166 réponses à ce sujet

[MP-Ryan]

Been tinkering with the Cabal since downloading Reckoning, and this kit has some seriously amazing potential for multiple builds.  Some notes:

Melee - Applies poison in a short range, staggers.
Heavy Melee - Teleports AND locks on target, then acts like light melee.  This ability is awesome beyond works.
Dodge - fastest in the game; instant teleport.  Forward is still awkward, but that's what heavy melee is for (and it has close to the range of Poison Strike).  Enemies still can shoot you while dodging, but it's so quick that multiple dodges in a row carry you out of harms way with some planning.
Poison Strike - DO NOT TREAT THIS LIKE BIOTIC CHARGE.  This is a mobility ability that applies damage - it should be taking you OUT of harm, not into it (unless you use the 6b evo, in which case you can use BF to stay alive then teleport out).   It does damage in a straight, narrow line, and seems to be useful as a "get me out of here!" button that simultaneously applies damage.  More on this in a moment.
Nightshade Blades - Powerful, short-range grenade that primes poison and does DoT.
Biotic Focus - Survivability buff ability.

Maxing Biotic Focus seems to be essential to her survivability if you're going to play her as the mobile raptor she is.  6a in Biotic Focus is basically mandatory.  Treat it like a rapid-cooldown-no-limit-stimpack, because that's basically what it is.  If your powers are not cooling down, hit BF.  If you've been shot at, hit BF.  If you're running away, hit BF.  If you're firing your gun, hit BF.

Poison Strike, as I already mentioned, seems to lend itself to getting you to a new position rather than as an aggressive ability (unlike Biotic Charge).  I would bet this is why it's not linked to target acquisition.  I found the 6a evo underwhelming (on Gold, everything has some kind of protection so paralyze is useless) and the 6b mobility addition (or PS+BF combo) has a fair bit more potential.

Nightshade Blades are pretty awesome direct-damage dealers, and they synergize well in some ways but really I think that Blades and PS are the two of her powers that we'll see less than 6 points assigned to in the various builds that are bound to emerge.

One note:  I've now tried the Talon (Melee+Piercing), Disciple ( for Omni-Blade), and Hurricane (Heatsink+Power Mod) on her.  She lends herself to 200% cooldown, as I'll chat about a little more.  Of those three, I found the rapid-fire Hurricane worked the best, but I may give the Talon another shot later on.  Really, I think any weapon yielding ~200% CD will probably work.  I don't have the BPP yet so no comment there.

So, I've tried three builds now:  6/4/6/6/4, 6/0/6/6/6, and 4/6/6/6/4.  On each, I've specced BF for max survivability.

The build I've had the most success with (and tried most recently) is the last one, played as follows:

Shoot targets with Hurricane.  Heavy Melee closest target.  Poison strike through the melee'd target, which will kill it (usually).  Dodge.  Continue firing throughout.  Repeat.  Throughtout this process, if you aren't using Poison Strike, hammer on BF constantly (it has a 3ish second cooldown).  This will constantly restore your shields and give you brief invincibility frames throughout.  Blades is used only on targets clustered together, which you then PS through, stacking the Poison damage (and melting all but the toughest).  The key is to move constantly, and spam BF while you do it.  PS is used to move away from targets which have already had the poison damage applied to them, or to ouright escape.  Heavy melee can also be used as a forward escape, while her high mobility ensures that side/reverse dodge is an option as well.  The hurricane is an ideal choice of weapon because it is high damage and rapid fire, allowing you to shoot continuously while hammering on BF.

Now, the above can be slightly tweaked to spec 6b on PS and max fitness, and eliminate blades.  It doesn't her much - the playstyle remains the same, the only drawback is that you lose the immense damage and stagger from the blades.  On the other hand, you gain better durability, the 6a melee evolution dramatically increases damage output, and the 6b poison strike allows you to strike and spam BF, or do a strike into harm and another strike out of harm.  I think, with the right weapon, the 6/0/6/6/6 can be just as effective as 6/4/6/6/6.

In my tests, I spent a lot of time dying on Gold with the original 6/4/6/6/4 build, but it was my first game with the character.  The key, as I learned later, is that BF is life.  Spam it constantly, and there isn't much that will kill you, especially if you're spamming it while you teleport out of harm's way.  Despite reasonable shields/barriers, she is not at all tanky and is actually quite fragile, which means that you need to be constantly moving in and out of combat constantly.  My only deaths by my last test were when I forgot to hit BF, or I had 4+ enemies firing on me at once and couldn't get out of line of sight fast enough.

Anyway, that's just my experiences across a few games.  What have the rest of you discovered so far?  I wanted to try a true melee+powers build with her, but found it less versatile than the combination of melee+powers+weapons.

[crashmatusow]

Her heavy melee decapitates.

Also poison strike has one large advantage over charge that it can be used to strafe bosses, instead of dropping you right at their feet to get sync killed. It is also the longest teleport in the game, able to among other things, hop from building to building in fbghost.

[MP-Ryan]

For sure, not dismissing Poison Strike at all, just pointing out that it is a mobility ability, not a damage-dealer+buff like Biotic Charge.

[crashmatusow]

The killer question is does melee damage affect poison strike.

Tbh i picked the bf evo that does restore shields, gives dr/melee damage / runspeed, so i think its actually a matter of choice. Bf is also the perfect reload cancel abiliy.

Her durability is insane compare to most non-Vanguard melee classes. As much health/shields as turisent and up to 40% dr on BF.

Modifié par crashmatusow, 27 février 2013 - 05:15 .

[Distilled Poison]

I did a 6/6/6/4/4 build on Plat/Reapers. I had no problem surviving... When I wasn't being sync killed. I got grabbed by Banshees five times in one game, no joke. I wasn't even charging them, they just kept ambushing me.

Anyway, I liked the build in between sync kills, so I'm keeping it.

[MP-Ryan]

Distilled Poison wrote...

I did a 6/6/6/4/4 build on Plat/Reapers. I had no problem surviving... When I wasn't being sync killed. I got grabbed by Banshees five times in one game, no joke. I wasn't even charging them, they just kept ambushing me.

Anyway, I liked the build in between sync kills, so I'm keeping it.

I thought about that build too, but I found her passive at rank 5 (20% power damage) is too good to pass up if you're going to run everything else on poison damage.

[crashmatusow]

Wow. One thing you can try ( as long as you didnt take the range reducing evo) is to poison strike her a few feet away from her, leaving you several feet away on the other side and ready to run. Cabal recovers very quickly from ps so take advantage of that. Of course if they are sneaking up on you you're sol either way.

edit: i ran her 6/6/3/5/6. Nighshade blades is nice but i mostly just use it for the stagger. Took health/ martial artist/health on fitness because its very easy to get her into a safe place to recharge. I believe poison strike makes her invulnerable for the duration and her light and/or heavy melee appear to have dr.

Modifié par crashmatusow, 27 février 2013 - 05:26 .

[Locutus_of_BORG]

Yeah, Poison Strike seems best used as a mobility device, since its hit detection is apparently wonky at best.

I've been running a CQC hit-n-run build and the only time I've been dying is when I get magnet-handzed or if I try to revive somebody in the middle of a spawn.

[Shinnyshin]

One feature that I think could greatly help your list is information on what scales with what. For example, as I understand it melee attacks scale primarily with melee damage and also power damage (right?) to a lesser extent. She has so many different aspects that scale with so many different things.

[Distilled Poison]

crashmatusow wrote...

Wow. One thing you can try ( as long as you didnt take the range reducing evo) is to poison strike her a few feet away from her, leaving you several feet away on the other side and ready to run. Cabal recovers very quickly from ps so take advantage of that. Of course if they are sneaking up on you you're sol either way.

Like I said, I never got grabbed while charging them. I play Novaguard a lot, so I know how to deal with cync kill enemies. I just got ambushed a lot. It was a combination of bad luck and bad situational awareness.

[crashmatusow]

If you're against a lone boss, and its not a banshee actively seeking to give you a colonoscopy, i like doing a heavy melee and then poison striking.

[HeartBreak301]

I'm not even going to spec poison strike, useless ability. Look at her from a soldier perspective and she becomes a lot more appealing. She's basically a human soldier with a spammable shield boost, REALLY good ballistic blades and a really good training skill (Turian Veteran). She's got 950/1425 health and shields with a permanent 25% damage reduction with a 40% shield boost every 5 seconds (with my Harrier II anyway).

So yeah, soldier.

[MP-Ryan]

Shinnyshin wrote...

One feature that I think could greatly help your list is information on what scales with what. For example, as I understand it melee attacks scale primarily with melee damage and also power damage (right?) to a lesser extent. She has so many different aspects that scale with so many different things.

Believe me, I think a number of us are trying to figure that out.

From what I've tried so far, Poison strike seems to be most effective when attacking targets that were already poisoned, and melee after PS is less effective.  That makes me think PS doesn't count as a melee attack, but the melee adds to power damage by poison stacking.


EDIT:  A general comment.  Novaguard and slayer are my two favourite characters in the game, but I can see the Cabal replacing my slayer off-host.  There's a ton of flexibility here.  Basically, she truly is a combat/biotic hybrid.  I think most novaguard players are going to adapt well to her because - so long as you don't treat PS as a buff ability - she can play similarly.  Basically, it's like they took the risks+damage from nova and slapped them onto PS, while taking the buffs from BC and combined them with Nova's i-frames on BF.  It can be counterintuitive at first, but once you get used to it, she's just as powerful as the novaguard, and a lot more agile and flexibly used.

Modifié par MP-Ryan, 27 février 2013 - 05:39 .

[crashmatusow]

I wonder if she can exploit incendiary ammo dot munching

[Big Bad]

HeartBreak301 wrote...

I'm not even going to spec poison strike, useless ability.

Not sure if serious...

[HeartBreak301]

Entirely serious. Her weapon training is better than Armiger Legion. Just spec her for survivability at that point.

[Leeeeeroy jenkins]

My current build is: 6/6/6/0/6

Posion Strike- damage, poision duration, poison strength
Nightshade Blades- damage, poison duration, enhanced blades
Biotic Focus- Damage taken, melee damage bonus, heigtended focus
Turian Veteran- none
Shields/melee- Melee all the way.


 I don't use weapons really at all except for a diciple with omni blade (taking advantage of the fact that it doesn't actually weigh more on original weapons) to give +50% melee and the grenade cap gear bonus.

My strategey is to Poision dark back and forth and launch the blades, then melee everyone's face off while they're stunned/paralyzed. I'll usually score towards the top and I've beat multiple hammer krogs. The only things I may try tweaking is taking double dash and explody blades.

Modifié par Leeeeeroy jenkins, 27 février 2013 - 05:47 .

[MP-Ryan]

HeartBreak301 wrote...

Entirely serious. Her weapon training is better than Armiger Legion. Just spec her for survivability at that point.

I think that's a perfectly valid build too, although you miss out on poison stacks.

Like I said in the OP, I honestly think this character is going to have the most variety in builds of any of the characters in the game.

[MP-Ryan]

By the way, has anyone noticed what the PS/BF cooldown TIME is like on her if you give her any of the following:

-Reegar
-Harrier
-Piranha
-Lancer (I don't have this one yet myself to try)

I'm curious if that 200% is really necessary to BF now.

[crashmatusow]

Problem with biotic focus is you have to recast it so often. But anyhow i think a 150ish cooldown should be fine if you're going a power centric build. Maybe 100 if you opt for duration on focus ( which only really means losing melee damage anyway)

[Shrakelle]

I'm gonna be skipping poison strike next time I spec her. Play her as a soldier.

[FlowCytometry]

her normal HM is kinda meh, imo, so I was fooling around w/ the Batarian gauntlets. Actually pretty good w/ the constant 40% barrier return from biotic focus + her awesome dodge (w/ a cyclonic she'll be okay in most cases, unless you get real reckless). I find Poison Strike to be rather weak since its dmg is low, and she has the awesome teledodge anyways to get out of sticky situations and speed through the map that pretty much does the same thing positioning-wise as poison strike.

I'm thinking of going 0/6/6/6/6- circuit the ammo crates and when not nuking w/ the blades fill time w/ punching, barrier boosting, shooting, and dodging around. Will have to experiment more once the store decides to give me another respec card.

[etm125]

I really really want her to be my favorite and ill be spending most of my time with her.
Thoughts: her dodge is unreal. Un-fuggin-real.
Ive tried 66606 and 66653.
66606 was with as much melee dmg as possible (but grenade cap). I poison strike in with a charged acolyte, release acolyte, nightshade blade a group. If theres clean up, i fire another nightshade or occassionally melee. The melee did great damage but it still took a couple heavys to take out a gold pyro. Was....unimpressed with my implementation of melee.

66653: health shields whenever possible and power damage with a wraith. Idea being incendiary rounds, poison charge, boom, nightblades, away. It sooometimes worked. Another thing I noticed is if you poison strike in you can dodge/TP back and poison strike almost back up. Maybe if i cluld get my CD a hair better I can just spam PS/dodge back n forth over a group. Not wild about the build bc i gave up on melee.

Last note: if i cant spam PS back n forth I dont know if its worth keeping. If you use it as an escape...why not just dodge? Much safer bc same TP but no cooldown so you can self heal. Sooo 3 in PS just....because, spec melee in fitness n 5 in passives. The only CD you care about is healing. Go heacy and use sparingly or go light and rely heavily on it....but wheres your dmg coming from? Just nightblades?

[michaelgrunhardt]

She is really good. When I focus my attacks are swift and what I would expect from a Fury with some sharp sporks. OP When you have done Biotic Focus have you turned Invisable? >.> I have a couple times and I thought it might help Nope >___<!

Her charge is really good for a get away ticket,when I do use it on weaklings some times it hits and other times it does not. BTW Biotic Focus is an amazing shield when you are surprised by a Cerberus Turret coming out to say hello like point blank at your face.

[Amano Kazumi]

I really like the 4/6/6/6/4 build and strategy you mentioned, OP. I think I'll be sporting a Piranha though; the Hurricane doesn't have enough burst damage for my liking on Gold for characters who stay rather mobile.