Legacy of the Ancients weapons are too OP

[etermes]

On top of the tedious, not so well thought content of DLC 2 these new weapons are too OP for the current content of the game.

I don’t know if future enemies, or better Palace mission will require this power but right now is out of place, they look amazing, super cool, 0 ammo (you save resources) but they are not necessary.

Give me more enemies, or harder missions, these weapons deserve that

Shard Gun + RB , OP damage, and only 2 AP

Full video: https://youtu.be/-g5vJ3myyLo

My Phoenix Point Youtube videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6hhjgFyJCdpUL66dnLCL2P2OiyjmaVHf

[Architectus]

The new ancient type weapons are meant to be powerful and should be, considering the amount of player effort involved to eventually make them. I think the real problem is when the ancient weapons are combined with the long-running terminator build issues the game has.

Abilities that have the potential to be gamebreakingly powerful, exploitative and unbalanced such as Rapid Clearance, Adrenaline Rush and Sneak Attack, really do still need to be reined in. Combining these abilities with the new ancient type weapons that essentially act as the highest-tier weapons in the game, creates the potential for players to reach new lows of powergaming munchkinism.

For example, a maxed out Infiltrator/Assault Class build (with either Reckless or Close Quarters Specialist traits) with the Echo head and Vengeance torso bionics, armed with a Scyther, is even better at killing every enemy on the map in one turn than even the old Assault/Berserker with Strongman/Reckless armed with Deceptor MG build is. All you have to do is have a Judgement Head Priest use Frenzy on the Infiltrator/Assault Class operative, then activate Rapid Clearance, then Vanish, Dash as needed to close distance between enemies, and the Infiltrator/Assault Class operative can use the Scyther to kill even Sirens and Chirons in a single 1AP hit, regain 2AP on each kill while using 1AP of movement to reach new enemies to continue the kill chain.

Combining the existing terminator build exploits with a new super-powerful weapon allowed me to turn an operative into the Grim Reaper. If the class abilities can finally be comprehensively balanced so that terminator builds are no longer possible, then the increased effectiveness of the new ancient weapons would not become unbalancing.

[MadSkunky]

@Architectus

For example, a maxed out Infiltrator/Assault Class build (with either Reckless or Close Quarters Specialist traits) with the Echo head and Vengeance torso bionics

Just as a side note, the Echo head is actually not needed. Revealing if you shoot or using any other offensive action is gone, for whatever reason. The Echo head is now pretty useless, beside its night vision ability.
Edit: And it wasn’t necessary for melee attacks anyway, these were always considered silent.

Edit 2:
I can completely agree with your main statement, I also think that these weapons are not a big issue if all the damage multipliers and AP gaining mechanics were balanced.

[walan]

You’re right.
I think most of all here always mean the combination, I think @etermes too, since he presented the weapon with RB.

Your examples are all good.
I just want to add that e.g. the grenade launcher (Goliath) and all mounted weapons were actually well designed in their power. With Boom Blast these weapons become a map limb destroyer from the starting position partially without a LOS. The panic mechanism also helps to be more effective. And that is only the “apparent” OP usage. Pair this skill with Armor Break or Adrenalin Rush or Sneak Attack or with Onslaugh or with … oh man.

Every time patch notes appear, I wonder about one thing in particular. The weapon values ​​are adjusted extremely meticulously e.g. Shotguns from 40 to 35 per bullet etc. I’m not saying that they were bad decisions, but these adjustments only make the game harder in their BASIC, which is probably the way most newbies play. The core OP problem is not solved if you can shoot with it 4 times and get AP back. Addressing the Terminator builds was an “effort” but nothing more.

I see the OP weapons of the DLC as unsuccessful, because they surpass all other weapons of their kind in everything and thus paradoxically reduce the choice and alternative tactics. If these weapons were only used with one shot per turn (without skills) it would of course not be so noticeable. But that’s not how PP works. Everything is raised to the power here, so that 50% more firepower of a weapon with skills results in 200-300%, and that’s a big deal.

[drages]

Rather then having powerful weapons, our main problem is always abilities and sandbox system. Now we got augmentations with abilities too.

You can just have any combinations with zero negative points. It’s became like a unbalanced power Mod for the game.

Augmentations do some very weird game breaking things like making melee for 1 tp and silencing all weapons. Those are changing some of the very important main rules of the game so when you use them, you just throw up every balancing without them.

This happens with the secondary random rank skills too like strongman, trooper… You balance the game with weapon and armor stats and suddenly throw it with rng. So the question is, when is the game balanced? With those secondary perks or without them? When you got them, those weapons became OK but without them they stuck. It’s much more clear with AR and sg s.

Making melee hit suddenly 1 turn is clearly killing melee balance of the game. I don’t count the one hit weapons of lota.

So as a result, lota weapons are powerful because their ammo is unlimited and ammo is important for resource and inventory management. Melee game play is mostly mess so adding 2 new ones won’t change anything for me, but they are unbalanced and unnecessary for sure, especially the 2. One. Shotgun is a mix of AR and shotgun and I don’t like that. We need a good sniper so it’s OK. Grenade launcher is crazy op with everything I say.

Still the main reason is the abilities. As we all talk about how the mixes are so unbalanced, we could not find a solution yet to balance them. We got some nice ideas for some points but there is no solution. Because you can’t find a solution with a system like this. A sandbox with unlimited options including random power perks including augmentations and mutation abilities. It’s a hell.

So do not expect to balance this. It’s impossible. You can’t find a solution and you expect that snapshot will find one. You are all mostly hard-core gamers and imagine casual gamers headache in this mess.

[etermes]

@Architectus

The new ancient type weapons are meant to be powerful and should be, considering the amount of player effort involved to eventually make them. I think the real problem is when the ancient weapons are combined with the long-running terminator build issues the game has.

Apparently Fantasy Realm is very popular in Reddit too, reading comments: Reddit - Dive into anything

@walan

I think most of all here always mean the combination, I think etermes too, since he presented the weapon with RB.

Most of the time multiclass, but Berserker single clsas with Adrenaline would not need Vengeance Torso or multiclass to achieve the same damage

@drages

Rather then having powerful weapons, our main problem is always abilities and sandbox system. Now we got augmentations with abilities too.

Indeed this is the problem, I show part of it in this clip: https://youtu.be/jXEdTLeGXFg

and my suggestion is to lock Level 7 abilities if you go multiclass, you can create a powerful soldier single class, but also multiclass LV6 soldiers with plenty of abilities and perks

But let’s see these new weapons and damage, and I don’t include perks, these would increase even more that damage.

Scorpion SR

180 damage directly makes obsolete all SR, also piercing 80, it is the max armor, so full damage per shot in any situation.
Sniper/Infiltrator with Sneak Attack 180 x2 + 10% Vivisection → 396 damage,
if you use Quick Aim twice in the same turn → 396+396=792
Imagine adding Sniperist perk +25% , 990 damage, one turn, one soldier

Crystal Crossbow

Infiltrator single class, 1 AP with stealth and Sneak Attack, 60 damage x2 +10% Vivisection → 132 damage, 4 AP → 528 damage, not so OP, piercing is 40, enough for most of enemies

Rebuke GL

90 damage, 30 shred, blast radius 3,5, apparently reasonable, Thor AML is damage 100 shred 20, but you can use Boom Blast , and thanks to mounted weapons exploit , 0 AP for Thor AML if you want after using Rebuke twice

Shard Gun SG

Original post is speaking itself, 1998 damage using 2 AP and 5 WP, this is so OP, and without perks

Enough to taking down a Scylla in two turns, one if you have two assault/heavy soldiers
And almost of enemies with one shot or two:

Mattock of the Ancients (melee weapon)

220 damage 400 shock is not too much, Marduk’s Fist is 160 and 200, Phoenix Shock Lance is 160 and 600. But using the weapon with Adrenaline or Vengeance Torso is a different story.

Scyther (melee weapon)

300 damage in exchange of 2 AP is great, but again if you use Vengeance Torso or Adrenalines Rush… watch the clip:

1200+ damage without perks, also disabling body parts in one turn.

And finally all together, LV 7 abilities, new weapons, and Bionics:

- YouTube

[Rainer]

All I can say is if the Ancient Weapons become the upper tier of a tiered weapon system, I think I’d be done with and lose interest in the game outright.

I’m still bothered that they created more of a gap between Phoenix standard gear and all the faction gear to make all the phoenix gear noticeably worse in every way except cost, and it’s not even cheaper enough to warrant ever using it (armor and some weapons). These new LoA weapons do the same thing, of basically removing all the weapons that currently exist in the game, and replace them with these super-weapons. They’re not difficult to get, and you get unlimited of these special resources too. They make the game easier in every way again, right as I got to the point of enjoying the difficulty.

On Legend (the only difficulty I actually care about tbh), soldiers get very little SP with 5 gained and about 2-3 going into the general pool per mission. You can’t create too many “terminator build” characters will that little SP, especially if you ever end up losing someone. Still, all you need to do is choose the talents like you said, even with bare minimum stats and no other talents and these characters can SNIPE enemies dead with the LoA Shotgun. Really just takes away from the fun imo if everyone has these weapons. If only one of my soldiers can do something like this, I’m okay with that. If everyone can, uh… game over I guess, because once again I lose interest in playing the game.

[drages]

When you finish the lota and get the weapons, game just tells you that now you are king of the world.

To be honest it became a jeneric eastern mmo rpg rather then a tactical xcom game.

[etermes]

@Rainer

On Legend (the only difficulty I actually care about tbh), soldiers get very little SP with 5 gained and about 2-3 going into the general pool per mission. You can’t create too many “terminator build” characters will that little SP, especially if you ever end up losing someone.

I have to disagree, I have a lot of super soldiers, multiclass too, 4 squads indeed

and you can recruit LV 6 soldiers from havens,

Project Vulture research, +3 strength also for all soldiers for instance

[etermes]

@Rainer

Really just takes away from the fun imo if everyone has these weapons. If only one of my soldiers can do something like this, I’m okay with that. If everyone can, uh… game over I guess, because once again I lose interest in playing the game.

Here, I fully agree,

I would prefer a different approach, make all these new weapons OP but super expensive (exotic materials + regular materials), luxury tax, that way only a few selected soldiers, the best of the best would use them

[Saph]

You really can’t fix the issues with LotA by making the weapons more or less powerful.

Getting the LotA weapons requires an absolutely ridiculous investment of time, missions, resources, and research, and requires you to do missions that are probably harder than anything else in the game (definitely harder than the final boss).

So if the LotA weapons aren’t massively OP then there’s no point doing all the work to get them. But to get them, you have to be so much stronger than the regular enemies that you can beat any Pandoran mission already.

If you need the LotA weapons, you can’t get them, and if you can get them, you don’t need them . . .

I honestly can’t see how they can balance the LotA content without a total redesign.

[etermes]

@Saph

I honestly can’t see how they can balance the LotA content without a total redesign.

And that was requested in the Council, full rework, process and UI

[sectoid_br]

I can’t talk much about lota as I have only played some of the blueprint missions for it. Lore-wise it absolutely sucks and needs change. Mechanics-wise, from what I read, it needs a total rework indeed. Also, one thing that wasn’t mentioned, is that lota-pandorans appear too early in the pandoran evolution system. The player doesn’t have the new weapons but must face umbras and golden sirens in february. If the game had a slower progression pace, and campaigns lasted more than a couple months, they could come much later.

I would also like to tackle a couple of specific builds that was mentioned here, using the berserker. One is the melee build, and the other is anything + berserker by using Adrenaline Rush. There’s a ticket on canny that I found very interesting and made a comment on it with some suggestions, I recommend the read:

Melee rework suggestion | Voters | Phoenix Point

Basically, if Adrenaline Rush would become melee-only, it’s OP’ness would be severely limited. Also, even with melee, you still would trade the high damage potential for being dazed next turn. The issue with LotA weapons would remain but besides the argument that they should be OP since it sucks a lot to get them, this can be balanced if LotA content is reworked.

And of course, rapid clearance is a problem of its own.

Edit: the canny topic is also about melee action costs. I disagreed with the OP’s suggestion and suggested instead that new melee weapons are introduced with 1AP and 3AP costs. Big hammers should remain with 2AP costs and the most powerful should be 3AP.

[LouisdeFuines]

I like the ancient weapons like they are. Please Keep that way. They are very time consuming to get. We deserve that firepower. Retaking ancient sites is already annoying enough.

[etermes]

I play Legendary, @LouisdeFuines I show you my Geoscape after Moonshot and City Upon a Hill

I have 13 bases, 24 new weapons and all the resources that you can see

I will create a post now for Moonshot mission with new weapons, and you take a look

[LouisdeFuines]

I am no legendary player. Apply changes to Hero and legendary campaigns. Not rookie and Veteran.

[etermes]

@LouisdeFuines

I am no legendary player. Apply changes to Herold and legendary campaigns. Not rookie and Veteran.

Fair enough

[LouisdeFuines]

You need to know. I barely managed to build TWO ancient weapons in my 2 LOTA campaigns.

And the effort is almost not worth the time.

One Skorpion can almost easily be outgunned by the Gungnir.

I like the grenade launcher. Only advantage I see: Unlimited ammo. Nothing more.

After I have conquered the ancient sites, I skip all the fights to regain control of them again, cause enemy attacks happen within 32 hours for me and I don`t want to waste precious live time for boring extreme fights.

[etermes]

Sorry to read that again, I only suffered one attack in 15 days in my 7 ancient sites under PX control

[drages]

All the earth including panderans fear you enough. I would not attack to you too.

Yeah redesign is needed so badly. They should wait more to release this dlc. After released its hard to make that kind of big redesign.

Why is there a second melee weapon when there is no mini gun at the game… And even its a mini gun, it would be much more balanced then that ridiculous melee.

All the sites would give some tech clues and maybe 1 extra resource then you would have a full of new tier weapons with every type and armor too. So simple.

And ammo will need that resource so you will think wisely to use those weapons. Like elenium from xcom for plasma weapon ammo.