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8:08 this raises the question then... why not go into WOTC with everyone being skirmishers and using the advanced armor on 2 of them to get Utlity Gremlin III's to actas medics? They're already so versatile they can overpower enemies, why not go the extra road of also using their utility slots to get medical abilities? With the superior dodge PCS and hunkering down, you also never need to worry about being hit until your cover gets destroyed, another bonus.

3:14 those vipers sure are missing a lot... Lemme guess: Superior Dodge PCS?

1:14 I would melt at this many vipers saying "I must of died and gone to heaven with all these fine alien ladies"

22:22 The Storm RAGES ON!! 😂😂😂 She Loves Bladestorm. Insaneously Funny! 😂

How did you find this strat?

3:03 You ask that we withold ...judgement... 😂😂😂

Dodge beats health and damage, because as the players themselves have noticed - There's no point in needing to kill the enemy, if the enemy can't strike a proper hit.

Congratulations. You have broken the game. With mY favorite class no less! Xcom 2 is a much more playable game than Enemy Unknown. Fortunately the majority of players that don't watch Xtube don't know this. Enemy Unknown purposefully punished you for gaming it. The moment your defend reaches a certain chance to not hit, the Aliens will say screw it and use a grenade or an attack that does not need to rely on your defense. The game knows this, that's why Elite Mutons are armored artillery.

Skirmishers are truly the Battelords once you have the correct Synergy within its moves. It, if used and supported properly, decimates entire enemies on a single mission.

Skirmishes are op. My advent captain looking chick one goes ham.

You have inspired me to use my conel ranger in a more aggressive way utilising the specialist ability though Running the chosen assassins sword And using the reaper ability To kill 1 targets place my self in hunker down next to a another target for the close quarter over watch on their turn With the untouchable perk for afree miss makes the ranger incredibly dangerous Only wish she had return fire 😢 Would of been sick

I get the strat sort of But it cant be used all the time surely 1 hit gets u injured The time u spend in recovery must be obsured And the game nesses with u 2 u always get called into action 1 day before full recovery

Now, THIS is how you are meant to use the Skirmisher…

This is such a dumb cheese strat. I love it.

Does a mindshield stop shadowbound? I notice you ignored the Assassin’s katana strike and Harbor Wave, so assuming you are using a mind shield.

Before i saw this strategy I thought that the skirmisher was really interesting in design, but in reality it didn’t seem very good because you never want your solder to be attacked at all. I didn’t think that stacking defense and using return fire would be an effective strategy. I guess i was wrong.

Dude you figured it out ... I'm going to try this game again.... For the fourth time 😂

beautiful

this is very cool!

For your first video I'm impressed that you did voiceover edits in post production. Great work my guy :D czcams.com/video/A8CWTdge2PQ/video.html

what mods are u using?

Interesting. Its on sale for $10 PSN store. For Xmas. 2023. 😮😅

You guys need to graduate to Long War.

Honestly you don't need all that much, a single spec can do a lot and makes missions much safer even early on (legend). I have a plan B that involves doing this, stacking aid + hunker down on a conveniently exposed unit, creating a makeshift, cooldown based mimic beacon. It's not a guarantee to miss everything and being targeted by all units, but if it does mitigate a few shots, its job is done. Sure it takes three actions in total, but throwing a beacon takes two.(well, you can blue move, but) Even taking three it beats losing a unit altogether, panicking another... That's how squadwipes start, and one or two wounded units is better than a wipe and failed mission. I usually bring two mimic beacons along and count on alternating with the cooldown of aid protocol if I'm anticipating really heavy combat. Sometimes it's hard to avoid pulling multiple pods, you might run into a Ruler or something, reinforcements drop, Chosen appears... Having a plan B to these things is how you actually play tactically, I guess. Keeping numbers up and slowly taking out targets is important. And you can still remove statuses such as unconscious, remote hack, heal, and do some damage. Not a bad class at all.

I saw this, loved it and tried it, it worked out great on vanilla..... unfortunately I play molded which separates the classes more for strategic specialisation so it doesn't work on my main playthroughs.... still I've found a way to do a simular thing using engineers and medics (the mods I have remove the 4 main and replace them with 6 specialist classes who are better at the specifics but worse outside of that, makes it so you build a more varied squad)

Hey great video, but how did you find out that on legendary no enemy appart from the avatar has a n aim stat over 80? I couldn't find that info anywhere online...

Once I discovered how OP Rangers were with Bladestorm, Specialists with Guardian and Threat Assessment, and Skirmishers with their unique attacks and mobility, I have used all three in every game. But I never imagined to stack them this way, nor that Hunker Down stacked defense like that (I always assumed Hunker Down just turned any half cover into full cover.) It's synthesizing all these together that makes this strategy so special. Of course, it seems to be solely for late game, so you have quite a bit of game to go through to get here, if I'm not mistaken.

Got a LIKE and a SUB for how well this was done. Normally this would be an "Oh C**p" moment but seeing this strategy working this well, was very inspiring. Nicely done.

Welp i just started playing xcom 2 and someone that gets hit when the enemy has the smallest chance to hit , this absolutely blows my mind , thanks for giving me something to build towards

Only the templar can solo the entire game on legendary. Ergo, the skirmisher is weaker than the templar

Ngl it's amazing to the skirmisher actually be what's advertised, the badass main character taking on a entire army in literal form... I usually neglect skirmishers, and use them for covert ops duty eating all the random stats purely because I am not skilled enough to have my good units be out doing ops...

I have over 1000 hours played in Xcom2. I still have yet to use the faction heroes in a single campaign outside of the rescue and required missions. I use hundreds of mods and multiple new classes, but I still go with basic soldiers. I have only used Sparks in a couple of campaigns. I think the core classes and some of the modded classes are so fun to level and build out, I always just focus on the soldiers. Great guide, and it might just give me the motivation to attempt a campaign using the heroes.

guys i bought wotc dlc after i play and like vanilla game but i dont have most of these items in my playthrough, should i start new game to get these?

What is the 'order of abilities?

Do you have a guide for this?

Great showcase and presentation. A++

Brilliant theorycrafting on an underappreciated stat!

Just wanted to mention about the subject of chrisilids specifically from the perspective of an xcom 2 player I swear I keep hearing that everyone is terrified of chrisilids but every time i encounter a chrisilids they were less then nothing they are almost as weak as faceless but you don’t have that severe of a reaction for that kind of enemy from so many people so I suspect they are talking about xcom enemy unknown chrisilids so what the hell were they like what the fuck does those chrisilids have over there xcom 2 counterparts that can generate epic battle fantasy 3 monoliths levels of horror when they see one of those

interesting

I play XCOM for these moments 8:54 getting flanked is also quite a funny one. Car explosions from overwatches, fall damage. 2 Hedgehog Skirmishers and 4 Medics? Seems a fine strategy I'd love to see how long they fare an endless lost horde.

A bit late but i have (i think) an important question. I always choose Tactical Rigging on my Skirm's, and one of the Vest's you can develop make you totally immune to Environmental Effects like Poison, Fire, and also (i think) Explosions. So with this Vest, you get a Fortress ability. Could this not negate a lot of the few downsides mentioned in this Video, like Sectopod's Exploding ??

This rattles my brain and every XCOM instinct I have, and I love it. What a redemption arc for Return Fire! I've beaten L/I about 5 times now, and you've literally made the game feel like new for me again

Oh, I know this is primarily a Skirmishing based strategy, but give it up for Reapers with Banish and Repeaters, and extended mags.

Can i Replicate this strat at early stage of the game ?

Hunker down in XCOM 2 does not make you immune to crits like it did in XCOM EU. Instead it just gives you +50 dodge which does block crit damage when it triggers, but it's only a 50% chance to stop a crit on it's own. That's one area where other classes can get an edge since the majority of classes can get higher dodge. Serpent armor for example is +40 dodge so 90% base chance to negate crits and halve any damage taken. Ironically you actually mentioned how important Dodge was to the strategy and how exceedingly high it should be, but skirmishers are tied for the lowest potential dodge stat in the game. On the "no enemies has over 80 aim" comment, that's not entirely true. Officers will always use mark target before shooting which gives them 85-90 effective base aim and sectopods always have high ground bonus aim so they basically always have 90. Of course any enemy can have high ground and benefit from mark target so some enemies will have 100-110 aim when shooting at you. You also mentioned getting more than one return fire shot per turn, but unless your running mods that skill can only trigger once per turn. It's also worth noting that the skirmisher is not what makes this work and they aren't the "strongest" unit in this set up. The specialists are the only important piece which you do hint at. The main advantages for the Skirmisher is the ability to make attacks with a somewhat decent weapon and still hunker down plus their intimidate (which isn't always good since many enemies like mutons will target the closet Xcom unit with AoE attacks when they panic). While retribution might sound like bladestorm it's not, and it's not exactly a good reason to use the skirmisher (it is a pretty decent skill though). Without aim buffs, retribution only has a max 56% chance to hit (it seems reliable in the video because those vipers have a +24% chance to be hit). Compare that to the Ranger's 77% without the katana, and the Templar's 100%, while their melee weapons also do more damage. Bladestorm is also guarantee to hit before the enemy, while retribution is not. This is an interesting strategy and one that's worth pointing out since most players wouldn't consider it, it just seems like the focus and framing was misplaced on the skirmisher rather than just focusing on the basic idea of defense stacking with specialist and giving a more flexible idea of the many ways the game lets you apply that strategy while still doing decent damage. Not saying the skirmisher is bad to use here (they're one the better default options), it just seems weird to frame the idea around them when they are entirely replaceable. You already mentioned that Sharpshooters can do this, and death from above means that they can attack with their sniper and still hunker down. Sharpshooters that roll Run and Gun also interact with the ability in a unique way that basically just gives them a third action and even lets them move, use the regular sniper, and still hunker down. They don't necessarily need the chosen weapons to start competing with the skirmisher, the chosen weapons do make them significantly more effective though. I don't see the reason to say those weapons aren't part of the "underlying class" when they are the only ones who can use those weapons and those weapons are part of their natural power progression. It's not like return fire is a natural part of the skirmishers progression since you only have a 70% to get the skill on any particular skirmisher Keep in mind that any base class that roles Death from Above can also attack and hunker down to a more extreme degree with their superior primary (potentially killing multiple enemies per turn before hunkering down). The base classes also have better dodge in light armor. Grenadiers can use explosives and heavy weapons while still hunkering down. Rangers with bladestorm can always just stand near someone to get an attack and still hunker down. Plus they can trigger untouchable multiple times a turn which protects from explosives and the assassin. Reaper also provides you an occasional free attack or 2 before hunkering down. And of course just using 6 specialist means your front soldier can always have 2 Threat assessment Overwatches + Guardian + CUP for an average of 3 decent attacks per turn while still hunkering down with that theoretical 90+ dodge and using up to 5 combat protocols/blaster bombs a turn. The other way of looking at this is that you can literally cut the "Front man" out and just replace them with one of the 3 specialists and fill their slot (and the other 2 slots) with any of the 4 potential "squadsight" units in the game (specialists, reapers, Psi ops, Sharpshooters) backed up by powered heavy weapons to have even better damage output. Psi Ops are another interesting late game unit to use for this. They don't make the best front man, but they can dominate Archons or Gatekeepers who both have high base defense and dodge so they can play the front since they can hit similar defense without hunker down and they can both be very deadly while the Psi op uses its abilities from outside LoS. The Psi ops also solves a lot of the issues you pointed out in the video via stasis and fortress. You also somewhat dismissed the Templar in other comments but I think you underestimate how its mechanics work. I get that it might not seem to fit naturally since it doesn't work well with Hunker down, but they don't need hunker down. Once they have deflect and mentally awake they have an always on 30% chance to block damage. With 40 defense against 80 aim that's only a 28% to get hit with no cover. This starts to work though when you have Reflect which is a completely separate roll. At 3 focus that's only an 18% chance for an 80 aim enemy to hit and that's before any defense. Aid protocol makes it 8% compared to the skirmisher who still has a 10% chance. Plus the Templar has innate dodge unlike the skirmisher. Keep in mind that every enemy that attacks also has a 45% chance to hit themselves (arguably better than return fire which only works once and has a 30% reaction fire penalty). Hunker down can reduce more enemies to 0 aim which is better, but The other big thing is parry which works on explosives and assassins and with gifted actions you can stack multiple parries. Of course they're also the only other class that can roll fortress and sustain which makes this strategy more effective and safer. XCOM skills are not needed though; they only need Parry, reflect, and Deflect to work, XCOM skill are just nice to have like return fire is on the Skirmisher (Bladestorm BTW is a 67% chance for a random Templar). Their AoE abilities are nice too and they can even make a moving mimic with the same high defense abilities and with bladestorm it can get a guaranteed free attack every single turn while still hunkering down and reducing the chance your front man ends up with wound time.

its pretty cool and satisfying. im give it a go

Dude why do you only have two videos.

I have never used a skirmisher in all my runs. Time to reinstall the game and try this.

Why does your skirmisher has 2 slots of utility items?, is it a mod?, since the top tier armor only has 1

downloaded xcom2, started a game, cinematics ended, what the fck is this piece of shit reaction, uninstalled. thought its fps