Thoughts on SPARKs?

[Sines]

So, I know it's a bit early, but what do people have to say about SPARKs? Based on what I've tried so far, and what I've seen elsewhere about their eventual ability lists... they seem very underwhelming.

Mechanically, they feel more like a Grenadier variant class, being good with Heavy Weapons, terrain destruction, Shredder, and a few other things. But none of these abilities really screams "Great". They're just variants.

And this would be fine. Variants on existing classes is cool, certainly, but the SPARK just comes with too many downsides. They're hard to obtain, they need whole new gear and can't just borrow Grenadier gear (Despite their main weapon being functionally identical, as far as I can tell), they can't use weapon mods or PCS, they don't show up until later in the game, but don't get free training (unlike Psychics), they can only heal one at a time and their heal rate isn't improved in any way (that I know of) and it seems to last longer than similar wounds for a human soldier. They have several abilities that encourage them to become a tank, and yet they can only be healed in combat by themselves (or another SPARK, but that's impractical thanks to the whole one-at-a-time repair thing). Etc, etc...

MECs were certainly a bit too powerful in EW, but this just goes too far in the opposite direction. If they were just a variant class, they'd feel pretty balanced (though I admit, I haven't seen them through to final level myself), but all the drawbacks seem to make them more of a novelty than anything else. And the fact that they're not that special doesn't help either. If they were underpowered, but did things no other class could, then they might still see use. But being Grenadiers with just a touch of Specialist isn't all that unique. Their tankiness would be unique, if it weren't for that tankiness being too underpowered for such a high risk job.

Still, I was going to try them out for the novelty, but thanks to a chain of unlucky crits, the one I got from the story mission died. And honestly, I can't think of any compelling reason to build a new one apart from the desire to try it out. But if it starts at first Rank... then what are the odds that it's just gonna get killed due to being underleveled, with it's low defensive stats making it a magnet for enemy fire?

I liked Alien Hunters, as while the near gear wasn't super-powerful, it all felt really useful, with it's power being balanced out by the difficulty of the Rulers. Whether to awaken the Rulers or to give up their armor and advanced hunter weapons is a legitimate choice (If I even decide to treat it like a choice rather than awaken them on principle :D), but I just don't see myself using SPARKs. The only way they're easy to obtain is if you wait so long to do the story mission that they're severely under-ranked...

[Coyote]

mine died in 2 shots from a stun lancer shooting him.. One of the shots was a crit.. Pretty meh.

[Cherenkov Blues]

From my experience, they are arguably useful in early game, but their utility falls off in mid-late game. Then again, mid-late game is never difficult. If you can make through the first few months, everything should just roll for you (unless you go crazy and take 6 specialists or something like that).

For Alien Hunters, I always grab the tier 2 weapons for early game. I generally play Ironman Legend, or Commander if I am feeling tired, so I actually skip the nest mission for safety. Sure, those armors are really nice, but I do not see the justification to take the considerable risks to engage rulers until end game. Then again, I do not really need those armors in endgame, which begs the question if they are truly useful.

[K. the Land-Surveyor]

I'm playing through Commander right now on a new campaign, and my SPARK has been absolutely invaluable. I skipped the mission and built my first one as soon as my Proving Ground went up, and it's been max rank for awhile.

I've only got the one but I've invested almost entirely into the Future Combat tree, deviating only to pick up Bombard. I haven't had any issues of survivability with it, and it consistently provides massive support to the squad on every mission I take it on. I really want to build a second one, but my cores have been going into other more important projects, alas.

[Khan, Binary of None]

I'm up to 5 SPARKs right now on my playthrough and I often run about 4 of them at a time with two other classes. Usually a Ranger, Grenadier, or a Specialist. Currently going to attempt to see how a size 6 SPARK squad handles as I got them up to Plasma Cannons before they even had their first armor upgrades and they pretty much one-shot or almost one-shot everything.

Also the melee attack 'Strike' is super good and very humorous. Punching Archons in the face is a very strong strategy.

[76561198034396398]

this unit can be more of a hazard then the enemy if you don't watch what you're doing it just ran through into a car killing 3 squad members

[!?!]

They're a "tank class" that levels up like normal soldiers but can't "bleed out" so once it's dead, too bad and they literally die in 2 hits on any difficulty level above normal which makes them MORE FRAGILE than regular soldiers.
They're supposed to "tank" yet their healing rate is ridiculously limited and slow with no way to speed it up like you can with soldiers because "it's so strong we have to limit it guys".

Their accuracy is garbage because they can't mod their weapons. That's also why they're permanently stuck with a 3 shot magazine so I hope you like spending turns reloading.
I guess customizing the robot you built just makes too much sense.

The 1 thing they can do better than regular soldiers is always being available.
You can bring a damaged spark to a mission, and heal it up on turn 1 with a medkit or by repairing it so it has 0 downtime.
They would be okay if you could rebuild them when they "die" so you always have a kenny to bring to missions.

But I guess rebuilding the robot that "died" is just crazytalk and a great way to differentiate the machine from your meatbags is to have it always break permanently while still being constricted by the same leveling system.

[ghpstage]

Originally posted by chris:

They're supposed to "tank" yet their healing rate is ridiculously limited and slow with no way to speed it up like you can with soldiers because "it's so strong we have to limit it guys".

There is a way to speed it up far beyond the abilitires of the AWC, just repair it in the field, any and all repaired damage stays with it and reduces/prevents 'wound' downtimes. Of course it does require a high rank to get the repair ability, but I did read about med kits apparently working on SPARKS, which may be worth a try.

That being said, they still fail to impress in the overwhelming majority of cases. Earlier in the game their sizeable array of innate abilities (Jump jets, shredding, low end ranged hacking ability, Heavy weapon, Overdrive) can look, and probably prove impressive, but getting them very early is either expensive (without mission) or dangerous (with mission!) and as they lack item slots, lack of PCS, inability to use special armours with their weapons not being moddable they scale very, very poorly, and are more reliant on ranks to compensate for weaknesses. A few of their abilities seem far less useful than they first appear too.
They are a bit of novelty fun, but in practice I would rather bring any of the other classes.

[Sines]

Well, made it to the end of the game, and I have to say that I'm really not feeling them.

In particular, I'm sad to find that they actually have less HP than a regular soldier (and that's without a Conditioning PCS). Sure, their HP + Armor is higher, and a point of armor is strictly better than a point of HP, but that's not really a meaningful difference in survivability. Add in the fact that you could use a Plated Vest, WAR Suit and/or Blast Padding, you could get another soldier up to the same level of armor, and they're actually less survivable than a soldier you've dedicated to being tanky.

Now, they do bring a few unique things to the game. I love Bulwarks ability to create high cover wherever I need it. There are plenty of missions where it's difficult to advance while staying behind cover, and a Bulwark SPARK effectively reduces the needed cover spots by 3. But honestly, that's the most useful and unique thing I've found it can do.

Apart from it's ability to stand out in the open with relative safety, there's nothing really all that unique about this guy. If I could get a SPARK for 25 Credits, and if it got new gear along with the Squad Upgrades rather than it's own seperate categories for armor and guns, then I'd feel like it would be worth giving up another soldier just for the usefulness of Bulwark. But with all the extra costs and production time you have to spend towards these guys... I just can't justify their use when there are so many better things to spend your limited resources on.

Still, they can't be that hard to fix. Firaxis was finally able to get swords (well, axes really) to a point I think was right, but it took them quite a long time. I suspect it'll require modders to make these things better. I'll probably wait to see what LWS does.

[gcp3000]

My last SPARK sacrificed himself for the glory of Earth last night in my L/I run. I agree with a lot of the things said ITT but I just love the guys. They are just a lot of fun to play with and you can employ some really creative strats with mobile cover or something like Wrecking Ball.

I do agree they're a little cost prohibitive but I don't think they should be 25 supplies like a run-of-the-mill recruit either. Perhaps 1 elerium core (instead of 2) and 100 supplies instead of the king's bounty it takes to make one now.

[lostsomething]

Aside from the slightly dubious 1-1 comparison to just regular soldiers (can't use cover, can't use chips, can't use weapon attachments...) the sheer price of them seems prohibitive. I'd like to throw a Spark into my ranks every so often if just for variety's sake but they're ridiculously expensive and so is their gear.

[Barry Bee Benson]

I strongly agree, that the spark is mostly a glass cannon, and the cannon part not really counting because of the below-average aim, but i feel like it still has a use.

The ability to overdrive sort of replaces run and gun. Combine that with the ability to go full kool-aid and blast through walls.

Besides, having a 'oh no i'm sorrounded better shoot everything' guy is sometimes a lifesaver early-mid game, where the spark (in most cases) can carry your soldiers until they can take care og themselves.

I usually use the spark as an assault-like unit. Always in the midst of battle. It's not a tank, so better eleminate my enemies before they can use my weaknesses against me.

[ShunBrokuSatsu]

I know I am going to be in the minority here but I honestly think that Sparks are borderline broken OP. Now before anyone freaks out let me explain why.

I do agree that early rank sparks are weak mainly due to the facts that they cannot take cover and they have really crappy aim, but at the same time Sparks usefulness sky rockets as soon as you hit their first promotion. Getting Bullwark makes the Spark a huge asset, not only do they get an extra point of armor but they also can be used as high cover, which is huge when you are in an are with little to no high cover. Also their base 20 defense makes it so that Advent misses more of their shots on it than you might think. I also use smoke grenades with the spark if I have to kind of plant myself down in an area with low cover for a while (with other units getting the smoke cover of course). This will give the spark a -40% chance to be hit and will give anyone standing behind him a -60% chance. This has been so good, I can't begin to explain how useful this has been for me.

The turning point for me with the Spark though, when I thought the spark was broken, was when I got Bombard and Rainmaker. Holy ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell is Rainmaker OP. The AOE radius and damage that it adds to the Rocket is huge, it allows me to one shot entire pods most of the time. If you pair this up with Overdrive and Bombard You get a hilarious amount of firepower, to the point where you can reliably take out even 2 pods at once. The big game changer though is if you are able to get a blaster launcher on it with Rainmaker, that is definitely broken as all hell. The radius is so large that most of the time when I fire it upon buildings, most if not all of the building is vaporized, and on top of that it does more damage than normal as well. I honestly don't think Firaxis tested this because if you play vanilla with no mods to increase enemy squad sizes you could pull all of the pods in the mission in one area and more likely than not you will be able to hit most if not all of them. The broken nature of Rainmaker Blaster Launcher is beyond hilarious.

Lastly you can actually keep a soldier behind the spark with a medkit (not a gremlin heal but a straight medkit) and use it on the spark if it takes damage. in the over 70 missions I have taken my spark on I have only seen it' health dip below half once. This is a great way to move your squad up and progress while still having cover and having a good target for advent to waste their shots on.

All in all I believe that as they are, Sparks are a little on the broken side. I would make their Rainmaker instead of giving heavy weapons a larger radius and more damage make it so that their heavy weapons get an additional use instead, this to me seems a little more balanced as you could not just nuke a gigantic group that you might accidentally pull.

[!?!]

What game are you playing in which you can "pull all pods into one area" or in which 18 crit damage max oneshots anything above 20 health archons?

[talemore]

It's when you try to play the stealth game. You draw all pods on you to get to the objective. Pods guarding objectives or destroying objectives can pile themself up by walking straight forward with no plan.

Using grenades to kill pods in one turn. If using explosives are broken, then I guess the game has been so since release day. Being able to use medkits to heal spark is just an example of how firaxis keeps rushing things, by saying that there's no motivation except finishing things ASAP and then rely on the workshop to solve their problems.
It's a pain to be reminded of "Official xcom 2 E3 2015 gameplay"

[Nokad]

The spark is underwhelming as a tank, that's for sure. Without sacrifice you can't take a beating and you'll be hit too often. And with aid protocol on it the enemies will attack your other squadmates, because the defense of the spark get's higher than that of high cover, which is quite bad for a "tank".

But as an offensive unit it is one of the best classes, and the best against single high hp targets. I skilled the war machine tree completely except bombard, because repair is just to important and with good positioning and understanding how to make good use of it, it's devastating.

A fully ranked spark with T2 equipment can kill a berserker on legendary (almost 30hp) alone and in one turn, I don't know any other class that can do this.