Techies been picked a LOT on the International, I like to think those matches as a needed sacrifice to the Frog Of Ice so his Nerf Stick is used after the event ends.

My guess is something will be made to make his laning weaker, perhaps something related to the mana cost of his skills so he every mount counts, or maybe reducing his armor / HP so he can be killed.

I installed Long War but haven't started it yet.. if I gonna replay XCom may as well try something a bit different.

On my 2nd playthru I realized the soldiers Aim on his profile is equal to his hit percentage. So 60 aim means 60% to hit assuming no other modifiers.

After realizing that you start to see how the game is tuned around your aim. +10 from SCOPE make you go from 60% to 70%, and versus an enemy under light cover you makes you go from 40% to 50%.

This also means any soldier with bad aim is really, REALLY bad, to a point I'd restart the game if my promoted Rookie has something like 55 aim.

The rare 80 aim Rookie will hit aliens under light cover 60% of the time, which is more than the 55 Rookie shooting a flanked enemy.

Basically, high aim soldiers are everything, and so is destroying cover to improve your chances to hit, which makes a Heavy (or a T2 Mech with grenade launcher) very welcome.