Morinth is an irredeemably evil and reprehensible character, and probably should be killed. However, from a tactical combat perspective she is distinctly more powerful than Samara.
Enhanced Dominate on any mission where at least half of the enemies are organic will be superior to every other squad power in terms of crowd control, flanking, distraction, total squad damage output, and mitigating damage taken by your team. While it does not work on synthetic enemies, using Samara’s loyalty power on a purely synthetic mission is likewise a waste of her talents and of your existing team’s skill roster at that point in the game. Lastly, the misconception elsewhere on these boards that direct-damage powers on squad members are ‘necessary’ or ‘superior’ is based on people only looking at listed damage numbers rather than evaluating the complexities of the entire battlefield as a whole. They become more irrelevant when you have fully upgraded weapons and access to all squad ammo powers, which is precisely the case when you acquire Morinth or loyal Samara.
This power prevents enemies from firing on you, enables you to deal substantially more damage by controlling enemies with heavy weapons, forces enemies out of cover through indirect flanking, and completely turns the layout of a mercenary/collector encounter on its head.
Every faction of organic enemies has heavy weapon units. As a general rule, these units habitually remain behind enemy lines, thus dominating them gives them full line of fire to their allies. As a standard tactic every player will want to target heavy weapon enemies first, dropping their defenses with concentrated weapons-fire/powers and eliminating the threat with a quick-finish powers. Alternatively they will forgo that route to remove the threat with a one-shot sniper headshot, or disabling them with Singularity or Stasis. However, all this does is eliminate/isolate the target, and you have given the remaining enemies free-reign to advance, take new positions, or fire upon your squad in those intervening seconds/cooldown cycle. By contrast, using Dominate to turn them into a temporary ally gives you an automatic cross-fire flanker who--in addition to being armed with rocket launchers and particle beams---will also have full line of fire to their (former) allies, be able to flush them out of cover with close-range rockets, and cause them to reposition (exposing themselves to fire from you) as they move to avoid a newly hostile flanking target.
Blue Suns Heavy
Eclipse Heavy
Blood Pack Pyro
Blood Pack Boom Squad
Collector Assassin
Those five examples alone more than justify the selection of this power. Yet, even if there are no heavy-weapon enemies present, dominate still reshapes the tactical layout of mercenary and collector combat encounters. Enemies will target the nearest visible hostile unit with their weapons/powers. Controlling a normal rank enemy means that elite and commander rank enemies will turn their enhanced weapons, powers, and ammo abilities away from you and towards their former allies. Thus, not only are you dealing more damage, you are also preventing multiple enemies from firing upon you--leaving you free to concentrate fire on those elite tier enemies with a substantially decreased threat of return-fire.
When it comes to Collectors in particular this is especially devastating. Forcing Harbinger to systematically kill his own assassins, guardians, and drones by dominating each of them in turn not only systematically eliminates minions for him to possess—it also cause him to cease his barrage of biotic attacks against you and your team. That leaves you free to reposition, eliminate stragglers, or whittle down Harbinger’s defenses with minimal interference (and with assistance from Assassin's heavy particle beams or the Guardian's warp ammo)
The only area where Samara has ‘superior’ options regarding her loyalty power is its ability to damage synthetic enemies, though inefficiently and without the health boost that makes her full-auto weapons viable under enemy fire from organics. However, if you are using or relying on Samara/Morinth for Geth or Mech heavy missions then you are clearly doing something wrong. By this point in the game you already have Miranda, Garrus, Tali, Kasumi, Zaeed, and possibly even Legion—any two of which would be superior choices on a mission where all enemies are synthetic. Even if you wanted to compliment one of those shield-piercing/AI-stunning characters with a biotic for crowd control, Samara/Morinth still would not be the superior option. Jack can create Pull Fields just as frequently, while simultaneously giving herself or the squad a passive bonus to damage against lifted enemies. If that were not enough; Loki mechs are highly vulnerable to shockwave, and the various main-story geth missions either consist of close-quarter areas that benefit the shotgun (Tali: Treason), or null-gravity locations combined with long corridors that benefit shockwave (Legion: A House divided). In addition, Jack’s most damaging weapons (Geth Plasma Shotgun/M-5 Phalanx) deal more resistance damage in a minimal number of shots, ensuring that she can stay out of enemy fire longer while still delivering maximum crowd-control and damage output. By contrast, Samara/Morinth would have their barrier/health consistently compromised by rapid fire from mechs/geth, due to using semi-auto/full-auto weapons against enemies whom they cannot use to "shield" themselves from damage (either through Dominate or the health drain/max health boost of Reave).
Since I am being subjective here (I am not exactly a fan of Morinth’s character), I will note that Dominate does have a delay after use where the enemy stands confused before attacking their former allies. This necessitates the use of Enhanced Dominate instead of Group Dominate, especially on Insanity. However, control powers (Dominate, AI Hacking) are superior in their single-target forms because a group of enemies will not always attack each other, and when they do they will only damage the temporary barriers/shields you gave them rather than their own health. By contrast, controlling a single enemy means they will deal lasting damage to their former allies, and forces those former allies to swarm upon it. This increases the chances that either it’s allies or the target itself will be killed, and often leaves them within a tightly knit radius and/or out of cover---perfect for follow up powers and concentrated fire.
I will also note that all crowd-control/debilitating squad members, specifically those with reduced cooldowns or increased durations, generally require you to use occasional radial-menu pausing to get the maximum use of their abilities. This is the only gameplay reason I find people prefer damage powers over control/debilitating powers—since you do not have to think before pressing the button. However this is a point of gameplay preferences, not of tactical superiority.
In terms of Reave, while it is great on Shepard, its use by Samara has a bit of an excessively overrated reputation elsewhere on these forums, and it is high time its reputation is given a more in-depth analysis.
First up: Enemy Resistances and breaching them.
By the time you acquire Morinth (or a loyal Samara) you already should have at least 6/7 damage upgrades for assault rifles, and at least 5/6 damage upgrades for submachine guns. Thus, the popular notion that you “need” Reave on this character in order for her to pierce defenses is not only false, it is also a waste of their reduced cooldown.
A normal rank enemy at 30th level on Insanity has an average of 500 health and 500 resistance (armor, barrier, or shield).
Examples (Insanity, 30th level)
Blue Suns Trooper 500 shield, 650 health
Blue Suns Heavy (normal) 500 shield, 500 health
Blue Suns Heavy (elite) 1500 shield, 1000 health
Blue Suns Legionnaire/Centurion 1500 shield, 950-1000 health
Blue Suns 1500 shield, 950-1000 health
Collector Drone: 500 barrier, 500 health
Collector Assassin: 1250 barrier, 750 health
Collector Guardian 1500 barrier, 750 health
Morinth/Samara can deal 489 points of resistance damage with three consecutive 3-round bursts (9 bullets) from a fully upgraded M-15 Vindicator assault rifle. Coincidentally that is the same number of bursts she will fire upon a selected enemy from a defended position each time she emerges from cover.
36.8 per shot
x 0.55 squad modifier = 20.24 per shot from squad members
x 3 shots per burst = 60.72 per burst
x 2.15* damage bonuses =130.54
x 1.25** resistance multiplier =163.185 per burst from squad members
x 3 bursts= 489.55 damage per firing cycle
*damage bonuses: 1.0 base + 0.7 damage upgrades + 0.25 penetration upgrade +0.2 Erdua-Yakshi
** resistance multiplier: all other bonuses are combined and then multiplied by this final modifier.
Meanwhile with a fully upgraded M-9 Tempest she will be able to deal 1207 shield/barrier damage per clip. A full clip can be fired out of cover, and roughly half that amount will be dealt each time she emerges from cover. In either case, half a clip can pierce the shields/barriers of normal rank enemies (including normal heavy weapon enemies), and with Squad Warp Ammo/Squad Disruptor Ammo she can even take down the resistances of Collector Assassins and the versions of Blue Suns Heavy. Morinth then immediately follows up with Enhanced Dominate, and from there you can take on entire squads of organics without another squad member at all.
Now if Morinth has learned the weapon-focused Malian Yakshi (+25% damage, +20% health, -18% power recharge) instead of the biotic-focused Erdua-Yakshi evolution, then she will deal 500.94 damage per every three 3-round burst (9 rounds total) firing cycle with her M-15 Vindicator—precisely enough to fully pierce resistances of normal-rank enemies regardless of resistance type. Meanwhile, she still will be able to recharge her Enhanced Dominate before the duration expires. Even with Insanity penalties to duration/recharge this second option is still viable (though not preferable), with the duration on a normal target lasting 11.52 seconds, and elite targets lasting 8.64 seconds, whereas the recharge time comes in at 8.92 seconds (0.28 seconds is negligible to say the least).
Now on that last point, I do NOT recommend giving up her –25% cooldown from Erdua-Yakshi in favor of weapon damage. I only raise that to illustrate a point, and highlight the precise symmetry of squad damage calculations/fire modes in this game. All you really need is the patience to deal another 11 points of damage; or apply an appropriate Squad Ammo power; or merely bring along Miranda with at least three ranks in her Cerberus Officer ability. Zaeed, Garrus, Jack, and Miranda are all devastating when combined with Morinth against the corresponding organic enemy factions.
Also, as a side note, it is worth mentioning that Samara’s Area Reave suffers from the same ‘almost-but-not-quite’ damage total against resistances. With all six biotic upgrades and biotic duration it will only deal 491 points of armor/barrier damage on Insanity. That means at 30th level you still need to add in another power or expenditure of firing time to remove the final (invisible) shard of strength left in their armor/barriers before using a debilitating area power. If I have to command Samara to use her assault rifle against the same norma-rank enemies I just had her use Area Reave against then why wouldn’t you just have had her use her weapon to begin with and follow up with Pull? Note that Shepard by contrast does not suffer from this, since a single piece of armor that increases power damage will fully offset the difference.
Now, I will note that the resistance damage of Samara’s Area Reave makes her a superior choice over Morinth when paired with an Adept, since Singularity deals a free pulse of resistance damage at regular intervals and can capture enemies AFTER it has been created. Thus Singularity + Area Reave is a viable two-hit combo, which you can then finish with Shockwave, Throw Field, Warp, or weapons + Warp Ammo. With every other class however the eliteness of Samara’s Reave is a bit of a moot point, both in terms of resistance damage output and crowd control. The resistance-damage function is outranked by her weapons and the power/combinations of other squad members (Incineration Blast, Unstable Warp, Squad Warp Ammo) and the crowd-control/damage-negation aspect is inferior to her faster use of Pull Field.
Now onto the other features of Reave..
Against enemies whose resistances have been breached, Reave does have a short-term stun effect that will *sometimes* keep enemies from firing back upon you, depending on who that enemy is and what they were doing animation-wise when you hit them with it. (I have played enough duration-bonus characters with Reave on Insanity to be fully aware of the unreliability of this feature).
If the target is organic this will also allow you to regenerate health, cancel their regeneration, and temporarily boost your maximum health total. While many people know of the short-term health drain, few seem to have noticed that Reave also increases your maximum health for the next 25 to 30 seconds. Like Energy Drain, this increase to maximum health seems to last regardless of how many times your health is damaged and replenished during that duration (as in you can replenish that increased total multiple times in cover, which is not the case with barrier/fortification/shield boost). On Shepard this is an god-like feature, enabling you to remain out of cover and unshielded for longer periods of time, or unleash powers/weapons fire in more rapid succession despite shields being down.
With Samara however, your ability to truly utilize this health bonus requires you to place her in a position where she can draw enemy fire away from your squad and is equipped with weapons that will cause her to keep firing after her barriers are breached. It is further hampered by your inability to see any scaled representation of a “health bar” for her—instead you only see a red quarter-circle that indicates her barriers are down and she is taking health damage. While on Shepard this feature can reliably double your time out of cover versus organic enemies, on Samara it is far harder to micro-manage, riskier, and is still inferior to tactical use of her other crowd-control powers against health-exposed enemies.
In terms of the ability to negate regeneration, while this is a nice feature it is hardly a selling point to bring Samara along in encounters in the second act of the game. Every class has either Incinerate, Incendiary Ammo, or Warp, thus no class has difficulty with regenerating adversaries. In addition, five of your squad members have these abilities as well, and three of them have these powers right away at level one--and are recruited during the first three missions of the game. Most importantly, none of these squad members have Pull Field competing with their regeneration-blocking abilities for cooldown, whereas Samara does. Thus this feature fairly is negligible point and wasteful tactic.
The end point however is that all of these features are still inferior to the tactical options rendered by Dominate. Dominate mitigates and ultimately negates potential damage to your squad by giving enemies a hostile target at closer range to focus on. Dominate mitigates the damage to the target itself by giving them a temporary 500 point barrier, enabling them to be reused multiple times if needed. Lastly, Dominate results in greater damage output, not only from the target’s weapons, but the ability of your squad to concentrate their own weapons/powers on other hostiles who are now focused on your dominated target rather than on firing back and taking cover relative to you.
It comes down to a simple Chess equation. If with two moves in variable order (fire weapons + activate loyalty power) I can:
A) Eliminate a enemy pawn, or
Use an enemy pawn to eliminate another enemy pawn, then move the first pawn to an vulnerable position on the board.
Then the clearly superior option is B.
Thus I do not understand why people think an assault rifle wielding biotic-specialist asari is better off:
A) Using her loyalty power to remove an enemy’s protection, then firing 5 bursts from her assault rifle to finish off one normal enemy (1 enemy dead/dying, -1 enemy shooting at you).
rather than;
Fire 3 bursts from her assault rifle to remove an enemy’s protection, then use her loyalty power to send that enemy to go attack another enemy (1 enemy dead/dying, -2 enemies firing at you).
Now Samara is a superior choice from a moral standpoint, and has a large fanbase, but from a purely combat-tactical perspective she is in no way an inherently ‘superior’ choice. The only reason I picked Samara in (99%) of my playthroughs is because I liked her character more and because Morinth is a truly irredeemably EVIL person who should have been killed. That said, her powers and weapons options are substantially potent on a single squad member, and make her equitable to the moral cost you pay to obtain her..assuming you are willing to pay it. You simply have to be prepared to approach combat like a tactical RPG and use the radial-pause menu once in a while rather than playing it like a shooter with all damage powers mapped to the squad d-pad. Lastly, Dominate--when used by Morinth--has the coolest and most unique power animation in the game.
I think that if she had only preyed on the slavers and murderers on Omega, and was able to actually use the M-76 Revenant hanging up in her apartment, then most people would have betrayed Samara in a heartbeat...especially when you can open that renegade choice with paragon dialog.
Modifié par Darkstar Aurora, 01 décembre 2011 - 04:31 .
Retour en haut
