Help with fighting the chosen?

[Ω]

I got the DLC the other day and sat down for another run through of the game with the War of the Chosen addon, but for the life of me I can't seem to even put up a fight against most of the chosen. The hunter I was able to beat once, and then he just teleported away anyway, but the assassin is borderline broken and I'm not sure if it's random or not. It's invisible, sees all my units still in stealth, is immune to overwatch, can summon other enemies, and seems to have nearly unlimited actions. The most recent example is a mission in the tunnels map, where he showed up in the middle of a full squad set up in overwatch, in one hit took my support down to 1hp and stunned him, which caused my heavy to go berserk and 2 other units to shatter, he then summoned an advent priest right next to my injured support, gave an un-skippable monologue calling me out, and then scampered off into the shadows beyond the point of me being able to give chase without provoking any overwatch.

So in sumary like how the ♥♥♥♥ do I even fight back against this? he makes one attack which downs his target, forcing me to making another character run over to help them, while also removing my ability to command 3 other characters because they're stressed out, he summons backup and then on top of all of it in one turn just gets a clean getaway because I can't even take a shot at him as he runs. Am I missing some kind of tactic here or are my squads just ♥♥♥♥♥♥ whenever he shows up?

And the worst damn part is that I have to sit there and listen to him talk ♥♥♥♥ about me while he does it because I can't skip it lol. I know it sounds like a rant at this point and it kind of is but ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ is it getting really frustrating.

[shiftmybrains]

Shes the hardest out of the 3. The reaper class can reveal invis units, you can use decoys, or you can use the support move "Scan"
But yes, it sucks.

[Ω]

Is the scan different than battle scanners? I always assumed they were two ways of doing the same thing but the battle scanner doesn't reveal the assassin, I tried.

[CloudSeeker]

The Hunter and Warlock will stay in the back while the Assassin will rush you and run away.

Both the Hunter and Warlock are easy to kill. Might be a problem with the warlock if he starts to mindcontrol your soldiers but if you attack him several times in the same turn he takes more damage so when you attack him he goes down fast.

The Assassin is harder to kill early game, but a Battle scanner will decloak her stealth so you can attack using bombs and attacking from higher locations.

[Helnano]

Abuse their weakness. A reaper with 2 claymores can deal a lot of dmg to a shell-shock chosen

For the assassin: initiative is key here. Since overwatch doesn't work you have to strike first. If you are not in a timed mission (or have plenty of time for it), let her come to you and handle her alone. Use specialist scanner ability to decloak her. A reaper can be good too if you can guess where she is (though broken glass / door sounds).

For hunter: In all my runs, hunter spawned far away from my troops and only used his special snipe ability, which is easy to dodge. Only started to do other actions when he entered into my sight. This behaviour makes it easy, as you can deal with the entire map before engaging him

For warlock: Once you get some mindshields it becomes the easiest. Until then your best bet is a healer specialist for most debuffs (i think flashbang doesn't work on him but i never tried)

And if everything goes wrong, when one of your soldiers is down the chosen will take some intel of the avenger and leave. Is not the best option but better than a dead soldier.

[Mrvecz]

If you start with the story mission lost and abandoned, Assasin will always have the ignore overwatch perk. Disable the mission and she wont be the first chosen to fight against. This helps alot in her case if your soldiers can actually fire at her when she attacks. Unless she gets it again in the RNG ability roulette.

[fewerjungle]

The chosen have random perks and vulnerabilities. With the lost and abandoned mission, I think some of them are indeed fixed, but apart from that, taking extra damage from consecutive attacks for example, is random.

Other perks include revealing clocked units, planeswalker (teleport after taking damage), harder to hit and so on.
You can check the chosen's perks, vulnerabilities and progress at any given time in the tactical map, on the left of the dark events button. That way you can plan accordingly.

As for fighting them, like cloudseeker said, the assasin will rush you, while the hunter and warlock will fight from a distance. Assasin will usualy go for a sword attack with bending reed (move after striking, like the templar's rend). Warlock will create one or more zombies, according to his power level (up to three) and hunter will mark or whatever it's called. When you make visual contact with them (hunter and warlock) they will engage with other abilities. It's unusual for soldiers to go berserk or shatter from what you described. Were they tired going into the mission?

General tips: while you're directly fighting a chosen (as in, you actually see them), the mission timer stops temporarily. When the chosen dies or disappears it will resume.
If you feel like you simply got unlucky with the circumstances and can't win the fight, you can let a dazed unit stay like that. It's not advisable, but the chosen can then steal information from your unit and leave the combat area. It will however make their knowledge progress faster which is bad. I believe they can also kidnap your soldiers but it never happened to me so I can't comment on that one. Chosen tend to not appear consecutevely. They usually appear in a mission then leave you alone during 3 to 5 missions (beware, on blacksite, a chosen will always show up), meaning you can almost predict when they do appear. If you have a facility to destroy and fresh soldiers you may want to 'trigger' their appereance on that mission just so you can have more relaxed timed missions afterwards. You're not running against the clock, so it's a controlled environment. Against the assasin, you can for instance, fall back to a safe place to avoid finding other enemy pods when fighting her, or hide behind cliffs while your concealled ranger tries to finder her (don't overextend, you need to come out of hiding guns blazing with the rest of the squad once you find her). Finnaly, remember chosen are constantly getting stronger.

Assassin: try to decloack her. Battle scanner (it does reveal the assassin, used it several times myself), scanning protocol, and advancing with a unit to a position you think she can be in. Pay attention to visual and audio cues. An opening door or broken window will not reveal her but will give you hints. Keep your guys close, as in blue move distance. You can then undaze soldiers (move with another soldier close by and 'cure' then - it's a free action). On the assasin's second turn (sometimes combat with her will go into the second and third turn, especially in the beggining) she will sometimes throw a blinding grenade so be carefull not to have your guys all bunched up.

Warlock: when the zombies trigger detonation they will explode after being killed, so be carefull. Also remember mind control can be less dangerous with high soldier bonds. Level 2 or 3 does something when the mind controlled unit is next to his/her bondmate, can't recall the details.

Hunter: can always grapple on his turn. Shots have a chance to inccur bleeding (damage over time).

Chosen are harder in the beggining, afterwards, unless you're unlucky and trigger enemy pods when fighting them, it's a matter of blowing their cover and shooting them, like any other enemy. Just takes some practice.

[TotalLegionnaire]

I recommend mods they make my life eaiser

[Messsucher]

Here was some time ago very good and detailed instructions how to deal with Assassin.

[TamTroll]

honestly, early-game i'd say the easiest way around the chosen is to just let them daze one of your soldiers, wait a turn, and let them extract the knowledge about the Avenger.

this WILL bite you in the butt later as if they get enough informaton, they will end up personally leading an attack force against the Avenger, but once they have the information from the dazed soldier, they immidiately leave the map and don't come back, and your soldier is still alive and unharmed. So in the short-term it's a good way to make sure your troops don't die, allowing them to get stronger further ahead.

In my limited successes against the assassin, the best i can offer is to try and keep the pressure on her, if there are two or more other aliens around you then you're kind of boned, but if you can get her alone and quickly deal with whatever she summons, then you might have a chance. Have your fast-movers follow her if she seeks cover, your shreders shread her armor, and use any kind of reapers or scanners you have to keep her from cloaking, as others have said.

You'll also want to keep your troops far apart from one another, to prevent her from using her BS death-wave attack that dazes every soldier it touches from 50 yards away. Bring a Templar if you can, with Parry allowing one guaranteed miss hit a turn, they can be pretty tanky.

[Bilateralrope]

Reapers with Target Definition making fighting the Assassin easy because you always get to see exactly where she is. Sure, you need to get close to decloak her, but that's easily done.

[Ω]

Thanks for the help, I've read the replies and had some time to get into the ebb and flow of the chosen (and also let the frustration go) and they're much more manageable now. I even had one run-in with the Warlock, who has shellshocked on my game, and he jumped me when I just happened to have two heavies and a spark on the mission. He took a heavy's grenade to the face, said I better have brought something bigger, and my spark rocketed him back to whever he came from which was fairly amusing.

[Mrvecz]

Sparks are also good idea against Warlock in general. Because his powers are useless against them and he can pretty much only attack them with his assault rifle. So in fact if you lead a full spark team attack on his fortress, you are in for a ride as he will barrage you with insults as he knows he cant do a ♥♥♥♥ against them.

But tbh Warlock tends to get nuked either within a round or two so he cant do that much to my team. But be aware that his assault rifle has 100% crit chance against XCOM psionics so make sure to hide them behind solid cover when you are facing him or he might one shot them or rip most of their health within a single attack.

[Stardustfire]

you better ignore some of fewerjungles advices. "blue move distance" is the most stupid thing you can do vs assassian as long you not only playing easy or normal difficulty. she has the most devastating ae attack for stuns. sniper only has a grenade, warlocks ability can jump to other targets in around 4 squares if not resisted from first target, but assassains habour wave says thank you and take out a complete squad when soldiers stand to near to each other and at worst case nearly in a line.
for my playstyle (means i dont say its the only way but it works best for me) templar is the choosen breaker, give him a mind shield and he tanks all choosen just fine, specially the assa gets a joke than. after she got here entrace speech find the templar something to hit to get parry up and let him be the first target the assa will find when she reach you team. she will go for him if the other soldiaers are not to near, and will break on him. when she trys to shot or slash him parry kicks in, if she trys to wave (what she only does when she can hit at least 2 soldiers with it) the mindshield resist it. after that its easy to comprend where she is if she used here bending reed attack move, so you can follow up with the templar, hit here, get parry up again, rince, repeat. only things that can make this harder are: auto OW for choosen and no shadow step for templar, planar walker, and last melee immunity (templar still get his parry but cant kill the choosen alone anymore)

[Charlemagne]

I can deal with them but they're annoying as hell, especially the Assassin. A PITA. All those "immune to" perks and their ability to take several actions in a turn. Every time a damn chosen shows up during a mission I go "aw man not again". I'm tempted to go into their bases even though my soldiers aren't ready (low tier armor, weapons) just to see if i can end the annoyance. I'm also considering moving to vanilla Xcom 2 just to be free of them.

And their endless chatter I'm sick of it. How can they communicate at will with the Commander anyway? And they know everything that goes on, on the Avenger, on the field. If they know everything they should have already beaten you up and destroyed the Avenger. "Commander, the color of your urine doesn't appear too good this morning. You should have that renegade doctor of yours take a look at you. He's on the second deck right now, scratching his left ear. Or maybe don't bother. The Elders will have you for dinner soon enough".

[fewerjungle]

@stardust fire

Blue move distance against the assassin is for the first turn when she attacks with the sword. If you don't have anybody in blue move distance what are you going to do about your dazed soldier? And since you don't know which soldier she will attack...

Although I didn't mention this should be done in the first turn, it was implied since I mention the second turn afterwards... where I say not to bunch your guys up.