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Discussions Rules and Guidelines
6 
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-spectre
-fire advent
-codex
-shield guy
If they were removed this game would be so much nicer to play. This is why XCOM 1 is better than 2.
Alien's turn - specter binds one of your guys.
Your turn again - you kill the specter and get your guy back. No big deal.
Specters are low priority enemies IF they get one turn to play. Two turns can be messy, but if that happens you probably messed up somewhere, most likely triggered too many enemies.
At that point you may consider targeting specters.
Small note: if you kill the shadow you also get your guy back, albeit slightly wounded, and you still have to kill the specters afterwards, so avoid that.
If I remember correctly, the shadow can also use abilities that it shouldn't be able to, like one you didn't pick for your bound soldier. Pretty sure once I was blasted by a rapid fire ranger shadow and I think that ranger wasn't even colonel yet.
Spectre is not a priority target when you encounter an enemy pod. So kill the whatever else they have that feels like the the highest threat. For example, a red droid or an advent captain or a sectoid or muton should hopefully be killed on the first turn.
On the next turn make sure your squad is not spread out too much, because the spectre will come in and disable one of them. After he did so, concentrate fire on the spectre unit. Ignore the shadow doppleganger that was created.
Soon as the Spectre is downed, the shadow doppelganger dies and you get your soldier back.
You can also revive the unconscious soldier with Revival Protocol, by killing the Shadow, or by killing the Spectre. Spectres are extra-vulnerable to EMP Grenades/Bombs (these often stun them and chunk their health badly) and Bluescreen Rounds allow a Sharpshooter with Bluescreen Rounds to pretty much one-shot a full-health Spectre with Fan Fire.
Would you rather have Spectres instead opt to use their excellent mobility to flank and shoot your soldiers on their first action? You can't recover a dead soldier who was lit up by a Spectre.
What makes any of these enemies worse than Sectoid Commanders and Ethereals from the first game? Those bastards had a ton of health, and could easily Mind Control one of your units on their first turn, then mosey off into the fog of war, leaving you to deal with, say, a MEC Trooper under the aliens' control.
The "shield guy" (more commonly known as the ADVENT Shieldbearer) will almost always opt to throw up his shield on his first action. This makes them possibly one of the least threatening ADVENT or alien units, since they won't
Codexes and Spectres die fast to EMP Bombs and Bluescreen Rounds. The Codex's psionic bomb is only a concern if a civvie you need to rescue, or a mission objective is in the blast radius.
As for "fire advent" (or ADVENT Purifiers, as most of us know them), the only dangerous attack they have are their incendiary grenades. They're utterly harmless to SPARKs, Psi Operatives and Templars with Fortress, and anyone wearing a Hazmat Vest. And their flamethrowers don't even inflict any damage--they just set stuff (and people) on fire on the next turn.
The real annoying enemy is the ADVENT Priest. 9 times out of ten, they'll proc Sustain instead of dying, forcing you to waste an extra turn to kill them. Usually, parking a Bladestorm Ranger next to them does the job, but that's still an extra turn you are forced to waste dealing with them.
I asked can I *not* get shadowbound whenever one shows up
the answer is no, trying to convince me that the enemy *is not* an annoying piece of ♥♥♥♥ is a waste of your, mine and everyone elses time.
X-com 2 is all about turn management, so you have to actually count what's happening.
Let's say you engage an enemy first. IF the enemy doesn't have shadowbound, you have 6 character turns before that enemy injures or kills one of your soldiers (and ideally you should kill it before then). IF the enemy DOES have shadowbound, he'll use it after your 6 characters have played, not killing nor injuring anyone, and you actually have 11 turns to kill them instead of 6 because the turn cycles back to you.
Shadowbound gives you a free turn minus one character. That's all it does. If you're dying after 11 turns have passed you would have died after 6 anyway.
But like others have said, you can't *really* stop a spectre from binding your troops, it's just the thing they do, like how shieldbearers shield, and mechs fire missiles.
That being said if spectres are giving you trouble you clearly still have a lot to learn (which is fine). If you want to get better at the game by far the easiest way is watching people better then you play it on youtube, twitch, or anywhere else you prefer. XCOM 2 being a turn based strategy game, if you pay attention and watch people who are good at the game play it, you will pick up on what they do differently and you can start incorporating what they do differently into your gameplay. It helped me get leagues better, just watching people doing XCOM 2 challenge runs for fun.
One final thing is you can mod the game. You could probobley find a mod that nerfs spectres or even removes them from the game if you find them frustrating. Video games are about having fun and XCOM has really good modding support so you change just about anything you want about the game with mods.
Hope that helps.
Using mimic beacons will also mess with their AI, causing them to shoot at the beacon instead of using their abilities.
All of these enemies are free kills; if anything, they should have been a lot stronger. If you are struggling to kill them, then you are not managing the strategical layer properly.
But wait for the big iron ball do hooga booga with it tentacles and ur full squad is 50% hp :p
I never used a flashbang on specters, but apparently it works?
The other thing, that I'm not 100% on is mindshields. A bound unit is KO'ed. KO is a mental effect supposedly. So maybe mindshields work?
When I was doing solo missions, my soldier would carry a mindshield and I never got bound. But that might be because he was the only soldier on the mission and the A.I. would take pity on me or something? I definitely remember having specters going invisible and simply do nothing (that I could see) for a bunch of turns.
On the other hand, overdrive serum, which should give the same mindshield immunity did not protect me from shadowbind once, so take that with a grain of salt.
It is indeed futile to try to change your opinion. I hate priests to death for instance. By far the most annoying unit for me. But I prefer annoying to deadly.
Annoying units are one of the reasons wotc is, generally speaking, easier than vanilla.
Soldiers cant resist the shadowbound, but you can flashbang Spectres and that skill gets disabled for 1 turn, so you have some breathing room. Only way to avoid it its to CC the Spectre. (Also the soldier can be revived with the gremlin if you have the skill to wake unconcious.)
Situations can change in this game, and yet the most consistent thing I found to keep my squad alive its to restrict the enemy actions as much as I can, while reducing the damage you can get, IF I cant kill them in the turn they are active.