Soldier Skills & Equipment Guide (EU2012)

A not so brief guide to class abilities

When choosing perks there is a big debate about to how to build them, with a variety of opinions depending on your personal play style and preferences. The fundamental question that must always be asked when making a promotion is one of specialization vs. variety. Does the ability gives you a new skill or does it enhance the unit/squad current capabilities?

The Assault class is the most clear cut example of this: nearly all of its choices are between increasing the Lethality/Defense of the unit, either turning into to frontal assault unit or into a flanking unit. Or you can mix both or even give it an unique squad ability by choosing the Flush perk, which forces the enemy out of cover.

Again, all of this options depend on your style and strategy and their effectiveness will also depend on the map and type of aliens faced. But at the beginning it may be confusing to realize all of the advantages and shortcomings of each class. Take for example the Heavy. Early on, the Heavy can be a major source of damage for your team, but due to the much lower accuracy numbers of the class at higher ranks their ability to be a primary source of direct damage falls off sharply. An inversion would be the sniper. Early on they are weak and difficult to manage but once they have some experience under their belt and a good weapon they will carry your squad.

The important thing to remember is that the advice in this guide will fall into two categories. Some of the recommendations are just that, advice that you may choose to ignore if you so wish. There are in fact many successful ways to run a squad that involve wildly divergent tactics. However, there are some points that are not recommendations per se. Some options in the skill tree exist that are false choices. It seems like they may be equivalent or one is slightly better than the other but in practice one of the two options is so much vastly better than the other that it changes the situation from a choice to a calculation. This guide will attempt to outline the different points as well as give approximate weights to the talents were it is not 100% a clean cut choice.

How to build a Heavy

The primary weapon of the Heavy is the LMG and its laser and plasma evolutions. The weapon has a base damage of 5 which puts it in the high damage category, along with the Sniper Rifle and the Shotgun. It has worse critical chance than either, but it doesn't have the severe accuracy drop off that the Shotgun suffers from at any significant range and it doesn't suffer either the close range penalty or double action cost of the Sniper Rifle. At first glance it is one of the best weapons in the game and in the early game it will be.

There is of course a hitch, in this case is the Heavy himself. Base accuracy of all soldiers is 65 but unlike his peers the Heavy only gets 10 more points over the course of his life, with a Colonel capping out at 75. This means that at mid range and under optimal conditions the best Heavy will hit 75% of the time. If the target is in light cover that chance degrades to 55% and under heavy cover there is only a 35% chance to deal damage. With a scope you can improve a Heavy's aim to 85 but compared to the base Colonel accuracy numbers of an Assault, a Support or a Sniper, which are 89, 90 and 105 respectively you can see why the Heavy suffers. 

Over a given hundred shots the percentile hit chance is a equal percentile modifier to Damage meaning that assuming all enemies are in light cover the base Heavy does on average a little more than half his listed Damage. This means that a Heavy at the top of the tech tree is doing the same as a Sniper at the bottom, less when you factor in the massive critical hit chances that the Sniper rifle enjoys, if they are both using weapons of the same tech level. This is discounting special abilities such as the Heavy's power to fire twice in a round, but suffice it to say that for every ability that the Heavy gets the Sniper of equivalent rank will gain an ever more insurmountable advantage. Now compared to a Support whose best weapon caps at 8 damage and who gets only 1 shot in a round the heavy certainly does do more adjusted damage, but here in lies the problem. In real combat conditions you don't do an average damage based on your aim. You either hit and deal full damage, or miss and do none. If a Sniper did twice as much damage with half the accuracy it's use as a unit would go from predictable to a coin toss and it's usefulness would drop from amazing, to marginal.

Here is the thing. In a turn based game the fundamental risk comes from uncertainty. If you are sure that an attack or ability will trigger then you can plan accordingly. Calculate exactly how much damage you can expect from all your units and use that to plan out a course of action. When abilities fail to trigger you are forced to make plans that accommodate this, namely, you need to devote more resources to a target than would under ideal conditions be needed, lest you whiff a final shot find yourself staring at a Sectopod with 5 hit points and it is now his turn. The binary nature of success and failure of individual actions maps to to the binary success and failure states of each turn. This is the beauty and the folly of a turn based game. The fact that a Heavy dealing with a standard foe in low cover with a 55% chance to hit cannot be relied on to make the shot means that you'll have to choose, both in game and during promotions on how to increase that accuracy or use the Heavy instead to prepare the Alien for the kill.

This is the paradox of the heavy, they have amazingly high damage weapons but they require careful planning to make it an useful tool, and to be aware of the shortcomings that some choices can have, specially regarding perk selection.

Bullet Swarm vs. Holo Targeting

• Bullet Swarm gives you massive tactical flexibility no matter how you chose to build the Heavy, Holo-Targetting a +10 Aim increase ONLY to other units firing at the same alien.
• Bullet Swarm allows for Fire and Move, Fire and Reload or Fire and Fire when high firepower is crucial. The issue, as mentioned above, is the lack of Aim of the Heavy - which makes this ability more useful in close range fights.
• The LMG has only 3 rounds, even if you take supression, you need bulletswarm to Supress two rounds in a row.

A Colonel heavy with a scope shooting at an enemy in optimal range in low cover has as mentioned above a pathetic 65% chance to hit. If you go with bulletswarm and spend a full round trying to make the shot you have a 12.25% chance of missing totally a 42.25% chance of hitting twice and a 45.5% chance of tagging them at least once. Meaning that you will an 88.75% chance of hitting something. At lowest rank this woult be a 79.75% chance to hit something, with a 30.25% of hitting twice.

Even though you might feel that there is a good choice here, there isn't. Using your heavy to set up shots might seem like a good idea, but statistically it does not work. The problem is two fold, first, at the lowest levels when holotargetting could most likely be useful, the power of at most 3 small 10 point bonuses does not produce more hits than an extra attack. Take the above situation. Enemy in light cover, heavy takes the first shot, then one of each class chimes in.

4 shots with heavy with holotargetting taking the first shot. All soldiers at recruit level

-7.487% chance of 4 hits

-27.422% chance of 0 hits

5 shots with heavy using bullet swarm. All soldiers at recruit level.

-1.845% chance of 5 hits

-13.325% chance of 4 hits

-11.603% chance of 0 hits

As you can see, the extra attack is better in every way. Not only are you going to have a higher chance of getting 4 hits you will have a golden chance to hit with 5. Futhermore given the fact that the heavy has one of the better weapons, capable of killing any low level enemy in one hit the hits that a heavy can make are worth more. Not to mention, this is a scenario skewed heavily in the favor of the holotargetting heavy. There are almost no early game circumstances where you will have a reason or the opportunity to make 4 attacks on 1 enemy.

I hope that one thing becomes very clear. NEVER take holotargetting.

Suppression vs. Shredder Rocket This defines your heavy as either an explosives platform or a suppression platform. I will make the argument that simply put, supports are better at suppression and heavies should be blowing things up. Yes supports can't suppress an area, yes they can't use mayhem to deal damage with suppression but here is the rub, supports have a higher ammo lower damage weapon with much greater accuracy. The reaction shot movement provokes will much more likely hit, the loss of damage is lower, there is less reloading needed and supports have much more versatile ability to specialize. A heavy with a shredder rocket has a 5 automatic damage weapon, that will hit exactly where put it almost all the time and close the rest of the time, and will amplify all damage against a target while removing its cover, in a wide area of effect. It is a limited use weapon but it will save you much more consistently than suppression. 

HEAT vs. Rapid Reaction is also clean cut. Many people who go the supression route think that this is perfect. Suppress an enemy, use flush to force a move, let the heavy get 2 free attacks. This is a failure state. First, reaction shots are made at a 15 point penalty and as we have previously stated heavies have crap accuracy. Second, the only way you get a second shot is if the first hits, combine this with the aforementioned crap accuracy and you will rarely see this promotion trigger and even if it does trigger you still have to hit with it, at a similar penalty. On the other side of the equation HEAT ammo doubles damage against robotic opponents and affects all heavy class abilities, including rockets. Put simply, in Xcom, robots are the devil. The cyberdisc and the sectopod are two of the deadliest enemies you will face, anything that hastens them to the grave is awesome. A cyberdisc is a deadly early game opponent who can deal 7 damage on a normal attack with a high critical chance, or fling a 5 damage grenade half way across the map. It can and will one shot your mates, no one below major has a reliable chance of living, and only then if they are at full health. A rocket from a HEAT heavy will deal 14 damage base, and can crit for more. Shredder rockets will do 10 and allow your sniper a good shot at a OHKO.  Not to mention, you will blow the drones that hover around the disc or the sectopod sky high. Choose HEAT, a heavy who can attack twice can one shot a cyberdisc or wipe a sectopod if both attacks hit.

The next choice is less clear cut. Grenadier gives 2 grenades, danger zone gives AOE supression and 2 tiles extra area on rockets. Both are good abilities and the question of which you want depends highly. The benefits are more intangible and are linked to your final choice of what you want your heavy to be doing. I am going to step back from (semi)objective analysis and offer an opinion. I chose grenadier becuase by the time you reach this point, no one else on your team should be carrying grenades. Your sniper needs his scope, your assualt needs armor of some type and even if she doesn't cause you are rocking titan she should be doing a lot more damage with basic attacks than with a grenade, supports might be a good choice to heft a grenade but they generally are better with arc throwers, med kits or armor/scope. Heavies get natural damage ablation and mutiple use actions. They have such bad accuracy that you aren't losing much by throwing an attack out the window, and the power that grenades have to damage terrain and remove cover offers a much more powerful buff to accuracy than a scope. The final argument for grenadier is simply that grenades are amazing breeching tools. You don't want to be using your rockets to breech but grenades can be a worthwhile trade. Danger zone is lessened in value because you aren't or shouldn't be picking up supression, 2 extra tiles is nice on your rockets and is certainly worth more than a grenade if it brings another enemy into range, but rockets are inherently less flexible than grenades as with their full round cost. Don't feel obligated to get grenadier, it isn't mandatory.

Rocketeer vs. Mayhem: To many this is the a tough choice, but it isn't. Mayhem adds max of 3 damage to supression which we don't have and adds 2 damage to your rockets, of which you get only 2 (regular and shredder). Rocketeer on the other hand gives you a second rocket. Assuming that you don't even get the blaster launcher upgrade you are still falling behind by 3 damage, and lose the flexibility of a second rocket. Since we have already decided that the heavy needs to be blowing things up to be reliable thus, anything that offers him more chances to be reliable is good. Thus, more rockets beat better rockets. With double grenades you have 5 bombs that can reshape the battlefield in your favor.

How to equip a heavy: More than any other class, the heavy shouldn't be worrying about their primary weapon. By all means upgrade the LMG if you can spare the resources, but there is a greater return on investment on other classes. Namely your sniper and then your assualt need their weapons maxed ASAP, these are the classes that will be dealing your damage and the Xrays drop plasma rifles and light plasma like confetti that your supports or assaults can use, thus obliviating the need to buy them. Moreover the damage scaling is not as significant. With a five damage base a heavy can reliably kill in one hit sectoids, thin men and floaters on classic. To one shot the next tier of enemies a heavy needs to upgrade to plasma.

Armor is the really deceptive choice for a heavy. Chosing a heavy armor for your heavy seems right, but you would be wrong. The role that we are looking to give to our heavy is not that of a walking tank. That is you assault. He needs to be mobile and capable of placing explosives precisely, while not being left behind. While carapace armor for everyone is always a wise choice compared to basic armor, you should be considering skeleton and ghost as your primary armors. Heavies don't get any inherent bonus from heavy armor, unlike the assault, instead they get a flat 2 point reduction in damage, meaning that they don't require a huge HP pool from titan or archangel. Skeleton/Ghost armor offers your heavy a couple amazing bonuses. First is that it gives you 3 extra move and the ability to grapple to the top of structures. Mobility powers are great. Second they give you defense bonuses, 10/20 respectively. A clean miss is much better than more HP. Late game, in low cover, you can get a 40 point defensive shift if you are wearing ghost armor. All late game enemies do more than 10 damage a shot, and the 4 lost HP vs titan or 2 hp vs archangel or 1 in the case of skeleton vs carapace, is compensated by the clean misses. 20% off a 100% attack doing 10 damage is an average 2 HP gain. This makes ghost even under the worst case scenario better than archangel flat out and much closer to titan than it seems. A heavy in ghost armor or skeleton armor is more useful and almost as survivable. Psi armor when appropriate.

Your final slot should be a grenade, if you ducked out on grenadier or if you are going to doing a terror mission, then feel free to improvise. 

How to build a Sniper

The sniper is the primary damage class that you will employ and suffers from a small problem of feast and famine. Snipers depending on the level will either be an unstoppable murder engine snuffing out at least one enemy every round, or they will spend most of the time running around useless trying to get a line of sight. Now building a sniper depends greatly on managing this problem, maximizing the good times and minimizing the bad. Snipers have the best basic aim progression of any class, reaching 105 at colonel. With a scope and high ground you can expect at have 98% or greater accuracy against an enemy in high cover and you can make the shot from across the map in a position of perfect safety. How can we assure this? Well lets go into the skills.

Snap Shot vs. Squad Sight: DO NOT BE FOOLED. There is almost no circumstance underwhich you should ever be taking snap shot. To do so is a waste of epic proportions and you might as well be using another class instead of a sniper. Now this being said, if you are trying some weird 6 sniper team there is a possibility that this might be okay but lets examine. First snap shot applies a 20 point penalty to any single action shot. Early game, this makes your shots unhittable. A corporal sniper firing at mid range against an enemy in low cover has a 28% chance to hit. A colonel has 65% chance but good luck getting there. Second a sniper who wishes to have options in terms of close range engagement has other talents that can be used to do so. The gunslinger perk can give you a base damage of 6 with no aim penalties with a plasma pistol if you have a terrible need to move and shoot. Squad sight on the other side of the coin essentially defines a sniper. Sniper rifles have a range cap of 100 which roughly translated is 4 times your vision range, or most of the map. Only thing is that you will never get this range unless you have squad sight. A squad sight sniper doesn't need to be right behind to your assault to cover them. They can do that from the spawn.

Gunslinger vs. Damn Good Ground: This is a question of enhancing strength vs. coving weakness, only I put the order wrong. Gunslinger covers your weakness at close range and inability to scoot and shoot. Damn good ground makes you better at sitting on to of the world sniping the hell out of people. With a scope and maximum elevation, damn good ground offers perfect chance to hit opponnents in high cover. Without this perk you are slightly less than perfect but gunslinger makes it so that you can actually fight at close range and not fail. This is a tossup depending on your style. Just keep in mind that archangel armor does trigger the DGG perk, giving you slightly better than low cover worth of defense for free and an enhanced chance to hit.

Disabling Shot vs. Battlescanner: Of all the choices that you will make as a sniper this matter the least. Disabling shot is for the most part patently inferior to blowing someones head off. It is  harder to make, does less damage and is on a cooldown. That being said, it can be very useful in capturing enemies and can once in a blue moon save your butt if you don't have the firepower to kill a sectopod or a cyberdisc. Battlescanner on the other hand gives you intelligence, which is invaluable, but cannot be thrown far from the sniper who likely will be in the back. Still, it can find enemies without triggering them thus allowing a sucker punch. Neither one of these perks will define your sniper and you should feel free to choose them depending on your mood. One notable point however is if for some insance reason you are building a front line snap shot sniper get battle scanner. You don't need squad sight to see through the scanner and it is the only way you can extend your vision. Also you will be close in and will have the proximity to throw it.

Executioner vs. Opportunist: This is another non choice. Executioner is a piddling 10% bonus that only triggers on low HP enemies. Snipers should be one shotting high HP enemies and pretty much the only people this will apply to are sectopods, who already we have ways of dealing with. Opportunist on the other hand means that your overwatch will do just as much damage at the same hit chance as your normal attacks and given the insane range on sniper overwatch allows you to protect soldiers all across the map.

In the Zone vs. Doubletap: The colonel level talent of a sniper is pretty much godlike no matter what you chose, but here is the thing. One of them is Ares and the other is Zeus, and while we all love the red god there is only one king. In the Zone is streaky. It will often do nothing compared to, sometimes equal and on rare occasions surpass doubletap. The difference is thus. For ITZ trigger you must hit, and kill an enemy out of cover or flanked. Practically speaking your sniper will never be flanking anyone, he will be well behind your entire line. So this is limited to only out of cover enemies, who fall in two categories. Melee enemies and enemies whose cover has been destroyed. Of the out of cover enemies that you encounter remember that unless you can kill in one, it doesn't count. Muton berserkers cannot be killed in one from full, neither can sectopods. Flying units are considered to be in cover. Now if you have a pair of bomb throwing, rocket launching, cover wrecking heavies on your team you could possibly set up situations where your sniper can go to town. Leveling whole squads in one round, until he runs out of ammo, which is 4 early game and 8 late. The other hand is Doubletap which gives you 2 shots, hit or miss, every other round. Why this is better should be immediately obvious. First of all it is predictable, second off it can pluck people out of cover, third it gives better focus fire. An ITZ sniper will never get more than 1 shot at a sectopod or an ethereal. A DT sniper always will. 

Equipping your sniper is really simple. Give him a scope, give him archangel, get him the biggest gun you can get as fast as you can get it. For a sniper an upgraded weapon is your first combat priority. If he is above the tech curve the rest of your squad could be carrying pea shooters for all that it matters.

How to build an Assault

Next to the sniper the assault is your big damage dealing class. The critical chance of an alloy cannon is lower than a plasma sniper rifle but the damage is the same and the assault has all sorts of tools to enhance their burst damage and given the correct circumstances they can easily do more damage than any other class. On top of this they are tough and mobile. Also assualts are the only class that has a choice of primary weapons and are perhaps the only class that doesn't have a clear cut build path. So without further ado...

Tactical Sense vs Aggression is the start of the divergent path, defense or offense. One offers you a mounting defense bonus per enemy in sight, the other a mounting critical chance. Which one you chose should be dependant on how you are planning to play the assault. If you chose the shotgun as your primary weapon you should be taking defense perks. To put it mildly, shotguns do a ton of damage, you don't need to worry about doing more, you need to worry about surviving the stupidity a combination of run and gun and a short short rang weapon produce. As previously mentioned a 20 point defensive shift is stupendously potent. Furthermore defense bonuses become exponentially more effective as they stack. Light cover, plus ghost armor, plus max tactical sense, plus a dense smoke grenade means that the Assault has a 100 point defense shift, making him effectively invulnerable to any aimed attack. Even negating his cover via flanking means that given the accuracy numbers of most enemies he is still unhittable. Aggression should only be taken when you are using an assualt rifle as a primary, you need to make up the loss of damage that the weapon entails and you also will be in better cover most of the time with less people trying to murder you, thus needing less defending.

Lightning Reflexes vs. Close and Personal, In a way these skills duplicate each other, and provide one of the only easy choices in the tree. Put simply, lightning reflexes is better. Both of them are closing skills. One gives you immunity to an overwatch shot, which is amazing, the other gives you a 30% critical chance to adjacent foes that degrades with distance. The idea being that with one you can survive to close and with the other you can make the kill once you are there. Needless to say while combining aggression and close and personal can give you a theoretical 80% critical on basic attacks the fact that you are already capable of dealing massive damage with good critical chance with a basic shotgun and good positioning should point to why not getting splattered by a sectopod plasma overwatch is better. Also, since the bonus is contingent on distance you should think twice before getting it for an assault rifle build.

Flush vs. Rapid fire: In Xcom, murder is usually the best solution. The major question that need be asked is 'will this help me kill'. Of these two skills we have a clear winner in the murder category. Taking a pair of shots, even at a 15% penalty will almost always offer not only a statistically greater chance of a hit but will offer you the chance to knock the damage ball out of the park. If you are running a scoped up assault rifle build focusing on high crit, this is a no brainer. However, if you want a reliable way to ding an enemy from range then this might be a good idea. Remember, the chance to hit is much higher on a flush than a basic attack and you can expect a near 100% chance even at extended range. Homerun numbers are great but flush can be a reliable tool, especially if you are running alot of assaults in a squad. Which is always a good idea.

Close Combat Specialist vs. Bring 'em On: This is a choice. If you are planning on a shotgunner CCS is not a perk to miss. It is a godsend against charging melee, or the poor fool that wanders through a door you are next to. Or just in any close range engagement. In contrast Bring Em On has no range requirement, but if you aren't rocking the critical side of the tree it is a very streaky talent. Under ideal circumstances, you can get a 14 damage critical from a plasma rifle, or two of them if you hit and crit on both of your rapid fire shos. Much more if you get Killer instinct at colonel rank. Needless to say, this is an amazing amount of damage, enough to waste near on anything. Critical rates on an plasma rifle with a scope and the critical  abilities will still hit a flat 80%, 50% if you chose lightning reflexes or if you aren't at point blank range. Higher if you flank a foe. As you can see this isn't a cut and dry situation. Both rifleman and shotgunner are viable.

Resiliance vs. Killer Instinct: on one hand you have immunity to critical hits, on the other hand you have a 50% damage bonus to your critical hits if you trigger your signature ability. If you have chosen to brawl then grab immunity to crits. It means you can't be take out in one round by any single foe and it takes luck out of the equation. Killer instinct on the other hand only shines if you have been mining the tree for bonus crit chance. That being said, you can do some retarded stuff with killer instinct. Run at full dash to a good position, open up with rapid fire and blow a sectapod or an ethereal away in one fell blow, or two as the case may be.

Equipping the Assault is going to be more of the same. The answer is always ghost armor. Statistically it is just plain better. Now I wouldn't hold it against anyone who chose titan, but in the end Titan is just not as good for the up and coming assault trooper. The conditioning ability that is gained on being promoted to major gives 2 extra HP when wearing Ghost Skeleton and Psi armor, and 4 when wearing carapace, archangel and titan. The HP totals are as follows. Skeleton gives 5, Ghost , Carapace and Psi give 8, archangel give 12 and Titan 14. Now the most bang for your buck early game is obviously carapace, but once you have the money you should be investing in ghost. Why? Well for all the previously mentioned reasons plus one. In terms of survival defense beats HP most of the time, mobility is the bread and butter of an assault trooper and here is the final reason. Cloak gives a +100% chance to crit. This means that a cloaked assault can expect to reliably crit against a hardened target if they are playing the shotgunner game, and the rifleman can be sure of a crit. A massive killer instinct enhanced rapid fire crit that will level any foe you chose.

In terms of your free slot, the best choice is situational. I personally like chitin plating for my CQC troopers and scopes for riflemen. The extra 4 HP offsets the losses that I sustain from not going titan and gives you virtual immunity to chrysalids and berserkers. For riflemen the scope gives you accuracy and crit chance. Which is peachy. Use psi shields when appropriate.

How to build a Support

If you want to double up on a class, supports should be your first choice. Sure they aren't as sexy as some of the others but they bring alot more to the table than most suspect. First of all, supports can shoot. They have great base accuracy and full HP progression. Even without a scope a support has a 90 aim. Beyond that they get to have 2 secondary items once they hit major, allowing unparalelled customization. Furthermore they are fast, unless you have a stroke while promoting them and accidentally click the covering fire button they will be the quickest unit on the map. This along with their solid offensive and defensive abilities makes them the most reliable unit that you have. A team of nothing but supports would be than optimal but would be entirely possible. 

Sprinter vs. Covering fire: Now I know I said you had to be having a stroke to chose covering fire and that is maybe a bit harsh, but I stand by the statement. The issue is simply this. Covering fire will never help you. Why? Well lets look at the ability. It grants you a reaction shot any time a unit under your overwatch or supression fire. Sounds good right? No its not. You just took a shot against a unit in cover that you could have fired on on your turn at a -15% penalty. It is nice if you are supressing an enemy and it is also decent if you have the sentimel ability but the truth is that as Genghis Khan proved, mobility is victory. The ability to chose your ground is vital.

Field Medic vs. Smoke and Mirrors: I ain't gonna lie. Smoke is awesome. Once upgraded it has all sorts if nifty perks and even in its base form a free 20 point defense shift is great. Still med kits are great too, and having 3 instead of 1 is also awesome. So this is a choose your awesome moment. As you always should have minimum 2 supports you can grab one of each. As a personal preference I tend to favor field medic, but a med kit is an inventory slot you have to spend and field medic tends to mandate one. Now having more options is good, but so is having more healing. A pure utility support can have chitin plating and an arc thrower or nanoweave and a scope. Thus make your choice not based on smoke alone, but on flexiblity.

Revive vs. Rifle supression, Chances are that you are screwed if you are relying on revive. Rifle supression can keep you from being screwed. The choice is simple and obvious. Of you find yourself favoring revive then you might instead want to have multiple field medics and just keep your soldiers topped off in terms of health.

Dense Smoke vs. Combat drugs: In the end the question of what makes you tear your hair out is answered by this choice. If getting your head blown off by a muton elite really grinds your gears, then dense smoke, a stunning 40 point defense shift that turns no cover into heavy cover and heavy cover into immunity to being shot, is a must. If panic is your fear and getting mind raped by sectoid commanders or ethereals is the bane of your existance then combat drugs is for you. A decent will bonus a critical bonus and a defense bonus all rolled into one. Personally I hate getting shot, and while ethereal's make me want to vomit blood out of sheer frustration, they are frankly quite rare, and my standard tactic of 'blow them to kingdom come' generally prevents retaliation.  This is a personal choice.

Savior vs. Sentinel: Do you want to heal or harm? What kind of question is that! This is Xcom. You want to harm those Xray scum. Now don't get me wrong, healing 10 points in one charge is awesome, but shooting twice on overwatch is even better. With improved med kits you should be healing 6 per charge anyways, and if you went with the multi medic route you can still top off the squad without worry. One of the most important things about sentinel is that it solves the problem of overwatch overkill. The ability triggers a second overwatch attack only if the first fails to kill the target, thus preventing those embarassing moments where your squad all open fire on a floater and blow him to the moon, only for a muton to wander unchecked into heavy cover and crit your prized soldier in the face.

Equipping your support is simple. Get skeleton armor first, then upgrade to ghost or psi depending. I have already gone into alot of detail as to why ghost armor is the best armor. A support wearing it can traverse 13 squares on one move. A dash from another class in heavy armor is 14. This is silly amounts of mobility. In terms of guns you have the choice of plasma or light plasma. I find that while light plasma and a scope is great early and can be obtained fast, it is offensively too inferior to use. Go for the big numbers and get a plasma rifle. Still one thing should be mentioned. Supports get a great return on investment in terms of lasers. The basic rifle allows them to one shot all the low tier enemies.  In terms of secondary items go with what you feel. Med kit, scope, chitin, arc thrower. The important thing about supports is that they are flexible and should never be bound to a single setup.