The Mass Effect thread

[Ankamius]

Nope, you can do it on any difficulty. If they don't specify one, then this is always the case.

[Mute]

Oh cool!
Extract from Firebases Rio, London, and Vancouver; then score 100000 against reaper enemies.
With this Kroginal bamf of mine.. =3 fuckin' heavy melee a Brute to death

[Ankamius]

Er, that one has been closed. The only one that is available right now is the revive medal one.

Careful, you have less than 10 hours left.

[Mute]

Revive Medal?
Lemme guess, revive a fallen teammate a few number of times?

[Ankamius]

Yes, five times to be exact.

[Mute]

in a single match?

[Ankamius]

Yes.

[Mute]

=|
This'll be fun.
Thanks for the info Ank.

[Ankamius]

No problem.

[Umbrage]

but you don't get a challenge thingy for that...

just the pack

[Mute]

Yeah, I had saw that after I got the challenge done.
Which was only after 30 minutes of looking for any type of picture. ._.
I did get the N7 [assault] rifle though. =D

[Umbrage]

realized I DID have the Salinfiltrator... not sure why I thought I didn't... anyway, did a couple geth gold. Feeling pretty good right now. I have enough equipment and consumables to reliably extract from Gold as long as my team is halfway decent, so I'm going to be going back to gold as my main, get them spectre packs. Maybe do a silver now and then for equipment. I'm not being stingy anymore though.

also got the sniper challenge, yay

[Ankamius]

We need to play more golds together.

[Ankamius]

Cool shit, game. I decide it might be a good idea to join in a group of people doing randomly generated builds on gold. I get Ex-Cerberus Adept with Javelin. Big fucking whoop.

Then the randomized map, like I predicted, was Giant Hazard. AKA the worst map ever for sniping. It also lags against Cerberus when you scope, which we also got. Another big whoop.

The guy who hosts the match is far enough away from me that the game lags latency-wise too. Also, my Javelin only has seven shots. This means I'm constantly running to an ammo box.

Then to top it all off, my internet shuts off in wave 11.

Never again.

[Umbrage]

Still sounds better than my 'join on wave 9, see the only living player get synckilled, run around wearing down the spawns over time, almost finish them off to have the host leave, watch as my teammates go down in 20 seconds without gelling, use all my rockets, run around whittling down the remaining forces, finally finish them off in a spree of badassitude, get the escort mission, watch as my teammates use one rocket each before dying and refusing to gel, wave 10 failure 0 credits' match.

[Mute]

I and some Krogan Battlemaster were in a match with two other unimportant peons. Between waves 5 and 6, him and I started headbutting each other. Most enjoyable random moment I've ever had playing ME online.
Then we both got swarmed by a fucking Geth Prime.

All those extra classes come from the Spectre packs and above right? I found that Turian soldiers just aren't my thing. ._.

[Umbrage]

There are six silver class unlocks: Salarian Engineer (total crap), Turian Soldier (not bad once you get a good assault rifle), Turian Sentinel (best sentinel), Drell Adept (some say this is the best class in the game), Asari Vanguard (better than human but nothing special), and Quarian Infiltrator (used to play her a lot). Those you can find in veteran packs and MAYBE recruits. All other classes are golds, which means they're usually only unlocked at spectre and higher, although you will get a few golds in veterans don't count on it happening.

Out of the non-gold kits I'd say your best bet is with the Turian Sentinel or Quarian Infiltrator. Human Sentinel and Adept aren't too shabby either, just focus on getting as many combos as possible. Vanguards are good if you're not lagging. BioWare recently nerfed most of the Engineers into oblivion thanks to their bullshit anti-camping crusade. Soldier is good if you have good weapons. Infiltrator with the Mantis is what got me out of bronze games.

[Mute]

Well, lesse.. Ignoring the basic humans in each of the six classes, I've got:
Asari adept; Turian soldier; Salarian Engineer; Krogan sent.; Quarian and Salarian infil.; Drell and Asari vanguards.
As for weapons, I got that promo Valkyrie from that Geronimo op, Geth SMG and Widow, and Mattock (I was overjoyed when I saw this), Phaeston, Scimitar, Eviscerator, Raptor, and Locust for weapons.


With the Turian (and by extension the Krogan), the big thing I can't stand is the lack of a roll. Either it's running, or ducking behind cover. (At least with the Krogan, I could melee into an enemy and rage off of it after three kills.) Haven't found a loadout I like with it, but it's

sorta

speced out to be a rifleman. Just, being unable to duck away from an enemy's gotten me killed more often than not.

[Ankamius]

Both infiltrators are very good classes. QFI has a bit of a weird skill build and SI has a bit of ambiguity to how you can build him, but they're great sniper classes.
Asari Adept isn't that great anymore, but is decent against Cerberus. She's a phantom killer at heart. I don't really know how well to build her since I haven't used her in a long time, but I'm starting to think that maybe a high powered gun build with a focus on stasis would be a great anti-cerberus class.
Turian Soldier is... okay, I guess. I can't find a way to make him work, but a lot of people swear by him.
Salarian Engineer is better than people think. He is kind of like the poor man's Turian Sentinel. I like slapping a Saber on him when I drag him out.
Krogan Sentinel is... okay. I don't really like his playstyle much, and it completely mystifies me how people say speccing out of incinerate and spamming lift grenades is any good. It's not. The best I can do with him is slap a Graal on and go on an anti-cerberus crusade.
Asari Vanguard is a great class, but she requires Grenade Capacity gear at a high level to unlock her true potential.
Drell Vanguard is similar to above, but he requires a lot of finesse and practice to get working right. However, if you can manage to learn how he works, he is an absolute monster.

I hate the krogan melee. All the melees in this game are pretty fucked up in how they target (it's gotten me killed MANY times as a Shadow), but it's even more annoying as a krogan since you have to turn around if you miss. Plus that dash looks ludicrously stupid if you don't hit anything.

[Mute]

Well, I toyed around with the drellguard, and so far I'm liking how nimble he is, but his lack of pain tolerance didn't appeal to the inner sado I have. I do see the potential in him, but I didn't put anything into cluster grenade. The one thing I can't work out is the weapon loadout. I'm half tempted to want to say a sniper rifle, or an assault rifle honestly. Sure the SMG/Shotgun combo's worked on the human vanguard, but the drell just seems suited to getting the foe cut down from a distance with the grenades, then smashing his face in with charge. Then with pull, if they're ducking for cover, bring the enemies out into the fray if they're cowardly hiding.
Least, that was my guess. Then I went back to headbutting abominations and husks, then charging those brutes and whatever-the-fuck the collectors had. =P

Yeah the melee thing sucks, but the only pitfall I've ran into is that, once knocked down, the heavy melee doesn't reach their hit box once/while they're lying down. Sucked.

[Umbrage]

Well, lesse.. Ignoring the basic humans in each of the six classes, I've got:
Asari adept; Turian soldier; Salarian Engineer; Krogan sent.; Quarian and Salarian infil.; Drell and Asari vanguards.
As for weapons, I got that promo Valkyrie from that Geronimo op, Geth SMG and Widow, and Mattock (I was overjoyed when I saw this), Phaeston, Scimitar, Eviscerator, Raptor, and Locust for weapons.


With the Turian (and by extension the Krogan), the big thing I can't stand is the lack of a roll. Either it's running, or ducking behind cover. (At least with the Krogan, I could melee into an enemy and rage off of it after three kills.) Haven't found a loadout I like with it, but it's

sorta

speced out to be a rifleman. Just, being unable to duck away from an enemy's gotten me killed more often than not.

Mattock is the best of that group. Raptor's not bad either. Phaeston is crap. Scimitar is crap. Eviscerator is OK. Geth SMG is OK. If you're playing silver, you are probably better off with a high level mantis than a low level widow, the extra weight isn't worth the damage at lower difficulties. Locust isn't bad, but don't depend on it.

Salarian infiltrator is better than quarian IMO. It's my new favourite. I specced mine for powers with duration/power cloak, radius/shield energy drain, pure damage proximity mine, 3 fitness. Absolutely destroys geth, I use the Hurricane, but any light weapon should be fine. Bonus power on cloak lets you refill your shields with an energy drain while staying invisible. Proximity mine detonates tech bursts and helps make up for the lack of damage against armour.

Turian soldier is OK if you take the Mattock and stick to cover, you can nail constant headshots from across the map. Lack of dodge is a pain, but you'll get used to it.

[Umbrage]

Also, don't listen to that crazy man, krogan melee is AWESOME.

Krogans are a pretty good learning unit actually, you have enough health and shields to survive most anything. So instead of dying and not knowing why, you take damage, find the source, and THEN die. Makes all the difference when you're learning to watch your flank.

Don't hide with a vanguard. Get in there and wreak havoc. I know it seems counter-intuitive, but Drell adept and vanguard are supposed to be really aggressive units. Until you run out of grenades.

[Ankamius]

Phaeston is crap.

I specced mine for powers with duration/power cloak

Um.

Phaeston is a great weapon, even on gold. It was my primary weapon when I first started learning the difficulty, and I still bring it out on occasion.
Duration on cloak is actually pretty bad on everyone that isn't the Shadow. Most of your damage on infiltrators is going to be your sniper rifle, so having 80% extra damage instead of 40% is absolutely huge. Plus if you don't spec into duration early on in learning infiltrators, you don't get into the bad habit of using cloak to run away all the time. 4-5 seconds is plenty while still requiring you to learn map awareness (a skill that is required to do well on gold).

Also, don't listen to that crazy man, krogan melee is AWESOME.

The problem with melee in general is that their targeting is hilariously bad. The krogans especially have huge issues hitting anything cloaked or moving backwards. It doesn't get you killed instantly like several other melees do, but you're just as likely to run past the enemy than hit them.

Plus, batarian melee in general is better. Only on the brawler, though.

[Umbrage]

Alright, Phaeston is an OK weapon. But it's still completely inferior to the Mattock.

I normally take the sniper damage. I randomly selected the bonus power to try something different, and discovered that it kicks ass on the SalInf because energy drain allows you to boost shields while cloaked, which is a huge plus.

And I almost always go for duration cloak over damage. It's just way more flexible, and is incredibly useful for most objectives. I tried using a sniper rifle on this guy, but it just didn't work. Low cooldowns mean more energy drain, which means LOTS of shields. And Hurricane does awesome damage, especially if you add disruptor ammo for easy tech bursts. You have lots of time in the cloak to scout out all the enemies, then pick an isolated target to kill. Rinse and repeat. If you're fighting geth, energy drain is even more useful, it rivals overload for stunning power. It can't kill things quickly, but it's excellent at surviving.

Krogan melee is only bad if you're lagging. Otherwise, it's all about timing. I used to be great at timing my charge and melee to keep phantoms stunlocked as I kill them. Good times...

[Ankamius]

Tactical cloak makes a recharge speed pointless. If you deactivate it shortly after activating it, then your cooldown will be short regardless. This is also why I don't take bonus power, since I almost always use cloak in order to get the damage bonus, instantly use my stagger/stun ability, then take the shot for an easy kill.

EDIT: Overload is an explosion-detonating power. It's difficult to compare it and energy drain together since they have completely different uses.