Grenadier | Soldier Classes XCOM 2 Guide
Last update: 11 May 2016
The Grenadier differs from the counterpart of the first XCOM in one aspect - the soldier uses a grenade launcher instead of a rocket launcher. It allows the Grenadier to launch deadly projectiles over vast distances, and a number of abilities greatly increase their effectiveness (by increasing the blast radius, the amount of carried grenades, or even the damage). They are equipped with heavy machine guns, and because of the grenade launcher they are carrying they can't use a handgun, getting a bonus grenade in return.
This class starts with the Launch Grenade ability, allowing it to launch grenades over vast distances.
Available abilities
Level | Ability 1 | Description | Ability 2 | Description |
Corporal | Blast Padding | Your gear includes layers of extra padding and blast plates, granting a bonus point of Armor and 66% less damage from explosive attacks. | Shredder | Your cannon attacks shred armor. Higher rank weapons shred more points of armor. The shredding effect applies before damage. |
Sergeant | Demolition | Unleash a volley of bullets at your target's cover, significantly damaging or destroying it. Deals no damage to your target. Uses 2 ammo. Needs 3 turns of cooldown. | Supression | Fire a barrage that pins down your target, granting reaction fire against it if it moves, and imposing a -50 penalty to the target's aim. Suppression is cancelled if the Grenadier takes damage. Suppression penalties stack. Uses 2 ammo. There is no cooldown on the ability. |
Lieutenant | Heavy Ordnance | The grenade in your grenade-only slot gains a bonus use. Affects support grenades, not just offensive ones. | Holo Targeting | Any directed cannon shot, hit or miss, will mark the target, increasing your squad's aim by +15 against this target. Applies to standard attacks and single-target abilities, including suppression. |
Captain | Volatile Mix | Grenades gain +1 tile to their radius and deal +2 damage. Does not increase environment damage. | Chain Shot | Fires a shot with a penalty of 15 to aim. If it hits, immediately fire another shot at the target. Uses 2 ammo. Needs 3 turns of cooldown. |
Major | Salvo | Using the grenade launcher or a heavy weapon as your first action does not end the turn | Hail of Bullets | Fire a shot that is guaranteed to hit. Uses 3 ammo. Needs 5 turns of cooldown. |
Colonel | Saturation Fire | Fire a hail of bullets in a cone damaging every enemy and all cover within. Uses 3 ammo Needs 5 turns of cooldown. | Rapture | Fires a shot that deals critical damage. The target, if hit, will also take 3 additional damage from all sources. Uses 3 ammo. Needs 3 turns of cooldown. |
Selecting Abilities
Grenadier abilities allow the soldier to cause havoc on the battlefield, flush enemies from behind covers (or get rid of covers) and deal damage to several targets at once. You should choose the following abilities:
- Blast Padding - an additional point to the armor is one less damage from every single attack, and it scales extremely well into late game. Additionally, the ability decreases the damage coming from explosions by 66%, making grenades extremely ineffective against the soldier.
- Suppression - suppressing an enemy will cause them to be almost completely useless in combat (-50 to aim), and when he decides to come out of the cover and change position, he will be greeted with reaction fire. The Demolition ability would be quite useful, if not for the fact that sometimes it does not destroy cover at all.
- Heavy Ordnance - additional grenades are always useful.
- Volatile Mix - an ability that increases the effectiveness of your grenades, enhancing the damage by half and vastly increasing the blast range. With it you will be able to hit even 4 or 5 enemies with a single projectile, or demolish whole buildings if needed.
- Hail of Bullets - a purely situational ability, as it consumes a lot of ammo, but has 100% chance to hit, which will be useful against an enemy in good cover, or to take out the last foe.
- Saturation Fire - despite that Rapture is not a bad ability (who wouldn't want a free critical hit?), Saturation Fire is the better of two. It comes in handy if you want to deal damage to a number of foes at the same time, or if you want to flush them out / destroy their cover, and you can't use a grenade (either by the lack of them, or of fear of hurting a teammate or destroying equipment on the map).