Chimera Squad Enemy Analysis: Shrike Cobra
HP: 7 (+1/+3)
Dodge: 15Aim: 80/80/85/85 (+2/+5)
Mobility: 12
Damage: 3-6 (+1/+2)
Will: 60 (+10/+20)
Initiative: 30
I'm not sure why Cobras don't get HP out of raising the difficulty; it feels weird to me, personally. It's not like they get Dodge or Armor instead...
Alert Actions: Move to a better location, Hunker Down.
Vipers have two Interesting Actions, but they're both damaging, so as usual they don't get to use such in the Breach Phase.
Poison ImmunityPassive: The Cobra cannot be Poisoned, and will not take damage from certain Poison-based attacks.
Poison SpitTurn-ending action: The Cobra spits a cloud of Poison at a targeted area, requiring a clean line of fire to the center. This Poisons every unit in its radius for 2 turns. No effect on units immune to Poison. 1 charge.
... they have the classic Viper Poison Spit, and are in fact willing to aim right on top of themselves with it.
Compared to the XCOM 2 Viper version of Poison Spit, for some reason it only has one charge and always ends the turn. It's a weird pair of nerfs, especially since Torque retains the XCOM 2 style of Poison Spit.
It's not relevant very often that it's gained these limits, mind, as Cobras usually move before attacking regardless and even mediocre play in Chimera Squad rarely gives individual enemies enough turns for the original cooldown to finish, but it's still sort of odd.
Also lowering its relevancy is that Cobras far prefer...
Rooting VenomTurn-ending action: The Cobra attacks a single target in range, automatically hitting and Rooting the target for 2 turns. Additionally, the target takes 1 (+2/+3) damage. 3 turn cooldown, 2 turn global cooldown.
... this.
To be completely clear: in spite of being named Rooting Venom, this does not Poison the target. It only inflicts Root, and by extension it doesn't care about Poison Immunity. Surprisingly, its damage is actually affected by Armor, too, which really matters given how much damage it gains from Act bonuses.
Rooting Venom itself is, in abstract terms, one of my favorite abilities in Chimera Squad, being an interesting experimental ability that is okay with being pretty abstract in regards to what's 'really' happening (Paralysis is a possible consequence of real venom... but the paralysis in real life is naturally a bit more general in its implications than 'you can't walk for a bit'), but in practical terms I'm a bit underwhelmed.
On the plus side, it's an enemy action that cannot miss, and so a Cobra using it is reliably getting in some damage; Cobras were in fact the 'elite' Shrike enemy I found most problematic in my first few runs simply because the other 'elite' Shrike enemies can be neutered pretty readily with movement and whatnot, whereas Cobras have two ways to do damage at range that can't be foiled by dice or negated by the player doing the right stuff with immediately-following agent actions.
On the minus side, Cobras are pretty terrible at assessing the correct target to Root (Among other points, they don't 'see' immunity to Root, such as Zephyr's innate immunity), and Chimera Squad is basically the wrong game for it to be reliably threatening.
That is, in XCOM 2, lots of missions involve the squad needing to keep moving in a timely manner to accomplish the objective, where anyone being immobilized for a couple of turns is A Problem to at least some degree the majority of the time. If the Cobra were a later-game Viper variant in XCOM 2, Rooting Venom would be menacing the majority of the time, even if they weren't smart enough to specifically target Rangers, Templar, whoever is carrying the objective, etc.
But in Chimera Squad, only a small number of mission types place it as important to get people to a specific destination on a timetable, and the timetable element in Chimera Squad is often 'softer' anyway: VIP Extraction in XCOM 2 fails the mission and causes the squad to go MIA if you have everyone dally too long. VIP Escort in Chimera Squad just... generates reinforcements for taking too long. And it doesn't escalate if you keep stalling, or anything of that sort. (Or at least not quickly enough for me to notice such happening in even my slowest attempts at such missions)
Also not helping is how flanking is lower-impact in Chimera Squad: if Godmother flanks a target and Rapid Fires them. she'll do maybe 2 more points of damage total and okay she'll also be more accurate. If an XCOM 2 Ranger flanks a target with endgame stuff to then Rapid Fire in the base game, they'll gain up to 16 damage between their GTS upgrade and the +5 crit damage! (And even in WotC, they'll still gain up to 10 damage from flanking) As such, even though Rooting Venom semi-regularly denies a flanking opportunity, this is often kind of whatever -even before considering the point that most agents have at least one way to ignore Cover at range.
If XCOM 3 follows strongly in XCOM 2's footsteps in regards to mission design, specifically the 'get to a destination quickly' aspect, I very much hope Rooting Venom gets a second chance to shine as an Enemy Ability I Hate And Fear, but within Chimera Squad itself it only rarely costs the player more substantively than the HP loss it induces. Sometimes it'll mean you can't go for a Subdue you'd like to do, and on very rare occasions it will combine with something like a Purifier's delayed-blast firebomb to actually be a fairly scary combo...
... but overall, it's a poor fit to the game it showed up in.
Alas.
------------------------------
Narratively, Cobras are yet another enemy we don't really get context on. They're Shrike Vipers, that's really all we've got, including of course that they're probably the clearest example of how it's not obvious how we should take different Viper capabilities. That is, do Vipers come in very different physical types, where Cobras are the strain of Viper that has a paralytic venom, and I guess this strain joined up with Shrike to an unusually large degree? Or is Rooting Venom being Cobra-specific just a gameplay thing you shouldn't think too much on?
Aesthetically, Cobras are another of my favorite enemy designs! Taking the general Shrike style of 'armored black ops-looking stuff' and translating it from the human shape to a Viper's body is a tall task, and Chimera Squad manages to land the balance of 'looks in-theme to Shrike' and 'is radically different to accommodate the Viper body' being simultaneously true. Among other points, while it's unfortunately a bit easy to overlook in regular play due to the overhead view, Cobras have a good amount of armor -not just the huge helmet- but it's concentrated on the upper body, and not down on their flexible tail/main torso region. Given that in real life putting armor on flexible locations (eg joints) without significantly impairing their flexibility is a constant struggle, it's very understandable that most of the Viper body isn't getting anything beyond their natural scales, especially since real snake locomotion is often reliant on said scales for grip and all; putting armor on the main of the torso for a Viper could easily be the equivalent of armoring a human's legs in the form of encasing them both in a single tube, preventing them from walking.
Furthermore, most of a Viper's body is very low to the ground; realistically speaking, a Cobra in cover often has the unarmored parts of its body out of the line of fire. So that's another way it makes in-universe sense for Cobras to skimp on armor away from the upper torso, arms, and head.
An interesting wrinkle to this I'm unsure of the intent of -and which my screenshot for this post is unfortunately poor at showing- is that Cobras have some manner of covering on the tail end of their... tail... that I would guess is meant to be more armor. I can imagine a few different angles to this, like maybe the devs noticed Viper animations often leave that part of their tail out in the open when they're in Cover and so slapped some armor-looking stuff on it, but it's overall not entirely obvious what it's meant to be, and of course there's no in-game explanation. I'm curious if a later game will bring this element back, and if so I do hope it actually gets explicitly stated what it's supposed to be about; it seems likely to be interesting.
The Cobra's helmet is also neat, if in a more straightforward way to describe since it's pretty clearly first and foremost 'wrap a spec ops helmet thing around the Viper hooded head'. The result is very visually striking regardless; I honestly hope XCOM 3 will give us Viper squad members with similarly-interesting-looking helmets.
-------------------------------
Next time, we cover Shrike's Muton unit, the Bomber.
See you then.
Comments
Post a Comment