Post by forgeking on Sept 15, 2017 10:03:24 GMT -5
Just a little achievement I thought I'd share, I did not take pictures at every turn as I now realise I should've but I learnt some very interesting things.
Here's the team setup I used, not on a NG+ save. 1 Plasma soldier with 9 in Shredding Fire and 4 in Rallying Charge, 1 Mk8 Assault soldier with 4 in Burst Fire and 10 in Calling Shots, 2 crit geared snipers (max headshot), a pyro with 10 in pyro turret and 4 in direct shot, captain with 10 denounce, 1 fire commander, 1 warrior's wrath and 1 pressing need. 900 (Scout x2) + 650 (Engineer) + 200 (Reactor Jolt x2) were the only purchases I made, all on turn 1. Using the jolt kits on the scouts, I managed to get everyone here, then cast calling shots then rallying charge, not bothering with defensive buffs. My captain rushed the worm with the snipers bringing it to 78 hp and tanked the hit as the turn ended. On the next turn, I rushed everyone to within range of the hive mind, with the scouts on the red squares and the Mk8 Assault soldier killed the worm. Due to having to pressing need my plasma soldier, I wasn't able to Fire Commander on the first turn and instead went Denounce->Piercing Fire->Pyro Turret->Everything else. Due to lucky narv spawns, shredding fire and the pyro turret managed to splash down 1 narv (which is why I have 3 kills) which stopped me from suffering losses on the next turn. A warrior narv I hadn't killed would have killed my plasma soldier but he autoblocked its second attack surviving on 14 hp. On the next round, I used Fire Commander, dropped a second pyro turret and let loose with everything, bringing it down to 33 hp. Thanks to the large amount of debuffs, I managed to run my almost-dead plasma soldier through my own fire, leaving him on 1 hp due to fire not killing until the turn after and he punched a penetrating hit for 38 damage killing the hive mind and ending the mission in an amazing finish! I didn't even have to touch Nyra's side of the battle!
1) This is very RNG reliant. Damage range, crits, spawns, attack targets, everything. Stacking autoblock is the best defence for all or nothing missions like this.
2) Crits are by far the BEST way to do single target damage. My entire team was geared and skilled for crit damage, though for talents I focused on +damage for my soldiers and engineer and had the crits come from buffs. Deflection and -Armor are strong but do not have as significant an effect as scoring crits on all sniper shots + 3/4 other attacks.
3) On that note, crit sniper geared scouts probably do the most consistent single target damage in the game. If you are having trouble with narvs, invest in the sniper tree. They do ironically lack in speed, relying on kiting and individually killing one or two narvs per scout per turn but they are very reliable. A more forward and rapid approach to most narv missions requires overwatch or melee tanks to not lose ground with kills.
4) Promethium fire on the ground can damage the Hive Worm while it is in its shell. I finished a run in 5 turns killing the retreated hive worm with my pyro turrets while experimenting. I believe bio-poison can tick too, though I cannot confirm. I did not end up using these in the successful run, though I was prepared to.
5) By far the most economical classes to run are the four core classes introduced in the tutorial missions. Investing in only the Soldier, Scout, Engineer and Captain will get you a boring, if highly competent team to run through most missions. You can push through all missions with a ball of these, the captain frontlining with high autoblock, soldiers cleaning up around him and buffing the ball, scouts crippling key targets like +mp +damage predators and grabbing secondary objectives and the engineers doing primary objectives and providing the distraction and AoE clear and denial of sentries when necessary.
