How can you modify their stats? I'd love to be able to change their defense and bump up the amount of armor points they can get. I've been going through different files with notepad but I'm not sure which variable to change/where to find it.

Would be hell if my soldiers were vanilla, but these guys are perfect punching bags for modded-out-the-wazoo brigadiers

And don’t let them get closer than 7-8 tiles; as the distance decreases, they get large bonuses to accuracy - even high cover will not save you.)

Great guys.) When meeting them, it’s useful to have 1-2 flashbang grenades with you.

Can we make our own, than maybe it would be a bit more. Would love to have this guy on my team lol

Is this from a particular mod since it’s called ‘Standalone’? Is this in A Better ADVENT: WotC?

pro tip for anyone struggling; Psi Ops. Custodians have mediocre will and Insanity will almost always be effective on them. If you play with LW or RPGO, or just really like arc blades, you can also attempt to stun them with arc throwers.

As for actual strategies, sharpshooters and grenadiers are pretty effective against them. Shred their armor with a grenadier, then quickscope them with a sharpshooter and you can take them out in 1-2 turns. Overall, just DO NOT GET CLOSE TO THEM.
(note: I play with RPGO and haven't played vanilla for a very long time. take my advice with a grain of salt)

My only complaint is that they're so difficult to hit for no reason. Thankfully it's easy to tweak their files. I removed their defense, doubled their armor, and gave them a sprinkle more mobility so they're sort of like a mix between Stun Lancer and normal Trooper.

These are too strong for vanilla classes, but they work well with Proficiency Classes. For people complaining about them having no weaknesses, they're super tanky and can oneshot at point-blank range, but they're slow and have low aim. If you kite away from them or put some status effects on them they're very counterable.

These guys have no weaknesses in a game that revolves around exploiting weaknesses, to clarify, staying far away and spending 3 turns to kill these guys is not considered a weakness in a time sensitive game.

Too OP IMO. Took out 2 of soldiers who were in end-game gear already. The first one was shot with a free pistol (?) through full cover, then finished off with their main weapon.

Yeah, great graphics and idea, but waaaaaay OP. Just one of these takes a whole squad a full turn to take down, and they come in packs of 3. And that melee shot is ridiculous. 20 HP damage?! Screw that . . .

Might I suggest using my tweaks to their stats to give them a more distinguished Heavy Armoured Advent? cut both Exalted and Custodian HP/Devastator Gauntlet damage in half but, adversely give them 50% more Armour (rounded down) and one mobility (=10), their you have it, a convincing place in the advent hierarchy, Elite armoured division, still threatening, need to drop them before they get close.

you gonna add the reveil animations from the custodian pack (i would use the big pack but the exalted custodians are too hard for my taste)

Decent concept, but the balance is awful. While having extremely high health is understandable, giving them 20% defence for no reason, along with aimbot and a tendency to frequently spawn entire pods of them is just stupid. On my first encounter with them, they wiped my high-tier squad with warden armour in about 4 turns.

My opinion on these guys (along with all of Claus's enemies besides the pathfinders) is that they are not meant of vanilla xcom 2 WOTC. You either have to be a seasoned Xcom player who expects losses or use other mods to balance things out. That goes without saying for about a third of all enemy mods out there. I have faced these guys with both Beta Strike SW and the Delta Strike mod on, which makes all of Advent into beasts! But I use some mods to balance that difficulty out, such as using Bitterfrost protocol or dedicated utility slots so I can carry grenades, ammo, and other items on all my units. It is really on the individual to balance that out if the owner of the mod feels they are manageable. After a bit of tweaking and adding new mods, you can face these guys without concern of their stats, which I left untouched. But anyone is able to edit the stats and encounter rates if you look into the config.

These mobs should be as a boss pod. Just like Sectopod plus 1 mec in the late game. So, any mission at force level 17 and above, should be able to spawn only one pack of Master+1 or 2 standard soldiers.

Outside of that it's a stupid mod. The same way anyone can create yellow, idk, Advent officer with 180 hp and 30 dmg just because.

Literally had to piss my full arsenal of grenades on three of these guys in the first encounter as they walk in on two armored bezerkers. Then I watch my use an action to ignore my team, walk up to my Templar and fire. She eats it with the parry and I think fine, I focus him next round. Nope. This motherfucker decides to do a third action. Point blank, flat 20 damage one tapping my templar. I want to love this mod. Then extracting. 3 more show up.
Too tanky.
Too much damage
Too frequent.
I want to love this mod, really I do. But there are balance issues.

Love this mod! but a diet version would be appreciated. These guys come in numbers and are so beefy they can wipe entire fully prepared squads.

Badass, but you really gotta soften em up a little bit. These guys have way too much health and often appear in numbers.

i guess the issue is when the game spawns them in groups. They are a very VERY tough enounter when first met, especially when not all your soldiers are superhuman monsters, but when the game shits 2 pods of them as the first encounter, that's a death sentence. The first time i encountered these dudes, i only lived because i had a tank that soaked 2 turns of bashing for the rest of the squad

Out of curiosity, isn't the Berserker suppose to be the Aliens Tank? You also got Generals Revamp for an equivalent. :3

they have too much health imo

WTF is wrong with you? I subbed to this and some other "cool" mods like Berserker Omega cause its in a collection.. now im hitting a wall in mission 18, with 3 custodian soldiers, and a pack of biozerks with omega zerk that will always trigger each other. Good job basically making the mission impossible to win. At least on commander or higher. Mind you i already did some heavily modded legend honest man playthroughs, but this is just ridicoulus.

I like a lot their appearance. They fit perfectly as super heavy/tanky ADVENT units. By editing the .ini I lowered their ridiculous HP for both variants and now I can enjoy this mod much more. Otherwise they're slowing the game down in timed missions because they're just massive bullet sponges that you have to rely on cheap tactics (kiting, frost bombs, mind control...)

His shield looks so cool.

what do i get for killing these? autopsy? rewards?

Wt ... is that. Jezus Great mod. Time back to xcom ....

They can be double agents yeah

These guys able to be found as double agents, or is that only coming in the complete mod?

I was scared of these guys until I mind controlled one and turned it against the enemy. They absolutely SUCK! They have zero speed, bad aim and no cover. It just ended up being a big damage sponge that never got in a single hit. It wasn't a "master" mind you, but next time these guys show up I'm not going to be as concerned. I could pretty much kite one to death with two soldiers, blue moving away from it and shooting at it every turn.

They have a very low spawn chance. You either have to edit the chance in the encounters ini or have larger pod sizes/more pods.

These guys never show up, the exalted either. Any ideas?

Oh cool the first custodian I ever see is a double agent on a ufo mission.

wil we be able to get the rocket pack after autopsy if thats intended like with the path finder cause it looks very fun

These are extremely strong, to the point where they're ALMOST pushing it, but I've still always been able to pull it out and beat them when they show up, so for me, at least, they've hit that sweet spot really well. Good work.

Sorry these guys are overtuned. Turning up in packs of three with 20 damage in melee and have 30+ health with 3 armor, I'm facing Andromedon Prime (A Better Advent, Force level 18) which has 23 health, 5 armor.

It would be better to have half the health and melee damage with a buff to be a bit better at range. Right now they are closer to a Sectopod that turns up as regular advent.

@Kakroom Pretty much like Yang's gauntlets from RWBY.

Had a strange bug today. Had a soldier in the Serpent suit use Frostbite on one and instead it basically played out like judgement, minus melee. Scary lemme tell ya.

@Pirahna Well, iirc their 'punch' is less just them being Ripped Bros and more that they're delivering an extremely close proximity, high-powered shotgun blast directly to your soldiers abdomen.

tbh it's the only reason I find them useful at all. Custodians who drop in with you are great for that tankiness you mentioned, but aside from their gauntlet they fucking *suuuck* in any ranged combat.

These guys look and are super tough, which makes them adequately intimidating. They fit nicely in with the advent roster, giving them a proper tank... of sorts. Their HP is ridicoulous, at least compared to all vanilla aliens, and so is their damage on their melee punch. Their tankyness makes sense, and fits how they look with their shields and stuff. Their melee punch, not so much. 20, really? Nothing about their models properly communicate that they are dangerous in melee, indeed much more dangerous than any beserker. They will literally one-shot your dudes most of the game. The solution? Use dominate mind, they are easy to mindcontrol. Though, it begs the question whether this is really a solution or symptomatic of a design challenge.

Can we get their rifles too?

they are far too common, seems to nearly replace the common troops.. I mean I had to fight 4 at once at the start of several missions and with their super high damage and speed the fatality rate on my missions are just are nearly at 50% on troops with maxed out gear..

hope to have Autopsy on them in the future……

any updates

these things look horrifying. Though I wish they would do a support role as well. Like the slam the shield they have down providing cover for troops

Did someone say cleanup in isle 3?

@Musashi: might be a good idea to tell Alterd to MAYBE move them up a force level or two so the player has a chance to actually get some Fixers... or at least someone with Shredder.

@[NNF❖|JgdK] Shepard
This is caused by the WoTC Fixer Class mod.

I litterally keep encountering them on my first mission after the intro one, I'm not able to kill them because all of my weapons deal 1 dmg to them (they have 4 armour points). Its a really cool enemie and the design and toughts behind it are awesome. I sadly got to kick em out of my list tho for now, because I litterally cant play the game Q.Q