14 réponses à ce sujet

[magimix 2000]

After 14 complete playthroughs, I thought I'd try something different for number 15.  Since Adept is my favourite class, I thought I'd add some additional challenge and try a Weaponless Insantity Adept.  No gunplay from Shepard whatsover at any point[1] - all talents, all the time.

([1] Bar one instance in the tutorial mission where you have to fire one round from the Grenade Launcher in order to proceed.)

42h20m laters, its in the bag, with full loyalty, and all party members and crew brought back.  As well as the Reaper Larvae itself, I was even ableto kill the Thresher Maw inside the time limit, during Grunt's loyalty mission.

For the curious, the L30 build is...

Rank 4 Warp (Heavy)
Rank 3 Throw
Rank 4 Singularity (Heavy)
Rank 4 Pull (Field)
Rank 1 Shockwave (because I had points spare when I hit L30, and nowhere to put them)
Rank 4 Biotic Mastery (Nemesis)
Rank 2 Energy Drain

I went with Energy Drain as bonus because I didn't want to find myself without some anti-shield capability in the event of a shore-party wipe-out.  In the end, I never used it much, and so it never needed more than 2 ranks.  To clarify, I don't respec my character - I build for keeps.  So there were some missions where I felt some pain from the 2 ranks in Energy Drain, because it prevented me from evolving any talents at all until after Horizon.

The weaponless contraint seriously amped up the nature of the combat at Insanity, and I'd heartily recommend it to anyone that likes Insanity Adepting.  Countering the additional challenge is rooted in sound tactical play, decision making, shore-party selection, and a solid understanding of how everything works.  There's no element of luck to it.

You find yourself beingmore inventive than ever, as you balance the goals of crowd control, direct damage, and map-ejections, and the impact all this has on cooldown management in general.  When its all over, you'll know the Adept inside and out.

Looking back the most challenging mission, from a tactical perspective, was actually Garrus' recruitment mission.  Specifically the shutters segment, and the fight against Garm and his forces when you return from the shutters. 

In terms of party members...  Zaeed saw a great deal of use, as did Miranda, Thane, Samara, and Mordin. 

Now I'm hankering to try a Weaponless Insanity Engineer   Once I calm down.  I'm still super wound-up at the moment.  I don't think even the conclusion of my first playthrough was as exciting as seeing the weaponless Insanity Adept victorious!

Edit: Fixed formatting.  Whoops!
Edit: This is with the 360 version, to be clear.  With so many active talents in use, it was very much 'pause and command' at times.

Modifié par magimix 2000, 14 septembre 2010 - 08:04 .

[Sailears]

You did that on the 360!? Good Job!

[Tony Gunslinger]

Holy crap, I salute you. I've thought about doing this but I don't have the patience to complete it.



Just wondering, what were your most hot-keyed powers, and do you switch the hotkeys mission by mission?

[magimix 2000]

I mostly had Pull and Throw hotkeyed, because in an intense fight, I find those are the ones I can most reliably steer in realtime. However, there was a LOT of radial-time evident. I couldn't focus on any one Adept role at a time, instead juggling competing tactical requirements, and this kept all active talents in play, all the time.



If there is one thing I'm realy, really good at now, its cooldown management! I was a very busy Adept; if my cooldown timer was finished, then I was invoking a talent immediately, most of the time.

[swk3000]

You know, I think it's possible to get through the game without firing a single shot, period. In Lazarus Station, when you are required to pick up the Grenade Launcher, you're only required to actually equip it; you don't actually have to fire any shots. If you have some sort of damaging power at that point (and you have to, if you got that far), then you can sit on the upper level behind cover and use your powers to take out those mechs.



Don't get me wrong; I'm very impressed, but that one Grenade shot wasn't actually needed.

[magimix 2000]

swk3000 wrote...

You know, I think it's possible to get through the game without firing a single shot, period. In Lazarus Station, when you are required to pick up the Grenade Launcher, you're only required to actually equip it; you don't actually have to fire any shots. If you have some sort of damaging power at that point (and you have to, if you got that far), then you can sit on the upper level behind cover and use your powers to take out those mechs.

Don't get me wrong; I'm very impressed, but that one Grenade shot wasn't actually needed.

And with that, it all comes crashing down for me   I honestly thought you HAD to fire the Grenade Launcher at that point.  I should have kept quiet about that bit!  Especially seeing as enemies during that part of the game have no defenses.  

Thats it - thats my whole evening ruined

[magimix 2000]

Still, the journey for this particular Shepard isn't over. They are a Liara-lovin' Paragon, who of course was faithful in ME2, so its time to get my 'Lair of the Shadow Broker' on. For the... 5th time, I think.

[swk3000]

magimix 2000 wrote...

swk3000 wrote...

You know, I think it's possible to get through the game without firing a single shot, period. In Lazarus Station, when you are required to pick up the Grenade Launcher, you're only required to actually equip it; you don't actually have to fire any shots. If you have some sort of damaging power at that point (and you have to, if you got that far), then you can sit on the upper level behind cover and use your powers to take out those mechs.

Don't get me wrong; I'm very impressed, but that one Grenade shot wasn't actually needed.

And with that, it all comes crashing down for me   I honestly thought you HAD to fire the Grenade Launcher at that point.  I should have kept quiet about that bit!  Especially seeing as enemies during that part of the game have no defenses.  

Thats it - thats my whole evening ruined

Sorry. Wasn't trying to ruin your evening. But now you know for your Engineer playthrough.

[magimix 2000]

swk3000 wrote...

magimix 2000 wrote...

swk3000 wrote...

You know, I think it's possible to get through the game without firing a single shot, period. In Lazarus Station, when you are required to pick up the Grenade Launcher, you're only required to actually equip it; you don't actually have to fire any shots. If you have some sort of damaging power at that point (and you have to, if you got that far), then you can sit on the upper level behind cover and use your powers to take out those mechs.

Don't get me wrong; I'm very impressed, but that one Grenade shot wasn't actually needed.

And with that, it all comes crashing down for me   I honestly thought you HAD to fire the Grenade Launcher at that point.  I should have kept quiet about that bit!  Especially seeing as enemies during that part of the game have no defenses.  

Thats it - thats my whole evening ruined

Sorry. Wasn't trying to ruin your evening. But now you know for your Engineer playthrough.

Oh, thats all right.  It was an honest mistake on my part.  It hardly invalidates the other 42 hours of gameplay, after all.    Indeed, *thank you* for the clarification.  During this playthrough I learned a great deal about a game I thought I already knew everything about, and clearly there is still more to learn (be it about gameplay mechnics, nuances, quirks, 'did you know' trivia, and more besides).

[RGFrog]

You don't have to use the Gren. Launcher on Lazarus. I toss a singularity, pick up the launcher and then do a warp on the first mech caught. It kills the mechs and triggers the container explosion so you can do the storm thing next.

[Alamar2078]

I've done almost the same with an Engineer except I cheated and shot at:

-- Thresher Maw

-- Baby Reaper

-- IIRC some Varren during the save-the-quarian mission [can't remember anything else]



I don't remember cheating elsewhere though ....

[mcsupersport]

On my no shooting Hardcore run I had to shoot in the Overlord mission Vulcan station and Zaeed's Fuel tanks spraying fire. How do you get by these points or did you without firing a shot??



The no shooting deal with Adepts WILL make you a better player, and it is an interesting challenge.

[RGFrog]

With overlord, you can go max ED as the bonus power and that will take care of pretty much everything in one or two casts. A few more with the end boss. Warp also works against shields, so don't forget to use it even though it's grayed out.

There's no getting around shooting in hovercraft, so that's understandable.

[mcsupersport]

RGFrog wrote...

With overlord, you can go max ED as the bonus power and that will take care of pretty much everything in one or two casts. A few more with the end boss. Warp also works against shields, so don't forget to use it even though it's grayed out.
There's no getting around shooting in hovercraft, so that's understandable.

What I was actually refering to shooting in Overlord wasn't enemies but the dang box that moves the blasted pipe out of your way.  I hit it with evey power I could and I think I even tried melee and nothing cleared the path, but one bullet blew the box and shot the pipe away clearing the path.

Also in Zaeed's loyalty mission, the two overhead fuel tanks that he keep yelling at you to shoot and bring them down, wouldn't respond to powers either, so I had to drag out a heavy pistol and drop them down.

Is there a way around these two spots or just deal with it??

[magimix 2000]

mcsupersport wrote...

RGFrog wrote...

With overlord, you can go max ED as the bonus power and that will take care of pretty much everything in one or two casts. A few more with the end boss. Warp also works against shields, so don't forget to use it even though it's grayed out.
There's no getting around shooting in hovercraft, so that's understandable.

What I was actually refering to shooting in Overlord wasn't enemies but the dang box that moves the blasted pipe out of your way.  I hit it with evey power I could and I think I even tried melee and nothing cleared the path, but one bullet blew the box and shot the pipe away clearing the path.

Also in Zaeed's loyalty mission, the two overhead fuel tanks that he keep yelling at you to shoot and bring them down, wouldn't respond to powers either, so I had to drag out a heavy pistol and drop them down.

Is there a way around these two spots or just deal with it??

I can't speak to Overlord as I elected not to do those Assignments in this run (primarily because I wasn't sure that my build would get me through the final encounter; remember, I don't respec).  However, with Zaeed's loyalty mission, I just left the flaming tanks in play.  They are disruptive to the enemy, too, and you can use this to your advantage.

The final big fight during Zaeed's mission is a good example of a fight that I was worried about, but that actually turned out to be pretty straightforward. I was also not sure I'd be able to take out the Thresher Maw in time, yet in the end I did it with 1m50s to spare (my Heavy Warp, plus Mordin's Area Incinerate, and even Grunt's ConcShot was thrown into the mix).

Another example would be the fight against Jedore (plus Mech and Krogan) at the end of Grunt's recruitment mission.  More normal tactic is to storm Jedore's location immediately upon entering the area, and take her out at close range (the quicker she dies, the fewer Krogan get released).  I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull that off with the weaponless Insanity Adept, but as it happens, it worked fine, and on the first attempt.  It took slightly longer to finish her off than usual, however, so two Krogan were released, rather than just one.

Horizon was a mission that was *tougher* than I expected it to be (normally missions featuring Collectors, Husks and Scions are easy pickings for Adepts), because my points were more thinly spread than usual, and I'd not quite taken this into account.  No great shakes though.

Again, the mission that I regard as having the most challenging aspects of the whole thing is Garrus' recruitment mission.  You fight a wide diversity of enemies, it has some timed sections (so getting bogged down can be bad news), and it is pre-Horizon so there was only a single Biotic upgrade available to me at that point, and my Warp was still Rank 2.  Therefore, I actually incurred 5 Shepard-deaths during that mission (three at the shutters, two during the section with Garm.  However, one of those was indirectly caused by my party members glitching out by totally freezing in place, which left me high and dry at a critical juncture).

Modifié par magimix 2000, 15 septembre 2010 - 07:33 .