91 réponses à ce sujet

[ScroguBlitzen]

This build and playstyle is based off of Tony Gunslingers "Agent" build with an emphasis on using a Viper and Cryo ammo to lock down your opponents.  See his thread here: The Agent - A Guide to the "Other" Infiltrator

The basic idea is to use Reave to strip enemies defenses and keep your own health topped off while you freeze them with Cryo on the Viper.  One of the major weaknesses of a traditional Infiltrator is waiting for your health to replenish before you can pop out and shoot some more enemies.  Reave nicely fixes that weakness.  If you keep some enemies handy without defenses then you can tap them with a Reave to top your health off.  You can think of them as "blood pets" if you like.

I know many people will object to the idea of Reave on an Infiltrator, but since I don't take any tech powers with her, I basically consider this build a Biotic Assassin similar to Thane.  I actually built her with an Sniper+Adept imported from ME1 so it's not a stretch.  Besides... it's getting harder to come up with novel builds... we have to be creative.

Build:

4 Squad Disruptor Ammo: As per Tony's Agent
4 Improved Cryo Ammo: As per Tony's Agent
4 Enhanced Cloak: Extra time since I use cloak for maneuverability and not so much for the extra damage.
4 Agent: Power Duration adds to cloak time, enemy freeze time, reave time AND damage.
4 Area Reave: This strips enemies defenses, incapacitates them and tops off your health to keep you shooting.

Armor:

Take all +Health pieces of armor.  You live with your shields down alot with this playstyle, and since you use Reave to top off your health, you want as big a health pool as you can get.

Preferred Weapon:

Viper with Cryo Ammo.  Use it to quickly freeze mobs that have been stripped by Reave and teammate attacks.

Bonus Weapon:

Shotguns (Scimitar):  You can take whatever you want, but the shotgun makes this build extremely versatile.  You can use the Viper to lockdown enemies, or you can whip out the Shotgun and stealth around for some CQC kills.

Squad:

Samara with Area Reave + Thane with Unstable Warp for the Biotic Assassin Trifecta.
If you're going up against geth then use Samara + Garrus with Area Overload.
You can go with Samara + Mordin with Incineration Blast for 3 AOE attacks (which is sick) but I prefer the style of the pure biotic team.

Alternative build:  If you don't want to use Reave then you can take Energy Drain and use a similar style topping your shields off instead of your health. 

First video mostly shows usage of Viper+Cryo+Dilation to take out close groups now:

Reaver Infiltrator: Azure Landing

Second Video demonstrates alot more shotgun CQC:

Reaver Infiltrator: Baria Frontiers

*NEW* Third Video mixing up Scimitar and Viper with Reave some Hacking

Reaver Infiltrator: Haestrom

Technically, this would be easier with an Energy Drain respec.

Modifié par ScroguBlitzen, 02 mars 2011 - 04:19 .

[Praetor Knight]

Cool, nice video.

The Biotic Assassin is not to be trifled with

Cryo ammo can be so much fun, I only wish I tried it sooner.

[hong]

Nitpick: isn't cloak a tech power?

[Locutus_of_BORG]

^:shakeshead:


Anyway,

Best part of this build is that a lvl4 Reave completely eliminates the need for Incinerate. The only downsides are that you lose out a bit on the disruptor ammo, and the Viper doesn't synergize as easily with the time dililation as well as the other SRs. All nitpicking though. But in some instances this build is probably better played like a cqc infiltrator to make best use of the Scimitar's cyro. I'd also argue that stim legs + damage bonus parts are probably excellent with this build.

Modifié par Locutus_of_BORG, 11 décembre 2010 - 03:10 .

[sinosleep]

I actually think the viper meshes BETTER with the time dilation. Due to it's higher ammo count you get far more actually slow down (3 shots, stop, 3 shots, stop rinse repeat) making it so that you essentially live in slow mo.

[Locutus_of_BORG]

Really? I always kept falling out of dilation while using the Viper on my Infiltrator, which threw off my aim... then again, i wasn't that disciplined with the trigger (never rose above the 12 bullet Viper spam I'd do with the other classes). I see your point now though.

I still say this build screams for more shotgun spam.

Modifié par Locutus_of_BORG, 11 décembre 2010 - 03:16 .

[lazuli]

Locutus, I had the same initial impression of the time dilation and the Viper. I'm almost done with my Shotgun Infiltrator now, though. This playthrough has forced me to use the Viper instead of the Widow. Now I'd say that it is just a matter of getting used to it, at least for me. Sound effects are good cues for when your time dilation is running out.

[ScroguBlitzen]

sinosleep wrote...

I actually think the viper meshes BETTER with the time dilation. Due to it's higher ammo count you get far more actually slow down (3 shots, stop, 3 shots, stop rinse repeat) making it so that you essentially live in slow mo.

True.  The Viper meshes the absolute best of all sniper rifles with infiltrator time dilation.  The Widow and Mantis mesh excellent with cloak.  The problem is that the Widow and Mantis also mesh even BETTER with a soldiers adrenaline rush.  The Viper is the one gun that the Infiltrator can really outperform every other class with.

Locutus_of_BORG wrote...

I still say this build screams for more shotgun spam.

You're absolutely right about that.  I DO use alot of shotgun with the build.  The one video I posted though, I managed to catch most  groups while they were bunched together.  In those situations, you hit them with some area powers and freeze them all with the Viper (+time dilation) to make quick work of them.  IF they manage to spread out, then you hit cloak (like 10 seconds plus on this build) swap to shotgun and go start picking them off one by one.

I'll try to post a video that shows more of the CQC with a shotgun in a while.  It also synergizes very well with Reave.  You can use cloak to gain a position, and then after that the next guy you kill, just shotgun him once or twice till he's at health, then hit him with Reave.  This gives you much better survivability and constant action because you're never waiting on health.

If you compare this build to a Vanguard with Reave and Sniper Rifle then you will see that in exchange for losing Charge, you get time dilation on ALL Viper shots (if you want it) and a 10 second cloak.  You also get a whole lot more usage out of Reave than a Vanguard ever does.  Reave is just an occasional ranged ability for a Vanguard, but for this build it's his primary bread and butter move.  It serves as a defense stripper, a CC ability, and an oh-no self healer.  Yes, Reave is undeniably overpowered, but that doesn't prevent it from being extremely fun with this build

Modifié par ScroguBlitzen, 11 décembre 2010 - 04:15 .

[Tony Gunslinger]

The Reaver looks very hot, ScroguBlitzen. I've thought about what would be a great insta-cast power for a shotgun Infiltrator, and I think you've found it. CC, defense stripping, damage, and health boost, I don't think it gets better than that, and a biotic assassin would be a pretty cool idea for a new class .  But actually, I would go out of my way to say your build is very Vanguard-esque, where your Reave serves as Charge. I tend to think my build is very Adept-ish, where Flashbang functions more or less like Singularity, and both our builds use Cryo Ammo like a 1pt Throw / Pull / Slam without the cooldowns... and that you have to aim it.

[ScroguBlitzen]

Tony Gunslinger wrote...

The Reaver looks very hot, ScroguBlitzen. I've thought about what would be a great insta-cast power for a shotgun Infiltrator, and I think you've found it. CC, defense stripping, damage, and health boost, I don't think it gets better than that, and a biotic assassin would be a pretty cool idea for a new class .  But actually, I would go out of my way to say your build is very Vanguard-esque, where your Reave serves as Charge. I tend to think my build is very Adept-ish, where Flashbang functions more or less like Singularity, and both our builds use Cryo Ammo like a 1pt Throw / Pull / Slam without the cooldowns... and that you have to aim it.

Reave is awesome with the Shotgun using this exact same build.  Busy today but will try to post a video of it tomorrow or so.  You just mix the two up depending upon range, how many enemies grouped, cover etc.

One other thing I just noticed re-watching my video.  Power cooldown DOES NOT slow down during sniper time dilation.  In other words, if you are staying in sniper zoom, you get a Reave (or other bonus power) every 2.5 seconds of enemy action time instead of every 5 seconds.  That makes a huge difference for survivability.

Thanks again for your Agent build, couldn't have given up my Widow without seeing what you do with the Viper + Cryo.

I think it's interesting how alot of the classes, powers and weapons that everyone always thought sucked, end up being among the most powerful.  I'm still trying to find some use for a Shockwave centric build...  I think the consensus is right on that sucking pretty bad.  If only it was 3 seconds I could do something with it...

[ScroguBlitzen]

New Video showing same build with more CQC shotgun action:

Reaver Infiltrator: Baria Frontiers

Modifié par ScroguBlitzen, 12 décembre 2010 - 03:18 .

[Praetor Knight]

ScroguBlitzen wrote...

New Video showing same build with more CQC shotgun action:

Reaver Infiltrator: Baria Frontiers

Biotic Assassin pwnage, the powers have a very nice synergy.

[Miss Yuna of Atlanta]

This is an interesting idea. You aren't the only one with a build inspired by Tony's work.

[Locutus_of_BORG]

ScroguBlitzen wrote...

New Video showing same build with more CQC shotgun action:

Reaver Infiltrator: Baria Frontiers

good good

[Tony Gunslinger]

ScroguBlitzen wrote...
One other thing I just noticed re-watching my video.  Power cooldown DOES NOT slow down during sniper time dilation.  In other words, if you are staying in sniper zoom, you get a Reave (or other bonus power) every 2.5 seconds of enemy action time instead of every 5 seconds.  That makes a huge difference for survivability.

I have noticed that CD doesn't get affected during time dilation. I sort of tested this before with FB, but when its CD wasn't affected, I presumed the whole thing was just my imagination. But it could be that combat powers are not affected, just biotic and tech.

I think it's interesting how alot of the classes, powers and weapons that everyone always thought sucked, end up being among the most powerful.  I'm still trying to find some use for a Shockwave centric build...  I think the consensus is right on that sucking pretty bad.  If only it was 3 seconds I could do something with it...

At one point I tried to play a singularity/pull/shockwave Adept. No warp. And I totally... sucked donkey butt :pinched:. But then again, I did it NG+ on Haestrom, so it was a bit of a brutal entry. I actually did all right until the Geth Prime showed up. But who knows, maybe someone else can really get it to work. I was a complete Widow nut as well when I started playing, but after playing all the classes and seeing all the variety in this forum, I began to realize a lot of the powers and weapons are more useful than I initally thought. It's great to find out things like that.

Modifié par Tony Gunslinger, 12 décembre 2010 - 07:42 .

[sinosleep]

I really do think shockwave is a no-hoper. At least with the other powers you can at least see WHY they they could be useful if playstyles are tailored around them but with shockwave I just don't see it. Powers like neural shock at least have a clear advantage that should have been spotted from simply reading the power and seeing that it had a long duration of stun, was instacast, and had a tiny CD. Even when people bagged on the power those things were clear, it was just that not everyone knew how to exploit those strengths. Shockwave though is simply outdone by every other power because it's only clear advantage is that it goes through cover.

It's got awful damage, awful CD, awful CC (in that it's completely unpredictable where enemies will end up which can come back to bite you when they start shooting at you from god knows where) it's just..... awful.

About the only way I could see shockwave being at all useful would be on a vanguard, speccing it to the IMPROVED version since the damage is useless, bringing along 2 squadmates specced for maximum defense stripping, and getting cryo-ammo maxed out ASAP and then play from range, strip everyone of defenses, shock wave em, and try to freeze targets while they are down with something like the viper. And even that wouldn't really elevate the skill, it'd be tailoring your playstyle to difuse it's weaknesses as opposed to your classes' strengths.

Modifié par sinosleep, 12 décembre 2010 - 07:57 .

[Kronner]

Yep, too bad about the Shockwave, it loooks cool when used, but it sucks so much that it's not even funny. On the other hand, it must be a lot of fun on Casual, just playing Mass Bowling 2.

Modifié par Kronner, 12 décembre 2010 - 07:58 .

[Bozorgmehr]

Shockwave absolutely kicks ass on Veteran and below. On my very first ME2 playthough (Adept) I figured SW must be the best biotic power coz it needed Singularity and Pull to be unlocked. Usually powers you'll get later are more powerful and SW did work brilliantly on Vet, but switching to Insanity quickly ended my SW love, for good.

I consider it useless for the player, but it's great having Jack around on certain locations and her Pull isn't on a 3 s CD either.

@OP; Nice vids, I never really liked Reave much but the way you're using it on your Infiltrator looks quite interesting, same for the CD / dilation - didn't know that. It's actually something I didn't like about Cloak and AR; cd starts once effect wears off while cd starts immediately using other powers. Last time I played Infiltrator I hardly used Cloak because if this. I just like using powers a lot and having to wait on Cloak plus cd is just to much for me to bare

[Sparrow44]

Very nice videos ScroguBlitzen, nice to see a tech based class use a biotic power that actually makes use of the Infiltrators other abilities.

Pretty cool that while enemies are in Cryo you can still use Reave for the heath buff while they're already CC'd and then subsequently killed by squadmates most times due to the damage boost of Cryo'd targets. Keep 'em coming

Also do you not think the Heavy version of Reave would suit this build simply due to the better health boost and the increased duration along with the Agent passive to increase the Infiltrators' chance of survival based on Health alone?

[Cossack72]

Didn't realize how awesome Cryo ammo was until I used it towards the end of the game and in LotSB. Wish I used it earlier <_<

Good stuff though man

[SonofMacPhisto]

Miss Yuna of Atlanta wrote...

This is an interesting idea. You aren't the only one with a build inspired by Tony's work.

That seems to be theme lately.  I'm working on one myself, now.

Great build, OP.  It's so cool that months later we're all still coming up with neat ways to play.

[JaegerBane]

I'm not sure that it's inherently a problem with Shockwave that makes it perform so poorly - i think it's more to do with how the difficulty levels affect the performance of physics powers. On lower difficulties Shockwave is worth every second of it's cooldown, as it's relatively wide AoE and ignorance of cover essentially trivialise most short range encounters.

Yeah, it's difficult to control where precisely it gets thrown, but when you can crowd control an entire swarm of husks or squadron of troops with a single cast then I'm not sure that issue is all that important. Functionally Shockwave isn't massively different to Mass Effect 1's Throw power - it just keeps on going after it's been cast - so I'm not so sure there's any inherent problem with it.

The real problem Shockwave has is that it's one of only two powers in the game that relies on physics effects but has a six second cooldown, and it's the only one that has no other effect. It's physics effects are an order of magnitude better than things like Throw, but, because of the way defences work, that difference doesn't manifest and hence it appears a lot worse than it is.

As for the Reaver build - I've been thinking of trying something like this. I really would love to play a character like the Ghost/Spectre from Starcraft, but unfortunately the infiltrator is as close as you can get and lacks any of the psionic-style abilities that the Ghosts and Spectres have.

Modifié par JaegerBane, 15 décembre 2010 - 05:03 .

[Praetor Knight]

JaegerBane wrote...

As for the Reaver build - I've been thinking of trying something like this. I really would love to play a character like the Ghost/Spectre from Starcraft, but unfortunately the infiltrator is as close as you can get and lacks any of the psionic-style abilities that the Ghosts and Spectres have.

You could carry the Cain around for the Nuclear Strike, and use Energy Drain to mimic EMP Shot for the Ghosts.

Using Reave could be like the Psionic Lash as an SC2 Spectre.

Unless you mean like Nova or Tosh and their special attacks, but still Dominate and Barrier might do.

Modifié par Praetor Shepard, 15 décembre 2010 - 05:10 .

[JaegerBane]

Praetor Shepard wrote...

JaegerBane wrote...

As for the Reaver build - I've been thinking of trying something like this. I really would love to play a character like the Ghost/Spectre from Starcraft, but unfortunately the infiltrator is as close as you can get and lacks any of the psionic-style abilities that the Ghosts and Spectres have.

You could carry the Cain around for the Nuclear Strike, and use Energy Drain to mimic EMP Shot for the Ghosts.

Using Reave could be like the Psionic Lash as an SC2 Spectre.

Unless you mean like Nova or Tosh and their special attacks, but still Dominate and Barrier might do.

True. The ME2 class system is far too restrictive to allow a true 'Ghost' style character but I'm guessing an infiltrator with Reave, ED, Slam and Barrier would be close enough - just have to break out the game files and do a bit modding

[ScroguBlitzen]

Wouldn't Overload be more like an EMP Shot than Energy Drain since it actually shuts down equipment?