Darkclaw or powered shadowkeeper?

[learnedhand]

Throwdown question of the day folks, which do you prefer on your sniper.

[Fringehunter7719]

Darkclaw is much better now it works with ammo types, the extra base point of damage is worth a lot and having armor piercing in addition to another ammo type is good too. Before the change I'd have said shadowkeeper with bluescreen.

On the other hand you can always bring two sharpshooters and use both.

[Synavix]

I prefer Darkclaw for gunslinger build, at least at higher difficulties. With that you don't need to worry about getting a target's armor shredded first. They can just straight solo large units with the right ammo. Shadowkeeper is pretty good, though. I usually just put it on my main sharpshooter sniper to use with Lightning Hands or close targets.

[learnedhand]

Yeah, for a gunslinger I think hands down darkclaw, but for a sniper I find myself preferring the shadowkeeper. The +15 aim on the shadowkeeper is added to darklance shots and getting those hits are key to keeping the death from above streaks going for the darklance.

edit: +10 aim, got it mixed up witht the +15 crit chance on the shadowkeeper.

[red255]

that sounds like a bug.

[mosspit]

Shadowkeeper for early game and Darkclaw for late game. The aim bonus is very useful in the early game where a Sharpshooter's accuracy is meh. And I also used Shadowfall for the guaranteed dmg sometimes.

Darkclaw is just amazing with Fanfire due to the amour bypass and also yes, the fix that enables it to work with ammo like Bluescreens.

[red255]

I don't have alien hunter DLC, but wiki says the pistol aim bonus is just for pistol shots.

and the darkclaw works with bluescreen rounds without any mods.

[4rrakis]

If I remember correctly there was a bug that disabled special ammo on Darkclaw as well as a mod to fix that, but Firaxis patched that and that mod is not needed anymore.

[learnedhand]

Okay, I double checked in game and I'm wrong, the aim from the shadowkeeper is not added to sniper rifle shots. The character screen adds the shadow keeper aim to your total accuracy but when taking the shots its not included.

[mosspit]

Originally posted by red255:

and the darkclaw works with bluescreen rounds without any mods.

It didn't used to. This is the fix I was referring to.

https://xcom.com/news/entries/fall-2017-xcom-2-war-of-the-chosen-update-deploys

- Darkclaw now gains the effects of equipped ammo