Chimera Squad Equipment Analysis: Epic Weapons

Epic Weapons are a new concept to Chimera Squad, one I like more than I thought I would when first running into it, but unfortunately is pretty rough around the edges.

The basic concept is that the game has eight one-of-a-kind weapons -two for each weapon type aside Pangolin Gauntlets- that you can acquire somewhat randomly throughout a run, which are unambiguous improvements over not equipping an Epic Weapon. Interestingly, unlike the implementations of similar concepts in a lot of games, Epic Weapons don't have a fixed strength, though; Epic weapon damage is actually completely identical to regular weapon damage, including that upgrading your weapons improves Epic Weapon damage and gives them a point of Shred at Mastercrafted. This is nice, as a common problem with 'unique loot' gear in a wide variety of genres is that it often ends up having all kinds of jank because eg your Magic Sword Of Awesome Stabbing is maybe strong and great when you first loot it but rapidly becomes obsoleted by Generic Swords Of Lame Slashing that have better base stats. The usual solution to this problem is to try to make unique gear top-tier in strength, but this comes with its own problems, like making the important part of your Magic Sword Of Awesome Stabbing that you loot early not whatever cool and unique properties it has but rather is the fact that it's stronger than an endgame generic sword that you're not able to loot so early. Games that escape that problem usually end up just making it impossible to get unique and cool loot until you're more or less done progressing anyway, which of course has still more problems.

So it's a pleasant surprise to see Chimera Squad entirely sidestepping that whole collage of cringe by simply making the damage stats of Epic Weapons scale alongside regular weapons.

Instead, there are exactly two things that set Epic Weapons apart in mechanical terms: first and most obviously, each Epic Weapon has a unique skill it grants the wielder while equipped, with all of these in fact being returning skills from XCOM 2, sometimes with slight tweaks. I'll be getting into that with the individual weapons themselves.

The second difference is universal, non-obvious, and possibly not actually intentional? Point is, all Epic Weapons are visually variations on beam-tier weapons from XCOM 2, and this actually includes that they inherit the mechanical part where beam-tier weapons have superior ability to damage the environment. This is easily overlooked in real play because Chimera Squad's environments tend to be lighter on destructible elements than XCOM 2's environments, and by extension this quality is unreliable about really mattering, but it is something to keep in mind, such as when considering whether to risk an improbable shot on a target in High Cover. If the agent is equipped with an Epic Weapon, it's a lot more likely that even a miss will end up smashing the target's Cover.

Now, there are two ways to get an Epic Weapon. (Well, possibly three, but I've personally never seen an Epic Weapon be assigned as a regular mission reward and suspect it's forbidden from happening) The first way is that they'll sometimes show up in the Scavenger Market, where you can purchase them for Intel. Do note that if a given Epic Weapon shows up in the Scavenger Market and you don't buy it, there's no guarantee that it will show up again next week, and in fact it may never show up again; if you want a given Epic Weapon eventually and can afford it right now, don't put it off on the idea you'd rather buy it later. 'Later' may never come. Fortunately, Epic Weapons are generally not so impactful that missing out on them is a big mistake or anything (Which makes it kind of funny they're labeled 'Epic' Weapons; they're really not 'epic'), but still.

The other, more interesting way an Epic Weapon can show up is that a mission can generate that explicitly has its objective be that somebody has a weapon Reclamation wants taken out of general hands and so it's your job to retrieve it. Such missions can only generate so long as at least one Epic Weapon hasn't been claimed by the player, and when you do them the final Encounter will in fact have a single enemy on the map who is equipped with literally the Epic Weapon you'll get out of completing the mission. I've personally never seen these enemies actually use the ability their Epic Weapon provides and suspect they're not coded to understand they have an extra ability from the Epic Weapon, but I also rarely let them get a turn and so cannot be fully confident they can't. But they do absolutely get the ability, I should emphasize; if you use Puppeteer on them, it'll be in their ability list and you can make them use it yourself! In any case, they can benefit from the part where Epic Weapons have beam-tier capacity for destroying terrain -I say 'can' and not 'do' because some of the enemies who are valid for being assigned an Epic Weapon carry a beam weapon normally anyway.

These mission types are, from a player end, fairly straightforward experiences, but I still say this is interesting both because the devs went through the effort of creating the framework to dynamically swap out weapons on enemies, which is potentially a concept XCOM 3 will return to and expand on, and also because of the narrative aspect that this actually touches some on what Reclamation's primary job is. It's easy to forget because the majority of the game is focused on the Investigations and associated core plot, but the Chimera Squad is explicitly part of Reclamation, which is itself an organization whose primary job is to find problematic alien technology and get it out of the hands of the general public. These missions are one of the few times Chimera Squad remembers to touch on what that mission statement actually means!

It's still pretty vague, mind, but it's something, which is a surprise given overall the way the game approaches Reclamation tends to feel like the organization is mostly an excuse to justify the general shape of the game without having to worry about various expectations that eg being a more conventional police unit would bring in. Often such excuse-plot organizations in games just never get around to doing anything that strongly connects to their ostensible mission statement, and indeed it's not unusual for such organizations to experience 'drift' as a series progresses, where later entries clearly model themselves mostly after what the organization actually did in earlier entries rather than on whatever they supposedly do, even if those earlier entries were explicitly presented as anomalous situations not representing what the organization does on a 'normal day'. I'm kind of curious if XCOM 3 -or some other entry in the series- is going to delve more seriously into Reclamation, or if they'll just get quietly forgotten about after Chimera Squad. I'd started out assuming 'quietly forgotten about' because that's so typical... but I do have to wonder.

Returning to gameplay, one non-obvious quirk to Epic Weapons is that difficulty affects the rate at which Epic Weapons are offered. The rate is 1.0/0.66/0.66/0.33 by difficulty, which is to say that the lowest difficulty uses the highest, baseline rate, the middle two difficulties offer them only 2/3rds of the time you'd be offered them on the lowest difficulty, and then the highest difficulty offers them half as often as that. As such, going up in difficulty makes opportunities at Epic Weapons more precious; if you play a few runs on the second-highest difficulty and get used to relatively casually completing your Epic Weapon collection by the end of the run and then go up to the highest difficulty on a new run, you're liable to be unpleasantly surprised if you were planning around that tendency continuing to hold true.

Anyway, on to specifics, starting with the Assault Rifles.

Fortunate Blossom
Serial
After activation, downing an enemy with the Rifle will fully refund the user's current action points. Successful Subdues will also trigger this effect. 1 use per mission.

It's interesting that they brought back Serial and assigned it to a regular Rifle rather than a Sniper Rifle analogue. Not that Chimera Squad has a Sniper Rifle analogue, but it's still interesting; I'd sooner have expected it to get slapped on a Pistol, given Blueblood is clearly derived from Sharpshooter design and is the game's primary Pistol user.

Anyway, where Serial was, in XCOM 2, a very powerful ability primarily held back by normally being tied to the undertuned Sniper Rifle (Plus the base game had the additional wonkiness of it requiring 2 action points to be allowed to activate it even when Serial was passed out to classes that didn't need 2 action points to fire their primary weapon), in Chimera Squad Serial is... actually surprisingly underwhelming in general?

The core of the issue is the change in turn order mechanics. Much as I laid out with Reaper on Zephyr, Serial in XCOM 2 benefited from the freeform turn order, where you could have the non-Serial soldiers soften up enemies and then notice this is a good Serial opportunity and activate it, or activate Serial to deal with a couple of enemies and then have other soldiers soften up still more enemies to finish off with the Serial soldier, and so on, whereas in Chimera Squad those options don't really exist. (Or more accurately the extent to which you can achieve similar results is significantly curtailed and reliant on having specific kinds of support prepped, like Motile Inducers) If your Fortunate Blossom-equipped agent's turn comes around and the situation doesn't already make for a good Serial opportunity, you have limited ability to arrange for the situation to become a good Serial opportunity that you then immediately take advantage of.

Correlated to that is that good play in Chimera Squad in general revolves heavily around downing or disabling enemies early in the turn order so they don't get to act, where spreading around damage is generally inferior to focusing down key targets, once again primarily due to the turn mechanics. Cleaving to this pressure means minimizing the odds of a good Serial opportunity getting to come up organically.

This isn't to say that Serial is worthless or anything, and you can make some not-unreasonable decisions to try to support it -just having Blueblood on the team to soften the room up with Faceoff is a big boost to Serial's relevancy, for example- but don't get too excited about the idea of clearing out an entire Encounter with it. It's not liable to happen particularly often, if you ever have it happen at all, and if you jump through hoops to make it happen that's probably less efficient than some less flashy strategy, honestly.

I would in fact argue that Fortunate Blossom isn't really worth buying from the Scavenger Market unless you're already at the point of running out of things to usefully spend Intel on.

That said, it's worth emphasizing the oddity that Serial triggers off even Subdue downing a target, not just on finishing a target with gunfire. For starters, this eases the consideration of ammo -it's possible to potentially Serial a room of 7 enemies with no ammo support even though Rifles only have 4 max ammo base, which is a neat little advantage over Serial's state in XCOM 2. For another, in cases where a mission objective demands you get to a location in a timely manner, Serial can be used to walk Verge, Patchwork, or an Android a shockingly far distance via a Subdue chain. Dash to Subdue a target, get both action points refunded, repeat; this can result in more ground covered than Zephyr can pull off!

Also keep in mind that since Items are always free actions to use, it is possible to eg equip Verge with a Plasma Grenade and keep an eye out for clustered enemies to instantly create and act upon opportunities to leverage Serial. Enemies don't cluster enough for this to be a reliable help, but it's something to keep in mind. It's not like you can use Serial more than once per mission itself, so the fact that you can only equip one such grenade isn't some additional limitation. By a similar token you can give Verge or Patchwork a Motile Inducer to get help from another agent. Patchwork getting three Item slots makes it particularly easy for her to justify doing both if you really want to maximize opportunities to leverage Serial -and if you take Voltaic Arc she's even good at Subdue chains.

You can also just set yours sights a bit lower than in XCOM 2 to get value out of Fortunate Blossom. Activating Serial when you'll only get to down one enemy isn't much value, but it's something, and it is free. If you're in the final Encounter, why not?

Impetuous Spire
Banish
Once per mission, fire on an enemy until the target is dead or the weapon is out of ammo, with all shots operating at a -15 Aim penalty.

Bizarrely, and annoyingly, if you attempt to Banish a targetable object, you will spend the Banish charge but only fire one shot, with said shot having a 15% chance to miss even though normal shots can't miss environmental objects. So don't try to Banish destructible objects; it's completely inferior to just firing a regular shot.

Anyway, Impetuous Spire is fantastic to have when heading into a Take Down (Investigation target) mission, since those always have at least one boss enemy that's a great target for Banishing. It's not unusual for Banish to instantly delete such a boss, especially if you've got a Superior Expanded Magazine equipped, and bosses are mostly the most dangerous enemy in their Encounter.

Most of the time, though, you're going to have to unlearn your Banish metrics from XCOM 2. The vast majority of enemies in Chimera Squad are designed to die in 1-2 hits if your technology is keeping up, which was true in XCOM 2 as well but XCOM 2 was perfectly happy to have outsizedly tough pod leaders who broke this metric, not to mention the Chosen were running around. In Chimera Squad, most missions won't have any enemies you're liable to want to shoot 4+ times. You should get used to usually treating Banish as something to use on only moderately tough or particularly problematic enemies, rather than conserving it for 'boss-tier' enemies. Particularly remember to be aggressive about using it in missions that are just 1 Encounter; you might as well try to Banish a middling-durability priority target in that case.

Of the regular enemies, Praetorians, Muton Bombers, Sorcerers, Archons, Ronin, and Mecs are some of the best targets, often able to survive two hits when you're on target for technology... but still keep in mind the potential to use it on crucial targets that only need two hits to go down, like Dominators.

On the plus side, your Rifle users all have innately lackluster firearm-based offenses; Verge and Patchwork appreciate the ability to break out Banish in dire need a lot more than, say, Blueblood would. This is made even more true if you tend to let your Rifle technology lag -and since there's only two Rifle users, neither of whom is fond of their firearm and who aren't particularly synergistic with each other, there's strong arguments for having Rifles be a low-priority purchase, at which point Banish is more likely to be higher-value. Though of course in the long haul you'll have everything upgraded regardless.

Overall, Impetuous Spire is a little easier to justify actually purchasing than Fortunate Blossom. Being able to almost-completely-reliably remove a key target is very appreciated. Among other points, the Aim penalty is actually a bit less painful than in XCOM 2 precisely due to the overall frailer enemies; if you try to Banish a target you only need two hits to down, missing a couple of times is probably not a problem at all. Indeed, Banish can be worth breaking out on important targets that are in decent Cover; it'll be a gamble, but possibly not more so than your other options.


Lonely Herald
Run And Gun
Immediately gain an extra action point for free. This action point cannot be spent on most movement actions. 3 turn cooldown.

I specify 'most' movement actions because Axiom's Smash is, bizarrely, an exception, so Axiom can actually use Run And Gun to perform a super-Dash Smash. Furthermore, just as in XCOM 2 the game prefers to spend Run And Gun action points before other action points, so when using Adrenal Surge Axiom can absolutely Run And Gun, Smash, and still have two freely-spendable action points. Since using Smash inexplicably doesn't trigger the Dash penalties if spammed via Adrenal Surge, this can give Axiom incredible movement potential, comparable to Zephyr abusing Momentum with her superior base Mobility!

Incidentally, this means Axiom is by far the best user of Lonely Herald. Claymore is also a decent user at max level due to being able to spam Shrapnel Bombs with it, and even at lower levels it can be used to toss a Shrapnel Bomb while still flanking and shooting a conveniently-close target, but it's just not as dramatic. Godmother, meanwhile, barely appreciates it, having no innate way to efficiently spend an additional action point, being naturally quite fast, and having Alpha Strike to give her a massive Mobility surge on shorter missions/when you expect to need it/in the final Encounter of a mission. You might as well give it to her if you don't have Callow Ember and aren't running Claymore or Axiom, but you'll barely notice the difference; for one thing, Run And Gun action points don't cancel out the movement penalty you suffer for Dashing.

Also note that there's reason to consider equipping a Reflex Grip to whoever you give Lonely Herald to, as you can in fact use the Run And Gun action point to feed a Reflex Grip shot. Among other points, you can spend one action point to get close to a target and then fire twice, or just fire three times on enemies standing in the open. This latter scenario can crop up pretty readily in Sacred Coil missions thanks to how many units they have that don't use Cover!

On a different topic, this is the Epic Weapon skill that most confuses me as a choice. Run And Gun wasn't super-amazing in XCOM 2, and while Chimera Squad gets rid of one of its biggest classic flaws -the risk of pod activation- it also burdens it with new issues and, crucially it's the only Epic Weapon skill that doesn't fairly directly boost firepower when leveraged. (There's multiple ways to turn it into added damage, but it's not a given the way the other Epic Weapon skills are, and some of these options look very much unintended) Admittedly, every Epic Weapon skill is specifically a returning skill, but it's not like the game is shy about borrowing from the 'wrong' class for a given category; the Rifle skills are associated with Sniper Rifles and Vektor Rifles, not Support/Specialist Rifles, for example.

It's basically free and there's not a ton of competition so it's not ruinous to the design or anything, but it's weird.


Callow Ember
Rapid Fire
Fire twice on a chosen target, at a -15 Aim penalty on each shot. 1 use per mission.

Where Lonely Herald was least useful to Godmother, Callow Ember is most useful to Godmother; she's the best Shotgun user at getting close enough to a target that Rapid Fire's Aim penalty more or less doesn't matter. Then her Principle Agent Training makes a kill-shot grant a free reload, so the part where it eats 2/3rds of a Shotgun's base ammo and she has multiple ammo-hungry skills isn't a problem, ultimately.

Axiom can still put it to decent use, but honestly Run And Gun tends to be a bigger boost to his utility, being much more versatile, and if you equip him with a Reflex Grip then Run And Gun is able to functionally replicate Rapid Fire but minus the Aim penalty and using a cooldown instead of a charge! If he's your only Shotgun user and you only have Callow Ember, yeah, give it to him, but don't expect it to impress.

Claymore basically doesn't care about Callow Ember. You'll find yourself using it if he's your only Shotgun user and you loot Callow Ember before Lonely Herald, but you'll probably be using it for situations like 'I need him to kill this enemy he has a 63% chance to hit, let's Rapid Fire to make it more likely a shot actually lands'. Getting close enough to do a reliable Rapid Fire? Not terribly likely with Claymore.

In general Rapid Fire is not going to impress as much as it did on base XCOM 2 Rangers. You can't get Aim as high to cleanly offset the Aim penalty, individual enemy HP doesn't go as high to make a single-target damage spike so reliably valuable, and the one-use-per-mission limitation makes it easy to end up not using it at all because you keep passing up opportunities it would be okay for just in case a more significant moment will come up later, and then that more significant moment never happens, oops.

And yes, this means both Epic Shotguns are a bit lackluster in their payoffs. This is another reason Shotguns don't actually tilt agent quality all that much upward; as Epic Weapons come into play, your non-Shotgun agents will get bigger spikes in power than your Shotgun agents.


Surly Constant
Hail of Bullets
Spend 3 ammo to fire a shot that cannot miss but cannot crit. 3 turn cooldown.

It's interesting to me that SMG Epic Weapons are represented using Kal-90 recolors, primarily because XCOM 2 mods have already drawn parallels between Long War 2 SMGs and Skirmisher Bullpups.

It's also amusing to me that Epic SMGs get Grenadier skills, given Cannons are basically heavier Rifles, while regular SMGs are visually more like lighter Rifles. (Though mechanically they're just marginally more oriented toward close-range combat...)

It's also a little surprising they made a completely new graphic for Hail of Bullets for Chimera Squad, instead of just fitting the old graphic into the new visualization framework. Did they try that, and find it became incomprehensible or something?

In any event, Hail of Bullets is not amazing in Chimera Squad, but can be a clutch skill when you really want to force damage on someone. Terminal has no way to force damage on her own, so she's pretty straightforward about appreciating it, but in some ways Torque is a better user; among other points, she doesn't burn through ammo as consistently as Terminal does due to having multiple offensive tools in her kit that don't demand ammo, especially if you go the Bind-riffic route with her skills, so she's more likely to have the ammo when you need it. Regardless, they're both good choices; just consider an Expanded Magazine or Auto-Loader so you don't have to worry particularly about not having enough ammo when you want to use it.

Shelter is probably the worst user. Relocate lets him get sudden flanks or even drop your victim amid the rest of the squad so they can deal with the problem, Soulfire lets him dump guaranteed damage on a target that ignores Armor and delays their turn, Fracture lets him generate an additional source of Soulfire, and while Writhe is pretty bad it still occasionally provides him a way to do damage without any chance of missing, all of which makes Hail of Bullets just one more way to force a hit. Since he's also an excellent choice for a Reflex Grip, he's very possibly burning through ammo too quickly to count on it, to boot.

Ultimately, Hail of Bullets actually stands out less in Chimera Squad than it did in XCOM 2. Chimera Squad is much more willing to pass out abilities that can't fail (eg Subdue), or that can fail but where this is largely a technicality (eg Verge's basic abilities will almost never have a chance to fail against the overwhelming majority of enemies you're allowed to use them on at all), and tends to have more generous tuning on such abilities as well. (eg in XCOM 2 Combat Protocol can't miss, but its damage is notably inferior to just shooting if the target isn't a robot, where Shelter's Soulfire is pretty directly comparable to a regular shot to start) It's an okay enough Epic Weapon ability, but if an equivalent to Epic Weapons had existed in XCOM 2 it probably would've impressed more there, honestly. I'm a little surprised this isn't Rupture, actually -indeed, Chimera Squad doesn't use the Rupture skill anywhere, oddly.

Admittedly the auto-crit aspect of Rupture would be pretty underwhelming in Chimera Squad, but Chimera Squad is plenty fond of the Rupture status, so it feels a bit weird that the Rupture skill isn't around.

Crucial Symmetry
Chain Shot
Fire a shot at a -15 Aim penalty, and if it hits immediately fire another shot, also at a -15 Aim penalty. 3 turn cooldown.

Yeah, both SMG Epic Weapons look really, really similar. Black and red/orange coloration, in a similar distribution and all. Only SMGs suffer from this, for whatever reason.

Anyway, Torque is very much the best user of Crucial Symmetry, between Adaptable letting her get amid enemies readily to start and Tongue Pull letting her pull enemies atop her. Just keep in mind SMG Aim scaling is such that even with a Superior Scope a point-blank Chain Shot with max-level Torque is still imperfect, at a 98% chance to hit. You'll need Holo Targeting assistance or Tracer Rounds to ensure hits. (No, this is not an argument for actually using Tracer Rounds)

Shelter is a solid second-best, since Relocate lets him get advantageous positions quite suddenly. It's unreliable in multiple senses, but probably better than Surly Constant's Hail of Bullets for him. Among other points, he lacks an innate way to spike his damage abruptly, so he appreciates that element more than Torque and Terminal do.

For Terminal, it's awful. She's terrible at closing, and would really rather have Hail of Bullets to make up for that issue, rather than Chain Shot to emphasize it as a weakness. If she really wants to generate more damage all of a sudden, she innately gets Cooperation to get another agent attacking, so she doesn't even particularly appreciate it offering a way to spike her damage.

Chain Shot itself is propped up a little bit by the fact that it's no longer just Bad Rapid Fire, since Rapid Fire has only the one charge where Chain Shot is a cooldown-based ability. This isn't hugely important in practice (Plenty of missions last too briefly to use Chain Shot a second time), but I do appreciate that Chimera Squad seems to recognize that even War of the Chosen giving Rapid Fire a longer cooldown than Chain Shot wasn't a particularly effective way of giving Chain Shot something over Rapid Fire. It suggests that if XCOM 3 brings back the two concepts -and it's obviously very likely to bring back Rapid Fire, at least- that XCOM 3 is liable to do a better job of avoiding the 'Rapid Fire, and Rapid Fire's Inferior Cousin' issue than XCOM 2 did.


Artful Fathom
Lightning Hands
Immediately take a standard shot on a target, but without spending an action point. 3 turn cooldown.

This is great on both Cherub and Blueblood, but probably overall slightly more appreciated by Cherub than by Blueblood. Cherub doesn't have Deadeye (Which can't be used on Lightning Hands, making it slightly less of a damage boost for Blueblood, and he already can shoot twice to boot, making this at best a 50% increase in his damage), and his focus on Kinetic Shield and melee strikes can easily leave him with little opportunity to fire his Pistol conventionally. It also goes well with Supercharge, letting him use Supercharge, promptly leverage the damage boost, and still put up a Kinetic Shield if you desperately need one up.

Note that Blueblood's Warm Welcome and Fond Farewell skills will in fact trigger on Lightning Hands. Also note that Lightning Hands does in fact spend ammo; before he gets his final Training online, Blueblood can end up running out of ammo in a longer Encounter quite readily. Cherub is still really unlikely to run through his ammo, though.

Lightning Hands remains a fantastic skill, and it's a pleasant surprise to see Chimera Squad correctly assessing it as a super-skill that deserves to be treated as such, as opposed to XCOM 2 passing it out at a relatively low level and treating it like it's merely okay. It's a little less amazing in Chimera Squad than in XCOM 2, with no Alien Rulers running about, Pistols actually dealing with ammo, and myriad other design differences that are individually insignificant but collectively bring its peak down, but 'less amazing than in XCOM 2' is still very, very strong.


Endless Brevity
Fan Fire
Fire three standard shots at a chosen target. Requires three ammo available. One use per mission.

This is also great on both your Pistol-users, but I feel it tends to be slightly more valuable to Blueblood, simply because he's a lot more committed to maximizing Pistol effectiveness. Cherub may skip an Ammo Item, for example, since Pistol fire isn't central to his performance. It's still nice to have on Cherub, though, and prior to Blueblood performing his final Training Cherub finds it easier to cope with the ammo concerns.

Like Banish and Rapid Fire, Fan Fire is usually going to be overkill against any given enemy if all shots land. As such, it's actually generally better to use it on targets you have high-but-imperfect accuracy against, on the idea that one of the shots missing doesn't really matter if you only need two to hit, which is in fact usually all you need to down a target. It's also decent for when you have a weak target you want finished off but have poor accuracy against; three 40% shots where only one needs to hit to kill the target is pretty good odds of a kill.

That said, Praetorians are impressively durable, enough so you may actually need all three shots to get a kill, so during the Gray Phoenix Investigation it's more worth considering saving Fan Fire for killing a big target outright rather than using its barrage as a kind of fake accuracy booster. Also, Investigation bosses are all tough enough targets that a full Fan Fire is what it takes to kill them. (Or may not be enough to kill them, actually) So it's not like there's no situations the peak damage is appreciated in.

But you still shouldn't approach Fan Fire usage in Chimera Squad the way you did in XCOM 2, where you expected every mission to have at least one target tough enough to survive a full Fan Fire by the time you had Fan Fire. In Chimera Squad, you'll have entire missions where nothing will live past the second hit, and surviving three hits is something you only expect to see during the Take Down Sacred Coil mission from one of its bosses.

Indeed, in conjunction with it now having only one use per mission, I suspect a lot of Chimera Squad players end up not getting much use out of Fan Fire at all, because they're perpetually holding onto it for situations that largely don't exist in the game, and so go through multiple missions without ever making use of it.

If you set your sights a bit lower than that, though, it's a very solid boost to Cherub or Blueblood's effectiveness. It can't reach the heights of its peak performance in XCOM 2, as for one thing Chimera Squad simply doesn't have anything equivalent to how Bluescreen Rounds in XCOM 2 were massive damage boosts against key late-game enemies (Sectopods and Gatekeepers), but it's still a great skill.

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Next time, we wrap up all this weapon talk by covering the Weapon Attachments I keep alluding to.

See you then.