Pistol+Blade combo useless?

[Drunetovich]

I have tried to make an officer with levels in pistolier and swordsman, but resulted build was doing low damage with blade as it was only level 7 from A4 locker. Anyone managed to make this combo work?

[Trese Brothers]

@drunetovich - one piece of the puzzle I've found to be really important in this case is the mixing and matching of Talents. Are you using Sharp Counter? Which Talents are you using from each job?

[�[Dire_Venom]�]

The small offhand blade is only useful for the extra parry, you do not want to be attacking with it.

The Pistol is a mixed bag. While there are some good talents 99% of the time you'd just be better off with a Swordsman instead in the front 2 ranks.

In short the pistol Blade combo feels lacking compared to other combat builds, especially in damage. Stealth is also a questionable build as well.

In short, it can be fun, but is still outclassed and of limited use unfortunately.
Why would you take a pistol and a tiny blade when you can alternate skewering thrust for 40-80 damage to the front 2 targets every Swing :P?

Maybe there's some way of making it work as well as other combat classes, but I have yet to see it. If anyone has made it work please do share!

[Drunetovich]

I find that most of the time you are much better off doing direct damage instad of spending turns on buffing\healing, so doing 2x rapid fire from pistols + 2x full auto from lmgs kills most enemy squads on turn one.

[Trese Brothers]

A good offense is certainly a quick way to end fights.

Thanks for sharing the feedback, we'll keep balancing out combat!

[219A730]

My squad on impossible does enough damage, I find one combat medic good for healing damage through attrition. I can take the same squad in multiple battles from beginning to end with a healer, no need to see the port doctor anymore most of the time. Because of this, I only need one squad of combatants, even the Cadar Syndicate 303 rescue mission (sorry for spoliers) I got away with one squad.

On impossible, I rather had 2 swordsman up front for the xeno terrox hunters than pistoleers, especially if they can melee, since evasion doesn't help with melee attacks. These xenos on impossible are also really beefy and a bit hard to hit. On the other hand, evasion is usually a lower stat than blades, so I'm guessing range attacks might help get past their blade defense, IDK.

One reason pistol & blade doesn't work well because none of the talents and skills synergize well with the combo. Going in both equally, your skill in both blades and pistol will suffer a 50% split. In Templar Battleforce, it wasn't so bad because your captain had a couple talent encouraging hybrid usage of sword & pistol.

[Trese Brothers]

Great feedback. We'll be attacking this kind of stuff on multiple fronts -- more weapons, re-balancing talents, improving the AI and looking at dual wielding specifically to make sure it stands up as useful.