Typical Human Vanguard builds
Full Nova | Half-blast
Hosting
Always host your game. The Vanguard glitch might have been fixed, but playing a Novaguard requires exact timing and you will die a lot more off-host.
Invulnerability Frames
Charge and Nova grant a certain amount of invulnerability frames. This means that during the animation, you will not take any damage from enemy hits. However you will still be susceptible to sync kills. The idea when playing a Novaguard is to maximize the amount of time you are invulnerable to enemy fire by using Charge and Nova sequentially. Note that you can move during the animation of Nova.
Basic Gameplay (Full Nova)
Always have +200% recharge when playing a full nova build. The power recharge bonus from Nova Rank 5 stacks with itself up to 4 times within the 10s duration. This greatly lowers your Charge cooldown down to about 2.5s on Gold/Platinum. The idea is simply to Charge, Nova and then Charge again with the help of the super-short cooldown. It is advisable to spam Nova before the round begins to get the power recharge up.
Basic Gameplay (Half-blast)
You can get away with significantly slower cooldowns with the half-blast build. The idea here is to simply Charge, and then use Nova twice, and Charge again. This takes about 4.1s seconds on Gold/Platinum, and is longer than the Charge cooldown at +200%. This is why it's possible to use heavier weapons, even a Claymore with Power Efficiency mod III.
Nova Canceling
The Nova animation can be canceled by rolling to the side, forwards, backwards or by using a light or heavy melee attack. You will still retain your full 1.5s invulnerability from Nova while doing this. Rolling forwards or backwards is slow and only recommended when trying to move to cover while taking fire. Rolling to the side is quick and usually the best option. Canceling Nova with light melee is the fastest way, but you will be able to move the least. It is, however, very useful to do while carrying the Pizza objective.
Nova Damage Scaling
The damage of Nova is scaled based on the percentage of shields left when it is used. The absolute value of shields do not matter, and thus Cyclonic Modulators will not add any damage to Nova. The 40% damage penalty from Half-blast is additive, not multiplicative. However the second Nova after a Charge will only deal 50% of the damage of the first, as you are left with 50% (or less) shields after the first one.
Combo Detonation
Charge and Nova are good abilities for detonating all four types of combos: biotic, tech, fire and cryo. Teaming up with another biotic, especially anyone with Area Reave, will make your life a lot easier. After the recent combo changes, teaming up with an engineer with Incinerate or someone with Flamer is also extremely effective due to the constant fire explosions. You can also set up your own combos with ammo powers. See the section on Ammo further down.
Sync Kills
Atlas, Phantom and Scion will only use their one hit kill grab attack after first using a regular melee attack. This makes it quite easy to avoid the sync kills: simply wait for them to do another animation after using their melee attack. Note that you can get instantly grabbed after Charge if the enemy has just used a melee attack even on someone else, so you have to keep an eye on what they're doing.
Banshees don't have a melee requirement for sync kills. They have two active modes: one where they teleport around and sync kill, and one where they stand still and cast Warp and Nova. Banshees will not grab you while in the cast mode even on Platinum. Note that Banshees are not in cast mode until they try to Warp you; they can still grab if they have only stopped teleporting for a few seconds. When the banshee screams and opens her arms, she will switch to the teleport mode and can again sync kill.
Brutes appear only to sync kill when their eyes glow red. They enter the sync kill mode when they use the AOE stagger roar. Praetorians need to melee before sync killing, but their melee staggers and they can combo the melee attack into a sync kill especially on higher difficulties. Praetorians don't use melee while they are up in the air. This means that it is safe to Charge them while they shoot lasers, missiles, or are flying around in the bubble. Pay attention to when they get back on the ground, though, as they can do it very quickly and then melee you into a sync kill. Quickly back out of the melee range when they land.
No enemy can use a sync kill if you are above or below them on a slope. Note that the sync kill chance of enemies goes way up with difficulty. Playing around with sync kill enemies is not adviced on Platinum.
Staggering Phantoms
The Phantom stagger Force threshold is 1000 N for Gold and Platinum. With the recent buffs, you will have enough Force even if you spec for Area Charge and Weapon Synergy. This requires that you take power damage evolutions in Alliance Training.
Shooting Between Charge/Nova
It is possible to shoot your weapon without being vulnerable for any additional time. The easiest way is to use Nova, aim during the animation and hold down the left mouse button. Your character will shoot as soon as is possible. After that, simply Charge or use Nova again. It is also possible to instantly shoot after a Charge as well, but that is quite difficult to aim. If you spend more time to aim, you will also spend extra time vulnerable to enemy fire.
Reload Canceling
You can cut the reload animation of weapons short by using an ability or by using medigel (bind it to mwheel up). Wait until you see the bullet count rise, then use medigel. This is most useful on weapons with a slow reload animation such as the Claymore.
Reloading During Animations
It is possible to reload your weapon during the animation of Nova or Charge. However doing this adds a small amount of vulnerability time to Nova, and a significant amount to Charge. Therefore you should only do this after a Nova. Additionally you need to use a weapon with a quick reload duration such as Talon, Scorpion, Wraith or Eviscerator. The idea is to wait until you only have one shot left in your clip. Shoot the last bullet, and then immediately use Charge or Nova. Do not use another ability until you see your clip refilled again. With Nova, the reload will be finished almost almost as soon as the Nova animation. You can see me using this method in my Platinum Solo.
Shield Recharge
The delay for shield recharge is 4s if your entire shield is gone and 3s if some remain. The fitness bonus and gear/equipment bonuses stack. This makes Stronghold Gear a good option to consider. The idea is that as soon as you have any shield recharge, you can begin Nova canceling all over. Or with a Full Nova build you can use Nova to get the power recharge stack faster.
Damage Reduction
Explanation of how DR works in this game. Biotic Charge has a hidden 50% (37.5% effective, see link) damage reduction bonus for 4 seconds. You can think of it as a 1.6 shields/health multiplier. So if you have 825 shields, after a Charge you have effectively 1320 shields. Damage reduction effects are additive and have inverse diminishing returns. For example if you Charge in a 30% DR Justicar Warp Bubble, you have 80% (60% effective) DR and a shields/health multiplier of 2.5.
Weapon mods
The weapon mods that add weight such as Pistol Heavy Barrel and Shotgun High Velocity Barrel don't add weight to non-DLC weapons. They're bugged. As such, Talon with Heavy Barrel/Piercing and Wraith (or even Claymore) with HV Barrel/Choke are excellent choices for weapons.
Ammo
Detonating your own combos is the key to maximizing damage output. There's two options: incendiary ammo or disruptor ammo. Fire Explosion damage was reduced to being identical with BE/TB in the recent patch. However at the same time they can now be activated without killing the enemy. Fire Explosions do double damage on armor, while tech-bursts do double damage on shields. FEs have smaller range than TBs.
Incendiary ammo leaves a DOT, whereas disruptor ammo does quadruple damage on shields. One very important thing to note is that incendiary ammo does not prime on shields or barrier, whereas disruptor will prime on everything. Both are good choices. Use what you happen to have, what you like or depending on the enemy you will be fighting. For high level solo runs I would recommend Disruptor due to the higher proc chance and higher radius. Cryo ammo is still not really worth it.
Combo Damage
The formula for combo damage is finally available thanks to corlist. Ammo Powers will only ever count as rank 1 powers for combo. Combo damage depends on difficulty, but not on enemy HP as thought before. Here are the important damage numbers to know:
Disruptor Ammo Self Tech-Burst
Gold - 591 (1181 Shields)
Platinum - 768 (1536 Shields)
Incendiary Ammo Fire Explosion
Gold - 591 (1181 Armor)
Platinum - 768 (1536 Armor)
Incinerate+Charge/Nova Fire Explosion
Gold - 844 (1688 Armor)
Platinum - 1097 (2194 Armor)
Overload+Charge/Nova Tech-burst
Gold - 844 (1688 Shields)
Platinum - 1097 (2194 Shields)
Reave+Charge/Nova Biotic Explosion
Gold - 844 (1688 Armor/Barrier)
Platinum - 1097 (2194 Armor/Barrier)
Warp+Charge/Nova Biotic Explosion
Gold - 1266 (2531 Armor/Barrier)
Platinum - 1645 (3291 Armor/Barrier)
Pro tip: use a Cyclonic Modulator on Platinum.
Edit: Damage Reduction added.
Edit: Combo Damage added
Edit: Banshee behavior expanded on
Edit: Collector sync kills explained
Modifié par Achire, 18 janvier 2013 - 04:49 .
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