admittedly im taking a break from xcom for a little, been enjoying escape from tarkov alot. ill start making legendary runs on xcom2 again soon more than likely
Scanning protocol is very useful for retaliation missions, you can scan 4-5 civilians, ensure they're not faceless, find nearby enemy pod to engage it or setup overwatch trap if they will run into you on their turn because you're near civilians. The medkits are also useful, but if you do 2 specialists, one for skullmining and hacking other as a medic, it's by no means useless ability.
Specialists let you add 20 def and over watch to another class…. Hulkdown adds 30 to your def…. Heavy cover adds 40…. All three give you 90 def and overwatch….. defence is subtracted from aim to calculate hit chance…. Any thing with less than 90 aim can’t hit you….. 3 specialists and a sharpshooter with aim and the pistol skills means a return firing supersoldier that can’t be hit, has overwatch, a pistol shot before hulking down and gaining bonus aim on his/her/them return fire…..
This sounds awful, most missions have timers and youre throwing everything onto one soldier that is gonna return fire at enemies already in cover with a weak side arm, no way do you play legend iron-man and win with this strategy
Kill Zone can be one of the best skills in the game if you've got an appropriate build. You need extended mags to provide more shots--especially if you want to play aggressively and pump out five or six shots in one activation and delete a pod with one soldier's move. You also need bonus aim PCS chips in your sharpshooters to offset the overwatch aim penalty. And if you want to wipe out pods of Troopers, Secoids, Officers, Priests, Purifiers, or Stun Lancers, use venom rounds. Venom Rounds not only apply an aim penalty to enemies hit by it but also reduces their movement, which makes them much easier to hit when cleaning up a pod when you get that second round of shots against them. The trick to unlocking the god-tier potential of Kill Zone is to trigger it on your turn. In other words, once you spot a pod, put down a kill zone on it then trigger the pod. If you can make this happen, you'll get shots against pod on your turn followed by a second round of shots against the pod on the enemy's turn. That's up to six highly accurate big-damage shots going downrange. Few pods survive that. To set up these pod-wiping Kill Zone shenanigans, scouting is super important. Having a Reaper on the sniper team is a must. And having a second sharpshooter to trigger the pod and pull them in is kind of handy too. A team with two Kill Zone sharpshooters and a Reaper can carry the squad when taking out Advent facilities and go flawless too even when deliberately hanging out to mop up the two waves of reinforcements that drop in after you deploy the demolition charges. I usually bring six soldiers on these missions and use it to level up some non-sharpshooter scrubs and chumps. Lots of enemies on the map; lots of XP to earn. These facility missions don't have timers, so you have the luxury of scouting at your leisure and setting up effective Kill Zones. Most maps have good spots to set up your Kill Zones and dominate the map. And if you delay deploying the demolition charge in order to bring Kill Zone off its cooldown timer, you can finish the mission by dropping Kill Zones on the pods coming in as reinforcements--for that ultimate abuse-kill-zone experience.
The text on silent is correct - taking shots with reaper increases the chance for getting revealed. Let's consider a scenario: 1. You take a shot with reaper and don't kill, you get 50% chance to get revealed, but you get lucky and stay in shadow 2. On next turn, you take a kill shot with the same reaper. What would happen without silent killer, you would get increased chance to get revealed (80% if I remember correctly). If you have silent killer in this scenario, the 2nd shot still has only 50% chance to reveal you.
Note that bladestorm still inherits your blade's stats, so if you use the Katana, or you're lucky enough to roll it on a Templar, those attacks *cannot* miss. Which even on legendary can make for great roadblocks in chokepoints, especially against Lost.
Offering a contrary opinion here: I feel like the Specialist class gets slept on quite a lot. Medical Protocol is a house. The healing ability scales even better the later the campaign goes. In the early game, if you get one-shot critted, you can't do much about that, but later on, if somehow you get hit, the remote healing keeps you out of one-shot range, and the ability itself doesn't end the turn, which makes it incredibly useful. You can do double healing, or heal + aid protocol, or heal + take a shot, etc. It is quite flexible. It also helps counter chryssalid poison, burning, etc., that you will run into from time to time. Revival protocol is also incredibly valuable. Like you said, many enemies have disorientation effects, and it allows you to restore soldiers very cheaply. Threat assessment in the mid-late game allows you to shift an extra shot onto another soldier. At major rank, threat assessment on the specialist, combined with Guardian, allows the Specialist to enter overwatch, to set up an ambush, allows you to unload your clip and sometimes kill off a pod without using any consumables. This isn't a reactionary gameplay, this is fairly proactive, and it comes up in almost every mission, when you engage the first pod out of concealment. On the hacker side, remote hacking is useful in situations where you need to hack for a mission objective, disable an advent tower, or sometimes, if you have to, hack a mec, which provides you a free mimic beacon. Obviously, you have to weigh it based on the penalty if you fail, but the whole game is about making good decisions anyway. Overall, I find that the action economy on a Specialist is quite high. The base kit is very flexible, and fulfils an excellent role as a support and backline damage dealer.
@@legionxiv1792 I don't think that's true. I have no idea what Syken possibly sees in them, but threat assessment and combat protocol are their only legitimately good abilities imo, and threat assessment has the classic "the best thing you can do is give your turn to a better soldier" problem. They're not awful-awful, but I do honestly believe the game is simply easier if you ignore the class after early game where you have no choice. Skipping assault rifle upgrades is actually just a huge deal on legendary. Especially for plasma rifles. I will say they get significantly better at lower difficulties where assault rifles being 3-5 damage base is much less of a liability, but man, bringing a squaddie specialist really feels like I'm bringing a rookie. Under 70% accuracy flank shots that don't actually kill 1/3rd of the time is really rough. I actually use them quite a bit in late mid to late game just because I probably don't have oodles and oodles of rangers and grenadiers unless I got very lucky that campaign and specialists are a natural mimic beacon carrier/that's the part of the game where I'm liable to pull the whole map so purifiers burning people happens which makes gremlin heal basically combat presence, but they're very whelming. I do appreciate their relatively high aim at high ranks and combat protocol usually means I can get away with not shredding armor on a robot, but it's whelming. By that point in the game my reaper can just take 7 shots, my ranger is getting +6 (iirc) damage from its 95+% crits, my grenadier is removing the defense stat from the big scary guy while doing a big hit and shredding armor (or straight up assassinating less scary guys), my sniper is putting 3+ shots down range, and my templar is still an infinitely useable frost bomb. Getting 90% shots at range is cool, but it doesn't really compare to what the other guys are doing.
@@Mezmorizorz I agree with your assessment in general, one thing I've found useful is to give the Specialist the Bolt Caster. Then I upgrade it to Plasma Bolt Caster. This is obviously much cheaper than either or the Rifle upgrades, and you also save on the tier2 Caster upgrade. Then you pass it on to PSY OP when you phase away the Specialist for PSY OPs.
Admittedly, base classes are much better balanced in xcom2 than xcom1. But among the new wotc classes, reapers are by far the best. I only use skirmishers and templars on simple missions.
I was always hesitant about time limits, in my games. Majora's Mask, XCom 2, etc, and seeing you break this all down, while I'm in 2023, and this video is 10 months old- my god you are /the/ tutorial guide. I've been able to make sense of what you're talking about (mostly. Gotta play more to fully get it) and I've felt nothing but educated. Properly educated. I'm in the Specialist bit, and I'm just...in shock of how little the game actually tells you. You, sir, are a gentleman, and a scholar.
Important note regarding Templar skill invert. It cannot miss and it works on the Chosen. Makes dealing with an Assassin who has dashed away to some ridiculous spot or a Warlock hiding behind high cover all the way in the back fairly easy. You only have to get your Templar into a position where he can see the Chosen no matter if it's a 12% chance to hit he will pull it out of cover and your team can do the rest. Best of all he can even come back and rend her if necessary. Other than that here are some notes I would like to make on your assessments. Bladestorm is very good. But it's situational you have to know when and how to use it. It is not a guaranteed hit because it's considered an overwatch ability. Also if there is another overwatch active the combined damage can explode a flamethrower right in your face which is not great. I believe with a katana and the sword breakthrough your slash might even one shot the bugger even on legend. Here are some examples of good uses of bladestorm. In resistance ring ambush missions there will be a reinforcements pod dropped on your ass on the second turn. On legend it's always three enemies, a captain and two troopers. Never a flamethrower. Parking your ranger exactly on top of the red dot will put him right in between all three making it very likely that he slashes two or even all of them. Combined with overwatch this can result in crippling the pod even before your turn starts. This makes the mission trivial since the rest of the ambush enemies are always alone and they tend to patrol so you can overwatch ambush them and also if you don't you have at least two soldiers so it's manageable. Another very good use of bladestorm is when you get untouchable. Soften up a Andromedon with another soldier, move right to his face and kill it either by slashing or if necessary with your shotgun which does more damage. The stupid armor suit will activate but it's melee so it is programed to attack the closest unit. You are closest and you take no damage plus you can bladestorm it (if you don't miss) so that next turn you have an easy kill. This works if all other enemies can be reliably dealt with so that no other one shoots at the ranger. This strategy works without bladestorm, sure, but it's a nice extra attack that costs no action and you are going to get in close anyway.
On Rupture - it comboes exceptionally well with a gunslinger sharpshooter - that +3 damage quickly adds up when you're able to shoot same target multiple times in a single turn; effectively almost doubling gunslingers damage output against single target, on top of applying holo targeting and shredding armor. Rupture + Banish is another good option - armor shred + reapers armor piercing + 7 total attacks in two actions makes it my go-to way to kill rulers and occasional sectopods.
shadowstrike can be used more than once per mission, depending on enemy sightlines and visibility of your ranger. you can often get this bonus several times in a mission if you're careful to position - but it's easy to misinterpret. any enemy that hasn't already seen the ranger is capable of being hit with shadowstrike if line-of-sight allows it, including up to when they initiate their attack. most enemies will glimpse a line of sight of your squad during reveal, but it does not necessarily mean that your ranger was spotted. this also includes slashes, shotgun blasts, anything that you can peek out from. for *massive* +25 aim and crit buff, its a huge opener for a midrange shotgun kill that lets you get closer with implacable after the fact.
55:13 great video, just want to mention that Repair can also be used on yourself. This is the reason why i go for Bulwark with them because Bulwark + Repair in addition to the default benefits of having robotic immunities makes it a pretty nice frontline tank for tough enemies such as the Berserker Queen.
Great video! Very quick mention on psi ops, stasis shield is two level stasis is on enemies and statis shield is the upgrade which allows both enemies and team mates to be put in status
concerning blade storm I think it's a must in certain situation, you can clean 4-5 enmies group just by moving the ranger next to them...next turn whatever they do they going to be slashed!
I've never used Guardian and only Ever Vigilant, and it's especially helpful on retaliation missions where you don't have time to OW creep. If you trigger a pod you're like "Oh Crap" and then your 1 or 2 specialists with Ever Vigilant fire and just like that one of the enemies is dead.
The permanently visible perk can potentially stop the AI after being revealed from converging onto you if you run pass them concealed. I've farmed blacksite with it and without it. Almost certainly without it will cause the pods to follow you around the map and converge. Now you can use this to your advantage by getting them grouped up preferably near a car too then blow them up with a claymore+car explosion.
Demolition for grenadiers is pretty handy to have in a good deal of cases. There are certain covers that the AI loves to take advantage of that are tough to destroy with grenades. The two main problems with demolition is that you need to “hit” the target to destroy the cover its in and the fact that it works best with extended mags because without them it will basically force a reload. However the benefit ties into the grenadiers job better in the sense it allows the rest of your squad to quickly handle the suddenly out of cover target quickly, especially your sharpshooters without burning up your precious grenades. Sharpshooters outside of ambushes have a hard time getting to a position that will keep them relevant. With grenadiers demolition ability, you are giving your sharpshooters a chance to heavily damage/kill a target that can also get quickly cleaned up if the target was only damaged and not killed.
Haywire Protocol is really just a fun ability. I fully agree with your breakdown and comparison, but who doesn't love getting to pilot a sectopod for a few turns? :)
Its really interesting how many things I love that he calls trash. really makes me want to take a second look at somebof them. also shows how deep this game is
just bear in mind, this is coming from the perspective of legendary difficulty runs, and i certainly have my biases. other people have pointed out great counterpoints/ideas in the comments
I tried Demolition and I liked it a lot more. Unlike Suppression it has immediate effect that can turn your 20% hit and 0% crit into 70% hit and 40% crit. If it's last enemy and you could kill it through the reaction fire, why not just shoot it and not waste 2 ammo on reaction shot that does nothing. Enemies very often, practically always try to do blue move, get rid of suppression and then fire so it's whole purpose is non existent. It should have reduced mobility as well as cover and apply anywhere the unit goes to for as long as it remains in line of sight. Currently it does nothing but waste ammo. Meanwhile if you dealt with enemy pod and there is just 1 dude left far away in cover you can except it to run away to another pod and going up close could activate another pod. Demolition allows you to deal with cover in situations you got under control and save up on nades. It also enables you to take some of the experimental grenades that don't destroy cover. Not saying they're better than plasma, but it's enabling you something Suppression could only dream of. What, are you going to sack a Mimic beacon because you got suppression? Didn't think so. When doing UFO crash site or raid convoy on Legend and mission is Very Difficult with dark event reinforced missions you will be out of nades in no time if you rely on those 2-3 nades even if you bring 2 grenadiers. Not to mention early on regular nades don't destroy trees, so until you get plasma nades it's really useful to do the usual grenadier's job in early game.
Gotta disagree on the Specialist's hacker tree. It's not great in the early game, sure, and having a medical specialist is real good at that point. But you can rack up hacking bonuses through covert ops, and the upgraded Skulljack gives a HUGE hacking buff. Mid-to-lategame hacker specialists can be really strong. Sure, a gunslinger sniper with bluescreen rounds and the Hunter's pistol can one-shot a Sectopod, but you know what's better than doing that? Owning a Sectopod. Sweet, sweet two-for-one action.
For the specialist a basic gremlin Combat Protocol does 2-3 damage to organics and *doubles* that to 4-6 against robotic enemies, a MK 2 does 4 damage to organics and 6-8 to robots, and a MK 3 does 6 to organics and 8-10 to robots. All of this guaranteed damage without a miss chance. If comboed with a grenade or shredder attack to burn off some armor most turrets can be 2 shotted, similar with a pistol shot with bluescreen rounds. For hacking a basic gremlin offers no bonus with the MK 2 and MK 3 giving +20 and +40 respectively. An ADVENT heavy MEC has a tech score of 90 so a MK 3 vs heavy is 100-90+40=50% hack chance... *However* a skulljack with the skullmining upgrade gives a +25 hacking bonus to anyone it's equipped on so that calculation becomes 100-90+40+25=75% hack chance! Add in a few covert op missions to boost hacking or the Enemy Protocol reward from hacking a mission objective, which is a *permanent* and potentially *stackable* +20 to hacking for that soldier, and it can make hacking heavy MECs *guaranteed* (note that's the MEC tech score for hard and legendary difficulty and that even superheavy turrets only get a tech score of 75 on the same difficulties. Andromedon Shells get 80 and Sectopods 150 for the hardest possible hack of the game). Finally EMP grenades and bluescreen rounds reduce tech scores by 5 (per hit on the rounds) and the EMP bomb reduces it by -10 so you can make it easier to hack by putting a little damage on it. Takes a bit of work but offers *much* higher success rates.
For statistics, hunter protocol is deceptively effective on the spark because it's 33% for each enemy in the pod. With a pod of 3 the stars break down as. 0 shots 30% 1 shots 44% 2 shots 22% 3 shots 4% With the aim penalty a colonel Spark has about a 70% chance of proc hunter protocol at least once and a 50% chance of hitting a target. I ran the maths on it and with a superior scope you basically have a 90% hair trigger proc equivalent. It is insanely powerful.
i had never considered that setup for late game sparks. i normally run extend mag and stock if i dont have adaptive aim, if i do i take free mag and ext mag. ill have to give that a try
Just want to let you know the only thing good about scanning protocol. Is that it will reveal the hunter when she's cloaked. And any faceless that are on the map. As well as let you know that there's a pod close by.
Not the hunter the assassin and as for the faceless they instantly activate if you scan them despite how weak they are they are still potentially dangerous and is easily saveable for later on when you oh I don’t know kill every other enemy on the map before it if possible
Yeah, Specialists kind of suck. That said, I find that you can often stack enough +Hack on a specialist to reliably get good rewards from hacking (and reliably control Advent mechs), and having someone around to Revive can be really useful. You often need to take +Hack rewards anyways, so it's not like it costs you to do it. 1 tooled-out specialist can usually pull their weight on a team.
cheers sean, im not uploading much xcom2 atm since im a little burnt out on it and am enjoying escape from tarkov. I'll likely do more xcom2 stuff at a later date, just wanted to let you know. cheers again
Man, so many people just do not understand how powerful the gunslinger abilities are when you have blue screen rounds, spider suit, aim PCS, and the shadow keeper aim bonus. Yes, they need a lot of equipment to bring out their full potential but once they do they borderline break the game. They are almost busted, and I mean before hunter weapons. Hunter weapons just make them even more OP. Shame you did not mention that codex and spectres are vulnerable to bluescreen rounds as well as all the robots. Faceoff hard counters codex splitting and ya they just break the action economy so much. Give your skirmisher a scope, auto loader, and bluescreen rounds too!
I have quite a few installed, any particular ones you’re interested in? For my play throughs on TH-cam I only use cosmetic mods since non steam users won’t have access to gameplay mods, I want my guides to be helpful for them as well.
As a fellow xcom vet, (still don’t have the courage for an Ironman run bc I love to Misclick) this video was very relaxing to watch and see another veteran player’s perspective on the abilities. My two cents is the most op ability in the game isn’t even an ability, it’s the mimic beacon. Btw what is the armor mod you’re using on your troops?
I agree that the specialist falls off pretty hard in late game, but I’d rate them at least A in the mid game (and probably A in the early game, too-those 2 dmg from combat protocol may sound like not much but, again, can be such a lifesaver when you’re missing shots left and right). You mentioned you don’t do hacking, but capturing pesky mechs or shit like an Andromedon or Sectopod in those games when you’re still trying to catch up can be life-saving. Late game I still try to make some use of them-specially if I broke their hack rating with buffs-but by then you have better things to so with your turn than trying to hack things.
On the other hand, I think you rated Grenadier too high in early game! Once you can find ways to buff their aim, Grenadier becomes a must in most squads, but early game their terrible aim makes for a very unreliable unit-even if their grenades are very useful. Anyways, not trying to knock on your takes, but I just find it interesting that we can have such different outlooks on the classes, despite ostensibly playing the same game lol. Really says a lot about the depth of the game.
That’s the great thing about this game, you can play it with very unique squad sets and make things work. As much as I hate specialists, people have made 5 spec 1 skirmishes teams that are crazy strong.
This is a very good video and I like your inputs on each class. Im surprised nobody mentioned this in the comments but there is some audio stuttering as the video goes on which is very bothersome. Namely 36:20 and further on. It seems like its your mic causing these audio issues as well. Hopefully you caught this, thanks for the guide.
Can a templar learn bladestorm at any level? Or only at corporal? My templar started with sustain and i want to know if i need to restart the game or if i can keep playing and maybe get it later on?
I like Suppression too but in some instances Demolition is clearly better. For example, if the unit you're suppressing is a Sectoid or a Priest the suppressed unit can just use mind control or some other psi-ability. Demolition would clearly be preferable in those situations. I usually take Demolition for the first grenadier soldier I get. In fact, other than taking Shredder over Blast Padding I usually always take the left side of the tree for all other perks for my first grenadier.
@@legionxiv1792 It's a bit of an investment but if you get the aim training and you have your sharpshooter on the high ground Deadeye can make taking out difficult enemies really easy. For my most recent playthrough I had a sharpshooter with bluescreen rounds and he was 1 shotting most mechs with his deadshot. If you deadshot a gatekeeper and it crits you can even one shot a Gatekeeper which is super satisfying.
I agree with you on you nearly everything but I think you're analysing classes based on their individual strengh rather than their combo potential. For example: some dude called Reddest of Goats pulled off an unique strategy involving 1 skirmisher and 3 specialists, turns out it's the most broken combo in the entire game and makes the skirmisher possibly the best class in WotC.
@@TyphonNeuron skirmisher has an ability called warlord which allows him to make an action after the enemy performs one (just like the queens). Normally this is pretty shit because you need him to be very close and he'll die very fast BUT, using defence protocol from a specialist, you can increase his defence and therefore dogde capability. Turns out you can stuck defence protocol up to 3 times and make any soldier unkillable, skirmisher just happens to be the best target for this strategy.
That's a total meme build. It works I guess, but it's a ton of set up, is no more consistent than just bringing 6 majors+colonels, and takes forever to actually play through the turns. Do it for the spectacle if you want to I guess, but it's better to just play standard. Especially because you are in glorified "end turn to finish shadow chamber projects" mode by that point.
I know this is Xcom abilitys but if u can get lucky and get a Templar with Bladestorm your set. Not only does he hardcounter any melee based enemy, he will easily be the best soldier vs all Alien rulers not to mention with just 1 promotion hes a mobile Mimic beacon with untouchable every turn. But a Templar can also be your worse enemy especially vs the Warlock. If u dont have a Mindshield or cant afford to build 1 then your Templar should never be put on a mission. U might get away with it on mission areas not controlled by the Warlock but even then its high risk becouse if he gets mind controled by a Sectoid and u cant instantly break it then he will tear apart your team. If u have lvl 2 armour then u can hopefully tank 1 hit, but if u dont then 1 soldier isent getting out alive. Also have they made changes over the years to Bladestorm hit% becouse even before Wotc when Phantom were more popular i cant recall Bladestorm ever missing. Sometimes the visuals bugged out when multiple enemys like Chrysalids ran past and it dident show the hit animation but all enemys still toke the dmg.
Like you I don't rate specialists. However I do prefer combat protocol, because its a guaranteed kill on an enemy with two health, it will also do 5 damage on a mec. The damage scales with gremlin level.
Decent video, but Sharpshooter is IMO bottom tier in midgame because of upgrade costs. It's a DD class like the Ranger, but it lacks the scouting utility the Ranger has, and it costs A LOT more to upgrade SS weapons, while Ranger weapons are cheap. While it's very powerful late game, getting there is just painful and you still don't really get anything that proper play in the late game with other classes won't. If the game is played with Integrated DLC option and you have to build your own SPARK to get one, then it is also bottom tier because it costs an arm and a leg. The Templar cannot be S tier early game either because you can activate things you must not. XCOM is at its heart a game about mitigating bad RNG, so you need to consider the worst case scenario a lot more than the average one, let alone a good one. A class that has to walk on eggshells cannot be S tier.
Why specialist so low? Especially in late game, it's a lifesaver. Not only can it heal 7 HP up to four times, but it has an ability that heals the entire team the same amount once. It also removes DoT (fire, poison, etc.) and some mental effects (such as panic). Not to mention that it can stabilize bleeding soldiers and remove CC effects remotely. Also, thanks to her abilities, he can overwatch automatically by spending all his actions on movement, and it can be activated not only with movement, but with any enemy action, and also has a 50% chance of reactivating, being able to do so several times. Finally, if you have enough skill points left over, you can unlock the entire hacker branch, and so you can control robotic enemies, scan an area you have no vision over, or simply do a lot of damage to mechanical/robotic units.
It's still the weakest in late game because its utility is pitiful compared to PSY OP. If you Stasis the most dangerous enemy in a pod you won't need healing, and you can get a dominated Andromedon or Gatekeeper do both the damaging and the tanking part for you.
Sadly i cant enjoy legendary because it becomes too much of a puzzle game. You have to strictly build, research and choose what to do in a really specific way in order to minimize risks, that xcom becomes a puzzle game on what to do first. I always play on commander/ironman to allow more carnage and so that more soldier die. It makes the playthrough more like a realistic movie about legendary rebellion instead of a typical marvel superhero rebellion movie. And honest mistakes dont instantly hurt the whole playthrough.
I can agree with that. If they gave commander difficulty advent a slight health buff and kept pod number the same I think it would be a happy medium between legendary health enemies as well as +1 pod for the difficulty. Still difficult, but you don’t have to play super cookie cutter every playthrough
@@legionxiv1792 the +1 pod only works if the xp then is lowered. Because +1 pod could gibe to much experience to soldiers and make the game easier as you get more experienced soldier much sooner. I tried it with mods and it makes your soldier level up after each mission which is progress breaking. Slightly higher life, 1 more pod/ slightly bigger pods and slightly less xp for killing aliens. The longer research time just drags the playthrough on. And it is unfair if research time is longer but the aliens still grow the same in research as in commander while we habe to wait double the time. What makes xcom fun is that you grow in strength just like the aliens and turns become much more complex to play/ calculate. My problem with Legemdary is either you kill the pod before they can harm you or its you who will loose with big disadventage if not completely. It becomes a who kills who first. The more random things are added the better. For example ot would be cool if aliens sometimes would surrender / you would get random reinforcment mid battle and turn the tide on key missions / alliens get better way of reinforcement instead of a pod that will die instantly on overwatches. Would be cool if civilians would join / you fight during a protest and cam make your soldiers disapper during battle. Also would be cool instead of having a mobile center that you would ha e mutiple bases you can defend and move in a certain region only. The base mechanics of xcom are good but not good enough. The best thing they could add is not a 1 soldier 1 turn system but whole squad 1 turn system. The squad all do your commands at the se time aswell as the aliens. It could make for cinematic gunfights.
Aid protocol in ironman runs is insanely good. Not turn-ending. Specialists can also have greater overwatch accuracy. You didn't have to do them so badly lol
My specialists constantly reassure me that they are perfectly good classes. I have no idea why they are so underrated, same with medkits. I don't care how good you are at this game...things will make your soldiers take damage and others will outright kill them. Specialists can mitigate deaths by healing and when deaths go to bleedouts they can save the soldier for another day. There is also the extremely rare case where a hack can make you go from a loss to a perfect clear (these are rare b/c hacks are inconsistent, but sometimes its a nice last ditch effort). In WotC you dont need to decide between two skills...they can be medics AND be decent at dealing with robotic enemies. The chosen do so many disorienting things and specialists are the only ones that can save them sometimes. I think in vanilla xcom they are bad but in WotC they are insanely consistent and key members of any squad. I would say they are essential for chosen lairs b/c your soldiers will take lots of damage going up against the chosen. Grenediers are horribly overrated. Shredding becomes irrelevant when enemies have a crapton of shields to where you just run ap rounds or chosen weapons. Their accuracy is so bad you NEED superior PCS and Scopes for them to use their actually good abilities (and also expanded mags). Grenade strats in general are overrated - they're just easy to perform decently and don't require much strategy which makes them very popular for first time clearers. But there are many other ways of dealing with enemies. People run them for the guaranteed damage and breaking cover...but then they are the most RNG b/c even with height advantage and flanking or perfect range they sometimes still only have an 85% chance to hit. Frost bombs are great but the alien rulers are a joke in WotC - some bad combinations like kinetic plating and blast shield can make your Grenediers liabilities. Skirmishers and Templars can't really be rated mid or late game. The RNG of their XCOM abilities is too random. Having multiple actions with a grapple can be extremely good with some XCOM ability RNG. But Skirmishers certainly do fall off and eventually just exist to give extra turns. Reapers are inconsistent. 90% of the time they are god tier...but the other 10% they screw you so hard you might lose the entire campaign. The only way to prevent this is perfectly using battle scanners which early game means you have 3 soldires with actual grenades maybe because reapers dont get utility either...I hate reapers and don't think they're reliable at all. Yes 90% of the time they work great...the other 10% an advent patrol move into a civ and the civ runs into your reaper and your reaper instantly dies from the enemies. They also do like zero damage when theres no explosives and they're out of claymore...they don't do anything battle scanners can't do. They're just early game crutches that murder pods early on that will eventually die or you'll stop using them and they'll take all the xp you put into them with them. And don't even think about taking them into battle with the lost.
specialist have a trade off and that trade off is not bringing something that could have completely prevented w/e injured ur unit from taking a turn and the later the game goes the worse they get b/c other classes get so much more damage output potential
@@ihatetacocasa Yes that's always the logic but it doesn't hold up. Again, I don't care how insane your squad is, sometimes you take damage and sometimes your soldiers die or bleed out. In these cases, specialist is the only one who can help. An extra grenedier isn't going to suddenly make it impossible for you to take damage. In fact, if your squad is so insane, you should be totally fine with a specialist. As I said they can be anti robotic and heal in wotc at relatively low ap cost. Aid protocol is greatly underutilized especially on spark units. Late game they can heal or cure anything on every single member of the squad or start hacking consistently which is op as hell. With xcom abilities they can get serial potentially or something to make up for their lack of damage...or give them mobility pcs and send them in with an exo suit w/ shredder rounds. People will pour superior scopes and perception pcs into their grenedier and give them frost bomb, their best nade, and a third high cost item. Then people compare them to their specialist that they don't bother to give med kits or any utility to and almost no one gives them pcs or weapon attachments. Against chosen specialists are the best unit hands down. Early game and even late game chosen can one shot your guys into bleeding out or just guarantee damage on someone twice. Or daze someone where you'd normally gave to waste an action sprinting to get to them or blind...specialist can delete everything chosen do to you.
@@lushen952 its not that hard to pop the chosen when it comes out if u rush to the first one at mag weapons at that point u want more fire power on the tomb which a grenadier is better for b/c it has higher damage and aim doesn't matter and i also don't use frost bombs and use grenade less and less as campaign goes on
@@ihatetacocasa Chosen are sometimes very easy to get rid of quickly but I have had many runs end b/c a chosen wipes my squad. They have one hit potential on your guys and the assassin can sometimes end up going places that you can't follow. I had her in my last playthrough on one of the lost missions where I had to evac across the map and there was literally nothing I could do - there are so many buildings she just comes in, one shots someone, and runs inside a building and could be in like 4 places where my guys can't see even if they move. The sniper can also just murder your guys b/c he likes to attack a lot and not daze. If they have something like kinetic plating or blast shield they are going to be a huge problem for your playthrough. Chosen lairs are also possibly the hardest missions in the game. Chosen are absolutely a threat - rulers are a joke, not chosen. Especially on missions where you can't evac.
I see a lot of people swearing by hacking and haywire protocol in the comments, but in reality, these people must be save scumming. Haywire protocol is a trash ability because hacking itself is trash, as the chances of pulling off successful hacks are low, and the risks/negatives outweigh the rewards most of the time. I've done lots of playthroughs (commander/Legend) where I purposefully stack hack on a single specialist through the resistance ring, skulljack, and save scumming multiple +20 hack rewards, but even still my specialists botch hacks way more often than not, regardless of high hack stats or what the success percentages say. I mean ffs, how retarded is that? I still need to save scum the +20 hack rewards on the guy that I am intentionally stacking hack on! OMG. In ''real'' situations where you dont go out of your way to stack hack on a single guy, and you dont plan to save scum or cant because of ironman, then it is not worth going for a hack on anything other than obligatory mission objectives. Otherwise, all youre going to achieve when you inevitably fail hacks is to make things harder by calling in reinforcements on yourself or buff the enemy at the expense of your specialist's action/turn, and if you took a skulljack for max hack, then wasting an important equipment slot for absolutely zero value.
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So I only watched random parts, no the whole 2 hours. Anyway, some notes: * abilities are random, but the pool is very small, and you get 4-6 of them. For Templars specifically there's only 8 possibilities, so majority of Templars will have Bladestorm. Over 3/4 of Templars will have either Bladestorm or Reaper or both, it's really terrible luck to roll a Templar with neither. * defensively is not how you use Bladestorm - it's a very offensive ability, you open by running your Ranger or Templar in the middle of a pod and getting 3-4 completely free attacks, then you do the normal attack. Ranger with Chosen weapon can't miss. Templar can't miss. You can also use it defensively against melee enemies like Lost and Chrysalids, but that's a secondary use. * your list is pretty much the reverse of how I'd put it * There's a reason the only known 1 soldier per mission legendary run by Syken was a Templar run. Templar is the strongest soldier * Reaper makes your squad better by preventing double pod activations and reliably deleting worst threat (max tier Banish has 80% chance to kill even enemy with infinitely big hp pool). Reaper also trivializes facility missions, stage one of Chosen fortress, and to lesser degree Avenger Defense. * Specialist makes your game better by preventing WIA turning into KIA, and has amazing action economy, as most of their actions are not turn ending so you can do two actions per turn. * Psi would get on the list if you could get them early, but you can't. At least best Psi ability (Stasis) is front-loaded, so you don't have to train the rest. * These are the candidates for S tier. * Ranger and Sharpshooter are really great if you give them Chosen weapon (also Bluescreen Rounds for Sharpshooter, as they apply to pistol too), otherwise not so much. So one each is great, but you don't really want to double on them. * Sharpshooter in particular can delete every Lost on the map, then every low health enemy, then single-handedly kill a Sectopod in same turn, with Death from Above, Bluescreen Rounds, and Chosen weapon. * For Ranger making melee unmissable with Chosen weapon makes Brainstorm really damn good. It's less essential than Sharpshooter, especially since second one can get an Axe. * Grenadiers, SPARKs, and Skirmishers are overall weakest classes, especially towards the late game. Not saying they're trash, XCOM2 doesn't have trash classes (like XCOM1's Support, especially with random skills), they just don't provide anywhere near as much as other classes.
Sniper is F tier easily, most useless class in the game. In almost EVERY situation, you'd rather have another heavy or ranger, why on earth do I want a soldier who can't even walk and shoot with their main gun or can't reload then shoot, it's awful. Not to mention the fact that they only get relatively good late game with their serial skill, but if you've gotten late game, you've won anyway - this is from a purely legend ironman playthrough perspective, but honestly if you play on anything easier than you can use any class and it works fine cause the game isn't hard
All of this is balanced on legendary. Gunslinger class for sniper with blue screen rounds is fantastic mid and late game. Late game sniper with free grapple/chosen weapons is easily the highest damage dealer in the game when partnered with serial
@@legionxiv1792 yes, like I said, LATE game they're good, but if you make it to late game, you've already won, cause the early game is by far the hardest part, and ranger and heavy are much better at this stage, and rangers are honestly still better late, so there's just no reason to pick a sniper over either at any stage of the game
Oh yea definitely. But I’d have to disagree that rangers are better late game. Serial is too strong especially with chosen weapons. And a single gunslinger can kill a gatekeeper, no other class can come close to that level of burst damage
Totally understand brother, they’re good for clearing lost or mech units but not much else early/mid game. If you’re in the US I hope you and your family has a good thanksgiving yesterday.
I fucking love that people are still making such great Xcom content this long after launch. Keep it up, subbed
admittedly im taking a break from xcom for a little, been enjoying escape from tarkov alot. ill start making legendary runs on xcom2 again soon more than likely
@@legionxiv1792 Xcom and EFT? Do you enjoy suffering or something?
Scanning protocol is very useful for retaliation missions, you can scan 4-5 civilians, ensure they're not faceless, find nearby enemy pod to engage it or setup overwatch trap if they will run into you on their turn because you're near civilians. The medkits are also useful, but if you do 2 specialists, one for skullmining and hacking other as a medic, it's by no means useless ability.
Specialists let you add 20 def and over watch to another class…. Hulkdown adds 30 to your def…. Heavy cover adds 40…. All three give you 90 def and overwatch….. defence is subtracted from aim to calculate hit chance…. Any thing with less than 90 aim can’t hit you….. 3 specialists and a sharpshooter with aim and the pistol skills means a return firing supersoldier that can’t be hit, has overwatch, a pistol shot before hulking down and gaining bonus aim on his/her/them return fire…..
This but instead of sharpshooter, a skirmisher with return fire and retribution. (More mobility, way more offense and versatility)
@@eseerianknight0386 absolutely
This sounds awful, most missions have timers and youre throwing everything onto one soldier that is gonna return fire at enemies already in cover with a weak side arm, no way do you play legend iron-man and win with this strategy
@@J4ckmaestro sad but true
Also won't help against AoE, psionics, and some other Chosen actions.
Kill Zone can be one of the best skills in the game if you've got an appropriate build. You need extended mags to provide more shots--especially if you want to play aggressively and pump out five or six shots in one activation and delete a pod with one soldier's move. You also need bonus aim PCS chips in your sharpshooters to offset the overwatch aim penalty. And if you want to wipe out pods of Troopers, Secoids, Officers, Priests, Purifiers, or Stun Lancers, use venom rounds. Venom Rounds not only apply an aim penalty to enemies hit by it but also reduces their movement, which makes them much easier to hit when cleaning up a pod when you get that second round of shots against them.
The trick to unlocking the god-tier potential of Kill Zone is to trigger it on your turn. In other words, once you spot a pod, put down a kill zone on it then trigger the pod. If you can make this happen, you'll get shots against pod on your turn followed by a second round of shots against the pod on the enemy's turn. That's up to six highly accurate big-damage shots going downrange. Few pods survive that.
To set up these pod-wiping Kill Zone shenanigans, scouting is super important. Having a Reaper on the sniper team is a must. And having a second sharpshooter to trigger the pod and pull them in is kind of handy too.
A team with two Kill Zone sharpshooters and a Reaper can carry the squad when taking out Advent facilities and go flawless too even when deliberately hanging out to mop up the two waves of reinforcements that drop in after you deploy the demolition charges. I usually bring six soldiers on these missions and use it to level up some non-sharpshooter scrubs and chumps. Lots of enemies on the map; lots of XP to earn.
These facility missions don't have timers, so you have the luxury of scouting at your leisure and setting up effective Kill Zones. Most maps have good spots to set up your Kill Zones and dominate the map. And if you delay deploying the demolition charge in order to bring Kill Zone off its cooldown timer, you can finish the mission by dropping Kill Zones on the pods coming in as reinforcements--for that ultimate abuse-kill-zone experience.
The text on silent is correct - taking shots with reaper increases the chance for getting revealed. Let's consider a scenario:
1. You take a shot with reaper and don't kill, you get 50% chance to get revealed, but you get lucky and stay in shadow
2. On next turn, you take a kill shot with the same reaper.
What would happen without silent killer, you would get increased chance to get revealed (80% if I remember correctly).
If you have silent killer in this scenario, the 2nd shot still has only 50% chance to reveal you.
i should have recalled that at the time, you're absolutely right
Note that bladestorm still inherits your blade's stats, so if you use the Katana, or you're lucky enough to roll it on a Templar, those attacks *cannot* miss. Which even on legendary can make for great roadblocks in chokepoints, especially against Lost.
personally for me i use bladestorm blademaster to invalidate chrysalide
Offering a contrary opinion here: I feel like the Specialist class gets slept on quite a lot.
Medical Protocol is a house. The healing ability scales even better the later the campaign goes. In the early game, if you get one-shot critted, you can't do much about that, but later on, if somehow you get hit, the remote healing keeps you out of one-shot range, and the ability itself doesn't end the turn, which makes it incredibly useful. You can do double healing, or heal + aid protocol, or heal + take a shot, etc. It is quite flexible. It also helps counter chryssalid poison, burning, etc., that you will run into from time to time.
Revival protocol is also incredibly valuable. Like you said, many enemies have disorientation effects, and it allows you to restore soldiers very cheaply.
Threat assessment in the mid-late game allows you to shift an extra shot onto another soldier. At major rank, threat assessment on the specialist, combined with Guardian, allows the Specialist to enter overwatch, to set up an ambush, allows you to unload your clip and sometimes kill off a pod without using any consumables. This isn't a reactionary gameplay, this is fairly proactive, and it comes up in almost every mission, when you engage the first pod out of concealment.
On the hacker side, remote hacking is useful in situations where you need to hack for a mission objective, disable an advent tower, or sometimes, if you have to, hack a mec, which provides you a free mimic beacon. Obviously, you have to weigh it based on the penalty if you fail, but the whole game is about making good decisions anyway.
Overall, I find that the action economy on a Specialist is quite high. The base kit is very flexible, and fulfils an excellent role as a support and backline damage dealer.
in hindsight i definitely was a little too harsh on specialist. my playstyle is very aggressive especially on legenday.
I have 190 hacking on my specialist, i can stun 100% of the time , on sectopods i still have 50% to control , not worth the gamble
@@MasterUpload2010i think its capped chance for sectopods, so that is why. I mean 190 is a lot
@@legionxiv1792 I don't think that's true. I have no idea what Syken possibly sees in them, but threat assessment and combat protocol are their only legitimately good abilities imo, and threat assessment has the classic "the best thing you can do is give your turn to a better soldier" problem. They're not awful-awful, but I do honestly believe the game is simply easier if you ignore the class after early game where you have no choice. Skipping assault rifle upgrades is actually just a huge deal on legendary. Especially for plasma rifles. I will say they get significantly better at lower difficulties where assault rifles being 3-5 damage base is much less of a liability, but man, bringing a squaddie specialist really feels like I'm bringing a rookie. Under 70% accuracy flank shots that don't actually kill 1/3rd of the time is really rough.
I actually use them quite a bit in late mid to late game just because I probably don't have oodles and oodles of rangers and grenadiers unless I got very lucky that campaign and specialists are a natural mimic beacon carrier/that's the part of the game where I'm liable to pull the whole map so purifiers burning people happens which makes gremlin heal basically combat presence, but they're very whelming. I do appreciate their relatively high aim at high ranks and combat protocol usually means I can get away with not shredding armor on a robot, but it's whelming. By that point in the game my reaper can just take 7 shots, my ranger is getting +6 (iirc) damage from its 95+% crits, my grenadier is removing the defense stat from the big scary guy while doing a big hit and shredding armor (or straight up assassinating less scary guys), my sniper is putting 3+ shots down range, and my templar is still an infinitely useable frost bomb. Getting 90% shots at range is cool, but it doesn't really compare to what the other guys are doing.
@@Mezmorizorz I agree with your assessment in general, one thing I've found useful is to give the Specialist the Bolt Caster. Then I upgrade it to Plasma Bolt Caster. This is obviously much cheaper than either or the Rifle upgrades, and you also save on the tier2 Caster upgrade. Then you pass it on to PSY OP when you phase away the Specialist for PSY OPs.
Admittedly, base classes are much better balanced in xcom2 than xcom1. But among the new wotc classes, reapers are by far the best. I only use skirmishers and templars on simple missions.
Templars are absolutely disgusting with Blademaster, but yeah Reaper is OP compared to everything else.
Is someone still playing XCOM 2 multiplayer on the Xbox Series X|S in 2023? Please respond I really want to play. :(
I was always hesitant about time limits, in my games. Majora's Mask, XCom 2, etc, and seeing you break this all down, while I'm in 2023, and this video is 10 months old- my god you are /the/ tutorial guide.
I've been able to make sense of what you're talking about (mostly. Gotta play more to fully get it) and I've felt nothing but educated.
Properly educated.
I'm in the Specialist bit, and I'm just...in shock of how little the game actually tells you.
You, sir, are a gentleman, and a scholar.
Important note regarding Templar skill invert. It cannot miss and it works on the Chosen. Makes dealing with an Assassin who has dashed away to some ridiculous spot or a Warlock hiding behind high cover all the way in the back fairly easy. You only have to get your Templar into a position where he can see the Chosen no matter if it's a 12% chance to hit he will pull it out of cover and your team can do the rest. Best of all he can even come back and rend her if necessary.
Other than that here are some notes I would like to make on your assessments. Bladestorm is very good. But it's situational you have to know when and how to use it. It is not a guaranteed hit because it's considered an overwatch ability. Also if there is another overwatch active the combined damage can explode a flamethrower right in your face which is not great. I believe with a katana and the sword breakthrough your slash might even one shot the bugger even on legend. Here are some examples of good uses of bladestorm. In resistance ring ambush missions there will be a reinforcements pod dropped on your ass on the second turn. On legend it's always three enemies, a captain and two troopers. Never a flamethrower. Parking your ranger exactly on top of the red dot will put him right in between all three making it very likely that he slashes two or even all of them. Combined with overwatch this can result in crippling the pod even before your turn starts. This makes the mission trivial since the rest of the ambush enemies are always alone and they tend to patrol so you can overwatch ambush them and also if you don't you have at least two soldiers so it's manageable. Another very good use of bladestorm is when you get untouchable. Soften up a Andromedon with another soldier, move right to his face and kill it either by slashing or if necessary with your shotgun which does more damage. The stupid armor suit will activate but it's melee so it is programed to attack the closest unit. You are closest and you take no damage plus you can bladestorm it (if you don't miss) so that next turn you have an easy kill. This works if all other enemies can be reliably dealt with so that no other one shoots at the ranger. This strategy works without bladestorm, sure, but it's a nice extra attack that costs no action and you are going to get in close anyway.
Im replaying WOTC, used this as a refresher :)
glad to hear that, best of luck commander!
Great video it's very informative. I just recently got wotc and watched the whole thing as a refresher.
Hope your play through goes swimmingly friend :) good luck commander
Great analysis! Really enjoying this video :)
thanks james, also alot of good info in the comments as well
On Rupture - it comboes exceptionally well with a gunslinger sharpshooter - that +3 damage quickly adds up when you're able to shoot same target multiple times in a single turn; effectively almost doubling gunslingers damage output against single target, on top of applying holo targeting and shredding armor. Rupture + Banish is another good option - armor shred + reapers armor piercing + 7 total attacks in two actions makes it my go-to way to kill rulers and occasional sectopods.
Im a simple xcom player i see a video about xcom 2 wotc and im happy
shadowstrike can be used more than once per mission, depending on enemy sightlines and visibility of your ranger. you can often get this bonus several times in a mission if you're careful to position - but it's easy to misinterpret.
any enemy that hasn't already seen the ranger is capable of being hit with shadowstrike if line-of-sight allows it, including up to when they initiate their attack. most enemies will glimpse a line of sight of your squad during reveal, but it does not necessarily mean that your ranger was spotted. this also includes slashes, shotgun blasts, anything that you can peek out from. for *massive* +25 aim and crit buff, its a huge opener for a midrange shotgun kill that lets you get closer with implacable after the fact.
This actually makes me feel like playing again. I just love when people theorycraft as hard as I do.
55:13 great video, just want to mention that Repair can also be used on yourself. This is the reason why i go for Bulwark with them because Bulwark + Repair in addition to the default benefits of having robotic immunities makes it a pretty nice frontline tank for tough enemies such as the Berserker Queen.
that's actually a really interesting set up, i would have never considered using that combination
Great video!
Very quick mention on psi ops, stasis shield is two level stasis is on enemies and statis shield is the upgrade which allows both enemies and team mates to be put in status
Bladestorm is a reaction strike, so it has a 70% multiplier to hit chance (or 60% to dashing enemies.)
concerning blade storm I think it's a must in certain situation, you can clean 4-5 enmies group just by moving the ranger next to them...next turn whatever they do they going to be slashed!
I've never used Guardian and only Ever Vigilant, and it's especially helpful on retaliation missions where you don't have time to OW creep. If you trigger a pod you're like "Oh Crap" and then your 1 or 2 specialists with Ever Vigilant fire and just like that one of the enemies is dead.
I like ever vigilant until one of my specialists gets mind controlled. Then I hate it so much 🤣.
The permanently visible perk can potentially stop the AI after being revealed from converging onto you if you run pass them concealed. I've farmed blacksite with it and without it. Almost certainly without it will cause the pods to follow you around the map and converge. Now you can use this to your advantage by getting them grouped up preferably near a car too then blow them up with a claymore+car explosion.
Demolition for grenadiers is pretty handy to have in a good deal of cases. There are certain covers that the AI loves to take advantage of that are tough to destroy with grenades. The two main problems with demolition is that you need to “hit” the target to destroy the cover its in and the fact that it works best with extended mags because without them it will basically force a reload. However the benefit ties into the grenadiers job better in the sense it allows the rest of your squad to quickly handle the suddenly out of cover target quickly, especially your sharpshooters without burning up your precious grenades. Sharpshooters outside of ambushes have a hard time getting to a position that will keep them relevant. With grenadiers demolition ability, you are giving your sharpshooters a chance to heavily damage/kill a target that can also get quickly cleaned up if the target was only damaged and not killed.
If demolition hit 100% of the time it would be a top tier ability. The one miss in five is what kills it.
Haywire Protocol is really just a fun ability. I fully agree with your breakdown and comparison, but who doesn't love getting to pilot a sectopod for a few turns? :)
Its really interesting how many things I love that he calls trash.
really makes me want to take a second look at somebof them.
also shows how deep this game is
just bear in mind, this is coming from the perspective of legendary difficulty runs, and i certainly have my biases. other people have pointed out great counterpoints/ideas in the comments
I tried Demolition and I liked it a lot more. Unlike Suppression it has immediate effect that can turn your 20% hit and 0% crit into 70% hit and 40% crit. If it's last enemy and you could kill it through the reaction fire, why not just shoot it and not waste 2 ammo on reaction shot that does nothing. Enemies very often, practically always try to do blue move, get rid of suppression and then fire so it's whole purpose is non existent.
It should have reduced mobility as well as cover and apply anywhere the unit goes to for as long as it remains in line of sight. Currently it does nothing but waste ammo. Meanwhile if you dealt with enemy pod and there is just 1 dude left far away in cover you can except it to run away to another pod and going up close could activate another pod. Demolition allows you to deal with cover in situations you got under control and save up on nades. It also enables you to take some of the experimental grenades that don't destroy cover. Not saying they're better than plasma, but it's enabling you something Suppression could only dream of. What, are you going to sack a Mimic beacon because you got suppression? Didn't think so. When doing UFO crash site or raid convoy on Legend and mission is Very Difficult with dark event reinforced missions you will be out of nades in no time if you rely on those 2-3 nades even if you bring 2 grenadiers. Not to mention early on regular nades don't destroy trees, so until you get plasma nades it's really useful to do the usual grenadier's job in early game.
take a shot everytime this 30 yr old man's voice cracks
played that game... went to hospital
Gotta disagree on the Specialist's hacker tree. It's not great in the early game, sure, and having a medical specialist is real good at that point. But you can rack up hacking bonuses through covert ops, and the upgraded Skulljack gives a HUGE hacking buff. Mid-to-lategame hacker specialists can be really strong.
Sure, a gunslinger sniper with bluescreen rounds and the Hunter's pistol can one-shot a Sectopod, but you know what's better than doing that? Owning a Sectopod. Sweet, sweet two-for-one action.
Fair enough! As I only play legendary I’ve become very risk adverse. Sometimes this means not going for hacks on those HVTs
Nothing wrong with playing it safe! I definitely get punished a little more for my aggressive playstyle.
What mod is he using for the XCOM Ap and solider Ap?
The issue I find with soul harvest is I only take garunteed kill shots with the reaper so the crit damage doesn't ever come up
For the specialist a basic gremlin Combat Protocol does 2-3 damage to organics and *doubles* that to 4-6 against robotic enemies, a MK 2 does 4 damage to organics and 6-8 to robots, and a MK 3 does 6 to organics and 8-10 to robots. All of this guaranteed damage without a miss chance. If comboed with a grenade or shredder attack to burn off some armor most turrets can be 2 shotted, similar with a pistol shot with bluescreen rounds.
For hacking a basic gremlin offers no bonus with the MK 2 and MK 3 giving +20 and +40 respectively. An ADVENT heavy MEC has a tech score of 90 so a MK 3 vs heavy is 100-90+40=50% hack chance... *However* a skulljack with the skullmining upgrade gives a +25 hacking bonus to anyone it's equipped on so that calculation becomes 100-90+40+25=75% hack chance! Add in a few covert op missions to boost hacking or the Enemy Protocol reward from hacking a mission objective, which is a *permanent* and potentially *stackable* +20 to hacking for that soldier, and it can make hacking heavy MECs *guaranteed* (note that's the MEC tech score for hard and legendary difficulty and that even superheavy turrets only get a tech score of 75 on the same difficulties. Andromedon Shells get 80 and Sectopods 150 for the hardest possible hack of the game). Finally EMP grenades and bluescreen rounds reduce tech scores by 5 (per hit on the rounds) and the EMP bomb reduces it by -10 so you can make it easier to hack by putting a little damage on it. Takes a bit of work but offers *much* higher success rates.
Was wondering why on consoles in wotc standard classes don’t get access to the third row of skills, Is this a pc only addition on wotc?
Once you build the advanced warfare center you can access the third row for xcom classes
For statistics, hunter protocol is deceptively effective on the spark because it's 33% for each enemy in the pod. With a pod of 3 the stars break down as.
0 shots 30%
1 shots 44%
2 shots 22%
3 shots 4%
With the aim penalty a colonel Spark has about a 70% chance of proc hunter protocol at least once and a 50% chance of hitting a target. I ran the maths on it and with a superior scope you basically have a 90% hair trigger proc equivalent. It is insanely powerful.
i had never considered that setup for late game sparks. i normally run extend mag and stock if i dont have adaptive aim, if i do i take free mag and ext mag. ill have to give that a try
Just want to let you know the only thing good about scanning protocol. Is that it will reveal the hunter when she's cloaked. And any faceless that are on the map. As well as let you know that there's a pod close by.
Not the hunter the assassin and as for the faceless they instantly activate if you scan them despite how weak they are they are still potentially dangerous and is easily saveable for later on when you oh I don’t know kill every other enemy on the map before it if possible
Yeah, Specialists kind of suck. That said, I find that you can often stack enough +Hack on a specialist to reliably get good rewards from hacking (and reliably control Advent mechs), and having someone around to Revive can be really useful. You often need to take +Hack rewards anyways, so it's not like it costs you to do it. 1 tooled-out specialist can usually pull their weight on a team.
Earned a sub from me buddy appreciate the effort and time you put in.
cheers sean, im not uploading much xcom2 atm since im a little burnt out on it and am enjoying escape from tarkov. I'll likely do more xcom2 stuff at a later date, just wanted to let you know. cheers again
Man, so many people just do not understand how powerful the gunslinger abilities are when you have blue screen rounds, spider suit, aim PCS, and the shadow keeper aim bonus. Yes, they need a lot of equipment to bring out their full potential but once they do they borderline break the game. They are almost busted, and I mean before hunter weapons. Hunter weapons just make them even more OP. Shame you did not mention that codex and spectres are vulnerable to bluescreen rounds as well as all the robots. Faceoff hard counters codex splitting and ya they just break the action economy so much.
Give your skirmisher a scope, auto loader, and bluescreen rounds too!
what mods are you using?
great Vid!
I have quite a few installed, any particular ones you’re interested in?
For my play throughs on TH-cam I only use cosmetic mods since non steam users won’t have access to gameplay mods, I want my guides to be helpful for them as well.
Well, at the console, you only get two options to choose from with a normal class when you move rank.
The additional options are unlocked in the Training Centre. This is part of "War Of The Chosen" expansion.
As a fellow xcom vet, (still don’t have the courage for an Ironman run bc I love to Misclick) this video was very relaxing to watch and see another veteran player’s perspective on the abilities. My two cents is the most op ability in the game isn’t even an ability, it’s the mimic beacon. Btw what is the armor mod you’re using on your troops?
I agree that the specialist falls off pretty hard in late game, but I’d rate them at least A in the mid game (and probably A in the early game, too-those 2 dmg from combat protocol may sound like not much but, again, can be such a lifesaver when you’re missing shots left and right).
You mentioned you don’t do hacking, but capturing pesky mechs or shit like an Andromedon or Sectopod in those games when you’re still trying to catch up can be life-saving. Late game I still try to make some use of them-specially if I broke their hack rating with buffs-but by then you have better things to so with your turn than trying to hack things.
On the other hand, I think you rated Grenadier too high in early game!
Once you can find ways to buff their aim, Grenadier becomes a must in most squads, but early game their terrible aim makes for a very unreliable unit-even if their grenades are very useful.
Anyways, not trying to knock on your takes, but I just find it interesting that we can have such different outlooks on the classes, despite ostensibly playing the same game lol. Really says a lot about the depth of the game.
That’s the great thing about this game, you can play it with very unique squad sets and make things work. As much as I hate specialists, people have made 5 spec 1 skirmishes teams that are crazy strong.
Could be wrong but i think rupture increases status damage like burning, poison, and acid.
What music did you use please?
Thank you Legion
you are welcome, glad you enjoyed
It might just be this 🌿 but does anyone else see a new face everytime the SPARK moves? I swear I saw a couple of Yoshimitsus in there.
question:
Repeater can insta kill chosen and rulers?
it most certainly can! repeater reapers are very good for this
This is a very good video and I like your inputs on each class.
Im surprised nobody mentioned this in the comments but there is some audio stuttering as the video goes on which is very bothersome. Namely 36:20 and further on. It seems like its your mic causing these audio issues as well. Hopefully you caught this, thanks for the guide.
Thanks, i thought it was my setup which caused the audio issues
Question, with the sparks DLC and the snake one, will I have to start over to use them
did you have the dlc's downloaded when you started your playthrough?
@@legionxiv1792 I had WoTC but not the other DLCs before I started
@@MaroonGoone unfortunately you'll have to restart to gain access to the dlcs. you have to enable them each run
"I've never used the battle scanner"
And into the trash this goes
"i can't remember chrysalid burrow locations or predict very dumb chosen AI"
fixed that for you
This is a good guide.
Ty!
Can a templar learn bladestorm at any level? Or only at corporal? My templar started with sustain and i want to know if i need to restart the game or if i can keep playing and maybe get it later on?
it is one of the randomly assigned abilities in the "xcom" specialization. it is not a guarantee that a templar will get that
I like Suppression too but in some instances Demolition is clearly better. For example, if the unit you're suppressing is a Sectoid or a Priest the suppressed unit can just use mind control or some other psi-ability. Demolition would clearly be preferable in those situations. I usually take Demolition for the first grenadier soldier I get. In fact, other than taking Shredder over Blast Padding I usually always take the left side of the tree for all other perks for my first grenadier.
28:30 Deadeye is a 25% penalty, which is rather terrible in my opinion.
100% agree, its good if you can build some aim training into your sharpshooters and you have the height bonus, but thats about it
@@legionxiv1792 It's a bit of an investment but if you get the aim training and you have your sharpshooter on the high ground Deadeye can make taking out difficult enemies really easy. For my most recent playthrough I had a sharpshooter with bluescreen rounds and he was 1 shotting most mechs with his deadshot. If you deadshot a gatekeeper and it crits you can even one shot a Gatekeeper which is super satisfying.
Its im plack a ble not im place a ble
I’m bout to replay this game again, I hate I don’t have advanced warfare room
haywire can get 100% chance to stun, it's pretty decent. Stunning a high health target can leave your other soldiers to kill the other ones
Why aren't you using any weapons reskin mods?
Sorry for the late reply, I have far too many language/clothing mods already and I’ve found the more mods I have active, the more bugs I run into
I agree with you on you nearly everything but I think you're analysing classes based on their individual strengh rather than their combo potential. For example: some dude called Reddest of Goats pulled off an unique strategy involving 1 skirmisher and 3 specialists, turns out it's the most broken combo in the entire game and makes the skirmisher possibly the best class in WotC.
Can you go into more detail on how does that work? The strategy with the skirmisher and specialists.
@@TyphonNeuron skirmisher has an ability called warlord which allows him to make an action after the enemy performs one (just like the queens). Normally this is pretty shit because you need him to be very close and he'll die very fast BUT, using defence protocol from a specialist, you can increase his defence and therefore dogde capability.
Turns out you can stuck defence protocol up to 3 times and make any soldier unkillable, skirmisher just happens to be the best target for this strategy.
Oh wow ok thanks.@@haissake
That's a total meme build. It works I guess, but it's a ton of set up, is no more consistent than just bringing 6 majors+colonels, and takes forever to actually play through the turns. Do it for the spectacle if you want to I guess, but it's better to just play standard. Especially because you are in glorified "end turn to finish shadow chamber projects" mode by that point.
I know this is Xcom abilitys but if u can get lucky and get a Templar with Bladestorm your set. Not only does he hardcounter any melee based enemy, he will easily be the best soldier vs all Alien rulers not to mention with just 1 promotion hes a mobile Mimic beacon with untouchable every turn. But a Templar can also be your worse enemy especially vs the Warlock. If u dont have a Mindshield or cant afford to build 1 then your Templar should never be put on a mission. U might get away with it on mission areas not controlled by the Warlock but even then its high risk becouse if he gets mind controled by a Sectoid and u cant instantly break it then he will tear apart your team. If u have lvl 2 armour then u can hopefully tank 1 hit, but if u dont then 1 soldier isent getting out alive.
Also have they made changes over the years to Bladestorm hit% becouse even before Wotc when Phantom were more popular i cant recall Bladestorm ever missing. Sometimes the visuals bugged out when multiple enemys like Chrysalids ran past and it dident show the hit animation but all enemys still toke the dmg.
Like you I don't rate specialists. However I do prefer combat protocol, because its a guaranteed kill on an enemy with two health, it will also do 5 damage on a mec. The damage scales with gremlin level.
I wouldn't mind the time if your audio wasn't cheeks.
I wish there was a mod so I could have an all spark team
Decent video, but Sharpshooter is IMO bottom tier in midgame because of upgrade costs. It's a DD class like the Ranger, but it lacks the scouting utility the Ranger has, and it costs A LOT more to upgrade SS weapons, while Ranger weapons are cheap. While it's very powerful late game, getting there is just painful and you still don't really get anything that proper play in the late game with other classes won't.
If the game is played with Integrated DLC option and you have to build your own SPARK to get one, then it is also bottom tier because it costs an arm and a leg.
The Templar cannot be S tier early game either because you can activate things you must not. XCOM is at its heart a game about mitigating bad RNG, so you need to consider the worst case scenario a lot more than the average one, let alone a good one. A class that has to walk on eggshells cannot be S tier.
No, this setup is for novice veteran at most !
Why specialist so low? Especially in late game, it's a lifesaver. Not only can it heal 7 HP up to four times, but it has an ability that heals the entire team the same amount once. It also removes DoT (fire, poison, etc.) and some mental effects (such as panic). Not to mention that it can stabilize bleeding soldiers and remove CC effects remotely.
Also, thanks to her abilities, he can overwatch automatically by spending all his actions on movement, and it can be activated not only with movement, but with any enemy action, and also has a 50% chance of reactivating, being able to do so several times.
Finally, if you have enough skill points left over, you can unlock the entire hacker branch, and so you can control robotic enemies, scan an area you have no vision over, or simply do a lot of damage to mechanical/robotic units.
in hindsight i was too harsh on the specialist. i really don't like the reactive/overwatch style of gameplay but thats more of a personal bias
It's still the weakest in late game because its utility is pitiful compared to PSY OP. If you Stasis the most dangerous enemy in a pod you won't need healing, and you can get a dominated Andromedon or Gatekeeper do both the damaging and the tanking part for you.
Sadly i cant enjoy legendary because it becomes too much of a puzzle game. You have to strictly build, research and choose what to do in a really specific way in order to minimize risks, that xcom becomes a puzzle game on what to do first. I always play on commander/ironman to allow more carnage and so that more soldier die. It makes the playthrough more like a realistic movie about legendary rebellion instead of a typical marvel superhero rebellion movie. And honest mistakes dont instantly hurt the whole playthrough.
I can agree with that. If they gave commander difficulty advent a slight health buff and kept pod number the same I think it would be a happy medium between legendary health enemies as well as +1 pod for the difficulty.
Still difficult, but you don’t have to play super cookie cutter every playthrough
@@legionxiv1792 the +1 pod only works if the xp then is lowered. Because +1 pod could gibe to much experience to soldiers and make the game easier as you get more experienced soldier much sooner. I tried it with mods and it makes your soldier level up after each mission which is progress breaking. Slightly higher life, 1 more pod/ slightly bigger pods and slightly less xp for killing aliens. The longer research time just drags the playthrough on. And it is unfair if research time is longer but the aliens still grow the same in research as in commander while we habe to wait double the time. What makes xcom fun is that you grow in strength just like the aliens and turns become much more complex to play/ calculate. My problem with Legemdary is either you kill the pod before they can harm you or its you who will loose with big disadventage if not completely. It becomes a who kills who first. The more random things are added the better. For example ot would be cool if aliens sometimes would surrender / you would get random reinforcment mid battle and turn the tide on key missions / alliens get better way of reinforcement instead of a pod that will die instantly on overwatches. Would be cool if civilians would join / you fight during a protest and cam make your soldiers disapper during battle. Also would be cool instead of having a mobile center that you would ha e mutiple bases you can defend and move in a certain region only. The base mechanics of xcom are good but not good enough.
The best thing they could add is not a 1 soldier 1 turn system but whole squad 1 turn system. The squad all do your commands at the se time aswell as the aliens. It could make for cinematic gunfights.
Aid protocol in ironman runs is insanely good. Not turn-ending. Specialists can also have greater overwatch accuracy. You didn't have to do them so badly lol
WOTC = Work opportunity tax credit?
sir im going to need you to fill out form 8850
Thank you
Shadowkiller WILL reveal you. But instead of it being 50% right away its 0%, 20% and then back to 50% and 80%.
My specialists constantly reassure me that they are perfectly good classes. I have no idea why they are so underrated, same with medkits. I don't care how good you are at this game...things will make your soldiers take damage and others will outright kill them. Specialists can mitigate deaths by healing and when deaths go to bleedouts they can save the soldier for another day. There is also the extremely rare case where a hack can make you go from a loss to a perfect clear (these are rare b/c hacks are inconsistent, but sometimes its a nice last ditch effort). In WotC you dont need to decide between two skills...they can be medics AND be decent at dealing with robotic enemies. The chosen do so many disorienting things and specialists are the only ones that can save them sometimes. I think in vanilla xcom they are bad but in WotC they are insanely consistent and key members of any squad. I would say they are essential for chosen lairs b/c your soldiers will take lots of damage going up against the chosen.
Grenediers are horribly overrated. Shredding becomes irrelevant when enemies have a crapton of shields to where you just run ap rounds or chosen weapons. Their accuracy is so bad you NEED superior PCS and Scopes for them to use their actually good abilities (and also expanded mags). Grenade strats in general are overrated - they're just easy to perform decently and don't require much strategy which makes them very popular for first time clearers. But there are many other ways of dealing with enemies. People run them for the guaranteed damage and breaking cover...but then they are the most RNG b/c even with height advantage and flanking or perfect range they sometimes still only have an 85% chance to hit. Frost bombs are great but the alien rulers are a joke in WotC - some bad combinations like kinetic plating and blast shield can make your Grenediers liabilities.
Skirmishers and Templars can't really be rated mid or late game. The RNG of their XCOM abilities is too random. Having multiple actions with a grapple can be extremely good with some XCOM ability RNG. But Skirmishers certainly do fall off and eventually just exist to give extra turns.
Reapers are inconsistent. 90% of the time they are god tier...but the other 10% they screw you so hard you might lose the entire campaign. The only way to prevent this is perfectly using battle scanners which early game means you have 3 soldires with actual grenades maybe because reapers dont get utility either...I hate reapers and don't think they're reliable at all. Yes 90% of the time they work great...the other 10% an advent patrol move into a civ and the civ runs into your reaper and your reaper instantly dies from the enemies. They also do like zero damage when theres no explosives and they're out of claymore...they don't do anything battle scanners can't do. They're just early game crutches that murder pods early on that will eventually die or you'll stop using them and they'll take all the xp you put into them with them. And don't even think about taking them into battle with the lost.
specialist have a trade off and that trade off is not bringing something that could have completely prevented w/e injured ur unit from taking a turn and the later the game goes the worse they get b/c other classes get so much more damage output potential
@@ihatetacocasa Yes that's always the logic but it doesn't hold up. Again, I don't care how insane your squad is, sometimes you take damage and sometimes your soldiers die or bleed out. In these cases, specialist is the only one who can help. An extra grenedier isn't going to suddenly make it impossible for you to take damage.
In fact, if your squad is so insane, you should be totally fine with a specialist. As I said they can be anti robotic and heal in wotc at relatively low ap cost. Aid protocol is greatly underutilized especially on spark units. Late game they can heal or cure anything on every single member of the squad or start hacking consistently which is op as hell. With xcom abilities they can get serial potentially or something to make up for their lack of damage...or give them mobility pcs and send them in with an exo suit w/ shredder rounds.
People will pour superior scopes and perception pcs into their grenedier and give them frost bomb, their best nade, and a third high cost item. Then people compare them to their specialist that they don't bother to give med kits or any utility to and almost no one gives them pcs or weapon attachments.
Against chosen specialists are the best unit hands down. Early game and even late game chosen can one shot your guys into bleeding out or just guarantee damage on someone twice. Or daze someone where you'd normally gave to waste an action sprinting to get to them or blind...specialist can delete everything chosen do to you.
@@lushen952 its not that hard to pop the chosen when it comes out if u rush to the first one at mag weapons at that point u want more fire power on the tomb which a grenadier is better for b/c it has higher damage and aim doesn't matter and i also don't use frost bombs and use grenade less and less as campaign goes on
@@ihatetacocasa Chosen are sometimes very easy to get rid of quickly but I have had many runs end b/c a chosen wipes my squad. They have one hit potential on your guys and the assassin can sometimes end up going places that you can't follow. I had her in my last playthrough on one of the lost missions where I had to evac across the map and there was literally nothing I could do - there are so many buildings she just comes in, one shots someone, and runs inside a building and could be in like 4 places where my guys can't see even if they move.
The sniper can also just murder your guys b/c he likes to attack a lot and not daze. If they have something like kinetic plating or blast shield they are going to be a huge problem for your playthrough.
Chosen lairs are also possibly the hardest missions in the game.
Chosen are absolutely a threat - rulers are a joke, not chosen. Especially on missions where you can't evac.
I see a lot of people swearing by hacking and haywire protocol in the comments, but in reality, these people must be save scumming. Haywire protocol is a trash ability because hacking itself is trash, as the chances of pulling off successful hacks are low, and the risks/negatives outweigh the rewards most of the time.
I've done lots of playthroughs (commander/Legend) where I purposefully stack hack on a single specialist through the resistance ring, skulljack, and save scumming multiple +20 hack rewards, but even still my specialists botch hacks way more often than not, regardless of high hack stats or what the success percentages say. I mean ffs, how retarded is that? I still need to save scum the +20 hack rewards on the guy that I am intentionally stacking hack on! OMG.
In ''real'' situations where you dont go out of your way to stack hack on a single guy, and you dont plan to save scum or cant because of ironman, then it is not worth going for a hack on anything other than obligatory mission objectives. Otherwise, all youre going to achieve when you inevitably fail hacks is to make things harder by calling in reinforcements on yourself or buff the enemy at the expense of your specialist's action/turn, and if you took a skulljack for max hack, then wasting an important equipment slot for absolutely zero value.
So I only watched random parts, no the whole 2 hours.
Anyway, some notes:
* abilities are random, but the pool is very small, and you get 4-6 of them. For Templars specifically there's only 8 possibilities, so majority of Templars will have Bladestorm. Over 3/4 of Templars will have either Bladestorm or Reaper or both, it's really terrible luck to roll a Templar with neither.
* defensively is not how you use Bladestorm - it's a very offensive ability, you open by running your Ranger or Templar in the middle of a pod and getting 3-4 completely free attacks, then you do the normal attack. Ranger with Chosen weapon can't miss. Templar can't miss. You can also use it defensively against melee enemies like Lost and Chrysalids, but that's a secondary use.
* your list is pretty much the reverse of how I'd put it
* There's a reason the only known 1 soldier per mission legendary run by Syken was a Templar run. Templar is the strongest soldier
* Reaper makes your squad better by preventing double pod activations and reliably deleting worst threat (max tier Banish has 80% chance to kill even enemy with infinitely big hp pool). Reaper also trivializes facility missions, stage one of Chosen fortress, and to lesser degree Avenger Defense.
* Specialist makes your game better by preventing WIA turning into KIA, and has amazing action economy, as most of their actions are not turn ending so you can do two actions per turn.
* Psi would get on the list if you could get them early, but you can't. At least best Psi ability (Stasis) is front-loaded, so you don't have to train the rest.
* These are the candidates for S tier.
* Ranger and Sharpshooter are really great if you give them Chosen weapon (also Bluescreen Rounds for Sharpshooter, as they apply to pistol too), otherwise not so much. So one each is great, but you don't really want to double on them.
* Sharpshooter in particular can delete every Lost on the map, then every low health enemy, then single-handedly kill a Sectopod in same turn, with Death from Above, Bluescreen Rounds, and Chosen weapon.
* For Ranger making melee unmissable with Chosen weapon makes Brainstorm really damn good. It's less essential than Sharpshooter, especially since second one can get an Axe.
* Grenadiers, SPARKs, and Skirmishers are overall weakest classes, especially towards the late game. Not saying they're trash, XCOM2 doesn't have trash classes (like XCOM1's Support, especially with random skills), they just don't provide anywhere near as much as other classes.
Excellent summary. I am one of those unfortunate enough to have rolled a Templar with no reaper/bladestorm.
Tier list is made wrong when more than half of classes are S. Also too much eee, yyy, yhmmm.
It depents alot of your gameplay style too...
Forgot to take his adhd meds
Bro, next time actually plan on how you breakdown shit. Painful descriptions, not bein a Nancy just maybe watch your videos before upload.
Sniper is F tier easily, most useless class in the game. In almost EVERY situation, you'd rather have another heavy or ranger, why on earth do I want a soldier who can't even walk and shoot with their main gun or can't reload then shoot, it's awful. Not to mention the fact that they only get relatively good late game with their serial skill, but if you've gotten late game, you've won anyway - this is from a purely legend ironman playthrough perspective, but honestly if you play on anything easier than you can use any class and it works fine cause the game isn't hard
All of this is balanced on legendary. Gunslinger class for sniper with blue screen rounds is fantastic mid and late game. Late game sniper with free grapple/chosen weapons is easily the highest damage dealer in the game when partnered with serial
@@legionxiv1792 yes, like I said, LATE game they're good, but if you make it to late game, you've already won, cause the early game is by far the hardest part, and ranger and heavy are much better at this stage, and rangers are honestly still better late, so there's just no reason to pick a sniper over either at any stage of the game
Oh yea definitely. But I’d have to disagree that rangers are better late game. Serial is too strong especially with chosen weapons. And a single gunslinger can kill a gatekeeper, no other class can come close to that level of burst damage
@@legionxiv1792 yeah all that is true, but because they are worse than a rookie early game they're instant f tier for me
Totally understand brother, they’re good for clearing lost or mech units but not much else early/mid game.
If you’re in the US I hope you and your family has a good thanksgiving yesterday.