Can I beat XCOM 2 WOTC using only LW2 Grenadiers?

[@Haru-spicy]

Niam Leeson: _Missing_ in Action

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

You win the internet today.

[@overfailed3639]

You've gotta hand it to the man: He's sticking to his principles.

[@randorookie8587]

Of course he’s missing it’s all he ever does

[@derpmonlvl7079]

Wow just take my like

[@kindatim]

Sorry if I'm being dumb right now, but like, what's the reference?

[@plaguedokktor6420]

41:30 Drifter: Alright, flanking shot, on a trooper whose neck I'm literally breathing down on, looks like another kill to my- *BY THE ELDERS A COCKROACH*

[@Xuphilo_CHSM]

10:08 I’d imagine the survivors are thanking the rng gods he died, then start screaming in anger when they see him on the skyranger

[@oashen5475]

The real reason Leeson was alive after that mission, was because he *missed* his flight to the underworld

[@JonatasAdoM]

He had a 84% chance of entering. The underworld sent him back.

[@misterspoken2803]

Ya know, despite having just 16K subs, the dude does pretty damn fun challenge runs and he makes it engaging enough to hold viewers attention with jokes and his pretty good narration, keep up the great work drifter. (I'm not exactly talking bout this video but all his videos as a whole.)

[@Velociapcior]

I tried to watch other XCom 2 KZbinrs, but watching them upload every mission, without making it compact, makes them unbearable. I don't have 60hours to watch Chrsitopher Odd finish his challange. Drifter is so unique with his approach of compact (1h compact lol) content, I always come back to his videos

[@ForgedinPrint]

I think it's because he treats every campaign as a story, and each soldier a personality. Think about leeson, first thing you think of when talking about him is he is always missing.

[@BreakdancePeach]

@@Velociapcior It sounds like you want edited videos. ManyATrueNerd might be up your alley, as he's playing XCOM 2 right now. Granted, he's new and going in blind. He's playing on Veteran but just switched to Commander in part 15.

[@firestarter6488]

The Avatar didn't attack you because there were too many enemies active at once. For this single instance in the campaign, XCOM 2 was actually throwing you a bone, I guess.

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

Yea unless you play on highest difficulty enemy has an offensive action limit

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

The increased environmental damage of granades is really necessary in LW2 because normal grenades deal very little terrain damage

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

Trying to drop some advice here in the comments because I already suffered through this mod so I want to share some things to make it at least a bit easier

[@michelpignot1157]

It's more like they do no damage to anything but fences, unless you use the equivament of a nuke for buildings which suuuuuucks

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

@@michelpignot1157 true but you also have a lot more soldiers and other ways to destroy cover, like rockets and the special wall explosives In a game where you can bring what was it? 12 guys? You could destroy the entire map with granades They had to balance it somehow

[@michelpignot1157]

That's in theory, in practice, you'll only get up to 8 people until extremely late into the game where you get access to the superheavy weapons of the heavy suits which invalidate cover anyways, so in reality, you're just using up to 8 people because time limits on ops infiltration, not to mention that there are so few missions to even get corpses making getting plasma nades pain

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

@@michelpignot1157 true And the fact that most mission early don't give loot was one of my biggest problems with the mod

[@jaiclary8423]

They spend the entire trip back to base telling stories about Leeson, laughing, crying, mourning. They get back to base, they see Leeson standing there, and like a montage shot from Blazing Saddles, the entire team says in unison, "Aw, f#$k!" and splits up to go find something to drink.

[@齐轩-o3l]

Needle grenades preserves enemy corpses and deals +1 damage in LWOTC, good to have in the early game (killings enemies with explosives will destroy loot and corpses and there isn’t much way to get corpses other than some extremely difficult missions)

[@EruHjoyn]

In lwotc, grenadiers aren't a bad class, as what they offer is more needed. Cover destruction is very difficult, so grenades for guaranteed damage is stronger. Pod sizes can be bigger, so aoe damage is better. Support grenadiers also excel, because their non-turn ending actions like rapid deployment sting grenades pair well with officer abilities that allow them to then give actions and/or buffs to other soldiers.

[@MrMali22]

Yeah but that's how it is for every run. You really see how much each class needs the help of others

[@MofuggerX]

Minix was all like “notice me senpai” and then she missed her 96% (?) shot, to which Drifter reacted “oh I fuckin’ noticed!” But her redemption arc is one of the best character stories in the Drifter Cinematic Universe.

[@Xeakquh]

It's funny fellow console Stellaris player. how do you do this fine day?

[@incompetencelogistics8924]

So grenadiers in LW2/LWOTC are actually quite good, because in LW2 you don't have restrictions on how many versions of an item you can equip (so you can bring more frags) and you also get more inventory slots by default, so you have even more grenades. In LWOTC specifically, Needle grenades give the missing point of damage back, but only on unarmored targets.

[@mobgabriel1767]

neo:disapears in plane line of sight drifter:what is this thing me:he is starting to believe

[@NovaTheAngel]

8:37 I'm so living that joke. I very rarely laugh out loud. I usually just give out a small chuckle when I think something is funny or just a smile but this actually got me to laugh! I wasn't bending over or anything but I actually laughed! Thank you for this gift!

[@ormtapp6014]

Fun fac: did you know bluescreen rounds ignore shields and that they do extra dmg to gatekeepers.

[@Kirbycrasher2746]

1:17:10 allied soldiers also appear in that cutscenes if they were in bleed out when the last avatar is killed. I learned this in my first xcom2 playthrough when my custom soldier Mick “Sniper” Mundee (he was funnily enough an assault not a sniper) was shot and put into bleedout

[@TheDrEngineer]

I don't even play X-Com or know much about the mods or expansions but I can't stop watching these videos. If I have a flight or long commute coming up, I download them so I can watch some along the way. Very few people can make an hour long video and still keep it engaging enough that I enjoy watching the whole way through. Thanks for making these!

[@Zebo12345678]

In LW2, you actually _can_ see which enemies have loot vs which ones don't (they have an icon near their health) so the Needle grenades not destroying loot does come in handy in LW2

[@TrickyPilot]

34:03 should definitely make it onto your wall-of-fame memes!!

[@mothman8300]

58:30 Honestly that really reminds me of the clone journals from the old starwars battlefront 2

[@dude12125]

So glad I found a content creator still playing this awesome game. I was late to finding it and I’m loving it!

[@willbrolley262]

The Backlogs is another excellent content creator, and he's just about to start moving onto XCOM2 (after a dozen videos on XCOM) in the next month or two, hopefully. He's mentioned that he's actively playing it and enjoying the heck out of it.

[@MrMali22]

Pete complete is playing it too. He's doing a let's play on legendary. His channel is all about trying to get as many achievements as possible in one run pretty much (he does play some games multiple times like rimworld)

[@ForgedinPrint]

I mentioned this in another video (long after it came out) but I think I know why the mimic beacon didn't work properly on that archon. The mimic beacon has a high priority value compared to other things, like soldiers in cover. However there may be situations where other moves either have higher priority, or just was the selected value in that instance. From my understanding it appears as though the archon is required to do blazing pinions after an event, which I believe is a damage threshold and seeing soldiers clumped together (I hadn't really done much in the game myself so I cannot verify this). If that is the case, then it would have a chance to ignore the mimic because the pinions has such a high priority, realistically speaking the priority value could be picked over the mimic despite it being lower. If you want to see what I'm talking about with "priority" values, I believe there are free game engines, like early rpg makers (not the later ones as those do cost), that actually have this target/priority value system in place and are used to prioritize what the ai actually does.

[@antoniotrivelloni8191]

It's still blatant cheating. The fact that its description says "Mimic Beacon generates a holographic decoy that WILL draw enemy attacks" while operating as a way to force ADVENT to do what you want, makes that incident cheating.

[@ForgedinPrint]

@Antonio Trivelloni does it not draw enemy attacks? It does not say that it will prevent retreats or special attacks. According to that kind of description it should also draw the chosen and avatar attacks, and drifters mentioned it before but faceless and berserkers who are mad ignore it as well. You could easily argue glitch, yeah. Calling it cheating means there was intent behind this design to do so, when that just isn't the case.

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

@@ForgedinPrint Nah, that boi was definitely cheating haha.

[@MrMali22]

Would be not be able to do blazing pinions on the mimic beacon? Cause if so that doesn't explain why he didn't attempt to do it to the beacon instead of the 4 soldiers it seen

[@ForgedinPrint]

@Ron G blazing pinions, acid bomb, harbor wave and so on are all aoe attacks. These typically require multiple targets to hit. If your army of mimic beacons were right next to each other it might actually activate these aoe attacks on them.

[@Buglin_Burger7878]

I feel like if Xcom 3 is a thing they will give an enemy a Mimic Beacon after how many different ways you've proven it is broken.

[@mhk9245]

8:35 that was gold! thank you

[@theboredguy733]

It brings me great joy that you kept the salt from the final mission in its purest form, this run was shit yet you still pulled through, be proud of that mate.

[@mobgabriel1767]

leeson:dies the recruitment pool:somehow leeson returned

[@sebastienwall5853]

Not sure how you manage to keep XCOM entertaining after this time, but you do! Also, great content to chill out with in the evening (barring the clown music).

[@patukamu]

i didn't immediately notice the joke at 8:40 nice one

[@In.the.mood.2]

I still remember the first time I watched one of your videos and the first thing I thought was “this is some good intro music” you have the best Xcom content and I feel like you’ve done every xcom 2 challenge there is! But you still think of more so good job on being more creative than me.

[@matril328]

« Lofi beat to blow up/kill alien rulers to » I’m dying And I liked that five dates reference.

[@sorryimvague1613]

If you want a challenging challenge that isn't a solo class run. You could try the Overwhelming Enemy Pods mod. Basically tripples the amount of enemies. It would be interesting to see you attempt it with all classes in you barracks

[@evilbob840]

About that Archon with the mimic beacon and the blazing pinions... I don't know much about the XCom 2 AI, but it kind of works like a flowchart. The AI control file is quite confusing, but I think I at least have the basics of it. The Archon AI follows a sequence of actions until it finds one it can't do (usually because it has no action points left from a previous choice using them) or it runs out of things to check. First, if it has a special job, it acts on that job -- I'm not sure how jobs are assigned, but there are jobs for support, terror (prioritize resistance targets), aggressive, leader, etc. Next, if it's on green alert (patrolling), it checks if it should wander around. Next, if it's on red alert (XCom has been spotted), it does a red alert action. Last, it just does a generic action. The Archon's red alert action first tries to do a mimic beacon action, and if that didn't happen, all the regular expected violent actions, with blazing pinions being first choice (if it's not on cooldown and 2+ enemies are grouped up within range). The mimic beacon action -- for any enemy, not just Archons -- first it checks if a beacon is in LOS, and if it fails that check, bails on the whole mimic beacon action sequence. Then it does the moving closer and attacking with melee or standard shot (no special attacks). So, for this particular Archon, one of two things happened: 1) it had some special job that made it attack before checking for the regular red alert actions, or 2) (the one I think happened) it didn't have LOS on the beacon at the start of its turn, so it went to the standard move and attack choice, picking blazing pinions. It definitely had LOS after the first move, but that would have already been past the part where it checks for mimic beacon actions.

[@emberthecatgirl8796]

9:37 In LW2 you get a HUD element that shows you which enemies will drop loot

[@DefinitelyFroggyDioBrando]

Everybody gets some stormtrooper aim today, huh?

[@PugiGG]

Brilliant as always. I freakin love watching these, especially at night chilling, eating and watching Drifter😋

[@Plutario9715]

I'm surprised that you only have 10k tbh I thought you had way more judging by the quality of the content you post here. That 50k should be a breeze, keep up the good work, drifter!

[@fryingpanem]

I'm glad to see this come out, fun streams.

[@AleksanderK12]

I love your verbal juggling to avoid using the d-word and k-word :V

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

We must keep our KZbin overlords happy.

[@GreenSwordsman1]

The man, the myth, the legend. HE'S BACK!

[@demitriush4791]

Thanks for all you do, I’m always happy seeing another upload!

[@takenname8053]

SUPER NICE, impressive finish as always!

[@Alelip1000]

finally my girlfriend is out of the house so I can watch one hour of drifter doing a themed xcom 2 run. i was on the edge of my seat with the finale on this one! try number 2 for drifter senpai: "scraping the barrel run" reminder all of your soldiers start with the lowest possible stats as dictated by the long war 2 randomizer.

[@AsianDawg46]

Yeah, sapper is pretty good in vanilla, but in LW2 or LWOTC, it brings up the grenades from "No cover damage" to "just enough for you to have false hope."

[@michielzandbergen6219]

Whoooooohoooooooo, anpther Drifter video! And now we keep up the wait for the run where all pods activate at the same time

[@twinodoom]

40:57 Disoriented disables the Spectral Lancer's melee, so they can't attack

[@kbassi777]

Great job beating this challenge! I had know idea that a frost bomb can break mind control from a chosen.

[@Lugghandle]

Had me laughing so hard on the Boomer joke I had to rewind 3 times to hear what you said next.

[@lovethesuit]

Still a big fan, but let's see a run of Long War already. You're good enough to make it fun.

[@quaternarytetrad4039]

This video was laden with schadenfreude! Thanks for posting, Drifter!

[@ruthlesace]

In starting to think that the grenadiers have a hidden debuff for accuracy that makes them hit less than the odds say they should.

[@MarkofWisdom]

31 minutes in-I had the assassin spawn in that exact area on that map, leading to it being a shooting gallery after everything else was taken care of. Even had a lucky soldier with rupture from the random abilities that was able to make it an easy 1 turn kill. No mods either, so this is a vanilla WOTC possibility

[@mobgabriel1767]

as i memed after the live aliens:lay down your weapons you are surrounded minix:all i'm surrounded by is fear, and dead aliens

[@chevairelame]

You've been swarmed by enemies in both your LW2 solo-class runs. It might be a little early to call a pattern, but if this becomes a constant, then eventually a team is going to kick the bucket.

[@JonatasAdoM]

The game kinda reacts to what is going on, that's my tinfoil theory. If you're doing really well, the game will compensate. I remember an instance where I brought a squad with shredding and the game used high hp enemies instead and then armored/tech enemies when I brought a squad that couldn't deal with them. Will also never forger the mission where perhaps every single pod were sectoids.. what a literal trainwreck.

[@Superschokokeks]

"He and his entire incompetent team really made sure to secure defeat out of the jaws of victory on thise one" hm we'll just ignore whose fault it was that triggert the lost swarm. It was probably me. I think.

[@Mellomonkey05]

So glad to see Poggers in action on KZbin lol

[@jackknoxartz5853]

New drifter vid just what i needed

[@Plaine]

I haven’t watched any of the stream archives. I’m excited to see the outcome of this one!

[@devalk_]

I wonder if the Shield bearer affecting Sus was due to them maybe being coded as Advent for the purpose of targeting until they're recruited. So that they're not just immediately gunned own by advent

[@leshab7733]

What’s the mod that adds energy sweeper as a weapon?

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

I think it's the Tactical Legacy Pack DLC, not a mod.

[@gaberielpendragon]

The mimic beacon wasn't ignored, it was one of the targets in the pinions attack.

[@Schnittertm1]

Defeating Chosen while calming music is playing, is thight!

[@ussfriendship8989]

Hello I like your videos and wanted to leave you something interesting i found out. I dont know whether its actually new information, but I was quite surprised when I found out: When advent priests go into stasis while burning, they dont regenerate HP, and just die the next turn.

[@citcoin-official2681]

Mimic Beacon with Two shots to the back of the head- Ice Cold.

[@ryansmith-ni9cj]

this is great

[@overfailed3639]

Dawww, Leeson is back! I missed him! Well, time to reload and try again.

[@ZealotOfSteal]

I saw Leeson, the true hero of XCOM, and started this ASAP!

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

For a moment there i thought you're doing the "Leeson clone only" run.

[@SArugbyALLday]

Starting with Boomer sass is a strong opening my friend

[@modest_soup]

What did i learn from this video: any challenge run for a class that has the word grenade in it is cursed with bad luck

[@esuriolitum9169]

This nightmare run is a good example of why I love Xcom and yet curse it out every time I play. I was continuously stunned by how incompetent your soldiers were. It honestly felt like they were double agents and were tying their hardest not to kill the enemy most of the time. Or they were suicidal. Either way

[@BreakdancePeach]

fyi, if your description is up to date, *_Insider Knowledge Fix_* is redundant thanks to Community Highlander. Your stocks would be doing extra damage with Insider Knowledge (e.g. basic stocks go from 1 to 3 dmg). Wouldn't want anyone to say you're cheating now :P

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Yeah, I got rid of insider knowledge fix a while ago for that reason. Will need to update the mod list. Cheers.

[@BreakdancePeach]

@@TheDriftersBroadcast ah nice, thanks for lmk

[@drekon7877]

im just imagining Niam Leeson taking cover near a guy on a mission and the guy just closes his eyes not wanting to see that abomination of a man

[@Gh0stKiller3]

Thanks for the video big man 💯

[@alek7998]

I am very much a straight man, but when I heard Drifter's ASMR, my heart skipped a beat.

[@giacomomeluzzi280]

Regarding that Archon that broke concealment, I'm pretty sure that if you bunch up your guys the AI still has a chance to ignore the mimic beacon for an AOE attack. Not 100% sure because I stopped using them because they feel cheap, but iirc the AI is weighted towards certain actions and shotting a mimic beacon is high priority enough to override most actions, but AOE attacks become really "heavy" in that regard when they can hit multiple targets, and when you consider how heavy Blazing Pinions is in the Archon's AI already, 5 troops will weigh enough to have a significant chance to happen.

[@digitaldevil696]

Honestly equipping pretty much exclusively assault rifles felt like a mistake. Swapping to a shotgun makes the class a lot better, even though their mobility isn't huge, and you play pretty aggressively anyway, so close range encounters are a given. Add salvo for easy flanks later, also less missing point blank

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Yeah, I didn't realise they could equip shotguns until I was about halfway through the campaign haha.

[@georgesanders5380]

The boomer tree joke got me, ROFL!

[@reginoldogiuseppe7457]

Leeson has me laughing and slapping my knees

[@ruthlesace]

"She connects but THIS is where it all starts falling apart" right in the end have had me dying. Games been rigged from the start buddy.

[@sophie3352]

I'd say if Drifter starts the Rookies only run now, he'll finish it just in time for the 50k subs

[@SaltyRocksPew]

Can you beat xcom 2 as snekxcom? Rules= only viper soldiers added by mods. There's one that just replaces humans with vipers and they can be specialists/sharpshooters, etcetera. There's another that adds them as their own class, and another couple still that ads viper 'hero units' that lets you capture viper king and gives you torque from chimera squad. Details are up to you. Just give us snek.

[@johnmcdougal8642]

"He's back there at the avenger like a looney tune... or a horror movie" For advent both

[@marcelovinicius3386]

oh my god i missed you so much and youtube didnt sent me a notification, i even missed the rokie only run

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Gotta turn on the notification bell!

[@sprambles]

50k! but i'm already subbed twice. Hang on i'll see if i can get more accounts made. If you work for youtube you didn't read that last bit. Oh and solid work as ever bud.

[@Helpfulbull]

I would love to see a Rookies only run, except every Rookie is Leeson

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Each one could have different coloured armour and we could have Leeson Power Rangers.

[@Helpfulbull]

@@TheDriftersBroadcast I absolutely love this idea!

[@goigadol1420]

advice for the lost, sit atop a ladder and they cant attack you and also they try to target you by going up any ladder they see also it gives height adventage so also a plus. basically it makes them take another path and most of the time it means no attacking your troops

[@RinIsArty]

The amount of problems you have with hit chances in these runs reminds me *exactly* why I have the mod for true hit chances.

[@VolcanicSpacePizza]

Oh Drifter you're getting really spicy with that boomer joke.

[@teampyro231]

He's back and in full misses

[@h4hyena]

If you aren't I would recommend doing these runs with precision grenades. This is because lw2 you are forced to use this adv option.

[@warriorinred3405]

By the end of the video I'm quite sure of my theory that the grenadier mod plus long war mod did something to the hit chance mechanic. Either the game is misrepresenting the actual hit chance or the glitch is that despite the high hit chance it's rolling misses anyway because of all the mods. Even for XCOM this is ridiculous.

[@gyny2358]

I dunno about beating chosen ASMR, but XCOM 2 gameplay ASMR would be nice...

[@The-one-who-drives]

Wait normally when you upgrade on LW2 everyone gets gear? Dam i gotta turn off whatever mod changes that

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

This is still the vanilla game, just using a LW2 class.

[@The-one-who-drives]

Ohhh, ok

[@Marxon1134]

You want a good challenge? Compulsive reloaders only. Only classes with reloadable primaries can be used and can only fire once before reloading. Other abilities can be used but ONLY after reloading in the same turn.

[@unrulyracer]

Ya know watching these challenge runs are fun and its great. But have you ever played xenonauts? I think that would be a challenge throughout the entire campaign and with the soon to be released of the second game it would be nice to see that.

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Played a bit of it and got my butt kicked in record time lol.

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

I'm wondering what will be the next class LW Gunners are fun AOE suppression can be ready broken I think the sword class is called shinobi (been a while since I played) and they can deal massive damage with a sword If I remember correctly the class with the gauntlet is called an engineer (again, been a while) and having a full team of rockets and flame throwers could be ready fun, the only problem is that rocket accuracy really drops after moving

[@mikoajciemiega8018]

Ok, I checked and they aren't engineers, they are Technical class Specialists are mostly the same as normal Sharpshooters are strong but they don't have pistols by default (no class in LW has them, you can give everyone a pistol in seperate slot but it costs mobility) And rangers are just really good with gun Accurate, fire twice if not moving ect Hero classes also changed but not as much I think the biggest hero change is that templars now have riot shields that give them light cover

[@ruthlesace]

Dr. Dr. Bob is now my favorite

[@BaskinTimi]

Now play Xcom 2 but every possible dark event is active for the entite game

[@SlivkoverseStories]

I believe the most annoying thing I had happen, well a lot of annoying stuff happened in this game to be honest, but one that this video reminded me off was one of the chosen gain the immunity to explosions when he or she had the weakness to explosions. Really annoying and I dont think it was a strength it got I think he had it from first appearance which hurts even more. xd

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Something has gone wrong with your game there. The Chosen never get an immunity to something they are weak to.

[@dahelmang]

What do you think of the Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor and Shadow of War? It seems pretty similar to the Chosen, but with replacements.

[@TheDriftersBroadcast]

Pretty sure the XCOM devs actually sighted the nemesis system as a source of inspiration for the Chosen. It's a cool system... just wish it wasn't attached to WB. 😥

[@dahelmang]

@TheDriftersBroadcast well I am glad they made it, but that's risky because there is a patent on it.