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404notfound
Mar 5, 2006

stop staring at me

Two Finger posted:

Power Recharge stacks. I am not entirely certain of how many times it can stack - I have heard 3 - but what I do know, is that if you launch straight into a Nova from your first charge, you will have perhaps half a second before you can charge again. After your third, there is effectively NO gap between them, meaning you will lunge between charge and nova as fast as you can mash the button.

Hold on, what? This is news to me. Can you explain more about how this works?

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Comrade Blyatlov
Aug 4, 2007


should have picked four fingers





It's something I used in my playstyle for a while without really realising it.
Once someone mentioned it to me, I clicked as to why at the start of a combat, I had to hesitate before using Nova - there is nothing worse than winding up with no shields and a good half a second before you are able to Charge again.
Basically, you want to learn to time your Nova so it ends around the same time as Charge's cooldown finishes.

For the first one, you need to hesitate for perhaps half a second after a charge before pressing Nova, to avoid the dreaded no-shields delay.

For the second, it is slightly less.
After your third or so (I've never actually sat down and counted) you will notice you are able to spam charge and nova as fast as the game can react with no delay between nova finishing and charge's being ready again.

I need to go get some dinner, but I'll be back in an hour or so and I will attempt to take videos to prove my point.

Edit: For clarity, I am talking about the Power Recharge evolution of Nova. Each successive Nova decreases the cooldown time of Charge.

Adrian Owlsley
Aug 6, 2010

This galaxy only has room for one karaoke champ.
Half blast nova actually does make you literally invincible as long as you take care not to get staggered which is highly avoidable. If you're trying to get the most out of human vanguard then you absolutely should take it as it's quite game breaking, although obviously it also makes it quite a shallow class. It looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIzrBSCfF0, note the turret firing full blast and doing 0 damage, no other character has quite that level of invincibility obviously.

These days there are faster and more reliable ways to beat matches without too much effort, but this was a big deal in the demo...

Adrian Owlsley fucked around with this message at 09:45 on Aug 8, 2012

BreakAtmo
May 16, 2009

Aw, now I don't get to see my title and know the sweet nectar of e-appreciation. Oh well.

Back on page 2 there was someone asking about the Collector Rifle - I actually think it works well with the Destroyer. It's a good, accurate, fast-firing gun that is held back by the weight, which the Destroyer doesn't care about. Only issue is that most people will only have it on low levels - I think my Geth Pulse Rifle VII is better. If I bought all those ME3-branded PC accessories it would probably be really nice.

Also, I was curious - has anyone here noticed a higher rate of URs in PSP bought with BP rather than credits? After all the many packs I've gotten since March 6 I've only ever gotten 2 URs, but I just pulled a Black Widow in the PSP I bought with the leftover points from getting Firefight. My friend did the same, and got a Javelin. I wonder...

Comrade Blyatlov
Aug 4, 2007


should have picked four fingers





Adrian Owlsley posted:

Half blast nova actually does make you literally invincible as long as you take care not to get staggered which is highly avoidable. If you're trying to get the most out of human vanguard then you absolutely should take it as it's quite game breaking, although obviously it also makes it quite a shallow class. It looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIzrBSCfF0, note the turret firing full blast and doing 0 damage, no other character has quite that level of invincibility obviously.

These days there are faster and more reliable ways to beat matches without too much effort, but this was a big deal in the demo...

Just so everyone knows, this is what I mean about Vanguard being insanely aggressive. You could not play like that with ANY other class.

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.

Adrian Owlsley posted:

Half blast nova actually does make you literally invincible as long as you take care not to get staggered which is highly avoidable. If you're trying to get the most out of human vanguard then you absolutely should take it as it's quite game breaking, although obviously it also makes it quite a shallow class. It looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIzrBSCfF0, note the turret firing full blast and doing 0 damage, no other character has quite that level of invincibility obviously.

These days there are faster and more reliable ways to beat matches without too much effort, but this was a big deal in the demo...

Even the turret doesn't know anymore what the fucks going on.

Comrade Blyatlov
Aug 4, 2007


should have picked four fingers





Batham posted:

Even the turret doesn't know anymore what the fucks going on.

I will admit I'm pretty impressed by the ownage of that Turret. I'm a diehard fullblast supporter, and it is entirely possible to take on a turret and annihilate it, but... you do have to be a little more careful than that.

Though from how squishy everything seemed, I think that was Bronze?

tribbledirigible
Jul 27, 2004
I finally beat the internet. The end boss was hard.

Adrian Owlsley posted:

Half blast nova actually does make you literally invincible as long as you take care not to get staggered which is highly avoidable. If you're trying to get the most out of human vanguard then you absolutely should take it as it's quite game breaking, although obviously it also makes it quite a shallow class. It looks like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MIzrBSCfF0, note the turret firing full blast and doing 0 damage, no other character has quite that level of invincibility obviously.

These days there are faster and more reliable ways to beat matches without too much effort, but this was a big deal in the demo...

Don't forget the ABC corollary- Always Be Hosting. This player would get hosed pretty quickly if there was any lag.

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


Biotic Charge gives 50% damage reduction for 4 seconds after it completes, so you want to keep its cooldown around that time. Also, if you don't mind using an exploit, you can cancel Nova's animation by combat rolling. This will give you Nova's invincibility without using up your barriers.

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice
Hmm, apparently I have no idea how to play the Slayer. It's 3 powers are just a mish-mesh. I do like telporting around like Nightcrawler and cutting people, complete with invincibility frames. But against any non-mooks I seem to be helpless.

kalel
Jun 19, 2012

Two Finger posted:

I have just finished reading the DR guide.

Going to go respec my BatSent for 45000 shields, I need a Justicar, any volunteers?

I'd be happy to help, how should I spec it?

Crows Turn Off
Jan 7, 2008


This morning, I decided to spend some credits on a few PSPs. I got one character - I finally unlocked the Asari Adept. Yes, the original one available at launch. Now I only have one more launch character to get, the Salarian Infiltrator! :v:

I still have a ton of newer characters to get, from the Vorchas to the Male Quarians to four of the N7 characters. I really want the N7 Paladin and Demolisher. :(

I also upgraded to a Piranha IV just in time for the nerf. I really want the Harrier and Typhoon.

The RNG really doesn't like me.

Crows Turn Off fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Aug 8, 2012

VelveetaAvenger
Nov 3, 2011

Boom!

Rudoku posted:

They love to kick when I have my Falcon-totting Demolisher, I've noticed. The gun kicks rear end now, pubs.

I just unlocked the Demolisher, and it gets me kicked out of games all the time no matter what guns I'm bringing along. People hate that class for some reason.

Tremors
Aug 16, 2006

What happened to the legendary Chris Redfield, huh? What happened to you?!

SciFiDownBeat posted:

Just look at your filthy three-digit N7 rating! No wonder those four-digit players kicked your inexperienced pubbie rear end out.

Welcome to Mass Effect 3, where the game's made up and the points don't matter.*

I know someone already made this joke in the last thread but I thought I'd carry it over to the new one and get it out of the way...

:smith: I'll never measure up. :flaccid: At what N7 rank does bioware send you a mass effect branded bedpan to further enable your constant play?

MrDude
Jun 23, 2011
Another useful consolidation thread that popped up on BSN last night and has potential. List of balance changes to weapons, but sorted by weapon. Interesting if you haven't kept up with it each week, or maybe want to see what's worth trying out again.

Felinoid
Mar 8, 2009

Marginally better than Shepard's dancing. 2/10

VelveetaAvenger posted:

I just unlocked the Demolisher, and it gets me kicked out of games all the time no matter what guns I'm bringing along. People hate that class for some reason.

Maybe it's the new Vanguard backlash. Except instead of someone smashing into the guy you were lining up a headshot on at light speed, it's grenades everywhere so you can't even see what happened to the guy you were trying to shoot. I see a lot of people who don't seem to get that Homing Grenade is good, too. They'll spam Arc Grenades at the beginning of a round and then sit and do nothing until they get more. It's another class that can be very rote until you get into trouble, but also very powerful doing so, so all the bad players are probably flocking to it like they seized on the Human Vanguard's invincibility frames (and then tried to play Gold off-host :ughh:).

Lagomorphic
Apr 21, 2008

AKA: Orthonormal

Thundercracker posted:

Hmm, apparently I have no idea how to play the Slayer. It's 3 powers are just a mish-mesh. I do like telporting around like Nightcrawler and cutting people, complete with invincibility frames. But against any non-mooks I seem to be helpless.

N7 Slayer Guide

The Slayer is an excellent class and when played correctly is extremely effective on gold. All three active powers are great and we're taking them all to 6 and we have a couple of options for speccing the passives.

Biotic Charge: Take the radius, power synergy and barrier options. The slayer is a power heavy class and you won't be relying on your gun for damage.

Phase Disruptor: Take damage, efficient blast and shield damage. This power does not lock on at all; it always fires directly where you are aiming. This means you can snipe with it. It also has an area of effect so if you can shoot it at the floor to avoid misses. You can often hit enemies in cover by shooting the floor behind them. People sometimes compare this power to Nova, but it is not Nova. If you use it like Nova you will die. You have no invincibility frames when using it so do not use it after a charge. You want to use Phase disruptor before you charge to use up your remaining barrier. You want the shield damage option because with it you can kill shielded infantry (centurions, rocket troopers, marauders etc) on gold with two shots and a charge. Armor damage would be nice but this is a crowd control power we'll be relying on Biotic Slash for single target damage.

Biotic Slash: Take damage, detonate, and damage. This is your fallback power for when you can't charge. It goes through walls and obstacles so abuse the hell out of that or the long wind up animation will get you killed. For maximum damage fire off Phase Disruptor during Slash cooldowns and then use your time Slashing behind cover to regenerate your barriers.

Passives: I went 5/3 here and then use Stronghold Package 5 to make up for the missing fitness. You don't need the weight reduction from the passive at all so you could in theory make a cut here for more points in fitness but nearly all of your damage comes from your powers so I don't recommend going beyond a 4/4 split. Only go for 4/4 if you don't have the stronghold package gear.

Weapons: We're going for power damage here so travel light. I'd recommend a Tempest with the stability mod and the AP barrel. It's light as hell does decent damage at close to medium range (for long range just use Phase Disruptor). You'll only really be using your gun to finish off nearly dead enemies after you charge or for shooting on the run. The Tempest works really well for both of these functions because it works well as a bullethose and you won't have time for careful aiming anyways. You should have enough extra weight to pack a Phalanx or some other ultralight equipped pistol but you won't really need it at all.

Playing the Slayer

You want to be mobile as much as possible. When you find a group of enemies hit them twice with your phase disruptor (you'll have some barrier left for protection) then charge to recover your barrier. Use your tempest to finish of any nearly dead enemies and then us your refilled barrier to keep you alive while you run/teleport away and back to cover. You're not a Krogan so you want to avoid taking fire as much as possible. If your getting shot up quickly use your teleport to get to cover and spam Slash while you regenerate shields.

Your teleport will take you farther then a roll would so you can charge Atlases and Brutes fairly safely if you teleport away before they react. Try to avoid charging Phantoms and Banshees though. Whenever you find a group that's too dangerous to charge into or if you need to be stationary for an objective you can fallback on Phase Disruptor and Biotic Slash. Use the Slash to continue your damage output while regenerating your barriers behind cover.

For objectives remember that you can teleport through walls. This can allow you to bypass groups of enemies and quickly complete objectives when your team gets bogged down.

Synastren
Nov 8, 2005

Bad at Starcraft 2.
Better at psychology.
Psychology Megathread




Some notes about the vanguard guides (vanilla and Slayer):

vanilla Human vanguard: The best way I've found to deal with guardians is to charge, then unload into their face when they are staggered. Note that I use a Disciple, but a Katana should work just as well (as long as it is light enough to keep a decent cooldown). If they can recover from the stagger, a Nova will stagger them again. It's easier than trying to get perfect positioning, and is quite effective.

Slayer: Do you have any thoughts on the 6 evo in the Fitness tree, that gives a bonus to power damage after killing an enemy with heavy melee? I've been playing around with different styles of play with Slayer, including highly aggressive melee (abusing the teleport whenever possible to kill dudes in other rooms, then teleport back as fast as possible), and as a psuedo-adept (biotic slash hits like a truck, and phase disruptor is quite useful--just wish it detonated explosions).

The class it tricky, and has a huge bag of tricks, but I can't figure out the right combination to use just yet.

Monolith.
Jan 28, 2011

To save the world from the expanding Zone.
I apologize if I missed this but have they nerfed the Piranha yet?

KingShiro
Jan 10, 2008

EH?!?!?!
Operation: Olympus

Crows Turn Off
Jan 7, 2008


What do they mean "kit"? Like, just your loadout or gear or what?

UnknownMercenary
Nov 1, 2011

I LIKE IT
WAY WAY TOO LOUD


They probably mean any character.

London is such a terrible map.

Batham
Jun 19, 2010

Cluster bombing from B-52s is very, very accurate. The bombs are guaranteed to always hit the ground.
London on gold, ugh.

Zikan
Feb 29, 2004

Batham posted:

London on gold, ugh.

Actually the squad goal looks like it can be on any difficulty.

But still playing the London map, ugh.

Gasoline
Jul 31, 2008
Oooh London. Cerberus/Gold is seriously fun on that map :D

Wait it doesn't say if we have to fight specific Enemies for the Squad goal? Why can't Bioware write those announcements in a way that doesn't leave a bunch of unanswered questions.

Elotana
Dec 12, 2003

and i'm putting it all on the goddamn expense account
London is surprisingly easy vs Geth. Have a Demolisher set up a pylon at the broken vending machine at the top of the stairs. One person watches the stairs, another watches the balcony, while two others rain fire on the Geth as they slowly make their way towards you across all that exposed low ground.

That DICK!
Sep 28, 2010

It's pretty sad that the objective creativity is getting much much worse, since it didn't start out anywhere good.

SEPTEMBER 14TH

OPERATION: UHHHHHHHH

SQUAD OBJECTIVE: DO A THING

ALLIED OBJECTIVE: DO THINGS

zxqv8
Oct 21, 2010

Did somebody call about a Ravager problem?
Did I read a different page?

It says London on any difficulty, meaning you can solo bronze to get it. And the rest just says complete wave 10. I assume that means finish the wave, not just get the payout. That's probably the only part not entirely clear.

Tremors
Aug 16, 2006

What happened to the legendary Chris Redfield, huh? What happened to you?!
It's pretty annoying that the allied goal is split across difficulties, with no way to track if any of those portions have been completed.

reagan
Apr 29, 2008

by Lowtax
Time to fire ME3 up again. *runs to liquor store first*

AngryBooch
Sep 26, 2009

Batham posted:

London on gold, ugh.

Yeah but Olympics bro, it has to tie in. London. Gold. Olympus.

Burning Mustache
Sep 4, 2006

Zaeed got stories.
Kasumi got loot.
All I got was a hole in my suit.

AngryBooch posted:

Yeah but Olympics bro, it has to tie in. London. Gold. Olympus.

Thank god there are no Platinum medals in the Olympics :gonk:

Thundercracker
Jun 25, 2004

Proudly serving the Ruinous Powers since as a veteran of the long war.
College Slice

AngryBooch posted:

Yeah but Olympics bro, it has to tie in. London. Gold. Olympus.

Are you loving kidding-Argh! I want to stab whoever made, I don't know, is this even a pun?

mania
Sep 9, 2004

Tremors posted:

It's pretty annoying that the allied goal is split across difficulties, with no way to track if any of those portions have been completed.

There's supposed to be a status update on Sat night.

Fight Club Sandwich
Apr 29, 2006

you want a piece of me???

That DICK! posted:

It's pretty sad that the objective creativity is getting much much worse, since it didn't start out anywhere good.

SEPTEMBER 14TH

OPERATION: UHHHHHHHH

SQUAD OBJECTIVE: DO A THING

ALLIED OBJECTIVE: DO THINGS


Operation: Warchest

We need to divert funds to the crucible. 90% of credits earned towards the mission will be allocated to the crucible research project.

Squad objective: donate a million credits
Allied objective: donate 100 billion credits

Dr. Abysmal
Feb 17, 2010

We're all doomed

Burning Mustache posted:

Thank god there are no Platinum medals in the Olympics :gonk:

It's any difficulty so you could do it on Platinum if you really wanted to I guess.

randombattle
Oct 16, 2008

This hand of mine shines and roars! It's bright cry tells me to grasp victory!

Fight Club Sandwich posted:

Operation: Warchest

We need to divert funds to the crucible. 90% of credits earned towards the mission will be allocated to the crucible research project.

Squad objective: donate a million credits
Allied objective: donate 100 billion credits

Operation : Eagle

Our intelligence suggests no one is using this amazing piece of N7 gear. Help us find out why!

Squad objective : Use the Eagle for a whole match.
Allied objective : Complete 200,000 matches where everyone is using the Eagle.

Squad Goal Success: All squad members awarded a Commendation Pack containing an Eagle
Allied Goal Success: All players awarded a Victory Pack containing an Eagle


Oh wait that's every reward anyway.

Sapozhnik
Jan 2, 2005

Nap Ghost
yeah "kit" is their developer terminology for character class, going by the patch notes.

Valiant is kinda mediocre these days (even post-nerf the Krysae is arguably better because it chain-staggers things), Crusader is completely eclipsed by the Piranha, Harrier feels superior to Hurricane and we all know about the Eagle. Why do I particularly care what I'm going to get in this Commendation pack, again?

Sapozhnik fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Aug 8, 2012

Wowporn
May 31, 2012

HarumphHarumphHarumph
I finally unlocked the Vorcha sentinal, but feel dumb 'cause I dye a lot despite how it's supposed to be goddamn invincible(I even took all the regen bonuses). I was using a Piranha, but I don't actually love it as much as everyone else. Every extra inch further you are away from a target, it's usefulness is cut way down; it might help if I had it past level 1 I guess. Flamer is pretty rad though, brutes/ravagers melt and I can usually out pyro the Pyros. I also started playing gold more regularly, and although my play style made my adept and melee classes kind of useless, my Turian Sentinel and Human Engineer at least get me somewhere.

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kalel
Jun 19, 2012

So if the multiplayer is following the single player chronologically in some way, and the Reapers are increasingly focusing on London, does this mean we're approaching the point where the Citadel is brought to Earth and Shepard fires the Crucible? I'm waiting for the Multiplayer DLC where we get to fight Reaper bosses...

Sigh :allears:

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