Chimera Squad Equipment Analysis: Weapon Attachments
The list includes a lot of returning concepts, with only Repeaters completely gone -and good riddance- but also includes some new, much more unique concepts.
I quite like what Chimera Squad has done with Weapon Attachments overall, even if I have issues with some of the details.
You might notice I'm actually using icons for Chimera Squad's Weapon Attachments. This is because, unlike XCOM 2, Chimera Squad went with a simple setup; in-engine weapon models do not reflect Weapon Attachments at all, and each Weapon Attachment has a fixed icon instead of changing the icon based on what weapon you're looking at. In turn this means I can just use a single icon and be done with the topic, instead of providing a couple dozen icons for every individual Weapon Attachment or giving up and representing them all with Plasma Rifle versions or some such.
To be able to equip Weapon Attachments, you have to first complete the Modular Weapons Assembly Project, which also unlocks the ability to buy basic Auto-Loaders, Stocks, and Expanded Magazines from Supply, meaning you always have access to those in every run unless you actively shun Weapon Attachments entirely. Which, uh, would be quite the challenge run given this Assembly also gates all the Assemblies that upgrade weapon damage!
Also, one of the more interesting changes on a conceptual level is that Chimera Squad isn't committed to the Basic/Advanced/Superior tier concept. It uses it for all the returning Weapon Attachments -and in this post I describe the benefits as #/#/# where that represents the Basic/Advanced/Superior benefits- but Chimera Squad has multiple completely new Weapon Attachment concepts, none of which comes in tiered forms. This is nice; one of my low-key disappointments with Weapon Attachments in XCOM 2 was that the Basic/Advanced/Superior framework fundamentally meant the game was unwilling to incorporate any number of benefits that would be interesting and meaningful but also more or less impossible to break up into a smooth three-tiered system. I very much hope XCOM 3, if it brings back Weapon Attachments, is similarly willing to do non-tiered concepts.
Oh, and just like XCOM 2, while I'm calling these Weapon Attachments, the in-game terminology remains 'weapon upgrades'. I'm continuing to ignore that because it's unnecessarily confusing alongside upgrading your weapons being an entirely different concept with similar terminology, but if you look up other guides or something they're probably not referring to these as Weapon Attachments.
Scope
+5/10/15 Aim for primary weapon
Note that Chimera Squad has removed the semi-hidden extra +5 for firing on a target in the open, subtly nerfing Scopes.
Scopes remain one of the most important Weapon Attachments, and in some ways they're even more important than in XCOM 2. Chimera Squad doesn't have high ground access nearly so common, and indeed many Encounter maps are completely flat, and multiple agents lack innate access to tools designed to get them in the enemy's face for more Aim. There's also no Perception PCS or equivalent, and external Aim boosting is more prone to having notable limits or caveats, like how Cherub's Supercharge ability can only be used once per mission. And your agent Aim gain from leveling is worse than soldier Aim gain in XCOM 2; agents mostly start from 65 Aim like an XCOM 2 Rookie, and then only gain 5 levels instead of 7, with individual levels adding similar or lower amounts of Aim. Most of your agents cap out at a natural Aim somewhere below 80, with the highest being 85. Back in XCOM 2, 80 Aim on max-level Specialists and Rangers was lackluster, and Grenadiers at 75 was abysmal, while Sharpshooters and Reapers capped out at 91. It's not a huge difference, but on top of everything else...
... well, you basically need Scopes on every agent who isn't going to essentially ignore their weapon if you want to minimize misses. (Aside Zephyr) Even with a Superior Scope at max level, most of your agents still won't reach 100% accuracy against targets in the open who aren't close enough to get close-range accuracy bonuses and who lack natural Defense; Blueblood is the sole agent who hits 100% in these conditions. This is particularly important to agents with a more 'turret' fighting style like Verge, where they are generally not spending action points on getting close-range accuracy bonuses.
There's an argument that several agents barely care about their firearm and so don't really need a Scope, but only one Weapon Attachment directly interacts with a non-shooting action; everything else is useless if you aren't firing the weapon. If, say, Verge could equip a couple psi amp-type tools into these slots to improve his psychic abilities, then yeah I'd argue he doesn't want a Scope. As-is, though, that's 'such agents are a lower priority for getting your first Scopes', not 'they should equip something else'.
Laser Sight
+5/10/15 crit chance for primary weapon, gaining up to +10 more for getting close to the target.
You remember how the Laser Sight was only really good for Rangers and maybe Reapers in XCOM 2?
Yeah, in Chimera Squad it's pretty much completely worthless. Everyone crits for exactly +1 damage now; that's not worth a Weapon Attachment slot, not over some other option. Don't bother wasting Intel or Supplies on buying them. If you loot one, go ahead and put it on someone, preferably someone with a Shotgun since they have natural incentives to close, up until you have enough Weapon Attachments to displace it, but that's it. And frankly the only reason it has that much utility is because Chimera Squad doesn't let you sell your junk, so I can't actually inform you that it's so worthless you should just sell it.
No, Talon Rounds don't help.
Also not helping is that crit chance is overall harder to raise in Chimera Squad, when it was already a struggle in XCOM 2 to reach 100% crit rate. Laser Sights were noteworthy in XCOM 2 if you wanted to arrange reliable crits, whereas in Chimera Squad they aren't because reaching 100% crit rate on a stable basis is just not possible. Laser Sights really are largely 'you might as well use them if you loot them and still have empty slots to fill'.
On the plus side, Laser Sights no longer compete with Scopes. It was always a problem that Laser Sights were not only inherently dubious but then hard-competed with unambiguously the best Weapon Attachment in the game; even if Laser Sights had been less bad in their own right, you would still have largely ignored them simply because giving up a Scope for a Laser Sight was a bad trade. This ultimately is only mildly helpful within Chimera Squad itself, but it gives me hope that XCOM 3 won't repeat the problem and so maybe actually manage to get this sub-component of Weapon Attachment design to work okay.
Stock
1/2/3 damage on missed shots with primary weapon.
Stocks benefit a lot from Chimera Squad having overall lower damage at each step of the game than equivalent points in XCOM 2. In XCOM 2, most of your soldiers were doing 8 damage at minimum on a successful hit by beam-tier; even a Graze was better damage than a Superior Stock. And then there was Ammo Items, Breakthroughs in War of the Chosen, crit damage spiking, and several external modifiers like Rupture's +3 (Or +2 if from Schism) damage and Chosen Weaknesses multiplying all this damage.
In Chimera Squad, only Shotguns rise above 3-5 at base, each tier upgrade is only +1 damage (And there's still only 2 of them), crits are only +1 damage on weapons, Rupture has been reduced to +1 damage, there's almost no other external modifiers... ignoring Bluescreen Rounds for the moment, most of your agents rise to a mere 6 for minimum damage, where a Superior Stock is 50% of their minimum impact damage. Correlated to this is that enemy durability peaks much lower than in XCOM 2, where 3 damage will regularly let you finish off targets or soften them up enough that another agent can finish them even into the endgame on the highest difficulty. (Where in XCOM 2 three damage becomes kind of forgettable in the endgame on the higher difficulties, only occasionally being sufficient to secure a kill or the like)
Stock
1/2/3 damage on missed shots with primary weapon.
Stocks benefit a lot from Chimera Squad having overall lower damage at each step of the game than equivalent points in XCOM 2. In XCOM 2, most of your soldiers were doing 8 damage at minimum on a successful hit by beam-tier; even a Graze was better damage than a Superior Stock. And then there was Ammo Items, Breakthroughs in War of the Chosen, crit damage spiking, and several external modifiers like Rupture's +3 (Or +2 if from Schism) damage and Chosen Weaknesses multiplying all this damage.
In Chimera Squad, only Shotguns rise above 3-5 at base, each tier upgrade is only +1 damage (And there's still only 2 of them), crits are only +1 damage on weapons, Rupture has been reduced to +1 damage, there's almost no other external modifiers... ignoring Bluescreen Rounds for the moment, most of your agents rise to a mere 6 for minimum damage, where a Superior Stock is 50% of their minimum impact damage. Correlated to this is that enemy durability peaks much lower than in XCOM 2, where 3 damage will regularly let you finish off targets or soften them up enough that another agent can finish them even into the endgame on the highest difficulty. (Where in XCOM 2 three damage becomes kind of forgettable in the endgame on the higher difficulties, only occasionally being sufficient to secure a kill or the like)
You still prefer to hit, of course, so passing out Stocks to everybody isn't some optimal strategy, but compared to XCOM 2 they're not pushed aside so strongly by a run advancing.
Also helping is that Chimera Squad is less aggressive about its use of Armor than XCOM 2, and so the higher tiers of Stock are more reliably real improvements over the Basic Stock. In XCOM 2, the Advanced and to a lesser extent Superior Stock suffered from how many enemies picked up at least one point of Armor at higher tier/difficulties, where eg an Advanced Stock didn't add any damage over a Basic Stock when firing on Stun Lancers because Heavy and Elite Stun Lancers had a point of Armor. There's still Armored enemies in Chimera Squad, of course, and in fact Chimera Squad has some strikingly early examples of Armor like Shrike Troopers, but overall Armor has a reduced presence in Chimera Squad.
For that matter, it helps that Codices are no longer a mandatory standard early enemy, and in fact are only rarely seen in exactly one Investigation. Stocks suffered a bit in XCOM 2 from the fact that chipping damage on Codices is mostly a bad thing to have happen, where missing and doing no damage could in fact be a superior outcome to missing and doing a handful of points of damage and provoking the Codex into cloning itself. Being able to freely swap out Weapon Attachments is an additional aid; you can, for example, do the Gray Phoenix Investigation first, find a Superior Stock late in it, then do the Progeny Investigation second and swap out the Superior Stock if you're worried about Codex cloning, guaranteed, where in XCOM 2 even once you had the Shadow Chamber to predict Codex presence the only reliable option for not using a Stock was to unequip the affected weapon entirely. Which was obviously not great if it had another Weapon Attachment (Or two of them!) that you did want to make use of.
Blueblood particularly appreciates Stocks due to his innate ability to shot-spam, but you can also combine a Stock with a Reflex Grip on any agent aside Blueblood or Zephyr to produce the same result. I find this a useful thing to do with Claymore, especially in runs where he's my only Shotgun agent and so I leave Shotgun upgrades for last, since he's generally not a very mobile agent and his innate abilities don't help with hitting distant targets; for a distant enemy hiding behind High Cover, being able to shoot twice and do a minimum of 6 damage can easily be the best thing Claymore can do in the turn. It also goes well with Lonely Herald providing Run And Gun, where in a pinch Claymore can toss out a minimum of 9 damage, guaranteed.
I personally tend to phase out Stocks in favor of Scopes as a run advances, but Stocks really do hold up better in Chimera Squad, and for agents that use their firearm less often there's a decent argument that a Stock is better than a Scope. Being able to get an assured kill on a low-HP target is a clear reason to specifically fire their weapon as opposed to using one of their personal abilities, where improving their accuracy may be insufficient to justify trying to shoot; against a target in High Cover, a regular shot almost certainly has notable odds of being a miss even when backed by a Superior Scope. That kind of thing.
Expanded Magazine
+1/2/3 max ammo for primary weapon
Expanded Magazines are surprisingly limited in utility, which is a pretty striking contrast with XCOM 2 where Expanded Magazines were probably the second-most-widely-valuable of the Weapon Attachments. While most agents would really prefer to not spend an action point on reloading due to having better things to do with their action points, it... rarely matters because your agents automatically reload after every Encounter, and it's uncommon to completely run through their ammo within an Encounter.
Impact Frame
Subdue gains +2 damage. Cannot be equipped by Cherub.
Interestingly, there's indications in the code that there was an advanced and superior tier at some point in development, but it apparently got cut. Which makes sense; it's already the case that the Impact Frame is problematically wonky in relation to eg Zephyr being a melee specialist, it would be even worse if it was possible to get a Superior Impact Frame that provided +4 damage or something.
In any event, I quite like the Impact Frame on its own. A Weapon Attachment that affects something other than regular shooting is a cool idea, this one makes reasonably intuitive sense (Subdue on most agents is smacking the target with their firearm, after all), and it provides a way for Subdue to not fall out of favor so readily just because enemy HP has risen in later Investigations.
In the context of the game having multiple melee specialists who clearly aren't tuned under the assumption of having to compete with Impact Frames existing, I'm not so fond of it. If Zephyr takes Pressure Point and Vital Strike, she ends up with her primary melee attacks KOing enemies, ignoring all their Armor, and doing 5-6 damage in the process with no possibility of missing. Or I could slap an Impact Frame onto Godmother or whoever and be only 1 point of damage short, with the only other loss compared to Zephyr being no Momentum action point. That's... that's really, really dumb. Zephyr shouldn't have to be spending multiple levels on competing with a single Weapon Attachment, and if she has to it ought to be designed so that she's far better at the job than just shoving an Impact Frame on someone. Like, if her melee attack naturally did 4-5 damage while ignoring Armor and KOing targets, and then she could level up to further improve it, I might ultimately still feel the Impact Frame was a problem but at least wouldn't feel like an obvious design error was occurring.
Not helping is the strange decision to deny it to Cherub. He at least gets area-of-effect on his Subdue if he has any Charge, which makes it harder to say 'just give someone else an Impact Frame', but it's still a bizarre, frustrating decision from a game design standpoint. Cherub would love an Impact Frame, but it would still be an actual decision whether to give him it or a different Weapon Attachment.
In any event, out of the nine agents who can equip Impact Frames...
Axiom is pretty inarguably a terrible choice. Smash is comparably powerful to an Impact Frame Subdue (Albeit more random), always available, also a move-and-melee attack, can inflict Unconsciousness on enemies from any HP value if you get lucky, and the only trade-off is that it can sometimes miss. And Adrenal Surge does a lot to mitigate that issue, as does access to Holo Targeting. Notably, you can give Axiom a Reflex Grip and a Targeting System so he can shoot at a target and then Smash it with no chance of missing on the latter, all by himself. The only point in favor of giving him an Impact Frame is that he'll tend to be in easy reach for Subdues anyway. (Which isn't nothing, mind)
Claymore is also pretty awful a choice. He always has a natural ability to do at least 4 damage, unavoidably, to a nearby target, but Shrapnel Bombs are area-of-effect and he'll either upgrade them to penetrate Cover or upgrade them to immediately Rupture for +2 damage. Why Subdue one target for 4-5 damage when you can blow up multiple enemies for 4 or 6 damage? He's also your slowest agent, and never gets any faster, so he'll often be in no position to go for Subdues even if you're aggressive about advancing him. If you loot or buy an Impact Frame in the very early game, you're probably better off giving Claymore Tranq Rounds and passing the Impact Frame off to somebody else if your goal is to have him KOing enemies instead of killing them.
Verge is both great and terrible a choice. Terrible because he really should, in most fights, spend his entire time sitting still and spamming psionic abilities plus Neural Network-enhanced shots, which the Impact Frame isn't a good fit to. Great because Subduing is by far the best way to maneuver Verge in an action-point-efficient manner, and an Impact Frame will make Subdue-maneuvering more likely to be safe and productive. If nothing else, it's worth considering slotting it in if you're bringing him into a mission that requires a lot of movement, like a VIP Extraction.
Torque is a decent option. Her ability set encourages her to behave like a turret, with Subdues to help cover movement, and an Impact Frame will make the Subdues more reliably useful. Her natural access to Vents makes it easier for her to get amid enemies, and if you took Hard Target getting +4 Mobility on the first turn means it's surprisingly common for her to be able to reach enemies with just one action point on her first turn. As such, her turreting tendencies don't interfere with reaching targets as much as they do on other turret-y agents. On the other hand, she can always try to bring enemies to her with Tongue Pull, and if you take Tight Squeeze then a Tongue Pull followed by a Bind is overall better outside the part where Subdue is good for battlefield maneuvering and Tongue Pull+Bind is not.
Shelter is... okay? Relocate makes him unusually well-suited to getting atop distant enemies, and Relocating followed by a Subdue is a way for him to potentially swap with an enemy in a not-great position and then escape the position while still doing damage. An Impact Frame makes it more likely he can take an enemy out as part of this process. If you took Temporal Distortion, it's certainly worth considering. I don't like doing this, myself, but he's far from the worst choice.
Terminal is a pretty good choice. Like Verge, she's prone to ending up turreting. Unlike Verge, it's not because she's good as a turret, it's just that she's often busy burning her first action point on healing people or giving someone else an action point. Better Subdue damage means better ability to justify Subdue-maneuvering with her. Like Verge, it's certainly at least worth considering in movement-heavy mission types.
Blueblood is a very solid choice, and in fact an excellent choice if you take Ever Vigilant, since you'll often want to Subdue as a way of attacking while triggering Ever Vigilant. Once he's got the ability to reload for free, Auto-Loaders become worthless to him and Expanded Magazines become much more limited in their impact (Mostly to power up Faceoff), and Reflex Grips are already unavailable to him by virtue of being redundant, so it's a bit easier to justify an Impact Frame over some other Weapon Attachment than you might think, too. He wouldn't be my first priority without Ever Vigilant, but he's definitely one of the best choices with Ever Vigilant, and before he gets his free reload ability having a solid way to do damage without spending ammo is very valuable to him.
Patchwork is a dubious choice by default. She becomes an okay choice if you take Voltaic Arc, since it encourages having her Subdue targets anyway, particularly if you take High Voltage; at that point going for an Impact Frame Subdue is 5-9 damage on your primary victim, with potential for bounces! Without Voltaic Arc, though, she'd usually rather use Chaining Jolt, which also does 4 damage, also can't miss, also ignores Armor, but works at range and the bounces can give it even more damage across multiple other victims. Notably, there are no targets you can't use Chaining Jolt on. (By contrast with how Subdue can't be used on eg Turrets) In that context, Subdue backed by an Impact Frame is only useful if you're trying to get KOs in particular, or if you're trying to get Patchwork moving while fighting... and when robots aren't around, she isn't naturally prone to turreting, making that a bit unnecessary.
Godmother is probably the single best default user of an Impact Frame. She's one of your fastest agents by default, is working with limited ammo and has natural access to multiple ammo-hungry abilities, can further bolster her battlefield mobility with Alpha Strike and Overtime, and gets no innate abilities for letting her beat Armor, all while having strong incentives to get close to enemies at all times. Getting to Subdue for solid damage is naturally synergistic with all of these qualities. Even better, she's not particularly enthused by most other Weapon Attachments, making it not much of a sacrifice to eg run it over a Targeting System.
Expanded Magazine
+1/2/3 max ammo for primary weapon
Expanded Magazines are surprisingly limited in utility, which is a pretty striking contrast with XCOM 2 where Expanded Magazines were probably the second-most-widely-valuable of the Weapon Attachments. While most agents would really prefer to not spend an action point on reloading due to having better things to do with their action points, it... rarely matters because your agents automatically reload after every Encounter, and it's uncommon to completely run through their ammo within an Encounter.
That said, there are several specific niches for Expanded Magazines.
First of all, Impetuous Spire and thus Banish can be passed out to any Rifle-user -so Verge, Patchwork, and your Androids can all have cause to want to equip an Expanded Magazine. Nothing achieves the heights of durability of XCOM 2, so this is less impressive than you might expect, but it's still relevant since they can find themselves burning through a lot of ammo in one turn with combat still ongoing, especially if you used Banish on a target where the chance to hit was poor. (eg 50% or less) In that case they could easily burn through a lot of ammo even if the target goes down in two hits.
Second, Godmother will often appreciate an Expanded Magazine, having two different abilities that let her burn through ammo quickly while wielding Shotguns, which are already the lowest-ammo weapon type. This is exacerbated by Callow Ember offering Rapid Fire, giving her another way to potentially burn through ammo quickly.
Third, Blueblood's ability to fire twice a turn, every turn, means his Pistol having 6 innate ammo is really closer to being equivalent to a Shotgun's 3, in terms of how quickly he'll burn through it. Furthermore, both Epic Pistols provide tools for burning through ammo extra-fast, and Faceoff burns ammo for every enemy in reach. (Ignoring the unreliable bugginess where it doesn't always expend the correct amount of ammo) As such, Blueblood is tremendously ammo-hungry: if you're using him, you're going to want to give him a Superior Expanded Magazine at some point, realistically. (Up until he gets his final Training done, at least)
Fourth, a Reflex Grip can grant anyone except Zephyr (Or Blueblood, technically) the ability to burn through ammo twice as fast. It can be worth considering combining the two on the agents that can put the Reflex Grip to good use on the regular, such as Shelter.
There are missions that can have fairly long Encounters, but this always takes the form of reinforcements, giving time to reload in peace, so Chimera Squad doesn't really have an 'extended combat' scenario to give Expanded Magazines another niche, but those prior three niches are notable enough. Just don't mindlessly treat Expanded Magazines as widely great if you got used to doing so in XCOM 2.
Auto-Loader
1/2/3 reloads per mission are free actions
For most purposes, an Auto-Loader is basically flatly inferior to equipping an Expanded Magazine, due to ammo scales and Encounter-reloads and all. Particularly egregious is that Blueblood -the agent hungriest for ammo- ultimately gets the ability to reload for free on his own, making an Auto-Loader literally worthless to him.
Auto-Loader
1/2/3 reloads per mission are free actions
For most purposes, an Auto-Loader is basically flatly inferior to equipping an Expanded Magazine, due to ammo scales and Encounter-reloads and all. Particularly egregious is that Blueblood -the agent hungriest for ammo- ultimately gets the ability to reload for free on his own, making an Auto-Loader literally worthless to him.
That said, Hitmen and Codices can both forcibly drain ammo from your soldiers reliably, and while Codices are restricted to the Progeny Investigation, Hitmen can show up at basically any point in the campaign. If you routinely find Hitmen causing you trouble with their ammo drain, consider passing out an Auto-Loader to address the issue.
If you don't find that to be a concern, though, there's better Weapon Attachments to be equipping.
In practice the primary reason to consider equipping an Auto-Loader is because you looted one for free and have empty Weapon Attachment slots still. I certainly wouldn't buy an Auto-Loader from the Scavenger Market; they really do hold up very poorly in Chimera Squad.
Hair Trigger
10% chance for a given shooting action to not cost any action points
Surprisingly, this can even trigger on some special shooting actions like Fan Fire.
Also, no, there's no advanced tiers of Hair Triggers in Chimera Squad. Not properly available; the code still contains allusions to advanced tiers, but they'll never spawn. 10% is as good as this chance gets.
Hair Trigger
10% chance for a given shooting action to not cost any action points
Surprisingly, this can even trigger on some special shooting actions like Fan Fire.
Also, no, there's no advanced tiers of Hair Triggers in Chimera Squad. Not properly available; the code still contains allusions to advanced tiers, but they'll never spawn. 10% is as good as this chance gets.
In practice, the Hair Trigger is largely something you equip early in the game if you happen to loot it, and inevitably displace with better options. Blueblood is the only agent who shoots often enough, reliably enough, to really expect a Hair Trigger to trigger in any particular mission, and he desperately wants ammo support and preferably a Scope so he can hit things more reliably, at which point there's no room left for a Hair Trigger. If you happen to get one early, before you have other Weapon Attachments, Blueblood is certainly the best choice for a Hair Trigger, but there's a long stretch of the game you're basically guaranteed to not be able to justify a Hair Trigger on Blueblood. Once he's done his final Training I guess he becomes a decent user, but even then I personally would rather have an Impact Frame.
Part of the problem with the Hair Trigger is, surprisingly, that Overwatch has been improved. In XCOM 2, if a soldier couldn't make any good shots and didn't have any relevant special abilities or Items to use, the optimal thing was to take a bad shot in 99% of situations. In Chimera Squad, if you have no good shots and no good relevant abilities, more likely you'll go into Overwatch -among other points, if part of the reason you have no good shots is that multiple enemies Hunkered Down due to the Breach phase, it's usually better to lay Overwatch over them instead of taking a shot at them, since the Overwatch shot will end up not having to deal with the Hunker Down bonuses. And since Overwatch doesn't benefit from a Hair Trigger, Overwatch's increased relevancy drags down Hair Trigger's utility!
It should also be explicitly noted that a Hair Trigger can't do anything in the Breach Phase, in case you were thinking that might give it a place.
I was never a fan of Hair Triggers in XCOM 2, but I'm really puzzled by Chimera Squad bringing them back and reducing their peak potential. It didn't bring back Repeaters, which I very much appreciate, but the relevancy is that Chimera Squad isn't just mindlessly copy-pasting the XCOM 2 list without thought to whether a given one should stick around. So why didn't Hair Triggers get dumped as well, or get more substantially overhauled?
Impact Frame
Subdue gains +2 damage. Cannot be equipped by Cherub.
Interestingly, there's indications in the code that there was an advanced and superior tier at some point in development, but it apparently got cut. Which makes sense; it's already the case that the Impact Frame is problematically wonky in relation to eg Zephyr being a melee specialist, it would be even worse if it was possible to get a Superior Impact Frame that provided +4 damage or something.
In any event, I quite like the Impact Frame on its own. A Weapon Attachment that affects something other than regular shooting is a cool idea, this one makes reasonably intuitive sense (Subdue on most agents is smacking the target with their firearm, after all), and it provides a way for Subdue to not fall out of favor so readily just because enemy HP has risen in later Investigations.
In the context of the game having multiple melee specialists who clearly aren't tuned under the assumption of having to compete with Impact Frames existing, I'm not so fond of it. If Zephyr takes Pressure Point and Vital Strike, she ends up with her primary melee attacks KOing enemies, ignoring all their Armor, and doing 5-6 damage in the process with no possibility of missing. Or I could slap an Impact Frame onto Godmother or whoever and be only 1 point of damage short, with the only other loss compared to Zephyr being no Momentum action point. That's... that's really, really dumb. Zephyr shouldn't have to be spending multiple levels on competing with a single Weapon Attachment, and if she has to it ought to be designed so that she's far better at the job than just shoving an Impact Frame on someone. Like, if her melee attack naturally did 4-5 damage while ignoring Armor and KOing targets, and then she could level up to further improve it, I might ultimately still feel the Impact Frame was a problem but at least wouldn't feel like an obvious design error was occurring.
Not helping is the strange decision to deny it to Cherub. He at least gets area-of-effect on his Subdue if he has any Charge, which makes it harder to say 'just give someone else an Impact Frame', but it's still a bizarre, frustrating decision from a game design standpoint. Cherub would love an Impact Frame, but it would still be an actual decision whether to give him it or a different Weapon Attachment.
In any event, out of the nine agents who can equip Impact Frames...
Axiom is pretty inarguably a terrible choice. Smash is comparably powerful to an Impact Frame Subdue (Albeit more random), always available, also a move-and-melee attack, can inflict Unconsciousness on enemies from any HP value if you get lucky, and the only trade-off is that it can sometimes miss. And Adrenal Surge does a lot to mitigate that issue, as does access to Holo Targeting. Notably, you can give Axiom a Reflex Grip and a Targeting System so he can shoot at a target and then Smash it with no chance of missing on the latter, all by himself. The only point in favor of giving him an Impact Frame is that he'll tend to be in easy reach for Subdues anyway. (Which isn't nothing, mind)
Claymore is also pretty awful a choice. He always has a natural ability to do at least 4 damage, unavoidably, to a nearby target, but Shrapnel Bombs are area-of-effect and he'll either upgrade them to penetrate Cover or upgrade them to immediately Rupture for +2 damage. Why Subdue one target for 4-5 damage when you can blow up multiple enemies for 4 or 6 damage? He's also your slowest agent, and never gets any faster, so he'll often be in no position to go for Subdues even if you're aggressive about advancing him. If you loot or buy an Impact Frame in the very early game, you're probably better off giving Claymore Tranq Rounds and passing the Impact Frame off to somebody else if your goal is to have him KOing enemies instead of killing them.
Verge is both great and terrible a choice. Terrible because he really should, in most fights, spend his entire time sitting still and spamming psionic abilities plus Neural Network-enhanced shots, which the Impact Frame isn't a good fit to. Great because Subduing is by far the best way to maneuver Verge in an action-point-efficient manner, and an Impact Frame will make Subdue-maneuvering more likely to be safe and productive. If nothing else, it's worth considering slotting it in if you're bringing him into a mission that requires a lot of movement, like a VIP Extraction.
Torque is a decent option. Her ability set encourages her to behave like a turret, with Subdues to help cover movement, and an Impact Frame will make the Subdues more reliably useful. Her natural access to Vents makes it easier for her to get amid enemies, and if you took Hard Target getting +4 Mobility on the first turn means it's surprisingly common for her to be able to reach enemies with just one action point on her first turn. As such, her turreting tendencies don't interfere with reaching targets as much as they do on other turret-y agents. On the other hand, she can always try to bring enemies to her with Tongue Pull, and if you take Tight Squeeze then a Tongue Pull followed by a Bind is overall better outside the part where Subdue is good for battlefield maneuvering and Tongue Pull+Bind is not.
Shelter is... okay? Relocate makes him unusually well-suited to getting atop distant enemies, and Relocating followed by a Subdue is a way for him to potentially swap with an enemy in a not-great position and then escape the position while still doing damage. An Impact Frame makes it more likely he can take an enemy out as part of this process. If you took Temporal Distortion, it's certainly worth considering. I don't like doing this, myself, but he's far from the worst choice.
Terminal is a pretty good choice. Like Verge, she's prone to ending up turreting. Unlike Verge, it's not because she's good as a turret, it's just that she's often busy burning her first action point on healing people or giving someone else an action point. Better Subdue damage means better ability to justify Subdue-maneuvering with her. Like Verge, it's certainly at least worth considering in movement-heavy mission types.
Blueblood is a very solid choice, and in fact an excellent choice if you take Ever Vigilant, since you'll often want to Subdue as a way of attacking while triggering Ever Vigilant. Once he's got the ability to reload for free, Auto-Loaders become worthless to him and Expanded Magazines become much more limited in their impact (Mostly to power up Faceoff), and Reflex Grips are already unavailable to him by virtue of being redundant, so it's a bit easier to justify an Impact Frame over some other Weapon Attachment than you might think, too. He wouldn't be my first priority without Ever Vigilant, but he's definitely one of the best choices with Ever Vigilant, and before he gets his free reload ability having a solid way to do damage without spending ammo is very valuable to him.
Patchwork is a dubious choice by default. She becomes an okay choice if you take Voltaic Arc, since it encourages having her Subdue targets anyway, particularly if you take High Voltage; at that point going for an Impact Frame Subdue is 5-9 damage on your primary victim, with potential for bounces! Without Voltaic Arc, though, she'd usually rather use Chaining Jolt, which also does 4 damage, also can't miss, also ignores Armor, but works at range and the bounces can give it even more damage across multiple other victims. Notably, there are no targets you can't use Chaining Jolt on. (By contrast with how Subdue can't be used on eg Turrets) In that context, Subdue backed by an Impact Frame is only useful if you're trying to get KOs in particular, or if you're trying to get Patchwork moving while fighting... and when robots aren't around, she isn't naturally prone to turreting, making that a bit unnecessary.
Godmother is probably the single best default user of an Impact Frame. She's one of your fastest agents by default, is working with limited ammo and has natural access to multiple ammo-hungry abilities, can further bolster her battlefield mobility with Alpha Strike and Overtime, and gets no innate abilities for letting her beat Armor, all while having strong incentives to get close to enemies at all times. Getting to Subdue for solid damage is naturally synergistic with all of these qualities. Even better, she's not particularly enthused by most other Weapon Attachments, making it not much of a sacrifice to eg run it over a Targeting System.
Overall, I like the Impact Frame as an attempt at doing something new, but I really do wish it either hadn't been introduced in this game that has multiple melee specialists, or that the game had been designed with more awareness of how the Impact Frame's existence impacts such melee specialists. I honestly am kind of hoping XCOM 3 simply doesn't do its own version of the Impact Frame. Fortunately, this seems pretty plausible -I'd be quite surprised if the 'everybody gets Subdue' part of Chimera Squad's design makes a return in XCOM 3, for one, and the Impact Frame only really makes sense to exist precisely because everybody has access to Subdue. (Aside, technically, Cherub)
Reflex Grip
Standard shots only consume 1 action point, instead of automatically ending the turn. Cannot be equipped by Blueblood.
Unsurprisingly, this only comes in one tier. What would more advanced versions even do?
One might intuitively expect the Reflex Grip to be a profoundly powerful, widely appealing Weapon Attachment, but it's actually surprisingly niche. Chimera Squad is very fond of giving agents internally good action point economy, often from the word go, so for several agents the Reflex Grip is situational at best, or a complete waste at worst.
Verge, for example, would generally rather use Battle Madness and then shoot. Battle Madness will often result in a flanking shot, potentially from an enemy with more firepower than Verge has, and will add the target to Verge's Neural Network, immediately granting him +10 to Aim, while having not cost Verge any ammo. That's pretty clearly a lot better than spending that first action point on a shot of his own, especially early in a run before Ammo Items come into play. The primary caveat here is that Sacred Coil uses a lot of robots and has three different pure melee enemies, so if you're going to insist on using Verge during the Sacred Coil Investigation, he's one of the better recipients of a Reflex Grip at that point.
Blueblood, of course, can't even use a Reflex Grip, because it's just Desperado in Weapon Attachment form.
Terminal is another poor user, especially as she levels; she can always burn an action point on Safeguard, and once she hits Special Agent she also has Cooperation, letting her gift an action point to someone else who's better positioned to make an attack, which will often be better than shooting twice. She's a better option than Verge, but not by a lot, and when fighting Sacred Coil she's actually an even worse choice, since Sacred Coil doesn't inhibit her natural ability to efficiently spend action points.
Cherub is an absolutely awful option. It's very rare that it makes sense for him to shoot twice, instead of putting up a Kinetic Shield and then shooting or bashing. And unlike Verge, there's no qualifier of 'except in a specific Investigation'.
Torque is dubious. She always has Tongue Pull as a way to spend an initial action point, picks up Poison Spit at Special Agent, and at max level you can give her Training to make Tongue Pull outright gift allies an action point. If you want her to do the turret thing, her built-in tools are generally more appealing in this regard. That said, it can be nice to get to fire off a shot for 'free' before Tongue Pulling an enemy, particularly if Poison Spit is on cooldown or you're early enough she hasn't picked it up yet; I'm not a fan of doing this, in part because it's a bit of a waste of her above-average Mobility and ability to shrug off even flanking shots via Dodge if you build her to do so, but it's not like it's actually a terrible idea.
Claymore is a decent recipient at low levels, simply because he's so slow he struggles to close for shots and may wish to just take a shot and then lob a Shrapnel Bomb. If he's placed early in the turn order, it's quite possible there's an enemy right on top of the group he has decent odds of hitting, even. Once he's at max level and can toss a Shrapnel Bomb without ending his turn, it's a lot more dubious, especially since so much of his effectiveness still does require him to get close enough to at least toss a grenade. Consider giving him a Reflex Grip if everyone else in the squad is a worse choice/invalid choice, but otherwise I'd recommend passing over it once he's max level.
Axiom is a solid option, especially before he reaches Special Agent. He can take a shot, and then advance on enemies via a Smash, and that's great action economy. Once he's at Special Agent it's slightly less appealing since he can intermittently achieve superior action economy by using Adrenal Surge, Smashing, maxing his Rage with Psych Up spam, and then taking a shot, or Smashing a second time... but it's still a pretty good option, especially in multi-Encounter missions where he's liable to have at least one turn of being right on top of a target while Adrenal Surge is cooling down.
Patchwork is a fantastic option, though less so during the Sacred Coil Investigation. Outside Sacred Coil, she initially has no way to spend her initial action point aside movement, and movement isn't very useful to her initially because Chaining Jolt is often better than firing her rifle, doesn't care about distance, etc. Under those conditions, a Reflex Grip is letting her throw in a shot for free. Once she hits Special Agent, this is slightly less true, and when investigating Sacred Coil she can spend her initial action trying to hack a robot most of the time... but Reprogram has a long cooldown when it succeeds, so unless you literally win partway through the second Round, with no further Encounters, it's still extremely likely Patchwork will get an opportunity to slip in a free shot. I'd argue she's actually the best choice for a Reflex Grip, by a fairly wide margin.
Shelter is also a decent choice, though unfortunately this is more commentary on how much he struggles than anything else. Relocate is his only option for spending his first action point; firstly, Relocate itself is somewhat situational, not a skill you should be spamming every turn. Secondly, his access to Relocate makes maneuvering with his feet more limited in its utility; when he does want to get moved somewhere, he can already switch with an enemy or ally. The combination of these points means that Shelter ends up with a lot of turns where he has no incentive to move, but it also doesn't make sense to Relocate, so he's stuck with 2 action points and no way to spend them efficiently that actually makes sense. Then the Reflex Grip comes along and now Shelter can shoot twice a turn, Relocating when it makes sense to do so, and now he's actually kind of okay!...still under-strength, though.
Finally, Godmother is a surprisingly good user, so long as you also give her an Expanded Magazine or Auto-Loader; Ventilate means she can intermittently contribute even at long range, no need to move closer, Alpha Strike will give her 3 action points once in a mission, often allowing her to flank someone and then, with the Reflex Grip, shoot them twice, Lonely Herald is already a decent fit to her and with a Reflex Grip suddenly Run And Gun can be converted into an extra shot whenever you need it, and Overtime can readily result in Godmother being exactly where you need her. And once she's fully Trained, kill-shots are reloads, helping mitigate the ammo-hungriness!
Reflex Grip
Standard shots only consume 1 action point, instead of automatically ending the turn. Cannot be equipped by Blueblood.
Unsurprisingly, this only comes in one tier. What would more advanced versions even do?
One might intuitively expect the Reflex Grip to be a profoundly powerful, widely appealing Weapon Attachment, but it's actually surprisingly niche. Chimera Squad is very fond of giving agents internally good action point economy, often from the word go, so for several agents the Reflex Grip is situational at best, or a complete waste at worst.
Verge, for example, would generally rather use Battle Madness and then shoot. Battle Madness will often result in a flanking shot, potentially from an enemy with more firepower than Verge has, and will add the target to Verge's Neural Network, immediately granting him +10 to Aim, while having not cost Verge any ammo. That's pretty clearly a lot better than spending that first action point on a shot of his own, especially early in a run before Ammo Items come into play. The primary caveat here is that Sacred Coil uses a lot of robots and has three different pure melee enemies, so if you're going to insist on using Verge during the Sacred Coil Investigation, he's one of the better recipients of a Reflex Grip at that point.
Blueblood, of course, can't even use a Reflex Grip, because it's just Desperado in Weapon Attachment form.
Terminal is another poor user, especially as she levels; she can always burn an action point on Safeguard, and once she hits Special Agent she also has Cooperation, letting her gift an action point to someone else who's better positioned to make an attack, which will often be better than shooting twice. She's a better option than Verge, but not by a lot, and when fighting Sacred Coil she's actually an even worse choice, since Sacred Coil doesn't inhibit her natural ability to efficiently spend action points.
Cherub is an absolutely awful option. It's very rare that it makes sense for him to shoot twice, instead of putting up a Kinetic Shield and then shooting or bashing. And unlike Verge, there's no qualifier of 'except in a specific Investigation'.
Torque is dubious. She always has Tongue Pull as a way to spend an initial action point, picks up Poison Spit at Special Agent, and at max level you can give her Training to make Tongue Pull outright gift allies an action point. If you want her to do the turret thing, her built-in tools are generally more appealing in this regard. That said, it can be nice to get to fire off a shot for 'free' before Tongue Pulling an enemy, particularly if Poison Spit is on cooldown or you're early enough she hasn't picked it up yet; I'm not a fan of doing this, in part because it's a bit of a waste of her above-average Mobility and ability to shrug off even flanking shots via Dodge if you build her to do so, but it's not like it's actually a terrible idea.
Claymore is a decent recipient at low levels, simply because he's so slow he struggles to close for shots and may wish to just take a shot and then lob a Shrapnel Bomb. If he's placed early in the turn order, it's quite possible there's an enemy right on top of the group he has decent odds of hitting, even. Once he's at max level and can toss a Shrapnel Bomb without ending his turn, it's a lot more dubious, especially since so much of his effectiveness still does require him to get close enough to at least toss a grenade. Consider giving him a Reflex Grip if everyone else in the squad is a worse choice/invalid choice, but otherwise I'd recommend passing over it once he's max level.
Axiom is a solid option, especially before he reaches Special Agent. He can take a shot, and then advance on enemies via a Smash, and that's great action economy. Once he's at Special Agent it's slightly less appealing since he can intermittently achieve superior action economy by using Adrenal Surge, Smashing, maxing his Rage with Psych Up spam, and then taking a shot, or Smashing a second time... but it's still a pretty good option, especially in multi-Encounter missions where he's liable to have at least one turn of being right on top of a target while Adrenal Surge is cooling down.
Patchwork is a fantastic option, though less so during the Sacred Coil Investigation. Outside Sacred Coil, she initially has no way to spend her initial action point aside movement, and movement isn't very useful to her initially because Chaining Jolt is often better than firing her rifle, doesn't care about distance, etc. Under those conditions, a Reflex Grip is letting her throw in a shot for free. Once she hits Special Agent, this is slightly less true, and when investigating Sacred Coil she can spend her initial action trying to hack a robot most of the time... but Reprogram has a long cooldown when it succeeds, so unless you literally win partway through the second Round, with no further Encounters, it's still extremely likely Patchwork will get an opportunity to slip in a free shot. I'd argue she's actually the best choice for a Reflex Grip, by a fairly wide margin.
Shelter is also a decent choice, though unfortunately this is more commentary on how much he struggles than anything else. Relocate is his only option for spending his first action point; firstly, Relocate itself is somewhat situational, not a skill you should be spamming every turn. Secondly, his access to Relocate makes maneuvering with his feet more limited in its utility; when he does want to get moved somewhere, he can already switch with an enemy or ally. The combination of these points means that Shelter ends up with a lot of turns where he has no incentive to move, but it also doesn't make sense to Relocate, so he's stuck with 2 action points and no way to spend them efficiently that actually makes sense. Then the Reflex Grip comes along and now Shelter can shoot twice a turn, Relocating when it makes sense to do so, and now he's actually kind of okay!...still under-strength, though.
Finally, Godmother is a surprisingly good user, so long as you also give her an Expanded Magazine or Auto-Loader; Ventilate means she can intermittently contribute even at long range, no need to move closer, Alpha Strike will give her 3 action points once in a mission, often allowing her to flank someone and then, with the Reflex Grip, shoot them twice, Lonely Herald is already a decent fit to her and with a Reflex Grip suddenly Run And Gun can be converted into an extra shot whenever you need it, and Overtime can readily result in Godmother being exactly where you need her. And once she's fully Trained, kill-shots are reloads, helping mitigate the ammo-hungriness!
The Reflex Grip is an interesting experiment, but I'll be surprised if it returns in XCOM 3, and especially if it returns without being very dominant. XCOM 3 seems unlikely to replicate the collage of qualities Chimera Squad has that keeps the Reflex Grip relatively low in value, and it also seems likely to want to have 'shoot twice in a turn' be a distinctive class skill like it was in War of the Chosen. It's already a little wonky in Chimera Squad that Blueblood has Desperado be one of his primary advantages and then you can pass it out to anyone except Zephyr; imagine if War of the Chosen had done the same alongside introducing Skirmishers. Skirmishers would probably have really struggled to justify their presence at that point!
Targeting System
Primary weapon now Holo Targets enemies it fires on, providing +15 Aim against them for one turn.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Holo Targeting is even applied by Breach phase shots, and in fact will last past the Breach phase.
Targeting System
Primary weapon now Holo Targets enemies it fires on, providing +15 Aim against them for one turn.
One thing to keep in mind is that the Holo Targeting is even applied by Breach phase shots, and in fact will last past the Breach phase.
Targeting System is a great catch-all fallback Weapon Attachment. There are no agents it's actually bad on, as anybody can end up in a situation where they're struggling to find a way to contribute and Targeting System gives them a way to tilt the odds even if they have no good shots and none of their abilities are relevant. If one is offered from the Scavenger Market early in a run, I tend to buy it right away simply because it will be so useful for so long no matter my team composition. This is even though it's not unusual for me to end up, in the endgame, ceasing to use it entirely. The main flaw with it is poor stacking; a squad with four Superior Scopes is largely better than one that instead has four Targeting Systems, as the most straightforward illustration. Even so, Targeting Systems are great, and one of my favorite bits of Chimera Squad's design.
As for specific agents...
Well, first of all it should be immediately noted that earlier is better. If you like to put a given agent in the first slot, they're going to be a better recipient simply because you need the Targeting System individual to fire before it can benefit people. This is honestly the most important factor; if you insist on having an agent go first, even if they're one of the agents biased toward being placed later, they should be your top candidate for a Targeting System. (Unless they're Zephyr, of course, but only because she can't equip Weapon Attachments)
Second, anyone you give a Reflex Grip is immediately a good candidate for a Targeting System; twice the Holo Targets, not to mention the ability to potentially benefit from their own Holo Targeting if they target a given enemy twice.
Of course, by the same logic Blueblood is innately the greatest beneficiary of a Targeting System, since he's innately able to fire twice a turn. This also goes well with the Epic Pistols; Artful Fathom lets him shoot an additional time for free intermittently, while Endless Brevity lets him shoot thrice at a target, both of which further leverage a Targeting System.
Cherub similarly becomes a decent candidate once he's got an Epic Pistol, and isn't a bad candidate even before then; if you're leaning into his Kinetic Shield, he'll often be taking not-great shots because he's not getting flanks, high ground, etc. His ultimate Training is another point in his favor here (Not much of one, mind), since he'll occasionally take free shots from being shot at and if the target survives now they're marked.
Axiom is one of the more dramatic examples of how a Reflex Grip makes a Targeting System useful, where he can be marking people to get Smash perfectly accurate and then immediately Smash said target. Notably, while there are other ways to inflict Holo Targeting, including Items any agent can equip, there's not any Items that can be used at will in a battle for this purpose; this is the only way to make Axiom self-sufficient in achieving reliable Smashes. Even without a Reflex Grip, being a Shotgun user means he's more likely to have only bad shots compared to most agents, where attaching Holo Targeting to the shot is a useful consolation prize. He's also one of the agents most explicitly encouraged to be placed in the front of the Timeline, so that's another point in his favor there.
Claymore is another example of the Reflex Grip+Targeting System combo being pretty dramatic. Without a Reflex Grip, a Targeting System is okay but not stellar for him -he'd often rather walk forward and toss one of his explosives instead at low levels, and at high levels he'd rather toss an explosive and shoot it to detonate it. (Or throw explosives twice) A Reflex Grip at low levels combined with a Targeting System can let him take a dubious shot for 'free' that will benefit other agents even if it misses and then toss a bomb, and even once he's at max level the flexibility of the Reflex Grip can make it appealing, or the Targeting System can be nice if you prefer to have him toss his explosives at enemies late enough in the turn that there's no need to detonate the explosive manually. That said, Claymore is one of the agents most okay with going late in the Timeline, and if you're prone to using him that way he's automatically a bit of a poor choice. (Though he does innately have the ability to use explosive-based Breach points, and doing so will force him to the front, keep in mind)
Godmother, in spite of being a Shotgun user, is actually pretty eh on Targeting Systems. She's good at closing and good at getting accurate kill shots, giving Targeting System little room to work with. You can give her a Reflex Grip, but as I noted earlier she really should attach ammo support if she does that, at which point there's no room to fit in a Targeting System. The main point a Targeting System has going for it is she can use Ventilate on a tough target in High Cover to force damage and mark it for a follow-up from someone else... and that's not a strong argument for putting it on her in particular. Her propensity for acting early is really the main argument for her in particular.
Torque can put a Targeting System to okay use, but isn't stellar. With a Reflex Grip she can mark a target to make it easier to Tongue Pull, but Tongue Pull is so absurdly accurate this is rarely helpful. Without a Reflex Grip... well, an Impact Frame or Superior Scope are the main Weapon Attachments she really appreciates, so she's a decent candidate just due to how limited the competition is.
Shelter is another case where combining a Targeting System with a Reflex Grip can be pretty useful. This gets less and less appealing as he climbs in levels, as his special abilities tend to be better to use when eg he can't get a reliable enough shot lined up, but if you get the combo online early it does a lot to prop up his effectiveness. Otherwise it's kind of whatever.
Terminal is one of the best agents for a Targeting System, because she's incentivized to be placed early, can use Cooperation to immediately take advantage of her own Holo Targeting (By virtue of an ally promptly firing on the target), and is heavily incentivized to play like a turret, limiting her ability to reliably pursue high-accuracy shots. Her ability to hack security doors is also another pressure to putting her in front, where even if you dislike having her in front it may happen intermittently anyway.
Verge is another pretty good agent for a Targeting System due to his turret-y incentives, incentives to be placed early in the Timeline (So you can see the outcomes of his Neural Network moves and plan around them, for one), and pressures to nonetheless actually fire his Rifle. (Because his Neural Network bonuses don't actually do anything unless he shoots at something) He's the agent I'm personally most prone to still having a Targeting System sitting on in the endgame, in fact.
Lastly, Patchwork is both great and terrible for a Targeting System. Terrible, because honestly she has little reason to fire her Rifle outside the Breach Phase... but great for basically the same reason, in that giving her good Weapon Attachments is a bit of a waste when they could be going to someone else who actually wants to fire their weapon. Probably better to give her a Targeting System than a Superior Scope. Notably, she doesn't have a Breach Phase special action, so she'll be shooting during the Breach Phase even if you shun her firearm as much as possible. She's also another really dramatic example of the Reflex Grip+Targeting System combo, since as noted earlier she has little ability to spend her first action point usefully by default, which the Reflex Grip solves in the form of letting her make free shots before getting to the actually useful business of zapping people with her Gremlin. Taking a free shot that marks the target for other people is pretty nice, and since it's a 'free' shot you're probably picking a target you don't mind surviving for the moment.
And yes, the Reflex Grip is a big determiner of Targeting System importance. If you loot one of the two and then get an opportunity to buy the other at the Scavenger's Market, that's more worth considering than if you have neither and spot one of them at the Scavenger's Market. It's a little centralizing, though only in a bit of a local way so it's not too bad. (That is, it's centralizing to Weapon Attachment choices, but it's not like Reflex Grip+Targeting System is a centralizing strategy you always pursue; it's nice, but not clearly superior to other ways of playing)
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Next time, we continue this focus on weapons by talking about Chimera Squad's Ammo Items.
See you then.
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