Sapper/needle grenades, heat/tandem, combat engineer/full kit

[nightwyrm]

Even on Veteran, I find a good pod cracker makes my life so much easier. The problem is that both rockets and explosive grenades are loud and attract attention while flamers require good positioning. Stinger grenades are starting to look more and more like a perfect opener.

[trihero]

Stings are really good, I've been trying it as an opener. I mean it's not surprising, but roughly half of what you hit gets stunned leaving a few to get murdered by overwatch and the rest are sitting ducks for flank shots. Also the range/radius of flashbangs are just pretty insane in general, I remember recently hitting 2 vipers + muton spread out behind cover in one flash and it stunned them all. Very few abilities in the game have that kind of power.

BUT, the problem here is that I didn't have people in position to get through the high cover, so I wound up using another time to re-Sting the same enemies while my dudes got into position. So you see if you go with a defensive grenadier, you need to make sure the other members of your squad maintain enough firepower to finish things off fast or all you do is just keep locking down the other team and slowly losing your grenade count.

On the other hand, again frag grenadiers are purty amazing party openers on those 8 man pods when you go tandem, and even in small man engagements I carry an incendiary grenade in my grenade slot (so essentially 2 of them), and it acts as a "I can snipe/delete this organic unit hiding behind high cover" tool which is very handy; few people can do such a move through high cover.

[Devon_v]

DoT ignores armor, but not shields.

Iron Curtain is, IMO, far superior to Demolition. Gunners have far better things to do than take out one lousy tile of cover. Maybe.

The E.X.O. Suit comes with the shredder cannon now, not the rocket, so those aren't very available outside of Technicals. (A Technical with an E.X.O. can carry an extra rocket however)

[trihero]

DoT ignores armor, but not shields.

Iron Curtain is, IMO, far superior to Demolition. Gunners have far better things to do than take out one lousy tile of cover. Maybe.

The E.X.O. Suit comes with the shredder cannon now, not the rocket, so those aren't very available outside of Technicals. (A Technical with an E.X.O. can carry an extra rocket however)

Iron Curtain is powerful early on, but completely outclassed once you get saturation fire. I wish I had demolition sometimes because I just don't use iron curtain once I hit saturation fire (and retraining in the AWC is a massive time sink!).

[Devon_v]

DoT ignores armor, but not shields.

Iron Curtain is, IMO, far superior to Demolition. Gunners have far better things to do than take out one lousy tile of cover. Maybe.

The E.X.O. Suit comes with the shredder cannon now, not the rocket, so those aren't very available outside of Technicals. (A Technical with an E.X.O. can carry an extra rocket however)

Iron Curtain is powerful early on, but completely outclassed once you get saturation fire. I wish I had demolition sometimes because I just don't use iron curtain once I hit saturation fire (and retraining in the AWC is a massive time sink!).

I'll take auto-hits over anything. "Just couldn't hit it" is the number one cause of death in the XCOM universe.

[Jacke]

There's also soldiers with Shredder in their AWC skills. In many ways it does come down to making squads in the Avenger to ensure there's all the tools needed, whether it's to crack pods or destroy cover.

Iron Curtain is powerful early on, but completely outclassed once you get saturation fire. I wish I had demolition sometimes because I just don't use iron curtain once I hit saturation fire (and retraining in the AWC is a massive time sink!).

Is there any benefit to having 2 AoE's when the engagements are so short there's not enough time to get a skill back after cooldown? It's partly due to most missions being on the clock or having to avoid reinforcements; there's not a lot of flexibility for drawn out tactics when there's only so much time to pull it off.

[Devon_v]

Retaliations and ambushes play very differently from the usual timed missions. Especially the ones that drop pods on you non-stop. You can't afford to save up abilities or set up optimal shots, you just have to kill as fast as possible. Many of those also last long enough to get even long cooldowns back.

[trihero]

My most current thoughts on offensive grenadier are go down the full left side, except get tandem over heat. Combat engineer + sapper + volatile mix is essentially not replicable by other classes (that is, destroying masses of high cover). Blowing up high cover is good, it removes 45% hit penalty and gives you a +33% crit bonus (as if we didn't all know that by now!). Plasma grenades shred 2 armor and is usually enough for most work as to not require HEAT warheads (for the really big guys, you should have someone with shredder perk or rupture).

Between boosted cores, big booms, and tandem warheads, your aoe damage is surprisingly high (crit pretty often for 9 or 10). Sometimes you will outright one shot trashy mobs, and two grenades to the same area will wreck everything short of 20 hp.

Full kit is mostly for defensive grenadiers (so they can bring flashies/smokes all day long and wear armor while at it), or maybe some specialized fire/emp/gas "tri-element" grenadier which could be fun/viable.

[LordYanaek]

Iron Curtain is, IMO, far superior to Demolition. Gunners have far better things to do than take out one lousy tile of cover. Maybe.

Well, i'm in my first campaign on veteran so strategies might be different on higher difficulties but i'd sure rather destroy one cover for sure than fail at destroying several with a sapper so demolition have become my de-facto cover removal tool. Helps a lot at getting that pesky viper/muton hiding behind full cover.
Iron curtain doesn't look that great but to be honest i didn't actually test it, demolition is just too useful to pass for me. Half damage and a situational mobility reduction, why not area suppress and kill them if they move, reduce their aim if they don't. Reducing mobility won't help get rid of a high aim/high damage enemy behind full cover. I can see it being useful against stun lancers or other melee enemies but so far i haven't met enough of those to justify taking iron curtain, especially not when there is such a useful alternative.

I guess it depends a lot on how you play I don't have gunners in many squads either.

[Jacke]

Iron Curtain is, IMO, far superior to Demolition. Gunners have far better things to do than take out one lousy tile of cover. Maybe.

Well, i'm in my first campaign on veteran so strategies might be different on higher difficulties but i'd sure rather destroy one cover for sure than fail at destroying several with a sapper so demolition have become my de-facto cover removal tool. Helps a lot at getting that pesky viper/muton hiding behind full cover.

Iron curtain doesn't look that great but to be honest i didn't actually test it, demolition is just too useful to pass for me. Half damage and a situational mobility reduction, why not area suppress and kill them if they move, reduce their aim if they don't. Reducing mobility won't help get rid of a high aim/high damage enemy behind full cover. I can see it being useful against stun lancers or other melee enemies but so far i haven't met enough of those to justify taking iron curtain, especially not when there is such a useful alternative.

I guess it depends a lot on how you play I don't have gunners in many squads either.

I was playing Legendary on stock XCOM 2 and getting by, so I decided to go with Legendary for LW2. The different difficulties often transform the effects of things. Combined together, the game can shift a lot between each level. So I'm sticking to Legendary to try to reduce bad habits. Like if environmental damage is stronger or somehow better at lower skills. (Don't know.)

Iron Curtain isn't just useful for slowing down the enemy. It's also a cone AoE attack, like Trench Gun, Street Sweeper, Technical flamethrower attacks, and Gunner's own Saturation Fire. Likely a narrow cone like the others and may be hard to get more than two targets in the cone. But that means the Gunner can hit two or more enemy with one attack, half-strength and snaring, because it's an AoE. Weak ones might be killed. And could synergize with Saturation Fire as two cones in a row.

I've heard that the original Gunner's Cannon isn't that great at Demolition and Flush is meh too, with enemy just move a tile, likely still in cover, and then back. Lining up narrow cone attacks is more a job for the Assault, as well as the Technical ambushing a pod. When I get a Gunner to Sgt, I'll have to test all 3.

[Devon_v]

Yeah, I don't care about the mobility debuff, I just use it to hose down clustered enemies without having to roll to hit against them. I used to use Flush just as a +30 to hit attack in LW1 as well. (With Flak ammo it actually works REALLY well against Floaters)

I'm not personally a fan of reaction fire. I want everything happening on my turn, while I'm in control of order of operations.

[LordYanaek]

Iron Curtain isn't just useful for slowing down the enemy. It's also a cone AoE attack, like Trench Gun, Street Sweeper, Technical flamethrower attacks, and Gunner's own Saturation Fire.

The issue i have with this is that gunners aren't exactly a mobile class, or at least my gunners aren't terribly mobile, even those with good (~15) base mobility. They can't easily flank their targets like an assault, they don't auto-hit like a flamethrower, and as far as i understand you don't have a chance to destroy cover like saturation. The result is that when enemies are grouped together, i tend to area suppress them cause if i can't hit them, i prefer they don't hit me either. If there isn't many enemies to suppress, destroying their cover for the spark or sniper/officer tends to have better results then trying to kill them with my gunners at 50-60% to hit.

I've heard that the original Gunner's Cannon isn't that great at Demolition and Flush is meh too, with enemy just move a tile, likely still in cover, and then back. Lining up narrow cone attacks is more a job for the Assault, as well as the Technical ambushing a pod. When I get a Gunner to Sgt, I'll have to test all 3.

Can't talk for the base canon. My gunners are part of a squad that didn't see much action in the timed heavy first months so by the time i had demolition i also had laser. Laser canon destroys cover 100% of the time up to trees (i haven't tested on alien structures) unless higher difficulties reduce environmental damage and laser comes quite early if you want to.

[Manifest]

I'll take auto-hits over anything. "Just couldn't hit it" is the number one cause of death in the XCOM universe.

Wait. ... Iron Curtain is an AOE guaranteed hit?

[Tuhalu]

Can't talk for the base canon. My gunners are part of a squad that didn't see much action in the timed heavy first months so by the time i had demolition i also had laser. Laser canon destroys cover 100% of the time up to trees (i haven't tested on alien structures) unless higher difficulties reduce environmental damage and laser comes quite early if you want to.

I'll say Laser cannons wreck trees. On a HQ Assault I had the Advent General slumped behind one (Arc Throwered). My Gunner turned that tree into toothpicks with Demolition and my Sniper and Ranger ripped him a new one

[LordYanaek]

Wait. ... Iron Curtain is an AOE guaranteed hit?

I doubt it, nothing in the description says this, quite the contrary as it states somewhere "if this attack hits ..."
Now, if it's a guaranteed hit, that's another story of course

Just wanted to add i've just ran into a fight with a crap stat gunner i got out of cell and turned into and advisor. He still had a base canon and he just chew through trees like they were made of bricks (since everyone knows a brock wall is easier to destroy than a tree ). Demolition was bad in vanilla but it's much better in LW. Never saw less than 100% to hit, and never failed to destroy the cover either.

[Devon_v]

I'll take auto-hits over anything. "Just couldn't hit it" is the number one cause of death in the XCOM universe.

Wait. ... Iron Curtain is an AOE guaranteed hit?

Either that or I've been extremely lucky as it's never missed. The same goes for the shotgun cone attack. Niether of them says it autohits, but you are never shown accuracy for either attack and I've never seen them miss.

I should turn on Perfect Information and see what it says.

[Tuhalu]

I'll take auto-hits over anything. "Just couldn't hit it" is the number one cause of death in the XCOM universe.

Wait. ... Iron Curtain is an AOE guaranteed hit?

Either that or I've been extremely lucky as it's never missed. The same goes for the shotgun cone attack. Niether of them says it autohits, but you are never shown accuracy for either attack and I've never seen them miss.

I've definitely had Trench Gun miss at the end of the cone. Maybe a low percentage chance, but its devastating when it fails you kill 2 or 3 guys you exposed yourself for the kill (even if you are in cover, they are still in walk and flank range).

[trihero]

Sat fire, iron curtain can definitely miss - source: me missing with them. Perfect information doesn't show you any hit chance on these attacks.

(one of my gunners has shadow strike; combine this with sat fire = OMGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG always hits, and almost always crits)

[Manifest]

Perfect information doesn't show you any hit chance on these attacks.

For me it does, but it's always the same and wrong. For example Trench Gun shows 100% hit every time, and Sat shows 0%.

[trihero]

Perfect information also always shows a 95% on faceless melee hits regardless if I flashbang/red fog them a ton, or not.

[Manifest]

Perfect information also always shows a 95% on faceless melee hits regardless if I flashbang/red fog them a ton, or not.

Yes, then it seems to have issues with aoe attacks.

[LordYanaek]

Perfect information is definitely not perfect.
I use it mostly for the shot-bar showing hit-crit-dodge, thought i don't think it's accurate for LW2 either as i have grazed enemies with 100% hit and no dodge shown.

And as others i've missed shots with trench gun.

[JulianSkies]

Perfect information is definitely not perfect.
I use it mostly for the shot-bar showing hit-crit-dodge, thought i don't think it's accurate for LW2 either as i have grazed enemies with 100% hit and no dodge shown.

And as others i've missed shots with trench gun.

There is another mod, EU Aim Rolls, that has a more accurate version of the hit chance function that shows it the same way the original Perfect Information did, despite the mod name you can in fact turn on just the PI data.

[LordYanaek]

There is another mod, EU Aim Rolls, that has a more accurate version of the hit chance function that shows it the same way the original Perfect Information did, despite the mod name you can in fact turn on just the PI data.

Thanks JulianSkies. I used to play with the original GrimyShotbar mod but it haven't been updated since it was included in PI. While we are on the subject of mods, do you know if Additional Icons really depends on PI? I'm using it for the numeric health and damage display (turned off the cheating loot icon) but the LW2 compatibility chart says it requires PI

[JulianSkies]

I know for one that it doesn't. At minimum I can tell you that for the one mission I played without PI to check the mod I just told you about it still worked correctly.