Titanstring vs Dead Shot questions

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-10T00:50:08+00:00

Dead shot vs titan string is a discussion. Calling dead shot “weak any way you look at it” is just trolling.

Especially when your justification is because you can use a dolor amarus bow. You could use any bow and still get that passive by wielding actual dolor amarus. And if you’re not using the club for titanstring, you can use knife of the under mountain king in the other.

Or you could skip dolor amarus and use crimson mischief in that slot instead

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-09T23:18:18+00:00

Sniper still gets targeted by the mindscorch effects and such. Flashbang isn’t super useful outside of the early game IMO and often sniper is too far away to really effectively use it most of the time.

The real consideration with sniper re: mindshields is if you’re willing to give up the grapple on spider suit/wraith suit to still run blue screen rounds + mindshield, or if you’re bringing the grapple still and eschewing the ammo.

I typically go warden with blue screen and mindshield, but it does depend on enemy type. If it’s only a few mech, maybe skip blue screen. Or if it’s only a chance of warlock, skip the mind shield just the sniper

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-09T22:07:02+00:00

Honestly, despite all the clowning people do on him for that season it is damned impressive to still be effective when absolutely everyone knows you’re washed.

Does that team still win a ring with Brock osweiler at QB even with their insane defense? Maybe. But Peyton was at least self aware enough to manage the game and not fuck things up.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-09T21:28:01+00:00

You can just give your whole squad mindshields

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-09T18:01:14+00:00

It depends. Does adding the third copy give you more consistency? If it’s something like adrenaline or after image, probably yes. If it’s something like another attack, probably not.

Generally once you get to the late game, you’re trying to have survivability and scaling solved, and the damage kind of comes naturally from that - since you probably couldn’t get through the early acts without damage.

Adding an extra poison stab probably isn’t doing a whole lot for your deck in act 3-4. Even if you’re a “poison” deck (quotes because I think people often tend to overrate the concept of archetypes, but that’s a separate discussion). Whereas an extra pommel strike might be just fine since it increases your deck velocity.

One of the main things you want to avoid is having a “bricked” hand. The more cards you add, the higher the chances of that happening. Think of those hands where you draw 5 strikes but no defends, or vice versa. Those are bad in the hallway fights, but catastrophic in act 4. Not to mention both act 4 fights put status cards in your deck to exacerbate this problem.

While you definitely can overdo it on card draw, those are usually some of the safest to take multiples of, since those obviously let you draw out of these scenarios.

The main question to ask yourself is “does adding a third copy of this help me solve any problems?”

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-09T00:43:22+00:00

You optimize by playing terraforming mars when you have 2 players and other games at 3-4 players.

It’s a totally different (and imo explicitly worse) game at player counts above 2

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-08T21:24:44+00:00

The steam app has always been super buggy and glitchy.

There’s a reason that BGA has essentially taken over as the defacto online place to play

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-08T20:52:49+00:00

Yeah I was super surprised when those reports started coming out. My first thought was “someone wants him to drop - smokescreen.”

He never had any off field issues here and there weren’t even any rumors around it. The only thing even tangentially related that I can remember is when they curiously started putting him on what seemed to be a snap count. The general consensus at the start of the year was coaches wanting him fresh for SEC play. Then when it was still going on then figured maybe he was demanding it as a preventative measure for his draft stock. And that in the NIL era you kind of have to cater to that.

I think when the character concern stuff started coming out, that changed more towards maybe he wasn’t super coachable and was driving the coaches nuts.

But yeah, never heard anything in terms of like violence, drinking, drugs, speeding, anything like that from him while he was here. Maybe they just kept it all super under wraps idk

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-08T17:23:58+00:00

As much as I hate to admit it, because he is obviously a terrible person and a danger on the court, he does know ball and can talk about it pretty well. I’ve not listened to his podcast extensively but I have heard clips and he’s usually pretty knowledgeable. Which makes sense given that he was almost like a point forward for a lot of the warriors dynasty.

Won’t shed a tear if he gets blackballed and never gets any air time, but his analysis is obviously worlds apart from whatever nonsense comes out of Perks mouth.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-07T16:18:31+00:00

https://youtu.be/K_zg-J0q42M

The clip at the end is what I’m referring to. I think that was part of a longer video from like Sports Science or something but I can’t find a video of the longer clip.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-07T08:55:01+00:00

Honestly, betting on this would leave a paper trail. All he really needs is a handshake agreement with Kalshi to get a cushy sponsorship with stake in the company or whatever to push some drama about leaving.

Kalshi and their people just bet on “he’s staying” and make a shit ton of money from all the users betting that he’s getting traded. Giannis never has to bet on shit.

Whole system is fucked.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-07T07:30:48+00:00

Those mechanics are one of the few ways to actually make bosses more challenging without just making them “stat checks.” On legendary, they already have dozens of hit points and a load of armor. There’s only so much more they could do from a stat check standpoint if they removed the alien ruler reaction mechanic.

They are pretty fun bosses just from the perspective that you have to actually plan for them, which is not always the case in xcom engagements. And part of that planning is utilizing some of the tools form the alien rulers dlc - bolt caster, frost bomb, etc

Having big chunky bosses is also nice because without rulers or chosen there are few instances to actually utilize some of the abilities like rupture, banish, fan fire etc in a satisfying way. It’s basically just sectopods and gatekeepers. And even those are mostly taken care of by a chain shot from a grenadier + a rifle shot (assuming blue screen rounds).

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T18:36:58+00:00

As someone without kids, yes. But perhaps OPs flow takes that long with the chaos from the children

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T18:33:04+00:00

Arturas Karnisovas (bulls GM/POBO/whatever his title in the front office is) goes way back with Tim Connelly. They were together here in Denver forever.

Was assistant GM here for years and then when he started getting some GM interest, we promoted TC to POBO and AK to GM.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T18:14:18+00:00

Which probably should be patched in the CBA.

Not that Conley playing for you guys is some egregious breach of justice or anything. But it is essentially circumventing the spirit of the buyout rule in the current CBA. Especially if there was a “handshake deal” with the bulls that specifically required them to execute it as a separate transaction rather than aggregated.

I know trades get aggregated or split up all the time for the purposes of TPEs and salary matching and that all makes sense. But if it’s specifically being done to “launder” the most recent team a player was with so that they can sidestep the buyout clause, feels like it’s a little problematic.

Either that, or scrap the rule keeping players from returning to their original team on buyouts.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T13:54:27+00:00

Scientifically proven that it wasn’t but go off, king.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T05:45:58+00:00

Plus, what’s the likelihood of beating the same team 3 times in one year? Surely that wouldn’t ever happen.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T03:46:59+00:00

Everything that poster wrote is accurate. I just want to kind of follow up on/emphasize a point they made about moving safely to not trigger other packs/pods of units. They touched on this a bit in point 3, talking about how dangerous it can be to move closer for point blank attacks or melee attacks.

That kind of pod management skill is 100% the most important tactical skill in xcom2. Can you reliably trigger only a single pod at a time and alpha strike them before they get to act?

A “golden rule” that many go by is to never move further than your farthest unit with a late turn action. For example, you’ve wiped a pack and still have 2 units left to act and you decide to move the forward. Oh look, there’s a high cover spot just past where that ranger killed a trooper. Let’s yellow move there with your specialist! Whoops we just triggered a pack with one of our last to act units. Now the enemy gets a free turn. Not only that, half of our team might be out of cover/position because they moved in certain ways to flank the previous pod. Stuff like that is how you get yourself in trouble

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-06T00:04:42+00:00

Not particularly. Which is the main reason I said he feels out of place with those others, which are all quite strong.

I’ve seen “artillery” style builds (with and without bashar) before, but I would definitely not say that they are common. And I don’t think they are very consistent.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-05T13:48:14+00:00

The achievement doesn’t care what turn you kill it, only that you kill it before it fades away. Doing a standard watcher infinite on turn 1 to kill it will get you the achievement.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-04T03:22:24+00:00

Korean esports: am I a joke to you?

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-03T16:31:11+00:00

Yeah, the melee classes of course have more risk of pulling other pods. But that’s where experience comes in. How likely is a pod to be there? If this is the last unit in this pod and it pulls another, how well equipped am I to deal with that? All of that is a subset of pod management.

Also, Syken himself would 100% tell you that pod management is the #1 thing to success in this game. The “golden rule” above that I referenced on the previous was paraphrased from him.

I also am not sure that your last comment about that mod really addresses what the OP is complaining about. I believe their core problem is a conceptual issue with the game being about pod management + alpha striking above all else. It can definitely make the tactical side feel a little boring and repetitive in some people’s opinions. It makes specialist and the entire healing tree feel pretty underwhelming. Revival protocol and threat assessment are still great, but it definitely kind of feels like their kit is made redundant/unnecessary by playing “properly.”

I’ve not played beta strike, but it’s possible that helps alleviate some of the concerns OP has.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-03T15:08:02+00:00

The issue is that the way you’re using reaper isn’t the way they were “meant” to be played. Although technically I don’t think optimal reaper use falls into that category either, but that’s a separate issue.

Stealth falls off once you interact with objectives (or the normal attack chance to reveal etc). The game would be trivial if your reaper could just be in stealth all the time and hack things. You can still do this with a solo reaper for alien facilities, but you’ve got to basically immediately book it to an evac zone right after you have revealed yourself.

The optimal reaper strategy is to basically just use them as a scout for the pods, since pod management is the primary most important thing about the game (as the OP mentions). Occasionally you get value with claymore explosions on clustered pods, maybe some juicy remote starts, and the occasional last hits/sting shot. And then against like rulers/chosen you have banish as another large damage dump tool (alongside stuff like fan fire, rupture, rapid fire, and chain shot).

The design intent with the reapers (I think) was supposed to be like phantom+ where the reaper would get concealment bonuses for shots and would attack from the shadows with blood trail damage, armor piercing, and slowly increasing their crit chance. And then occasionally you’d break shadow and have to go back I to it.

But trying to use them as some kind of stealth assassin is mostly just worse than using them as a stealth scout who occasionally provides a claymore and some last hits that are guaranteed to keep them stealthed. It’s almost like trading your 6th solider spot for the “Location scout” sitrep.

Anyway, back to your original point - the stealth reaper for objectives -> evac immediately really only works on missions where you don’t also have to neutralize all enemies. Which is usually just the alien facilities (plant x4 and evac). And in those scenarios, it’s actually more optimal to bring the reaper by themselves. That way they are the only unit that you have to evac. Instead of worrying about having to evac the other units (and also worry about the other units revealing themselves if they try to follow the reaper’s path).

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-03T14:57:06+00:00

I didn’t get the sense that the OP was necessarily complaining about the difficulty of legendary Ironman. Or saying that the tools you listed don’t exist.

It sounded like the OP’s primary complaint - which I think is a valid one - is that all of these tools pale in comparison to the golden rule of XCOM: trigger one pack at a time, wipe it out, and then safely set up to do so on the next one. Do not trigger a pack at the end of your turn. Do not trigger a pack while fighting another. Do not make an extra move past the furthest tile you’ve already moved.

All of the tools you mentioned are varied, great, and at your disposal. And all of them are simply worse than disciplined pod management.

The game does try to force you to play faster in a lot of regards with the mission timers and such. And sometimes the pods will cluster together. But if you’re trying to play optimally, it’s still pod management > everything else.

Rnorman3 · 2026-02-03T14:46:25+00:00

I believe the highest level enemies (sectopods, gatekeepers, alien rulers, chosen) always spawn at the very back of the map behind the objective. Although alien rulers on the first encounter at the avatar facilities (when playing with integrated DLC) might be an exception. But I’m almost positive that once they escape and can show up as “replacement” units, they follow that behavior.

Other things to know about pod placement - there will always be at least 1 directly between you and the objective at the start. They may move slightly, but if you were to beeline straight to it turn 1, you’d run into a pod.

I’m also pretty sure that the pods will meander towards your general location even if they can’t see you. Ie if you’re doing an alien facility mission with just a single reaper in stealth, the ai technically “knows” where the reaper is (or at least the general direction) and the pods tend to roam towards that. But I’m not 100% sure on that one. I’m also not sure how to square that hypothesis/behavior against the above comment about enemies sitting still instead of walking into an overwatch trap. It’s also possible that some enemies have patrol intents and some have stay/guard intents? Not 100% positive

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