MASS EFFECT FRANCHISE CATCH-ALL THREAD

[J.T.]

23 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

But god damn it it is SO HARD to drop the Cluster when a I went into a quick little swarm of hunters, Pyros, and rocket troopers, flamed the bunch quickly, threw a grenade, and set off 3 Fire Explosions and got a Killstreak plus 1. The damage he does with those things is just crazy.

You don't trust your squaddies to have proper Gold builds, so you manage your own combos and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

The thing I think you're forgetting is that Bloodlust procs your regen regardless of how something dies so why put points into nades when you can spend points to make Flamer super effective as well as your Melee skills?

You don't have the shields or health to be a tank so you have to be a quick killer.  Depending on nades means frequent trips to the ammo box and you're not guaranteed a nade reload. 

If your Flamer and Melee are on point, there will be matches where you don't even bother to fire your Reegar unless you are in match with Geth and everyone has a blue bar.  All you need to do is spam Flamer and use your Omni-Claws.

Edited March 7, 2019 by J.T.

[RIPPA]

24 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

BACKWARDS COMPATABILITY SIR

Wait - the backwards compatibility works with MP?

[J.T.]

2 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Wait - the backwards compatibility works with MP?

Uh, oh....

Edited March 7, 2019 by J.T.

[The Man Known as Dan]

22 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Wait - the backwards compatibility works with MP?

Yes, though with a limitation: you have to be signed up to EA Access, which I personally find a little gross. It was one year for 30 dollars or month to month by 5.

So, it's basically a "is it worth it" question. I thought for 2.50 a month, as much as I basically despise EA st this point, I'll pay it to keep playing this game and being able to have the complete Mass Effect and Dragon Age library on my console.

Edited March 7, 2019 by El Dragon

[RIPPA]

Yeah - when I literally have to just move my HDMI cable and Ethernet cable I will do that instead of giving EA more of my money

[The Man Known as Dan]

7 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Yeah - when I literally have to just move my HDMI cable and Ethernet cable I will do that instead of giving EA more of my money

Very fair. I only ended up doing it due to some problems with my old copy of the game.

[The Man Known as Dan]

On 2/23/2019 at 6:02 AM, El Dragon said:

So, after god knows how long, I am firmly back playing Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3 multiplayer. And I am still learning about both.

-Did you know that if you hold out on doing Tali's loyalty mission until after you get Legion, you can do both before the Collectors attack your ship? So you can take Legion on Talis mission and not have any repicussions on your crew during the final mission. I am doing my playthrough to do that now.

-Also a new thing I learned: Playing as an Engineer lowers the cost of research on upgrades. Maxed out it lowers the cost on everything in research by 25%

- As far as Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, I've taken my challenge rating from about 4,000 to 6,500 in the last month, and I have gotten a decent haul in terms of new characters and guns.  Characters and guns I still need looks like..

Characters: N7 Paladin (naturally) and Volus Protector

Assault Rifles: M-37 Falcon (Only Gold gun left, dammit),  Cerberus Harrier (Best Gun in the Game, also naturally), and the N7 Valkyrie

Heavy Pistols: M-77 Paladin

Submachine Guns: None

Shotguns: M-11 Wraith, Venom Shotgun

Sniper Rifles: Javelin and Black Widow.

Scratch off the Valkyrie. Why did it have to be the least interesting gun of the bunch?

[RIPPA]

5 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

Scratch off the Valkyrie. Why did it have to be the least interesting gun of the bunch?

Of what you have remaining or in general?

The Valkyrie wasn't too bad - it's biggest problem was that it was heavy as fuck

Oh and don't plan on getting any headshots - maybe it start by aiming at a things crotch

[The Man Known as Dan]

On 3/7/2019 at 11:53 AM, J.T. said:

You don't trust your squaddies to have proper Gold builds, so you manage your own combos and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

The thing I think you're forgetting is that Bloodlust procs your regen regardless of how something dies so why put points into nades when you can spend points to make Flamer super effective as well as your Melee skills?

You don't have the shields or health to be a tank so you have to be a quick killer.  Depending on nades means frequent trips to the ammo box and you're not guaranteed a nade reload. 

If your Flamer and Melee are on point, there will be matches where you don't even bother to fire your Reegar unless you are in match with Geth and everyone has a blue bar.  All you need to do is spam Flamer and use your Omni-Claws.

Didn't catch this until now. I think my main disagreement is that that I don't think, the Vorcha is a really good melee character, and meleeing as him should be an absolute last resort. If you have a Carbine, you have 3 better options with dealing with people short rang than a melee, both in terms of damage and hitting multiple targets.

I think with the Vorcha Sentinal you need to either build for melee or not, but as good as Bloodlust can be for you at melee, it absolutely destroys the characters survivability. 65% health regeneration doesn't cut it on gold, unless you have much more health then he has. 

[The Man Known as Dan]

21 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Of what you have remaining or in general?

The Valkyrie wasn't too bad - it's biggest problem was that it was heavy as fuck

Oh and don't plan on getting any headshots - maybe it start by aiming at a things crotch

Of the ones I have remaining. I already have the worst Ultra Rare gun in the game (stupid eagle..)

Also you should know I would read that headshot thing like a challenge. Played with it with th Turian Soldier a bit and it felt okay, but not amazing. Added a scope for a second run and THAT was my jam. With Turian Stability and the scope it plays like a Sniper Rifle at range an Assault Rifle up close. Scored 10 headshots in 7 waves, which isn't amazing but not bad. I would classify it as a mook destroyer, but unreliable against tougher enemies. Problem is, it weighs way too much to be a secondary and you kill basic enemies pretty easily with lots of guns.

[The Man Known as Dan]

Also in my Mass Effect 2 replay, I never really did ththought Firewaller stuff before. Holy Shit that thing makes me long for the Mako. It can't getting shot at by Geth Troops without catching fire! And there are no saving on those missions!

[J.T.]

On ‎3‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 3:15 PM, El Dragon said:

Didn't catch this until now. I think my main disagreement is that that I don't think, the Vorcha is a really good melee character, and meleeing as him should be an absolute last resort.

Eh, what you say about Vorcha and melee may reflect how you feel about melee in general, especially since melee in Gold is a risky proposition.  I don't do a lot of melee in Gold as I prefer to power combo and run / gun, but I also play classes that facilitate that playstyle.

Vorcha classes are strong melee classes and they have to be since they have poor defensive capabilities and they don't have the carrying capacity to hold a lot of weapons, yet they have to be able to kill constantly in order for Bloodlust to proc. 

Melee and Power Damage should be your primary means of dealing damage and your gun is there pretty much to soften up targets for you to either burn to death or slash apart with your claws.  

Opinions about what gun VS characters should use in Gold matches is varied though.  The Reegar is a good choice since it is able to break shields without a Disrupter Ammo mod and the DPS is pretty sick, but some people find the short range a bit off-putting. 

Those folks tend to gravitate to the Cerberus Harrier, Cerberus Talon, or the Indra (which really is a scoped assault rifle rather than a true sniper rifle) and they will tend to pack Cryo-Ammo mods to give them extra crowd control ability and also gives them free melee kills on frozen opponents which further procs Bloodlust.

I hate playing with VS characters when I am running a Krogan because of the tendency for them to use Cryo Ammo on everything since that fucks up my Charge and Grab attempts.

On ‎3‎/‎8‎/‎2019 at 3:15 PM, El Dragon said:

I think with the Vorcha Sentinal you need to either build for melee or not, but as good as Bloodlust can be for you at melee, it absolutely destroys the characters survivability. 65% health regeneration doesn't cut it on gold, unless you have much more health then he has. 

65% does indeed cut it if you Flamer is doing what it's supposed to do and your teammates are helping to heal you by detonating your fire primer.  If your Bloodlust goes inactive for more than a minute, you're not working hard enough.

I don't think you trust your squaddies to help you with tech detonations, which is why you spec Skip Grenades so that you can do it yourself.  You want to rely on your own capabilities rather than depend on a squad mate to supplement your offense.

Understandable since one potato on your team that insists on doing dumb things can run everything and the whole point of the DVDVR No Revive List came from Rippa and I not bothering to go save dipshit players that did threatened the score with idiotic play.

If anyone died while farming kills and not helping with the objective, their punk asses had to sit there on the ground until the next wave started.  Anything that costs us a Full Extraction is unforgivable.

Edited March 11, 2019 by J.T.

[J.T.]

And of course a lot of weapons that people hate on Gold are the ones they love in Platium play when trips to the Ammo Box can be risky, so guns that chew through thermal clips like bubble gum turn into a liability..... unless you are playing a class that lives and dies on power spam.

I categorically hate the Collector weapons in Silver / Gold. but they were my go-to guns on the occasion I played Plat because you never ever have to run for clips and heat is manageable so long as you don't hold the trigger down.

Edited March 11, 2019 by J.T.

[The Man Known as Dan]

On 3/11/2019 at 9:30 AM, J.T. said:

Eh, what you say about Vorcha and melee may reflect how you feel about melee in general, especially since melee in Gold is a risky proposition.  I don't do a lot of melee in Gold as I prefer to power combo and run / gun, but I also play classes that facilitate that playstyle.

Vorcha classes are strong melee classes and they have to be since they have poor defensive capabilities and they don't have the carrying capacity to hold a lot of weapons, yet they have to be able to kill constantly in order for Bloodlust to proc. 

Melee and Power Damage should be your primary means of dealing damage and your gun is there pretty much to soften up targets for you to either burn to death or slash apart with your claws.  

Opinions about what gun VS characters should use in Gold matches is varied though.  The Reegar is a good choice since it is able to break shields without a Disrupter Ammo mod and the DPS is pretty sick, but some people find the short range a bit off-putting. 

Those folks tend to gravitate to the Cerberus Harrier, Cerberus Talon, or the Indra (which really is a scoped assault rifle rather than a true sniper rifle) and they will tend to pack Cryo-Ammo mods to give them extra crowd control ability and also gives them free melee kills on frozen opponents which further procs Bloodlust.

I hate playing with VS characters when I am running a Krogan because of the tendency for them to use Cryo Ammo on everything since that fucks up my Charge and Grab attempts.

65% does indeed cut it if you Flamer is doing what it's supposed to do and your teammates are helping to heal you by detonating your fire primer.  If your Bloodlust goes inactive for more than a minute, you're not working hard enough.

I don't think you trust your squaddies to help you with tech detonations, which is why you spec Skip Grenades so that you can do it yourself.  You want to rely on your own capabilities rather than depend on a squad mate to supplement your offense.

Understandable since one potato on your team that insists on doing dumb things can run everything and the whole point of the DVDVR No Revive List came from Rippa and I not bothering to go save dipshit players that did threatened the score with idiotic play.

If anyone died while farming kills and not helping with the objective, their punk asses had to sit there on the ground until the next wave started.  Anything that costs us a Full Extraction is unforgivable.

I think our main differential is I view the Vorcha Sential in the absolute top tier of power damage characters in the game and you value him more as a hybrid class. Or basically, you don’t think the Vorcha the Vorcha works in the power combo setup and I think that he excels at it. Maybe not in the way an N7 Fury does but the Vorcha Sentinal has much better survivability then she does.

I also do like Melee characters, I just don’t think you should go halfway with them. They are a pure melee class or they aren’t. Going half way on that doesn’t work on Gold as you half to pick your shots. I prefer the “Get in fast, throw a quick flamer our, cancel out of it when everyone in he area is primed, throw a grenade, run away” style with the Sentinel.

The other thing is just going Bloodlust/Flamer and ignoring my other power is what I am already doing with my Vorcha Soldier. No real desire for me personally to have 2 characters with the same build. It’s why I don’t play the Human Sentinel when the Asari Sentinel does everything they can and do it in a more interesting way.

 

[J.T.]

15 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

The other thing is just going Bloodlust/Flamer and ignoring my other power is what I am already doing with my Vorcha Soldier. No real desire for me personally to have 2 characters with the same build. It’s why I don’t play the Human Sentinel when the Asari Sentinel does everything they can and do it in a more interesting way.

The nature of the ME co-op build system is that the point distribution means that you don't get to be a jack of all trades like Shepard is.

You're not being told to ignore a power; You're being asked to make a value judgment about what is important to your build.

In the case of the Vorcha Sentinel, IMO, grenades are not all that important when you can use those points to maximize the capabilities of Flamer and also have lethal follow up melee to kill the things that fire did not burn to the ground.  

It sounds like you don't want to make that value judgment so instead of maximizing five trees at the expense of one, you have chosen to gimp two trees in order to attempt to be good at everything and create your own fire combos.

Your insistence on being able to do that still tells me that you'd rather not rely on your squaddies to supplement your damage output with their detonators.

That being said no matter who gets the highest score, you're all going to get paid the same amount of credits.

Edited March 12, 2019 by J.T.

[RIPPA]

I will just say that sometimes my builds were solely done for whatever challenge I was working on at the time.

God bless the ability to respec guys

[The Man Known as Dan]

1 hour ago, J.T. said:

The nature of the ME co-op build system is that the point distribution means that you don't get to be a jack of all trades like Shepard is.

You're not being told to ignore a power; You're being asked to make a value judgment about what is important to your build.

In the case of the Vorcha Sentinel, IMO, grenades are not all that important when you can use those points to maximize the capabilities of Flamer and also have lethal follow up melee to kill the things that fire did not burn to the ground.  

It sounds like you don't want to make that value judgment so instead of maximizing five trees at the expense of one, you have chosen to gimp two trees in order to attempt to be good at everything and create your own fire combos.

Your insistence on being able to do that still tells me that you'd rather not rely on your squaddies to supplement your damage output with their detonators.

That being said no matter who gets the highest score, you're all going to get paid the same amount of credits.

What good is maximizing the Vorcha Resillience though to begin with? Your options for that are taking weapon damage (Which you are saying is a last resort) or making your shotguns and Rifles lighter which is pretty much unneeded since the only power that’s recharge speed matters is Flamer and we are talking about the differential of a a tenth of a second or so because Flamer recharges so damn fast regardless. Really, there isn’t much of a reason to take that 6th evolution on almost any caster class unless there recharge speeds are just awful (looking at you Awakened Collector)

 

Also, if I did make that value pick regarding maxing out Fitness, it would be for health and shields, not melee. You have been arguing Power and Melee over Weapon Damage and health regen, were as I am arguing Power Damage and Health Regen over Melee and Weapon Damage. Which is all well and good, but you are also saying I am making a build that is just about points and not working with my team, while you are going with a build that is squishier then mine is. If you wanted to say I should be going full health and shields and fitness I could see were you are coming from, but for melee?

[J.T.]

41 minutes ago, El Dragon said:

Also, if I did make that value pick regarding maxing out Fitness, it would be for health and shields, not melee. You have been arguing Power and Melee over Weapon Damage and health regen, were as I am arguing Power Damage and Health Regen over Melee and Weapon Damage. Which is all well and good, but you are also saying I am making a build that is just about points and not working with my team, while you are going with a build that is squishier then mine is. 

Vorcha are squishy no matter what you pick and the Heath / Barrier bennies for their tree are negligible at best because their base shields are shit to begin with.  Bloodlust / Regen is how they stay alive hence being able to crowd control and kill shit at the same time is very useful. 

Being able to detonate your own combos will do that, but maxed out Flame will also get that done just as effectively.

I'd maybe take one rank of Heath / Barriers and put the rest in Melee.

[Robert C]

Finished up my playthrough of the ME1-3, which reminded me of things I knew perfectly well already

- How much I hate that final fight waiting for EDI to figure out how to aim a missile.  Stupid Banshees.  And how much more I hate the actual mechanics of the game after you survive the hit with the bigass death beam.  Honestly I'd rather it have been a cut scene than have to spend ten minutes walking around slowly.  At the very least, they could've let me shoot the damn keeper I have to walk past.

- How much I hate the part where the Normandy swoops in and rescues your wounded teammates, though I know that's basically my nerd rage directed at a fix Bioware made to assuage other people's nerd rage.  I've always liked the rest of the changes they made to the end, and it's been so long now that the actual endings don't really bring out a reaction one way or the other, but that part has always bugged me, since it pretty much makes the whole fight your way to Citadel beam thing pointless.  Why didn't we just have the Normandy drop us off right in front, since it made the whole process look about as easy as curbside dropoff at elementary school?

- How damn good this series was, especially with things that aren't big, dramatic moments - like the first time you see the new Normandy or the crew looking at the ship at the end of the party during the Citadel DLC.  I can't remember anything in Andromeda or the last couple Dragon Ages that had as much impact as those two little scenes.  Hell, I can't think if too many games in general that matched that.  Stop making shitty Destiny clones, go back to doing things like that, and you can have my money folks.

There were a couple things I'd never really noticed before **** Warning:  Fantasy booking of a ME4 that will never happen follows.  ****

- The way the end parallels the end of Lifeforce, trying to fight your way through London, which is infested by things that used to be human, to get to a beam of light that is somehow a transport to a giant, extraterrestrial object floating overhead.  Maybe they should've made Mathilda May the final boss.

- How well the destroy ending sets up for a sequel.  I figure I know why the didn't go with that - the expected explosion of nerd rage that would've come from picking a single canon ending.  Well, that explosion already happened, so fuck it.  Go with that ending. 

Have Shepard be dead/decapacitated/sitting on a beach earning 20%.  Whatever, just keep him/her out of the way.  The galaxy is a mess.  The alliance between the species ain't gonna hold.  The big, established governments/militaries are in tatters, at best.  The relays are destroyed/disabled.  The Citadel is gone.  Getting all those military ships back to their homeworlds had to be a time consuming and messy progress.  Maybe some of em got lost, turned to piracy, etc.  There are gonna be a shit ton of desperate refugees trying build new lives, and the attendant evil bastarts that prey on em.  The remnants of Cerberus are still out there, and they're still a bunch of bastards.  Whatever is left of the Batarians is gonna be pretty pissed off.  The Krogan are gonna be powerful, populous and restless.  Make the Geth/Quarian alliance canon too, and you've got a new power there.  Leviathan and his buddies still there.  Maybe somebody fucks up and gives the Yahg access to interstellar travel.  There's a lot of potential moving parts there to make a smaller scale game interesting, even before adding any new threats.

[Robert C]

Also, I got curious and logged onto Andromeda.  I'm somehow still in the top 1000 in the world.  Played one game of bronze and realized something important - I suck at this game now.

[The Man Known as Dan]

Robert, my offer to help you try the far superior ME3 multiplayer is still on the table, especially since I’m going on vacation next week.

 

As for thoughts, nobody needs to hear my thoughts on the ending, so past that...

 

I actually am replaying Andromeda again. It’s a fun but unmemorable game, is where I’m at now. The fighting is super fun, the everything else is super there. Contrasts I don’t think I’ve made before:

- Enemy design in Mass Effect 3 especially blows Andromeda out of the water. The Reapers, Geth, Collecters, and Cerberus just feel cool. Also, no enemy in Andromeda is nearly as fun to fight against as a Phantom.

 

- If I asked you to name your favorite Mass Effect characters, how far down the list would you have to go to get to someone from Andromeda? I’d have Jaal or Drack ahead of Ashley or Jacob, but that’s a ways down the ME totem poll. 

 

- Also the weaponry in Andromeda just doesn’t feel as good as ME3, which is weird because I think the combat in Andromeda is better. 

[Eivion]

Drack would find pretty decent placement on my list. I actually liked the Andromeda cast. They just didn't get the same time to develop only having one game.

[AxB]

Isn't Liara technically in Andromeda?

I still intend to play through it again at some point. Trophy hunting, if nothing else. The trilogy you could do an immediate replay just to experience renegade instead of Paragon and male instead of female, but Andromeda I played so long ago, much may feel new to me. 

[The Man Known as Dan]

39 minutes ago, AxB said:

Isn't Liara technically in Andromeda?

I still intend to play through it again at some point. Trophy hunting, if nothing else. The trilogy you could do an immediate replay just to experience renegade instead of Paragon and male instead of female, but Andromeda I played so long ago, much may feel new to me. 

In a 600 year old message, yes.

[jstout]

On 8/22/2019 at 2:53 PM, Robert C said:

Also, I got curious and logged onto Andromeda.  I'm somehow still in the top 1000 in the world.  Played one game of bronze and realized something important - I suck at this game now.

We got this shit