Can I beat XCOM 2 WOTC using only Specialists? 

i went with 4 and 2 psychic's for a run, having the effect for overwatch till out of ammo, gremlin overwatch with the armor bonus, the lack of penalty on overwatch shots, superior scope and tracer ammo, it was pretty freaking effective when specters weren't involved... that was painful in my run, no clue how you did it but im wanting to comment in the early seeing of this video lol edited to add a question, do critical hit shots have higher probability the less likely you are to hit? I feel that the more assured the damage is, the lower the damage will be like, the 1 insured damage add on to a gun seems to push accuracy beyond comparison low

Can't wait for the final challenge to be all Grenadiers and a montage of explosions set to 1812 Overture.

49:37 or alternatively imagine the more likely scenario of a civilian who supports Advent, watching as the terrorist group responsible for so many attacks of terror, can't hit a single advent mech. And being in despair anyways because your government can't kill these idiots.

the gremlin jolt should absolutely not be discounted. Having six guys with 12 shots of 4 guaranteed damage, shoot. This should be easier than the skirmisher run at least. Plus the relentless healing...man I wanna see this with shrpshooters. All gunslinger colonels and everybody fanfiring on one target at once.

By all means cheese the alien rulers until the cows come home. They're so hilariously overpowered using anything on them but maximum cheese is asking for a squad wipe, especially the archon king he's the worst one. He's got innate high cover defense everywhere he goes, like quadruple the health of a sectopod, AND he shows up in a pod of two other archons. So if he doesn't KO someone his little backup buddies definitely will. I tend to just spam him with shredstorm cannons or banish him with a repeater reaper every game because I just don't want to deal with him.

Bluescreen rounds bypass shields in addition to the increased damage against robotic enemies. There's so many comments this probably won't be seen, but didn't see anyone else saying this.

I feel like if a character class can mind control or hack another unit it should be allowed. I'm sure most people would agree with me. It'll make the inevitable psi operative playthrough be so much more fun

33:25 "I think these random abilities are maybe one of the more under appreciated of war of the chosen" My templar with Reaper, Bladestorm AND Fortress: "You don't say?"

Oh. This will be a very interesting run. Really like the specialist, but as you said i mostly consider them a support. Hacking a few robots and give you the control over them is really fun though.

X-COM Philosophy - "For every 70% shot you missed, you could have taken a 30% shot and hit"

At the 10:00 Minute mark you actually hit with your shot, the sektoid goes from 5 to 2 Hp, you just rolled low damage

keep doing these challenges, they're pretty interesting bruv

I can't help but feel like you should have made use of the bolt caster the whole way through the run. It's the king of alpha strike, apparently +15% aim according to the wiki, _and_ has a stun chance, which more than makes up for its single-shot magazine IMO. 52:30 If you're wondering about the line of sight thing, what probably happened is that you destroyed its cover. When in cover, characters can see & be seen from the tiles next to the cover, otherwise standing by the corner of a building wouldn't allow for shooting. So when you destroy someone's cover, you stop having this extended line of sight, potentially making them disappear into the fog of war.

I look forward to the Ranger run to see the mix of shotgun and assault rifle equips. and the snipers for the pistil/snipers

Nicely done. Definitely a thrill. Here's an assortment of things that either explain some of the oddities or are just general tips for future challenges (Like say, one involving copious amounts of grenades) Berserkers can in fact panic from the rage suit, it's just hard. Kinetic plating's ablative health is identical to the shieldbearer's shield. Both of these can actually be outright ignored if you have bluescreen. Purifiers are generally harmless because their main attack has a very low chance to hit even when flanked and only sets you on fire. Watch out for firebombs though. support enemies like the shieldbearer and sectoid will decide to attack instead if a soldier is flanked and no other enemies are there to dish the punishment. This includes the advent general, but they'll try to pull back first if it keeps you in line of sight. Blinded enraged berserkers (queen included) can actually trigger a 'blind rage' where they assault their own allies. If you somehow have chrysalids on a city level, they'll prioritise killing the (nonessential) civilians to create nests. turrets instantly die if you destroy the floor beneath them retraining soldiers will refund their soldier AP and will refresh their xcom ability pool. Useful if one of your high rollers has really counter intuitive also, less useful but for the vanilla players out there. hidden abilities tied to lower ranks will still be unlocked once you build the advanced warfare centre. they'll just be awarded on the next promotion. Hope these are useful

The thing where Drifter shot the Warlock and ignored the shield was due to him having bluescreen rounds. It’s not stated in the infamerer descriptions anywhere, but works as a neat bonus.

I remember one run where I had a team of "the carry". Assault in rage armour with the assassin sword, bonded team-mate and psychics. Basically, the assault takes all the turns and turns everything on the map to dead. Kind of comically watching this one guy run up to everything and all with a sword. The game really is "oh dear god this is hard" at the start and turns into straight up bullying the AI late game...well...if you don't get X-Commed!

23:30 trust me dude, I already know. I put my grenadier I made after myself through dozens of those missions. Ended up with like 40 health and 100 dodge. Pair that with the 4 armor from a plated vest, war suit, and the blast padding skill, and he was literally a walking tank

I'm happy to see this series continue! With 5 classes down, some might say there's 4 more to go. To them I ask: "How many rookies does it take to shoot to the center of the Avatar Project?"

I think early on ONLY having a single healer in a squad is a mistake. I think having 2 and having them farther back from the squad is very important, as shown by some of your early missions where your healers kept getting dropped and you couldn't use them to get themselves up. Giving some of your combat protocol guys revival protocol here and there is also nice just with the amount of disabling effects that the game can throw at you. Overall though I think this challenge really shows the power of the underappreciated overwatch abilities of Specialists, and the strength of being able to utilize items and armor more freely. The special tools like the War Suit and its heavy weapons are just such a massive amount of versatility that can be provided to a squad, and can really let you handle problems that some of these previous challenges ran into.

Berserkers can definitely panic from the suit. They seem to panic more than mutons

Specialists actually is my second favorite base class after sharpshooter, especially at early game, and "why" is simple - they have pretty damn good aim with decent damage. In late game you just put scope and repeater on them, use "Capacitor discharge" on large groups for disorientation(or just throw flashbang if you have it), they are INSANE against mechs and if you have multiple of them - you pretty much have second team, that consist of enemy mech units. I always have 4 in my barracks, but out of need of both damage and healers. If i did this challenge - my take would have been 4 DDs and 2 healers. And i'm at 2:26 so i don't yet know how Drifter went with his strategy and how it went.

'Niam Leeson, and he is horrifying.' - Drifter in the heady days of 2022, before he truly realized the monster that he had just been cursed with.

That thing with soldiers in the recruit list that are also already in the barracks is caused by the "Starting Soldiers" mod.

,,13 enemies down in a single turn, and he could have kept going but we ran out of enemies.'' -Drifter 🤣

I can't wait to see a Psi Soldiers run later on, I never really see them used too often tbh. I am also pretty guilty of this, and would love to see their potential

To be fair, the "miss chance" is more of an abstract of missing and armor deflection. Not every shot penetrates. Sometimes a shot that misses technically doesnt actually miss...it just glanced off of the armor

there was a time in this avenger defense mission that oh my god, there was my base, then literally 6 tiles away, a building, and like, 2 dashes of distance from outrider, the objective was in sight, and ALL OF THE PODS between the objective and my base were activated, there was 2 andromedons, 2 heavy mecs, 2 priests, 3 sectoids, 3 troopers, 1 officer, 2 spectres 2 mutons, 1 berserker and 1 stun lancer, and 2 archons next to the objective who were not activated, i didn't even know that this mission could spawn that many enemies at the same time, talk about rotten luck

I love these single class challenge runs. Looking forward to watching the remaining classes get their own videos

ok i love this run just because of the "Thats is X-com baby" moment

29:52 I have a theory: The Psionic Bomb does not jam weapons themselves, but, for a brief moment, takes control of the soldier and makes him forcefully eject his magazine.

Challenge idea: complete a whole campaign without mimic beacons. Or, even more diabolical... No grenades of any kind. Good luck!

I’ve never played x-com and probably never will but I find this videos interesting and I often just play it in the background to goto sleep to. Thanks for your smooth voice homie

All specialists seems a bit bad But four to six consecutive discharges with several heals though it sounds good if you can get there

Regardless of whether this is a successful run or not, I've always considered the specialist to be one of generally the most reliable classes to have, for the most part. Well-upgraded, they're quite good, and fairly accurate, with mid-tier damage.

I really like these videos, your style of commentary and the interesting challenge is a great combo.

Prediction: they'll perform competantly but unremarkably until Major rank, and then start slaughtering everything in overwatch with mass combined Covering Fire + Ever Vigilent + Guardian.

I think 2 medic out of a team of 6 would have been better. It counters the chance of getting the medic knocked out first and make your life so much easier

I'm surprised that you like to give the archon suit to a specialist. To me it's perfect for snipers--it helps get them into perches, then they can sit there while you push forward, and then once the squad gets too far ahead they can Icarus jump to catch up immediately. A sniper with the archon suit, the hunter's sniper, and of course death from above can just teleport into a battle and wipe everything out.

I love these videos. I just jumped back into xcom2 after like 3 years because of your reaper video. Thanks for making these.

Have I mentioned that I love this channel? I can't wait for the remaining videos for rangers, grenadiers, and sharpshooters. Also, can I request that you attempt a lone wolf or army of two challenge? Syken4games managed to do both of them (with great difficulty) and I'd love to see you give them a whirl.

I'm only 10 minutes in but holy crap that sectoid must have had an guardian angel. How he dodged 5 point blank flanks was insane. there's supposed to even be an invisible aim bonus on your troops after missing a shot how disgusting that was to watch lol

You might use the same mod I use to set your starting squad soldiers. Starting Soldiers. There appears to be a bug where it puts duplicates of the soldiers in the rookie pool. That might be why you got those soldiers in yours. Edit: And it looks like someone else noticed and commented about it so you know. I guess this is another bit of datum to confirm it as a culprit.

Specialists with Ever Vigilant & Guardian and using expanded magazines and scopes make for a barrage of overwatch death.

although some might find this video long and boring, i find this video incredible fun, with a good amount of salt, funny scenarios, and overall, is a very good watch if you enjoy strategy games and videos. keep up the good work, top 10 most underated youtubers.

Missing 88% shots? Yeah how about missin 12x 94% shots in row on Enemy with 2HP that finaly kills two of these idiots. Yeah welcome to Xcom yeah :D

I'm imagining the Ranger playthrough as the Assassin getting into some kind of old-school action movie 1 vs 6 swordfight That and the Hunter pulling an Indiana Jones vs that one swordsman

i know i'm late on this, but 31:00 dj was not in full cover, but half cover. Advanced troopers have a aim stat of 70, minus 20 for low cover, minus 20 for disorientation, so he had a 30% chance to hit. If it was full cover, then it'd be a 10% chance. Now I know you didn't want to know that, but it is six am for me and I can't get back to sleep, so you must suffer with me.

Specialists are pretty great, especially when you get them specc'ed up with Guardian and weapons with repeaters and stocks. Having a single soldier use the Warlock's rifle and wipe out a whole pod in overwatch on the final mission is just beautiful. I do wish they had changed the camera when using Combat Protocol, though. The way it just sits there on your soldier while Advent die off-screen is a bit weird, but also unintentionally funny. I definitely agree on the enemy hacking. Even when you get a high-level specialist with boosted stats from covert ops and a skull-jack, the robotic enemies at that point have such high defense that you're always at around 40% chance of success, and it's just not worth it versus killing them off with said specialist. I guess blue-screen rounds help, but again, why not just kill them? Really looking forward to the Sharpshooter run in particular, gunslingers are just crazy when you get going with them, they might be my favorite soldiers.

i think it would be a straight run. i like the specialist class. there are support of course, but there are very versatile. greetings from germany :)

1:05:59 Drifter ignore the shield is because bluescreen round, bluescreen ignore shields

Seeing how many times the best soldier = Drifter got mind controlled, it seems to be a good idea to just use mind shield on him to prevent the problem. Which is advice i will (hopefully) keep in mind, since your videos made me download xcom 2 again.

You're really making me wanna play XCOM again! Thank you so much for the video! Really fun to watch your journey! A small criticism I have is the lack of game audio after an hour feels a little weird. I get that the footage is from your stream, but I think even having it on low volume as you narrate would make the video more engaging audio-wise.

I'm looking forward to the Sharpshooter run because I'm a sadist, and Skirmishers can't have the worst campaign. They.. They just can't. They CAN'T. It is not allowed.

Actually when it comes to Snake bite antidotes they need the snake venom to synthesize antidotes so maybe they do something similar

wow this game sounds like a buggy mess. love the videos but my gosh i would hate playing with these odds fking me over this hard.

You know, funnily enough, I consider Specialists to be the second strongest base game class. In my games, some of my strongest and most reliable soldiers have been specialists.

this video came faster than I thought! Awesome!!!

finally another challenge run ive been waiting, love this series keep it up man

If you have people saved in the character customisation then they have a chance to appear in all you're games either as starting soldiers, VIPs, mission rewards or new recruits.

The chosen weapons don’t affect each other, so the bonuses against psionics just don’t proc.

Theoretically, I would think specialists only to be one of the most reliable ones. They're good all around classes and the ability to heal very generously makes them incredibly helpful, plus hacking mechanical units. I always try to make sure to have at least one healer specialist on each mission, 2 of them for longer missions.

First comment, Hyped for this video!

A combo that you slept (and the comment section as well it seems) is threat assessment + guardian + over watch/movement You grab a specialist with guardian and give him threat assessment aid protocol from either himself or another specialist and then send en forward or over watch for 2 + over watch shots without aim penalty and crit chance. Bonus points if you use the Archon Armor to move to high ground and make the combo with one soldier It’s basically superior hunter protocol

Really love the videos, when YT algorithm popped Your channel binged the whole xcom2 series. Keep up the good work looking forward to the other class videos. Any ideas on doing something similar with Xcom enemy unknown? DLC included ofc.

My favourite Ruler and armour is the Viper King. The Viper Ruler's design is the most interesting, not to mention the Lore behind it. And the Armour is the coolest looking. R.A.G.E is just meaty, and Icarus is what, some shoulder décor? Though the whole Ruler storyline kind of feels like a lost opportunity. Would have loved a more in-depth side-campaign. But the Viper armour goes to my character, who usually is the sniper.

I almost never see the enemy miss on the first 2 missions. It's almost like the game is programmed to kill at least one of my soldiers in those first 2 to try and send me a message.

Big agree on your conclusions for hacking. The only time I've ever used it is either when I first started playing and would savescum till it worked, or when you have a soldier with obscene hacking buffs... And even then I only really used the buffed soldier to shut down enemies because the odds of taking them over were so bad. Hacking is a really fun idea, but it really should have just stayed in the "if you fail you've wasted your turn" realm. Hell, even just locking you out of hacking that unit would've been fine. It's just way too punishing to fail to stun a unit, essentially lose your action, and then buff your enemy. I'd way rather just try to kill/injure the damn thing.

Another absolute blast of an episode Drifter! I’ll admit, I thought this run would be a lot more challenging, but the Specialists really wiped the floor with Advent this time around. I’m sure the Skirmishes are feeling a bit sheepish after that final chamber. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Rangers show the aliens what they’re made of of!

I have done this on my channel. It was a breeze. You got so much overwatch fire, the are highly mobile and put repeaters on each gun and the last mission they just kill everything on overwatch. They did even better than the rangers, which whom I have also beaten the game. Once you have so many aid protokolls available, that they become highly sutainable.

For Sectopod on the Forge - I vaguely remember on one of my first ever playthroughs it was on our side of the bridge the bridge. It actually stuck in my mind and I have to remind myself it actually spawns on the other side.

Thank you for your challenges. In this current shithole of geopolitical circumstances it is just lovely to watch you mop down the ADVENT forces. Vigilo Confido!

Youve inspired me to replay this lovely game thanks for that my friend, really interesting runs here

Oh, the grenadier episode is gonna be friggin funny... I can't wait to see 'missed' dozens of times. Edit: Thought I was following your twitch channel, apparently I wasn't! Now I'll get notifications finally, don't underestimate the power of telling people to follow your twitch!

I’m looking forward to the grenadier run. Easily my favorite class. Love them to death. Also, guardian and ever vigilant if you train both pair so well together. Free potentially unlimited overwatch shots with their bonus to aim in overwatch is so good

I was just thinking about if you’ll do one for each regular class and low and behold

Man Watching your Videos made me better at Xcom and I thank you for that.

been watching some videos was enjoying them but as i got to the third one i was really starting to bore out maybe some some copy right free tunes plays in the back round. but I'm just one commenter out of thousands it's not likely you would see this in the first place.

The second coming of DJ. Hilarious.

Watching this video thinking about how I use these guys as both the supports and my primary units.

I can barely beat the game normally dawg

Predictions, predictions... Specialists don't really do burst damage, and don't have good ways to shred either (though I can't remember if they have the chance to pick up Shredder). So. My prediction is they'll be challenging throughout, with things quite possibly spiralling out of control fairly often unless you're very careful, and lategame they'll struggle against highly-armoured foes. That said, I don't think they'll actually be the worst class to solo with. Between the various Protocols and their overwatch abilities (and decent aim)... I've got hopes they'll surprise you with their survivability and flexibility. Edit - wow. You *blew away* the lategame. I guess I underestimated the all the tools you have by then. That actually looked the easiest finish of all your runs I've seen so far 🧐

I can't wait to see the high level sniper run. I can guess a few strategies for how this would work. But. I also can't wait till the lost section. A sniper with between the eyes, and 20 lost. Long as the gunslinger sniper can see a lost. It will likely go down. I've had a sniper nearly solo a hoard mission with just the pistol

Bluescreen rounds penetrate shields. That's why it shot through Hunters shields. IIRC

Babe wake up, new The Drifter's Broadcast XCOM challenge run

I built myself one with Haywire, Covering Fire and Guardian, wich means if the enemy runs into you you have extreme good chances, at least two oberwatch, plus one attack and +40 defense ? In one turn where the enemy can actually attack ? Take my fucking XCOM Ability points

A lot of the complains are also true that devs seems to literally screw big. Enemies landing shots on full cover with low chance of hit. Soldiers with high ones misses. Sadly thats the main complain i also had since a lot of this are literally coding BS. Some mods fix that at making aim been more accurate to both sides, and cover actually not only has not form of penetration (except from other mods) but actually reduce damage deal/recieve in case of BS happen depending on the level, and also make so it doesn't crits. Also phrase from another game: "overconfidence its a slow and incidious killer".

I wonder how this would compare with a vanilla specialist, or even an EU/EW support run

Specs might be a support class, but when you've got a whole bunch of them, their abilities do add up together. The power of a guaranteed damage is huge, because it defuses so much situations where you would have to rely on a shot with a chance to miss otherwise. And specs are probably the class which benefits the most from the training center. Having all the protocols allows you to cover a lot of areas tactical wise, and all the overwatch related abilities stack really well between each other. And the skullmine is great too, buffing the hack and allowing an insta kill attack, although it might not connect and it would be really bad time then

With their high potential for both damage through overwatch and combat protocol, and the healing and buffing, the Specialist is probably one of the easiest classes to do this with.

I had to smile when u said cat is your sisters character, as my brother introduced me to xcom 2 and your videos and now i'm addicted, it also started with me creating characters for him lol

When you are done with the classes it would be cool to see a Commander only run just for fun. Imagine what 6 avatars could pull off. Or maybe a named character only run, where you make up a character for each named character and run with them. Bradford could be an assault, the commander could either be the avatar or a sniper to show how he stays back and watches over the squad, Shen would either be a spark or a specialist. The main challenge would be that you can't replace them, so if they get injured you have to run with a smaller squad for a little while and if they die you lose a solider permanently.

One question here: At 18:02 you get an improvement into the rifles damage +1; This bonus damage will still be applied when you upgrade your weaponry to mag and beam? The Beam weapon will do + 1 damage from the upgrade on your rifle or the beam weapon (or mag) will only get this damage bonus if you get the breakthrough research while using that specific kind of weapon???

Not gonna lie its the game missing four 88% chance shots in a row is the exact reason I don't enjoy playing xcom games. What's the point of giving me a % chance if it doesn't accurately represent the % chance of success?

Can you beat xcom 2 with only sharp shooters: side note I love the random perk mutations because I got a grenadier with the dead zone ability and I got superior extended mag/sup repeater… busted

31:00 Trooper Base Aim 65. Disorient -20 aim. Full Cover -40 aim. That was a 5% chance to hit... and the Trooper got it.

at about 1:25:00 you say that people might see the tactic of hitting the Alien Rulers when they're outside line of sight as "cheesing". I don't really think it is; hitting your enemy while they can't hit you is just sound military doctrine.

Idk know man you say weakest. I say most versatile. I always run with 2 specialists in all my squads, one of each class. While the rest of the squad is just one of every other class.

For the specialist hacking ability, you need to be a bit lucky cause certain hacking events grant a +20 to hacking. Get that 2 or 3 times and nothing can stop you.

Since you asked... In my very first campaign, I actually beat the Avatar on the Blacksite mission. Of course it took some savescumming and it was right before I encountered the Sectopod, so more savescumming ensued because I hate losing soldiers...and then I found my first Andromedron which I proceeded to demolish before I ever found out what it even does. But it was fun! Also the Avatar indeed can ignore the mimic beacon. Pretty sure the beacon's description literally says that some powerful enemies can ignore it.