MASS EFFECT: ANDROMEDA (Here be Spoilers)

[Robert C]

Yup, hate the new character.  Get him to 20, never use him again.

[J.T.]

2 hours ago, Robert C said:

Yup, hate the new character.  Get him to 20, never use him again.

I don't know about that.  Artificer has the potential to be broken in a good way.

Leave Cryo Beam at 1 and spec Remnant VI 5 and 6 with Close Quarters Module /  Detonator Missiles and spec Invasion 4/5/6 with Duration / Epidemic / Virulence.

Once you do that, your Remnant Vi can either detonate the enemies you freeze or lower enemy health and trigger the Virulence effect to cause redbars to explode and take other redbars with them.  

Then you can arm her with a single Remnant weapon like a Sweeper or the PAW and never have to visit an ammo box ever..

The Artificer will be just as good as the Engineers at easily hurdling Tech Mastery daily challenges, but the class won't see its true potential until it is Level 20 and Tier XI where she has access to all available skill points and starts getting the Veteran Bonuses.

It will be a really good class to use by players that like to bunker down and attack from cover.  It does not strike me as a run and gun class like the Human Juggernaut or any of the Vanguards.

I bought the Sniper Rifle Damage mod and the Operator Mod.  I'll probably never use the SR mod but I can dig bonus damage to guns and tech powers.

Do I really have the patience to save up 500K creds for the Jumbo Premium Pack?  Probably not.

[RUkered]

10 hours ago, J.T. said:

It will be a really good class to use by players that like to bunker down and attack from cover.  It does not strike me as a run and gun class like the Human Juggernaut or any of the Vanguards.

And lo, a powerful breeze swept the room as the night shift ran away with substantial haste.

[Robert C]

11 hours ago, J.T. said:

I don't know about that.  Artificer has the potential to be broken in a good way.

Leave Cryo Beam at 1 and spec Remnant VI 5 and 6 with Close Quarters Module /  Detonator Missiles and spec Invasion 4/5/6 with Duration / Epidemic / Virulence.

Once you do that, your Remnant Vi can either detonate the enemies you freeze or lower enemy health and trigger the Virulence effect to cause redbars to explode and take other redbars with them.  

Then you can arm her with a single Remnant weapon like a Sweeper or the PAW and never have to visit an ammo box ever..

The Artificer will be just as good as the Engineers at easily hurdling Tech Mastery daily challenges, but the class won't see its true potential until it is Level 20 and Tier XI where she has access to all available skill points and starts getting the Veteran Bonuses.

It will be a really good class to use by players that like to bunker down and attack from cover.  It does not strike me as a run and gun class like the Human Juggernaut or any of the Vanguards.

I bought the Sniper Rifle Damage mod and the Operator Mod.  I'll probably never use the SR mod but I can dig bonus damage to guns and tech powers.

Do I really have the patience to save up 500K creds for the Jumbo Premium Pack?  Probably not.

She may very well be a good character, but she ain't one I want to play.  I either want to run around headbutting/stabbing/punching shit, or I want to run around setting off combos.  I'd be perfectly happy never shooting a gun again.

34 minutes ago, RUkered said:

And lo, a powerful breeze swept the room as the night shift ran away with substantial haste.

Pretty much this.  My whole game is basically run and punch.

[RIPPA]

Everyone's game except JT's is run and punch

That should be the board motto

[odessasteps]

5 minutes ago, RIPPA said:

Everyone's game except JT's is run and punch

That should be the board motto

Well, my preferred mode is stand far away and snipe if given the choice. 

[jstout]

If it moves, I shank it. Makes strategy simple.

[J.T.]

13 hours ago, Robert C said:

She may very well be a good character, but she ain't one I want to play.  I either want to run around headbutting/stabbing/punching shit, or I want to run around setting off combos.

Well, yeah.  The Artificer isn't a class of immediate gratification like the Asari Adept, the KroGuard, or the Batarian Vanguard.. 

If you goal is to set off combos, you can do it with the Artificer, but it will require some ttinkering with the build. 

You can also add lethality to the mix if you spec Invasion to do damage rather than debuff.

13 hours ago, Robert C said:

 I'd be perfectly happy never shooting a gun again.

I was in a Gold APEX match with some euro that already had his Artificer up to Level 20 and was Tier XX and he rarely fired his weapon.  He let the drone do the work.

Between the VI's Detonator Missiles creating Cryo Explosions and the mass kills from Epidemic / Virulence, there weren't too many enemies for the rest of us to fight.

[Casey]

Thanks to two $5 coupons I had on Gamefly somehow, and them offering a deal to keep the game for $12.34 for whatever reason... I got the game for $2.56. Hah.

I haven't touched it in like 2 or 3 weeks, though. Currently stuck and I keep rage quitting.

[J.T.]

Enough people have beaten the game for game advice to be spoiler free.  Where are you stuck, Casey?

[Casey]

I've tried a dozen times to get past the Remnant Destroyer on H-047c's conservatory. My squad always die a few minutes into the battle, because of the sheer amount of bots plus the Destroyer. I take out the turrets on both sides of the body and then focus on the body, but with my squad always dying no matter what, it's hard to focus on the torso AND take out the rest of the bots.

It's super frustrating and I've since re-loaded a previous savepoint and left the planet and went on to hunt the Archon some more.

[jstout]

It may be a case of simply not being strong enough to deal with it right now, level-wise and equipment-wise. Who's in your team? Some are obviously hardier than others.

I tend to try to save the big stuff for last, if possible. I like trying to get the smaller distractions out of the way first.

[Kevin Wilson]

I could have sworn one of the Destroyers I was against was glitched or something. It was spawning overseers at what seemed like an impossible rate. My friends would die quickly, and I probably tried it 20 times, I checked a youtube video and in his for the same fight (I forgot now where I was), they weren't spawning at all so I couldn't even get an idea on how to beat it. I was so deep into the stage, I didn't want to leave and come back later, plus I was pretty leveled up at the time.

Eventually what I did was hide behind an energy wall and just turned into a 20 minute grind. It was the one with the hallway next to it with a energy wall that I could control. So I'd put it down, shoot him a bunch, let a few overseers in the wall, close the wall and kill them while hiding really well, then put the wall down and repeat. It was just the only way I could find to do it. It was the only fight in the entire game I struggled so I dunno what was going on.

[Casey]

10 hours ago, jstout said:

It may be a case of simply not being strong enough to deal with it right now, level-wise and equipment-wise. Who's in your team? Some are obviously hardier than others.

I tend to try to save the big stuff for last, if possible. I like trying to get the smaller distractions out of the way first.

I think when I was on H-047c, my team was Vetra and Cora. Mainly because Vetra's loyalty mission was on H-047c, and for Cora - I just really like having an asari on my team whenever possible. I'm probably going to revisit that conservatory at another time, maybe when I have better weapons and/or at a higher level.

Although now I'm stuck fighting the Ascended on the Kett flagship and yeah, that's super annoying too. But nothing I can't get past, I just forgot to equip my sniper rifle and went with a fucking pistol instead. 

[jstout]

I always at least kept Drack around because he's just so tanky. Drack and Liam were my go-tos, but if I were doing it again now after everything I've learned about the game, I'd play a lot of stuff differently.

Welp, multiplayer folk, I spent about 2 1/2 hours today playing platinums with the top guy in the world on XBox (APEX rating 71,000-something). I think his two buddies were 17 and somewhere around 40 in the world. I think they took a shine to me because I did as told. They let me play the Avenger during the first try, but I fucked up the devices wave and cost us the game.

They then had me switch to, of all things, the Kroguard. I respec-ed him per their instructions. This was an awesome setup, but it was by no means easy: One person would play the Avenger and would be the designated "activity wave" guy. He'd handle the hacks, uploads, whatever. He could stand to, because the rest of us were hunkered in a room drawing in every enemy on the map. One guy was the Salarian Operator, spamming shield boosts to the two Kroguards. Each Kroguard would stand at opposite ends of the doorway and just Nova the shit out of anything that came in the room. The shield boost kept the shields high, and the Nova was powered by shields, so you could use it over and over and over again. I only used the charge maybe twice in three hours.

They then had a great "strategy" for extraction. We'd gather at one of the ammo boxes, the Avenger would cloak us, then we'd take off for the next ammo box in a pattern dictated by the map. We'd stop at that ammo box, let everyone catch up, get cloaked and take off for the next ammo box. Two laps around Sandstorm like that would put you very near extraction with 10 seconds left. 

I got killed often at the start, but by the end I'd kinda grown into my role and was actually really, really helping out. There are times where you're in one little room with two hydras, a Krogan and an Ascendant (on loan from the Kett), but you just gotta keep chopping and have faith. One handy tool: The Salarian Operator had that vest on that revives everyone when he revives, so both us Krogans would go down and he'd say (we were in a party chat the whole time) "wait until I get killed and I'll revive us."

We even finished two Platinum APEXs - glass jaw and dampened powers. There was one time I somehow got to buy two disappointment packs after finishing one game. That was cool. Now at 200 in the world.

[J.T.]

18 hours ago, Casey said:

I've tried a dozen times to get past the Remnant Destroyer on H-047c's conservatory. My squad always die a few minutes into the battle, because of the sheer amount of bots plus the Destroyer.

I take out the turrets on both sides of the body and then focus on the body, but with my squad always dying no matter what, it's hard to focus on the torso AND take out the rest of the bots.

The Progenator is a pain in the ass because it has advanced particle cannons.  The ball lightning plasma bursts have an AOE which will tear the crap out of your shields and it can mini-facture Observers the same way that Assemblers create Breachers.  Your primary goal obviously is to target and destroy the Progenator and then deal with the other bots.

It is still dangerous (if not more dangerous) when the turrets are down because it moves faster and will fire its main gun more often. It also has that bullshit anti-shield countermeasure that all Destroyers have that it activates if targets are in close proximity.

I took Vetra (because Loyalty MIssion) and Liam with me.  I remember that encounter being a bit of a pain in the ass even though Liam is specced with Anti-Armor grenades and is able to deal with Bluebars thanks to Overload.  I probably should've brought Drack along because he's tankier.

I can't remember if Cora was 100% loyal by that time.  If she was, she'd have also been a better choice than Liam if I had her Shield Boost specced to the perk at Tier 6 where she regenerates both squad health and squad shield power.

Best advice I can give is that survival starts with you.  Find a profile you really like and tailor your powers and load out to best compliment your class and playstyle.

My Ryder is designed to be a Remnant killer.  His passive Tech skills are specced with damage to synthetics and shields in mind and his go-to powers are Remnant VI / Energy Drain / Tactical Cloak.  In the fight with the Progenator, it helped to be able to go invis whenever a squad member needed reviving and any offensive construct (turret or VI) adds extra firepower and serves as a decoy.

Also, don't forget your consumables.  Shield Capacitors and Disruptor Ammo are definitely worth their weight in creds and if you had the forethought to bring a Cobra or two, the Progenator won't last that long.

You don't have to craft anything in order to beat the game, but I still swear by making your own shit.  The Augmentations in my armor do just about everything from buffing my health and shields to giving me more damage and duration to my Infiltrator's Tech powers and I install Kinetic Coils on all of my guns to boost base weapon damage.

And what Stout said.  It is very time consuming, but it is a good idea to knock out any Optional Tasks / Loyalty Missions / Crew Tasks you have on other planets before moving on to the next planet.  You want to be as leveled up as possible for any future encounters.

[J.T.]

1 hour ago, jstout said:

.Welp, multiplayer folk, I spent about 2 1/2 hours today playing platinums with the top guy in the world on XBox (APEX rating 71,000-something). I think his two buddies were 17 and somewhere around 40 in the world. I think they took a shine to me because I did as told. They let me play the Avenger during the first try, but I fucked up the devices wave and cost us the game.

They then had me switch to, of all things, the Kroguard. I respec-ed him per their instructions. This was an awesome setup, but it was by no means easy: One person would play the Avenger and would be the designated "activity wave" guy. He'd handle the hacks, uploads, whatever. He could stand to, because the rest of us were hunkered in a room drawing in every enemy on the map.

One guy was the Salarian Operator, spamming shield boosts to the two Kroguards. Each Kroguard would stand at opposite ends of the doorway and just Nova the shit out of anything that came in the room. The shield boost kept the shields high, and the Nova was powered by shields, so you could use it over and over and over again. I only used the charge maybe twice in three hours..

I've played with that guy before.  He's pretty cool and we've traded build advice before. 

And yeah, the one thing I learned on the few times I've played Platinum is that solo guys die... a lot... 

All Challenges are pretty much team efforts, including Devices. 

That's somewhat counterintuitive to Gold, Silver, and Bronze where you can send out your stealth person to do Devices and have a reasonable assumption that the player will succeed on his own while the rest of the squad takes the brunt of the assault and draws enemies away.

Team survival is key and revives are not an option.  Get fallen squadmates back to their feet as soon as you can and if you go down in a bad spot, have the decency to revive yourself if you can so that you don't jeopardize the mission by being a wipe magnet.

[J.T.]

10 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I could have sworn one of the Destroyers I was against was glitched or something. It was spawning overseers at what seemed like an impossible rate.

If you're talking about the Progenator, it's not a glitch.  The Progenator is a unique Destroyer unit that has heightened firepower and it can also mini-facture Observers the same way that Assemblers can create Breachers.

If you destroy an Observer it will immediately create another one, so destroying the Progenator is the primary objective in that encounter.

[J.T.]

Finally got to roll with Stout again in MP after a long span of working odd shifts.  Good times!

[Robert C]

Melraz and I went through a slew of crappy teammates last night, including John to the B, various Killers, guy who wanted to run Gold at level 1, guy who refused to extract on any match ever, etc.  I think we went 6 consecutive matches without getting a full extraction.  Pretty sure my VI outscored a few of our teammates.  Melraz died once cause Vince Gill sucks.  Dunno what our teammates excuse was.

Bought one of the new 500K packs, which was a waste of 500K.  One drop of the new character, an N7 sniper rifle I don't want, and a bunch of rare guns I'll never use.  A 500K super reserve pack might be worth it, but the 500K premium can kiss my ass.

 

[jstout]

If all your other Rares are up to XX, and I'd bet they are, you would've gotten five of the new character with five reserves packs. I got her in the 20 packs I bought after she came out, like clockwork. She's at XX-Level 1 because I haven't fooled with playing her yet.

I've been having decent luck getting ultra-rare characters lately, but they're not ones I want. I think I have the Asari up to XVI and the Gladiator up to XV. That's fine, it gets them out of the way.

I just played a couple of games with a 41,000-APEX guy who just kept getting killed over and over again. All of them were getting killed with such frequency that I began thinking they were in it together playing a joke on me watching me run around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to revive them all.

[RUkered]

2 hours ago, Robert C said:

Melraz died once cause Vince Gill sucks.  Dunno what our teammates excuse was.

Melraz, I stiiiiiill belieeeeeeeeeve in youuuuuuuu.

Either that or y'all told some Kett to go rest high on that mountain.

These are my two guesses...

[melraz09]

1 hour ago, RUkered said:

Melraz, I stiiiiiill belieeeeeeeeeve in youuuuuuuu.

Either that or y'all told some Kett to go rest high on that mountain.

These are my two guesses...

He came on Pandora and I dropped the controller to pick up my phone and give it a thumbs down. I died on the process. 

[RIPPA]

Pro tip - you can retroactively rate songs so you could have waited till in between waves

[melraz09]

I just couldnt stand it for that long. Vince Gill on Kris Kristofferson?  Hell no!