Shock stroopers for the win

[mark.r.hendrickson]

So in fighting Xeno a front of two shock troopers has become my clear favorite. They replace the swordsmen / zealot / WC combo.

Stand strong is almost as good as unstoppable fury but buffs 2 instead of 1!
Braced fire a big favorite of mine. Counters the xeno preference for moving my guys around. This ultimately saves a lot of init spent moving guys back into position.
And finally Titan shell, I mean, how can you not love this talent?

They don’t even need to be officers. I mean, I make them officers, but it’s really not required.

But my favorite thing about them is I don’t need to spend forever buffing and debuffing. I mean, sometimes I do, but quite often they just blow the xeno to bits and the fight is over before the first round ends.

It’s a little counterintuitive: big weapons, which require lots of init, but they are fast fighters because they have so much offense. No swordsman routinely single shots two xeno at a go, which the Shockers do all the time.

Their defense is not as good as swordsmen. But then again, they say the best defense is a good offense, and by that measure they do very well.

[MasterShake]

Shock troopers are amazing class, but the game is about managing risks at point you can outpace consequences of fail. Two ranged characters frontline in top fights is still high risk added to high reward. Risk which you should not "miss" once when permadeath.

Originally posted by mark.r.hendrickson:

Their defense is not as good as swordsmen.

It's not good at all like for any rifle character. Because parry. If you go ranged "tanking", you literally "shock and ave" to take down 2 jyeeta in first round. Otherwise it can go very wrong very fast. In my tests it happened extremely rarely but still happened, e.g. my ST captain lvl 32 slaughtered dozens jyeeta, and then out of blue on levl 40 possible bad rolls happen in row, and game over. Ground Jyeeta teams capable of doing massive-massive damage chain (high init enemies). If you are unlucky, or they are lucky.

Non-officers? Toast, unless you somehow rolled some really good recruit randomly. You miss "braced fire" in first round (happened to me casually even with rifles like 30) ? You should call a priest just in case.

My melee captain does not need heals - they can't hit through all parry stacked (because captain). But ranged chatacters include captains, get hit occasionally hard, even being in heavy armor 4 (best deflection at least up to tier 7). If chains of damage go nuts, you won't be able to outheal everybody (at least with 1 healer), that's why classics are about having melee in slot 1 for sake of literal tanking.

[wilky]

Underrated Shock Trooper talent: "Unconventional Tactics" is the only "remove" Salvaging card talent with such a short cooldown (3 weeks). This is worth mentioning because most Salvaging card talents have a pretty long cooldown period of 6-9 weeks.

[Tomcat]

I originally liked to use Xenohunters with heavy guns prior to shocks being a thing. I don't think it's counterintuitive at all to use big guns when you are using AOE moves.

My favorite group to run back then was 1 sword, 1 healer, 2 xenos. Now its 3 xenos/shocks/soldier and a healer. Whoever is in slot 1 has to be the captain because thats the only person you can control statwise to make a frontline tank.

You can do Xeno/Shock/Soldier so you will always have position to do heavy damage no matter where the opponent moves.

If you have Vyvautas, its better to just give him Xeno as his third and always keep him in back.

[ibanix]

My current run has a captain with ST/Sol/BH. She just destroys things. Dragonfire shell followed up by deepstrike grenade will debuff the entire enemy team, cause bleeding, and stun. There may be an argument for STs to be a little overpowered.

> If you have Vyvautas

Vyvautas shows up in my games as a Wing Commando / Soldier combo, not a Shock Trooper. Is this from that mission predating the introduction of the Shock Trooper class?

[MasterShake]

Unfortunately he still didn't get his rightful ST starting job, so yes Soldier/WC. But since those are not consistent classes that means you have to choose 3rd job to determine which he wil be. So it's either Swordsman for, you know, shuttle sturm, or rifle job for creating common ranged hybrid. Soldier/ST actually was and is a solid build. Anyway, I used both variants, and they both are good, because good stats and traits.

I'm not really sure why do you pair BH with ST, ST is slot 1,2, while BH is most effective at 3,4 if I recall, and you also lose opportunity to stack either command or intimidate efficiently.

[Tomcat]

I didn't mention him being a shock trooper. You can make him a shock for the front or a Xeno for the back.

He could be in the front due to his 97% death save but I rather not chance him ever dieing with his very high accuracy skill. So that's why I recommend him to be in the back as a Xeno hunter.

[ibanix]

Originally posted by MasterShake:

I'm not really sure why do you pair BH with ST, ST is slot 1,2, while BH is most effective at 3,4 if I recall, and you also lose opportunity to stack either command or intimidate efficiently.

I was playing a BH on that captain. There aren't a lot of other options that work well on frontline ST/Sol if you're trying to triple-up on Rifle skill - you have Xeno Hunter (lots of backline skills); Sniper (almost all backline skills); or Exo-Scout (all backline except Burrowing Shots, E-Grenade). Bounty Hunter gives your fighting captain some extra evasion which is very helpful.

If I need more command and intimidate... I just hire more Commanders. I don't need those skills on a crew-combat focused captain.

[MasterShake]

When I mentioned command and intimidate - I meant for skill purposes, not just pool expansion. For example your "rapid bandage" talent's efficiency = command.

Originally posted by ibanix:

Bounty Hunter gives your fighting captain some extra evasion which is very helpful.

Less than same levels of soldier, that's my point. Also in the endgame evasion isn't that helpful, and since combat captain obviously has +10 rifles initial bonus, I find it's not a bad idea to get more utiity from 3rd job.
But, yea, BH has some useful skills too, "Unfaltering Ire" worth alone, tho I wouldn't put more than 5 ranks in such case.

[ibanix]

Originally posted by MasterShake:

When I mentioned command and intimidate - I meant for skill purposes, not just pool expansion. For example your "rapid bandage" talent's efficiency = command.

Originally posted by ibanix:

Bounty Hunter gives your fighting captain some extra evasion which is very helpful.

Less than same levels of soldier, that's my point. Also in the endgame evasion isn't that helpful, and since combat captain obviously has +10 rifles initial bonus, I find it's not a bad idea to get more utiity from 3rd job.
But, yea, BH has some useful skills too, "Unfaltering Ire" worth alone, tho I wouldn't put more than 5 ranks in such case.

1) Rapid Bandage is the only talent in the ST tree that uses Command. That's it. That's not sufficient justification for me to miss out on the other talents provided by other classes eg BH.

2) Since you have to spent a fair bit of time *not* in the endgame, that evasion is actually quite useful... and once again, you'd choose your third class for combat talents on a combat captain. If you're playing as an actual Bounty Hunter, the Blood Game talent is quite useful to get your team into crew combat quickly.

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by MasterShake:

I'm not really sure why do you pair BH with ST, ST is slot 1,2, while BH is most effective at 3,4 if I recall, and you also lose opportunity to stack either command or intimidate efficiently.

Multiple reasons. Unfaltering Ire, self heal (resolute hound if you have more intimidate, rapid bandage if you have more command, or both to stack armor buffs), damage buff, armor buffs. The last ST/Sol/BH captain I made was an armored beast that rarely took more than 10-15 damage from any attack - when they managed to do damage at all.

Granted I had a backline Sol/Exo/Xeno, Pistol/Med/Doc, and a Sword/Dancer/Zealot also stacking armor buffs on the team.

Bounty hunter is probably the most "natural" feeling compliment to the Sol/ST combo just because of it's frontline or universal abilities. I'd also accept Commander or something similar for the third to boost your Command related talents. Before they introduced the Shock Trooper I was running a slot-2 bounty hunter/sol/xeno shotgun captain just so I could make use of the Behemoth shotgun - ST/Sol/BH just works better.

[ibanix]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Granted I had a backline Sol/Exo/Xeno, Pistol/Med/Doc, and a Sword/Dancer/Zealot also stacking armor buffs on the team.

Haha, this is almost exactly the same setup I used on my current run, except I had Sniper/Exo/Xeno in post 4. I tried having a second Sol/Exo/Xeno to swap in when I ran up against xenos, but the Sword/Dancer/Zealot still works really well.

[MasterShake]

Originally posted by ibanix:

1) Rapid Bandage is the only talent in the ST tree that uses Command. That's it. That's not sufficient justification for me to miss out on the other talents provided by other classes eg BH.

My rapid Bandage heals about 40 HP. I conider it totally justified, because 100+ damage thro +30% bonus armor in a row by being focused with entire 45 lvl ground xeno team is not something I haven't witnessed. It happens rare, yes, but it may be enough once .
Ofc no tetriary skill is supposed to be stacked by combat job alone, include intimidate from BH too, it's obvious. That's why I use 3rd job to boost it.

Originally posted by ibanix:

2) Since you have to spent a fair bit of time *not* in the endgame, that evasion is actually quite useful... and

No, it is not. Only buffed geared snipers can cause issues in ranged combat. They are rare and anyway you either dispose of them in first round or at least debuff them. You can't lose to a human team with prepared combat squad, you just can't.

Originally posted by ibanix:

once again, you'd choose your third class for combat talents on a combat captain.

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Bounty hunter is probably the most "natural" feeling compliment to the Sol/ST combo just because of it's frontline or universal abilities.

Look, I'm not saying you play wrong or BH is bad or anything. I already agreed, there're some useful talents. I just considered it's better in slot 3 (with shotgun if you wish).
I got your point anout talents, but wonder if you really are able to use talents from BH,Sol and ST in a single battle simultaneously. I personally find that Sol/ST have more combat talents than I can possibly implement. No idea, where to put additional skills in rotation. Maybe Ire, but It would be quite situational, with all that good stuff we alreafy have in Sol/ST.
Meanwhile you stack 40+ rifle dice on your characters. Who's defence dice are you are going to penetrate with that much? That's a waste!

[di eshor ribly]

Originally posted by MasterShake:

Meanwhile you stack 40+ rifle dice on your characters. Who's defence dice are you are going to penetrate with that much? That's a waste!

Unlike most captains I don't go the 30/30/30 strength/fortitude/wisdom route. Usually I range from 20 for the secondary stats to 25 for the primaries, for my own sanity in general map saving rolls, finding traits, etc.

Likewise, instead of stacking 10 (insert weapon here) on my captains, I go 10 evasion and 5 in their support skill (whatever their job calls for). By end game my rifle skills barely surpass my evasion (mid to high 30's for both). Since I lack the blade for defense I focused on evasion and stacking armor and init buffs. Obviously 99.9% of the time I run stats on A and skills on B (as you should for a combat captain).

Rotation wise, I'll admit there's a lot of fluff talents from the BH/Sol/ST lines that don't usually see a lot of combat use together. There's a lot of cross overs and redundancies. Then again, that's what your support talents like Red Badge, boarding talents, mutiny prevention, etc are for.

[MasterShake]

Ah, I see then. That's an interesting way, you consciously don't make it easy on yourself, and you need that dice indeed.

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Then again, that's what your support talents like Red Badge, boarding talents, mutiny prevention, etc are for.

Commander job has stuff too. Red Badge, yes - good stuff especially early-mid. I usually get BH job on my quartimeister officer for this talent exactly. I feel Blood Game not that powerful tho - while it's -1 turn for boarding, you can't really use full potential of best boarding talents of WC and crew. That aside from being...unrealistic talent (RP wise).

[ibanix]

Originally posted by di eshor ribly:

Originally posted by MasterShake:

Meanwhile you stack 40+ rifle dice on your characters. Who's defence dice are you are going to penetrate with that much? That's a waste!

Unlike most captains I don't go the 30/30/30 strength/fortitude/wisdom route. Usually I range from 20 for the secondary stats to 25 for the primaries, for my own sanity in general map saving rolls, finding traits, etc.

Bingo, you can run stats *not* as A and still have a deadly combat captain :D