What happens if I ignore the chosen?

[sick duck]

Are they just going to keep getting stronger until I can't defeat them? I am already very far into a legend difficulty campaign, so far that I'm on the new year now, and I only killed warlock in the middle of doing all the lab research and am only just moving on to do the the shadow chamber reasearch right around the time I have all the plasma weapons, the viper and muton armors, and a psi lab. I barely managed to kill the warlock, and that was with more save scumming than I want to admit.

Ever since then the hunter bastard has captured the templar I had been sending on all the covert ops (I have waited a month and no rescue mission for him...), and the assassin chosen is now at about 65 health and teleports on hit... so how can I kill her if she moves around so much? I barely defeated her on my last campaign one difficulty level lower and it cost the life of a ranger captain. I have never used psionic soldiers before, so I might have to try that. My working theory for an assassin killing strategy for now is to have all my people defend postions around the avatar gate thing we need to blow up and have my skirmisher chase her around the chamber with his grappling hook, armed with a repeater, a scope and tracer rounds and just hope for the 1 in 5 chance of execution. Will this strategy work? I already can and have annihilated her on regular missions, however the problem is I have to kill about 20 other enemies by the time the chosen is done and dusted, and I need grenades and abilities to help with that. I have a pair of good healer specialists that can keep the skirmisher alive as the chosen is chased around and they can keep her visible iwth help of scanning protocol and a reaper. A couple of restoration abilities and 8 gremlin heals should let me emdure until the missiion is done, right?

[Narrowmind]

They can max out, but basically, it's best to take care of them because if you don't, you'll still have to deal with them in the final battle.

EDIT What happened to your reaper? Your strategy can work, but the reaper is the most important because she is able to mark her so that no matter where she goes, you'll know where she is.

[Amanoob105]

Ok, there's a lot of parts here so this may or may not (likely not) come out in the order you typed it.

There is a limit to how powerful they can get as they can only get so many new abilities until they run out of slots to put them in. Their health can also only get so high.

Any you don't take out will turn up on the final mission as extra enemies on the way to the final "boss fight" at the end.
Plus you don't get access to their stuff.

Hoping for a 1-5 chance to go off is a strategy, but I prefer a more sure thing with less dependence of whether or not RNGesus is feeling a greater hate towards me or them.
For most of the more annoying enemies in this game, the freeze grenade can provide an answer, teleporting enemies being a good example.
Find her, freeze her, unload unto her. Added bonus, on top of all the other things frozen enemies don't get to do, dodging is one of them.

There won't normally be a whole lot of other enemies joining you in that final room and normally only once you take down the chosen. And even then they are just a distraction. So long as she and then her respawner die, followed by her one final time on less than full health, you win.

Fighting the assassin in her home means you will fight her in a limited area. A Spec's scanner ability can cover that entire area if the drone is fully upgraded and you have two uses of it.
When she first joins the fight she will only be able to run so far on her turn so find her, freeze her, nuke her.

If you haven't tried psionic soldiers yet, I recommend changing that. They're a bit OP.
While their not on par with a templar for ability to troll the enemy, they make up for it in being living artillery pieces. Not counting the token gun in their hands all of their attacks ignore cover and most do guaranteed damage. The rest can just make things very annoying for the enemy.
A simple example of most of the above happening all at once.
Void Rift is guaranteed damage with a chance to inflict Insanity on any target hit which could inflict a number of conditions on them up to mind controlling them for a turn. But if you also have the upgrade ability for Insanity called Schism, then the Insanity from Void Rift now also does extra damage and makes them take more damage from future attacks.

Beware any covert op that has a capture chance. I've long taken to just avoiding them if I can't nullify that outcome. It's just not worth the hassle, as while a rescue mission will always turn up sooner or later it can sometimes be months before they do.

Let me know if I missed anything.

[AlexMBrennan]

teleports on hit... so how can I kill her if she moves around so much?

Teleportation is a bit of a tactical liability because you can force the enemy to abandon a very strong position (high cover on the far side of the map) with guaranteed damage weapons (e.g. blaster launcher).

You have unlimited time to defeat the cannon fodder in the first level which allows you to recharge your OP abilities so you should be able to conserve most of your limited abilities for the boss fight.

What happens if I ignore the chosen?

They will keep showing up on missions where you have limited time and need to fight the regular enemies in addition to the boss.

[gruetoo]

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

They will keep showing up on missions where you have limited time and need to fight the regular enemies in addition to the boss.

Mission timers pause when engaged with a Chosen, so you have all the time in the world to deal with them when they show up. On the other hand, you have to deal with a Chosen, so it is little consolation.

[megansweden]

The Assassin is easier to deal with in her stronghold than on regular missions, in my opinion. You don't have to wonder when she's going to charge up at you, invisible, and whack one of your soldiers down to half health with one swipe. The chosen chamber is a small area and she can't move far when she first comes in - she's usually just a short distance from where she first drops in. And she doesn't directly attack, you trigger her on your turn so just be sure you don't get too close to the pillar until you're ready, so you have everyone's actions available and are in control.

Rather than focusing on bringing all the healing you can muster, bring as many multi-shot skills as you can. Rapid fire, chain shot, BANISH. One specialist should be enough. The Skirmisher is a good idea especially if she's weak to Skirmishers.

If she teleports on injury you want to hit her with as much damage as you can for each attack. If you have plasma and Colonels, you should have no problem.

Reapers with Banish can take the Chosen out in one attack (superior extended mag, and if you're trying Repeater cheese this is your best bet). Worst case she'll be down to less than half health.

Rangers with run and gun + Rapid Fire are another good option as they can usually get right up close even after she's teleported (superior laser sight + talon rounds, they can hit for 20+ per shot and it's a guaranteed hit if they're right in her face).

If she teleports too far for a good attack, hit her with something guaranteed like combat protocol or even a bad shot with a Stock, there's a good chance she'll teleport to a better spot for your squad. If you have the proper selection of skills available you won't even need to use the whole squad to take her out in one turn.

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

Originally posted by gruetoo:

Originally posted by AlexMBrennan:

They will keep showing up on missions where you have limited time and need to fight the regular enemies in addition to the boss.

Mission timers pause when engaged with a Chosen, so you have all the time in the world to deal with them when they show up. On the other hand, you have to deal with a Chosen, so it is little consolation.

Technically true, but in practice you typically lose 1 turn to a chosen fight. This is because the timers starts from the turn they die ... and you don't get actions already taken refunded to you upon their death.

Sure you might only use 1 soldier to kill them, but lets be honest here, plenty of times the finishing move will be towards the back end of your turn ... and a cardinal sin of Xcom is moving into the fog with all actions spent in case you proc another pod. So you effectively blow a turn not moving forward and not reloading.

I would even make the argument that the mere presence of the Assasin and Warlock slow down your progress through a level before you actually engage them fully, and stopping the timer. Because you don't want to fight the Assasin or Spectral Zombies while also engaged with another pod ... or run the risk of activating another pod. Again, you end up playing conservative.

Not to say that you cannot make it through fine, but the timers are more of an issue around chosen.

[sick duck]

Well, flawless victory... that was anti-climatic. I spent ages procrastinating over attacking the assassin stronghold feeling certain I'd get my butt kicked because legendary difficulty is supposed to be harder than the difficulty I barely defeated the assassin on last month. I guess I learned some things since that last time. Did her in with a:

Reaper to mark enemy positions and claymores.

Skirmisher because they are the adversary.

Psi-ops dude to null lance pods through walls and dominate the advent officer attempting to help the assassin

Specialist to scan for the assassin

Demoliton expert to blow stuff up

Then there was the ranger guy for fun-murder action, the main killer of the team. I made certain between his icaras armor, the psi-ops guy, our grenades and the team spread out all across the stronghold that there was nowhere was safe for the assassin.

I feel like my people weren't really challenged. I would have to start a new game to really stress out over xcom 2 now I think.

[Mithrandir]

Originally posted by sick duck:

I feel like my people weren't really challenged. I would have to start a new game to really stress out over xcom 2 now I think.

Grats on your flawless victory.

Imo, save scumming is like a boot camp for Xcom2.

When you get out of it, you really confront the unforgiving difficulty and if your acquired skills are enough to win.

[sick duck]

Originally posted by Mithrandir:

Originally posted by sick duck:

I feel like my people weren't really challenged. I would have to start a new game to really stress out over xcom 2 now I think.

Grats on your flawless victory.

Imo, save scumming is like a boot camp for Xcom2.

When you get out of it, you really confront the unforgiving difficulty and if your acquired skills are enough to win.

I see that xcom 1 had a save scum special option, a thing that is supposed to redo all of the probable hits and misses upon loading a save file. I would absoultely use it for xcom 2 if it had one, and I wonder why it didn't make it to the sequel. Workshop has something else I see, called "bronze mode" It is said that it will allow saving on the tactical map, but not in missions. I like that idea and I think I'll subscribe to that.