If they did that there wouldn’t be a need to nerf the Piranha. The PP AR is fine early game, traded asap for laser AR because range, then when armor goes crazy traded for piercing, a totally logical progression. If it was “overused” it’s only because the armor ramped up too fast.
Depends. They said that there are some changes to the difficulty scaling but you have to start new campaign. If those changes effect the cost of armor/hp for crabs then you might see more of the less armored or few but heavy armored crabs. Taking into account that there are some tools and abilities to shred armor, I think devs want us to actually use them, even for regular enemies, not only bosses.
The SR still probably rule but there might be some other patch that addresses them. Like removing ability to take two shots with SR per turn would completely change their utility.
To be clear, not defending these changes, they are a bit one sided and changes to RB are a bit bizarre like in case of Return Fire previous time.
i agree :), i just was pushed by the game complexity in using those, and had a feeling that those op abilites are scale up with the game complexity rather than just OP.
I also started to play on rifles on accuracy and stuff, but skyrocketing complexity annoyed me so much and Assaults looked just useless class comparing to others (in the late game),
that i started to think 
Yes indeed, but in the first games i even haven’t used dash, it seemed to be unusefull, after some time i started to realize that this game is more about the movement and not about covers. For example Arthons will not hide, they will flank you and shout even if they are going to die next turn, but when they shout … well invest in strength a lot in the begining and pray that they will not destroy your weapon, in game itself covers don’t matter that much, you use logistics more to deal with the damage.
Yeap. Had exactly the same experience. I was confused into thinking that this is supposed to be played as a military tactics, couldn’t be more wrong than that. I’ve thought that abilities are just sort of bonuses you would use sometimes. Later it was clear that you should use them all the time. Then larger patterns emerge and then you just don’t see a point to play in a different way, which leads to stagnation of experience and eventual boredom.
Exactly. Devs raised mobility of your and enemy dramatically over the course of the development of the game. At the same time, they lowered the distance at which firefight happens and made maps smaller. Which leads to covers being largely ineffective or too easy to circumvent. It made ballistics much more binary decision based than “spray and pray” when you don’t have other choice. It kind of sucks to find all this out, sort of cheapens the whole experience. I really hope that they improve this and get things fixed.
I suppose that many players that like tactical games think the same and that is why they shout that many elements of the game are overpowered. People who say that current nerf is from masochists to masochist don’t understand that game require a lot of balancing along with nerfing.
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I like most of the changes they did (although nerf on Raven and Piranha make no sense… Raven isn’t even that good. And Piranha is very meh…). Good that they (indirectly) nerfed hell cannon. Finally, there is an incentive for the player to do any research whatsoever instead of having entire squad of sniper heavies and blasting through everything with hell cannon and a suit of banshee armor.
However, they still left a ton of abusable stuff that ruins the fun… I was thinking about doing a second legend ironman playthrough. The only thing that stops me is that I have to set like 5 different arbitrary restritions on myself to have any challange whatsoever… no 100% stealth, no assault berseker 20 kills in a turn bull…t, no electric reinforcement / recover will 100 armor spamming, no vanish/ recover will abuse, possibly restrcting training facilities somehow and so on… There are still far too many ways to completely break this game regardless of the difficulty level.
Good that they recognized, how broken the balance is and maybe with next 2-3 patches legend difficulty will pose some challange to a player who know what he is doing.
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You didn’t have to be berserk, now you have to.
Whats wrong with the hell cannon? it does less than a shotgun. Fly to the target and rageburst shotgun? Don’t understand a point.
No, you could easily go 3-4 Assaults Dash + rapid clearance. And if Heavies Snipers are bad and Assaults+ bersker is broken how and why do you play the game at all?
Nothing stops you, just make restrictions and thats it, as simple as that, i would check your playthrough , i am just curious how far you can get 
This argument again? Here is the answer:
Assaults need at least research one tech … a shotgun… Sniper (into heavy) with hell cannon in a set of banshee armor you could use from first mission until the palace… and this was my point. You started with a set of weapon and armor that could carry you through the entire game. Utter nonesense. Hell cannon was more powerful than gungir and gave shred and daze. Accuracy was a non issue because of master marksman + quick aim accuracy boosts. I quit one of the first legend ironman attempts half way through as I was sick and tired playing sniper heavies and gave myself a rule not to use them. Not only was this combo completely broken… (and still is to a slghtly lesser extent). What frustrated me most is how easily accessible it was. Now at least you need to make an effort to research pytagoras and a suit of synedrion armor to overcome aim penalties.
And as for playing with rules… I spent a good chunk of yesterday tryng to figure out a set of rules that I cannot break and every time I thought of something 5 mins later I was thinking of a way to go round that rule to break the game again. Most of the time I concluded I would have to play in a way that is simply not fun with very limited options. Turning the experience into a slow grind. There are just too many abilities in this game that are completely bonkers. It is already enough that I have to endure through bugs (vanishing equipment in inventory), interface that looks like and operates like in the 90s, endure 5 mins alien turns… now I would have to start cutting content to have some challange and enjoyement. No… I do not like this game THAT much. I would rather check out Long war of the chosen mod for Xcom 2 that was released some 2 months ago…
Yea i agree, i also was disapointed that you can’t research some kind of step up in tech. For me problem was also in resources to build for example new armor, but i guess later in the game it is not a problem.
i quited several times. Everybody said that the game is easy and you should go legend, and when you start it, looks like it, but later understand that what you have picked in talents or how you have progressed with research is total mess and you either spend lots of time for every mission and possibly replay it for 20 times or either go another attempt and check what game is offering. I haven’t finished the game yet and with those nerfs i just don’t want to continue struggling again, and currently i don’t see many fun options how to play it again.
This is so true.
I am also thinking about it
After have experiment significantly the new game version (but for sure not fully), I have doubts it’s a hurry patch that listened whiners “it’s too easy, are all players idiots but me, pff 100 aliens killed in one turn boredom game, blah blah”.
Dash nerf was looking awful until I started get some Rally (fresh new campaign). Old dash was more versatile then more complex than new Dash. But now to replace the Dash high flexibility, there’s Rally. It is a bit of complexity increase because it requires have a team thought, not one soldier then the next. But it’s really more interesting, not that complicate, and think it team or part of team isn’t that difficult and will improve with usage.
Priest nerf are harsh but frankly it’s one for which it was clear that a nerf was coming sooner or later. For that, take care give high speed to Priests, also from Berzerk armors for example, not just high will. This already solves many use cases. On top of that, not always but sometimes Rally will do the trick and it will match perfectly or well enough your team play turn.
Bloodlust, who care? If you was using exploit around it try something else. If not it’s only soldier death wish.
Quick Aim, huu I continue use it as much, sure some builds less oriented on aiming will match less well, but it’s not a that big deal.
Rage Burst, not tested yet.
Grenades changes, it helps players, cool change.
Piercing Sniper, it’s still the most powerful SR on par with end game Raven.
Piercing AR not tested before patch nor after.
Mortar Chiron, tiny help for players.
Spawnery, who care? Until Lairs and Citadels designs are cleaned it doesn’t matter, wait it becomes Citadel.
Mutog, you was ignoring them, continue.
Human Enemies, they worth the boost.
Medical Bay, Mutog stuff so don’t bother.
Environmental Destruction, it’s also an extra care to have, but nothing disastrous, and it can become a new tactical tool for you.
Plus I quoted multiple cleaning of small bugs not listed in patch.
I don’t have any comment on Rage Burst until tested, same for AR. But overall it’s a very coherent patch, and no way making life harder. It doesn’t target the biggest OP holes but some around Priests, but clearly it wasn’t the point, more a tuning of Dash/Rally, Rage Bust, Priest.
for me it wasn’t even a problem before.
Rally if i remember correct cost 2 Action points and 2 will points, to loose 2 action point is harsh on Assault who is supposed to use dash himself, so i disagree, and i would use rally for heavies to fly and open them to 3 Action points to shoot with heavy weapon.
Dont care much about sniper rifle, it was indeed more powerfull than others, but sniper rifles don’t do that much damage anyway i use them with Rage Burst or more to disable body parts. But nerf on AR is just lol i was like O_O, i would use AR only in the beginning of the game and maybe piercing AR with some damage bonuses, since damage on AR like expnonentially scale down with the armor on the target and initial AR damage is low.
Here i partly agree, because i still would clear layers, i think it spawns more assaults on factions and when factions are down (assuming you go to discover the map and can’t react fast enough), they will attack your base, which is pain in the neck (good luck to fight an assault on your base without skilled troops, against 3 sirens in late), and also clearing lairs gives reputation with all factions which is nice too. Lairs however are very long to run, and easy to make a mistake because of the lack of the vision.
Ofcourse you will, to shoot twice or once in a turn for a sniper is a big deal, but now however it is harder to disable nasty body parts without precision and sniper risks to miss a shot for example on Arthons hand, which is a big deal in my opinion and also annoying. It is still strong talent indeed, but not sure why it had to be nerfed, it just makes the game harder and thats it.
I am more interested how it works in missions when you search for lost civilization. Early game is easy enough anyway.
Other changes overshadow small fixes.
Can’t comment on others since i haven’t tried priest for example. And haven’t played berserker a lot, it just seemed to be useless slot for me.
That’s your problem right there. If you replay 20x, you are not providing a blood sacrifice to the DDA God and its a dark and hungry deity that will have its feast one way or another. Provide regular human sacrifices to keep this angry God appeased and things will go much smoother for you. Of course if you’ve got DDA so wound up you have to try 20x, it’s probably easier to start over.
The thing is that with veteran, replacements are very expensive because you have to buy a full set of equipment. On Legendary you get guys without any gear so they can be easily replaced… But of course everything else is stacked against you, hard.
Sure 3 Assault not used for one Heavy, rarely a positive exchange. But you don’t get it, mobility, new Dash has it, what it hasn’t is flexibility. You get flexibility with Rally.
But use Rally for one soldier non sense, plan the turn to use Rally useful for most team during the turn, you have flexibility, some complexity and depth, and it enhance the party turn approach of the design, it’s not play a soldier then another, it’s play a team to mix and sort their actions in the most efficient way.
This is the second aspect of this set of changes, play closer, you want shoot from other side of the map then you have limits, this is Rage Burst nerf (not tried despite I have it already, still struggling for resources and want full equip two teams in priority), this is Quick Aim.
Now that they have taken away half the playable tricks the game would is very hard. It also feels like your troops are always pansies. Their armour sucks or doesn’t work vs something. Their WP doesn’t matter if a Siren got 30 and their weapons feel like toys or Airsoft guns. I seriously consider multiclassing everyone to heavy and spam hel Cannon with rocket mount.
Yep, Quick Aim was a very reasonable nerf. It didn’t make sense to get an accuracy boost. The logical thing to have would’ve been an accuracy penalty. This change was a middle ground.
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That is one of the ways to do it. Or you can field multiple snipers with Athena SRs. Or lvl7 Infiltrators with double damage. Or try Anu priests with Mind Control and Mind Crush. Or Berserkers with their armor break skill and shotguns/laser ARs.
I’m kinda tired of looking for another exploit so the game can be playable. I think high level soldier should be better than rookies not only thanks to their skills and larger WP pool. Assault lvl 3 and lvl 7 is used exactly the same. Run and shotgun to da face. Using AR from 5 tiles almost guarantees one shot to miss. 5-3 tiles they are guaranteed to hit body part u didn’t aim at. I’m sick of having double tap arthrons and Tritons, they have enormous accuracy, 2-3 weapons (spitter head least you forget) are potential frenzy targets and I got to deal with 4 while 2 sirens closing by backed by chiron (pretty standard group). And my 8 lvl 7 soldiers in turn one cannot kill 4 lowest tier mutants unless I charge/snipe everyone in range. I respect the evolving mechanism of enemies but arthron with machine gun shield and head is good at all distances. Also yat AR used by aliens instakills your rookie assault if he fails to disable an arm and not wearing armour and even if he does it’s very high chance he will be dropped to 10% hp with multiple disabled parts makin him useless. So again IM TIRED OF EXPLOITING THE GAME! ITS NOT MAGIC THE FUKIN GATHERING.
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If you want to give everybody an assault rifle and just steamroll than it’s a wrong game for you I guess.
Or you can try to lower difficulty setting.
I think there is some difference between steamrolling and game breaking / ultimate min max challenge. Half of the weapons are unusable on higher difficulties. Big units are laughable. Currently it’s better to give soldiers pistols than assault rifle. Something may be off balance.
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