fowlJ wrote:
Well, yes? First of all, making lots of shots through high cover is inherently better than making few shots through high cover, so it is pretty effective in that regard, but second, I think you're misunderstanding something here: 90% of the reason Faceoff is so ridiculous is the ability to open with it from concealment, especially with Shadowstrike, which applies to all shots made as part of the ability. Cover of any kind is irrelevant, because the enemies aren't active yet, and you're looking at 100% Hit and 100% Crit (or pretty close) against every target. Without that interaction it is a lot less silly.
Nothing was misunderstood. I stated below it's advantages as an opener. How would you balance opening AOE? Should 4-7 pts of grenade damage be the max available, when dealing with 17HP-22HP enemies? Would you always require careful 7-to-9 tile cone AOE positioning?
fowlJ wrote:
Snarkily implying that people who have experienced situations in the game that you haven't have done so because they are playing it wrong or using mods to make the game easier is kind of rude at the best of times, and a little silly when one of the people in this discussion is literally a Legend difficulty balance tester for the mod. No, I'm pretty sure JoINrbs is not, in fact, using True Concealment to trivialise ambushes, and I know for a fact he houserules out 0% Supply Raids.
XCOM is one of the few games where people AREN'T playing the same game. If I claim that Nightmare mode on Doom is too easy, then you can be assured that I and everyone else are playing under the same conditions. In XCOM, and LW2 especially, folks are most certainly NOT playing under the same conditions nor the same (more stringent) house rules. Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are two of the VERY FEW who are playing vanilla, no save scum, no reload, no 0% supply raid, no True Concealment, Legend campaigns. Find me someone else on YouTube who's playing under those conditions. Perfidious Pete is one of the few who attempted unmodded-LW2 Legend and got annihilated, Mal runs True Concealment, Marbozir was ready to quit until he enabled True Concealment, Christopher Odd quit, Beagle quit, NorthernLion quit, EnterElisium failed and quit, some others who are mostly stock have over-run 0% raids and leveled MSGTs while still using laser weapons.
So the point is, when folks show up and start clamoring for nerfs, a disclaimer needs to apply if they've modded the game to be easier than it's been designed, because they're not playing the game the way it's been balanced. Even leaving aside all the mods/hacks/console commands, if someone's abused 0% supply raids then they've outleveled every other player who hasn't and they've gotten Faceoff + all the bonus damage perks LONG before anyone else who is more likely getting those perks when enemies are already 12-22+ HP.
Yes, JoINrbs and Xavier are playing Legend the way it was balanced and they're testing features and they're helping design mechanics. And, presumably they're doing this on their own time. They're invaluable. The challenge for them (in providing feedback) is to also imagine the game from the perspective of a player that doesn't have all the intimate mechanic/insider knowledge that they do.
Also note that Xavier doesn't even use pistols, at least from what I've seen, and I don't recall him saying that it's a house-rule because they're so broken.
But, after all this, maybe Shadowstrike/Faceoff is still a big problem facing LW2 balance. So, give us a max damage that's acceptable from an AOE opener? We don't want to be able to kill more than one enemy from a single person from stealth, right? Maybe CC then? But some here are also claiming that Sting grenades are "broken". So, too much CC, too much damage. So, before every enemy scampers to high-cover, how would you design the opening engagement?