Niche Captain Talents

[En1gma]

That's a long time to be off the horse

Sidearms are IMO the best way to go for the captain on the higher diffs. No matter what, swinging the sword invites a counter attack, which could be the end of the mission or even the entire run for Ironman.

[Arklash]

Current playthrough is in brutal.
I ain't saying it's a walk in the park. But still between heavy armor, rotation between offensive templars, use of prolonged/commander deployment (if buff heat is an issue), willpower, pal with battle stimulabt and an engineer (seriously I love these guys). I am rarely shutting down unless I am really gettig overwhelmed/unlucky.

Yeah good on you, didn't think bout the squishy narv.

[drspendlove]

Denounce can be pretty fun. The trick is to combine it with Templars with a high critical magnitude, not critical hit chance. This works well for a piercing shot based scout that invests heavily in Stealth. Such a scout has very limited critical hit chance but can land quite massive critical hits (especially on the second shot of the turn, when the armor has been further weakened by the debuff of the first shot.) This makes for a handy way to deal with a secondary incoming attack force with only two templars, one of which is highly mobile and can return to your primary front quickly. Just send a sword/shield captain with your scout and quickly retract your scout once you've dealt with the big guys.

Of course, this assumes you have good willpower on your captain and can thus manage having a higher heat cost than usual. The investments I've used for this captain have been Denounce and Bladeweave, followed by a few ranks of Slash (counter-attacks and finishing off weak, single foes for less heat) and Frag Grenade (SO useful now that ground targeting is possible.) The difficulty I've played with this build on is Hard.

[Uglymug]

Yeah, I did a Brutal runthrough with a sidearm captain a few months ago and I remember her being an AoE crit monster that my other Templars were having trouble keeping up on kills. Between Arc Fire + Honing + Frags.

Doing Nightmare atm, and I'd be doing pistols again if not for two reasons:

- Want to mess around with Hammer Paladins and want someone packing a shield

- Going Neptunes instead of Hydras, and want to use a plasma soldier with the Strikepoint Kit

[drspendlove]

Have further thoughts been given to Honing's heat cost of late? (Not trying to pressure devs AT ALL; I'm just wondering where their heads are.)

[fallen]

Honing costs 12 Heat and we do not plan to change that.

[drspendlove]

Understood. Then I will have to learn how to change myself, rather than the system. That is, learn how to use it.