[@Savato]
Long war MASSIVELY ups the power of Ethereals. In standard Xcom you can kill the uber ethereal with two sniper shots to the head, ignoring all the other Ethereals in the room. If you know what you're doing, he doesn't even get a turn to do shit.

Long War ups the difficulty of the game immensely. But if you're basing the char on Long War, that explains why I've been underestimating him fairly consistently.