Note: This post is a revised version of my Long War 2 Shinobi build, with changes to the text/build as appropriate for the new rules and skills in LWOTC. All changes to the rules/mechanics of LW2 are displayed in bold.
LWOTC Ufopaedia: Shinobi
Shinobis are the scouts in Long War of the Chosen, but can also chop up sectoids, and lockdown Mutons. Though not the best killers in your line-up, their stealth can help you ambush the enemy, instead of blundering into them. The value of the Shinobi depends a lot on your capabilities as a commander. While good scouting can lead you to victory, poor scouting can end in disaster; activating enemy pods, rather than avoiding them. Shinobis can do even more from the shadows if you make them your officers, which you should. Otherwise they will be sitting out the fight, or abandoning their role as scout. Neither is a good choice. Here is my build:
Sword-Scout Hybrid Officer
Blademaster -or- Ghostwalker
Combatives
Covert
Bladestorm
Reaper
Whirlwind
Conceal
Blademaster:
Without this ability, your Shinobi will forever be looking at chances to hit with Fleche in the 80s. And while that’s not bad, the extra 10 aim can make this attack near guaranteed and keep it in the 90s throughout the campaign. Eventually, you will need your Shinobi to fight, and the Shinobi, like the Assault, must be put in a vulnerable position to fight effectively. Failing to kill the target makes that position far more precarious. This ability will help prevent that.
Ghostwalker:
This is a great ability that can keep your Shinobi from getting trapped by patrolling pods. It is particularly useful on 1 or 2 man stealth ops when speed is essential and fog of war must be revealed more hastily. Because of the incredible utility of this ability on stealth missions, the Shinobi is the only class where I use two different builds. My primary 3 officers all get Blademaster, and then 2 others take Ghostwalker. Shinobi’s with Ghostwalker are my stealth mission specialists, but can also serve as back-ups in case of injury. They shine on the Network Tower, Avenger Defense, and Invasion missions, when you need to sneak by a horde of bad guys.
Alternative: Lone Wolf.
Lone Wolf would be very good on Shinobis, but Blademaster grants about the same aim bonus to blade attacks, as well as +1 damage. Lone Wolf is a little different in LWOTC; granting +12 aim/crit when the soldier is 7+ tiles away from an ally, but prorates the bonus for a distance of 4-6 tiles.
Combatives:
This ability is likely to save your squad. Maybe more than once. It will allow a Shinobi to lock down an Archon or Andromedon for as long as it takes to regain control of the fight. A muton can only be locked down for a single turn due to a new cooldown timer on the Muton’s Bayonet ability which was added in LWOTC. Its not a big deal so long as you are aware of it.
With Combatives, a Shinobi will always parry the first melee attack so long as the enemy does not land a crit. The Shinobi can almost1 completely avoid melee crits by wearing a nanoscale vest which in addition to adding HP also reduces crit chance by 25% (I love nanoscale and equip them throughout the campaign; crit reduction is often a life saver when enemies activate on your flank). Alternatively, melee crits can be avoided with Resilience gained from the AWC. But there are some situations that will still cause Combatives to fail. You need to know when Combatives will work, and when it won’t, or instead of saving your squad, your Shinobi will get killed. Regular Mutons and Andromedons will always melee an adjacent Shinobi unless they are disoriented; in which case they will shoot. A Stun Lancer doesn’t care about proximity and is more likely to run away from an adjacent Shinobi to jab someone else. The Faceless attack is an area of effect, so Combatives won’t stop it. Archons are guaranteed to melee only when they are enraged, so be sure to piss them off first. And don’t expect Combatives to lockdown 2 enemies. It only procs once per turn.
Alternatives: Shadowstep or Executioner.
Shadowstep is ok for a Shinobi that is utilized exclusively as a stealth mission operator. But usually if the Shinobi loses concealment on a stealth mission, they are dead anyway. I take Combatives on my stealth specialists because they may need to fill-in for my main Shinobi Officers.
Executioner is ok on a Shinobi. It will moderately improve their fighting ability and Reaper chaining which is most effective against the heavily wounded. This ability has been buffed in LWOTC, and now offers +20 aim/crit.
Covert:
I keep a journal of my XCOM campaigns, as it helps me evaluate and consider my tactics and other decisions. I typically add additional notes when something goes very wrong. Awhile back I was looking through my journal, and found that a bunch of recent comments were of the “Bad Activation” variety. I was letting my Shinobi get revealed, which would often lead to big trouble. It might mean I lost my opportunity to ambush, but when already in a firefight it could mean activating additional pods. I made some changes to how I approach the game. I slowed things down a bit. I don’t race my Shinobi so far forward, and I don’t race the decision about where to put him. Also I always take Covert. This ability gives my scouting Shinobi much more leeway, and thus prevents many bad situations from getting truly ugly.
Alternatives: Hard Target or Cutthroat.
Hard Target has been buffed a bit in LWOTC. It now offers +5 dodge per enemy in sight (instead of 3). It is very good, especially when paired with a Dodge PCS which will allow it to mitigate many direct hits.
Cutthroat is good, not great. Unfortunately, it usually doesn’t help guarantee the kill. Bypassing armor will sometimes matter, but most advent have little to no armor and so the primary benefit of cutthroat is an increase to crit probability and crit damage. This is less vital, as I only feel comfortable running my Shinobi over to that advent soldier, when I can guarantee a kill, not because I may be able to do extra damage. Cutthroat seems most relevant when locking down Mutons or Archons with Combatives and Bladestorm, making your counter attacks strong enough to finish the fight rather than just stalling the enemy.
Bladestorm:
This ability will prove very useful if you fail to kill something with your Fleche. Also it pairs extremely well with Combatives, doubling the damage you deal to that poor frustrated Muton. A big issue with this ability in Long War 2 was that an adjacent enemy will often move away from you, and Bladestorm would not proc. That has changed in LWOTC, and moving in any direction will still trigger Bladestorm.
Alternatives: Shadowstrike or Low Profile.
Shadowstrike seems like a nice ability, though I can’t remember having ever selected it. It works great in the base game.
Low Profile doesn’t seem very valuable. When the Shinobi is in concealment, it has no value. When fighting, the Shinobi will often be easy to flank, which limits the value of this skill.
Reaper:
Reaper has a lot of value. Usually it allows your Shinobi to finish off 2-4 enemies.
Alternatives: Hit and Run or Evasive.
Because the Shinobi needs to use an SMG to retain stealth and speed, the Hit and Run ability is only just good. In LW2 this ability is available at the next rank, and I always select it.
Evasive is great, demoting the first full hit to a graze instead. And turning all grazes into misses until they get a real hit. The graze band is 20. You should consider this ability to be effectively +20 Defense until you take a hit, then a large HP bonus afterwards (however much damage was reduced). I think Evasive is about as good as Reaper, probably better in a breakdown situation. Yet, it is a defensive ability on a soldier who stays in concealment much of the time. When you do unleash your Shinobi, it is often when the fighting is almost over, or when you really need the Shinobi to intervene. In both cases, I think more offense is preferable to more defense.
Whirlwind
Whirlwind is a nice ability that will allow your Shinobi to find a better defensive position after a Fleche. High level enemies get this perk, and it makes them super annoying. It only procs once per turn, making it somewhat incompatible with Reaper.
Alternatives: Hunter’s Instincts or Tradecraft.
Hunter’s Instincts does not work with swords, so it is not great for your sword guy. It will be useful if you take Hit and Run, but I don’t take Hit and Run, and so I skip this ability as well.
Tradecraft is not very good. I’ve done some testing with it and found the actual reduction of infiltration times for 6-7 man squads to be paltry. To reduce infiltration times you are better off keeping the same soldiers under the same officers as best you can, using suppressors, chameleon suits, and SMGs on those classes that can still be effective with them.
Conceal:
This is a great ability that finally allows the Shinobi to fight early in a mission and then resume scouting duties. For long missions such as the Forge, it will shine. On shorter missions it will speed your squad up, and allow some flexibility in how you use the Shinobi. You still can’t run your Shinobi around with abandon, but Conceal is a valuable mulligan in a game with notably little forgiveness.
Alternatives: Rapid Fire and Coup de Grace.
Rapid Fire is only ok. Because of the aim penalty it doesn’t allow the Shinobi to meaningfully contribute from a distance. It can serve as the capper on a Reaper chain, but other than that, I can’t imagine it ever being significantly better than Fleche with a Fusion Blade.
Coup de Grace is pretty good. It grants +50 aim, +50 crit, and +2 base damage against disoriented, stunned and panicked enemies. The big issue with this ability is that disabled opponents are not the ones you need to be killing. This conflicts with basic XCOM philosophy. We kill the dangerous enemies first, not the disabled ones. Their time will come. There is still some value in Coup de Grace because it can help to extend a reaper chain and to finish off enemies that are about to recover from panic or stun.
About the Shinobi Officer
This build, the Sword-Scout hybrid, is intended to be made into an officer. This allows them to fulfill 3 different roles: scout, officer, and burst damage. While there are more than a few compromises in this build, it has many advantages, the most obvious and significant of which is that a Shinobi Officer can use the Command ability while remaining concealed, and thus contribute to each encounter while still retaining the ability to scout ahead. If your Shinobi is not an Officer, then he must sit and watch, or break concealment. This will always be the main reason to choose Shinobis as Officers, but there are a few less obvious advantages which I want to enumerate:
If you use Shinobi Officers in your primary squads, they can also serve on 1-2 man stealth ops, should you need them for that.
Shinobi Officers that are running 1-2 man stealth ops will gain levels faster in the early game than other classes and are thus able to acquire Trial By Fire sooner.
When a Shinobi Officer finally enters the fight, it is possible for them to complete a Reaper chain, then use the Command ability to cap it off. Few other classes can use their most powerful offensive ability, and still have an unneeded action remaining.
A Shinobi Officer can often use two officer abilities (perhaps Focus Fire followed by Command), while other officer types will usually want to use at least one of their own class abilities.
Bond mate granted actions (Teamwork, Advanced Teamwork) give the Shinobi even more to do from the shadows.
Alternate Builds
If you want to consider some other Shinobi builds I would recommend watching DerAva’s Shinobi build video, in which he breaks down his 3 builds: Blade, Stealth, and Shooty. His series on class builds also contains a lot of information on game mechanics and how those interact with various abilities, and is worth watching even if you know what build you want to use.
Looking at the skills available on the XCOM row, there are a few powerful shooting abilities that might entice me to try a shooty build. DFA and Light’Em Up are both cheap; while Shredder and Lethal are more expensive but worth the price.
There are a bunch of TC skills that enhance sword fighting or survival and would be more advantageous to the combat focused Shinobi. The availability of these skill should help you decide which Shinobi should take Blademaster and which should instead take Ghostwalker and run stealth missions.
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There are some edge cases where the enemy may have a greater than 25% chance to crit which will not be negated completely by nanoscale.
