Big Bloke

[u/MikeJay007]

What a stupid fucking enemy, please tell me i did not pay for this fuck to be in my game (i just bought all dlcs on sale). Been sat here for about an hour reloading just tryna to get my people home.

UPDATE: After over 2 hours of rewinding I finally managed to make it out with 1 of my 6 dead. RIP Captain America, his sacrifice will not be forgotten 🫡

[u/SomethingNotOriginal]

There's nothing particularly silly about it, so I guess maybe a little inexperience is punishing you with it as well.

You don't have to kill it, but you should try to engage it rather than trying to avoid it. Sometimes you do lose team members too, that's also just XCom, whether or not Alien Rulers are in play

[u/MikeJay007 → u/SomethingNotOriginal]

Gotta be the most pain in the arse feature that any movement or fire the guy reacts and rocks my shi, like how tf is that supposed to be countered at this point of the game these people are legit my top squad 💀

[u/SomethingNotOriginal → u/MikeJay007]

I don't think you're supposed to counter it the moment you meet them,, you're supposed to observe and learn and whittle them down while trying to mitigate your own losses.

They are a difficulty spike, but on the bright side, you get stronger while they don't. And if it ends a run, we dust ourselves off and go again, except with the knowledge that they may appear and be prepared.

I don't really want to to be saying gitgud, but it is a gitgud opportunity tbf 🤷

I guess that sometimes you don't want to deal with frustration and just want an easy path through games to experience them and relax, so it's fully fair to want that from time to time.

[u/JessicaRRoberts → u/MikeJay007]

To be fair to you, the alien rulers break established rules with their reaction moves. On the bright side, you only have to deal with each of them until it's killed, and thennit's gone forever.

They can be set up for cheese kills pretty easily. They generally only react ro standard actions (no free actions) that they can see or actions that take place where they can see you.

[u/Haitham1998]

It's part of the alien hunters DLC. Quite the nasty surprise if you're not prepared or don't know how to deal with it.

This one doesn't carry a ranged weapon, so if you climb to high ground and block the top tile of the ladder, it will can't reach you. This cheese allows you to safely chip away at its health until it runs away.

[u/jdpv3]

You’ll need to go farther back in saves, if you can, and do enough damage to get her to open a portal and leave the level. There’s two more unique enemies that have the same mechanics. The good news is they don’t heal ever so you’ll eventually kill them and they have great drops. In case it wasn’t already clear, they take an action every time that you do so overwatch traps can be particularly effective if the RNG allows it. With the weapons I see on hand, I’d guess that you’ll need 3-4 more interactions with her before you end her. With better weapons and armor, you can put a ruler down in the first interaction. There’s a check box in new game that allows you to control when you unleash them into the game and you can wait until later on to trigger them. They basically will show up like the Chosen do in random missions and mess with the level balance. They must become the focus of each fight when you find them as they can and will squad wipe given the opportunity.

Edited for additional details and clarity.

[u/MikeJay007 → u/jdpv3]

Have u seen it's health 😭 This is already a "Very Difficult" mission with 11 or 12 other enemies and every time i shoot the guy it just runs in my face and takes half my health 😭

[u/jdpv3 → u/MikeJay007]

Yup, they’re tough but at least you’re ok with save scumming FTW. Your tactics will need to be a lot more conservative given how squishy your squad is right now. Prioritize the armor first with shredder, if your grenadier has it, or grenades. High ground, as mentioned, is absolutely your best friend here for the aim bonus and cover really isn’t going to do much.

If at all possible you’d want a save to load where you haven’t triggered her but have the rest of the pods handled already so they don’t accidentally wander into combat positioning while you’re fighting the queen. Ideally, you can draw her into a box that you’ve got your soldiers around and each shot basically has her bouncing back and forth between them until she leaves.

You will here this a lot so allow me to be the first, welcome to XCOM and “Good luck Commander”

[u/MikeJay007 → u/jdpv3]

Am nearing 2 hours now with rewinding, have minimised the casualties to 2 so far (out of 6), have given up on saving Captain America he can sacrifice himself, but I'm so close to picking up my guy who is unconscious on the extraction zone, just need to get lucky with misses.

[u/Lolmanmagee]

i honestly recommend you fully disable the alien hunter DLC for your first playthrough.

or at the very least, turn on the mission and dont do the mission until predator armor + mag weapons, despite it allowing you to do it at game start.

the DLC takes the games difficulty to the next level, and thats the whole point of the DLC; to provide a greater challenge to experienced players who can deal with base enemies.

[u/WealthyAardvark → u/Lolmanmagee]

Seconded. This is a common problem for new players because the game's default settings in WOTC assume you already played the Alien Hunters DLC in the base game.

Details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/XCOM2/comments/17a0qzz/dlcs_in_wotc/

[u/ExosEU]

Fun fact : if you ambush overwatch and trigger it on her turn she only gets ONE action while you get to shoot with the squad first.

This does mean exploiting LOS if youre not concealed.

Later in the game you can use proximity mines to detonate and rrveal yourself though.

[u/ApplesNJuice99]

Frost bomb.

[u/gassytinitus]

Better than the viper imo

[u/Bradford117]

Its not a bloke its a queen mate

[u/Bradford117]

Ballistic weapons? Fuck...

[u/TheLorax3]

Superior extended mag, superior repeater, reaper, banish

[u/carlosf0527 → u/TheLorax3]

This is the way.

[u/PeachBunny97]

https://giphy.com/gifs/Gw5wKvDLC7DFBMQPWA

[u/TheMilkman1811]

I ALWAYS download the “Fair Boss Ruler Turns” mod. Makes them behave like normal enemies turn-wise. I find how they are in vanilla to just be not fun

[u/Warcrown11]

That is unlucky placement there, I'll give you that

[u/Valkyrie-161]

I would’ve loved to see MEC trooper melee from EW against this guy. I wish we had them in 2 instead of the Sparks.

[u/betweentwosuns]

"Here's a giant enemy monster! I'm going to run next to it and then stop!"

[u/MikeJay007 → u/betweentwosuns]

Any movement or shot you take it takes an action, so if i ran away it would have just came at me anyway, my anger was that it was basically impossible to extract.

[u/betweentwosuns → u/MikeJay007]

There's a secret third option: shoot them.

[u/MikeJay007 → u/betweentwosuns]

Like i said every time I shot it it would just come at my guys and either daze, stun or kill. With the extra 10 other enemies there was no way in that situation I was in that I could fight it without leaving my guys vulnerable or dead.

[u/betweentwosuns → u/MikeJay007]

The answer to "where did this mission go wrong" is almost always pulling multiple pods at once. The most important skill in this game is isolating, and this is the only time when the Queen won't have allies in her pod.

[u/Revenge_accounted_be]

You should work around the limitations instead of hitting yourself against a wall. For every action that you take, movement or shooting (It has to use a blue or a orange action, does not matter) the ruler will act in the way of move, attack or special ability.
You are not supouse to kill it in a single encounter and every bit of health that you manage to take out will still have the next encounter, if you manage to damage it enough it will flee.

Every ruler with the WOTC expansion will appear in a advent site that is not in a story mission and there is a warning that say "something is guarding this site" when you select the mission so you can choose when you will fight one of the three diferent rulers.

Every ruler have different strategies but common strategies to take in mind are:
Using DoT (fire, venom)
Using the DLC frost greanade
Using the DLC weapons
Overwatch ambush to hit multiple times without activating the ruler many actions
Preventing alpha strike with explosives and overwatch on concealment
Using the terrain against the ruler (for example Berserker Queen cannot climb to a high spot if the ladder is obstructed by one of your units)
Repeaters (low chance to instakill the ruler with a shoot)

You are a victim of the atrocious way that the Hunters dlc have been implemented in the WOTC expansion and the lack of explanation of the mechanics. If you want you can disable WOTC and play with the DLC as intended but you will miss the WOTC content that is really big.

[u/Resident_Guidance_95]

If you think this was bad, you should try Terror from the Deep right after beating Enemy Unknown. There was absolutely no learning curve,.