I have zero idea how I am supposed to use Heavy?

[Lampros]

All he seems to be able to do is jump and semi-scout. He's so slow, and his weapon extremely inaccurate.

Ideas to better utilize him?

[Yoinkyz]

i allways found heavys one of the better classes. mix it with sniper and its becomes a monster with jetpack and shooting twice. pure heavys in my experience are more about staying up close and blasting enemys. the new jericho mini gun can 1 tap human npcs and robo men . the roar ability is strong too and it a must for some enemy types personally. i find them useful

[DropShot]

I typically class them the same as my Assualts. Once they reach the 50pt ability to take another class, i just spec in both. I'll have 4-5 dudes who can jump pack, all armed with Rifles (of your choosing, but i prefer new Jericho ones), secondary'd up with GLs and the back missile launcher. It just allows them to do literally anything. Also allows them to GTFO when you need to.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Yikes:

i allways found heavys one of the better classes. mix it with sniper and its becomes a monster with jetpack and shooting twice. pure heavys in my experience are more about staying up close and blasting enemys. the new jericho mini gun can 1 tap human npcs and robo men . the roar ability is strong too and it a must for some enemy types personally. i find them useful

You mean sort of like Sniper in XCOM? I guess that makes sense: Find a good "nest," don't move, and then just keep firing.

But it's the pure Heavies that I find trouble with. Perhaps I will do better once I get more stats, abilities, and gear.

Originally posted by DropShot:

I typically class them the same as my Assualts. Once they reach the 50pt ability to take another class, i just spec in both. I'll have 4-5 dudes who can jump pack, all armed with Rifles (of your choosing, but i prefer new Jericho ones), secondary'd up with GLs and the back missile launcher. It just allows them to do literally anything. Also allows them to GTFO when you need to.

Yeah, with Close Combat, Heavy/Assault makes sense, too - just like Heavy/Sniper. But it's the early game as a pure Heavy that I find difficulty with.

[DropShot]

Ahh, early game. Well for 1 i don't recruit heavies, beyond the original one you get since they're all gonna be classed the same anyway (for me). Try to get your hands on the New Jericho heavy's gun. That one fires so many shots it's hard not to do at least some damage. Even then you're gonna hit that perk so quickly, you may not need to mess with it to begin with. Just suffer through it for a time. I suppose you could load him up with a bunch of Grenades. At least then you're doing damage.

[Artek [General]]

Let me rev up the wiki real quick... What are his skills again...
Alright.

Level 1 Heavy: no job, really.
Carry a gun and a grenade, throw the grenade or shoot the gun if opportunity arises. His better purpose is to stay in the open and bait enemies to shoot at him, as his armor will be better at absorbing assault rifle fire (but careful around snipers).

Level 2 Heavy: gets Brawler (+50% damage from bash and melee, also can use melee now).
Now this is better.
If you can find a melee weapon - give it to the guy immediately. If any enemy will be stupid enough to get too close - that's basically death.
The weakest melee weapon deals 140 damage, or 210 with this perk.
Bashing enemies with weapons also now deals considerable damage and its only 1 AP.
Which means heavy can now jetpack next to someone and slam his heavy weapon in their face for like... 100 damage or something (increases with weapon weight and strength stat).

Level 3 Heavy: War Cry (remove 2 APs from any and all enemies within range).
Now heavy becomes full-on support unit. He can jetpack next to a squad of enemies and reduce their APs to the point that they basically can't do much. His heavy armor will help him survive their retaliation (if any) and then, since he is so close now - he can properly his weapons, taking close range shots.
This is also exceptionally useful for disabling powerful enemy units who need 3 APs to act, like snipers, other heavies, Chirons, yadi yada.

Level 5 Heavy: Boom Blast (reduce cost of explosive weapons to 1 AP).
After activation shooting Mounted Weapons costs 0 AP, throwing grenades costs 1 AP and using Goliath Grenade launcher costs only 2 APs.
This means, that if your positioning is good enough - the guy can take a mounted weapon shot and then shoot 2 grenade as well.
Also: you can take jet-pack jump and throw a grenade right after. Costs crap ton of WPs though, so it better be worth it.

Level 6 Heavy: Nothing different, really.
Unless you just found a small pack of worms and happened to carry a grenade...
In which case that's easy WPs for the entire squad.

Level 7 Heavy: Anti-vehicle / large enemy unit. But nothing changes for fighting small humanoid targets.


The single best thing you can do for heavies is to research Advanced Laser Tech and give them Destiny Laser Array which shoots a 70x3 laser burst that pretty much never misses except for bugs.
This effectively allows the heavy to delete any <200 HP enemy from the board, as long as he got a clear line on sight on it. Or at the very least - break a problematic limb, or even destroy the weapon they're holding.

Otherwise: pray the guy will have some talent that will allow him to use literally any other weapon as it immediately makes them a superior unit, i swear.
Except for Sniperist. Obviously.

[backwards doG]

I put a sniper helmet and leg armour for increased accuracy.

[Moth]

I found Heavy/Berserker to be a rather strong combo. Bonus melee damage from Brawler, and the level 7 Berserker ability lets you fire the big guns 4 times in a turn (more if you have Assaults supporting).

Early game though, Heavies are something of a liability. They're one of the hardest classes to get running, and their default proficiency guns don't work well with a height advantage (which seems rather counterintuitive for the class that starts with a jetpack).

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Artek General:

Level 2 Heavy: gets Brawler (+50% damage from bash and melee, also can use melee now).
Now this is better.
If you can find a melee weapon - give it to the guy immediately. If any enemy will be stupid enough to get too close - that's basically death.
The weakest melee weapon deals 140 damage, or 210 with this perk.
Bashing enemies with weapons also now deals considerable damage and its only 1 AP.
Which means heavy can now jetpack next to someone and slam his heavy weapon in their face for like... 100 damage or something (increases with weapon weight and strength stat).

Yes, I will turn some of them into melees, likely with hybridizing with Assault. But at low levels, the Heavy doesn't have the mobility to get into melee range though - aside from jumping.

Originally posted by Artek General:

Level 3 Heavy: War Cry (remove 2 APs from any and all enemies within range).
Now heavy becomes full-on support unit. He can jetpack next to a squad of enemies and reduce their APs to the point that they basically can't do much. His heavy armor will help him survive their retaliation (if any) and then, since he is so close now - he can properly his weapons, taking close range shots.
This is also exceptionally useful for disabling powerful enemy units who need 3 APs to act, like snipers, other heavies, Chirons, yadi yada.

Yes, I am using War Cry with profit - but again this raises the mobility issue.

Originally posted by Artek General:

Level 5 Heavy: Boom Blast (reduce cost of explosive weapons to 1 AP).
After activation shooting Mounted Weapons costs 0 AP, throwing grenades costs 1 AP and using Goliath Grenade launcher costs only 2 APs.
This means, that if your positioning is good enough - the guy can take a mounted weapon shot and then shoot 2 grenade as well.
Also: you can take jet-pack jump and throw a grenade right after. Costs crap ton of WPs though, so it better be worth it.

I guess this is where Heavy finally comes into his own. I guess I will wait till then!

Originally posted by Artek General:

Level 7 Heavy: Anti-vehicle / large enemy unit. But nothing changes for fighting small humanoid targets.

What weapon is best for this?

Originally posted by backwards doG:

I put a sniper helmet and leg armour for increased accuracy.

I will have to do that and see if it is not too much of an eye sore! ;)

Originally posted by Moth:

I found Heavy/Berserker to be a rather strong combo. Bonus melee damage from Brawler, and the level 7 Berserker ability lets you fire the big guns 4 times in a turn (more if you have Assaults supporting).

Early game though, Heavies are something of a liability. They're one of the hardest classes to get running, and their default proficiency guns don't work well with a height advantage (which seems rather counterintuitive for the class that starts with a jetpack).

Don't you need a head mutation to neutralize the daze effect? But again, I am way away from there! ;)

[Artek [General]]

Originally posted by Lampros:

Originally posted by Artek General:

Level 7 Heavy: Anti-vehicle / large enemy unit. But nothing changes for fighting small humanoid targets.

What weapon is best for this?

Without a doubt NJ's Gauss Cannon. There's really no competition.
Acid Cannon technically can get better results, but only against targets that take longer than 2 turns to kill. Of which there's literally only 2 in the game.
(there is a 3rd one, but its resistant to acid so... Gauss Cannon reigns supreme)

[MacGyver]

once you get a grenade launcher and boombast. thats when the fun begins

[Clail]

For early game Jetpack next to alien > bash for quick daze/CC. Their level 2 trait Brawler will make this pretty damaging in most cases, and most enemies will avoid targeting heavies due to their heavy armor, and even when they do, that heavy armor is going to mitigate the vast majority of damage.

If you can shoot, definently do that instead, but because of limited movement and ♥♥♥♥ accuracy the jump and bash is typically what I end up using initially.

Mid game once I unlock the grenade launcher I use them for shredding armored targets and/or limb damage via explosives.

[mergele]

Heavys early can work with bashing, then later Hel II and finally laser stuff, Minigun and/or explosives.
But really all of that is secondary. The most powerful tool a Heavy wields throughout the game is Warcry. It's a stupidly powerful ability that would make me take one into battle without weapon and consider it worthwhile. if you ever have a problem, Warcry is the solution.

[Mentalflows]

What you need from heavies - War Cry + Jet Pack (Jericho heavy armour at best, rest parts of armour from 2nd class). 2nd class is up to your play style, both snipers and assaults works. Normally, I tried to jump on building above group of enemies with one heavy that would pin them with War Cry for few turns while rest team mates were wiping out. Most scary pandorans need 2+ AP for skills, so the only thing they will have after War Cry - basic move and some also single attack. E.g. Syren/Scyla will be turned into punch bags.

You can use bunch of heavies like heavy/sniper, heavy/assault that can go in group, just use one specifically to pin bunch of enemies for few turns (try to get maxed willpower) and rest will be wiping + helping with war cries when required.


P.S.: as others say - war cry is OP skill.
P.P.S.: Laser Array is highly recommended as well, since reasonable damage (e.g. 2 shots to disable Syren's head), no range limit and 100% accuracy.