16 réponses à ce sujet

[Phaelducan]

So, I've played through ME2 twice. My first run was a Sentinel on Insanity (imported a 60 from ME1 for the full 1k achievement on one playthrough), and my second was a Vanguard which I started on Insanity and lowered to Hardcore as I was reloading quite a lot.

It's been a while, and I just finally finished my renegade infiltrator from ME1 for importing.

I just got through Freedom's Progress and I swear Jacob died in every fight. Miranda died in every other one. What's the deal? I don't remember my squadmates eating turf that much on either of the other classes, and in theory I'm doing more damage with an infiltrator than either a Sentinel or Vanguard.

I can't have screwed up my spec yet, and I haven't died at all, so why did my teammates decidedto drink a call glass of fail right before the mission?

Oh, and side note, I keep seeing a lot of specs for Infiltrators that go to 10 in Heavy Incinerate, but I'm pretty much just spamming my cloak constantly and am barely using incinerate at all. What's the incentive to use it over either the Hand Cannon or the Sniper Rifle on anything other than regenerating enemies?

[khevan]

Phaelducan wrote...
I can't have screwed up my spec yet, and I haven't died at all, so why did my teammates decidedto drink a call glass of fail right before the mission?

I can't honestly answer this without seeing how you play, but I've noticed that with an Infiltrator, the tendency is to stay back a little more than with a Sentinel or a Vanguard, so your squadmates can get ahead of you.  If they do that on Insanity, they have a tendency to die more, since the enemies focus fire on the closest target.  Try setting your squad to cover a bit more behind you, unless you want them to tank, like Grunt. 

If you're already doing this, ignore my prior comments.

Phaelducan wrote...
Oh, and side note, I keep seeing a lot of specs for Infiltrators that go to 10 in Heavy Incinerate, but I'm pretty much just spamming my cloak constantly and am barely using incinerate at all. What's the incentive to use it over either the Hand Cannon or the Sniper Rifle on anything other than regenerating enemies?

As an infiltrator, you'll generally be carrying weapons that have a relatively low amount of ammo.  Having a damaging power that can be used to finish off an enemy without wasting a bullet can conserve your ammo and make you an overall more effective killer.  And that's the whole point, right?

[Phaelducan]

Ammo conservation then? Wouldn't have guessed that, makes sense I suppose. Why full points though? 1 point would be just as effective as killing a near-dead target and saving ammo as 10 points. By saving those 9 points I could max both disruptor and cryo.



Again, I'm not arguing that 10 points in incinerate is a bad idea, I'm just looking for compelling reasons to do so. This is all based on limited play (just the first mission) but I am literally spamming cloak constantly in combat and don't see the use in having another cooldown in the rotation (although the above comment about ammo conservation makes sense).



I'm more likely to look at Squad Cryo, Squad Disruptor, and probably Squad AP Ammo as more useful on Insanity just due to that fact that one of them will always be in use and doesn't burn my cooldown.



Other opinions on the use of Heavy Incinerate for Infiltrators on Insanity? I've read some arguments for Area Incinerate (particularly for Husks) which make sense, but single target doesn't compute when the infiltrator is already so good at tearing down single target armor.

[Besetment]

Ammo conservation is only really necessary on Mantis, Incisor and Carnifex with Incisor being the worst in this regard (by a long way). Cloak is alright and it has some great uses but if you are using it every cooldown then I dunno.

The only 2 things that I think you really want to max out all the time and have on every build is Squad Cryo and Operative (evolve it however you wish). Tactical Cloak? I don't mind dropping that down to rank 3 if I find that I really want rank 4 Energy Drain *and* AI Hacking for missions like Overlord and Haestrom.

Incinerate is quite good at 1 to 3 points. On super heavy armour missions like Tuchanka you might want to max it out but otherwise Reave can functionally replace it for Eclipse or Collector type missions where barriers are also prevalent.

Energy Drain is pretty amazing at 1 point and it scales pretty good up to rank 4. I'd say that Energy Drain makes close quarter running and gunning alot easier. You can get lots of tech upgrades very early: Buy the first one from the Citadel, do Kasumi + get tech upgrade and Locust so that unlocks the duration upgrade. Then do Archangel's mission for the third one and the cooldown upgrade.) All told you can get 5 tech upgrades in the 3 missions after you are done with Freedom's Progress making Energy Drain and Incinerate quite powerful in the early game.

Contrast this with bio-amp upgrades and you can only get 1 before Horizon (from Firewalker) so it takes quite a while for an Infiltrator to make Reave worthwhile as a bonus power. I respecced on Horizon on my last playthrough from Energy Drain to Reave and Reave sucked at rank 2 + 1 bio amp upgrade. Long cooldown and low damage (about 1/3rd of a Collector barrier). Later on when you get the points to max it out and get up to 3 or 4 bio amp upgrades it becomes a monstrous powerhouse. At 4 bio amp upgrades, Area Reave will one shot Collector barriers on Insanity+ but that takes a while.

In the meantime I'd fall back on Energy Drain which is amazingly useful early on because all but one of the pre horizon missions are blue shield heavy. You can also make do with Incinerate at rank 2 for quite a long time on Insanity and it does great damage, is still good for stun or finishing off mooks that survived a Mantis neck shot etc because it arcs around cover.

Other than that, everyone's playstyle is subtly different. I like to combo squad powers alot and do a mix of close quarter and long combat.

www.youtube.com/watch
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Modifié par Besetment, 18 septembre 2010 - 01:15 .

[lazuli]

When you cloak, enemies need to target something, so they put greater pressure on your squadmates. Flagging them behind you can help. I understand if you don't want to or forget to, though. It's a chore to assign them to a location for every single fight, especially when different waves of enemies occasionally count as different fights, breaking your squad's cover flags, and setting them in the positions you want them requires a lot of movement to line it up.

[Besetment]

^ Thats a good tip because the more you cloak the more your squadmates will draw fire so they can die easily. You might need to pay attention to your squaddies a little bit more than other classes so I would get into the habit of using waypoints and target firing.

Modifié par Besetment, 18 septembre 2010 - 01:19 .

[Phaelducan]

That makes sense. I guess I was just thinking that they would miraculously be fine with me completely removed as a target for almost the entire combat.



It's funny, I almost never set waypoints playing as a Sentinel or Vanguard. It never occurred to me that I would have to implement that as a new component of combat after rolling an Infiltrator. It did seem odd though... that they were getting gibbed constantly while I was frosty.



As to bonus powers... how would Energy Drain help me survive more than Cloak? It's a shared cooldown, and unless I am missing something non-target > more shields. I really like AP Ammo for bonus, as it's just a static damage bonus that is always on and doesn' t require activation.

[lazuli]

Energy Drain is also a shield breaker, setting you up for an easy kill. I do see the merits of AP ammo though. I used it successfully on my first Insanity Infiltrator.

[Besetment]

Phaelducan wrote...
As to bonus powers... how would Energy Drain help me survive more than Cloak? It's a shared cooldown, and unless I am missing something non-target > more shields. I really like AP Ammo for bonus, as it's just a static damage bonus that is always on and doesn' t require activation.

I'll have to post a later video to show you how awesome it is. The Korlus one I posted is only 1 point so it doesn't quite one shot shields yet. You can use it to charge baddies down and get close to death, hit Energy Drain and it resets your shields. You can use it to make aggressive pushes to forward cover that would normally get you killed. I use it alot to get really close because I like sniping but when I need to Heavy Pistol/SMG I want to get in close because of the range multiplier.

It also works like Overload and it doesn't take many points or upgrades until it can one shot mook shields. I think its something like 2 points and 0 upgrades on Insanity. So you find that you can charge baddies down out of cover, hit e-drain, get your shields back, warp bomb the target which staggers everyone else. Sometimes you can literally just plow through mobs of 3 or 4 without even taking cover or letting go of the forward key.

Modifié par Besetment, 18 septembre 2010 - 01:41 .

[fegede]

The energy drain also buffs your shields for longer than its cooldown. If you use it between 2-3 cloak cooldowns (drain, cloak, cloak, drain, etc.) you will still have a big buff to your max shields for the whole fight. Paired with cryo ammo, it gives you easy kills on shielded mercs and it can act as a finisher (like incinerate) on synthetics on top of refilling your shield

[Tony Gunslinger]

On insanity, I gave my infiltrator ap ammo first to deal with krogans and vorcha, then around the time Horizon hits up, I re-spec to heavy warp ammo to maximize the damage for the Widow, as well as taking biotic squadmates for the synergy. As a pure sniper I left incinerate at 1pt so I maxed out my bonus power, squad cryo and heavy disruptor ammos. I sparingly used incinerate except when I want foes out of cover, and for the first 1/3 of the game you can't afford to pop out to take damage + lose a CD and not get something worth while in return. ED/Reave are great alternatives if you want to mix up your playstyle; my AR infiltrator enjoyed them very much.

[Mudzr]

Well I probably can't help much, as my inflitrator playthrough is my first insanity playthrough in ME2.
But I will say that my playthrough started out really hard, I think it's just because as a sentinal/ venguard you would be in the enemies faces, whereas now you have to rely on cover alot more and your squad will take alot more heat. My advice? Whenever started a fight, the cover for your squad is crucial, try and find a place where they will be safe, usually you can put them on either side as you. Leveling them up and upgrading will help alot, untill you get guys like Grunt on your team.
Where I am now (gathering loyalties and N7 missions before I hit the Omega relay), my squad is able to hold up alot better, but am using medpacks more than I ever have before.
I found infiltrator to be quite easy to play through on most missions, expecially after the first couple of missions, but it does get insanely hard on places like Horrizon (the boss fight) and the collector ship.
Upgrade that cloak ASAP so you can flank enemies, same as for your class skill. Also buy all the upgrades you need on Omega and the Citadel as soon as you can. I used barrier and then geth sheild as my squad power, just because having backup health is crucial for my semi-aggressive playthrough.
As always, Miranda is crucial with warp and overload, while Garrus, Grunt and Zaeed are great too.
So in summary, after a massive difficulty curve infiltrator will become alot funner to play, but you have to prepare for the hard missions, as otherwise they will be extremly frustrating.
Goodluck.

Modifié par Mudzr, 19 septembre 2010 - 07:06 .

[khevan]

Phaelducan wrote...

Ammo conservation then? Wouldn't have guessed that, makes sense I suppose. Why full points though? 1 point would be just as effective as killing a near-dead target and saving ammo as 10 points. By saving those 9 points I could max both disruptor and cryo.

Again, I'm not arguing that 10 points in incinerate is a bad idea, I'm just looking for compelling reasons to do so. This is all based on limited play (just the first mission) but I am literally spamming cloak constantly in combat and don't see the use in having another cooldown in the rotation (although the above comment about ammo conservation makes sense).

I'm more likely to look at Squad Cryo, Squad Disruptor, and probably Squad AP Ammo as more useful on Insanity just due to that fact that one of them will always be in use and doesn't burn my cooldown.

Other opinions on the use of Heavy Incinerate for Infiltrators on Insanity? I've read some arguments for Area Incinerate (particularly for Husks) which make sense, but single target doesn't compute when the infiltrator is already so good at tearing down single target armor.

I like to have options, not just ammo conservation.  There's also the fact that Incinerate is the highest damaging armor stripper in the game, and many of your tougher enemies are mostly armor.  Harbinger (once you bring down the barrier), Scions, Praetorians (again, below the barrier) and husks.  Husks are particularly difficult for Infiltrators  The only ability Infiltrators have to insta-kill husks is cryo ammo  Incineration Blast is great to take down multiple husks' armors, with squad cryo there to freeze them almost immediately.  Most of the "big-bads" all take multiple SR shots to bring down, so I usually go with Heavy Pistol (Carnifax is my preference) + Incinerate to bring them down.  This lets you take them down as quickly as with the SR, but saving SR ammo.

Beyond the above (admittedly narrow) set of opportunities, I like using Incinerate for it's CC abilities.  I don't often use Jacob or Grunt (for their Squad Incindiary Ammo), so I like using Squad Cryo, and Incinerate for CC.  If you hit an unprotected enemy with incinerate, any enemy within the blast radius has a chance to get hit with the flame dance, even if they have protections themselves.  It's situational yes, like the other example, but there it is.

It's a playstyle issue with me.  Even if I don't use Incinerate much (which I do, but for the sake of argument), I like having it available.  I like the area version, because of the higher AoE, and that requires 10 points.  If you're not worried about the AoE, you can certainly get by with 2 or 3 ranks, because it still works great as a supplemental armor stripper.

I've got a guide in the sticky for guides.  It's not intended for high-level shooting game experts, and I'm not one of those.  I use powers (like Incinerate, and Energy Drain for my bonus) to supplement my shooting skills.  If  you ED an enemy's shields, the most basic body shot from the Mantis (or even better the Widow) will nearly always OHKO an enemy in health.  Thus, you don't need to spam Cloak to boost your weapon damage.  I use Cloak mostly as a positioning tool, letting me flank, set up good crossfires, retreat to better cover, advance for CQC opportunities, etc.  It gives me more flexibility, even if it's not as "powerful" or "optimized" of a playstyle.  It's also more fun to me.

So, for all of the above reasons, I recommend Incinerate be a part of your arsenal.  I personally recommend Rank 4 Incineration Blast, but your own playstyle will dictate to you how much you like and use Incinerate, and that'll tell you how many points you should put in the skill.

Edit here:  I forgot to mention also that Incinerate has a secondary use that makes it a great power...it'll explode pyros, including geth destroyers.  It works exactly like overload in that regard, and since Infiltrators don't get overload, incinerate does the trick.  Overload is better, since it's an insta-cast, not a projectile power, but incincerate gets the job done when a teammate's overload is on cooldown, or you'd rather save their cooldown for something else.  One point in Incinerate is enough for this, though, so it's not an argument for evolved incinerate.  I just wanted to throw this out there.

Modifié par khevan, 19 septembre 2010 - 09:02 .

[Besetment]

Yeah exploding pyros with Incinerate is great. It may not be instant cast but you can arc it around cover when you don't have line of sight. Having both in your squad is nice (choices choices...).

[Phaelducan]

Thanks for the posts. I ran another couple of missions today and I'm finding that I'm still not using it much, so I'm keeping it at rank 1 for now. I might invest in area pyro for the IFF, but until then it's looking like a bit low on the priority list.



Also, my understanding of CQC specs are that you use cloak to flank and use point-blank shotgun head shots. This is generally supported with Squad Cryo. Now, again my experience with an Infiltrator on Insanity is still new and limited, but if you were to shoot someone from cloak an they don't die... wouldn't your surviveability be extremely low?



I played a sentinel on insanity in that way, but with the armor stun-proc if I didn't kill something in one hit I could usually do so on the follow-up or get to safety before the stun wore off.



CQC Infiltrator though... if your cloak is down for 6 seconds and the target doesn't die... or worse you didn't fully strip their defense... aren't you pretty much dead?

[OniGanon]

What, against one mook? No you just melee the crap out of them. Against two, melee one and shoot the other. Against three or against one boss, well... that gets tricky.

[ScroguBlitzen]

I concur with rank 4 incineration blast. It helps alot with husk rushes and mixed in with sniper shots it helps conserve ammo. It doesn't compete with stealth cooldown much because on most enemies you don't need the stealth bonus to one shot them anyways (if it's a head shot).

Modifié par ScroguBlitzen, 19 septembre 2010 - 11:23 .