So you want to train a Psi Operative. It makes sense. Having read our beginners and advanced player’s guides, and mastering the early stages of the XCOM 2 campaign, it’s time to find out what XCOM 2 has in store for players with its final soldier class. Fortunately, there’s a whole lot more reasons (starting with fun) to focus on training Psi Operatives in XCOM 2.
The abilities and potential for Psi Operatives are much more diverse in XCOM 2 than what players encountered in Enemy Unknown. The psionic specialists are no longer considered a sub-class of their existing assignment, instead training exclusively as a Psi Operative from the time they’re a rookie, and XCOM 2 features more than twice as many learnable skills for your telepathic soldiers. Truth be told, there’s a pretty lengthy list of reasons why players want Psi Operatives on their roster in XCOM 2.
Just a few examples:
- They can level up outside of combat
- They can deal damage that ignores armor ratings
- They can mind control ADVENT forces
- They can (more-or-less) revive themselves at higher levels
Convinced yet?
So here’s what you need to know:
How To Get Psi Operatives
Unlike Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2 doesn’t ask players to test soldiers for the series’ own special version of Force sensitivity. Once you’ve built a Psi Lab, which we’d recommend doing after you’ve spent a few hours with the campaign, adding a Psi Operative to your roster is as easy as sending a rookie soldier to training. The process usually takes a couple of weeks to complete, even with an engineer expediting the soldier’s training, but the wait is absolutely worth it. In fact, we’d recommend adding at least two Psi Operatives to your team as quickly as possible.
How To Train Psi Operatives
Every Psi Operative can use the Insanity ability, which has a chance to panic or disorient an opponent. From there, players have some say in the growth of their Psi Operatives. We recommend training the Domination ability as soon as possible, to easily (albeit temporarily) increase your squad size during combat, and then placing a high priority on offensive abilities. Soulfire might be one of the best abilities in the game, delivering guaranteed damage (undiminished by armor) for just a single action point. Psi Operatives can even keep themselves alive after taking fatal amounts of damage via the Sustain perk.
It’s a powerful set of abilities that makes you wonder if Firaxis is trying to reward any fans who manage to get this far in the campaign. What’s interesting is that you can train them out of order, depending on what’s offered to the player, and sometimes even learn both abilities from a skill tier. For example, one of our Psi Operatives learned the top ability from both the Telepath and Resonant trees before learning a skill from the fourth tier of either.
To increase the battlefield effectiveness of your Psi Operatives, we also recommend researching (and equipping) the various Psi Amps that can be unlocked via XCOM 2’s research tree. They won’t need much else besides the same armor upgrades you’re buying for the rest of the squad.
What To Do With Psi Operatives
There’s generally no reason to send more than one Psi Operative out into the field at a time. A single well-trained Psi Operative can be an absolute nightmare for ADVENT. So rotating them in and out of combat (theoretically) ensures you’ll always have a fresh Psi Operative ready to fight.
From a tactical perspective, Psi Operatives should be kept towards the center of your battle formation. Not only will this allow the soldier to benefit the most allies, via the Solace perk, a central position makes it easiest for the Psi Operative to respond to whatever situation(s) arise on the battlefield. We tend to use ours to foment chaos in the enemy ranks; mind-controlling enemy officers, using Soulfire to make quick work of ADVENT Shieldbearers and firing off a few rounds from time to time.
Basically, let your Psi Operative wander the map and wreak havoc as needed. The only things you really need to keep in mind are:
- Enemies usually treat Psi Operatives like high priority targets
- Mind control is less likely to break the closer your Operative remains to their target
- Psi Operatives won’t learn new skills while recovering from injuries
- Mind controlled enemies are still valid targets for your squadmates. So watch where you're aiming.
Psi Operative Abilities
Telepath Tree
- Insanity - Debilitating telepathic attack that can inflict different negative conditions, including mental control of the target
- Soul Steal - Soulfire transfers half of the damage done back to the Psi Operative as health
- Solace - The Psi Operative is surrounded by an aura that immediately extinguishes or blocks any mental impairments for themselves and any nearby squadmates
- Schism - Insanity now does a small amount of guaranteed damage, and applies Rupture to the target
- Fuse - If an enemy is carrying explosives, they can be remotely detonated. No cooldown!
- Null Lance - Project a beam of terrible power that damages every target it passes through. This attack can penetrate multiple enemies and obstacles.
Resonant Tree
- Inspire - Grants a bonus action immediately to a nearby squadmate. (3-turn cooldown; squadmate must be within sight radius, but line of sight is not required)
- Stasis Shield - Completely stuns the target for 1 turn, but renders them immune to any damage or attack, and can be cast on allies.
- Sustain - If the Psi Operative takes enough damage to be killed, they are immediately put in Stasis for 1 turn and their health is only reduced to 1 HP. This can only happen once per mission.
- Fortress - Psi Op is immune to fire, poison, acid, and explosive damage.
- Domination - Permanently mind control an enemy. Only one successful Domination can be performed per mission.
- Void Rift - Generate an explosive field of Psionic energy that immediately damages everything within. Organic enemies have a chance to suffer Insanity.
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Be sure to check back with iDigitalTimes.com and follow Scott on Twitter for more XCOM 2 coverage throughout 2016 and for however long Firaxis continues to support XCOM 2 in the months ahead.
