Into the Breach - Updated Pilot Tier List! (Advanced Edition)

[@justinamick5074]

Justice for my boi Gana. 🙏

[@conjecturemm]

He deserved it

[@paradoxica424]

Shell Psion and Blood Psion make Gana useless. Apart from Leapers being on the first turn spawns, the Acid Storm Generator Mission, Boom Mech Missions, Dam Mission with a low direct damage squad, and Smoking/Shattering squares, as well as the seldom Secret Pod, the deployment isn’t that great. Sometimes nice, but not great. (And I do enjoy a very satisfying turn one placement, but I recognise my own bias against the objective value of Gana)

[@rossbt041]

Y'all are sleeping on Gana. Forget about the damage. It's negligible, and multiple psions basically negate it, as the comment above this one points out. What makes Gana so strong, and possibly even a lower-top tier, is how much his ability can solve turn 1, which is so important on Unfair. He can block off many kinds of grounded Vek from getting to use their turns, either partially or fully. Better yet, he draws aggro down towards the bottom of the map, away from most of your Grid. These two things alone give you an insane amount of flexibility for quickly getting control of the mission when you are horribly outnumbered. The icing on the cake is how good Gana is at positioning Primes and Brutes for maximum effect. One of the big struggles with these two types of mechs is how their weapons struggle to solve problems until they get into position. Consider the Mirror Mech (which is what actually inspired me to take another look at Gana). It normally starts surrounded by your buildings, meaning that you're going to struggle just to avoid hitting your own grid, let alone making use of both shots (and I know that you can use it to thaw the Ice Mech, but that's a hard sell on Unfair's brutal turn economy). But deploy it near the Vek, and it just comes alive. It isn't all sunshine and roses, however. It's not always possible to perfectly predict and manipulate enemy AI even with Gana messing them up. Moreover, how much impact he can have will vary quite a bit depending on map and enemy composition. It's also very easy to get Gana in a situation where he gets trapped behind enemy lines - you have to balance maximizing the value of your deployment with whether or not he can move around or get rescued by other mechs. This also means that he needs specific skills to be fully effective, and getting the most useful skills for him can be tedious; given how hard it is to roll Mech Reactor and Skilled or Mech Reactor and Opener, you might have to settle for +HP or +Move in order to avoid grinding dozens and dozens of Ganas (you definitely want Mech Reactor for obvious reasons).

[@nicky2coats]

@@rossbt041 Great analysis. I’ll just add that you can edit the profile file to get Skilled and Mech Reactor on your banked pilot. It’s a text file and can be edited in Notepad. Technically this is cheating, but all it does is circumvent the RNG on skill acquisition. Set skills to =3 and =8, and level =2.

[@andrewboteler7522]

Yeah, gana is #1 best pilot because of the potential of drawing enemy aggro, killing 1hp enemies aside.

[@imp6808]

I have to disagree with the Corporate pilot, those people are dedicated to saving their timelines. They are heroes and people don't remember their name. They're with the protagonist you bring into the playthrough at the beginning. Helping you along the way in your journey to find someone better suited for the job. Then you trade them off to protect an island. The rest of the squad jump away after saving the timeline. And the CorpoPilot stays beyond, they live a prosperous life telling stories of the timelines they've saved, and most importantly spread the tale of the pilot who you choose at the beginning. The battle isn't just won by the heroes, but by everyone who helped them along the way... So corp pilot should be in S tier

[@Phantom_Kraken]

Don’t forget the engineers who maintain the grid and the mechs S tier (except in archive fuck those guys f tier)

[@Flea_ip]

That's a beautiful story and sentiment, but they're still just +1 Reputation to me :D (or, sometimes you get really lucky and they're +4!)

[@diva8889]

yeah man long live the true hereos ;)

[@NycStar-09]

Rosie can also heal unit structures, like terraformers or satelite launchers

[@fonsly]

Yeah, she can also remove statuses like break mechs out if ice or remove acid, because she triggers a full repair. I tried a custom game with 3 ice mechs with her, i had 2 of the ice mechs freezing the enemy and themselves, and i had her breaking them out by just moving. 2 guaranteed removal of any unit per turn is pretty powerfull, i just wish the vek you leave frozen at the end would count towards kills for missions, since it makes it impossible to full clear a sector since the boss vek at the last stage has to be killedm

[@cowlump]

The other thing to remember with Gana is that there are quite a few objectives where one damage on turn zero gives you a significant head-start. Off the top of my head, there's the dam, boom bots, shield generator, acid vats, mountain breaking...

[@conjecturemm]

Gana for boom bots is awesome.

[@paradoxica424]

you actually may not want to break the shield generator early, especially if it is a high threat mission. but yes there’s a few missions where Gana shines.

[@bluelense7]

I got a Morgan Lejeune with opener and skilled, and now I can't let go of her, or stop using her in the laser mech. Infinite boost lets the laser mech one shot almost anything at point blank or one shot any two health vek at any range.

[@conjecturemm]

Yeah that's awesome! It's hard to let go of pilots that get awesome skills

[@bugjams]

Just curious, but why is everyone so sure Morgan's a she? I thought they were a guy with long hair at first. Apparently there's bios on the pilots from the base game, including genders, but nothing yet for the AE pilots. Until then I'm just not going to lean one way or another, which almost seems to be the point given their very androgynous name. But if you wanna headcannon Morgan as either or, I see no problem with that.

[@coobk]

because she has the stereotypical 'woman that knows tech' haircut​@@bugjams

[@AgentTheWookie]

Oh yeah, I got rid of the first couple iterations of Morgan, and then I got one with Opener and Adrenaline. And since that point damage dealing mechs have been going BRRRR. Heat sinker's brute mech, then the whip ("tesla") mech, now I started a new Zenith Guard playthrough and the laser mech incinerates everything even before the upgrade. I'll stick to him for a while longer, he-he. +2 movement that turns into more and more movement later, plus Boost for practically every turn right off the start. In the stats, Morgan has 4 times more kills than battles he's participated in right now. Crazy numbers.

[@That_Skeleton1]

Thing is with Rosie Rivets too though, she can actually revive dead mechs too, which I'm seeing a lot of people fail to mention

[@conjecturemm]

Yes she can, and I did mention that!

[@That_Skeleton1]

@@conjecturemm ah yes, my bad, I apologize, but still, she opens up a few interesting new strategies as even death itself can be off the table

[@AgitadorX]

Kai Miller with technician (+1 repair at the start of each turn) is simply op and I won't let her go 😂

[@Flea_ip]

Kai Miller in the Arachophile Ranged mech is my bread and butter. Being able to spawn spiders by keeping her in the back and doing 2 damage to enemies is sooososososoosososoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo GOOD hnnnggggg

[@caml1720]

just found your channel from this video, really enjoyed the watch! on lily/gana: i think an underrated difficulty layer of this game is what control you can exert over the vek with how you position on turn 0. i've had a lot of hard campaigns bricked because the very first moves played against me by the computer can't be solved without spending some resource(usually power or mek health) i can't afford to lose-opener positioning to deny the most total spaces of attacking the grid or the objectives is really important, and gana's ability to let you do that swings wildly based on which enemies and map you draw on turn 0

[@conjecturemm]

Glad you’re here! Yeah, I think the debate between those two has been so much more heated than I anticipated lol. True a good setup with him can really help a run. Feel free to join the streams of us playing unfair runs sometime! Discord too!

[@duythuchoang5095]

I really like these tier list videos and hearing your comment on squads and pilots Really hoping to see you also do a tier list for the Advanced Edition Mech Squads just like the pilots

[@yxt4911]

If you are playing Advanced Edition, your Vek pilots can get the Popular Hero skill, which means you can sell them for an extra reactor core, and obviously you can't do that. So yeah, yet another reason to rank them the worst pilot. And it can be worse. Just imagine a Vek pilot with Popular Hero and Invulnerable skill set.

[@conjecturemm]

it's actually impossible for the cyborg pilots to get either of those skills, it's coded into the game!

[@yxt4911]

@@conjecturemm Really? I'm pretty sure I saw those skills when I played Secret Squad with AE. There are actually screenshots of such thing happening on Steam Community as well. Have the devs updated the game recently? If so then this is a really welcoming quality of life change.

[@yxt4911]

Oh well, they really did patch it out last week. I just haven't tried out yet. Really good change I must say, although I do kinda want this feature retained just for the trolls.

[@marvinvargas4988]

I'm surprised to see Adam get midtier as I find the shield+2 move to be fairly minor bonuses considering the big cost/risk of using up a reset. I just hardly see getting almost any use out of that. If it had been +2 dmg instead of a shield, then it might actually save you sometimes!

[@thedangerroom7747]

I'm glad you gave the AI pilot the recognition it deserves. I can't tell you how many of my runs were saved by them 😅😅😅

[@Jasonio77]

Kai Miller with the arachnoid mech is awesome.

[@conjecturemm]

Agreed. So powerful

[@conjecturemm]

If you enjoy this video, join the discord to catch some of our ItB livestreams! DISCORD discord.gg/ZPKTYSFjGJ

[@randyrockholt834]

These tier lists are always fun. Thanks for this. And thanks for moving Gana up!

[@conjecturemm]

Glad you're liking them!

[@randyrockholt834]

@@conjecturemm any chance you will ever do a tier list for weapons or individual mechs?

[@tirell2075]

Liking seeing Gana move up. I also didn't give him the time of day until playing again until the update and seeing people advocating for him. My favourite squad is the Flame Behemoths and that 1 damage start is pretty huge for the Flame Mech to get "first turn kills" on 3 health units. It's interesting the comparison you made between Gana and Lily, because Gana's movement being turn 0 I actually rule as a huge advantage. Starting off adjacent to the Vek consistently makes your mech an attack target, making a lot of spawns very manageable, which is something Lily can't replicate. Most Vek don't/can't move far away enough from an adjacent mech to undermine Gana's positional head start either, though it's not foolproof. His main downside comes from three Scions which almost force you to spawn next to them to get value.

[@paradoxica424]

Blood and Shell. There’s a third Psion?

[@tirell2075]

@@paradoxica424 I was counting Soldier too as a soft counter because the 1 extra health until it dies makes it a priority target so that Gana actually gets that 1 damage advantage. It's not as bad as the other two

[@conjecturemm]

Yeah I think gana gets a bad rep since I also didn’t love using him before that lol. And yeah for the turn 0 vs 1 thing I guess it’s just a preference really. I think if his ability were free it’d be definitely better but it does cost one core so a little closer to even

[@tirell2075]

@@conjecturemm Oh yeah, especially in the context of a fresh run. One of his strengths is helping teams with a weaker start I think, but then you're waiting on a pod drop to get that aid

[@PhilippeLemaire]

Trying to roll different level up bonuses through resets doesn't work because of the way the randomness is generated in video games, particularly turn based ones. You can think of the RNG as an infinite but predetermined string of numbers. It's set at the start of the run based on some seed value, like the date and time. Whenever something random needs to happen, the game will pop the next random number from the generator. If you roll back in time somehow and do the random thing again, you get the same result because you just popped the same number from the generator. One way to mix things up if you can is to have 2 random things happen, and do them in a different order the second time around. For example in slay the spire you can savescum and chug two card generating potions in a different order, you'll get different results.

[@diva8889]

hi let me say i played the game a lot still fighting for a perfect game on unfair but no luck so far. your updated tier list nails it totally agree with it . the thing with Harald is push is a very strong mechanic in the game especially for a strong mech that lacks the abillity. on unfair maybe i would Miller give her own Tier at least at the first two islands ...Miller (Laser Mech) does flat 4 damage right from the start this is nuts ;)

[@jafsrob]

Morgan vs Kai is situational. Sometimes I want one, sometimes I want the other. Sometimes I want both.

[@shallowgod5539]

Got Morgan with an "adrenaline" (+1 to movement EVERY time you kill an enemy) boon and man it just snowballs. Put her in a high damage mech and she can just go anywhere on the map and nuke things.

[@DavidCosmanCozySmash]

Glad Abe got left in mid, he's really overrated in Reddit. Even considering those self-damage weapons, Mafan and Ariadne can be just as good with them too. The way I see it both Ariadne and Abe should be tiered pretty close together, it makes no sense to put them in separate tiers when they function similarly. Gana at mid is definitely where he belongs, though I do agree Lilly is a bit better for the purpose of giving you an early advantage; aside the better reaction you mentioned, another point for her is that she can use it in the 2nd part of the Volcanic Hive, whereas Gana doesn't choose to deploy anywhere in that 2nd part. Adam is hilarious and personality wise one of my favorite pilots; he's definitely written with biblical references in mind (given his dialogue and name). I think he's the best "beginner" pilot, it's a nice way of trying something that was previously impossible thanks to his +2 movement and shield he can get anytime. I do agree with mid-tier ultimately, higher-mid mostly (I realize your list isn't ordered as well within tiers). I've highlighted in Reddit that Rosie can heal other non-mechs too, like deployable tanks; pretty neat for blocking with them continuously. As good as that is though, tanks are random equipment you have to find and it's also like 11 reputation at worst (2 to buy, 9 for the cores to power + upgrade their HP). Mostly, the positioning restriction does mean you have to really think whether losing a vital position is worth it. So I do agree with mid, because there's cheaper ways to do strats that are just as good. I can confirm that Hazardous Mechs is actually a very good squad for her, piloting Nano Mech specifically. Kai and Morgan are fairly interchangeable imo. I do think Kai is just a tad better for starting with a boost, whereas Morgan has to be fed a kill to activate it (she also hogs EXP). But just a tad means they're both high/top tier really, just with Kai a bit higher. There's only one squad where I wouldn't use Kai and to a lesser extent Morgan, and that's Hazardous Mechs; boost also increases the self-damage, which means both are going to lose movement after using one of their weapons once. Not until the killshot-healing from Nano Mech is upgraded anyways.

[@DaCooGa]

Morgan doesnt lose movement from taking damage as you seem to imply at the end

[@DavidCosmanCozySmash]

@@DaCooGa yeah that's what I meant with "lesser extent" but Morgan still takes 2 self-damage from being boosted

[@duythuchoang5095]

Another thing with Rosie is that her ability is also about positioning, but rarely you can have the chance to have your mechs close together to do those sort of stuff, that's the same reason why the kick off booster passive also sucks to me

[@michaeldoyle8092]

Wow! Great video!

[@conjecturemm]

Thanks!

[@amronfortis187]

I agree with this list pretty much, but I do think that Adam kinda deserves Top tier I mean think about it. He has the ability to be just as good as Bethany (Shield) and almost as good as Lily (Extra movement [2 instead of 3]). Hes almost got those two powers COMBINED, and he can activate it whenever he wants, with only the cost of a Reset? Not to mention, if Bethany spawn blocks once, her shield is gone. Adam can spawn block until he's almost disabled, and THEN activate his shield to block some powerful hit from an alpha vek. Not to mention, he has the ability to get even stronger when paired with Isaac. Does that make him Top tier? Maybe not, but it puts above two other mid tier pilots combined, which is at least an argument towards Top tier.

[@apollyon6855]

you could do this but for singular mechs? for example with prime type mechs

[@conjecturemm]

I have videos like that planned!

[@gaby000fr]

I just had a game where 2 of my cyborgs were max lvl, died during final mission 1, and kept their max lvl for final mission 2. Can they lose abilities only when not maxed?

[@conjecturemm]

interesting...haven't heard about this! Yeah maybe that's a bug. Thanks for sharing!

[@aPache43211]

Can you update the mech overview as well with the advanced edition squads?

[@Ryadriz]

He's probably just Adam because he's a reference to the biblical Adam

[@TubeVRN]

All pilots from Advanced Edition are great and I would put Adam higher than Bethany Jones (shield) and Lily Reed (+3 move first turn). Maybe to top tier or at least I'd move last two to lower tier. Because Adam not just has Bethany and Lily abilities combined, he can use them on any turn as long as you didn't press "Reset Turn". Like you can take 1 damage from weak enemy and then activate shield to block 4 damage from Alpha Vek. Or use +2 movement on any turn. Also Advanced Edition's new ability "Opener" (boost & +2 move on first turn) much better than Lily Reed has so I wouldn't start the game with Lily or Bethany.

[@conjecturemm]

Yeah, you just have to be able to not burn your reset turn at a different point in the match. If you can successfully do that then I'd say Adam is better than them. And yeah skills add an interesting new dimension, but like I said in the beginning of the video this tierlist was supposed to be skill agnostic!

[@paradoxica424]

picture this: opener adrenaline Lily

[@DavidCosmanCozySmash]

​@@paradoxica424 I've gotten something like that before; Opener Masochist Lily. Very good pilot

[@ozanalkan137]

updated squad tierlist when?

[@trolenciopichicho4010]

How do I unlock them? I already have all the other pilots and achievements

[@DrGameTazo]

GOOD JOB~

[@rily2885]

Abe is good for early, but there are so many bugs that deal too much damage for +1 reduced damage to be valuable, most of the time you need twice your mech HP just to survive one hit from big boys and that +1 is rarely enough, I don't think he belongs in other tier but to me he is the weakest of his tier

[@conjecturemm]

Yeah he really is like a hyper situational pilot. But yeah I agree that unless he’s in a self damaging mech he’s super lame to have lol

[@paradoxica424]

and not being able to block bump/spawn damage takes the icing off the cake as well (though that would make the enemies much more annoying as well…)

[@PhilippeLemaire]

Pro French tip: Morgan's last name rhymes with bun.

[@philipkoch5062]

If you were to have an S tier who would be in it? For me it would be Archimedes, Kai, Silica, and maaaaybe Kazakpleth

[@conjecturemm]

probably mafan, kazaak, kai, and maybe camila? idk I think so many in the top tier are fantastic

[@paradoxica424]

while Rusting Hulks Camila is nice, Rusting Hulks Twin Core Mafan is a thousand times better (2 damage smoke storm for the final boss). Though Twin Core Mafan is pretty busted in general xD

[@philipkoch5062]

Another question: If you could have a pilot with any two skills what would they be?

[@conjecturemm]

You mean like two pilot skills? Prospero and Archimdes

[@philipkoch5062]

@@conjecturemm No, what I meant was 2 skills for a pilot. Skilled, Finisher, Invulnerable...etc. Which 2?

[@anguschen5597]

I like Ralph

[@andrewboteler7522]

Rosie doesnt heal status effects like frozen or fire, so you clearly didnt actually use her. Hilariously bad advice 😂

[@dmews7141]

You should have moved Abe down a tier to generate controversy for more views. Unfortunately all you have are well thought out arguments and reasons.

[@conjecturemm]

you're right. Mafan's actually F tier

[@paradoxica424]

Popular Hero Grid Defense Mafan

[@paradoxica424]

Ariadne is mid? really? I don’t find either of the passives compelling at all.

[@conjecturemm]

You’d put her lower? I think the three extra health is pretty nice for some builds

[@paradoxica424]

simply put, I dislike tanking builds, as you may have to expend turns to avoid dying, and if you die before the last turn, then it really hits you hard. it’s just the basic principles of resource management in a turn based game.

[@MrVinic33]

A.I. is the best?? lol

[@Raidoguy]

First!

[@conjecturemm]

First indeed!!