XCOM 2
Escalation Classes
Knytesage 27 Mar, 2016 @ 2:24pm
Scout Class: Suggestions and Tweaks
@DivineLucubration, @Beagle:

What follows came about while studying both the Scout and Rocketeer classes -- it hit me that the perk tree flow seemed awkward. With the original framework for the Scout class in mind, I started making notes for suggestions and tweaks -- ultimately to pass along for consideration with any future iterations of the class. It turned into a small project, and the results are below....


Scout Perks
Squaddie:
Awareness -- The Scout pays close attention to their surroundings, increasing their chance at detecting the presense of nearby enemies. 5 tile radius

***Makes Awareness baseline for all Scouts, but w/ a reduced radius. The idea is that all Scouts are usually trained to spot things before others, and even a bad scout masters this basic of skills, or they wouldn't be a scout. Lightning Reflexes remains a perk (although slightly altered), it just gets moved down the tree and is no longer baseline.

Corporal:
Quick Strike - Slash your sword/fire your pistol at the target. This attack does not cost an action. 4 turn cooldown.
Camouflage - When the squad is revealed, the Scout remains concealed. Once per mission, immediately enter concealment.

***Lightning Hands and Conceal are renamed to Quick Strike and Camouflage respectively, this is to reduce confusion w/ the perks of the same names already in use by Sharpshooters and Rangers. Both of these perks move up from Sergeant to Corporal rank and have been swapped from left/right tree positions to coincide with future flow of the perks down the progression trees.

Sergeant:
Holo Targeting - Any directed primary weapon shot, hit or miss, will mark the target, increasing your squad's aim by +15 against this target.
Executioner - Confers +10 aim and +10 critical chance against targets at or below 50% health.

***Perks moved down from Corporal to Sergeant as Executioner seemed too powerful for a Corporal to have mastered. Otherwise, no changes are suggested, as these perks fit very nicely w/ the class overall

Lieutenant:
Flush - Fire a shot that encourages enemies to move. +30 aim. -50% base weapon damage. Uses 2 ammo.
Heightened Reflexes - The hit chance of reaction fire against this unit is reduced by 90 percent for the first shot, and by 50 percent for any additional shots. Also grants +2 mobility base to the Scout.

***Flush swapped to left tree position, otherwise no change. Lightning Reflexes is renamed to Heightened Reflexes while giving the same primary defense, but a reduced defense on secondary shots...as an offset, the Scout then gains +2 mobility baseline. The idea is that good Scouts move faster through/over terrain, and the extra mobility should synergize w/ the blue move sword attacks, but not be too overpowered (and still situational). This perk then replaces Battle Scanner which gets revamped and moved to Captain level (see below).

Captain:
Smoke and Mirrors - Allows one additional use of all equipped support grenades during each mission. It also increases charges from Smoke Grenades by 1 and the radius by 2.
Danger Sense/Heightened Senses - Allows the Scout to sense enemies beyond their field of view, and increases their base field of vision for 2 turns. Does not break concealment. Detects enemies like the Battle Scanner perk, and adds 4 additional tiles to the Awareness perk. Has a 8 Turn Coolown.

***Smoke and Mirrors moves up from Major rank and gets swapped to the left tree position, and gets a slight radius increase. Danger Sense/Heightened Senses replaces Battle Scanner w/ a skill a bit more flavorable for a Scout, yet functions somewhat similar (with an added tweak of boosting awareness for 2 turns -- to a max of 10 tiles w/ 5 (base) +1 (GTS) +4 (DS)).

Major:
Hit and Run - Your first attack of each turn against an uncovered or flanked target does not cost an action.
Assassinate - Your attacks will not break concealment if they kill the target.

***Hit and Run and Assassinate are moved down from Captain tier, they just seemed too potent for that level. Also swapped them left/right to match tree flow. Otherwise, no changes are suggested.

Colonel:
Grim Reaper - Your kills with a sword or pistol refund your action points for the turn.
Ghost - Greatly reduces the Scout's detection radius by enemies while concealed. -50% detection radius.

***Reaper renamed to Grim Reaper to clear confusion w/ normal perk already used by Rangers. Perks are also swapped for flow down the tree.


The GTS Perks look good, no suggested changes.

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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments
Beagle  [developer] 28 Mar, 2016 @ 7:50am 
Keep in mind these classes are designed to be used all together with the original vanilla classes disabled, hence I'm not worried about vanilla perk names being confused for ones in use on the vanilla classes (such as our Reaper being confused with vanilla Reaper)
Pencey 29 Mar, 2016 @ 12:20am 
The recon ability from Isms' Rogue mod strikes me as something that would work very well with a new Scout. Maybe it would overlap too much with holo, but it might be nice to give them something cool and scouty to do while sitting in concealment. To my mind, one of the lamest things about the vanilla implementation of prolonged concealment is that it incentivizes doing a whole lot of nothing with your hidden rangers.
JayBee 🔰 29 Mar, 2016 @ 2:28am 
I like the idea of increased AoE with Smoke & Mirrors by 1.

Having said that I've nerfed the radius for Flashbangs to a somewhat more reasonable 6 (from 8).

I'd probably drop it to 5 if Smoke & Mirrors increased it. Still might.

When I first saw the radius of flashbangs in game I thought it was a bug.
Wyldfire 29 Mar, 2016 @ 7:44am 
Lightning Reflexes just doesn't feel right on the scout anymore. It seems like Shadowstep is a lot more thematically accurate (also anything that works with the concealment phase) for a stealthy class. I think the addition of Dodge also makes LR feel off... like it ought to grant a massive boost to dodge and a lesser defense bonus. And that would go great on an Assault with a couple points of DR
Divine Lucubration  [developer] 29 Mar, 2016 @ 9:12am 
Having more options for things to do while concealed is something I can appreciate. If we go back and revise the perk tree, perhaps we could do something with Battle Scanner to make it useful in that role.

Mechanically, I like the idea of putting Shadowstep on the Scout and high dodge the assault. That said, I'm not sure that "high dodge" makes a lot of sense on the Assault class; perhaps straight up granting DR from reaction fire (along the lines of Blast Padding and explosive damage) might make more sense. I expect it'd also necessitate changing the armor plating utility items to actually grant armor. In any case, this isn't something we can really look into until we get around to the Assault.

I'll make sure we give these some consideration.
Wyldfire 29 Mar, 2016 @ 3:20pm 
Awesome!




Lilly D'lore 29 Mar, 2016 @ 4:24pm 
Personally, if I were to make the Scout class like that, I would set them up more in an infiltrator-like role. Instead of focusing on direct damage, focus them on screwing over your enemies.

Instead of assasinate, have a perk that grants them three uses of their utility item, plus a third utility item slot. Make it so that grenades and utility items don't break concealments. Add things to screw around with your enemies, ect.
Wyldfire 29 Mar, 2016 @ 4:44pm 
Have you seen this mod? an additional perk to choose from each level would allow a lot more build flexibility, and feel more like longwar.
Makko 13 Apr, 2016 @ 12:20pm 
So the Scout being able to attack 3+ times in one round seems like a little much.

You can use the quick strike + the flanking perk + the normal perk + the reaper perk all in tandem.

I mean, it's very fun, but it seems somewhat overpowered.
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