Pavonis Interactive Forums

I rolled Flesche (8-day training) on my Gunner. I haven't decided if I'll try it, but at least it's interesting, and I'd take that all day any day over seeing Salvo and Biggest Booms on absolutely every soldier in my roster.

The grenade perks are infuriating. They're an off-shoot of the reality that every class can use grenades, however it's ignorant of the reality that beyond the first month there's little reason for anyone other than your grenadier to take offensive grenades. I really wish Pavonis would tune them down.

I'll say this for bladestorm. It's not nearly as terrible as flush. Because I was a nub, I built my second shinobi with bladestorm and it actually came in handy a few times. It was pretty effective at keeping chrysalids off of him and I do fleche a bad guy, it's about 50/50 that they'll trigger bladestorm as they move away. If I tried, I expect I could increase that number but it would come at the cost of greater exposure to the enemies he is not meleeing. The downside of bladestorm is the perks it is up against, not that it is straight up bad.

Now, concussion rocket, coup de Grace, and flush are actually just straight up bad.

I actually find Bladestorm to be useful. Many a foolish melee alien has fallen to it and it can be a useful pod activator. Set up an ambush and run the Shinobi in to Fleche. If you pick your position well, you can get off a number of swings as the pod tries to scramble for cover under a hail of overwatch fire. As the AI will tend to want to avoid hits from it, you can sometimes influence which way they run to your advantage and herd them a bit too. It also works well against reinforcements if you know where they are coming in. I sometimes run a couple Shinobis as flankers and scouts for the main force. I've had missions where a pair of Bladestorm Shinobis on overwatch at a reinforcement spot has obliterated most or all of an incoming pod by themselves while the rest of the squad dealt with other matters. Used tactically, it can be quite devastating. So if you think it sucks, maybe that's because you're using it wrong.

LordYanaek wrote:

seananigans wrote:Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections.

Apart from the fact that i didn't really notice any heated debate, i totally agree with you

Hey, heated doesn't have to mean inflammatory! There's a LOT of back and forth, I figured it qualified.

seananigans wrote:

LordYanaek wrote:

seananigans wrote:Personally I think the fact there's such heated debate over the usefulness of so many perks and/or which playstyles are best shows that Pavonis is doing something right with regard to their class/perk balance. There are definitely multiple valid playstyles, involving different class/perk selections.

Apart from the fact that i didn't really notice any heated debate, i totally agree with you

Hey, heated doesn't have to mean inflammatory! There's a LOT of back and forth, I figured it qualified.

If your debate is inflamed, try putting some ice on it to reduce the swelling.

Fizzwick wrote: If your debate is inflamed, try putting some ice on it to reduce the swelling.

I'm sure Viper King will be happy to help

Fizzwick wrote:I've had missions where a pair of Bladestorm Shinobis on overwatch at a reinforcement spot has obliterated most or all of an incoming pod by themselves while the rest of the squad dealt with other matters.

That was it's best use in vanilla XCom2 but in LW2 it only works on Rookie (or with an ini edit) as you don't see the flare on Veteran+. There's nothing wrong with playing on Rookie, but there's something wrong if a perk is only useful on one difficulty level (regardless of that difficulty being the highest or lowest).
Pod activation might be fun if Bladestorm did trigger when an enemy moves away from you so you could run in the middle of a pod and slash the aliens as they scamper away, but if it actually works this way in game, then the description needs updating!
Finally, against melee aliens, the most common melee enemy (the faceless) has a "reach" of 2 tiles so can attack you before you have a chance to use bladestorm Maybe having one of bladestorm shinobi ready for chrysalid heavy missions would be a good idea but that makes it very situational at best. Well, i guess it's better than crappy

I guess i just unconsciously want to make a really badass sword shinobi and i'm annoyed the sword perks aren't that great

LordYanaek wrote:

Fizzwick wrote: If your debate is inflamed, try putting some ice on it to reduce the swelling.

I'm sure Viper King will be happy to help

Fizzwick wrote:I've had missions where a pair of Bladestorm Shinobis on overwatch at a reinforcement spot has obliterated most or all of an incoming pod by themselves while the rest of the squad dealt with other matters.

That was it's best use in vanilla XCom2 but in LW2 it only works on Rookie (or with an ini edit) as you don't see the flare on Veteran+. There's nothing wrong with playing on Rookie, but there's something wrong if a perk is only useful on one difficulty level (regardless of that difficulty being the highest or lowest).
Pod activation might be fun if Bladestorm did trigger when an enemy moves away from you so you could run in the middle of a pod and slash the aliens as they scamper away, but if it actually works this way in game, then the description needs updating!
Finally, against melee aliens, the most common melee enemy (the faceless) has a "reach" of 2 tiles so can attack you before you have a chance to use bladestorm Maybe having one of bladestorm shinobi ready for chrysalid heavy missions would be a good idea but that makes it very situational at best. Well, i guess it's better than crappy

I guess i just unconsciously want to make a really badass sword shinobi and i'm annoyed the sword perks aren't that great

Faceless can be an issue yes but I've killed Lancers, Snakes (Grab ME with your nasty tongue will you? *SLASH*), and even bayonet-happy Mutons who somehow decided charging my sword-wielding soldier instead of shooting them from range was a wise tactic. So maybe it's just me and how I play, but I do get a fair amount of mileage out of it. But if something seems situational, maybe that's because you expect the situation to come to you on its own. Sometimes you have to go to it or lure it into coming to you. Hence why my Shinobis are all trained to fake a limp and squeal like little girls when they see an alien. Makes them more tempting targets.

Alketi wrote:I rolled Flesche (8-day training) on my Gunner. I haven't decided if I'll try it, but at least it's interesting, and I'd take that all day any day over seeing Salvo and Biggest Booms on absolutely every soldier in my roster.

The grenade perks are infuriating. They're an off-shoot of the reality that every class can use grenades, however it's ignorant of the reality that beyond the first month there's little reason for anyone other than your grenadier to take offensive grenades. I really wish Pavonis would tune them down.

It is quite simple to comment out grenade perks from the AWC.

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