These are ports of classes designed by GrimyBunyip, who isn't modding anymore. So I try to keep them functioning as designed. only ability I swapped out was one that never actually did anything.

Originally posted by Mitzruti:

These are ports of classes designed by GrimyBunyip, who isn't modding anymore. So I try to keep them functioning as designed. only ability I swapped out was one that never actually did anything.

even so could you modify it?

Anarchists aren't nearly as bad as you seem to think, in fact they are a unit I bring at least one of whenever possible and they are one of the most important units I bring. I feel your problem, based on what you said is the comments, is that you want to kill things with it directly when it is meant to fulfill a supportive role instead. Between getting 6 grenades, 100% tile coverage with poison/acid/incendiary grenades, double shredding, extra dot damage, haywire protocol, and all of the normal gremlin abilities, they can do a lot.

There is nothing in the game that is better at shredding armor from powerful enemies that I have found, it can provide a good amount of field control, between all the grenades and gremlin abilities I rarely run out of things I can do with it in a fight, it is a decent hacker and decent healer, the main role it plays is weakening powerful enemies with a lot of armor, getting some early damage in with reinforcements by having them drop out of their ship and immediately get set on fire or poisoned, unable to move without getting hurt by acid, etc., crippling grouped up enemies by hurting them a bit, and more importantly inflicting them with various penalties, or supporting allies, honestly I feel it is the most versatile unit I bring along in my games.

Not every unit exists purely to kill things directly. I have shredded 8 armor in a single attack with these guys, and that is just with mid-game stuff, making the most dangerous enemies a lot easier to kill, burning enemies can't melee (except for archons, psi zombies, and berserkers), overwatch, reload weapons, or use most cooldown abilities, poisoned enemies have -30 aim and -6 mobility, making them a lot less of a threat regardless of whether they are melee or ranged, and the dot from acid, poison, or fire can do a lot of damage with the extra damage from anarchist abilities. If you equip the alien hunters frost grenade, you also get three uses of a long-ranged ability that can render as far as I can tell any enemy in the game useless for a turn, cancelling any psi abilities in the process.

Anarchist doesn't kill enemies, but it cripples them, supports allies, makes enemies easier for other allies to kill, can hack stuff, and is basically the swiss army knife of the XCOM 2 universe, capable of filling a wide variety of supportive roles, personally I feel it renders grenadiers useless, can replace a specialist to a decent extent, and plays an important role in reducing how much damage your units take while helping your units kill the enemies a lot faster. On maps where you are doing a lot of fighting around buildings, it is also great at making enemies take a hard fall to the ground and between the dot, initial damage, and fall damage has the potential of killing decently strong enemies with only one action, though it may take a few turns for the enemy to actually die.

Anarchists deal way too little damage and several of their abilities don't even work. The Grenade Shred ability doesn't seem to affect anything but Frags for example.

Originally posted by Doom Gnomem:

Anarchists deal way too little damage and several of their abilities don't even work. The Grenade Shred ability doesn't seem to affect anything but Frags for example.

It worked fine on acid grenades for me, and they aren't really designed for damage, they are better at debuffing enemies, buffing allies (with smoke bomb for example), hacking things, shredding armor, destroying cover for allies to get a better shot, etc. I use my specialist to shoot things only when it doesn't have anything better to do, I don't rely on it for damage, same applies to anarchist, except rather than shooting things it will help in other ways.

Seriously, 3 uses of an insta-kill ability, albeit one only affecting advent soldiers, the ability to hack robotic enemies, regular gremlin hacking, two free heavy weapon uses via abilities, 6 grenades plus 3 smoke bombs if you equip one since they count separately from grenades, gremlin abilities, a decent healing ability albeit one that is worse than a specialist with a medkit, there is plenty of stuff an anarchist can do, not every unit has to just shoot things and deal damage directly, the sheer amount of utility provided by anarchist is great. I would say it is absolutely better than a grenadier at the grenadier's role and slightly worse than the specialist at the specialist's role, making it a good replacement for either one and with it's own niche to fill as well.

Personally, I find the only abilities that don't work are the ones it gets from other class that you can spend AP points to get, which is randomized for each unit, specifically the ones requiring ammo, everything else works perfectly fine.