Specialists -not so special...?

[motojauntx]

Are other players finding that the specialist is a way underpowered character? Besides the combat protocol against robots (which is useful), I'm less and less inclined to train spare specialists in the guerilla warfare school.

3 reasons why:
1. Hacking is so hit or miss, and the benefits are almost never worth the risk For example, why risk enemy boosts and a wasted opportunity to shoot or throw a grenade on the 10% chance that "This soldier gains extended sight for 2 moves." Seriously, why bother?
2. I hardly ever use the medkits in this version. With the move counters, it seems to make more sense to rush through than it does to treat an injury, as opposed to enemy unknown or enemy within, where you could usually regroup before another charge into the breach.
3. The other classes are sooooo much more useful/powerful.

So, am I off my rocker here for perceiving the specialist as more of a glorified rookie (i.e. expendable)?

[Dies Fourth]

You have 60 hours in the xcom world total. Play the game and the usefullness will become painfully obvious with more experiance.

[Sammarok-GoodGaming]

Specialist with weapon with 3 mods: Superior Repeater, Superior Scope and Superior ammo. Have the skill Guardian and with 200+ hacking skill. Is very OP and very special.

EDIT: I forgot, add him a W.A.R. suit with a heavy weapon for devastating AOE options.

[Dies Fourth]

Hours arent the only criteria, the more you play the more situations you will encounter and learn what class equipped in what way using what specific tech works in different situations.

Then each game has different tactics and things that work. Xcom2 has timers that chanfge everything. Just play and learn : )

[PDX MM]

Originally posted by Malevolence:

Specialist with weapon with 3 mods: Superior Repeater, Superior Scope and Superior ammo. Have the skill Guardian and with 200+ hacking skill. Is very OP and very special.

EDIT: I forgot, add him a W.A.R. suit with a heavy weapon for devastating AOE options.

To add to this if you get lucky with the right hidden ability they can be pretty unstopable. My last game I had this setup with shredder perk and bluescreen ammo, any and all robots fear me!!

[Segovax]

Originally posted by schlippyschlappy:

1. Hacking is so hit or miss, and the benefits are almost never worth the risk For example, why risk enemy boosts and a wasted opportunity to shoot or throw a grenade on the 10% chance that "This soldier gains extended sight for 2 moves." Seriously, why bother?

Well, you don't need haywire protocol to hack terminals, and the real rewards are from things like cell or truck doors - you get the door open, but you also get a chance at free intel, 50% reduced scanning time, 50% reduced contact cost for a nearby province, halve the time for current research, etc. Once hacking is high enough, along with a skulljack, you will see 100% for shutdowns and the only time you have to gamble is if you feel comfortable taking a risk on grabbing a bot to attack its buddies.

2. I hardly ever use the medkits in this version. With the move counters, it seems to make more sense to rush through than it does to treat an injury, as opposed to enemy unknown or enemy within, where you could usually regroup before another charge into the breach.

I.. guess if triggering every pod on the map works for you then go with it. Having a healbot that can heal anyone anywhere, and doesn't end the healers turn so they can do things like.. heal someone else, throw a grenade, shoot or bestow the joy of Threat Assessment makes healing just way more powerful than it was in EU/EW. As well, all but one mission type either has a timer shutdown which lets you take your time killing everything else, or doesn't have a timer at all. Extract/Capture the VIP is the only mission I can think of that doesn't have a timer halt.

3. The other classes are sooooo much more useful/powerful.

And when your assault ranger does a run & gun, kills a guy and still gets a +50 defense with a free covering fire overwatch, they can be even more powerful.

So, am I off my rocker here for perceiving the specialist as more of a glorified rookie (i.e. expendable)?

I wouldn't say off your rocker, but you are missing the finer points of the class, imo.

[Sammarok-GoodGaming]

Originally posted by schlippyschlappy:

So they're late bloomers, huh? Ok.

Not really, yes what I mentioned is mid-late game, but inthe beginning they have combat protocol that is a very good skill, they can one-hit kill mechs and the most important is to stop the enemy overwatch, that is very important in the beginning. Hacking a terminal (if you choose those hacking missions) always brings the most important hacking rewards like:

A)+20 hacking skill
B)Reduces the Contact Cost for a nearby region by 50%
C)Research Time on the current Tech reduced by 50%.
D) Or my favorite one, the one that reduce the scanning time of the avenger for 4 weeks, you can earn rewards very fast and early in the tactical map, very useful in legend difficulty (also ironman games).

There are more rewards that I forgot to mentioned.

But yeah hacking a lampost most of time have bad rewards.

[subarublaidd]

Specialists also get the combat specialty (name?) as their second perk. This guarantees 2 damage (more versus mechs) and more as you improve the gremlin. May not seem like much, but how often do you have an enemy with 1 health left a little too far/covered to guarantee a kill? The Gremlin works like squad site - so long as someone can see the enemy.

Also.. you can hack from range, in some timed missions this can give you an extra turn (more if enemies guarding the area) to hack a chest on those missions.

I also like turning mechs to my team. The rest of hacking is meh, perhaps, but I do it for the rank ups.

The ability to revive an unconscious troop?

The ability to clear poison off a damaged troop?

Clear burning?

Multiple shots when you trigger ambushes.

In truth, if everyone is having a good day, the specialist just gets to train hacking but when stuff goes wrong, they are wonderful insurance policies.

Specs get a bum rap because they don't throw up gaudy DPS. But they handle all the little things.

[Segovax]

Originally posted by Malevolence:

D) Or my favorite one, the one that reduce the scanning time of the avenger, you can earn rewards very fast and early in the tactical map, very useful in legend difficulty (also ironman games)..

I <3 that on legend. Clearing all the scans is such a satisfying thing.

[Sammarok-GoodGaming]

Originally posted by HerrComrade:

Originally posted by Malevolence:

D) Or my favorite one, the one that reduce the scanning time of the avenger, you can earn rewards very fast and early in the tactical map, very useful in legend difficulty (also ironman games)..

I <3 that on legend. Clearing all the scans is such a satisfying thing.

Yup, in 1 week I got some supplies+other loot, 1 engineer and 1 scientist, all in one week :D , and the bonus last for 4 weeks. Is so sweet.

[orion winterfire]

Originally posted by schlippyschlappy:

Are other players finding that the specialist is a way underpowered character? Besides the combat protocol against robots (which is useful), I'm less and less inclined to train spare specialists in the guerilla warfare school.

3 reasons why:
1. Hacking is so hit or miss, and the benefits are almost never worth the risk For example, why risk enemy boosts and a wasted opportunity to shoot or throw a grenade on the 10% chance that "This soldier gains extended sight for 2 moves." Seriously, why bother?
2. I hardly ever use the medkits in this version. With the move counters, it seems to make more sense to rush through than it does to treat an injury, as opposed to enemy unknown or enemy within, where you could usually regroup before another charge into the breach.
3. The other classes are sooooo much more useful/powerful.

So, am I off my rocker here for perceiving the specialist as more of a glorified rookie (i.e. expendable)?

1. Agreed, although if you can get your hack high enough, it gets better in the later game.
2. Fair, as I use the Medkit less than always (unlike eu/ew) but just being able to cure poison is a big deal early/midgame.
3. I dunno about that. You're not accounting for Haywire, one of the best abilities of any class (with a good hack score).

Plus, Threat Assessment is bad@$$. (Applied to a stud Ranger).

[NorthernDruid]

Higher tier Gremlins is priority equipment. stronger heals, guaranteed damage, defence boost and hack chance.

You don't bring a specialist to fire their gun a lot. You get them to not die, whether it be from shutting down the Sectopod or instakilling a turret or healing/reviving your entire squad after half of them got blasted by a gatekeeper and another one was stunned by a lancer.

There's too much utility that they bring without even trying, like the ability to give high cover and overwatch you that ranger who ended up exposed next to the big bad enemy.

It's still one of the worst design desicions in the game to make healing a separate subspec taking up almost an entire skill tree.

Specialists don't necessarily dominate the battlefield alone at any point, I mean yes there are those times when you can go for the 50% hack on the sectopod and instawin the engagement, but they're not like the Ranger or the Sharpshooter, popping at least one thing a round, and they're not like the heavy with incredible AoE and stopping power.
But when you have that chance to 100% shutdown the heavy mec making a 6-on-3 a 5-on-2... It becomes a lot less risky for the other classes to clean up the rest.
Or maybe you take that one unlucky stun lancer hit which puts the heavy with that one grendade you need unconscious, and what you really need is someone who can bring him back up AND give that Gunslinger +40 defence in their low cover position.

Specialists aren't you linchpins, they're your safety net.

[Mistfox]

If you are having problems with hacks, give them a skulljack. It can sort of function as a close combat tool too and it adds to hack.

[yuri simp]

They aren't meant to be flashy or "special". They are, for most intents and purposes, pretty boring units that specialize in medical duty and OW fire, as well as hacking. They've got a pretty balanced toolkit, though, which makes them pretty good soldiers, especially when ranked up, but more than one Specialist will start crimping your offensive capabilities.

[motojauntx]

Reading the responses, it's interesting to see all the different play styles reflected in how a single class is utilized. It's clear that the spec has plenty of areas where it can excel. And I don't doubt that, when a team is in a pinch, their abilities can make a difference.

I am mostly seeing the spec described as a good backup for when your more crucial classes are in need. -When the grenadier is stunned or the ranger is cornered. A few laud the effectiveness of hacking mechs, which reminds me of the Psi Mind Control ability from the last games, which was occasionally very handy (nothing like a flipped Elite Muton to wreak some free havok on a ship).

The thing is, with this game being fairly unforgiving of sloppy ironman players (and everybody gets sloppy on occasion) it seems like a good policy to recognize the most effective classes, so when forced to choose between who comes/goes or who lives/dies, and your options are an extra ranger/grenadier or a specialist, the choice seems obvious to me. So maybe on a six-man squad, I'll let the specialists play, but only one! More than that and it seems like you're just watering down your team's lethality.

Who would you sacrifice first, an advanced specialist or an advanced "other class?"

[Dies Fourth]

Personally, I think your missing out on some of the fun of Xcom games.

By asking questions on the forums your not gaining your own experiance, and imo cheaping the knowledge your getting.

We can all pdobably recall allllllllllllllllllllllllllll our mistakes that we made along the way and the hard lessons we learned from them.

Imo your pullin a " Jurassic Park " your not earning the knowledge so you will never fully understand it or appreciate it.

Part of the fun is making the mistakes your looking to bypass in favor of advice from the ppl that made the mistakes and came out better for it on the other side.

Its your game your money your gameing experiance, get it anyway you want, this is just my opinion. Im not judgeing you and wont say another word. Enjoy your game.