One flaw in your approach, here, at least from my perspective, is that you're including the loyalty powers when discussing the utility of the characters. Well, for most of them, you're (I'm) only playing a fairly small portion of the game with them loyal due to the development of the plot. Sure, I could save all the DLC for after everyone's loyalty/just prior to the IFF, but then I'd be missing out on other stuff (having some of the DLC weapons, characters, XP, upgrades, etc... for most of the game).Fathom72 wrote...
I'd argue that any squaddie can work for any mission, so long as you can support them properly.
Jacob: Pull cc's, and his squad incendiary ammo boosts everyone's damage + CC's.
Miranda: The quintessential can-opener. Can detonate warp bombs, and set them up if you're willing to sacrifice armor stripping power. Also latently boosts the squad's health + damage.
Mordrin: Cryo blast is, hands down, the best crowd control ability (imo). 4.5 second cool-down on a squaddie? That's material for excellence right there. He's also the best armor stripper in the game, and can wreck organic health with incinerate (this is mainly due to the research update which improves his tech damage). He's also hardier than other characters, thanks to his shield boosting passive ability.
Garrus: The strongest overload in the game, thanks to his passive ability. Can also CC with Concussive shot. I've also found the shot decent at stripping thanks to his passive ability, but it still isn't enough to completely deplete barriers (nearly gets them, tho. A single shot will do it in.).
Jack: With her passive, pull is on a 4.5 second cooldown, just like Mordrin. Super quick crowd control, and sets up for warp bombs. If pulled over a ledge, instant kill. Shockwave is definitely viable, due to its large area of effect and strong base force. Also can give the squad warp ammo, one of the most versatile ammo types in the game.
Grunt: Regeneration. Seriously, you just can't kill him if you evolve his passive all the way up. Throw him right in the enemies' face with a claymore equipped for beautiful results. Also can give incendiary ammo and crowd control with concussive shot, as a bonus. Not to mention, he can get additional boosts to his health through research.
Thane: Can CC with throw. Also can strip armor and barriers with warp, + set up warp bombs. Great base damage via passive ability.
Samara: Like Jack, has access to the 4.5 pull. I personally feel that throw is redundant on her, since pull does everything it does and more. Can also strip armor and barries with reave, which also adds to her survivability.
Tali: The drone distracts enemies, and has a very powerful explosion attack. Ai hacking can cc, but the option is pretty rare. Can also strip shields with Energy drain, which also adds to her survivability.
Legion: See Tali. Other unique things include access to the widow, which can be further boosted thanks to ammo powers and his geth shield. He also can have his shields boosted through research, making him very hardy.
Zaeed: Has the only useless power in the game (lol incendiary grenade). Still important, mainly due to being the only squaddie capable of providing disruptor ammo. Also CC's with concussive shot.
Kasumi: Strips shields with overload (also has the fastest version of this). Her other two abilites are well renowned for their OP'ness; shadow strike wrecks all sorts of protections+health, and flashbang bypasses protections (+ has the largest radius of any power, outside tech armor's explosion).
Also, I would like to note that access to snipers and shotguns are very big plusses for characters, since it means access to the geth shotgun and incisor sniper rifle. With ammo, I've seen the geth shotgun completely strip enemy defenses (main reason I prefer Jack to Samara), adn the incisor ignores the damage reduction squad weapons suffer, giving snipers the same damage output as Shepard.
As such, for most of the game, Jack and Samara have no way to deal with defenses at all. Most of the other characters don't function like a switch going from not loyal to loyal. Plus, ammo powers simply aren't as valuable (in my opinion) as the direct-effect abilities like Warp, Incinerate and Overload, since squad mates just don't lay down as much fire as they could be, even if they aren't behind cover, and the ammo powers aren't stripping defenses in a second or two.
Now, maybe I'll gain more appreciation for CC abilities as I continue to play Insanity and have to deal with health more and more, but so far it feels like defenses are erally the issue: they take longer to drop and prevent the (effective) use of a lot of powers. Even on Hardcore, though, I was having these issues with Jack, Samara and Mordin.
I guess part of the motivation behind my complaint was a desire to be able to use the characters I like more often than they are necessarily the ideal choice for a particular mission: listening to Mordin ramble on about something is more fun for me than almost anything else in the game...but in a lot of combats he just feels like dead weight for too much of the fight. The same goes for Jack, except she has it even worse (both less interesting to listen to, if still fun, and even less useful in most situations).
I'm not looking to get defenses stripped, or to make the game a lot easier, but I would like each character to be a bit better at stripping defenses or to have [some] powers be more effective than they currently are against defended targets. There's quite a lot of middle ground between ME1 where defenses were essentially meaningless if you had a biotic along and ME2 where biotics are essentially meaningless if (because) everyone has defenses.
Modifié par Yeti1069, 06 août 2011 - 07:46 .
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