Specialist | Soldier Classes XCOM 2 Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
The Specialist is a class focused on supporting your team - the soldier has access to numerous abilities that can increase the effectiveness of your soldiers, improve med kits, heal your whole team in a single move, and wreck some serious havoc in the enemy ranks if needed. The main equipment of the Specialist class consists of an assault rifle, and the GREMLIN drone.
The GREMLIN is a drone which allows the Specialist to use most of his / her abilities. It allows the soldier to heal teammates from afar, scan the area for enemies, increase the defensive and offensive capabilities of a specified soldier, and, which is probably the most important one, hack enemies and targets from vast distances. Upgrading the GREMLIN drone increases the soldier's hacking chances, allowing to get through enemy security even easier.
Regardless of your preferred team, at least one Specialist-class soldier should always be in your rooster.
This class starts with the Aid Protocol ability, allowing it to increase the defenses of a specified soldier.
Available abilities
Level | Ability 1 | Description | Ability 2 | Description |
Corporal | Medical Protocol | The GREMLIN can perform healing actions remotely: GREMLIN Heal and GREMLIN Stabilize. The GREMLIN has a single charge. If a medkit is equipped, the GREMLIN will gain an additional charge. | Combat Protocol | Send the GREMLIN to an enemy to jolt them, dealing guaranteed damage, which is increased against robotic enemies. Can be used twice per mission. |
Sergeant | Revival Protocol | Send the GREMLIN to an ally to remove any negative mental status effects, such as disoriented, stunned, panicked, or unconscious. | Haywire Protocol | You may target robotic and mechanical enemies with your GREMLIN, attempting to hack them and seize control. |
Lieutenant | Field Medic | Equipped medkits have 2 extra charges. | Scanning Protocol | The GREMLIN can trigger an instant scan of the area, increasing the Specialist's sight radius substantially for one turn and revealing any hidden enemies. |
Captain | Covering Fire | Overwatch shots can now be triggered by enemy actions, not just movement. | Threat Assessment | Aid Protocol now grants the target a Covering Fire Overwatch shot, but the Aid Protocol cooldown is increased by 1 turn. |
Major | Ever Vigilant | If you spend all of your actions on moves, you are granted an automatic overwatch shot at the end of the turn. | Guardian | Grants 50% chance during Overwatch to perform an additional shot if the previous Overwatch shot hits. There's no limit as to how many times Guardian can trigger. |
Colonel | Restoration | The GREMLIN flies to each squad member, healing or reviving them as needed. Can only be used once per mission. | Capacitor Discharge | Send the GREMLIN to a location where it emits a substantial electric discharge, damaging and potentially stunning all nearby units. Robotic units take more damage. Once per mission. |
Selecting abilities
While playing with the Specialist class, you can either focus entirely on the left column, or on the right one, or you can simply mix abilities from both of them. It looks like this:
- Medical Protocol - the ability that no Specialist can work without. Thanks to that, you will be able to heal your units over vast distances, without the need of getting into melee range to do so.
- Haywire Protocol - the ability to hack a mechanical enemy is the one you should not forget about. The possibility to seize control over an enemy is quite small during the first few missions, but you can always turn the enemy off for 2 rounds. Take the Revival Protocol if you have problems while dealing with the Advent Stun Lancers and your units tend to lose consciousness.
- Scanning Protocol - the ability that is useful until you gain access to the Battle Scanner utility item, which servers the same purpose, albeit on a smaller scale. If you don't need the ability to scan the area, you should pick up the Field Medic, which will give you a couple of extra med kits.
- Threat Assessment - a powerful ability if used on a soldier like the Ranger, who fights better numerous enemies at the same time. Not only that the soldier will be able to deal damage with the sword to enemies running close to him / her, the ability will allow to perform an Overwatch attack.
- Guardian - 50% chance to perform an additional attack is practically a guaranteed hit on an enemy (unless the hit chance on the first one was small to begin with). The ability can be triggered numerous times in a row, which unfortunately can leave your soldier with an empty magazine.
- Restoration - the ability to heal your whole team (regardless of the distance) and the cleansing effect getting rid of all the negative statuses is a must-have. If you, for some reason, don't want an additional healing, Capacitor Discharge is a useful skill as well, especially during the encounters with mechanical units.