Skirmisher, what is he good for?

[BackdireinEis]

Now I don`t see the point of using the Skirmisher. He has crappy aim and deals only little damage.

Do you see any point in using him?

[gimmethegepgun]

His point is to be highly flexible, usable in many situations.
The problem, as you've yourself discovered, is that he sucks at everything he tries to do, and a grenadier is better at doing the things he tries to do.

[Silamon]

I would strongly recommend some mods to buff skirmisher if you want to use him as anything more than a covert operative.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1369915922&searchtext=richard%27s+hero
I use that one in particular.

[Commander Gorda]

He is pretty good on none Timed long missions, can use his trappor unlimited Times to pull enemies Out Of cover so you dont need to use grenades. Easy to reach elevated position with his grapple, shot twice Of his not moving. He is not op like the reaper but is decent.

[Stardustfire]

and there goes gimme again with his compare all to grenadiers even when the other things dont have the same role as grenadiers. as soon as grenadiers are used to be highly mobile and shot up to 3 times a turn on a normal base and do a lot of melee and short range attacks you can start comparing grenadiers with skirmishers.
many ppl just have no sense for subtil tactics, that why many here says "Skirmisher is bad" and in the same sentence "Reaper is best" .
The Skrimishers skillset is set for high mobility and a mix up of close range and melee attacks. its best to see him as a class that works in the same field as a Ranger, only that his gun does less dmg, but compensate for that with shooting and his special attacks dont end his turn. with the grapple hook and the grapple attack that pulls the skirmisher to the enemy he has 2 options to cross the battlefield without wasting actions or trigger overwatch. ok the second wastes ONE action, but it has a build in attack so you can pass a range where templar or ranger must sprint to, and still have a build in attack where you can chain a second attack after.
His bad aim comes from the nature of his BULLPUP, ever seen a long range on of this weapon class? its a close quarter weapon. his rope attacks have better aim when the enemy is to far away for the gun, and after they suceed you have the enemy at point blank range for a 100% gun hit or a melee attack (yes skirmisher get melee hitting and his own version of bladestorm)

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

and there goes gimme again with his compare all to grenadiers even when the other things dont have the same role as grenadiers.

It does though. Skirmisher's most useful abilities are Justice and Combat Presence. Justice performs the same purpose as grenades, except is exceptionally worse at the job, and Combat Presence is because someone else is more useful with that action point than they are. Because of this, Grenadiers, with their vastly more effective and overall more usable grenades, are better at what Skirmishers do than Skirmishers are.

as soon as grenadiers are used to be highly mobile and shot up to 3 times a turn on a normal base and do a lot of melee and short range attacks you can start comparing grenadiers with skirmishers.

Yes, a lot of short range attacks on a class with limited ability to close to close range and is incredibly ineffective when firing after moving. When they're moving they're essentially a Sharpshooter on the move (ie terrible), except when they stand still they don't have a sniper rifle or Squadsight.

The Skrimishers skillset is set for high mobility

Lowest effective mobility out of everyone but Sharpshooter due to damage lost from moving.

ok the second wastes ONE action, but it has a build in attack so you can pass a range where templar or ranger must sprint to, and still have a build in attack where you can chain a second attack after.

That, or it misses because of course it does, and now the Skirmisher is stranded at long range with a terrible gun not suited to long range AND is missing an action point.

His bad aim comes from the nature of his BULLPUP, ever seen a long range on of this weapon class? its a close quarter weapon.

Yes, you're describing WHY the Skirmisher is trash. The nature of its class encourages long range but its gun is terrible at long range, and the nature of the class very much works against using close range attacks, where the gun would actually work.

his rope attacks have better aim when the enemy is to far away for the gun, and after they suceed you have the enemy at point blank range for a 100% gun hit or a melee attack (yes skirmisher get melee hitting and his own version of bladestorm)

And, as stated, when they FAIL, because they have a fail chance unlike the grenades that they try to replace, they're complete garbage.

[zeeter]

Agree they're pretty much worthless. I only take them out on simple missions where I don't want to tire out one of my good soldiers. Even on the simple missions they do very little.

[Emjay]

I use the skirmishes and reaper for covert missions...

[Stardustfire]

gimme you show with you replys that you have no idea of tactic or the purpose of classes, long range is NOT the nature of a skirmisher. stay with you grenadiers where you know that they shot grenades and do nothing else.
you show in a incredible manner that you not even read (or maybe just not understand) all text and what it explains. what you quoted is out of context, because you only sniped out what fits in you small grenade world, destroying the real meaning of the text.

[KRON]

Upgrade their aim to 100 and their melee attacks won't be worthless. They also have pretty good mobility if you use only grapple, slash or wrath to move.
And I still remember skirmishers before patches. Thier tier 2 ripjack was OP af because it had guaranteed stun upon hit.

[Silamon]

The problem with vanilla skirmisher is that he doesnt really do anything particularly well, and the things he can do that are useful all have either only one charge per mission or a 4+ turn cooldown.

The bullpup lets you shoot more than once per turn. That's great right? Except you have to stay in one place to do it, and it has very poor accuracy at range. The gun's design goes against itself. Compare that to something like the Ranger's rapid fire. You can use your first move to get into a good position and then fire off two shots, which both do much more damage than the bullpup does.

Full Throttle barely even does anything. In order to get a meaningful ammount of bonus mobility from it (which will only last for one move by the way, since you have to use the first action to actually get some kills) you would need to also have the perk that lets you throw a grenade without ending the turn on top of having a group of low hp units to hit with it. Sure it is useful against the lost, but even then you would be better off with a gunslinger sharpshooter and the card that makes all headshots OHKO the lost.

Reflex gives you an extra action when he gets shot at, which would be great if it were not limited to only once per mission, and you don't even get to choose when to use it so it could very easily get wasted.

Total combat requires you to use a grenade in his one utility slot, which penalizes the low damage and multi hit gun even more. It is usually better to take some ammo with a dot like fire rounds to buff the gun's damage, rather than carry one grenade, especially when you have grenadiers to do that anyway.

Zero In would be nice if it stayed active after you move, or did not end after your turn. It forces you to stay in one place and shoot twice to get anything out of it at all. Combined with the Bullpup's poor accuracy to begin with this really doesnt help much....

Whiplash would, like reflex, be *great* if it was on a cooldown and not once per mission.

Combat presence is almost just a waste of a perk considering it does the same thing as the bond skill, or inspire from a psi operative.

Retribution is nice, but Ranger's bladestorm tends to be better because they get blademaster and untouchable, and no where near as good as a templar that procs bladestorm as an xcom ability.

Interupt is again.... only once per mission, and it limits you to only move or shoot so it would almost be better to just overwatch since that will trigger while the enemy is in the open instead of after it gets to cover.

Reckoning is.... why is this on a cooldown?! For that matter why is it a Major ranked perk?!

Waylay allows you two overwatch shots if you use overwatch without moving, which can be useful if you are doing it from concealment but otherwise its pretty ehhh. Why is that a Major perk?

Manual override would be more useful if his best skills were not limited to once per mission, but still a nice perk overall.

Battlelord is again only once per mission, on top of being buggy af. The idea is obviously to let you be like an alien ruler for a turn, but unmodded it only lets you get 2 extra actions, unless they have fixed that.


Compare this to the reaper or templar who have abilities that are always useful... It is easy to see why people might think skirmisher could use a bit of a rebalance...

[KingOfFriedChicken]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

as soon as grenadiers are used to be highly mobile and shot up to 3 times a turn on a normal base and do a lot of melee and short range attacks you can start comparing grenadiers with skirmishers.

I dont have an opionion really on this skirmisher topic but

This is not a statement that works for any class game, all calsses are ment to be compaired to each other. IE:
A sniper is long range single target high dammage attacker.
A grenaider is an AOE mid range attacker.

See i just compaired two classes that dont have the same role. A compairison of units allows you to decide what team composition you might enjoy most. With the effective skills they have.

This compairison also allows for the tactical part of the game. if i have a 3 health unit, do i take the 100% granade shot to kill him? or do i take the 80% snipe that will do way more dmmage then needs to be done.

All units have to be compaired, and its just an opinon if someone thinks a class is not as good as another. personally iv beatin the game with 4 snipers and shotgun unit in xcom 1 lol

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Stardustfire:

gimme you show with you replys that you have no idea of tactic or the purpose of classes, long range is NOT the nature of a skirmisher. stay with you grenadiers where you know that they shot grenades and do nothing else.

You're right, long range isn't their nature. Neither is short range. Nor is medium range. Nor any range, actually, they're bad at all of them.
They're bad at long range because their gun can't hit at long range. But their ability to shoot twice would be incredible with a weapon that actually hit things at long range. They'd be amazing if they had an assault rifle instead of the bullpop.
They're bad at short range because their gun's damage is trash if they don't shoot twice, and they need to move in order to do something at close range. But their gun is good at hitting things at close range due to close range characteristics, so it would be great if it actually hurt (you know, like a shotgun does).
Their mobility is trash, not amazing, because they functionally lack the ability to move the way everyone else can, and requires using the movement abilities to justify their existence. To that end, everything they have other than Justice, Combat Presence, and renamed-Bladestorm is either garbage (like all the things related to overwatch) or simply attempts to counteract their immense weaknesses so that they stop sucking so much (the movement abilities).
And, as explained repeatedly, Justice is categorically worse than a grenade at doing its job, because Justice can miss while grenades can't, and grenades can be used at will rather than on a cooldown (yes they have a use limit but Justice is never going to be used 4 times in a mission the way a grenadier can if you also count the heavy weapon, and besides Demolition is still only a little worse than Justice)

you show in a incredible manner that you not even read (or maybe just not understand) all text and what it explains. what you quoted is out of context, because you only sniped out what fits in you small grenade world, destroying the real meaning of the text.

I quoted each part to counter each part.

[talemore]

Alien ruler killer. Skirmishers are good against rulers because of having multiple shots. Mox killed all rulers with executes. Templars are good against the chosen. The reaper do every task on its own.

[Silamon]

Not to mention the xcom abilities don't really synergize very well with the rest of his kit...
He can get these abilities at random:
Return Fire - When targeted by enemy fire, automatically fire back with your bullpup once per turn.
So you have to get shot at first, then you can take a shot from your low aim bullpup in retaliation... It's actually worse than return fire on a sharpshooter....

Tactical Rigging - Provides an additional utility slot.
At least you can take a grenade for total combat and still have your ammo upgrade

Lightning Reflexes - Each turn, the first Reaction shot against you misses.
this one isn't bad

Volatile Mix - Your grenades deal +2 damage.
Grenadier's are just better for that.

Saturation Fire - Fire a cone shaped barrage of bullets at every enemy in an area. In addition, the cover of those enemies can be damaged or destroyed. Uses 3 ammunition.
Great if you want a bad way to remove cover that uses your entire clip. I mean you could just use a grenadier to do the same thing but....

[zeeter]

I hear a lot of people saying how you can get a Skirmisher better by doing this or doing that to them. Raising their aim through covert ops and such. Well that's great, but it only makes them adequate. If I'm going to raise somebody's aim it's going to be a Grenadier, Sharpshooter, or Specialist. In fact, a specialist with the chosen weapon and bluescreen rounds with an aim of 100 finally makes a specialist worthwhile on a mission. Much moreso than a Skirmisher.