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LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Ex-Cerberus weren't ever bugged, they're just fragile and Smash and Lash have obnoxiously long animations, relatively speaking.

Also, concussive shot is a perfectly decent power. With maximum force it's really good at killing unshielded enemies, which is handy if three husks are running at you while you're holding an empty Claymore. In general it's useful to stagger enemies, cause enemies to dodge, and set off tech bursts. I prefer it to frag grenades, which I can't be bothered to learn to throw properly.

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LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Reegar plus flamer is fantastic against Banshees. Reegar the barrier off, apply flamer for the full duration while she ineffectually warps you, maybe hit her with another Reegar clip, and she'll be dead before she goes back to teleporting.

Ironically it's easier on your own. When she stops teleporting she'll put up a shield to stop most (all?) powers (including flamer) if someone hits her with stuff like warp or throw. She won't put it up in response to flamer by itself.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Most of that is correct, at least the most important bits. There's a big clarification from a dev about damage multipliers vs defences, which points out some weird things that people haven't figured out. Let me just get the biggest surprise.

quote:

Resistance Damage Multipliers

Every weapon and power has a hidden damage multiplier on the 3 resistance types (Armor, Barriers, and Shields). Most of these are 100%, meaning they do normal damage to that resistance type. A value of 50% means half damage to that resistance type, and a value of 200% means double damage. Below are the multipliers for some of our weapons and powers.

Weapons

Acolyte Pistol (Armor=100%, Barrier=500%, Shields=500%)
Krysae Sniper Rifle (Armor=150%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
M-358 Talon Pistol (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
N7 Typhoon Assault Rifle (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
Reegar Carbine Shotgun (Armor=50%, Barrier=200%, Shields=200%)

The Acolyte has a 5x, not a 3x multiplier, the Krysae gets a bonus vs armour, the Talon gets a bonus vs shields, the Typhoon gets a bonus vs everything except health (!?).

I still don't believe that's all there is to the Reegar, but it does help explain why it's so much better against shields than armour. Just as a reminder, the shredder mod does work for the Reegar, and if you add warp/AP/cryo ammo it is amazing at melting armour.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Hey, the Reegar numbers do make sense now.

Test case: Kroguard w/Reegar X vs Atlas. Shields 21094 Armour 23000
Base damage is 66, 45% bonus from passives and extended barrel. Total damage is 95.7

It took 1 clip to clear the shields, and 7 clips to clear the armour.

95.7 x2 vs shields, x22 per clip, x5 'pellets' per ammo count gives 21054 damage per clip.
95.7 /2 vs armour, -17.5 reduction, x110 'pellets' gives 3338.5 damage per clip. 6.9 clips to kill.

The Reegar also fires about 500 rounds per minute (I checked this in recorded footage), so the base DPS is about 2750 (twice that against shields!), though that's not considering the delay before firing. It also takes about as long to reload as it does to empty the clip, but the DPS is still amazing.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Catsworth posted:

So I haven't really played multiplayer much since the game came out. I've only got a couple of the original characters unlocked and none of the new added ones. Which packs are best to buy in hopes of new classes for their cost?

PSPs are the best for getting Gold rarity cards, which includes all the new characters.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

VJeff posted:

So I've come to the conclusion that when you guys are talking about the Typhoon, it must be code for some other gun that's really good and doesn't take three years to kill a single Marauder on Gold, despite being at level IV. So could you guys tell me what this other magic, actually decent gun is, please?

Are you using accuracy boosts and stability boosts/gear? Without bonuses, the Typhoon is very similar to the Revenant, especially with the damage nerf. You need an accuracy bonus to hit a human-sized target at 10 metres, and you need accuracy and stability to consistently headshot at 10 metres.

The Typhoon also has a 1.5 bonus against everything except health, and a 0.75 second warm up time, which generally make it bad against small targets, even if it's great against bosses.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Ravenfood posted:

Only if you don't care about weight. The Harrier is heavy.

And it has a lot less ammo. The Harrier is unmatched in terms of long range damage (and I've never understood people who claim recoil is ever a problem), but to kill an Atlas by yourself you'll need to hit an ammo box/supply pylon. The Hurricane I only has a real capacity of 130, but the heat sink increases that by 80%.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
The Typhoon uses two ammo per shot once it ramps up, so the Revenant is still the best bullet hose, unless you want to slap a heat sink on the Tempest or the Geth SMG.

I've actually switched from the Typhoon to the Revenant on my Destroyer. There's a bit of an accuracy hit, but for non-farming games I really appreciate the Revenant's lack of a spin-up time.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Any accuracy buff is immensely helpful, and Hunter Mode is no exception. The Piranha still isn't a long range weapon like it is for the Turian Soldier, but it's extremely effective out to at least 10 metres, and it's still good out to 30 metres.

I have a Hurricane as a long range backup for my GI, which works a bit better for hitting phantoms beyond 20 metres, but I spend 90% of the time happily using the Piranha regardless of range.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Not really. It's not quite useless, but there's a reason why people generally avoid ARs besides the Mattock (but the clicking:gonk:), Saber (but the weight:gonk:), Harrier (but the ammo:gonk:). The Revenant and Typhoon are good too, but only with accuracy bonuses.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
That sounds wrong. Maybe it does that as well, but I'm pretty sure that cryo blast decreases the per-bullet penalty due to armour. So on gold armour removes 50 damage per bullet, and Cryo Blast/Warp decrease that to 75% of 50, or 50% of 50 with the proper upgrades. Homing Grenade also weakens armour.

It doesn't give you any bonus against armour, and doesn't affect powers or combos. Both Cryo Blast and Warp (and Proxy Mine) have separate effects that do increase all damage from all sources, though.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Lagomorphic posted:

The thing about the Reave damage is it does 100 damage/second. You can boost this to 175 per second against armor/barriers or to 130 against everything and get 15% extra damage reduction. On gold a Banshee has 10,125 barriers and 16,875 armor. Exploding a reave on a Banshee will deal over 2000 damage to the Banshee and everything near it. You don't use Reave for the damage over time you use it to prime explosions and to give you damage reduction.

As revealed by the devs, that's not the whole story. Reave has an intrinsic bonus vs armour and barriers, though a penalty against shields.

Reave (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=200%, Shields=50%)

So that 100/s becomes 350/s against barriers (130/s becomes 260/s). That's not a great way to kill a Banshee (though it's not the worst, either), but it is an awesome way to safely strip the barriers off a Phantom.

That said, it's definitely better to take the increased DR. The biggest advantage of the Justicar is that you can actually take a hit without collapsing, in sharp contrast to every other adept.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Fight Club Sandwich posted:

I disagree with this. Justicar has a massive health reserve already and one of the better dodges, she doesn't really need extra DR whereas the extra armor/barrier damage really does a number on reapers.


This kinda understates the damage difference. The 30% flat damage bonus in the DR upgrade only applies to base damage whereas the 75% boost to armor/barrier is a multiplier after all the other damage bonuses have been applied. In practice the difference will be amplified further since the DoTs stack.

Actually that's not an issue. The rank 6 evolution is the only thing that adds to the base damage, so it really is 130 vs 175. Justicars don't get damage bonuses from passives, so the only way to amplify the difference is with consumables and gear, and gear is a pretty small bonus.

I think the DR is entirely worth it. Justicars only have 600 base shields, so they need a fair bit of help if they're going to take a Geth rocket on the chin without their barriers dropping. Stacking 30 DR from bubble, 40 from Reave, and staying in cover, my Justicar gets about 5700 effective barriers, and can absorb ravager shots, grenades, anything. Dropping 15 DR from Reave would reduce that to 3500.

Since you also get a longer duration, you get a lot more damage per Reave against health, and the difference vs armour is smaller than you might think. Say the long-term DPS is (total damage)/(time per Reave). With increased damage and duration, I'm adding about 475/713/951 DPS vs health/armour/barriers. With increased damage vs armour and barriers, the damage is 317/832/1109.

With a rank 3 Power Amplifier those become 584/876/1168 vs 412/1081/1441.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Fight Club Sandwich posted:

It's only the rank 5 power passive that doesn't work. The other passives work fine, so do gear and power amps, which all benefit from pierce's multiplier.


I guess if you're going to go with a gimmicky defensive bubble camping build then yeah take Reave DR, but it's really a lot easier to just kill stuff fast with offensive reave and offensive bubble than it would be to try to grind it out with defensive reave and defensive bubble.


Damage x duration = total reave damage doesn't actually reflect what happens in game. You'll never reave a target once until the duration runs out and only then reave something else, the extra duration is irrelevant since the DoTs stack. Only Reave's damage per second matters, which is a lot more for pierce than it is for the DR upgrade.

Justicar's don't get passive bonuses to power damage, they get bonuses to duration, and there are no power bonuses in Reave, or in Bubble. There's consumables, gear, rank 6 Fitness after a heavy melee kill, and a properly specced Demolisher's Pylon. I think everything else that increases damage acts as a separate multiplier.

Since Reave stacks, the total damage is relevant: you can stack more Reaves if you have a longer duration to work with. The single DPS would only matter if Reave didn't stack, or if reapplying Reave reset the duration for every Reave in the stack, neither of which are true. I did account for the slightly bigger benefit you get with Power Amps in those numbers, but it's a difference of a 30% increase vs a 23% increase.

It's hardly a gimmicky camping build to put down a bubble when you want to hang around some cover for a little while. In comparison, I've never found offensive bubbles to be that useful except when camping, because it's hard to consistently funnel enemies into the bubble and take advantage of that short period when they're inside.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Fight Club Sandwich posted:

At this point I'm sure I can't convince you, but for illustrative purposes the pierce damage bonus is pretty material if you gear up.

Rank 6 DR with defensive sphere:
100 base * (1 + .4 power amp + .15 biotic gear + .3 rank 6 upgrade) * 1.5 reave armor bonus * 3 stacks of reave * 10/8.5 defensive sphere = ~980/s

Rank 6 pierce with offensive sphere:
100 base * (1 + .55 equipment) * 1.5 reave armor bonus * 1.75 pierce upgrade * 3 stacks of reave * 10/7 offensive sphere = ~1743/s

Right, we disagree on the math. I'm saying you won't just have 3 stacks of Reave: each separate application lasts for its own duration. In either case if you spam Reave at 200% cooldown, you'll stack 4 Reaves, but then the first one runs out. With armour and barriers, it runs out in .42 seconds, with damage and duration it runs out in 1.62 seconds. On average, that means you stack 3.17 Reaves vs stacking 3.66 Reaves (and even if your cooldown is lower, it stays at the same 9/7.8 ratio). That bumps up both numbers, but to 1195 vs 1841.

Adding in offensive Sphere is hardly fair, as I was just talking about Reave. If you use that with DR too it's 1451 vs 1841. Pierce does more damage against armour and barriers, sure, and sure it gets a bit out of gear and consumables, but it's not a huge difference.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Gordon Shumway posted:



Finally! Anybody got any advice on which mods I should use for it?

Heat sink definitely, it goes through ammo rather quickly. If you have AP/cryo/warp ammo, then EB, if not then you might want to use the piercing mod.

Alternatively, scope and stability mods. It's a mini-Harrier!

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Dr. Red Ranger posted:

So is there some new ability Banshees have that lets them cancel warps? I just got through a Reaper/Dagger/Silver game with my human sentinel and halfway through the match I noticed that warp-throwing led to the regular throw ~whump~ and not a warpsplosion. We didn't have any tech abilities overwriting the warps, my throws weren't lagging through them, and I was the only biotic, so I don't know how else they would manage that.

Banshees can absorb projectile powers when they're in their warp/nova phase. You'll notice they put up a shimmery field around themselves, and they may stop throwing out warps for a second, while they raise their hand.

You can always get explosions off with instant effect things (Reave, Dark Channel, Bubble), though if someone else is hitting her with powers I think the protective field will stop them from working. Sometimes you can still get explosions off with warp/throw, and but I haven't figured out any trick to it. It may be you need to time it based on whether she can interrupt her current animation.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

radintorov posted:

Yesterday, playing as a level 1 Fury, I discovered that Martial Arts can stun-lock most enemies.
It was a Bronze game, so admittedly it's easy to kill anything there, but still, saving a Lvl 20 Destroyer that got blindsided by a Geth Pyro by Dark Channeling it, teleporting in, meleeing it to death and then meleeing a Hunter that decloaked right when Dark Channel transferred to it made me feel pretty :smug:

What are the numbers on Martial Arts, by the way, compared to the other melee types?

Edit:
now I have to try to Martial Arts a Hunter on Gold.

Edit2: tried that solo by kiting a single Hunter in a room. Yeah, they can shoot despite being stunned.

It's not perfect, but heavy melee is helpful for taking on Gold enemies, including Hunters. If they're shielded you'll stagger them and Annihilation Field will prime them for a BE, and if they're unshielded they'll be knocked off their feet. They might shoot you once, but they probably won't shoot you twice. Annihilation Field will drain their shields, which also helps.

Phantoms can stab you while teleporting, so you should not melee Phantoms with barriers. Unshielded phantoms will be knocked back, which is a nice way to kill some time if your powers are on cooldown.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

EvanSchenck posted:

Phantoms can still totally insta-kill you any time you get near them, though, without regard to what you're doing.

Nah, Phantoms need to have done a melee attack and not switched to doing anything else. It's entirely reliable to Ballistic Blade->Falcon Punch, because they can only get in one swing before they get Punched and Exploded, which staggers them.

I've never seen my BatSol get interrupted during a heavy melee except for insta-kills, and that includes stuff like any sort of attack from Geth Primes and Atlases. I always use Blade Armour, maybe that makes a difference?

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Yeah, that's typical. Enemies become more aggressive and more damaging, so you need to learn to not stand in the line of fire. Even for aggressive classes you need to learn how to approach enemies safely, and even when you should just keep your head down and wait for them to come to you. Saying to yourself "nope, I can't deal with those 4 enemies, I'll run away and look for something easier to kill" is an important skill.

The other thing to keep in mind are enemy spawns. Enemies will appear pretty much instantly after you kill anything, so you need to keep in mind where your teammates are, and where new enemies might pop up.

The only exception are Vanguards, who can safely charge into just about anything except Cerberus Turrets and Banshees on Silver; and Kroguards, who can charge into anything except Banshees, though charging into Turrets is probably still a bad idea.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
I've been having a blast by putting a Reegar and a Scorpion on my Vorcha Soldier. Ignore carnage. Small enemies get a few Scorpion rounds, and then set on fire. Big enemies get their shields/barriers Reegar'd off, and then set on fire. Melee gets mixed in mostly to stagger enemies, and to help get shields off so they can be set on fire.

The crowd control of the Scorpion is great. The delayed explosions stagger enemies when you need it most: while you're setting them on fire.

The most annoying enemies are Ravagers and Geth Primes. Ravagers will kill you if all 3 shots hit, so you need to get in close where it won't fire. Geth Primes will stagger you and then kill you with turrets.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

jpmeyer posted:

Is there a solid definition of the differences between "armor weakening" and "armor penetration"?

I'm trying to figure out a good secondary weapon to use on my Demolisher Destroyer for Gold/Platinum (with Piranha as the primary). I figure that the Falcon to spray ammo powers everywhere would be decent until I get the Typhoon, but I'm wary of gimping my Piranha by losing out on armor penetration if I don't use AP ammo (since I'm using barrel/choke for the mods there).

The consumables doc says that cryo and warp III have 50% armor weakening, while AP III has 70% armor reduction. Do they function the same way (other than everyone else getting to take advantage of the armor weakening), or are they applied in different ways?

Also, I realllly wish the Acolyte just had a slow ROF rather than the charge, but that would probably just turn it into an uber Falcon.

Armour weakening is applied to the enemy, so it works for the entire team. You can get it from warp, cryo blast, snap freeze, homing grenades, cryo ammo, and warp ammo. I think they multiply together, so 50% weakening cryo ammo plus 50% weakening warp leaves you with 25% armour, not 0% armour.

Armour reduction only works for your own bullets. You get it from piercing mods and AP ammo.

Cover penetration is the ability to shoot through cover. You get it from piercing and AP ammo, and some guns have it innately: Widow, Black Widow, Javelin, Crusader, Typhoon.

Projectile weapons ignore armour entirely. Hit-scan weapons (including stuff like the Reegar) all seem to treat armour normally. The Typhoon was rumoured to have innate armour reduction, but someone at BSN found out that's wrong. The Typhoon does get a 1.5x bonus against armour/shields/barriers (applied after armour is subtracted, because the damage formulas weren't complicated enough), but apparently no reduction.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Right, I meant the Reegar still gets 50 damage subtracted per shot, unless you do something about it. Armour weakening/reduction is really valuable for the Reegar, as even with a 50% penalty it still does a ton of damage.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
The Revenant has always been a decent gun if you have accuracy bonuses. Before the Destroyer, that was Turian Soldiers and Geth in Hunter Mode, neither of which are really designed to be bullet hoses. Turians soldiers should have worked that way, but with no dodge, medium shields, and stagger powers that get in the way of using your accuracy bonus, they weren't very good at it.

With the Destroyer, people can finally use the Revenant in a competent way, letting the damage shine through. Plus it's fun to spray literally thousands of bullets into things.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Bronze is for solo-ing, preferably with Vanguards, preferably with a melee Kroguard. Or that whole 'learning the game' bit.

Also, is anyone else using the MEPinger and realizing they're connecting to a lot of Russian and Polish games? It certainly explains the lag, at any rate. I'm Canadian, so I'm wondering if I'm shunted into Europe as often as I'm put into American games, or if ME3 is just really popular with eastern Europeans.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Gestalt Intellect posted:

Still trying to get any of the four N7s I don't have.

I got one but it was another Slayer :negative:


At least while I'm trying to do that I've found out how absolutely ridiculous the Reegar is on Krogan Soldier. When I tried it on N7 Fury it seemed too gimmicky to be worth it, but now I'm just running up to absolutely any enemy on Gold short of a turret and melting it in moments. If it survives by a fraction I just headbutt it against the wall. Geth Primes, Atlases and Banshees' shields/barriers go down in one quick spray and then I carry another weapon to deal with the armor. Still trying to find a good one for that though.

The answer to armour is a piercing mod on a Reegar or a Piranha. Also warp/AP/incendiary ammo, if you have it.

There aren't any weapons that have a huge advantage against armour, just weapons that are noticeably worse. Automatic weapons without piercing mods are the obvious example, but the weaker shotguns also don't do to well. Thus to deal with armour, the most important thing is tonnes of damage. The Reegar suffers a lot against armour (the Piranha less so), but it does so much damage it still comes out ahead of most weapons.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

TheDK posted:

V I'm trying to put together a spec right now, how's this look?
http://narida.pytalhost.com/me3/classes/#03RQFFRq9@0@A@@O4L4@0@0

Should I run with a low cooldown or just use a shotgun?

Looks good, though I think it's better to maximize the DR on Reave. DR gets better the more DR you have, and the Justicar can get a lot of DR.

You want to keep your cooldown fairly low, as spamming Reave on an enemy will eventually do quite a bit of damage. Any good shotgun besides the Claymore (Piranha, Reegar, GPS, Graal, Wraith, Talon) would be fine.

I think it works better with the Drell Adept, but you could also use the Acolyte to strip shields, and then kill enemies with a Pull->Reave combo. That should kill anything Pull-able, though it'll take a second for Reave to kill the enemy.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Gold only takes longer than 30 minutes if the match goes horribly wrong, or if you have no idea how to actually kill bosses. It's faster if you have nice guns, but biotic and tech combos only depend on your character level. Human Engineers and Sentinels can do fine on gold without firing a single shot.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Mr Dog posted:

Still don't understand why anyone would want to use a Gethfiltrator over a Salinf though. Yes sure let me just give up the best tech power ever in exchange for seeing through walls that are 1m in front of me and doing 10% more damage. This sounds like a reasonable trade.

Seeing through walls is seeing through walls. Sometimes it's almost useless because you're playing on Hydra, sometimes it's amazing because you're playing on Glacier. Regardless of the map, it's really helpful to keep you from being surprised by a Hunter, or keeping track of a cloaked Phantom.

The real advantage to Hunter Mode is actually the bonus to accuracy and firing rate. 15% increased firing rate isn't much by itself, but that's a full 15% bonus on top of cloaking. The accuracy bonus also isn't as much as Marksman, but it's enough to make the Claymore/Talon/Piranha even better than they were before, and it's always on. Seeing as how those are the best weapons anyway, it's kind of ridiculous to have that on an infiltrator.

The speed and damage bonuses are just gravy.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
Banshees only become immune to powers after being hit by a power in the "walk and warp" state. Sometimes powers get through for bizarre reasons (If they are in the last half of the nova animation the power can go through? It depends on lag? Who knows!), and some powers cause the shield even though it seems like they shouldn't (incinerate, proxy mine). In the "charge and grab" state, they are always affected by powers.

I find this annoying mostly for Vorcha, as Flamer is ideal to use during the "walk and warp" state, but then other people will go and bring the shield up. You have to wait until she starts charging again before it will do anything. This is really irritating given that Vorcha can't be killed by a lone Banshee except by being grabbed.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
The Indra is a great AR. It does 2/3rd the damage of the Harrier (which still puts it ahead of all the other accurate ARs), but has twice the ammo and is a lot lighter. The Cloak rank 6 bonus bumps that up to 80% of the Harrier damage.

The penalty for firing when not scoped is annoying. It's 50% reduced damage or something ridiculous like that.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
I've done Plantinum/Random/Random with pubbies, and succeeded on Hydra. I was a Justicar, and the other people were a Fury (competent) Shadow (not good, even for Gold, but kept themselves alive after the first few waves and helped with objectives), and a Demolisher (decent, but her weapons were a bit weak). We hid out in the room, and I can't imagine getting through without doing that, unless you're running a 4-Kroguard squad or something.

The Fury and I held the far door, the Demolisher held the corridor. Between Arc Brenades and Reave/Warp Bubble/Dark Channel/Throw (a wonderful combination), the only real problem was Banshees. The room is plenty big enough to manouver around, but that would let in a string of other guys past the Bubble, making them much harder to deal with. We needed a few missiles for Wave 8 and 9

Platinum London is just terrible.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
I just tried it, and yeah, that works. I didn't use a strength consumable, but a warp plus 2 heavy melees left a Gold Brute with 1 bar of armour.

It's still not very good. The range is very short, it doesn't go through walls at all, it's a bit slow to come out, and it's slow to finish. Brutes and Husks are basically the only enemies I can imagine wanting to use it on, rather than setting up a combo.

Even just against a single Cannibal in melee range, dropping a singularity is better: the Cannibal can strip your shields in the time it takes before the melee actually hits. It also has a lot of force, so like Lash, you're risking the enemy flying off somewhere without it actually dying.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
On the one hand, blade armour has been buffed, and I think you need blade armour up to avoid being staggered while punching a Phantom's head off. On the other hand, with the Fitness buff you can survive a Geth Rocket / Atlas Rocket without hitting the shield gate even without Blade Armour.

If you take Blade Armour, I think you should definitely take Blade Armour 6 and Fitness 5 or 6, and maximize your shield-recharge speed. But on the Sentinel I like have Shockwave 6 and Submission Net 6, so I skip Blade Armour. The BatSol is better for punching guys anyway, because of the double stagger on Ballistic Blades.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Felinoid posted:

Something to remember is that hacking doesn't turn things friendly, it just turns them hostile to everyone. It's the equivalent of turning off Friend/Foe identification.

I don't think that's what's happening. Rather, the hack will start immediately, but it won't interrupt the current animation. This is especially bad for things with weird animations, like decloaking Hunters and Atlases in the middle of firing rockets. Then it spends a few seconds acquiring a target (or running away into cover, for rocket troopers), then it attacks as normal.

I don't think I've ever been attacked by a hacked pyro, even when it's the only enemy around and I'm standing next to it to revive the guy it just killed.

Atlases and Primes can use regular attacks, except melee has priority. Primes summon up a drone and melee it, and Atlases are either surrounded by enemies, or in the middle of firing at you, so they never have time to actually use their guns.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Pumpking posted:

It will be interesting to see what characters they come up with for the next DLC because its hard to think of good character/power combos without them being too similar to existing characters.

Well, the best things that have come out have really been one's that fix ideas that didn't work initially. Kroguards and Vorcha can actually tank, Demolishers are grenade heavy without needing ammo boxes, Destroyers are immune to stagger so they can bullet-hose effectively. Personally I'm hoping for something like an Asari Vanguard with warp grenades (or something better at priming than lift grenades), and maybe a class built around a turret, like the FQE, but good.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Paracelsus posted:

I'd read that it actually was additive and only boosts damage to 4x.

Nah. From the crazy Russian guy on BSN who's checked the values directly from in-game memory:

"peddroelmz posted:

Overload Base Damage is 220.. Will name X = base_damage * (1+sum of power damage bonuses)


Overload has X *0.5 multiplier vs Organic Health
X *1 multiplier vs Syntetic Health (geth)

Overload has X * 3 multiplier vs Shield/Barriers //confirmed by Eric Fagnan)

Neural Shock Adds 100% damage vs Organic Targets (probably added as a separate hit. will test to clarify)
X * 1 vs organic Health (*0.5 + *0.5 ?)
X * 6 vs organic Shields/Barriers (*3 + *3 ?)

The rank 6 extra (100%) damage vs shields/barriers behaves differently vs organics and syntetics
X * 6 vs Syntetic Shields
X * 5 vs Organics Shields/Barriers

Combining Neural Shock with the rank 6 100% vs Shield evo
X * 6 vs Syntetic Shields (neural shock has no effect vs syntetics)
X *3 +*5 vs Organics Shields//Barriers (tested to be applied in 2 hits *3 + *5 ) - main consequence is Overload can drop Gold Phantom Barriers (3075) in one cast..


About the Chain Overload

Second hit damage is *0.4
Third hit damage is *0.4*0.4 = *0.16

With the increased window for tech bursts, I guess I'll switch everyone over to Neural Shock. My Human Engineer was already based around tech bursts, but I guess now I can throw a Graal on her or something.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

MrDude posted:

Shield Damage evolution doesn't double damage against shields, it just takes it from 300% to 400%.

No, it goes from 300% to 500% on organics, and 300% to 600% on Geth. Shield damage is totally worth it. Neural shock adds another 300% against organics, for a total of 800%, or something.

LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008
My last post was about that:
Nah. From the crazy Russian guy on BSN who's checked the values directly from in-game memory:

"peddroelmz posted:

The rank 6 extra (100%) damage vs shields/barriers behaves differently vs organics and syntetics
X * 6 vs Syntetic Shields
X * 5 vs Organics Shields/Barriers

Combining Neural Shock with the rank 6 100% vs Shield evo
X * 6 vs Syntetic Shields (neural shock has no effect vs syntetics)
X *3 +*5 vs Organics Shields//Barriers (tested to be applied in 2 hits *3 + *5 ) - main consequence is Overload can drop Gold Phantom Barriers (3075) in one cast..

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LeastActionHero
Oct 23, 2008

Lagomorphic posted:

The main issue I think is that they brought it over "as is" from the single player; every other SP assault rifle has has had to be buffed at least once, many of them twice, just to get up to par for MP. Just ignore the Argus until the inevitable buff.

Actually, they did buff it, and by quite a bit. In SP and Argus X does 120.9 damage per shot, in MP it does 164.8. It's fairly easy to check yourself, as that's the difference between 2 and 3 bursts to kill a trooper on bronze.

The thing is, even with the buff it's about as good as a Locust, except for all the downsides (weight, reload speed, recoil). If they did something like double the damage, maybe slow the fire rate a bit, and it would be a fun and fairly distinct weapon. For right now, it's like a Hornet but terrible.

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