Lategame Builds Guide - the Meta

A guide to how to build your Templars. Tested on Brutal difficulty on NG+.

Intro

I love this game and have been looking for awhile for a builds guide to help me understand the "meta" of various characters, especially as I stepped up to Hard and Brutal. Mal's guide (here) was great for an overview of class abilities, but it didn't go too deep into the meta of item & stat combinations.

As a result, I decided to write one.

What it covers:
- What to prioritise for each templar in terms of gear, stats etc
- How the gear interacts with each other and how to use the Templar in combat and avoid confusing or conflicting builds.

A quick note:
- I've written the guide for mid-late game characters (say levels 8+ up to 20). On character level 6-8 or below, you might want to focus your Templar on their primary stat, e.g. Gunnery and Strength. Then respec once they have a few levels.

Captain - Pistol Tank

Oh Captain, my Captain.

Captains are best with pistol, sword, and grenade, specialised for ranged combat. Your mileage may vary on Nightmare and up, but for Brutal and below, and anything below NG++, this is best. You want your captain in the thick of things, firing his pistol, dropping grenades or buffs, and tanking melee strikes in chokepoints with Autoblock to protect more vulnerable characters like engineers.

Your Captain goes on every mission and so will be the highest level of your Templar, and thus he will have the most points to spend on stats and gear. Very early game (level 6 and below) you need to focus him on ranged attack, but later on it's possible to do jack of all trades quite well.

Attributes:
- Focus first. Get it to 16 for autoblock. Add some fortitude if you find he is taking too much damage, but otherwise Focus is the highest bang for buck.
- Fortitude next. Get it to 8.
- Quickness after this, for + ranged chance to hit, and + chance to counterattack.
- Very lategame, once you have the Devastator pistol, a high level shooting talent, and some accuracy bonuses from gear, consider respeccing and putting some quickness points into Fortitude. The Captain gets 150% toughness so 12 fortitude (18 toughness) will add 10-18 damage reduction per hit which is a lot, and more if you go higher.

A captain with 50% autoblock, 200+ hp and 24 toughness is very hard to kill.

Skills:
- Get gunnery to 6, then get Tactics to 10+; add points in gunnery if you need more accuracy.
- Ignore evasion and grenades; I've never missed with a grenade and your captain will get so many stat points in quickness (which boosts grenade accuracy) that grenade skill is a waste.
- After Tactics is at 16, put all your points in Warrior. Don't boost gunnery any further than you need to; most of your accuracy will come from your weapon and talent.

Gear:
- As soon as possible, go for the pistol with 4 range and eventually you want the devastator pistol. Ignore the needle pistols: Your captain's job is to finish enemies with Arc Fire and grenades, you don't want them running around taking poison damage - especially since your captain's range is so short that any living enemy will be close enough to attack him, possibly causing a game over.
- Take the lowest level sword possible, but be willing to step up a gear level if you can get +6-8% autoblock. This stacks nicely with all your points in Focus. Ignore shields.
- Take the heaviest armour possible without losing movement points, and augment this with +autoblock (preferably) or +armour, +deflect auxiliary gear.
- Heavy armour and high autoblock will save you from needing many points in Fortitude, so you can play around a bit here - save gear points on armour but spend attribute points on fortitude.

This is a *very* late-game Captain on NG+++. Basically everything here is optional except for the Devastator sidearm, the best autoblock gear you can find plus a half decent suit of armour.


Talents:
- As soon as you unlock it, respec to take 1 point in grenade. This only costs 1 AP and can take out 2-4 weakened enemies, you will use it often.
- As soon as you unlock Pressing Need, put 1 point in it. Eventually you want to get this to the point where it adds +2AP. This is extremely useful for moving allies around (e.g. to get an engineer to close those last 2 spaces to the Tact point so you can attack it this turn).
- As soon as you unlock Arc Fire, put most of your talent points in this. The ability to hit 3 enemies at once at up to 4 range is priceless, and the crit chance combined with your high tactics points will give you a 30-40% chance to crit.

Result:
With this build, your captain can stand in a chokepoint to tank melee attacks with high autoblock and counterattack, take out 2-4 enemies with Arc Fire, and then drop a pressing need or a grenade to buff an ally/take out a few more enemies.

Drawbacks:
- devastator pistol becomes outclassed in NG+ on Brutal and above. Generally I try to give the captain +pen and +damage gear to keep the pistol relevant, but it depends how often he's getting hit.
- if your captain dies it's game over, you need to be very careful with him until you unlock mid-game armour and get your autoblock up around 30%.
- Captain with Sword and Board is very hard to kill but the problem is that you have to move him into trouble (surrounded by enemies) in order to deal damage, and this makes him too vulnerable and moves him out of chokepoints which defeats the purpose.

Soldier Dalan: The Backbone

Your first Soldier, Dalan Ortho, will be with you the whole game. He will never be an off-tank/DPS like your captain or a weapon of mass destruction like the Neptune, but if you build him right, he will be the backbone of your whole team.

Plus, if you bring him on every mission he will end up higher level than your captain as he needs fewer xp to level up, so he'll be your first late-game character with elite gear.

Attributes:
- Fortitude to 8. Soldier is weaker than captain, but gets high HP gain so Fortitude goes a long way.
- Focus next. Get it to 16 for autoblock.
- Add Strength if you are missing frequently, but by late game I move all of my points into Focus and Fortitude.
- I usually just run my soldiers overheated or use an engineer to cool them (more on this later) and "never" add Willpower. If you are fast, almost all missions will be over before heat becomes an issue. The exception to this is Brutal difficult - see "Other Tips" at the end for more info on Willpower.

Skills:
- Gunnery to 6 for shooting and overwatch, as you'll be short on accuracy at the start.
- Tactics to 6 after this. Every point in Tactics lets us affect another team member with Rallying Charge, moving the whole team faster, which is vital on many missions to max your experience bonuses.
- Alternate Gunnery and Tactics until Tactics is 8, then max Gunnery. Get Tactics to 9-10 if you often use large teams.
- After this, put points in whatever you like. I ignore grenades since the soldier can never have more than 3. Evasion/Warrior decrease the chance to be hit very marginally, but I prefer Fortitude which also adds damage reduction.

Gear:
There are two ways I know of to build a soldier.
Type 1) A mid-range soldier (5-6 range) doing medium damage with solid overwatch. He will never be as good as a Neptune, but with the bonus movement buff on the team, a soldier will be critical to moving the gang through hostile territory and keeping enemies at a distance while doing so (especially on escort missions).

Type 2) An elite plasma slayer that has only 3 range but deals up to 300 damage per hit using the plasma relics and a maxed Shredding Fire talent. This is a very late game build - you will spend 80-90% of your first playthrough with a Type 1 soldier.

Here is an NG++ Type 2 soldier. Everything here is optional except for the plasma rifle and the strikepoint kit:


Type 1 Soldier:
- Use a range 5 rifle and keep penetration around 40-50% which keeps damage high
- use your two auxiliary gear slots to add penetration and damage as a priority. Later, once you have the Neptune, you can use them for whatever.
- Wear the lightest armour possible to free up gear points for damage. Especially early on when points are limited, your soldier should aim to kill all enemies before they get close enough to strike - you don't need armour for this. Use the captain to tank for the soldier.

This same build works for late game, just swap your early gear for relics and enjoy stronger armour.

Type 2 Soldier - late game Plasma:
- Get a Plasma rifle with 3 range.
- Use the Aegis gauntlet, the +8% autoblock is solid combined with your high focus. With minimal investment you'll already be blocking 1/4 enemy attacks. 3-4 full attacks are enough to kill most templars, so this level of block already adds massively to survivability.
- Get the strikepoint kit which adds +16 plasma damage and doubles plasma damage on penetrating hit
- It's a toss-up between the Plasma rifle that adds +62 plasma and lower penetration, vs the one that adds +42 plasma and has 112% penetration. The higher plasma damage will hit for 250 damage when it penetrates, but it will only penetrate 2/3rds of the time. The Plasma Gun relic has lower damage but will penetrate always, and it may be slightly better but use either.
- At 3 range you need heavier armour.

Talents:
I will focus on the plasma build here as the conventional soldier works the same as the neptune and is pretty easy to figure out - just stack overwatch talents and damage.

- Overwatch 3. Especially early game your guy will be overwatching a lot, and even with the plasma build I find this is useful on hard difficulties for defending against charging enemies from the fog of war.
- Get 1 point in Grenade when you unlock it. Soldier grenades suck and you never get more than 3, but every once in a while, you'll be able to take out a weakened enemy with it to save one of your allies from an attack.
- Shredding Fire 10. Get this as high as you can, especially once it starts adding penetration as it will cause the Strikepoint Kit to trigger much more often for insane damage.
- Rallying Charge. Get this to the point where it adds +2MP to the squad. Use it frequently - at the start of every level - to give yourself a massive headstart. It lasts 4 turns (+8 movement points) and is like getting 1 extra turn free.

Result:
Soldier hits everyone with rallying charge, boosting squad damage and moving the team farther. He shoots an area effect with either Burst or Shredding Fire, taking out 2-3 enemies. If an enemy survives wounded, he finishes them with a grenade, and then sits on overwatch to protect the flank. He's much more vulnerable to melee attacks than the Captain, but gains levels quickly and only needs 1-2 stats/skills (focus, fortitude, gunnery) and so will end up with a good amount of fortitude and strong armour, and in a pinch can be used as a damage sponge to protect an engineer or block a chokepoint.

Scout 1: The Penetrator

During the campaign you will get - and need - two scouts. These should be built different and late-game there are relics for each. This Scout is our main Scout and similar to the Soldier, he will appear on most missions and end up a similar level as the Captain.

Attributes:
- Fortitude to 6. Scouts are squishy and their armour sucks, and two hits can kill them. I personally find that fortitude of 6 "guarantees" the Scout to survive at least two hits from a Hunter, but if you're playing on Brutal all bets are off.
- Willpower to 6. Scouts spend most of their time overheated and Willpower is really important, even more than Fortitude. Low willpower will kill a scout.
- Focus to 16 for autoblock.
- After this, get Willpower to 8 and then put any leftover points in strength. Remember you can respec any time between missions for free, so don't be afraid to put a tonne of points in willpower and fortitude if you know you have an "overheat" mission coming up.

Skills:
- Gunnery to 6
- Stealth to 10. Respec stealth to 16 whenever you have a mission where you rely on Stealth.
- Tactics to 10, and then 16 (on non-stealth missions).

Eventually you want tactics at 16, stealth at 16, and any spare points in Gunnery. The Scout has relatively low accuracy, but this particular build is for Critical Hits.

Gear:
- Get the Scanner relic as soon as humanly possible, this is a life-saver especially on your first playthrough. It lets you cast Scan anytime for no heat which you should spam whenever your scout isn't shooting.
- Take the Aegis gauntlet, don't forget this. The +8% autoblock for Scout is really important.
- Avoid Needle Rifles, those are for your other scout. Get stronger sniper rifles as soon as they come available, eventually taking the Synchro Sight relic, which can be unlocked relatively early - ignore the side trees and go straight for the synchro.
- For pilot suit, swap between the +movement suits (for missions with lots of exploration), and take a +damage, +pen otherwise.
- Stay with the early armours (with higher armour & deflect) as long as humanly possible. Evasion is not that useful, and if your Scout is close enough to get hit, you're doing it wrong - you are better off tanking the rare hit when it happens.

NB: Once you unlock the 32 armour 80% deflection armour, anything higher than this has lower armour, lower deflection, and adds evasion. Save your requisition and buy anything else - you can keep an extra 2+ gear points free for other items this way. Plus with 80% deflection, adding +armour items is high bang-for-buck.

Very late game once you have the Synchro Sight, choose all of your gear to max +critical% chance. A Scout with high headshot, tactics, and synchro sight can have 70%+ critical chance, which gets close to 100% if you pair it with the Captain's critical debuff on enemies.



Talents:
- Get Piercing Strike to 3. Generally you want to shoot the two most powerful enemies once each, stripping their armour so characters with more modest damage potential can finish them off.
- Crippling Fire to 4. The -MP is good but the -1AP is lifesaving as it limits all enemies to attacking only once. When you get caught offside by a Carapace Tusk or Siege Goliath and your captain doesn't die because he only gets hit once, you will thank your lucky stars you had a Scout with this talent.
- Get Overdrive to 3 for +3 MP. The Bonus MP comes in handy in so many missions for reaching switches etc, it's well worth the talent investment. Again, you can respec out of it when it's not needed.

Result:
This Scout stays close to your squad, stripping the defences of tough enemies like Carapace/Goliath and crippling enemies to keep them at a distance. Can also use overdrive and scanner to explore the surrounding area and collect bonus objectives without taking a slower templar off-course.

Scout 2: Needle Crippler

This is your second Scout, who you will get later in the campaign. It should be your primary stealth specialist and you'll use it much less often than the first one, so they will spend most of their time at the minimum level (65-75% of the Captain's level).

As a result, unless you use both scouts often for some reason, you'll need to be extremely economical with gear and stat points for this build.

Attributes:
- Fortitude to 4
- Willpower to 8
- Max focus
- Willpower to 10
- Quickness if any extra stat points left over

Skills:
- Max stealth first. This Scout's most important ability is to be invisible.
- Put a couple of points in gunnery along the way if you notice you are missing shots. This scout will spend a lot of time in enemy territory and relies on Cripple to keep enemies at a distance; so it's important that you hit *every* time.


Gear:
- The highest level needle rifle you have, eventually the Rubicon Needler relic but this is very low priority; this scout is not for dealing damage. You should not get the Rubicon Needler until you have all desired relics for your Hydra, Engineer, Neptune, Captain, and Soldier.
- Wear the Blitz kit pilot suit for +1MP as soon as you unlock it. Consider the +2MP and -10 heat kit on missions where you need extra movement.
- Spend remaining points on whatever you want. Aegis gauntlet is always a good cheap upgrade.
- Use the relic scanner if you like. I prefer it on my main scout so it gets used more often, but it is viable here too.

Talents:
- Crippling fire to 3
- Overdrive to the point where your total stealth with Overrive on adds to 16. After this, keep overdrive at the point where it adds +3MP. Go to 4MP late game if you have a spare talent point.
- All other points in crippling fire until it deals -3MP and -1AP. Ignore Null Field as you'll rarely use it.
- Late game, add 1-2 points in scanning and take Crippling Fire to -4MP.

Result:
This Scout's job is to cloak and run off deep into enemy territory to activate objectives and bonus objectives, using Stealth to stay invisible. When enemies are close, hit them with crippling fire which reduces their move rate and attacks, and will kill them over time with poison. Each enemy only needs one crippling hit - then just leave them alive and run away. With this approach you can move 10+ tiles a turn and cripple 2 enemies.

Engineer: Tact Points

Do you even Tact Point, bro?

This engineer you'll get very early in the campaign, and he will be your main engineer for the game. He doesn't appear on every mission and has relatively high experience requirements, so will end up a few levels lower than your captain. Given his high need for talents, he needs to be built carefully.

Attributes:
- Fortitude to 8
- Focus to 16
- Avoid willpower. Engineers have high resistance by default so can tolerate overheating well without much point investment, plus they get a lot of +max heat items and can't use most of their abilities once they overheat. Unlike Scout, you can't keep stacking heat until shutdown; avoid Willpower.

Skills:
- Engineer to 16
- Tactics up to 6 or so (8-10 depending on what size teams you use)
- 2 to 4 points in gunnery if you have accuracy issues/shoot a lot

Gear:
- Cyclone reactor relic for +1MP and +60 max heat as soon as humanly possible.
- Basically ignore weapons but get a range 4 pistol eventually.
- Otherwise wear whatever you want. Generally take bonuses for either +movement or +defence, since your engineer is not for dealing damage and will rarely fire his weapon.
- The engineer is squishy and losing one can be a gamebreaker so I generally try squeeze in extra armour and deflection where possible. Prioritise movement and heat first though.
- Flame tank is a trap that requires too much investment in NG, don't do it. Make a second engineer be a flame tank if you must.


Talents:
- ASAP, get Capture Tact Point to the point where it only costs 2AP to use. This, combined with higher movement range lets you move to a Tact Point and either wipe it out or take it over in a single turn and will rapidly accelerate your campaign. Seriously, this alone is often worth an extra 5-15% experience and requisition points after a mission, it pays for itself.

• Not only that, but getting tact points 1-2 turns earlier (especially on missions with 2 or more tact points) adds up to an extra 100-400 SP which will usually let you get another soldier out for an extra 100+ XP for them. Just do it.

- After this, get the heat shedding ability to 2-3 points. This is important for cooling your Soldier so you can use their +max movement buff more often.
- Add 2-4 points in turrets
- Add 1 point in landmine. Landmines deal almost no damage with low point investment BUT you get 3 of them, and enemies prioritise attacking landmines over templars. So if you're moving a lot and being pursued by enemies, you can drop a landmine and distract them for a turn or two. Outstanding tactical value for very low point investment.

After this, spend on whatever you want. IGNORE the engineer's shooting talent as it scales too slow to be useful. If you find you are attacking often, get a better handgun or add a couple of points to gunnery and quickness. With the engineer in particular, since he is mostly for taking out weakened enemies, it can often be worth getting the pistol with the highest +accuracy instead of the most damage, to ensure you don't miss.

Result:
This engineer moves rapidly to claim enemy tact points & stanch the flow of enemies, while dropping turrets and landmines to slow pursuers. Due to his relics and high heat capacity, he can reduce the heat of other templars allowing them to keep buffing the team and keep everyone moving. Very occasionally he might fire a shot or two to finish a mortally wounded enemy, but otherwise should be kept out of combat.

Neptune: Weapon of Mass Destruction

It's in the title. This Nepo-baby is for holding key points and deleting large swarms of enemies. If you're like me, you'll use him on every mission - even more than your soldier - and he'll end up around the same level as your captain with plenty of points to spend on gear.

Attributes:
- Get Fortitude to 8. Your Neptune is going to be a glass cannon, but to do this he needs to be able to tank some hits. Neptunes have 10 toughness at 8 fortitude which is around a 10% damage reduction for most hits.
- Focus to 10+ for autoblock.
- After this put points in strength, focus, or fortitude as you see fit, probably strength first. Neptunes can kill up to 5+ enemies with a single shot, so it's best if they have very high accuracy (Gunnery + Strength). Avoid Willpower, especially once you unlock Full Vent. Neptunes have weak armour, low health gain, and high damage/AoE so I suggest Fortitude & Strength.

Skills:
- Get Gunnery to 8+
- Tactics to 6-8
- remaining points in Gunnery and/or Tactics.

Gear:
- Aim to have the the Relic Dragoon Mk21 (6 range) by the time your Neptune reaches level 12 (around Drayan Palace level). It's at the bottom left of the Neptune tree, will carry you through the campaign and NG+, and should be prioritised ahead of relic weapons for literally every other class.
- If you follow this path, you will unlock no good weapons or armours for your Neptune for a while, so take one node sideways (it's a step down when you should be going left) to get the MK14 Autocannon for 80RQ. This is a 6-range gun that's a solid improvement over the default, and will hold you until you unlock the Dragoon.
- The MK14 and Dragoon will take up all of your available gear points for a long time, so pair them with whatever +damage and +penetration gear you've unlocked.
- Take the lightest armour possible to keep gear points free for damage. The Neptune shoots at distance 6 so should be getting hit very rarely. This is also why I suggest stacking Fortitude and Focus.
- Aegis gauntlet and then, once unlocked, I always use Relliar's gauntlet on my Neptune as it costs the same as the Aegis but adds a massive +20% autoblock, taking the neptune to 36% autoblock by the time you max focus. This helps keep the Neptune using light armour and focusing on damage as long as possible without losing much from survivability.

This is a very lategame Neptune:



Talents:
- Get Full Auto to 5 for the greater damage area.
- (Optional) Get Suppressing Fire to 1 for occasions where you need to slow a group of hunters/goliaths and your scout isn't around.
- Get at least one point in Full Vent for reducing heat. Full vent is not for occasional heat reduction: It's for stacking heat removal into a single turn. This talent is pretty useless on many missions as it reduces movement points - BUT - if you are holding an area for a while, you can use it 3 times, save 75 heat, go on overwatch, and only suffer one movement penalty despite having vented 3 times! Then, boost your Neptune with pressing need or rallying charge and return to a normal level of movement.
- Otherwise spend on whatever you like, I like the self buff to damage and accuracy. A few levels in this can add huge mileage when you know you're about to go on overwatch for an extended period.


Result:
This Neptune can take out 4-5 enemies with Full Auto and then overwatch to take out another 3-5. Use him to defend key chokepoints and also to bring massive firepower if you need to push into enemy territory. He is the guardian angel of your squad and with a scout nearby your squad will be safe from everything except a scittering horde which can rush in from multiple angles offscreen.

Hydra: Mad (Fire)bomber

Ok i'll be honest with you, I haven't completely figured out the Hydra yet. He does great area effect damage with his talents, and dropping a napalm charge on an enemy spawn point appears to disable it for an extended period of time which is extremely useful. He also has an incredible selection of armour and supporting gear, and can be a great tank if built correctly.

However his raw single-target damage is usually disappointing, even when built for damage.


Attributes:
- Fortitude to 8
- Max Focus for autoblock
- whatever you want after this. I suggest stacking fortitude for the toughness bonus and using him as a meatshield.

NB. Willpower is pointless for hydras I find, since they get a lot of +Heat items naturally and it's hard for them to overheat even on longer missions. They do have 250% willpower though so every point in willpower counts as 2.5 for heat purposes, so if you want to skip the heat items, go for damage and run overheated, it's definitely viable.

Skills:
- Gunnery to 8
- Tactics to 6-8 to maximise the number of enemies you can catch with Napalm Charge (maximum # of targets is capped by your Tactics score).
- Gunnery to 16.
- After this, whatever you like; Tactics, Warrior, or Evasion. Hydra will rarely hit more than 10 enemies with an attack and Fire damage doesn't benefit from critical hits, so Tactics utility maxes out around 10.

Gear:
- Get the strongest range 4 flamer you can. Range 3 is fine at the start, but by late-game I find the Range 4s are superior as they deal more fire damage at longer range, and penetration is so low on both types they'll rarely penetrate anyway.
- Get Boosted Reactor auxiliary gear (+1MP, +10 max heat) as soon as you can.
- Wear light armour (get biggest weapon for the most damage) and minor defensive items like Aegis gauntlet or warding plates (+8 armour, +8% deflection) add a lot of value for minimum cost.

This is a very lategame Hydra:



Talents:
- Get his main damage dealing talent to 5 for bonus area effect
- Add a couple points in Napalm charge to get more charges. Casting Napalm Charge directly on an enemy spawn point (the black holes in the ground) seems to shut it down for awhile which is very useful.
- Other than this, whatever you want. I find the -MP attack talent useful lategame if your Hydra holds the flanks like mine does - it makes him a target and keeps enemies away from squishy engineers or escort targets.

Special Note:
This is a Hydra Tank with over 50% autoblock. Aegis/Irid Gauntlet, Heat Rewiring and Irid Sheathe/Deflection Field are all worth a look for Hydra.


Result:
The end result is a mobile Hydra suitable for auxiliary cleanup work on the flanks, shutting down enemy spawn points on a forced march, or slowing nearby enemies and tanking a hit or two to protect your escort or spawn point.

This is not my favourite build so I would like some input if you have a better one.

Paladin - Medic Tank

Some people like an offensive Paladin, but for me they are an auxiliary character that only comes out once every 4-5 missions when healing is needed. Consequently, they end up a fair bit behind your Captain in terms of levels and power - in many cases my captain is a better tank. If you use your Paladin all the time, other guides may be better.


Attributes:
- Get Fortitude to 8
- Max Focus for autoblock
- Optional: 2-4 points to Willpower. Paladin can accumulate a lot of heat but only if you use a lot of buffs. Go strength instead if all your paladin does is heal.
- Add leftover points to strength or fortitude, whatever you like.

Skills:
- Get Medic to 8 (later we will reset this to 6). The Paladin's most important ability at the start is healing, and you always want to be able to heal at least 100 HP, which is >50-60% of health for most of your crew.
- Warrior to 6
- Tactics to 6-8
- Warrior to 14 or so.
- Remaining points in whatever you like.

Gear:
- Select shield and sword for autoblock. Our paladin is a healer/tank so the bulk of their damage will come from counterattacks. Other than that, they should be spongeing for your allies and can self-heal if needed.
- Heaviest armour you can wear plus aegis gauntlet, plus whatever defensive gear you can equip. Your paladin will be gear-limited for the entire game so I suggest optimising for autoblock.
- Special note: If you have spare RP, it's worth going into the Berserk tree early to unlock the "assault" class of armours, e.g. Cavalry Assault (pictured below) which all give +1 movement point. Even if you never use Berserkers, this is extremely helpful to get the paladin to chokepoints or wounded allies to heal them.

This is a very lategame Paladin:


Talents:
- Battlefield Medic to 4, combined with 6+ skill in medic you should be healing >100 damage which is enough for basically the whole game.
- Put 2-3 points in Warding Fire, combined with at least 6 points in Tactics, you can add bigly to your squad's survivability by buffing autoblock.
- When you have some spare points, add 2-3 to your sword attack. This is the skill that's used when the Paladin counterattacks. While it's not essential it helps their damage keep pace over the campaign.
- Battlefield enhancers is great for move + shoot (e.g. escort) missions, but I rarely use this otherwise, respec into this as needed.

Result:
Here you have an off-tank Paladin that's great for blocking narrow corridors, tying enemies up with autoblock and counterattack, and healing nearby allies. It's not a strong damage dealer and I find melee too dangerous most of the time due to high gear point requirements to do it effectively, so I mostly keep the Paladin as my healer.

Berserk & Flame Tank engineer

I've never been able to use these well even once I've unlocked the best gear. Both have good gear that is worth unlocking for the Hydra or Soldier/Captain/Paladin respectively, but as individuals themselves I've always found them underwhelming.

- The berserker depends too much on finding groups of enemies to hit them with AoE attacks. If there's only 1-2 enemies nearby, the berserk uses up all their movement points moving to the enemy and attacking, which defeats the purpose since most missions require moving to a goal. If I was forced to use my berserk every mission I'd probably go for a grenade and +MP build.

- The flame tank engineer gets some really strong items but is still held back by weak attack skills since all of his points are spent in engineer and non-combat talents. Flame turrets aren't as good as normal turrets, and manual vent is OK with a group, but the movement debuff is crippling.

Other Tips and Tricks

Non-obvious tactics - A few tricks I have picked up along the way:

- Save difficulties above Hard for NG+. While enemies scale with you, you'll know the levels, have *much* better gear, and it will be easier overall.

- This is a time management game. You have X time to do your objectives before overheating/enemies overwhelm you. Many of the most important abilities manipulate time:

• Rallying Charge (Soldier) - gives you the equivalent of 1 extra free turn when you use it (+8 movement points)
  
• Capture Tact Point (Engineer) - once you can use it twice per turn, saves you at least 1 turn per tact point
  
• Landmine (Engineer) - dropping one will delay pursuing enemies by 1-2 turns, buying you more time.

If you use rallying charge twice and capture one tact point one turn faster, you've just saved yourself 3 turns. Most missions are over in <20 turns so you've just given yourself 15% extra time to win - and there are even more time savings available.

- Your squad should rotate between "Offensive" and "Defensive" gear depending on the mission. In NG it doesn't matter so much because you don't have much gear unlocked and don't know the missions, but in NG+ it's much more important. For example:

• Defending a static area is, ironically, an "Offense" mission - optimise for penetration and damage. Often you'll only have one soldier holding a flank, so they need to kill what they hit.
  
  
• Moving through enemy territory is a "Defensive" mission - you'll have enemies running out of the fog of war and will take a lot of lucky hits. Since your squad is all together, they don't need as much killing power individually since they can team up. Neptune is an exception to this and should basically always max damage.

- ~Never put points in Evade, Grenade, or Willpower unless you are a Scout (evade/willpower) or going for a special grenade build with your Captain or Berserk. Those points are better spent elsewhere.

- Use Soldier's Rallying Charge often for +2 movement for the whole team. In NG+, you can regularly complete missions in less than 50% of the par time just thanks to using this and knowing where to go.

- Use the Captain's +critical chance debuff on enemies to boost your chance to hit. The Hydra, Neptune, Scout, and Captain's Arc Fire all get bonuses to crit, and it's possible to get your crit chance to 60%+ without too much effort.

- Get Relliar's Gauntlet relatively early and swap it around as needed. It adds a massive +20% autoblock which combined with high focus will cause that soldier to block 1/3 attacks. This is huge for glass cannons like Scouts or Neptunes, or meatshields like your Captain.

- Get more Fortitude for Templar with a toughness multiplier. 12 fortitude on a Neptune is 15 toughness which will (I believe) reduce all incoming damage by 8-15, which is like a 12-18% damage reduction not counting armour. In most cases, extra fortitude would be better than 2 points in strength or especially 2 points in Evade. (So if you are looking to min-max your stats - take X points out of Evade, put them in Gunnery, take X points out of Strength, put them in Fortitude, for net higher survivability and same accuracy.)

- Choose between Focus and Fortitude for survivability. 10 extra points in Focus will completely block 1/10 attacks. 10 points in Fortitude will add ~50hp and 4-10(?) damage resistance. There's a tradeoff between "maybe blocking attacks" vs "definitely taking hits but having lots of hp to tank them" that varies by Templar.

- Survivability is path dependent. Templars take 3-4 hits to die and with 24% autoblock (16 Focus + Aegis gauntlet), surviving to a 5th hit isn't guaranteed.....BUT - it almost always takes multiple turns to receive 4 hits, and the game isn't static during this time. You could move your paladin closer, buy a medikit ordnance, kill the enemy, and so on. Autoblock rarely saves a life directly, but buys you TIME to save it. When your team has an average of 20%+ autoblock, you will definitely notice a difference.

- If your character has a main talent that gives a lot of bonus accuracy, like Piercing Fire for the Scout, you can take points away from strength & gunnery and put them in other categories without greatly reducing your chance to hit. Most enemies have 6strong + 6 defence dice or fewer, so the difference between having 31 and 32 attack dice is like a 1% chance to hit. You might be better off with an extra point in Fortitude (+~3% hp) or Stealth (+5% chance to be invisible).

- Use Chokepoints tactically. While some units are good for blocking chokepoints, actually blocking one (defined as a single space wide path that your unit is obstructing) in my experience seems to make you a target for every enemy in the area. As a result, your tank could be attacked several times and die. However, if you leave them next to the chokepoint but not blocking it, some enemies might attack other allies nearby instead of crowding your obstructing Templar. Choose what type of blocker you want, whether you want to spread the damage around or obstruct enemies to protect a near-dead templar (or escort). Especially on easier difficulties, enemies often target a full-HP templar instead of one with 10% health.

- The best time to do Brutal difficulty is NG+ or ++. Use NG to learn the maps. NG+ to speedrun for bonus requisition and xp points, and to try out the choices you didn't take in NG. This should mean you have most of the necessary items unlocked, and also you know the easiest choices of mission which will help you on Brutal. NG++ you can do Brutal with a level 20 squad with legendary gear and pick the easiest battles.

- On Brutal and above, respec to add willpower. I know I said it's useless and it is, but on Brutal you'll overheat every turn for 5-10+ turns every mission. Due to how overheating damage works[templarbattleforce.fandom.com] (roll a d12, minus a dWillpower), as little as 2 extra points in willpower can make a huge difference to survivability. It depends on character, but for a scout, take 2 points out of fortitude (-8hp) to take on average -1 damage per turn from overheat on a unit that will be overheated from turn 4 til turn 20. Even better if you can take points out of strength/quickness instead of fortitude.

- Pay attention to Willpower multipliers. Especially on Brutal, a character with 250% resistance (e.g. Hydra) can add 2 willpower to take d5 less overheat damage. Overheat only does d12 or d16 if heavily overheated, so for just 2 points investment plus your default willpower, you can almost completely neutralise overheat risk for some characters. Willpower does a d12 so even +1 points in willpower will reduce the chance of taking damage by ~8% (1/12).

- Beware of heat-reducing gear (e.g. the +2MP, -10 Heat item for scouts). If your Templar overheats often, it actually costs you -30 Heat because the shutdown point is at 200% of default heat. E.g. if you have 100 heat and normally shutdown at 300, now you have 90 heat and shutdown at 270, which is 3-4 turns earlier. You'll also take more heat damage sooner, which can be devastating on Brutal if you get it wrong. A solo, far-ranging scout can win missions for you but make sure you respec them to consider this - I suggest extra points in Willpower and Fortitude.

More ideas to come.



I hope that was helpful. If you've found a better build than the ones here, let me know so I can try it out and update the guide!

[Warlord Mal]

Very well put together guide! Your information on Capturing Tac points for 2 AP per action for the engineer was something critical to know about. It would let me take only 1 engineer on a mission rather than feeling like i need 2.

[Tchey]

Excellent guide, thanks. I almost want to play again ! But the GUI is killing the joy. Still, so far the best Trese games (others are good too, this one is simply better). CKF is on its way to "win", but a bit early yet.

[A goblin shaman.]

This is awesome, thanks!