Chimera Squad Agent Analysis: Torque

Interestingly, in the code Torque is labeled 'inquisitor'. I'm curious as to why, as it's such an odd name for a Viper and doesn't seem to connect to her capabilities or personality at all. Maybe Torque was originally imagined with something much more different in mind?

Like Terminal, Torque uses an SMG. Unlike Terminal, she's clearly intended to not use it very often, preferring her innate Viper abilities, and indeed they tend to deserve priority over her gun. This gets less true as a run progresses, but less than you might expect.

Base Stats

8 HP (10 on the easiest difficulty)
65 Aim (75 on the easiest difficulty)
11 Mobility
40 Will (50 on the easiest difficulty)
20 Dodge

Additionally, the easiest difficulty provides +15 passive crit chance, raises the crit chance bonus from a flank to +40 instead of +33, and provides a passive +5 Defense.

Torque is a little above-average in Mobility and a little above-average in durability by virtue of having the unique distinction of being your only agent to actually start with points of Dodge. None of this is significant enough to be liable to stand out, but it does make Torque one of your more solid agents out the box.

Possible Scars

Jittery: -30 Aim
Sluggish: -15 Dodge
Shell-Shocked: -15 Will

Jittery is horrific, easily one of the nastiest Scars to get. Torque has some ability to work around it, with two built-in abilities that bypass Aim and one that can situationally let her contribute without worrying about Aim, but Jittery is very much the sort of Scar that demands immediate benching and attention.

Sluggish is a bit annoying since Torque has Dodge to inherently care about losing Dodge, but is ignorable if you don't specifically commit to getting Torque to 100 Dodge for reliable Grazes. Shell-Shocked is even more ignorable, since few enemies actually trigger Will tests in Chimera Squad.

Torque is also, if you do decide to set her up with 100 Dodge, one of the less likely agents to ever get a Scar in the first place; having effectively doubled HP against the majority of damage sources makes her a lot less likely to end up even hitting the 50% threshold for having a chance to gain a Scar.

Base Abilities

Subdue

Turn-ending action: A move-and-melee attack that does 2-3 damage to the target, ignoring Armor and with no chance to miss. If the target is reduced to 0 HP by Subdue, they're knocked Unconscious instead of killed. Some targets cannot be Subdued.

Torque is one of your better agents for giving an Impact Frame, having above-average Mobility, getting to pick up more Mobility later, and having an innate ability that intermittently lets her get in the thick of enemies right at the start of an Encounter, while lacking any major flaws like 'forbidden from actually equipping an Impact Frame' or 'has trouble sparing either of those Weapon Attachment slots'.

There's an argument this is redundant with Tongue Pull+Bind, but Bind is always lethal (Oddly), has less generous mechanics when it comes to having Torque advance to melee, and unless you take Tight Squeeze it's primarily a way to disable a target, not to remove it from the fight permanently. Even compared to Tongue Pull, Subdue has advantages like being able to target enemies Torque lacks a direct line of fire to and having no chance of missing even if the target is in High Cover.

It's also worth pointing out that Torque is the agent most fundamentally tilted toward lethality. Every single one of her offensive special abilities kills the target if it reduces them to 0 HP, with the only way to work around this being to have Verge on the field while having taken Collar and hooking Torque's targets into his Neural Network in advance of her killing them. If you're wanting to maintain a steady stream of capture-based Intel while using Torque, you're going to need to tilt things back in the opposite direction, and giving Torque an Impact Frame is a straightforward way to do this.

That said, this is a lot more dubious when fighting Sacred Coil, as their robots can't be KOed and Torque already has some difficulties contributing at full effectiveness against Sacred Coil. A different Weapon Attachment is probably called for on Torque in that Investigation, maybe even benching her outright.

Tongue Pull
1 Action Point: Torque attempts to pull a single enemy or ally adjacent to her current position from 3-12 tiles away. If used on an ally, guaranteed to succeed. If used on an enemy, performs a normal accuracy check with +40 to Aim, doing nothing if it fails. If used on an enemy successfully, Torque may immediately Bind the target, even if out of action points. Some enemies cannot be targeted with Tongue Pull. 1 turn cooldown.

Yep, Viper gonna Vipe.

Note that just like in XCOM 2, Tongue Pull will trigger Overwatch fire on the victim. This can be inconvenient if you forget about it, or it can be useful when you keep it in mind, such as if you combine Torque with Terminal and are deliberately abusing Guardian, or Zephyr with Lockdown.

Also notice that Tongue Pull cannot be used on people within 2 tiles of Torque. This is identical behavior to Viper Tongue Pulls in XCOM 2, but it's a fact that virtually never came up in that game, especially since it would tend to be invisible if you didn't bother with multiplayer, so I imagine there's plenty of Chimera Squad players who have been caught off guard by this, possibly unable to figure out why they can't get Torque to Tongue Pull their desired target.

Also, I've framed its Aim bonus as +40, but when actually using it you'll get a +20 attributed to Tongue Pull and a separate +20 attributed to innate weapon accuracy. No, that's not your Scope benefiting Tongue Pull or something. I assume that in engine terms Tongue Pull uses an invisible weapon that provides +20 to Aim while the Tongue Pull skill itself also provides a direct +20 to Aim, but whatever the reason it's an unfortunate bit of anti-clarity. I kind of suspect it's an accident, honestly, where it's meant to just have +20 and somebody didn't realize that they were providing +20 from two different sources; +20 is, after all, what Tongue Pull had in XCOM 2, and I doubt there's a technical issue reason to break up a +40 Aim like this.

Whatever is going on there, Tongue Pull is thus ludicrously reliable; at max rank that's a 112% chance to hit, meaning an enemy in Low Cover has only an 8% chance to not be grabbed... and Tongue Pull actually benefits from Aiming Angles, so it's entirely possible to see Tongue Pull having perfect accuracy on a target in Low Cover.

Of course, the ability to target allies is new. At this stage, it's also generally dubious; you don't get control over where Tongue Pull drops its target (Nor do you get a preview of where the target will land, unfortunately), and presumably out of accommodation for Bind it defaults to dropping the target orthogonally adjacent to Torque. Chimera Squad is much less fond of long stretches of continuous Low Cover than XCOM 2 is, and in fact rarely has individual segments of (useful) Cover stretch further than 2 tiles in a row. Crucially, when a Breach finishes your squad autonomously scrambles to Cover without input from you, and Chimera Squad strongly prefers the default scramble-to positions to be a series of 'isolated' Cover elements.

The end result is that Torque will, particularly when talking immediately post-Breach but to a fair extent most anytime, generally have 1-2 of her 4 legal drop spots filled by the Cover she's using, 2-3 spots be utterly without Cover, and 0-1 spots be actually a place a squadmate will be in Cover at all. When there is Cover to be potentially dropped next to, you have limited ability to arrange things so that's where the pulled agent ends up, and often it won't be useful Cover anyway. As such, until quite a ways later this is generally only worth considering if the agent is going to act before any functioning enemies and will be able to run for relevant Cover afterward.

Also, agents who use the same Breach entrance will all be in the same little area anyway, so there's rarely any utility to trying to move a fellow agent shortly after the Breach. As many Encounters are liable to end less than two Rounds after the Breach is over, it's pretty unlikely Torque will end up far enough away that Tongue Pulling an ally has a chance of being useful movement.

That said, first of all Torque has a later ability that gives Tongue Pulling an ally far more use, and secondly there are cases where an Encounter involves a notable amount of travel. VIP escort missions are the best example, as the entire squad needs to get from one end of the map to the other; Torque Tongue Pulling someone can let a turret-y agent (eg Verge) do their turret-y thing without falling horribly behind, and it's entirely plausible to be wiping out enemies entirely such that it's relatively safe for the agent to end up briefly away from Cover.

Meanwhile, a discussion of Tongue Pull's offensive applications isn't complete without talking about...

Bind
Turn ending free action: Torque immediately does 2 damage to an adjacent target, and completely disables them. The enemy in question cannot be targeted by anyone until the Bind is terminated, other than by Torque electing to continue the Bind on later turns, in which case she'll do 2 more damage immediately. Either way, this damage ignores the target's Armor. Each time Torque's turn rolls around again, she can abandon the Bind as a free action. She will also automatically terminate the Bind if she takes damage, doing so immediately after taking damage. Some enemies cannot be targeted by Bind.

Note that Bind specifically demands Torque is orthogonally adjacent to the target. Corner-to-corner touching doesn't work. This will normally not crop up when using Tongue Pull because it tries to pull the target to a position that's orthogonally adjacent to Torque, but can lead to confusion and frustration when trying to slither Torque up next to someone, potentially leaving one with the impression Bind can only be used after a Tongue Pull, rather than at any time so long as Torque is orthogonally adjacent.

Also note that, just like when Vipers Bound your troops in XCOM 2, though Torque visually moves into her target's tile, she is mechanically still considered to be standing in her original tile. This is notably limiting to Bind's utility outside of using it after a Tongue Pull, since it makes it dangerous to try to Bind enemies hiding behind single-tile pieces of Cover. As I just covered, one-tile freestanding Cover makes up a decent amount of the Cover in the game, and even rows of Cover will still have one-tile ends or corners. Furthermore, often if there is a row of Cover to use, it's Cover relative to your squad, and no protection at all from other enemies in the area; it's pretty rare for an enemy to be holed up in a dead end with a row of Cover such that Torque can roll up and Bind without it exposing her to enemy fire.

You should still keep an eye out for opportunities for Torque to move and Bind, and can potentially create such opportunities with the help of other teammates, but mostly you'll be using Bind after a Tongue Pull.

On that note, not every enemy is vulnerable to Bind. If an enemy doesn't use one of the standard animation sets of the game -human/hybrid, Sectoid, Muton, or Viper- you can't Bind them. And sometimes even if they do, you still can't Bind them. This can be a nasty surprise if you had Torque slither over to Bind an enemy only whoops they're actually immune! Fortunately, this correlates 100% consistently to their susceptibility to Tongue Pull, so most of the time you can check if they're vulnerable to Tongue Pull before committing to moving up for a Bind; if they can't be pulled, they can't be Bound, and you need a new plan. (Unless they were 1.5-2 tiles away... then they might still be susceptible to a Bind)

Bind itself is primarily a disable unless you take Tight Squeeze later; 2 damage is simply not enough on its own to kill anything (The most fragile enemies in the game still have 4 HP), and furthermore is a fairly small range for finishing off weakened targets. As a disable it's fairly effective; just keep in mind it's best used on whichever enemy will act next, so that if an enemy manages to hurt Torque it doesn't actually let the Bound enemy act. (Because their turn was already eaten and shoved to the end of the Timeline) As long as you keep that in mind, it's a rare example of a fully reliable complete disable -Stun effects in Chimera Squad consistently eat 1-2 action points, as a comparison point, where they can eat an entire turn or they can leave an enemy able to act, entirely at random. Bind will always eat their entire turn if you arrange things so the Bind won't be interrupted.

Bind's target limitations are still important to keep in mind. In the Progeny Investigation, it's essentially perfect; only Archons (An enemy that can't show up initially, and is rare even once allowed to show up), the boss, and a non-standard enemy only found in the boss' mission are immune to Tongue Pull and Bind. In Gray Phoenix's Investigation, there's Faceless, Berserkers, and two bosses in the Take Down Gray Phoenix mission that are all immune. Faceless and Berserkers are individually uncommon, but between the two Torque's options will be limited more regularly than in the Progeny Investigation. Sacred Coil's Investigation is really limiting, with Mecs, Turrets, Neonate Chryssalids, mature Chryssalids, Chryssalid Cocoons, Andromedons and their Shells, and both bosses of the Take Down Sacred Coil mission all immune; it's rare, but it's possible for a given Encounter to contain literally no enemies susceptible to Tongue Pull and Bind.

This is something of a recurring trend with Torque, actually: multiple of her abilities work on nearly every Progeny enemy, are less widely effective against Gray Phoenix, and are very limited against Sacred Coil. She's still usable against Sacred Coil and in fact has some notable advantages -Bind is very solid for dealing with Ronin using Tempo Surge, for example- but benching her in favor of Patchwork or some such is a reasonable option to consider.

One nice touch with Bind is that if the only surviving enemy is currently in a Bind, the game simply kills them off without bothering to force you to do it yourself. Surprisingly, the game is quite generous in its definition here; if you Bind an enemy, and the only other standing enemies are minions tied to the Bound enemy's survival, the game will decide you've won and kill them all. (Assuming the Encounter is in a state where every enemy being dead will end it, of course)

Note that this behavior actually overrules Verge's Collar ability, where Binding the last enemy, with them in Verge's Neural Network, will kill them instead of KOing them. I meant it when I said Torque is tilted toward lethality.

Also, in case you didn't read the description closely, I should explicitly point out that where a Bound unit in XCOM 2 could be targeted by other enemies and the non-Lost AI just had code to heavily discourage them from doing so, in Chimera Squad Bind outright blocks targeting the Bound unit with... anything other than sustaining the Bind, as far as I'm aware. Don't be having Torque Bind a target on the idea that her fellow agents will follow up and finish the disabled target, unless you're specifically intending to carefully target grenades or similar to work around the inability to directly target the victim. (Now that I think about it, Mind Flay would probably also work around the no-targeting limitation so long as the victim was already in Verge's Neural Network, though I've not actually tested this)

This isn't much of a limitation if you're keeping it in mind, honestly, but it can be an unpleasant surprise if you constructed a plan hinging on it.

Adaptable
Pre-Breach Special: Torque may make use of Vent Breach points without equipping Infiltrator Weave, and in fact cannot equip Infiltrator Weave. Vent Breach points are single-person access points and often provide access far into the map, providing easy flanks on multiple enemies, though they're also often dangerous positions. They always include the Surprised Breach modifier, meaning a successful shot during the Breach will Stun its target.

I like the idea of this but in practice it's arguably the worst of the Breach access specials. Vents are often fairly dangerous to make use of, they're the most egregious Breach access point about you making decisions blind, the rest of the squad gets no benefit out of Torque's access (They don't get to follow her or the like), and Breach actions and Items are often designed to reward blobbing the squad on one Breach point. (eg Terminal's ability to heal just before a Breach heals everyone at her Breach point, not 'the entire squad', and same for the Medipatch)

In conjunction with Vents being rare, Adaptable is... a cool idea with only limited practical relevance. (At least it's free and innate)

Plot missions with Vents are admittedly mostly pretty decent about having Vents result in being in good Cover and flanks on targets (Take Down Sacred Coil is a particularly stand-out example), but for general missions Vents are rare and often dubious to actually leverage. If you do try to take advantage, you should probably have Torque be the first to take a turn, so if she pops up in a bad spot you can get her moved to a safer location before any enemies get to attack her.

I'm particularly sad no enemy ever screams SHE'S IN THE ROOM!

Poison Immunity
Passive: Torque cannot be Poisoned, and will not take damage from certain Poison-based attacks.

By itself, this is merely mildly cute, as most enemies have no ability to produce Poison, and initially your squad won't be able to do so either.

As Torque levels and you unlock new gear, it gets a bit more relevant, allowing the squad to produce Poison clouds confident that Torque, at least, will be able to charge right in without fear. It's particularly relevant in the Gray Phoenix Investigation, as one of their Vipers has a Poisonous melee attack, but it can crop up in any Investigation from enemy action, as the Shrike Viper can spit a Poison cloud.

A cute touch is that even civilian Vipers are immune to Poison, as you'd expect them to be. This is particularly relevant to Torque since, as we'll be seeing, she gains an area-of-effect attack that doesn't affect units immune to Poison; this can also come up via Gas Grenades, but it's a lot less likely. (Because the impact damage of a Gas Grenade will still be applied, and so kill Viper civilians; they have to randomly scramble into a cloud for their immunity to matter there)

Anyway, Torque's immunity to Poison being overall low in relevance honestly works out decently from a game design standpoint; Torque has four distinct abilities unique to her out the box, but because Poison Immunity and Adaptable are often irrelevant Torque doesn't end up oppressively powerful compared to the agents who have 1-2 initial abilities. If Adaptable and Poison Immunity were a lot more constantly relevant and powerfully advantageous, Torque would probably be unfairly good -especially since she's honestly one of the better agents as it is.

I do hope that if XCOM 3 does Viper squadmates that it won't pass out quite so many abilities to Viper squadmates out the box, though. Either that or 'raises the floor' so everybody has 4-ish notable qualities right out the gate. Point is, I do have some concerns about the possibility of XCOM 3 going 'Torque worked out fine' and walking right into 'Vipers are overpowered squad members' as a result.

Deputy Agent
+3 Aim

Toxic Greeting
Breach action: Torque spits venom at a target enemy, immediately inflicting 3 damage that ignores Armor, and Poisoning the target for 2 turns, instead of taking a standard shot. This attack cannot miss, but cannot be used on enemies immune to Poison, such as Vipers and robots.

For reference, Poison always does exactly 2 damage, and lowers Mobility by -2 and Aim by -15 until it runs out. Among other points, this makes Toxic Greeting a decent option to use on an Aggressive enemy if you can't actually prevent their attack, since the attack will at least be less likely to hit someone.

Toward the beginning of a run, Toxic Greeting is fantastic. Torque's damage with an SMG will be only maybe higher on initial impact, and then the Poison damage ensures Toxic Greeting's total damage is equal or greater (Bar a max-damage crit on the SMG, I suppose), meaning it's just plain better unless you're either talking an Aggressive enemy the SMG shot could've downed, or an Alert enemy whose Alert action is very problematic and won't be rendered moot by the Poison killing them on their turn. Furthermore, at the beginning of the game your squad's base Aim is at its lowest and your access to Aim boosters like Scopes is at its worst, so often Toxic Greeting being a guaranteed hit is very valuable for forcing damage on enemies your squad would otherwise be unreliable at hitting. (Such as because they're in High Cover and not Surprised -which also raises the relevancy of it ignoring Armor! A Shrike Trooper in High Cover is a case where an SMG can at best tie with Toxic Greeting on initial damage)

Crucially, the game doesn't construct the Timeline until the Breach phase is over with, and always attempts to ensure you alternate with enemies before any Timeline-altering effects come into play. This means that using Toxic Greeting on an enemy so they'll instantly die on their turn is usually better than killing them right off the bat with an SMG shot, if they weren't going to do anything problematic during the Breach phase, because if the game elected to slot them in as going right after your first agent you get to just ignore them while getting two of your agents acting in a row, where if you shot them to death some other enemy would get slotted in and you'd have to commit immediate effort to preventing them from acting.

Late in a run, Toxic Greeting is relegated to being a situational Breach action. Its damage never improves, while Torque's SMG gets harder-hitting, more accurate, and can be backed by an Ammo Item; an SMG shot backed by Venom Rounds is just clearly better than a Toxic Greeting unless accuracy or Armor is a concern. (The enemies with enough Armor for this to matter are stacked toward Poison-immune examples anyway, making the Armor question mostly not a strong advantage for Toxic Greeting) Furthermore, enemy durability rises such that it's no longer regularly possible to use Toxic Greeting on an enemy with the expectation they'll die the instant their turn rolls around, making that aspect of its value something you occasionally can leverage if Torque was placed after someone else who knocked an enemy low enough Toxic Greeting will leave them just barely alive before the Poison damage hits. You'll also maybe sometimes use it on a distant enemy in High Cover who you can't deal with right now, in situations where Torque couldn't gun an enemy down during the Breach phase anyway.

That said, 'situational' is not the same thing as 'bad'. You'll use it less later in a run, but it's a mistake to just pretend it no longer exists, especially if you like to put Torque in later slots. After all, you'll regularly see enemies reduced to a low enough HP value by a prior agent that Toxic Greeting can be used to directly finish them off completely reliably (Such as if they're an Aggressive enemy you wish to prevent from taking a shot) or push them into the 'Poison will kill them on their first turn' range. If shooting as a follow-up would have any chance of missing and Toxic Greeting is a kill, then Toxic Greeting is the thing to do if you can.

Investigation order is also an important factor here. The Progeny have one Poison-immune unit in their personal list (Codices), Gray Phoenix has a boss and two regular enemies (Pythons and Adders), while Sacred Coil has seven (!!) regular enemies immune to Poison. (Neonate Chryssalids, Chryssalids, Purifiers, Andromedons, Androids, Turrets, Mecs) In fact, Sacred Coil only has three regular enemies that are susceptible to Poison! (Commandos, Guardians, and Ronin) You'll occasionally get Sacred Coil Encounters where Torque can't use Toxic Greeting at all, because only one Poison-susceptible enemy generated and they appeared somewhere she doesn't have a line of fire to, or the like. More broadly, she won't be able to use it as a reliable finisher on most Sacred Coil targets, and of course if you have Sacred Coil as your final Investigation it's actually pretty plausible you'll never get use out of Toxic Greeting in that Act.

Surprisingly, Toxic Greeting is affected by Breach modifiers. Breach modifiers that affect the damage of the first slot or the last slot will actually modify Toxic Greeting's immediate damage, for example, which can be useful for letting you snipe a high value target behind High Cover. Similarly, Surprise triggering a Stun on a successful hit can be inflicted via Toxic Greeting -this gives Toxic Greeting situational relevance for forcing a Stun through on a difficult-to-hit target, and Torque has above-average odds of being able to do this if you're willing to use Vents, since they force the Surprise modifier.

Also, note that contrary to what you might expect, Poison damage is blocked by the energy shields produced by Guardians. Using Toxic Greeting on an Alert Guardian who will survive with 1-2 HP won't result in them putting up the shield and then dying on their first turn. It will result in them putting up the shield, and losing 2 shield points on their first turn. (This makes them basically the only example of an enemy where you'd rather shoot for an immediate kill with a firing action instead of setting up a delayed kill with Toxic Greeting's Poison damage; the delayed kill won't work, and also their shield will go up on other people and would potentially be relevant even if they went first and were able to be killed by the Poison)

Basic Training: +2 HP.

Due to Torque's disproportionate access to Dodge, this effectively goes further than on most agents. Torque is one of the better agents to get basic Training done on first, as a result, especially if you prioritize getting her a Mach Weave so her Dodge stat helps more consistently.

Field Agent
+3 Aim

Tight Squeeze
Passive: Bind does 3 more damage when initially used and on successive turns.

OR

Hard Target
Passive: Torque gains +30 Dodge permanently. Additionally, in the first turn of an Encounter she always gains +4 Mobility for that turn.

Hard Target's Dodge boost is enough that a Mach Weave's +30 Dodge ensures she always Dodges any attack that can be Dodged once you've also got her Training from the next rank. This can make Torque impressively durable, assuming you're not dealing with enemies able to dish out damage without miss chances being involved. That's fortunately less of a constant than in XCOM 2, though, so it's less of a qualifier than you might expect if you're coming in from XCOM 2.

The first-turn Mobility boost is also nice, I guess. Certainly, you can get a fair amount of use out of it by gifting action points, and it being the first turn of a given Encounter means it'll actually be a noticeable fraction of Torque's turns even in most longer missions. If Torque takes a total of 8 turns in a 3-Encounter mission, that's just short of 40% of her turns having this big Mobility boost. (Unless she just never gets to act in a given Encounter, admittedly)

Also note that Hard Target shares a name with a Long War 2 ability that did, in fact, provide Dodge. The Long War 2 version was effectively completely different due to Long War 2 reworking Dodge entirely, especially since that version wasn't a flat bonus but instead based on how close the attacker was, but still, this is a recurring thing in Chimera Squad, of abilities and Items that are clearly inspired by stuff from Long War 2. I have mixed (and mostly negative) feelings about this, given Long War 2's original ideas were generally gimmicky or outright bad, with Hard Target being exactly such an example, but on the other hand War of the Chosen in particular impressed me with how much it took inspiration from Long War 1.0 and yet managed to apply the ideas in much more interesting, non-obnoxious ways; I won't be surprised if someday XCOM 3 comes along and also draws noticeable inspiration from Long War 2 but with smoother, less obnoxious, more meaningful implementation.

Regardless, this skill pair is two different angles; Hard Target is a general boost that makes Torque better no matter what, though in a manner that's somewhat unreliable if you're not properly supporting it. Tight Squeeze is instead biasing her toward Binds, and specifically trying to use Binds to actually kill people instead of treating it pretty much purely as a disable.

Tight Squeeze is in fact a surprisingly big boost to Bind's utility as a killing skill. 5 damage is literally a high roll on Torque's SMG, while Bind cannot miss, Tongue Pull gets +40 to Aim, and Bind ignores Armor. It will fall behind a bit as your gear improves, with a Superior Scope substantially closing the accuracy gap while a Mastercrafted SMG will now have its low roll equal to a Tight Squeeze Bind, but Bind will still ignore Armor and be an assured hit if Torque can slither adjacent to the enemy first. This helps keep it relevant in the late game, as you'll be seeing 2 Armor enemies semi-regularly. The disabling aspect of a Bind also remains relevant, and indeed is overall more relevant since enemy durability rises enough that it tends to be difficult to one-shot enemies the way you can in your first Investigation.

Torque's SMG still pulls ahead overall, in part due to the presence of Ammo Items, but Tight Squeeze never falls completely out of relevance. You don't have to feel like you're just hamstringing yourself by taking it, unlike some of the more understrength abilities in Chimera Squad.

Special Agent
+1 HP
+2 Aim

Poison Spit
1 Action Point: Torque spits a cloud of Poison at a targeted 4x4 area, requiring a clean line of fire to the center. This does 3 damage to any unit caught in its radius, ignoring Armor, and Poisons every unit in its radius for 2 turns. Units immune to Poison are entirely unaffected by Poison Spit. 3 turn cooldown.

Note that Poison Spit's damage and (More unreliably) Poison component can be blocked by terrain. Enemies in High Cover are generally impossible to hit with Poison Spit unless Torque is flanking them, and even Low Cover can create situations where two enemies are clearly in Poison Spit's radius but you can't actually hit both of them. Fortunately, the game actually provides fairly clear visual feedback here: enemies getting the orange highlighting effect will in fact take Poison Spit's full effect, while enemies without the orange highlighting aren't going to be affected. The one qualifier here is that sometimes Cover is only offering partial protection, where the target doesn't take immediate damage but does become immediately Poisoned. It's... weird, very buggy-feeling behavior, and the High Cover protection is pretty counterintuitive given Toxic Greeting's premier use is bypassing High Cover.

Honestly, the whole thing feels more like a bug than an intentional design decision. I don't have specific reason to think it is a bug, to be clear, but the game doesn't communicate it's a mechanic and the behavior is wonky and unintuitive, so it ends up feeling like a bug, regardless of whether it is or not.

Anyway, a neat trick is that Torque can Poison Spit at her own coils, then Tongue Pull an enemy and Bind them; the enemy will end up Poisoned after the pull, helping accelerate their death. This might sound a bit pointless compared to lobbing the Poison Spit at the enemy first (Which, after all, will do 3 immediate damage), but Tongue Pull actually has more reach than Poison Spit, so sometimes you can't lob the Poison Spit at their location, and furthermore High Cover (usually) fully blocks Poison Spit while Tongue Pull is merely made less reliable. Torque's next level offers an additional reason to consider handling it this way, too.

Regardless, Poisoning and then Binding is especially useful against Ronin, since them gifting themselves extra turns will not only be wasted by the Bind preventing them from acting but will in fact cause the Poison to tick over faster. So that's another reason to keep this trick in mind.

Poison Spit itself is of course also useful for similar reasons to Gas Grenades in XCOM 2 -as a way to lower the average effectiveness of multiple enemies if you can't prevent their turns entirely. It's a little less effective at this job than in XCOM 2 in that enemies in Chimera Squad trend higher on base Aim and so the proportionate decrease in their accuracy is less, but it's still a utility to keep in mind. Its 4x4 radius is thankfully large enough Torque can usually hit multiple enemies with a single Poison Spit -the only caveat here is that Gray Phoenix and Sacred Coil forces are sufficiently heavy on Poison-immune enemies it's not that unusual for Torque to be unable to catch multiple susceptible targets with Poison Spit. Even in the Progeny Investigation, this can still happen on occasion, as Codices are immune to Poison and Shrike forces being present can include Shrike's own Vipers; in conjunction with Poison Spit's somewhat limited range, it's plausible to get unlucky and have a situation where Torque can't quite catch multiple susceptible targets with Poison Spit. Especially due to the wonkiness with Cover erratically blocking Poison Spit.

Still, while those qualifiers are worth noting, Poison Spit is a nice bit of utility on a reasonably reliable basis.

Unlock Potential Training: +1 Mobility, +20 Dodge.

If you're fond of using Torque as a turret, this is useful but can be prioritized behind other agent stat boosts. If you're fond of using her more aggressively, you should probably prioritize it heavily; she'll want the Mobility at that point, and is more likely to draw fire and so appreciate the Dodge too. If you took Hard Target and have a Mach Weave, this Training is necessary to get Torque to 100% Dodge so that she's perpetually taking only Graze damage, effectively doubling her durability against quite a few enemies, and in a way that effectively doubles the effectiveness of healing!

Senior Agent
+2 Aim

Reinforced Scales
Passive: Torque will no longer end a Bind in response to taking damage, and in fact has +1 Armor when currently Binding an enemy.

OR

Synthetic Venom
Passive: Torque has +50 crit chance against enemies who are currently Poisoned, and will heal 2 HP if she ends her turn in a cloud of Poison.

Reinforced Scales is, contrary to what you might expect, generally undesirable to take if you grabbed Tight Squeeze earlier. On the face of it, they're both Bind specialty skills, but they interfere with each other; Tight Squeeze will result in more cases of a Bind immediately killing a target, as well as encouraging you to use bind as a sure-kill effect instead of as a lockdown that includes a bit of damage, while Reinforced Scales is about supporting using Bind as a disable first and foremost. (And in fact Reinforced Scales does nothing if you only ever perform immediately-lethal Binds) Indeed, it really synergizes more directly with Hard Target, since Dodge halving damage occurs before Armor cuts damage still further, and so the two together make it fairly difficult for enemies to stop the Bind by downing Torque, especially if you're using a Mach Weave to further boost her Dodge, or a Plated Vest to further boost her Armor.

Synthetic Venom is the default, general-purpose pick, making it so Torque's guaranteed ability to inflict Poison doubles as setting up for more crits, and also extending her durability if you're prone to getting her inside Poison clouds. It's particularly nice if you like to do the Poison Spit+Bind trick, since now aiming at her own coils doubles as a heal.

Overall, I really feel Synthetic Venom is the clear winner here. Reinforced Scales is a neat idea, but usually if you're trying to Bind a target as a disable, you're going for the earliest one in the Timeline and don't care if Torque gets knocked off them after their turn has already been eaten. Reinforced Scales gives you a bit more freedom to Bind priority targets that are slightly later in the Timeline, but Chimera Squad leans away from lynchpin enemies; Guardians and to a much lesser extent Praetorians are the only enemies I'd consider classing as lynchpins, and Guardians are found only when fighting Sacred Coil plus in the endgame... when Torque is pretty bad at fighting Sacred Coil, enough so that an argument can be made you ought to bench her for the duration of that Investigation.

Not helping is that a notable fraction of particularly durable enemies worth considering disabling can't be Bound in the first place, like Andromedons. Particularly noteworthy is that all boss enemies are immune to Bind (And Tongue Pull) even though most of them are clear variations on regular enemies that are susceptible. 

Mind, Synthetic Venom isn't exactly great itself, with the crit bonus being underwhelming thanks to crits being so weak in Chimera Squad while the healing is primarily something you're liable to activate via Torque's Poison Spit and isn't particularly impressive healing... but that still puts it well ahead of Reinforced Scales.

I don't really get why Reinforced Scales doesn't provide Armor generally. The name really sounds like it should, and mechanically it would prop up its relevance enough this would be a reasonably difficult choice. Torque also has a surprising degree to which she can absorb fire; having a skill directly build that up would be straightforwardly in-'theme'.

Alas.

Principal Agent
+2 Aim

Final Stats
11 HP (Counting Training, but not other boosts)
77 Aim
40 Dodge (Not counting Hard Target)
12 Mobility

Vicious Bite
Turn ending action: A melee action which does 5 damage on hit, ignoring Armor, and Poisons the target for 2 turns. Crits for +3 damage. Performs an accuracy check with no modifier, using just Torque's innate Aim. 3 turn cooldown.

Vicious Bite is an extremely bizarre attack. It's not a move-and-melee attack, but the game provides a convenience that makes it look like one: if Torque has 2 action points, the game is perfectly happy to let you have Torque Vicious Bite as a single move-and-melee action, but if she has 1 action point left you can only use Vicious Bite on a directly adjacent target. The move-and-melee behavior is pure convenience, to be clear: Torque can't Vicious Bite out to her maximum movement range, the game merely automates the process of spending one action point on movement and another on Vicious Bite. No other attack in the game has this bizarre behavior, and it feels like a glitch. This notably limits Vicious Bite, as it means it directly competes with a Poison Spit (Which is particularly frustrating given Synthetic Venom should make the two synergistic), and further means that once you have Tag Team Vicious Bite can't be used to move-and-melee after gifting an ally an action point the way you might hope.

I don't really get why this has a chance to miss and isn't a more conventional move-and-melee attack. 5 points of damage with Poison thrown in is decently okay if you get Torque early and keep leveling her quickly, and the miss chance doesn't stand out too much at that point. Once you're looking at upgraded SMGs backed by Ammo Items and a Scope, Vicious Bite is frustratingly bad, its damage and accuracy horrible and its ability to ignore Armor essentially its only draw in practice... when an Impact Frame-backed Subdue does similar damage, ignores Armor, can be used out to further distances, and can't miss. 

If Vicious Bite were a proper move-and-melee action, it would still be a gamble, but at least you could grab Synthetic Venom and Poison Spit ahead of time to set up for Vicious Bite's unusually high crit damage. If it was a guaranteed hit like regular melee is, it would be a really solid tool for forcing damage on difficult targets, like a Hunkering Down enemy in High Cover with multiple points of innate Armor, even into the late game. If its damage were higher, so it didn't fall behind SMGs as you progressed, it would still be bad but I'd get the logic and wouldn't be able to argue it's essentially an unusably bad trap choice.

As-is, it's just frustratingly bad for no purposeful reason, with not enough to show for it. 5 damage plus Poison is less than what you'd get out of an unupgraded SMG backed by Venom Rounds! The fact that it ignores Armor barely helps, not only due to the Impact Frame point I raised earlier but also because Armor rarely strays above 2 points in the first place; a Mastercrafted SMG with Venom Rounds will still get better performance than Vicious Bite against most Armored targets, because 2 Armor just drags the damage down from 6-8 (+2 Poison damage) to 4-6 (+2 Poison damage) ie averaging exactly Vicious Bite's damage, but with better accuracy and Shredding a point of Armor and working at range and by extension being possible to combine with Torque's 1-action-point moves in realistic conditions.

You're seriously better off giving Torque an Impact Frame if you want her doing melee things.

Final Training: Unlock Tag Team.

Tag Team
Passive: When Torque uses Tongue Pull on an ally, that ally is immediately granted an action point.

This has a dramatic effect on how to use Torque and her abilities, encouraging you to constantly Tongue Pull allies so they can cram in more actions of their own, instead of trying to Tongue Pull enemies for a Bind or a clean shot. In turn, this encourages using allies who are okay with ending up in the open, because Tongue Pull is prone to dropping allies in positions with no Cover; Zephyr, for example, can immediately use the gained action point to go punch someone and simultaneously drop herself into Cover, where Verge is probably being forced to choose between doing something useful with his turn or scrambling for Cover.

This is particularly important since most of Torque's ability set doesn't scale as technology and enemies improve. If it weren't for Tag Team, Torque would be at risk of being an agent best off benched later in a run.

Fortunately, she does have Tag Team, and it's actually one of the better ultimate Training abilities, being a flexible, powerful effect you can use whenever you feel it's relevant as many turns in a row as you need.

That said, it's important to keep in mind terrain and team composition when considering whether to leverage Tag Team in any given moment. Zephyr is basically always a great Tag Team target; it doesn't matter if Torque drops her into a bad position, because Zephyr is just going to spend her action point on charging somewhere anyway, and Zephyr doesn't need more than one action point at a time to do what she wants.

Axiom is usually a decent choice for the same sort of reason: if you want him using Smash, then you don't care where Torque drops him, so long as there's somebody close enough to Smash. 

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As an aside, normally I might complain about all of Torque's capabilities being 'Viper doing Viper-specific things', but it's clear that in general Chimera Squad kept its ambitions controlled. You can look at agents like Shelter and see how he's much more cut-down than Psi Operatives in XCOM 2. I imagine if XCOM 3 returns to the concept of non-human recruits that they'll have fuller class trees, probably filling out with more capabilities along the lines of Rapid Fire.

My ideal scenario would honestly for each species to have 3-4 classes, with partial conceptual overlap with the existing human set (eg a Ranger-analogue for Vipers and Mutons), but given that would be 16~ classes even if no other aliens (eg Faceless, Andromedons) are incorporated, I rather doubt it'll happen, but I do suspect-slash-hope that XCOM 3 will have Viper squadmates who have more to their special abilities than 'does Viper-specific things', and so on.

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Narratively, Torque is probably my personal favorite of the agents, pretty much purely because she's unabashedly, unapologetically the 'evil' party member, and particularly how this fits into the larger narrative of the invasion forces working to peacefully integrate with Earth's human population.

Thing is, often when pop culture engages with topics like redemption or reformation, they focus really heavily on the idea of having the right feelings, rather than on having the right behavior. That is, there's more emphasis on 'I feel terrible for having beaten someone to within an inch of their life' than there is on 'I'm not going to beat people to within an inch of their life anymore'.

There's a number of reasons I don't like this emphasis in pop culture. In the first place -and especially relevant to a narrative involving actual aliens- the internal emotional experiences of someone cannot be reliably assessed with full accuracy based on external signs. There's the consideration of fakery, for one, where someone bursting into tears while talking about how much they regret their actions can in fact just be a show they put on, but more pressingly a given individual who actually is experiencing such intense regret isn't necessarily going to readily display such emotions to the people around them. Even aside topics like social conditioning, where a given individual might be reluctant to engage in such a display because they've been taught it's inappropriate... different people just baseline have different external displays. Put all that together, and you can absolutely have it be the case that you have two people who did things worth regretting, and then the one who really does regret it and is never going to do it again is not the one visibly crying over how bad they feel, but rather is the one who you can't see any signs of regret whatsoever.

Which, again, is really relevant with a narrative where not all people are even human. The natural human read of what a given reaction means is very unlikely to fully map to any kind of aliens humans might encounter. Even some of the closest cousins to humans have some very significant divergences when it comes to topics most humans probably never think about -for example, humans tend to expect each other to maintain eye contact when engaging in conversation, where it's 'rude' or the like to talk to someone without looking them in the eye. In chimpanzees and gorillas, eye contact, especially extended eye contact, is aggressive behavior, quite likely to provoke actual violence. 

In the second place, this emphasis on displaying the right feelings is inherently ripe for abuse -and I'm engaging in a double-meaning here, because a common pattern in abusive relationships is to lean into the expectations of the importance of such emotional displays to convince the person (Or people) being abused to not do anything to try to escape the situation or otherwise make it stop. The abuser engages in abuse, then within the day apologizes and otherwise displays regret, their victim is pacified, and then the abuser engages in the exact same abuse under the exact same conditions a week or less later, and then the cycle loops. (Until their victim dies or finally figures out that actually the abuser is never going to stop and they need to just get out or otherwise make the situation stop on their own)

It's worth pointing out here that I've previously talked about the Chosen being used to illustrate the Ethereals being awful, awful people, and more specifically how the Ethereal interaction with the Chosen is very much a 'parent abusing children' sort of framework. While the Angelus Ethereal never quite goes to some of the most stock sorts of phrases when it comes to depictions of abusive relationship, this 'feeling the right thing is more important than doing the right thing' thought process is very much baked into everything about how the Chosen/Ethereal dynamic is handled, where once a Chosen is killed the Angelus Ethereal talks about how 'we feel such loss' over the topic, and then proceeds to torture-beam the surviving two Chosen because they dared to not feel equally bad about a Chosen dying. Never mind that the Chosen have been pitted against each other by the Angelus Ethereal!

Which I'm bringing all that up again because this aspect is in fact a non-trivial factor in why I ended up liking XCOM 2 -particularly War of the Chosen- more than I thought I would, as it not only does not engage in the 'feelings are more important than deeds' thought process but is in fact viciously critical of it. (Even if the game itself doesn't put it in so many words)

Torque, in turn, is an unexpected extension of this principle. There's a non-trivial chunk of other pop culture I've seen that actually did engage in some criticism of the 'feelings are more important than actions' thought process, but such pop culture always stops short of actually having any characters who could be described as 'evil in thought but noble in deed', which is the obvious endpoint of arguing that feelings are less important than actions. Even comedy works that are presented -by the work itself, or by fans of the work- as something along the lines of 'a terrible person ends up being The Hero in spite of theirself' pretty much never actually stick to such a characterization (eg the pilot episode of a TV series might cleave to it, and then later episodes drift away), and I've absolutely seen cases where no such characterization exists at all, regardless of how the work and/or fans present it.

Whereas Torque is actually consistent across Chimera Squad about being written as someone you could, if you like, describe as 'evil in thought but noble in deed'.

Mind, 'evil' is probably overly-strong a word choice, but what I'm trying to get across is that Chimera Squad does an excellent job of showing that Torque doesn't 'think the right thoughts' -she's not a member of Reclamation/the Chimera Squad because she wants to protect the common citizen or otherwise out of pursuit of some noble goal, and in fact there's a strong undertone that she probably wouldn't have particularly minded staying under the Ethereal regime so long as it didn't impinge on her life particularly. (Which is a big 'if', mind, but the point here is about Torque's attitude, not what might've happened if X-COM hadn't won) Similarly, in interpersonal interactions, Torque leans more abrasive than the rest of the agents; she's not actively cruel or anything, but where other agents largely seem to be basically-nice people who want to get along with each other and will ask after each other's well-being and so on...

... well, as a concrete example, one of my favorite conversations involving Torque is one where she and Verge are talking, Torque makes a reference to 'aliens' that makes it clear she doesn't think of herself as one, Verge goes 'but you are an alien', and Torque's response is that she was born and raised on Earth and it's not her fault not all Earthlings are lucky enough to be born with scales. There's other reasons I like this particular conversation, but the relevancy here is that it's an example of Torque being willing to be a bit obnoxious to a fellow agent, where she not only disagrees with them on the topic but isn't going to try to maximize the 'niceness' of how she presents that disagreement. This is pretty normal for Torque's conversations; she's fine with being a bit abrasive, and when other people are put off a bit by it, she clearly doesn't care. (Or possibly actually enjoys it a little; it's a bit unclear if this is the intention, but her voice acting sometimes seems to imply she's actually amused by such responses)

Combat dialogue is also pretty consistent on this point, where Torque is much more prone to snarking in a mildly mean way when her fellow agents miss shots, take damage, etc, compared to other agents.

So overall, Torque's dialogue makes it clear time and again that Torque isn't, in her head, a 'model citizen', but Chimera Squad doesn't present this as something particularly worth caring about; Torque is staying within the bounds of the law/acceptable social behavior/etc, so unlike some of our Investigation targets who are actively doing some very bad things, Torque is fine. Gray Phoenix existing is a particularly illustrative counterpoint, as their motives and goals (Their thoughts, put a different, very relevant way) are reasonable and sympathetic, but the process they've selected for achieving said goal is incredibly destructive and dangerous to City 31 and its citizenry and so the Chimera Squad is obligated to stop them regardless.

This is all a pleasant surprise, to see pop culture actually go 'it's okay for someone to not be actively trying to be A Good Person, so long as they're not actively making things worse'.

Also nice is that Chimera Squad does a decent job of communicating that Torque is not meant to be some representative of Vipers as a whole in terms of personality -unlike Verge, where it's easy for a player to miss the indications that Verge and the newscaster Sectoid aren't meant to be 'all Sectoids are like this', Torque has the unavoidable contrast point of the Viper who runs the Scavenger Market. Said Viper only talks the one time and doesn't have very many lines in that conversation, but they don't have Torque-like behavior, and always have their bit occur very early in a run; in conjunction with Torque not being one of the agents forced into your first run's initial squad, a player can't have Torque be an extended first impression they then generalize as being All Vipers Are Like This. (Not without something like particularly extreme biases at work, at least)

Visually, I appreciate Torque's design on two basic levels; the first level is that she's part of the broader pattern of Chimera Squad diversifying Viper appearances. (Which it also does with Mutons, actually, though I have more mixed feelings on the details of that given previously-covered points like the issues with the new Muton face design) Torque is actually one of the less dramatic examples of this -she's mostly just a different color palette than XCOM 2 Vipers were, where for example not all Viper enemies have the cobra hood element at all.

The second level I appreciate is more personal to Torque herself, where her design is not particularly 'friendly-fied'. (Contrasting with Axiom and Verge) In fact, Torque's design is arguably more 'villainous' than the XCOM 2 Viper design; the stark black-and-white color scheme is something I see much more often on Bad Guy characters than anywhere else. There's a lot of reasons I appreciate this, some personal ('Aesthetics I like' overlaps pretty heavily with 'aesthetics pop culture uses to signal evilness', for one), but also several that matter rather more widely.

For starters, moral considerations aren't so straightforward as to color-code themselves for the convenience of people who care. Indeed, the reality is closer to the opposite of that; people who engage in socially predatory behavior toward their fellow humans as a deliberate agenda are far more likely to be doing their best to look like a respectable and likable person than people who think of themselves as not engaging in behaviors others will object to. A world in which 'bad guys' color-code themselves for the convenience of the audience isn't simply inaccurate, it's actively instilling thought patterns that are bad practices when it comes to keeping an eye out for unpleasant behavior from one's fellow humans.

By a similar token, and overlapping a bit with the more personal point I brought up a moment ago, is that different people care about different things, where they can have completely different reasons for having similar preferences on some topic or another. That is, even in the improbable event you have a Bad Guy whose Bad Guy-ness is somehow directly tied to their aesthetic sensibilities such that they pick black-and-red ~because they're evil~ you're still also going to have people who like the black-and-red color scheme for completely different reasons, like maybe it's easier on their eyes. Thinking a shared aesthetic necessarily means shared values is an extremely dubious thought process.

Then of course there's another point that Torque is a perfect illustration of: that such points aren't entirely inside a given person's control. Torque's color palette is, to all appearances, primarily a mixture of 'what she was born with' and 'the uniform her job calls for'. (The white-and-black armor is found on most of your agents) So there's no reason to think Torque's aesthetic is particularly driven by her own sense of aesthetics, so even to the extent it makes any sense to say 'one's aesthetic is a reflection of one's values' it would still be completely unreasonable to make assumptions about Torque's values based on her aesthetics, a fact Chimera Squad clearly understands.

This is especially striking given how I've previously complained at some length about how XCOM 2 went with ADVENT forces largely using Stock Bad Guy Aesthetics even though from an in-universe standpoint that's the exact opposite of what they should be going for. It gives me some hope XCOM 3 will avoid somehow replicating this particular bit of wonkiness, whatever opposing forces it sets the player up against.

Another detail I appreciate is that Torque doesn't engage in sssstereotypical ssssnake sssspeech patterns. Indeed, as far as I'm aware no Viper in Chimera Squad does this! The extended 's' sound thing for snakes/snake people is one of those pop culture memes that drives me completely up the wall for a lot of reasons; it drags things out unnecessarily, snake hissing is very specifically a threat display and not just how they sound in general, and actual snakes can't produce human vocalizations in the first place so any case of a snake or snake-like entity speaking human words has no reason to be held to such anyway, as just a few details of why I dislike it. It would've been especially frustrating if Chimera Squad had run with this meme given Viper vocalizations in XCOM 2 don't actually sound much like an 's' sound, but honestly, if I'd specifically thought about it ahead of time I would've guessed Chimera Squad would do it anyway simply because this is one of those really pervasive memes.

So Chimera Squad not doing this is a pleasant surprise!

It's especially appreciated in the context of Chimera Squad trying to press the idea that the (non-Chryssalid) aliens are all people and should be treated as such. Verbal tics like the extended 's' thing are often used in part to 'other' entities in pop culture, to set them apart and firmly say 'these people are not our people', which would be very much at odds with Chimera Squad endeavoring to present all these aliens as people to be accepted, understood, accommodated, and so on. Nonetheless, that kind of othering is exactly the sort of thing I see slip mindlessly into most pop culture that tries to press exactly the kinds of notions Chimera Squad successfully implements.

It really is impressive how coherent Chimera Squad is on this topic.

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Next time, we move on to Blueblood.

See you then.