Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Shrike Bruiser

HP: 6/6/6/7 (+1/+3)
Armor: 1
Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)
Mobility: 10
Damage: 3-4 (+1/+2)
Will: 50 (+10/+20)
Initiative: 50

Alert actions: Move, Hunker Down.

Bruisers actually have a special action that would make sense to be an Alert action, but... isn't used. Oh well.

Bash

Turn-ending action: A move-and-melee attack that does 3-4 damage to the target, ignoring Armor and knocking them Unconscious if it reduces their HP to zero. Can't miss.

I've never actually seen a Bruiser use this in AI hands, and suspect they don't have any AI for actually using it. The fact that it doesn't scale with Investigations is suggestive; it's entirely possible the devs forgot they gave Bruisers Bash at all.

It's still relevant through Puppeteer letting the player direct a Bruiser to use it, and since it ignores Armor and Defense this is worth keeping in mind even in later Investigations even though their Pistol's base damage will pull ahead; it can be the best thing to have a Puppeteered Bruiser break out on a Grey Phoenix Praetorian even in Act 3, for example.

But outside Puppeteering Bruisers, I'm pretty sure Bash doesn't matter at all.

Riot Guard

1 action point: The Bruiser gains 1 point of Armor, is considered to be in Low Cover even when flanked, and acts as Low Cover to adjacent allies. Effect ends the first time damage is sustained and only lasts 1 turn.

This is literally Cherub's Guard passive, except the Bruiser has to activate it manually, making it much less useful. They also are generally reluctant to use it; the vast majority of the time they prefer to change position before shooting, even if their current position is perfectly fine. I'm not entirely sure what prompts them to decide now is the time for a Riot Guard, but I've mostly seen them do it en mass if they do it at all, where multiple Bruisers in a row all decide to use Riot Guard, so I suspect this is some overall assessment thing rather than a Bruiser making a 'local' assessment.

Surprisingly, Bruisers can use Riot Guard while Disoriented. I'm... not sure how useful this is to know, but there you go.

Overall, in practice Bruisers are normally A Boring Stat Block Enemy, and in this duty they exacerbate the counterintuitiveness I covered with Hitmen. The Pistol-wielding guy with heavy armor and a shield... has less HP than the Pistol-wielding guy not carting around such heavy defenses? When the lightly armored Pistol guy has no exotic defenses to make up for this? Within a given Encounter a Bruiser can still end up one of the more dangerous enemies on the map, somewhat occluding all this, but it's pretty conspicuous when Bruisers and Hitmen are showing up together.

So that's all wonky.

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Aesthetically, the Bruiser has the conspicuous oddity that when they die, their shield disintegrates basically instantly, even though the Bruiser shield is a regular physical object and not some 'hard light' tech or the like.

I assume shields self-destruct in Chimera Squad to make ragdolling look less ridiculous; a large rectangle is exactly the shape I've seen wig out most often in games that make wide use of ragdoll effects, where they wildly vibrate over small gaps, clip right through terrain, and otherwise behave absurdly. If so, the Bruiser is just an unfortunate victim of a simple solution to this problem that happens to not be visually intuitive on Bruisers in specific, which is understandable.

I suspect most players are just left baffled by noticing it, though.

Narratively, Bruisers are of course another unit that's not explained beyond their name, but they don't really need an explicit explanation; 'some Shrike troops go into combat with particularly heavy protection' is pretty straightforward to intuit. It might've been nice to get a little more context, but of the units that are left vague, Bruisers are one of the lowest priority for 'would benefit from more explanation'.

So that works out.

One thing I do want to point out, though, is that Shrike never explicitly has hybrids confirmed to be in their forces, but it's entirely possible they're meant to; since hybrids and humans use the same animation skeleton and Shrike forces consistently completely cover their heads, the human Shrike units (such as Troopers) could just as easily be hybrid units in any given case. I'm not entirely sure this is intentional an effect, but it would be consistent with how Shrike is the only faction to use all four core animation sets, in the sense that Shrike is surprisingly species-diverse.

I'm bringing this up with Bruisers in particular because they use non-standard blood effects when shot; I'm not 100% sure this is intentional, but if it is then it strongly suggests Bruisers are meant to be hybrids.

(Mind, Sacred Coil forces are also very consistently covered up enough that a given soldier could totally be a non-hybrid human under there, but the narrative is very unambiguous that their forces are all hybrids. Shrike is presented in a less clear manner)

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Next time, we move on to the first alien Shrike soldier, the Necromancer.

See you then.