Part 1 (weapons) is available at: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=9765
Part 2 (melee characters) is available at: viewtopic.php?f=40&t=9820
Note: The two sections below (Derived Stats and CLASSIC Attributes) are quite complicated, and covered in both the melee and ranged section of this guide. There’s nothing different between the two, so if you read this stuff while reading about melee characters, feel free to skip down to Ranged Builds.
Derived Stats
Before getting into ranged-specific stuff, I’ll cover the derived stats we have to consider when making a character in WL2:
Combat Initiative: Combat initiative depends when in combat you act, and also how often you act. Combats are split into segments during which a 6 CI character will act 10 times and a 20 CI character will act 33 times.
Max CI character (20) = 33 turns
High CI character (15) = 25 turns
Average CI character (10) = 16 turns
Low CI character (6) = 10 turns
(Data from Mambus’s tests - thanks. Note that these are not break points - a CI12 character will act approximately 20 times per Segment. I have heard some people reference break points like, enemy melee tends to have 15 CI and ranged stuff tends to have 10 CI, so if you have 16/11 you'll act before them, but I'm not sure how consistent this is or whether it remains constant across difficulties.)
Action Points: Action points control what you can do when you act. Firing an M16 Assault Rifle costs 5 AP. Firing it in burst mode (3 shots, but with an accuracy penalty) costs 7 AP. Attacking with Dragon Claws, a Brawling weapon, costs 3 AP.
CI vs AP: CI and AP tend to balance one another out - if they’re roughly equal, 1 AP is worth 2 CI. If you had a weapon that cost 1 AP to fire, ideally you’d stick to a CI/AP balance that looked something like this:
10 CI 05 AP
12 CI 06 AP
14 CI 07 AP
16 CI 08 AP
18 CI 09 AP
20 CI 10 AP
The simplest way to explain why this is an optimal balance is that AP and CI both cost the same amount, so if you invest heavily in one you get a table that looks something like this (in concept):
5*5 = 25
5*6 = 30
5*7 = 35
5*8 = 40
5*9 = 45
Or, alternatively, if you balance the two, your table looks more like this (in concept):
5*5 = 25
5*6 = 30
6*6 = 36
6*7 = 42
7*7 = 49
In the real world, of course, you don’t have 1 AP weapons, so instead you tend to optimize AP around the cost of firing the weapon(s) you’re planning to use, and pump the rest of your points into CI to act as often as possible.
Damage: Damage controls how much damage you do when you attack. It’s primarily obtained by acquiring new weapons. If you’re melee, Strength increases the weapon min and max damage by 2% per point, rounding down. If you’re using Brawling, level increases min/max damage you do by 1 per level, but this is not modified by Strength.
Armor: If the Armor Penetration value on your weapon does not meet an enemy’s Armor value, your attack does substantially reduced damage: -20% for the first point of armor you do not penetrate, -10% each for the next two, then back to -20% per point. This means that if you're attacking an Armor 7 target with a Penetration 1 weapon, you will deal no damage.
Skill Points: Skill Points are used to train Skills. These include weapon Skills (your base hit/crit chance increases), and non-combat Skills (e.g., fixing computers, unlocking doors, etc). Some non-combat skills are essential to progress through the game (e.g., Perception, Demolitions, Lockpicking), and some are only used very rarely (e.g., Animal Whisperer).
Charisma: If we want to recruit certain NPCs, we have to meet specific total-party charisma threshholds. If we do this at all, we’ll dump a lot of charisma on a single character.
A perfect character would have very high AP, CI, and damage. This would mean it could take very long actions, and act very frequently during a segment. It would also have very high Skill Points and Charisma, so we could take all of the Skills we wanted to and recruit all the NPCs we were interested in.
Unfortunately, we have to be a little more selective when designing characters - Wasteland 2 uses a system in which 7 Attributes (CLASSIC) start at rank 1, and characters have 21 points to spend on improving them. They also gain a single Attribute point every 10 levels, meaning characters start the game with 28 Attribute points and tend to finish the game with 32 Attribute points.
CLASSIC Attributes:
[Note that characters start with 3 base AP, 5 base CI, and ? base Con + 3? Con/lvl]
As well as the benefits mentioned below, Strength, Speed, and Intelligence give 0.25 AP per point, combined. This means SSI (sum of Strength, Speed, and Intelligence) should be divisible by 4 to maximize AP gain.
Coordination (1% ranged hit and 0.5 AP per point) is one of the three primary combat attributes in WL2. As it starts at 1, all characters will take it to at least 2 for +1 AP.
Luck (1% crit and some meaningless stuff per point) is a bad investment for combat focused characters.
Awareness (1 CI and 0.5% Evasion per point) is one of the three primary combat attributes in WL2. Generally, SSI will result in an AP/CI balance skewed towards AP, and characters will invest more into Awareness than Coordination to balance it back out.
Strength (0.25 SSI-AP, 3? base Con OR +1 Con/lvl, 2% melee weapon damage, and 10% melee critical strike multiplier per point) is mediocre for ranged characters and excellent for melee characters.
Speed (0.25 SSI-AP, 0.1 Combat Speed, 1% Evasion, and 0.5 CI per point) is one of the three primary combat attributes in WL2. Thanks to the SSI mechanic, 4 Speed returns the same amount of CI/AP as 2 Coordination and 2 Awareness, as well as granting Evasion and Combat Speed. This makes it the best Attribute in the game.
Intelligence (0.25 SSI-AP per point, 2SP/level base, 3SP/level at 4, 4 SP/level at 8, 5 SP/level at 10) is used purely to gain more Skill Points. This is somewhat combat relevant because you have to invest Skill Points into weapon Skills to gain base hit/crit chance.
Charisma is not combat-relevant.
From here, basically we want to figure out how to convert the Attribute points we’re given into the most effective derived stats possible.
Ranged Builds - Maximum Damage:
Ranged characters are easier to optimize than melee for two reasons:
* Their damage comes almost entirely from Speed, Awareness, and Coordination.
* Generally, the attacks they’re going to be using will tend to be 7-9 AP bursts/headshot bursts (or shots/headshots, in the case of Sniper Rifles). (A few stray weapons want 10 AP, but 8-9 is the most common target). We know we’re never going to get 14-16 AP, so we don’t need to go for more action points.
This means it’s easy to put together a maximum damage ranged CLASSIC spend:
C L A S S I C
4 1 S 1 S 1 1 [8 AP, 20 CI]
This gives us 20 CI and 8 AP, at level 1. At level 20 we can extend it to:
C L A S S I C
6 1 S 1 S 1 1 [9 AP, 20 CI]
This gives us 20 CI and 9 AP - perfect. Like, we can’t really get any more damage out of our character here, so let's see how this looks on a spreadsheet:


* - I’ll be using level 20 characters using Assault Rifles / Assault Rifle Headshots with common Arizona mods for most of the comparative stuff here. EWs/SMGs/HWs require 8 AP, but generally SRs/ARs use 7-9, and the damage loss from changes in CI is quite consistent as a percentage.
To explain these columns:
* Damage per AP should be obvious.
* Damage per AP adjusted by accuracy is just damage adjusted by average miss chance.
* Attacks per activation and Damage per activation respect AP costs. So using a normal burst instead of a headshot burst wastes 2 AP here, since we actually have 9.
* Damage per Segment is where we start to account for CI. In a segment, a 6 CI character attacks 10 times. A 20 CI character attacks 33 times.
Our damage per AP spent only changes with weapon selection and accuracy, and we're building these characters to ensure we'll always have enough AP for either a normal burst or headshot burst. This means the differences in damage between this build and those below will primarily come from how high or low their CI is, reflected in "damage per segment".
This build has:
Normal burst damage per segment: 5243 with M16, 8141 with G41
HS burst damage per segment: 5974 with M16, 10585 with G41
Note that the M16 doesn't gain as much from the Headshot burst because it has a higher burst fire accuracy penalty - -15 to the G41's -5.
Ranged Builds - Increased Utility:
Despite the above CLASSIC spend giving us super high damage, we might not actually want 1 Intelligence or 1 Strength. SP is important for a bunch of stuff throughout the game, and 1 Strength leaves us very vulnerable to a stray burst of damage blowing us up. So how much damage do we lose if we want to stay at 9 AP, but aim for 3 SP/Level and 1 more Strength*?
C L A S S I C
4 1 8 2 S 4 1 [9 AP, 18 CI]
* - It makes sense to pick up the +1 Strength here to hit 16 SSI for +4 AP, as discussed in the Derived Stats section.


This build has:
Normal burst damage per segment: 4721 with M16, 7332 with G41
HS burst damage per segment: 5229 with M16, 9298 with G41
This is a damage loss of roughly 10-12%, but you gain +3 Con/Level, and +1 SP/Level. It's hard to say whether this is worth it, because it depends exactly what you're trying to accomplish from the game - more Skill Points open up interesting opportunities, and some extra Con might stop you having to reload when some DBM SMG guy deals 250~ damage to your AR user in 1 action.
What about if we want to have even more Con, and go for 4 Strength? (Note that this is not necessarily a safer option, as while you have more Con, you act less frequently, so enemies are alive for longer).
C L A S S I C
4 1 8 4 8 4 1 [9 AP, 17 CI]


This build has:
Normal burst damage per segment: 4459 with M16, 6925 with G41
HS burst damage per segment: 4938 with M16, 8781 with G41
This is more like a 15-17% damage loss (compared to the first build, not the second). Compared to the second build, you lose 5%~ more damage, but gain an extra 1 Con/Level.
Which of these builds you use is very much down to personal taste, but personally I prefer the middle increased utility build, starting at (this is level 1, and all the starting builds below will be level 1 - the above stats were all level 20, as noted):
C L A S S I C
4 1 6 2 S 4 1 [9 AP, 16 CI]
And putting all your points on level up into Awareness, so that you finish with 9 AP 20 CI.
Edit: If you want to pick up +1 Con/Level but lose 1 CI/2% Evasion, drop 2 Speed for 2 Strength. If you want to use Engagement Rings (a +3CI -1AP trinket), do research - generally you'll want +2 Coordination -2 Awareness and receive some minor endgame benefit + the option to use 2 single M16 shots in early Arizona.
Ranged Builds - 8 AP/Leader/Skill Mule:
edit: I updated the section below based on discussion in thread/Pizepi on 10th October 2014. Thanks to Hector, Frozyx, and others.
So okay, we've covered combat-focused Assault Rifle characters. But what if you want to use SMGs or EWs?
Basically, this is quite simple - you get to make similar choices to the CLASSIC attribute spends above, but you only need 8 AP for burst/HS burst fire, so you drop 2 coordination and have 2 points extra to play with. This tends to mean you can start with a CLASSIC attribute spend of something like:
C L A S S I C
2 1 8 2 S 4 1 [8 AP, 18 CI]
This runs into some issues at level 30, because you'll have already maxed your CI. There are two things you can do to round out the build sensibly:
* Aim for 9 AP and pick up Engagement Rings (-1 AP, +3 CI) in California. This means you finish with 23 CI and 8 AP. There're some problems with this though - while you're leveling Coordination you actually have less CI than if you dumped those points into Awareness (but if you go Aw, Co, Co + Rings, Aw) this is somewhat mitigated. It's like a slightly weaker l10-30 for a large l30+ powerspike.
* Take 3 Charisma and turn this character into your party leader. 3 Charisma is enough of a leadership bubble to cover all of your AR burst guys, and you can still pick up Pizepi, though it requires jumping through some Spiked Collar/Honeydew Melon related hoops.
I was going to look at 8 AP skill mule (10 Intelligence) builds here too, but it turns out that actually you gain so much AP from having 10 Intelligence it's just better to go for 9 AP and use ARs on that character. Something like:
C L A S S I C
2 1 4 2 8 S 1 [9 AP, 13 CI]
With a spend like this, we can still hit 17 CI at level 40. Or, if you wanted more Con, you could drop 2 Speed for 2 Strength [losing 5-7%~ damage], and hit 16 CI at level 40. I think that if you do want to run a 10 Intelligence character, this is the best statline you can put together.
Finally, the only other builds in this section worth considering are AR-focused leaders. There're two - a 3 Charisma 9 AP build, and a 7 Charisma 7 AP build:
C L A S S I C
4 1 4 2 S 4 3 [9 AP, 14 CI]
This is pretty much the 8 AP leader from earlier, but as you're running 9 AP you can't max out CI at level 40.
C L A S S I C
2 1 6 2 6 4 7 [7 AP, 14 CI]
This guy would have a very large leadership bubble, and enough AP to use normal (but not headshot) AR bursts throughout the game. Basically though, 7 Charisma is overkill for Leadership, so the only real gain is making it smoother to recruit Pizepi (or, possible to recruit Pizepi without grinding for Spiked Collars if you save Highpool). It's significantly worse than just having an 8 AP 3 Charisma leader, though.
So, recommendations:
You do not need a leader or skill mule to beat the game. If you do want to use either one, I think the most efficient builds are the 8 AP EW focused leader with 3 Charisma, and the 9 AP AR focused skill mule. But what you actually use depends heavily on whether you plan to recruit Pizepi, when you plan to recruit Pizepi, and whether you plan to give her the GRB or level up ARs on her and use Engagement Rings.
* If you plan to recruit Pizepi early/very early, you probably want a 7 Charisma 7 AP AR leader. Doing this tends to mean it's optimal to use the GRB on her.
* If you plan to skip Pizepi totally, you probably want a 3 Charisma 8 AP EW leader.
* If you plan to recruit Pizepi later, and you're planning to level up ARs on her and use Engagement Rings to bring her to 9 AP 15 CI at level 20 [and 9 AP 17 CI at level 40 - almost a PC!], you probably want a 3 Charisma 8 AP EW leader.
* If you plan to recruit Pizepi later, but you want to use EWs on her, you probably want a 3 Charisma 9 AP AR leader.
Final Notes - Trinkets, AP/Movement:
There's a trinket that's specifically worth mentioning re: ranged optimization (and I discussed it in a few places above) - it gives -1 AP but +3 CI (Engagement Rings). This means that in most AR builds you can swap out 2 Awareness for 2 Coordination, and gain the option to use single shot x2 through Arizona, then later in California pick up an extra +1 CI. It's generally more beneficial for 8 AP builds than 9 AP builds, though, because 9 AP builds just barely max out on CI. 8 AP builds max out on CI and otherwise waste attribute points.
There's also a +5 CI trinket. This will turn whoever you give it to into a killing machine.
The other trinket worthy of note is a +1 AP -5% chance to hit trinket. This is excellent on either melee characters, or Ralphy (can take him from 8 to 9 AP just in time for him to pick up a G41, and start using headshot bursts).
Finally, sometimes you'll need to move characters using ranged weapons a few squares. High Speed helps here. Generally, if you're doing this I just drop down one tier of damage - go from HS burst to normal burst, or normal burst to single shot. If it'd take more AP than this to move (for whatever reason - maybe you want to get into cover a turn~ away), it's better to just use an entire turn's AP on moving and then headshot burst the next turn, don't move halfway + singleshot, then finish + singleshot.
Cheers,
Phil
P.S - (If you’re interested in how I ended up with these numbers, the spreadsheet is available at https://www.dropbox.com/s/afat65wmix774d5/WL2.xlsx but it’s nothing particularly complex, just summing sources of hit/crit, multiplying likely crits by the modified weapon crit multiplier, etc).
P.P.S: - I've had a couple of queries as to what kind of party I'm actually planning to run. I'm just over halfway through my Ironman run now (at Rodia), and I ended up using:
* AR leader (2 1 6 2 6 4 7) // AR, Perception, Leadership
* AR combat (4 1 6 2 S 4 1) // AR, Demolitions, Kiss Ass [unnecessary, but fun sometimes]
* Brawler with int (2 1 4 6 S 4 1) // Brawling, Lockpicking, Comp. Sci [hacking robots is amazing]
* Brawler without int (2 1 4 9 S 1 1) // Brawling, Field Medic
* Pizepi with Gamma Ray Blaster
* Vulture's Cry with Sniper Rifles (Rose is obviously better than Vulture's Cry, but VC is... fine, and I wanted to do Highpool rather than Ag Centre. SRs are bad here but she had so many points in worthless stuff it just kind of happened. I should have rebuilt her to use ARs - she even has 9 AP!)
* Ralphy with ARs
Ralphy and VC cover Weaponsmithing, Toaster Repair, Outdoorsman, and Safecracking. Everyone has Surgeon 1.
Edit: If I could go back in time, I'd probably run a 3 Charisma EW focused leader (with 3 points in SMGs early game), and recruit Pizepi later in the game (shouldn't be too hard with 6 party cha + 10~ from NPCs, and a few Spiked Collars/Melons) and set her up to use Assault Rifles/Engagement Rings. It'd look something like this:
* EW leader (2 1 6 2 S 4 3 - 8 AP, 16 CI) // SMG[r3], EW, Perception, Leadership
* AR combat (4 1 6 2 S 4 1 - 9 AP, 16 CI) // AR, Demolitions, Kiss Ass
* Brawler with int (2 1 4 6 S 4 1 - 9 AP, 14 CI) // Brawling, Lockpicking, Comp. Sci [hacking robots is amazing]
* Brawler without int (2 1 4 9 S 1 1 - 9 AP, 14 CI) // Brawling, Field Medic
* Pizepi rebuilt to use ARs. Dump all SP into ARs, max out Smart Ass very late if at all. Use Engagement Rings for 9 AP 17 CI at Level 40 (a PC would be at 9 AP 21 CI, so this is pretty solid).
* Rose with ARs. (+2 Speed, +1 Coordination, +1 Awareness). Use Engagement Rings for 9 AP 15 CI at Level 40.
* Ralphy with (shockingly) ARs. Use Anarchy Patch for 9 AP 13 CI at Level 40. -5% to hit, but this shouldn't matter so much with a G41/California mods.
Everyone would have Surgeon 1. NPCs need to cover Safecracking, Weaponsmithing, Toaster Repair, Outdoorsman, and (optionally) Smart Ass. That's no problem with Rose 5 SP/Level and Ralphy having at least 1 free skill, though.
Combat wise, this'd be two superb brawlers, 1 superb EW user, 1 superb AR user, and 3 varyingly junky AR users. 4 AR users is kind of a lot of AR ammo, but contrary to my initial beliefs this is pretty much fine. You have to spend a lot of cash on ammo but you generate a lot of cash throughout the game (to the point that it should never really be a problem), and you don't have to spend much on medikits etc since you breeze through most fights. And you have two brawlers cutting down ammo costs even further. Note that for a while I had some fallacy where I thought of ammo spent on NPCs as less useful than ammo spent on PCs, but uh, this isn't really true - even if NPCs don't act very often, they should have high weapon skill ranks still.
Edit #2: I had some discussion on Pizepi in a few edits here, but I rolled it all into the leader section of the main post.