Part 21

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Sniper and Assault class perks. Learn about Rank 5 abilities like Executioner, Opportunist, and Rank 7 abilities like In the Zone and Double Tap.

Sniper Class Perks:

Rank 5: Executioner or Opportunist

• Executioner: Grants +10 aim against targets with less than half health. This is mostly useless as +10 aim is fairly weak.
• Opportunist: Removes penalties on overwatch shots. Very useful as it means that Snipers can go on overwatch on the chance that the enemy spots you first. Stacks with squadsight to mean that enemies are now pinned because if they move, they're highly likely to be shot dead by the sniper.

Rank 6: Low profile (only choice)

• Low Profile: Half cover (partial cover from enemies) gives full cover bonuses. Can be stacked with memetic skin gene mod (a community-made modification that changes the game) to give constant free cloaking.

Rank 7: In the Zone or Double Tap

• In the Zone: Shots that kill enemies out of cover do not count as an action. Allows snipers to kill enemies in massive chains. It does however require one hit kills which can be hard to chain and any misses will end the turn. The one hit kill may also be done with a pistol but it can only happen once. Remember that you can always blow up your enemies cover to satisfy the conditions of this ability.
• Double Tap: Shooting as the first action does not end the turn. Has a cool down of 1 turn. This means you can headshot (a critical hit to the head) one alien and then disable another!

Assault Class Perks:

The Assault is a close-range badass with a shotgun or assault rifle. The shotgun has greater range penalties for mid to long range shots while doing more damage and having a massive critical chance for close range shots. It is recommended to give the assault a shotgun unless you don't have the funds or research to give him a shotgun of the appropriate tier (i.e. don't send an assault with a ballistic shotgun when everyone else is fighting with plasma rifles).

Assault Stats: Aim: 89, Hp: 8

Rank 1: Run and gun (no other choice)

• Run and Gun: Allows for the assault soldier to dash (move two whole movements at once) and then fire. This means that the assault is the best for getting into people's faces and firing. It also means that the assault is also the riskiest and one of the most difficult classes to use seeing as how dashing is so risky in this game. Dashing towards an activated enemy squad could either activate another squad or activate several. This is definitely not the class you want to take on Thin man missions.

Rank 2: Tactical Sense or Aggression

• Tactical Sense: Confers +5 defense for each enemy in sight for a total of 20. Useful but not too useful since that means your assault is now being shot at 4 times and that bonus of +20 isn't going to help much. Only pick this because aggression is fairly worthless.
• Aggression: Confers +10 critical chance for each enemy in sight. While this will help the assault do critical's against hardened enemies, the assault generally doesn't need it. But if you want to guarantee a critical, then this is the perk you'd want to have for your assault.

Rank 3: Lightning reflexes or Up close and personal

• Lightning Reflexes: Causes the first overwatch shot to miss. Very situational, may or may not be necessary considering that dashing gives you full cover defense for any overwatch shots and the rarity of enemies going on overwatch.
• Up Close and personal: First shot against an enemy that is 4 tiles in terms of distance to the assault will not count as an action. Cannot be combined with run and gun and thus is mostly freaking useless. Maybe just maybe if you're having trouble with chrysalids and couldn't be bothered to use MECs. Given that the assault is slow just like everyone else, the only other time this ability will be used if the enemy positioned themselves in such a manner that your assault can move using the blue field (1 action bar) and end up right in front of them... that will rarely happen.

Rank 4: Flush or Rapid Fire

• Flush: Fire a shot that does half damage but has a +30 aim (chance to hit) and will cause the target to move out of cover if hit. This is a team player ability and combined with snipers with 'in the zone' or Heavies and their low aim, you've got one hell of a setup to knock the enemy firmly into the ground.
• Rapid Fire: Fire a special shot that is essentially two shots at once but each shot gets -15 aim. Very very deadly since it can be combined with run and gun and there's no reason why a -15 aim will offset the massive close range bonus a shotgun gets. If you want your Assault to be soloing the enemy, this ability is the one you want.

Rank 5: Close combat specialist or Bring em On

• Close combat specialist: Get a free reaction shot to any enemy who walks within 4 tiles of the assault. Deadly to melee type enemies but just remember that melee type enemies were built to survive a hit or two so its entirely possible for you to shoot and critical hit them only to still lose the assault. This ability is also useful when the enemy decides to hump your squad when activated (this happens when the AI detects that everyone has no action bars left to shoot or overwatch with). Fairly useless but not exactly the worst ability/perk either.
• Bring em On: Adds one critical damage for each alien in sight up to a max of 5. This ability literally asks the player to get his squad into suicide territory. Because that's what you want? To have 5 aliens shooting at you because you wanted to get +5 extra damage on a critical hit (which won't happen when your assault is dead)? Useless, even when you are fighting 5 aliens at once.

Rank 6: Extra conditioning (no choices here)

• Extra Conditioning: Gives extra Hp for the armor they're wearing. Heavy armor gives +4, medium armor gives +2 and light armor gives +1. Considering that the assault is most likely to be shot, this is just false reassurance for the unlucky.