Faceoff would be incredibly useful late game when up against stupid numbers of lost who have 4+ hit points, at which point kills are no longer guaranteed. Also, the headshot mechanic is heavily limited by ammo, an issue pistols don't have. A well placed faceoff could allow a string of 100% pistol kills on a second squadmate, without using a single point of ammunition.
Fantastic video. One minor quibble: @ 5:22 you describe an attack that "disorients" a sectoid. It does (evidenced by the head swirl animation), but more importantly, it *stuns* the sectoid, which is why it falls to its knees (and, if just like every other stun attack, loses some number of actions). That makes it considerably more powerful than e.g. a flashbang, which just disorients.
Notice how the sectoid didnt fall to its knees, instead it had the disoriented debuff icon but it fell to its back, implying the attack either made it unconscious or killed it outright, just a friendly correction.
Interesting to know all heroes have utility slots! I still remember seeing the Reaper video, and the screenshot showing no utility slots at all and thought that was a rather interesting trade off. A little disappointed that's not actually the case, but I guess that might have been too harsh a handicap, especially once most of your regular soldiers have 2 utility items.
Yeah, I think no slots would be a little harsh. Beyond the loss of pure power, it would also remove potentially interesting choices in the game like what to bring and how/when to use use it.
At low level, I think Templars may not be great on Lost missions. But if you get dragon rounds for the pistol, that will go a long way toward making them awesome and any gunslinger abilities should be icing on the cake.
at 5:30 it's called "stun strike" and it does not do any damage and has a 65% chance to hit +5% for every focus level Templar ghosts can hunker down but *not* use autopistols
A question that's been bothering me for a while now is, could heroes use weapons from similar classes? So you know how rangers can use assault rifles or shotguns? I'm curious if a hero could use a weapon from another class with the same restrictions that the class has. like how the bullpup can be fired twice but has crap damage, could a skirmisher use a shotgun but only fire once? Or could a reaper use a sniper but only if they haven't moved? Has anyone seen any info on this? I do hope they go this route to make the classes more flexible.
I think the original wording of the reveal videos goes along the lines of "skirmishers come equipped with the bullup," or "reapers deal damage from afar with their vektor rifles," so you're definitely right to question it, and no, we don't have a definitive answer yet. For my money, I'm guessing you'll be able to swap out weapons like you're suggesting, but that the special class' weapons will be locked to that class. Hopefully we'll know for sure soon!
I feel like I heard Jake Solomon say that they can only use their own weapons at some point, but I've watched so many interviews that I can't recall for sure and could be mistaken. Either way, I seriously doubt that they'll be able to do that. Their weapons have been balanced to their abilities and they're also part of what makes them unique. I agree that it would be nice to have the option, though.
K -OZ What you gain in flexibility of their abilities, you lose in flexibility of their weapons and equipment. Otherwise they would be a nightmare to balance. Also, their lore says that all of them are paramilitary groups who developed and are used to their own weapons and tactics, while XCOM soldiers are more regular troops who generally fight as an infantry squad with different specialities, but somewhat similar weapons, and with very flexible tactics. The gap between them means that cross-training is rather difficult, weapon use included. Finally, look at the upgraded Vektor rifle from the Reapers video, it is evident that Shen and XCOM engineers went to great pains to maintain the overall shape and controls of the weapon while replacing the bolt and barrel assembly with a magnetic equivalent. While different tier XCOM weapons look completely different.
I have seen a dev post on Reddit mentioning that yes, the faction classes are limited to only their unique weapons and armor. So no using WAR Suits or Warden Armors on the faction heroes, and they can't use the Chosen weapons either.
I can't wait to scream... PSI STORM!!! at the top of my lungs ala Husky whenever I use that ability..... ....dammit Husky, why'd you have to quit RUclips....
I agree that they look good. My only concern is that they fill a role similar to the ranger but lack the massive single-target damage that the shotgun offers. But I would very much like to play a Templar and see what they're like first hand.
Templar is a melee only hero. Of course they get some of the more OP abilities from this DLC. EDIT: Templar is basically melee only. A pistol and some ranged abilities aren't gonna necessarily make them more ranged than a sniper.
Yeah, they're basically melee. I think that's fair. If you're lucky it might be possible to buy the right combination of gunslinger abilities to change that but I don't know how likely that is.
I know that this is a maybe minor feature, but will we be able to make Heroes in the character pool for use in all campaigns like the rest of your pool?
Omel, it's ironic that I didn't see your comment when it first posted and almost didn't reply at all. Thank you for the positive feedback, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the channel!
thinks so much TapCat been looking forward to what you had to say about them!! Looks like a grate new hero class just got phyoniks in my game and man are they strong maby this well open them up earlier in the game.
These guys are so powerful along with the rest. Makes me wonder how hard the aliens must be because you know these abilities are not OP but necessary to win lol
100% chance to hit melee SOUNDS good, but the cone is situational (probably only a thing when activating from stealth), melee risks activations, PsiOps have guaranteed damage without the melee requirement AND rifles instead of pistols, the AOE is unlikely to be on par with heavy weapons, and the clone is basically a mimic beacon that can attack up to 3 times. The only abilities that sound impressive are swapping places with aliens (risk activations) or allies (potential lifesaver combined with rend+move), and lightning storm (AOE that potentially refills spent focus and potentially stronger than a single use grenade.) A team of support PsiOps Inspiring a single Templar has the potential to be more ridiculous than a team of pure PsiOps.
When it comes to the ghost ability, be careful not to use ionic storm if you have it, or it will destroy the clone (ionic storm drains all energy doesn't it?). And I hope that they don't make movement cost focus with the ghost
No, movement doesn't cost focus. It's using an ability that will drain it. And, yes, ionic storm should destroy the ghost although it might be worth it in the right situation.
Templar = Shepard's Omni Tool. a.k.a Space Mage. Cool looking but only good for finishers in my playthrough. Templars are my "disposable" players if poop hits the fan late game while waking heavy pods.
UniqueHEimgaming the question is though, would the attack be treated like an explosion and cause more lost to show up? I mean it is lightning, so I'd imagine the resulting thunder would be pretty freakin loud.
I think that it's unlikely to count as an explosion/lost summoner. They did say that "lost are drawn to the sounds of combat, specifically explosives" not "lost are drawn to the sound of combat, specifically explosives and other loud noises" (or something like that) so I believe that it will just be explosives that attract them. Because they just say explosives and not put anything after that, I doubt that it would call others to the location. Besides, is lightning much louder than gunfire anyway?
UniqueHEimgaming Yes thunder is much much louder than gunfire. And funnily enough brontide sounds very similar to an explosion. Which is part of why I say this. The other reason is balance, an AOE attack like that would just make lost superfluous so I figured firaxis would do something to try to minimize kiting and AOE spam. I'm with you on it being crazy powerful I'm just wondering how they'll balance it.
I expect the Lost to be drawn to explosives and that's it. They've talked about this numerous times and never even hinted that anything else will be added to that list.
Yes, we can recruit one hero from each faction and - if we're lucky, under unspecified circumstances - get multiple heroes from each faction. According to the devs, at any rate. I guarantee you on day of launch clever players will post screenshots of pure hero squads, within a week pure squads of a single hero faction.
This is hands-down the best video covering something from War of the Chosen that I've seen. Thanks for producing something so level-headed and analytical.
I figure this would be a good faction to use for a Little Witch Academia team they became Templars after Luna Nova fell to Advent Anyways I'm thinking of turning off long war class and aliens for first campaign unless they update for the game pre launch
I know that this is unrelated to this video but i still want to ask it anyway. Will the graphic card on my laptop still be able to support the expansion? My laptop is barely able to play xcom2 as is with no problems but will the game be like homeworld dessert of kharack with a massive drop in frame rate?
My understanding is that they're trying to better optimize the game as part of this, not make it harder on systems. I can't guarantee anything but if your laptop runs it now, you have a good chance of being at least as well off when War of the Chosen releases.
I find it hilarious how the Templars attack with such fury and grace, channeling psionic energy into techniques never before seen to defeat their enemies. But then they just whip out a machine pistol and spray some ADVENT guy in the face. Lol
lol good, good, they can't even get their game to work on their end, really filling me with confidance over here, guys! should i just wait a year for half the bugs to be fixed?
It sounds like they have all the features they want in replace, literally all that's left for the next month is bug fixes. they should have all major crash issues fixed by launch, with isolated rare crash issues being fixed within the first two weeks. After that, modders pretty much take over.
I don't think it's on the ground. It looks like that is the mission target device in the list of targets that the soldier can see. There are three red enemy symbols in the list, plus the device which is greyed out - be it because it's out of range, or can't be hit with Volt.
The stealth of the reaper looks great, and you know what? It's possible to solo ADVENT Blacksites, but imagine just how good a Reaper would be at soloing those.
I'm in the opposite camp. ANY xcom class can become deadly with enough levels/perks/ability point purchases, ESPECIALLY with a good AWC roll (or the equivalent in WotC). As a super stealth unit, Reapers perform a function that not even stealth rangers are capable of. Imagine, if you will, detonating explosive containers as squads patrol past them on untimed supply raids.
Except that would make you lose supplies/elerium.Try educating ADVENT/Alien goons on why cars make for very poor cover. And by that I mean make anyone trying to hide behind a car rest in pieces by using Remote Start.
I think getting full value from the Reaper will not be immediately obvious, but they could potentially be the most powerful and flexible of any of the heroes. That said, I need to see all of their abilities (and ideally get some play time) before coming to any real conclusion.
Phantom Rangers are some of the more useful builds in the game though: they're useful for scouting ahead to see enemies even when the rest of the squad is concealed, which is great for missions like VIP Extract, and you can use them to rescue civilians in Retaliation missions without fear of triggering pods. A Reaper literally has all of the advantages of a Phantom Ranger but better, since they're capable of performing offensive actions without breaking concealment, and if they do break concealment they have a good number of abilities to get back into concealment easily. There's also the fact that they're difficult to detect due to enemies having reduced detection radii against a concealed Reaper, so you can do stuff like solo ADVENT Blacksites with them.
Watched this a second time (hey, I'm starving for some more XCOM 2 content) and I noticed something that's not related to the Templars, but is interesting nonetheless. It's that in the footage of the Templar using Volt, we can see the mission objectives, which is to destroy a psionic transmitter by planting explosives on it. You can also increase your amount of turns by destroying power relays, which I assume to be those purple things with one HP, because everything related to psionics is purple. It's an interesting take on destroying a transmitter, since it used to be very easy. Just blow up a nearby wall, get in its line of sight and have a Sharpshooter destroy it from a safe distance with Squadsight.
When I first heard of Geist and his origins I'd hoped the templars were run by Annette Durand, because I loved her from EW. But alas he's just some rando. Idk how they'll do it but, Annette and the other dlc charcters need to come back. Though I think Chilong may be a bit too old by now.
Heck after the base attack (though I'm still confused about the exact cannon of that) you'd think she'd be trying to redeem herself. I mean if literally every other important person in the xcom base got away I don't think this is a crazy idea.
I'll be honest with you, I don't believe the good people of Firaxis do a lot of deep thinking about the lore when deciding how to move the game forward. I think they decide where it's going to go and throw in a little bit of new story to explain the new setup.
Yeah and the new story is always anything but airtight. Even to this day there's no consensus on if our EU/EW wins were real, in the commanders simulation, or in another reality.
An experiment someone has to do: When the Templar gets the Untouchable Perk out of the new Awc, can he dodge two attacks after killing with rend? ( Or move twice with implacable after killing with rend?)
No, they haven't. The Skirmisher and Reaper are both actors from Star Trek: Next Generation and I believe they said there were a total of 4 actors from that show who would be doing voice work for the expansion. So I would guess that one of those will be a Templar, but we'll see.
I'm disappointed about that myself. I assume that it's because of the extra dialogue for the Skirmisher and Reaper in the story mission but it would have been nice to get more options all the same.
If you play the Lost and Abandoned story mission, then you will get the Reaper every time. If you turn that option off when setting up a new campaign, then you'll be able to make contact with any of the factions and initiate the recruitment in whatever order you prefer.
The inside look is out as of Tuesday. Just saying and also, I think that the hunter will have the best character of the chosen. Considering that he seems more inclined to be slightly rebellious to the elders, he might be a cool character and not annoying.
Does any know if you can train more of the special classes or you just limited to one? for example is it possible to have 3 Berserkers or 3 Templars in my six man squad?
We're told that getting a single hero is easy that getting more is "difficult", but knowing XCOM players, we'll have pure hero squads on day of release and pure templar squads by the end of the week. Case in point: in my average C/I run, I farm 12+ PsiOps and 6 fully equipped WAR suits and STILL have time to kill before I have to face the Avatar.
I think you could very well be right. I also like his personality the best so far (not that that there's much competition). Now that I know there's not going to be a stream this week, I've started working on the script for his video and will hopefully be able to share considerably more thoughts in the next couple of days! ;)
I kind of hope we see more from the warlock's character.Right now he seems one dimensional as a character and in terms of abilities. One flash bang cripples him for a turn if he has no immunities .
Made my first Skirmisher and Templar Bondmates. The trailer made it seem like you really needed to get them to buddy up but it doesn't seem to be the case.
We can, but there faces are boring and their "unique" cosmetic options are limited, though they are free to use ALL vanilla soldier cosmetic options. You're gonna want cosmetic mods for your heroes, guaranteed.
You can't train them, you have to make contact with the 3 resistance factions and recruit the heroes from them. We've been told that getting your first hero will be pretty easy. And if one is killed, you'll get a replacement right away. Getting a 2nd hero of the same type, though, will be significantly more difficult. They haven't gone into detail on that, but I think you'd have to build up your relationship with that faction very high and that will take doing quite a lot of covert actions on their behalf.
TapCat Oh ok thank you very much! Last question let's say you have a save that is half way through the campaign are the new missions connected to the War of the Chosen will pop out of the map or we need to start a new game for it? I'm currently playing XCOM EW and planing to start a new game for XCOM 2 to familiarise myself again with the game. Thanks again man.
We've had to start a new campaign to get the story missions for both the Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift DLCs and War of the Chosen will work the same way.
Would you consider doing 2 or 3 weeks of first impresions and 'guides' after the game drops? I wouldn't want to watch a lets play while playing a new expansion. A lot of the fun of watching your last play through was going along for the ride. That would be lost if I didn't watch for a couple of weeks then tried to catch up. - Just an idea though. :)
That's good news. Then the audiance can discover the ups and downs for ourselfs and then later have a nice jucy let's play to show us all what we were doing wrong ;o)
Don't hold back on the let's play for too long though. I'd want it to start not too long after school starts preferably. It would make it more bearable after the summer holidays.
Ideally, I'll be able to start a Let's Play at some point while continuing to make introductory guides. The problem is that my work schedule is probably going to get very bad around mid-August and stay that way for a few months. That has the potential to really screw with my ability to do much of anything and I need to see just how bad it is before I'll know what I can realistically produce for the channel.
Amazing video mate! And i really hope they fix that crashers that they got when livestreaming cus if on the release we still get this crashers, its gonna sucks really hard.
From what we were told, they used an earlier build for the stream because it was considered more stable than the latest version that they're working on. Ironically, the bug that crashed the game is one that they had already fixed in the new version. So that decision may have been questionable, although who knows what issues the current build has?
It seems they're done adding features, so all that's left is bugfixing. Due to the infinite variety in computer specifications, a handful of rare crashes will occur on day of release, but even those will get fixed within the week.
I'm afraid not, I had finished almost all of my guides by the time War of the Chosen came out and I was never able to carve out the time to do a new round that would cover all the new stuff.
As you complete the covert operations to hunt the various chosen, you'll build your relationship with each faction. That, in turn, should give you a chance that the faction will offer a covert operation to get a 2nd champion. These opportunities show up randomly, so keep an eye out for them and make sure to do the covert op when you get the chance.
thanks for your time.....and your show....trying to find midnight sons at local stores.....no luck.....hopefully soon....it would have been cool for xcom with heroes.....lot of story in midnightsons i hear.......50/50 on the card ideal......anyway thanks again.....
Deus fucking Vult. Love these guys.
Deus Volt (w/ max focus)
MY LIFE FOR AIUR
This is the most in depth video on the templars I seen.
Thank you, I really appreciate the positive feedback!
SHUB-NIGGURATTH: I love templars. There so damn powerful in many ways. My templar has wonderful abilities called fortress reaper and bladestorm.
I hope the Templars can learn Faceoff at one point. It'd be a great way to dispatch Lost without having to waste Focus.
While I'm sure it would cost a lot of points, it would certainly be useful.
Anything seems possible with the redone skill system.
Faceoff doesn't actually help much against lost, since if you're getting kills you'd be able to shoot them all anyways.
Faceoff would be incredibly useful late game when up against stupid numbers of lost who have 4+ hit points, at which point kills are no longer guaranteed. Also, the headshot mechanic is heavily limited by ammo, an issue pistols don't have.
A well placed faceoff could allow a string of 100% pistol kills on a second squadmate, without using a single point of ammunition.
Only one problem: Does he even have a pistol or does it work without somehow?
Fantastic video. One minor quibble: @ 5:22 you describe an attack that "disorients" a sectoid. It does (evidenced by the head swirl animation), but more importantly, it *stuns* the sectoid, which is why it falls to its knees (and, if just like every other stun attack, loses some number of actions). That makes it considerably more powerful than e.g. a flashbang, which just disorients.
Notice how the sectoid didnt fall to its knees, instead it had the disoriented debuff icon but it fell to its back, implying the attack either made it unconscious or killed it outright, just a friendly correction.
You're right! Could be a full knockout. That would be incredibly powerful.
Interesting to know all heroes have utility slots! I still remember seeing the Reaper video, and the screenshot showing no utility slots at all and thought that was a rather interesting trade off.
A little disappointed that's not actually the case, but I guess that might have been too harsh a handicap, especially once most of your regular soldiers have 2 utility items.
Yeah, I think no slots would be a little harsh. Beyond the loss of pure power, it would also remove potentially interesting choices in the game like what to bring and how/when to use use it.
Actually, it's confirmed in a dev post that the Reaper doesn't have a utility slot, though the Skirmisher and Templar do.
So my life for Aiur anyone?
ZenodudeMC cold is the void
ZenodudeMC I'll get the zealot voice packs
I'll name my Templar artanis
I say, FOR THE SWARM. But Auir is good also.
Message is pretty clear: Enjoy your super awesome overpowered psi templaer afdfsffas, but... just don't bring it to lost mission okay? :D
Nah, they are still useful for ion storm.
At low level, I think Templars may not be great on Lost missions. But if you get dragon rounds for the pistol, that will go a long way toward making them awesome and any gunslinger abilities should be icing on the cake.
I know this is a little late but a templar with full focus and blade storm is OP on Lost missions
Kamahameha confirmed
at 5:30 it's called "stun strike" and it does not do any damage and has a 65% chance to hit +5% for every focus level
Templar ghosts can hunker down but *not* use autopistols
I literally can't wait for this DLC. We have 32 days left
To make the wait seem shorter, only count workdays.
Blayze that's still 23 days. :(
But you shouldn't be wishing away your days off.
A question that's been bothering me for a while now is, could heroes use weapons from similar classes? So you know how rangers can use assault rifles or shotguns? I'm curious if a hero could use a weapon from another class with the same restrictions that the class has. like how the bullpup can be fired twice but has crap damage, could a skirmisher use a shotgun but only fire once? Or could a reaper use a sniper but only if they haven't moved? Has anyone seen any info on this? I do hope they go this route to make the classes more flexible.
I think the original wording of the reveal videos goes along the lines of "skirmishers come equipped with the bullup," or "reapers deal damage from afar with their vektor rifles," so you're definitely right to question it, and no, we don't have a definitive answer yet.
For my money, I'm guessing you'll be able to swap out weapons like you're suggesting, but that the special class' weapons will be locked to that class. Hopefully we'll know for sure soon!
I feel like I heard Jake Solomon say that they can only use their own weapons at some point, but I've watched so many interviews that I can't recall for sure and could be mistaken. Either way, I seriously doubt that they'll be able to do that. Their weapons have been balanced to their abilities and they're also part of what makes them unique. I agree that it would be nice to have the option, though.
K -OZ What you gain in flexibility of their abilities, you lose in flexibility of their weapons and equipment. Otherwise they would be a nightmare to balance.
Also, their lore says that all of them are paramilitary groups who developed and are used to their own weapons and tactics, while XCOM soldiers are more regular troops who generally fight as an infantry squad with different specialities, but somewhat similar weapons, and with very flexible tactics. The gap between them means that cross-training is rather difficult, weapon use included.
Finally, look at the upgraded Vektor rifle from the Reapers video, it is evident that Shen and XCOM engineers went to great pains to maintain the overall shape and controls of the weapon while replacing the bolt and barrel assembly with a magnetic equivalent. While different tier XCOM weapons look completely different.
If it won't be possible vanilla, it will probably be modded in at some point.
I have seen a dev post on Reddit mentioning that yes, the faction classes are limited to only their unique weapons and armor. So no using WAR Suits or Warden Armors on the faction heroes, and they can't use the Chosen weapons either.
commenting for the sake of the youtube algorithms
Lol, thank you Big Hat Logan!
I can't wait to scream... PSI STORM!!! at the top of my lungs ala Husky whenever I use that ability.....
....dammit Husky, why'd you have to quit RUclips....
very very good job. these guys look very interesting (I'm a sucker for psionics, I even rush in in game )
I agree that they look good. My only concern is that they fill a role similar to the ranger but lack the massive single-target damage that the shotgun offers. But I would very much like to play a Templar and see what they're like first hand.
They will be like a ranger based on large AOE damage instead of single target damage
Hm, you gotta admit, AOE and medium range are two things Rangers are sorely deficient in. The Templars might just have an awesome niche.
Templar is a melee only hero. Of course they get some of the more OP abilities from this DLC.
EDIT: Templar is basically melee only. A pistol and some ranged abilities aren't gonna necessarily make them more ranged than a sniper.
Yeah, they're basically melee. I think that's fair. If you're lucky it might be possible to buy the right combination of gunslinger abilities to change that but I don't know how likely that is.
I know that this is a maybe minor feature, but will we be able to make Heroes in the character pool for use in all campaigns like the rest of your pool?
Yes, they've confirmed that you can do that.
Horray, excellent! Thanks
TapCat i Love how you reply to most comments! Love your channel
Omel, it's ironic that I didn't see your comment when it first posted and almost didn't reply at all. Thank you for the positive feedback, I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the channel!
thinks so much TapCat been looking forward to what you had to say about them!! Looks like a grate new hero class just got phyoniks in my game and man are they strong maby this well open them up earlier in the game.
I with that it would, but I don't think we'll get them any earlier. So far, they haven't even hinted at that.
wishful thinking... that ok will just make them stronger allies in the game.
You forgot one important move they have...
*Templar's can Deus Vult psionically*
These guys are so powerful along with the rest. Makes me wonder how hard the aliens must be because you know these abilities are not OP but necessary to win lol
They say that they've beefed up the late game enemies as well as adding the Chosen.
100% chance to hit melee SOUNDS good, but the cone is situational (probably only a thing when activating from stealth), melee risks activations, PsiOps have guaranteed damage without the melee requirement AND rifles instead of pistols, the AOE is unlikely to be on par with heavy weapons, and the clone is basically a mimic beacon that can attack up to 3 times.
The only abilities that sound impressive are swapping places with aliens (risk activations) or allies (potential lifesaver combined with rend+move), and lightning storm (AOE that potentially refills spent focus and potentially stronger than a single use grenade.)
A team of support PsiOps Inspiring a single Templar has the potential to be more ridiculous than a team of pure PsiOps.
Thanks is needed this because I just got the war of chosen dlc
Good luck!
Thanks man
I just played a little and had amazing time playing it
Hey can you make a video on how to defeat Acrhon king
Apparently Templar’s can kill gatekeepers with the ionic storm
you must construct additional pylons XD
When it comes to the ghost ability, be careful not to use ionic storm if you have it, or it will destroy the clone (ionic storm drains all energy doesn't it?). And I hope that they don't make movement cost focus with the ghost
No, movement doesn't cost focus. It's using an ability that will drain it. And, yes, ionic storm should destroy the ghost although it might be worth it in the right situation.
Templar = Shepard's Omni Tool. a.k.a Space Mage. Cool looking but only good for finishers in my playthrough. Templars are my "disposable" players if poop hits the fan late game while waking heavy pods.
5:15 ionic storm will be so good against lost. The low health will ensure they die and because they come in swarms, you get all the energy right back
UniqueHEimgaming the question is though, would the attack be treated like an explosion and cause more lost to show up? I mean it is lightning, so I'd imagine the resulting thunder would be pretty freakin loud.
I think that it's unlikely to count as an explosion/lost summoner. They did say that "lost are drawn to the sounds of combat, specifically explosives" not "lost are drawn to the sound of combat, specifically explosives and other loud noises" (or something like that) so I believe that it will just be explosives that attract them. Because they just say explosives and not put anything after that, I doubt that it would call others to the location. Besides, is lightning much louder than gunfire anyway?
UniqueHEimgaming Yes thunder is much much louder than gunfire. And funnily enough brontide sounds very similar to an explosion. Which is part of why I say this. The other reason is balance, an AOE attack like that would just make lost superfluous so I figured firaxis would do something to try to minimize kiting and AOE spam. I'm with you on it being crazy powerful I'm just wondering how they'll balance it.
I expect the Lost to be drawn to explosives and that's it. They've talked about this numerous times and never even hinted that anything else will be added to that list.
Very old video, but is it just me or did that disorient/stun ability never make it into the game?
Don't remember, can we recruit more than one of those guys?
Yes, we can recruit one hero from each faction and - if we're lucky, under unspecified circumstances - get multiple heroes from each faction. According to the devs, at any rate. I guarantee you on day of launch clever players will post screenshots of pure hero squads, within a week pure squads of a single hero faction.
If we can't there will be mods to save us (on PC anyway)
This is hands-down the best video covering something from War of the Chosen that I've seen. Thanks for producing something so level-headed and analytical.
And also not having a downright robotic way of talking about it. This video was analytical, but not impersonal.
Thank you for the kind words, Antoine, glad to hear that you enjoyed the video!
so we just going to skip over the fact that they are Protoss zealots weapons they are using then
I figure this would be a good faction to use for a Little Witch Academia team they became Templars after Luna Nova fell to Advent
Anyways I'm thinking of turning off long war class and aliens for first campaign unless they update for the game pre launch
No word on Long War 2 and compatibility with War of the Chosen so far...
I know that this is unrelated to this video but i still want to ask it anyway. Will the graphic card on my laptop still be able to support the expansion? My laptop is barely able to play xcom2 as is with no problems but will the game be like homeworld dessert of kharack with a massive drop in frame rate?
My understanding is that they're trying to better optimize the game as part of this, not make it harder on systems. I can't guarantee anything but if your laptop runs it now, you have a good chance of being at least as well off when War of the Chosen releases.
I find it hilarious how the Templars attack with such fury and grace, channeling psionic energy into techniques never before seen to defeat their enemies.
But then they just whip out a machine pistol and spray some ADVENT guy in the face. Lol
lol good, good, they can't even get their game to work on their end, really filling me with confidance over here, guys! should i just wait a year for half the bugs to be fixed?
It sounds like they have all the features they want in replace, literally all that's left for the next month is bug fixes. they should have all major crash issues fixed by launch, with isolated rare crash issues being fixed within the first two weeks. After that, modders pretty much take over.
Rend for the Old Go- !! Sorry, wrong game owo...
All the hero units seem very game breaking, hopefully the new advent and alien units are suitably powerful to match the stronger XCOM.
Swapping with another soldier could well help save unconscious or bleeding units, if you can swap with them.
Templar? Psi blades? Psionic storm? Hmmm.
I like the Templar's voice, there is a reference to the character Francis Dolarhyde in Red Dragon movie.
Can they wear Alien Hunters armor?
Tapcat, you're a fucking beast. My favorite Xcom RUclipsr by far.
That's high praise indeed, thank you very much!
i wanted to ask, at 4:46 there is somekind of device on the ground with (i think) 2 HP.
any idea what it is?
I don't think it's on the ground.
It looks like that is the mission target device in the list of targets that the soldier can see. There are three red enemy symbols in the list, plus the device which is greyed out - be it because it's out of range, or can't be hit with Volt.
I still think the reapers are the least useful, like... You have psyonic gods and guerilla berserker and then there's RNG snipers...
The stealth of the reaper looks great, and you know what? It's possible to solo ADVENT Blacksites, but imagine just how good a Reaper would be at soloing those.
I'm in the opposite camp. ANY xcom class can become deadly with enough levels/perks/ability point purchases, ESPECIALLY with a good AWC roll (or the equivalent in WotC). As a super stealth unit, Reapers perform a function that not even stealth rangers are capable of.
Imagine, if you will, detonating explosive containers as squads patrol past them on untimed supply raids.
Except that would make you lose supplies/elerium.Try educating ADVENT/Alien goons on why cars make for very poor cover. And by that I mean make anyone trying to hide behind a car rest in pieces by using Remote Start.
I think getting full value from the Reaper will not be immediately obvious, but they could potentially be the most powerful and flexible of any of the heroes. That said, I need to see all of their abilities (and ideally get some play time) before coming to any real conclusion.
Phantom Rangers are some of the more useful builds in the game though: they're useful for scouting ahead to see enemies even when the rest of the squad is concealed, which is great for missions like VIP Extract, and you can use them to rescue civilians in Retaliation missions without fear of triggering pods.
A Reaper literally has all of the advantages of a Phantom Ranger but better, since they're capable of performing offensive actions without breaking concealment, and if they do break concealment they have a good number of abilities to get back into concealment easily. There's also the fact that they're difficult to detect due to enemies having reduced detection radii against a concealed Reaper, so you can do stuff like solo ADVENT Blacksites with them.
Another great video gj man
Watched this a second time (hey, I'm starving for some more XCOM 2 content) and I noticed something that's not related to the Templars, but is interesting nonetheless. It's that in the footage of the Templar using Volt, we can see the mission objectives, which is to destroy a psionic transmitter by planting explosives on it. You can also increase your amount of turns by destroying power relays, which I assume to be those purple things with one HP, because everything related to psionics is purple. It's an interesting take on destroying a transmitter, since it used to be very easy. Just blow up a nearby wall, get in its line of sight and have a Sharpshooter destroy it from a safe distance with Squadsight.
Good catch! I guess they didn't like people cheesing those missions and wanted to put a stop to it.
Do you guys think war of the chosen will have something similar to second wave
But can Templars murder Byzantine families and take their stuff?
If the can find a Byzantine family in the near-future? Probably.
When I first heard of Geist and his origins I'd hoped the templars were run by Annette Durand, because I loved her from EW. But alas he's just some rando. Idk how they'll do it but, Annette and the other dlc charcters need to come back. Though I think Chilong may be a bit too old by now.
Heck after the base attack (though I'm still confused about the exact cannon of that) you'd think she'd be trying to redeem herself. I mean if literally every other important person in the xcom base got away I don't think this is a crazy idea.
I'll be honest with you, I don't believe the good people of Firaxis do a lot of deep thinking about the lore when deciding how to move the game forward. I think they decide where it's going to go and throw in a little bit of new story to explain the new setup.
Yeah and the new story is always anything but airtight. Even to this day there's no consensus on if our EU/EW wins were real, in the commanders simulation, or in another reality.
Trivia: the Templar's leader is voiced by John de Lancie.
Parry is an incredibly useful move also it allows you to laugh at enemies who tried to mind control the Templar
An experiment someone has to do: When the Templar gets the Untouchable Perk out of the new Awc, can he dodge two attacks after killing with rend? ( Or move twice with implacable after killing with rend?)
Since both abilities say that the first attack on the alien turn will miss, I don't see them stacking to give you two.
Did they say what the Templar voicepacks sound like? Judging by the names shown, probably some ambiguous European accent...?
No, they haven't. The Skirmisher and Reaper are both actors from Star Trek: Next Generation and I believe they said there were a total of 4 actors from that show who would be doing voice work for the expansion. So I would guess that one of those will be a Templar, but we'll see.
I'm really disappointed that there are only 2 voices per gender for the heroes. I could have gotten by on 4, but 2 is not sufficient for me.
I'm disappointed about that myself. I assume that it's because of the extra dialogue for the Skirmisher and Reaper in the story mission but it would have been nice to get more options all the same.
The Templar came in super handy when I went up against a hunter at his base.
I don't know if this is confirmed, but will we get to choose which hero we start off with? Cause I would rather the templar to the Reaper
If you play the Lost and Abandoned story mission, then you will get the Reaper every time. If you turn that option off when setting up a new campaign, then you'll be able to make contact with any of the factions and initiate the recruitment in whatever order you prefer.
Ah, thank you, that explains a lot
Hey tapcat I'm excited for Friday how about you?
I am a little worried about the chosen. Dat templar though...
The Templar looks pretty good to me!
seems really op. Why would i ever use a basic ranger again?
At least from what we've seen so far, the Templar won't begin to compare to the ranger when it comes to dealing massive damage to a single target.
Well, that's the Templar down, just the Hunter left 😉
The inside look is out as of Tuesday. Just saying and also, I think that the hunter will have the best character of the chosen. Considering that he seems more inclined to be slightly rebellious to the elders, he might be a cool character and not annoying.
UniqueHEimgaming yea I know the inside look is out, I was talking bout TapCat's video 😜
Coolest class so far
Does any know if you can train more of the special classes or you just limited to one? for example is it possible to have 3 Berserkers or 3 Templars in my six man squad?
We've been told that it will be easy to recruit a single Templar (or Reaper/Skirmisher) but that getting a second is much more difficult.
OK. Cool, I would hate to think that we could not have a replacement in case one of the new classes gets captured.
We're told that getting a single hero is easy that getting more is "difficult", but knowing XCOM players, we'll have pure hero squads on day of release and pure templar squads by the end of the week. Case in point: in my average C/I run, I farm 12+ PsiOps and 6 fully equipped WAR suits and STILL have time to kill before I have to face the Avatar.
tapcat what do you think of the the hunter trailer? Personally I think he will be most threatening chosen to encounter
I think you could very well be right. I also like his personality the best so far (not that that there's much competition). Now that I know there's not going to be a stream this week, I've started working on the script for his video and will hopefully be able to share considerably more thoughts in the next couple of days! ;)
I kind of hope we see more from the warlock's character.Right now he seems one dimensional as a character and in terms of abilities. One flash bang cripples him for a turn if he has no immunities .
Made my first Skirmisher and Templar Bondmates. The trailer made it seem like you really needed to get them to buddy up but it doesn't seem to be the case.
They massively overstated that whole issue. The tension between factions only exists in cut scenes as far as I can tell.
Do you think we'll get to take their masks off?
We can, but there faces are boring and their "unique" cosmetic options are limited, though they are free to use ALL vanilla soldier cosmetic options.
You're gonna want cosmetic mods for your heroes, guaranteed.
Just want to ask, can we train Reapers, Skirmisher and Templars? Or do we only get one of each? Anyone can clarify? Thanks
You can't train them, you have to make contact with the 3 resistance factions and recruit the heroes from them. We've been told that getting your first hero will be pretty easy. And if one is killed, you'll get a replacement right away. Getting a 2nd hero of the same type, though, will be significantly more difficult. They haven't gone into detail on that, but I think you'd have to build up your relationship with that faction very high and that will take doing quite a lot of covert actions on their behalf.
TapCat Oh ok thank you very much! Last question let's say you have a save that is half way through the campaign are the new missions connected to the War of the Chosen will pop out of the map or we need to start a new game for it? I'm currently playing XCOM EW and planing to start a new game for XCOM 2 to familiarise myself again with the game. Thanks again man.
We've had to start a new campaign to get the story missions for both the Alien Hunters and Shen's Last Gift DLCs and War of the Chosen will work the same way.
TapCat thanks 👍
So reapers are better at stealth and templars are better at melee. Are rangers just useless now?
Single damage potential from rangers will not be outshone
The shotgun blast at point blank range is ungodly, and with Rapid Fire it's just broken.
They just created a new game. Amazing
champions of the just
I love your voice so much its so soothing
En Taro Commander
These videos are great.
Would you consider doing 2 or 3 weeks of first impresions and 'guides' after the game drops? I wouldn't want to watch a lets play while playing a new expansion. A lot of the fun of watching your last play through was going along for the ride. That would be lost if I didn't watch for a couple of weeks then tried to catch up. - Just an idea though. :)
While I don't have a firm plan, my preference is to work on videos of that type immediately after release rather than a let's play.
That's good news. Then the audiance can discover the ups and downs for ourselfs and then later have a nice jucy let's play to show us all what we were doing wrong ;o)
Don't hold back on the let's play for too long though. I'd want it to start not too long after school starts preferably. It would make it more bearable after the summer holidays.
Ideally, I'll be able to start a Let's Play at some point while continuing to make introductory guides. The problem is that my work schedule is probably going to get very bad around mid-August and stay that way for a few months. That has the potential to really screw with my ability to do much of anything and I need to see just how bad it is before I'll know what I can realistically produce for the channel.
Once more real life strikes. It's a bugger. Good luck.
Amazing video mate! And i really hope they fix that crashers that they got when livestreaming cus if on the release we still get this crashers, its gonna sucks really hard.
From what we were told, they used an earlier build for the stream because it was considered more stable than the latest version that they're working on. Ironically, the bug that crashed the game is one that they had already fixed in the new version. So that decision may have been questionable, although who knows what issues the current build has?
It seems they're done adding features, so all that's left is bugfixing. Due to the infinite variety in computer specifications, a handful of rare crashes will occur on day of release, but even those will get fixed within the week.
FIX UR GAME JAAAAAKKEEEE
Halo lightsaber
Do you have a templar build video?
I'm afraid not, I had finished almost all of my guides by the time War of the Chosen came out and I was never able to carve out the time to do a new round that would cover all the new stuff.
War of the chosen is a paid dlc correct?
Very much so, $39.99 in the US.
I'm so exited
His pistol doesn't look like a vanilla one
The Templar's pistol has a different name and look, but is functionally identical.
Misspelled Templar in description.
*sigh* So I did. Thanks for pointing it out, all fixed now!
Huzzah! Was waiting for this!
u missed the magical shield ability or is that parry
99% sure that it's parry, but I should have put the video clip in the segment where I was talking about it.
ty for replying but i was thinking that you should have done that as well btw ty for commenting on my video
Great video as always, I'm wondering if you'll be able to make custom heroes in the character pool.
Yes, they have confirmed that you can do that.
TapCat That's good to hear, thanks for telling me.
Sure thing!
0:03 "new"
ROFL, it is quite telling when thedevs' game crashes. I guess the DLC won't be optimized and be playable for another year ;)
*DEUS VULT INFIDELS*
more melee...... loving it
I new you would!
I still love the blade and talking to vipers with blademaster and being like do it I dare you and then getting insta kills when they grapple me
When will this update arrive?
August 29
is fraxis kidding me??? i won't get enough time to play the escapists 2 :/
First
od.....yes.....you got a great show......good job.....i have a ps4.....how do you get more than 1 templer,or reapers,skermishers?????.......
As you complete the covert operations to hunt the various chosen, you'll build your relationship with each faction. That, in turn, should give you a chance that the faction will offer a covert operation to get a 2nd champion. These opportunities show up randomly, so keep an eye out for them and make sure to do the covert op when you get the chance.
thanks for your time.....and your show....trying to find midnight sons at local stores.....no luck.....hopefully soon....it would have been cool for xcom with heroes.....lot of story in midnightsons i hear.......50/50 on the card ideal......anyway thanks again.....
human zealots eh