 man Helios A-Team (A = Avengers ), that can solve any mission without a harm, has 2 Assault/Infs, 1 Heavy/Inf and, yes, only 1 Sniper/Inf plus one Priest for Frenzy. The most work are doing the Assault/Infs.
Infiltrators Sneak Attack is broken, every build with it is broken too, that’s pretty much all there is to be said about it …
I had not realized the double damage works with melee too.
Then that infiltrator thing is the problem. If they have to balance the game against a single class with two op abilities, invisibility and double damage, it is going to make all else unnecessary.
It would then be best to heavily nerf the infiltrator class and also most annoying enemies to make all or even just some more class combos useful.
Still for now my no.1 cause of losing soldiers in Umbras and it is silly when a ability on basic enemies is way more dangerous than the real boss monsters in the game.
Sneak Attacks double damage is only available when casting Vanish before, otherwise the Assault/Infiltrator would be revealed when he goes in melee range → no damage buff. Mist will also reveal him, even when vanished, so the mist repeller module is essential.
Agree
A short solution could be to decrease the Sneak Attack damage to +50%, I think it is enough and comparable to the Snipers Marks for Death. Then maybe nerfing the enemies wouldn’t be necessary, I think.
I think stealth should also be nerfed so any attack would make you visible for the next turn at the least.
Sneak attack is powerful but near complete safety from all attacks is in the long run even more powerful.
Maybe make armor more effective so others would be in less constant danger of dying.
Or if they want to go for a deadly game then make recruitment and outfitting troops cheaper so losing soldiers would be less damaging to progress.
There is so much cool stuff in the game and it is shame there is a real reason to not use most of it.
I liked the pure shield torso idea but then my guy had his head stick out and was hit more in the face than in the shield.
Armor in general loses importance as the game progresses. you can get the most protective armor in the game really soon and then nothing for the rest of the game.
Weapons improve and abilities make DPS go up for both player and AI but only AI gets more protective armor.
If straight up AV increase is not doable for some reason then there could be an add on like something that halves damage from first attack any turn to protect against snipers and something else that gives couple of additional points against many attacks to make the player choose what he wants to guard against.
Surely stealth should be fixed
Just a sidenote: I have seen a lot of “need to NERF” requests. Sounds a bit like to SMURF and seems to be quite rarely used otherwise. Is it some new age English?
Arent TO PUMP UP, TO BEEF UP, TO UPGRADE or TO BUMP UP, TO UPGRADE POWER or EXTEND USE way more common English expressions, depending on needed meaning? Mind I am not that much in gamming community, neither a native English speaker Aim is, as usual, that most of players and developers, understand better the request
Nerf means the opposite of all of those terms though. It’s exceedingly common in game talk and the opposite would most commonly be buff. Nerf stealth, buff melee and Berserkers!
I do think the +100% from top tier Infiltrator is a bit good but once upon a time rage bursting snipers were the game breaking top and infinite dash Rapid Clearance berserk assaults who it seems are still viable despite being toned down.
Besides all you guys talked about, there’s also a need for more diversity in enemies - there’s not much that can break through your lines, specially undetected. We need an enemy that can, let’s say, burrow and target our squeashy snipers in the back, and also reveal them as the worm chiron does sometimes.
PP could also develop some equipment to detect them underground - them we would know where they are and could act accordingly.
A burrowing enemy is just an example, it could be a flying one with an air dash-like ability or anything else.
Imagine a flying air-dashing siren that could mind control your sniper and hide? I think new enemy types could change the game much more than balance changes to already existing things, that always end up revealing new OP builds.
To weaken or make less dangerous. Taken from the “Nerf” brand name, which makes sports equipment toys out of a soft foam (e.g., the Nerf football is soft foam rather than the hard leather of a real football). Used frequently in the context of computer game balance changes.
“The chaingun was awesome til they nerfed it, now you can’t hit shit with it.”
I make the vague assumption that it wouldn’t matter much if they went back to the old Rage Burst.
Almost at the same time, they also massively increased the opponents’ HP. On release Scyllas started at around 1500 HP and went up to a maximum of 2500-3000. Nowadays the weakest Scylla has 3560 HP and they go up to 7400. The other opponents were also strengthened, not quite as much as Scyllas, but they all got a buff. What should a sniper rage burst do against such a large HP? Honestly, even with the 180 x 5 of the best sniper rifle (the ancient one), you need 4-5 sniper rage bursts to kill the weakest of these Scyllas. I’m pretty sure, many other combined attacks, including some Sneak Attack double damaging, would be way more effective.
In general, it was more effective to do a rage burst with a Deceptor in the past and it still is today, you just have to get closer. At least the casual gamers would have their favourite toy back, which in my opinion is by far not the biggest problem in balancing neither then nor now.
Edit:
In retrospect, I feel slightly confirmed. I took another look at the old thread about the “OP” Rage Bust Sniper:
Still, 5 super accurate sniper shots in the same target from very far away is too much for anything but a scylla. Chirons may survive too, but if you can disable their butt with it, it doesn’t matter. However, it’s specially problematic for sirens. The other combos you mentioned cannot be used from the range of a SR.
Also, consider this on an infiltrator/heavy with sniperist… you would get 180 x10, from the other side of the map, on any type of enemy, with high probability of hitting all shots.
Of course, but in my opinion it was very situational and more on the weaker side of all the OP possibilities that are still in the game. And exaggerations doesn’t help, it was not really useful against Sirens or “from the other side of the map”, the -50% accuracy from the first nerf prevented that quite reliable. Don’t forget, RB was nerfed twice and I really don’t want to have the release version back (no accuracy penalty and it emptied the whole magazine, THAT was OP as hell, especially with the Pythagoras and its 15 bullets).
Edit:
In my opinion the Sniper/Infiltrator build is still more effective than this Sniper/Heavy hybrid and useful in any situation and not only when triggering RB. 4 times damage per turn is not far from 5 times damage per turn and much more reliable because without any downside and really usable from the other side of the map.
Another edit just to show how reliable the old RB really was:
Given a Heavy without any useful personal perk and the goal is to make him very effective on long range without put him into dangerous close range.
Two solutions with the assumption that RB would continue to work like it did before the last nerf:
Dual class to Sniper and use RB with a sniper rifle, max damage output 5 x 180 = 900 with a high chance to miss 1 or more bullets. Additionially equip him a Destiny III to get 3 x 80 = 240 damage on top, so a max output of 1140, but only if every shot of the RB hits at the cost of 5 WP for RB.
Dual class to Infiltrator and equip him with Destiny III with 3 x 160 = 480 and the Archangel rocket launcher with 2 x 200 damage by using Boom Blast. Max output of 880 damage with a high chance to really hit any single volley across the whole map at the cost of 5 WP for BB.
Even with its theoretical lower overall damage I would always prefer the second build, because it is way more accurate, reliable and flexible and not only useful in rare situations.
I do not think that tools and combos for Alpha striking should be taken away, until more survivability options are added. I mean, the armor is effective early game only. Later on, you get dumped on by pretty much every threat, that is not melee / shotgun range. virus snipers, paralyze snipers, mind controls, bombardments, AP rifles, grenade crabs. Unfortunately as it is, you need these alpha striking tools such as inf/snipers or other combos, as you cannot get into prolonged firefights. Even one round of being fired upon by more than one high threat enemy can lead to an easy mission failed/game over scenario. I learned that a hard way, when I put an 8 squad of level 2-3s against some late game mission, that wasn’t even Extreme threat. That’s for a different thread though.
Umbras topic however is not that bad. Just bring some fire on your missions for your front liners.
They, Nerf Corporation, didn’t change it, usage changed it because, you know, language evolves. In fact nerf now usually means “make weaker” but it used to mean “make something so much weaker that it was useless” and it still carries a whiff of that.
), that can solve any mission without a harm, has 2 Assault/Infs, 1 Heavy/Inf and, yes, only 1 Sniper/Inf plus one Priest for Frenzy. The most work are doing the Assault/Infs.
