3721

Yep, the bonus was reported as high cover.

3722

The assault skills that gives auto-reaction shot within 4 spaces is pretty much the best thing ever. Combined with an alloy cannon. Getting multiple reaction kills in a single round… Yowza.

From my terrible over watch performance, I’ve concluded that enemies that teleport in (thin men mostly) get the dashing dodge bonus. On multiple occasions, I’ve had 3+ units at a time with absurdly high hit chance miss on over watch when they spawn in.

3723

Yah, opportunist, overwatch, squad sight, and archangel armor is fairly overpowered unless it bugs out (which is often). Elevated snipers often get 100% hit chance. On my latest play through I had 2 snipers set up this way and it really trivialized a lot of encounters.

3724

I used to have 100% hit chance and wasn’t elevated, so I’m not sure the archangel armor is the cause of that.

3725

It’s like effing christmas

3726

It is an amazing skill, and one of those skills you’d almost be dumb not to take (like squad sight), but it is also buggy in my experience.

Sometimes it just does not work. I’d guesstimate it triggers about 2/3 of the time it should.

Luckily, it is so good that even with the bugs it is a required skill.

3727

I must have saved Anna Sing 10 times now. These council missions have got to get more variety in future patches.

3728

okay, first run done, I did it on classic, and I owned them…however…

My opinion of the various classes :
Assault : Useful, always have one.
Heavy : Gotta have em, atleast 2
Support : Medic is so and so, but using them as poison bait is valuable.
Sniper : Worthless, I cannot for the life of me find a use for them, even as ranged support they suck.

Opinions?

3729

Snipers are OP late game. It’s fairly easy to setup situations where they get 2 100% shots a round from a distance that the enemy can’t even fire back.

This is from an ironman perspective so safe 100% hits are gold.

3730

I find snipers the most powerful class, once you get squad sight at level 2.

3731

Really?

I’m not done yet, but i completely disagree, mostly.

Well, i agree on assault and heavy, although i think you give slightly too much credit to heavy.

I always take a single support. Especially late game when your soldiers can actually survive a shot and have a ton of health, being able to heal them can be the difference between someone limping along with 5 health throughout a mission (and potentially dying in it) and being able to heal them back to full. It is true that they do less damage than the other classes, but they can still do well with a plasma rifle.

Sniper… Ok here is where i completely disagree. Yes, in some maps, like a limited number of ufos, there is too much moving for them to reach their true potential. However, in the majority of maps i’ve seen, they are just a dominating force able to do extreme damage, at range, with high accuracy and twice.

My ideal team is:
Assault X2
Heavy X2
Support
Sniper

Both assaults with full defensive talents except for the auto close range overwatch and +50% critical when you run & gun. Assaults can do a lot of damage and take a lot as well. Lightning reflexes is an extremely good talent that (especially early on) saves a ton of lives. My assault troops are also my dedicated stunners

Both heavies focusing on rocket launchers and anti mechanic. I tried to like suppression, but i can’t lie to myself anymore. It just sucks. This was only reinforced when i got the late game upgrade to the rocket launcher. Rocket launcher isn’t super useful, but it is situationally quite good, shredder even more so. Late game’s insanely strong robot enemies also makes heat ammo damn nice.

Support focused on healing. Smoke is situationally useful, but the healing can make it so you can keep using that assault who took some unlucky hits instead of sending them back so they don’t die.

Sniper because they just end up getting hte most kills in a map where htey can stand in one place and have a good field of fire. In my experience this is most maps and even on the ones where it isn’t the case, you can use them as overwatch gods where they will one hit kill something if it walks in to view.

3732

How did you build your snipers? With Squad sight I find them to be the must have class of the game. Late game they can just stand back AA up into the sky and double tap all day. Really they are the only class I thought approached being unbalanced in the players favor and being a bit overpowered.

3733

My preferred team had 3 snipers, I thought they were hands down the best class.

3734

I’d almost recommend not using more than 1 sniper just to avoid having a too easy late game.

3735

Squadsight snipers are probably the single most powerful class in the game.

Heavies are useful, but their low accuracy limits their direct offensive capability.

Assaults are important for map control.

Support is a strange class; I keep one around as an “insurance policy” against things like poison, unlucky enemy criticals, etc.

3736

Huh. I guess I’m weird. I usually take at least 2 support in every mission. I consider support to be the “standard soldier” class I use to fill out my team.

It’s partially due to resources constraints. I have a shit ton of plasma rifles from all my captures, but I only have one apiece of alloy cannon, plasma sniper, and heavy plasma because I’ve been very stingy with building weapons. (If you can get them for free, why wouldn’t you). So, since a plasma support is better than a laser heavy or sniper, I go support.

Also, deep pockets is pretty great. Consider, for instance: sprinter+chitin armor+ghost armor+arc thrower, and you have a super fast, very survivable capture specialist who can disappear if he bites off more than he can chew.

3737

Problems with snipers as I see them.

They are not mobile, and squadsight makes them lag behind, and alone which is bad imho. They also aren’t that good a shot, and have zero ability to defend in a close engagement, which you often can end up in.

Basically, you are better off with mobile weapons that can push the enemy and gain ground…as they wont always come to you, and sure, you can run around with a suicidal assault and spot, but seriously?

3738

By the end of the game, with squad sight, snipers will have 90-100% chance on just about anything not behind cover.

As for close quarters stuff, once you start to get upgraded pistols, they aren’t completely worthless (though, still not that great).

3739

Yeah, you’re pretty much wrong. A sniper with AA armor never has to move and will be shooting at around 100% to hit anything in the open map. They own outdoors. With gunslinger they are extremely lethal with a pistol for those times that you do need to move/shoot or if something somehow gets close, especially if you also built up pistols in the Foundry.

As an aside, my sniper ended the final mission in one turn as soon as the big bad showed its face at the end. Double Tap, headshot, game over, he was several screens back from where the guy showed up.

3740

My best sniper is also my best psionic, which is awesome.