First Campaign Completion on Commander - Advice for Legendary

[TheMasterBlaster]

Bought the game recently, and after tinkering a bit I finished the campaign on Commander difficulty. I'm going for Legendary difficulty next and would like suggestions about improving my approach. This is only the vanilla XCOM 2. I haven't run any mods yet and dont have WotC.

I ran a squad of 5 Specialists and 1 Ranger. The Specialists all had Combat, Revival, Field Medic, Threat Assessment, Ever Vigilant, and Capacitor Discharge. The Ranger was full Assault with an Assault Rifle. I prioritized Rifle, Armor, & GREMLIN upgrades/research, and trained up the extra Specialists ASAP to get them all to Colonel as fast as possible. I never researched or used any special ammo or devices other than the skulljack - which I only used on the missions that required it. Plasma Grenades were essential until I built a WAR suit for each squad member. The Ranger also used a Stasis Suit rather than a Medical Kit.

Combat Protocol is awesome, not necessarily because of the damage, but because of the range and it ignores armor. Pretty sweet. Does it hold up well in Legendary?

Revival was useful in the early game, but after that I rarely needed it. I definitely didn't need it for all of my Specialists. I'm thinking for Legendary I should diversify and switch most of the Specialists to Haywire. It should be super great if/when it works against Sectopods. Is Revival more important in Legendary than it is in Commander?

Field Medic I really liked compared to Scanning, especially since I didn't use any Medical or Restoration skills. Each Specialist always had enough healing and sometimes a Specialist would move adjacent to the Ranger to provide healing. Lacking Medical and Restoration skills didn't seem like much of a drawback. If I was running Ironman I think Scanning would be a must have. Which is better for Legendary?

Threat Assessment allowed so much flexibility, especially when my Specialists were well positioned and didn't need to move. And when I did need to double move, which is mandatory on the timed missions, Ever Vigilant kept my Specialists in the fight.

Capacitor Discharge is not as great as I hoped mainly because the range is rather short compared to Combat Protocol, but I used it often to soften up pods before swooping in with my Reaper Ranger to finish them off.

Suggestions please?

[Messsucher]

We have very different approach, I use max one specialist and make about everyone use bluescreen ammo, except shotgun ranger who use crit ammo. At legendary I use AP ammo too with one soldier.

At legendary revival was very good because dunno if bug but my units appeared to panic always if they got hit, making bondmate panic too. Revival let me take control of the situation back when needed.

[Aranador]

With all their percs, all the classes are quite powerful, and it comes down to playstyle what works best for you. I love me my rangers and their melee, but I do like to keep a grenadier on staff for rending enemy armour. If I have a sharpshooter, they're loaded up with pistol skills, but since all they really bring is damage, they're not too important to me. Meanwhile, a Psi-Op, well, their shortened title ends with OP for a reason. I'd pack 2 of those. But fast forward to now, and the whole field is wide open, as I've WotC and a million mods - so I am thinking back quite a ways to recall the vanilla experience.

[happy]

I'm not sure I would be able to pull a L/I without 2 grenadiers, if not 3 in my squad.

stunlancers are the first enemies you really have to adapt to, and flashbangs save your life, a grenadier can flashbang lancers far enough away so they never melee you, you definitely want that, as otherwise they can oneshot you.

grenadiers deal as much damage as snipers, can move, and can launch grenades, to tell you the truth in my last run I had one sniper (for chosen avenger defense), though not bad, snipers really shine late game and a templar basically does the same things but earlier: they clean multiple wounded enemies.

I can see a squad of specialist being very very good, but I believe that cooldowns will eventually bite you in the butt in legendary: the one turn that your combat protocols are on cool down( are they? not sure they have a cooldown, i only use one and never paid attention), you will lack the firepower to bring down THAT muton, and you' ll have a casualty.

And of course later you simply need shredder.
I'm probably not the best L/I player ever, my load out is basically brutal: 3 grenadiers, 2 assaults, one medic, a templar now and then instead of a grenadier, but I pick shredder on sight on any troop that has it as an option.

So to me, the priority is: get improved grenadier weapons asap.(my first L/I i went armor first, it kinda worked but i remember having a hard time on some timed missions where i was simply not able to kill everything in time, leading to eventually 3 captured soldiers)

in legendary there are three times where you are prone to lose soldiers: the transition between ballistic and mag, the transition between mag to plasma...and the ONE ambush when aliens have switched the 2 mutons 1 purifier for...2 andromedons + 1 whatever.(cause you got cocky from the past 6 ambush that were no threat)

you will likely lose quite a number of soldiers in the second transition, when you start to see that you are getting murdered on every mission, do not fear to just...ignore missions for a month.
You will lose regions and income but can make it up later, furthermore, there comes a time when soldiers that come as a reward will be on par with your very best troop, so you just have to wait it out and can replace very important tier one dead guys with reward soldiers.
DO not get stubborn, if you have lost a tier one soldierr or two, do not send your midrangish guys into sure death, you lose a run not because you have lost some elite but when your main bulk of soldier is too thin, so take care of your average effective guys, they are the heart of your squad.

you can freely skip around 5 missions(once you have the avatar under control), so...skip them when you need, no shame in that.

prioritise scientists, it's very important to get improved weapons on curve, more than having engineers. Midgame a scientist is worth A LOT.