Mass Effect Series

[Carlie]

brb need to go to my bunker.

 

[Lex]

I'm getting really pissed off with the collectors in ME3 multiplayer. If you pick random enemies you get (these are my last 10 matches):

Collectors - Collectors - Collectors - Reapers - Reapers - Collectors - Collectors - Collectors - Cerberus - Collectors.

It wouldn't bother me so much if it weren't for the fact that the collectors are harder than everything else. Their bullets literally fucking shoot through walls, they appear out of nowhere, and THOSE DAMN SWARMS.

I don't get it. Random game gives you Geth maybe like 5% of the time too, it's infuriating. I'm starting to think there's nothing random about it.

 

[Joe]

The thing I hate most about Collectors is that I usually play Biotics that rely solely on Biotics, so I don't usually take a powerful weapon with me. That means when I get hit by the swarms I am effectively useless until the cooldown and I'll get hit several times.

 

[Lex]

After looking at it objectively since it came out, I've come to the conclusion that they're the hardest enemy. I hate playing them - not because they're challenging, but because they just suck to play against. It doesn't seem to matter what class I choose, I don't often fail missions at all but if I do it's always against the fucking collectors. God I hate them.

Also what's with all the people playing silver on like level 20? That's pointless, you might as well play gold (I've started playing gold matches and actually succeeding almost every time, but I've been using an infiltrator.)

I'm getting tired of being the only level 9-ish guy surviving in matches.

 

[Joe]

No matter what difficulty I play on, my team mates always seem to be bad at that level. If I play a gold, they are likely to start dying around wave 8. If I play a silver match they are likely to start dying around then too. Same with Bronze.

I am constantly being matched up with players one difficulty higher than they should be playing. >.>

 

[null]

On Bronze I always end up with level 20 Vanguards equipped to solo on Platinum. Bunch of kill stealing beyotches. So annoying.

 

[Lex]

I've almost completely stopped playing bronze. Now that I'm used to silver it seems like a waste of time. When I promote a character and start back at level 1 I do a bronze round but that's just out of fear :/

 

[Hisako]

Also what's with all the people playing silver on like level 20? That's pointless, you might as well play gold (I've started playing gold matches and actually succeeding almost every time, but I've been using an infiltrator.)

Playing silver on level 20 is a stress-free, easy-mode way of farming credits without the need for items. It's fun to come out on 100k points in Silver in a 4-man group dominated by bullshit Vanguards - using nothing but Concussion Shot on a vanilla Human Soldier. AVENGER X BABY.

I only play on Bronze if I want to try a new build of character/class and I'm not certain I'd be much use on Silver. Most days though, Silver is my standard.
I've carried matches where a biotics-heavy team face off against Collectors, using an N7 Destroyer (AP mod shreds through most Collector enemies since a lot of them are armor-barrier centric - and of course, N7 Destroyer is almost completely independent from cooldowns. ). It's especially important to diversify the team on harder difficulties.

A great tech skill to employ is Concussion Shot. A lot of people sneer at it because it doesn't do as much damage compared to some other skills, but it has an incredibly fast cooldown and takes out most Collector barriers in one or two hits, leaving squadmates to focus on armor.

 

[Lex]

I've played through all N7 Classes now to a point where I feel like I've "mastered" them (my standard for this is playing through Gold without dying), but I had a lot of trouble adjusting to the N7 Destroyer. The other one I had trouble with was the N7 Paladin - the shield thing is a nice novelty but for a sentinel the dood doesn't have enough stay power for me.

I prefer my nimble classes, it has to be said. Now that I've properly tried most of them out my favourite characters are in Vanguard and Adept. The N7 Infiltrator is OK too. The N7 Demolisher is just a grenade spammer, though I'm finally getting use out of those ammo packs. I'm not really in love with any of the tech classes, but I prefer them to Soldier/ Sentinel. They're excellent against geth and cerberus at any rate.

 

[Hisako]

I've had difficulties with the Paladin as well (and this is as a very tech-centric player ) I've tried capitalising on what could be a potential melee build, and there's some potential tanking options with the emplaced shield as well, but it's just too finicky to use and closing the distance is a little more difficult on harder difficulties and larger maps.

 

[Joe]

N7 Slayer is my personal favourite. Kitted and spec'd to high hell with all the melee upgrades I just go around hitting people with the sword. The class benefits from intangibility while slashing and knocks most enemies back with each slash. This means you go up to a Geth Pyro in platinum and just hit with your sword til it dies. It can't hurt you.

Best enemy to use this against are the Geth Prime's. They have no sync-kill moves and so long as you keep slashing at them and biotic charge when you need barriers you can just wail on them til they die, quickly.

 

[Lex]

The slayer is magnificent, possibly my favourite. I love the drell vanguard too though.

@Satsu Exactly. I know the point of a Sentinel is that he's supposed to be a tank but the Paladin kinda fails there IMO. I did enjoy the melee, that's a fun attack, but the dude isn't quick enough no matter what way he's built.

 

[Joe]

Also Biotic/Electrical slash on the N7 Vanguard and Infiltrators are massively OP moves if you have a short cooldown. They can be used through walls so when you have a group of enemies you can put yourself safely on the other side of a wall and just fire off the aoe ability. This is like the number one way to do a team an amazing service.

 

[Hisako]

The melee is pretty dang good though. It holds pretty much the same punch as a krogan charge, so it plays funny business with the physics engine and launches half its targets across the map (especially when frozen as is like to do with the Paladin )

I might go back to it and see what I can do with it.

 

[Lex]

Shadow strike is the same, you can accidentally target someone from like the other side of the map through 5 walls and all you have to do is press a button and go weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

 

[null]

I just noticed that Matriarch Benezia's corpse is still blinking and her eyes are still shifting.

Also, this must be the third time in a row everything went tits up on Peak 15. Forgot to leave the hot labs until the end... such a fragile mission. I used to finish Noveria without getting everyone killed.

 

[Zee]

i love the n7 classes

i loved warping through walls as a fury but it was not cool that one time i did it and landed right in the middle of two brutes and a banshee

 

[Joe]

My mistake is always using the first anti-thorian grenade against the first thorian creeper you come across (rather than a colonist). It always leaves me without enough left to gas one group of people without trying to run past them to pick up the grenades around the corner.

 

[Mantichorus]

OK, the nuke probe... did Shepard enter some kinda bullet time there? Ten seconds to disarm all three hard points, and it took me four seconds to find the probe!

Doing the Cerberus side-missions now. RIP

Spoiler

Kohaku

.

This talk about the multiplayer does remind me of something I was going to ask: which class do each of you favour? I mean, it's a ways until I'll be doing any ME3 multiplayer, but I'm already thinking on it (I'll probably be a Quarian Male Engineer).

 

[Lex]

^The beauty of the multiplayer is that you can switch between classes between games, so the real answer for me is "it depends".

My canon Shep regardless of sex will usually always be a Vanguard. In multiplayer I played Vanguard exclusively for a really long time getting used to each of the different characters. The N7 Slayer is nice for melee and other stuff but lacks area hitting attacks. The Drell Vanguard might be my favourite of the whole class - you can zip around anywhere so quickly, dodging doesn't drain your shields, he has a cluster grenade which is just win (if you know where the enemies spawn you can literally take like 10 of them out before they move), and Pull which I love against cerberus because you can pull their shields off. The Asari vanguard is good in other respects, an area hitting heavy melee, lift grenades and Stasis which is really useful against phantoms.

Adepts can be fun. The N7 Fury Adept is all about setting up biotic explosions - annihilation field drains any enemies who come near you and any biotic attacks to them afterwards causes an explosion, which is nice. It's easy to survive with this class, which is quite unusual for adepts tbh.

Engineers - The N7 Demolisher Engineer is useful for one thing - grenade spamming from cover. That might sound crap but I usually came out on top points wise for each match with this character.

The N7 Shadow Infiltrator is my choice for gold and platinum matches right now, because I've never died with her. Infiltrators always have high survivability because of tactical cloak. A lot of people don't like shadow strike, but it's a useful way to take out enemies combined with tactical cloak (you can take out 2 - 3 with each cloak on Gold if you time it right and power up the right stuff).

Sentinels bore me to tears and simply don't move fast enough. I've tried a few characters and it's just a class I can't get to grips with. The ones with cool powers don't have the high tank HP and Shields required to survive the uber slow movement speed they all have. When you get used to classes like Vanguard, Adept and Infiltrator it feels like you're walking through water.

Soldiers can be very useful but I don't use them. The N7 Destroyer has a cool move that increases weapon damage, ammo and rate of fire, as well as another homing missile power that continuously shoots missiles at enemies you're targeting. But you'll have a hard time finding a match with this class because it's the one people use to missile glitch.

Long story short: my favourite class is still vanguard for multiplayer but I'm not sure which character. Infiltrators and Adepts are fun too, but you kind of need to mix it up because which class is useful completely depends on the enemy you're facing as well as what difficulty you're playing on. Tech classes are generally useful against Cerberus and the Geth where biotic classes are more useful against reapers and collectors.

 

[Hisako]

I tend to cycle between Infiltrator (Geth, Turian, and Alliance A.I, sometimes salarian and base character), Soldier (Turian, N7 and Vorcha) and Engineer (Geth, base character, salarian).

Infiltrators have diversified incredibly (and possibly the most out of all the classes) in Mass Effect 3. It used to be a case of the one-trick pony (admittedly one of the most fun and useful one trick ponies in the game ), where all there was was Tactical Cloak and a powerful sniper rifle. Previously you could try and go the caster route (fire one power before breaking cloak) but generally with only Cryo Blast or Energy Drain available your versatility was limited to 2 health types. With the release of the Quarian, Drell, Turian and Alliance A.I, Infiltrators have diversified into not only more caster types, but also diversified past the obvious sniper rifle specialisation (assault rifle infiltrators with the turian, shotgun infiltrators with the Alliance A.I.)
Infiltrators are the specialists in putting down 3-4 figure damage to single targets. How quickly you can do that as a player determines how good the Infiltrator is.

Not a lot to say about the Soldier. Good, all-purpose damage dealer with a weapons-centric (mostly assault rifle) focus with some very good casters in the mix and probably the best suppressive ability out of the classes. You'll see me swear by the Proximity Mine (Turian Soldier) as one of the best skills in the game period, both as a support skill (20% damage bonus to all damage recieved) and as a heavy damage dealer (1-1.5 meter radius, 800-ish? I think? damage). N7 Destroyer is incredibly solid with a good machine-gun type of assault rifle, as there are ammunition capacity, accuracy and damage bonuses all-round as well as an automatic missile launcher or multiple grenade launcher. It's fun all-round in Devestator Mode when you will never be staggered by any heavy attack by an enemy, and it's... empowering (to put it lightly) to slowly close in on a Brute even as it charges at you
Vorcha Flamer OP nerf pls

Engineer is the quintessential caster support, once able to hold their own as a damage dealer but now pretty much outclassed by other new class characters that are much better at the job. Offensively there's a heavy focus on stumble, stagger and stun animations, as well as set-ups for those incredibly important combination detonations - or as I like to call it, a song of Ice and Fire. With the baser classes, Combat Drone is a guy you'll become pretty attached to, putting out decent damage at all ranges and helping you score those tech combos when all by your lonesome. There are some great grenadiers like the Quarian Male and Turian, and I've seen N7 Demolisher Widow builds, so with the unrestricted weapons choices for Mass Effect 3 these things aren't set in stone. You could very much have an Engineer putting out enough damage to go toe-to-toe with an Infiltrator, if you play your cards right.

The only Sentinel I bother with is Vorcha, because he's a great (and oddly unique) HP tank, but more towards active regenerative ability (which unlike Tech Armor doesn't mess around with cooldowns as much, a Sentinel's great weakness). Also, Flamer is a top, top, top tier tech ability that not only does a huge amount of instant damage but persistent damage over time that stacks. And also paired off with another flamer can pop off a flame explosion virtually every second

Biotics aren't my thing; That's Lex's speciality, really.

 

[Mantichorus]

ExoGeni must be in league with Cerberus somewhere. They're the only two groups who seem to think it's OK to test on civilians.

Also: way to go ExoGeni lady. We just fought through the monsters you're hiding from, you try to bribe me with a pittance when I have enough now to get the Rich trophy five or six times over, and then think your hired goons can best Wrex, Garrus and I in a firefight? Stupid cow.

Also also: Bring Down the Sky. OK, I'm finding it hard to get good light armor, the fact that the omni-tool is the Charm/Intimidate reward means it's probably awesome, but... where in the holy hell did you find Quarian armor, Simon?

 

[Carlie]

Finishing Pinacle Station gives you Shepard's Apartment and there you'll be able to access the best armor and weapons of the game.

 

[Lex]

Not if he's playing on PS3, which doesn't have Pinnacle Station.

 

[Carlie]

Why doesn't the PS3 have Pinnacale Station?