Grand Strategist vs Master Tactician.

[Gracey Face]

Master Tactician just seems to do all of the same stuff but better in every way. What is the purpose of Grand Strategist?

[Blackdragon]

Long story short, you need both. Several Officer/Grand Strategists, and 1-2 damage dealing Tacticians.

The main point of Tactician is getting direct damage buffs through Press the Advantage and Inspire. The main point of Grand Strategist is to go first and give damage buffs through combat zones and stratagems, then give turns to Tacticians.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Blackdragon:

Long story short, you need both. Several Officer/Grand Strategists, and 1-2 damage dealing Tacticians.

The main point of Tactician is getting direct damage buffs through Press the Advantage and Inspire. The main point of Grand Strategist is to go first and give damage buffs through combat zones and stratagems, then give turns to Tacticians.

Grand strategist is kind of ♥♥♥♥ at giving extra turns though since you have to kill enemies inside of your front line for your free turns to be worth having and since you can't hold actions (or at least I haven't found a way to do it) you can't reliably kill things in your tiny frontline zone.

And you can only do it once in a battle anyway, compared to just having a basic officer class skill that lets you do it every turn.

Also the damage buffs from the combat zones are bad. You get far more from just having everyone have resolve boosting gear and skills and then adding flat MT inspire bonuses.

It's strange, both classes do the same thing and one is just much worse than the other. It's owlcat I guess..?

[Sotanaht]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

I just noticed that master tacticians have an upgrade that turns their heroic action into a 1 turn cooldown instead of once per battle. So 6 burst fires per turn for just momentum. And you can still gain stacks of whatever their class resource is called even when your momentum is maxed out.

Only advantage Grand Strategist seems to have is the free first turn.

It's strange, they're both basically meant to do the same thing just one is much worse than the other. Why set it up like that. Is that how the actual tabletop ruleset is? Was master tactician added in an expansion and grand strategist a core rulebook class or something?

I've honestly never used the Tactician heroic. It blocks you from using the base class (usually Officer) heroic, which is much much more useful at least in the short term. You typically only stack buffs on one character while everyone else plays support, so spending your Heroic to give that character 1 extra shot doesn't make sense when they could have a whole turn with no limits on attacks.

Plus even if you don't manage to kill everything before it even gets a turn which is pretty typical of Officer-Master Tactician setups, it still shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 rounds at the utmost, so you still aren't going to have all that much time to get value out of that "once per turn" ability. I suppose if the Tactician themselves is the one who is getting buffstacked, then they might be able to use their Heroic every time they get a bonus turn, but I honestly don't know if that even works (I would think it would be limited to once per round).

Also this game really doesn't use the tabletop rules. Archetypes have the same names, but all of the talents and abilities seem to be made up, as is the progression system itself. I don't really have any experience with the Rogue Trader system, but I did flip through the rulebook and aside from the d100 system and names of things, I couldn't really find anything that looked at all like how it works in the video game.

[Blackdragon]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Originally posted by Blackdragon:

Long story short, you need both. Several Officer/Grand Strategists, and 1-2 damage dealing Tacticians.

The main point of Tactician is getting direct damage buffs through Press the Advantage and Inspire. The main point of Grand Strategist is to go first and give damage buffs through combat zones and stratagems, then give turns to Tacticians.

Grand strategist is kind of ♥♥♥♥ at giving extra turns though

Which is why I said Officer/Grand Strategist.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

since you have to kill enemies inside of your front line for your free turns to be worth having

Yes, and since GS always goes first he can designate tactical zones before giving turns to damage dealers.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

and since you can't hold actions (or at least I haven't found a way to do it) you can't reliably kill things in your tiny frontline zone.

If you have several Grand Strategists (as you should), you can move zones on the fly to fit the tactical situation. And the Rear zone also gives damage buff to your ranged attackers.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

And you can only do it once in a battle anyway

Every GS can move any zones on each of their turns. Zones are shared among GS.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

compared to just having a basic officer class skill that lets you do it every turn.

Officers can't designate tactical zones, that's a unique GS buff. Also Officers don't always go first, with the exception of the Seize the Initiative talent. Finally your Grand Strategists are also your Officers, remember? They are not mutually exclusive.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Also the damage buffs from the combat zones are bad.

Lolwut? The zones add like +50% to all damage, at least. And there are also unique stratagems that auto-kill enemies in a zone once they reach a certain HP threshold, or make enemies auto-fail their dodge rolls, etc. And you can apply several stratagems at once to one zone, if you have several Grand Strategists. Also zone bonuses use the best INT and FEL bonuses from all your GSes, so for example if Pasqal has top INT, and Cassia top FEL, and both are GS, then their zones will have max bonuses from both.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

You get far more from just having everyone have resolve boosting gear and skills and then adding flat MT inspire bonuses.

There is only a finite amount of Tactical Advantage, and it's better used on your BEST damage dealer. Whereas GS bonuses are effectively free.

Again, you should have both GSes and Tacticians to maximise the output from both.

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

It's strange, both classes do the same thing and one is just much worse than the other.

No they don't LOL, they're completely different and use different resources.

Also, the GS ability to always go first alone makes this archetype top-shelf, especially for Officers.

[Gracey Face]

Originally posted by Blackdragon:

There is only a finite amount of Tactical Advantage, and it's better used on your BEST damage dealer. Whereas GS bonuses are effectively free.

There's not. That's why it's so broken. And GS bonuses aren't free because they require you to take GS when you could take MT or any other archetype.

Look, here's an example at my current level (17).

Girl using M40 autogun with 7 ROF. at 5-8 so 35-56 damage in an attack.

Master Tactician in a single turn gets 20-30 stacks of tactical advantage, so +3-4 damage to each shot on that. Next turn gets 30-40 stacks of tactical advantage (because of all of the killing and resolve bonuses you have) on top of the 10-15 stacks they still have because they only spend half their resources means next turn they're now adding +5-6 damage per shot so that autogun is now hitting for 91-126 in an attack just from this one bonus.

Meanwhile best grand strategist can do at this kind of level is give that same character a ~75% bonus, which is 61-98.

It's never more efficient to use a grand strategist for this purpose. This is not a subjective matter. If you have a grand strategist rather than an additional master tactician you are simply putting out less damage.

Maybe GS gets some relic items later on that make them not ♥♥♥♥, but that's going to be the only saving grace.

[Nox]

you need both if you're really looking to exploit all the things. Officer is your main bread and butter "give two more turns to my main damage dealer"

strategist keeps everyone alive and provides leverage

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Moffin Bovin:

GS always goes first. GS with seize the initiative goes first twice.

Basically this

[Khloros]

Originally posted by Gracey Face:

Originally posted by Lur Nen Rue:

making anything under 1000 wounds die

What do you mean by this?

Using cassia, you buff your self with revel in light, use point of curiosity to yank everyone in, nightmare, frontline, overkill, then lidless stare, profit.

[Light91]

If you wanna be creative, you could put strategist on someone other than Jae. But it only really belongs on Jae. Buff the party. Equip her with duelist armor, get the daredevil pisols. I like the anti vehicle revolver too. Spec her right and make Jae give your arch militants extra turns and stuff. Make the best out of the strategems. Unless you need to bring the veil down if you bring another psyker, you don't need cassia. Heinrix can provide the buffs plenty enough without her. Cassia isn't as great as everyone thinks.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Light91:

If you wanna be creative, you could put strategist on someone other than Jae. But it only really belongs on Jae. Buff the party. Equip her with duelist armor, get the daredevil pisols. I like the anti vehicle revolver too. Spec her right and make Jae give your arch militants extra turns and stuff. Make the best out of the strategems. Unless you need to bring the veil down if you bring another psyker, you don't need cassia. Heinrix can provide the buffs plenty enough without her. Cassia isn't as great as everyone thinks.

Jae is an awful officer that is the problem. She doesn't have the resolve buff either which is the most important buff besides turns.

At least as a master tact she can buff HP dmg and resolve.

But her officer heroic is garbage. It should be giving out 11 attacks. Owlcat did the worst possible build for Jae.

You are better off taking like 4 officer talents with cassia then navigator for buffs and going grand strategiest. At least she can pick the good heroic actions.

Jae needs to be toybox Respec from lvl 1 or benched for a Merc.

Honestly I couldn't believe her build is so bad. How do you mess up a support build.

[Draken]

Master Tactician seems to be more about damage and momentum.

Grand Strategist is more about buffing you whole team and debuffing the enemies. It has a lot more support option.

Things like preventing injuries, making cover immune to damage, not being flushed out by aoe attacks. Along some nice general dodge, damage, parry, mobility, armor and even deflection buffs.

[JimmysTheBestCop]

Originally posted by Draken:

Master Tactician seems to be more about damage and momentum.

Grand Strategist is more about buffing you whole team and debuffing the enemies. It has a lot more support option.

Things like preventing and removing injuries, making cover immune to damage, not being flushed out by aoe attacks. Along some nice general dodge, damage, parry, mobility, armor and even deflection buffs.

Resolve and momentum are everything in this game. Combat is built around it.

Only officers and master tact can buff resolve.

[Nox]

Originally posted by JimmysTheBestCop:

Originally posted by Draken:

Master Tactician seems to be more about damage and momentum.

Grand Strategist is more about buffing you whole team and debuffing the enemies. It has a lot more support option.

Things like preventing and removing injuries, making cover immune to damage, not being flushed out by aoe attacks. Along some nice general dodge, damage, parry, mobility, armor and even deflection buffs.

Resolve and momentum are everything in this game. Combat is built around it.

Only officers and master tact can buff resolve.

Your main resolve buff comes from sanct psykers.

[Light91]

Originally posted by JimmysTheBestCop:

Originally posted by Light91:

If you wanna be creative, you could put strategist on someone other than Jae. But it only really belongs on Jae. Buff the party. Equip her with duelist armor, get the daredevil pisols. I like the anti vehicle revolver too. Spec her right and make Jae give your arch militants extra turns and stuff. Make the best out of the strategems. Unless you need to bring the veil down if you bring another psyker, you don't need cassia. Heinrix can provide the buffs plenty enough without her. Cassia isn't as great as everyone thinks.

Jae is an awful officer that is the problem. She doesn't have the resolve buff either which is the most important buff besides turns.

At least as a master tact she can buff HP dmg and resolve.

But her officer heroic is garbage. It should be giving out 11 attacks. Owlcat did the worst possible build for Jae.

You are better off taking like 4 officer talents with cassia then navigator for buffs and going grand strategiest. At least she can pick the good heroic actions.

Jae needs to be toybox Respec from lvl 1 or benched for a Merc.

Honestly I couldn't believe her build is so bad. How do you mess up a support build.

Jae not having resolve isn't a problem when she gives three or four free turns back to back to back dude

did you even read what i wrote? find duelist armor. Give her those pistols. They cost 0 AP for bursts. Spec her right. 'SPEC HER RIGHT'. you probably only know ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ cassia at this point.

[Morgian]

Most people are abusing the stat bug, without which these numbers cannot be achieved.

I tried the GS out, but it was the most tedious and useless of the second archetypes. The zones cannot be placed as needed and are usually not there where the action is after a round. I found also few opportunities to use various abilities, as enemies are widely scattered. Tactician was much more handy.
GS is probably an acquired taste and needs more reading to use efficiently. I was happier with another tactician really.