22 réponses à ce sujet

[seacrest3000]

 After months of playing multiplayer I have decided to try single player again. The only time I beat insanity was using pure caster/biotic explosion build sentinel with defense matrix shield purge, and I finished London without firing my guns once. Now I want to try a weapons based character instead.

So I'm hoping to get some advice on how to build my infiltrator. I will use the mantis until I can afford the black widow, and will spec tc for max damage. Disruptor ammo will be maxed out to deal with shield and barriers. The problem now is how to deal with armor. If I understand the description correctly, rank 6 gives 50% damage boost to frozen, and not chilled targets, so will be useless against armor. Armor weakening is insignificant for slow firing weapons. Thus I see no reason to take more than rank 4 for squad cryo.

Incinerate may have synergy with cryo ammo with rank 6, but overall I found in my experience playing the quarian fem engi that this is not enough for sustained dps.

So I feel this leaves me with 2 options: take AP or warp ammo as a bonus power, or have James or Liara use squad incendiary or warp ammo respectively. 
I had an idea of using Liara's squad warp ammo, take reave as a bonus power for a big damage boost by priming armor. On the other hand, using an ammo bonus power allows more flexibility in squad choice.

So, any suggestions

Modifié par seacrest3000, 12 avril 2013 - 01:53 .

[iOnlySignIn]

Use the Javelin instead.

Kill rooms full of enemies before you open doors to enter those rooms.

Experience the true meaning of Infiltration and Assassination.

Modifié par iOnlySignIn, 12 avril 2013 - 01:54 .

[Pressedcat]

If you're rolling a Black Widow infiltrator on insanity difficulty, I'd recommend taking energy drain as your bonus power. Unlike in MP, shield-gate in SP insanity stops 100% of extra damage when destroying shields (that is, when a shot does enough damage to take down an opponent's shields, none of the excess damage is carried over to the enemy's health/armour). Thus shooting any shielded mook target will take two shots; one to strip shields, another to kill. Taking energy drain allows you to avoid this issue. All the stacked bonuses from tactical cloak and passives mean that your Black Widow will still deal significant damage to armoured targets. Coupled with incinerate and squadmate's powers, you should be fine vs armour. Also note that one of the later evolutions of cryo ammo causes all frozen/chilled targets to take extra damage from all sources. I think this is something like a 10% multiplicative bonus, meaning all your shots will do 110% damage versus such targets.

Another option is to instead opt for the Javelin. This weapon deals so much damage that, with cloak bonuses and max damage disruptor ammo on line, you can actually one-shot most shielded mook. This works because the disruptor ammo's shield busting damage is applied before the shot's damage. As disruptor ammo deals a percentage of the weapon's total shot damage (including all tac cloak etc bonuses), it is possible for the disruptor ammo's bonus damage to completely take out the target's shields before the actual round connects, effectively bypassing shieldgate. You need to take all the headshot/bonus dam evo's for disruptor ammo (and of course for tac-cloak and your passives) for this build to work, and you may also need to take fortification (which has an evolution that grants 30% bonus power damage, including for ammo powers) as a bonus power, though I am a little unsure on the numbers for this latter proviso. If it transpires you don't need Fortification (as someone will no doubt clarify), Proximity mine offers excellent damage buffs and will leave you able to pretty much one-shot Brutes with the Javelin.

If playing on lower than insanity, shieldgate will absorb 75% or less excess damage, opening up more weapon/power choices.

[Veovim]

Do you really need a bonus power for anti-armor? Sustained fire from the black widow (plus cloaking as often as possible) should drop bosses plenty fast by itself. Make sure to get the Hahne-Kedar armor pieces asap for even more weapon damage.

If you want more power out of incinerate, don't forget that infil Shep has sabotage (rank 6 tech vulnerability). Also, don't forget that fire explosions were patched in sp, so if you take squadmates with reasonably fast detonator skills, you can use those, too.

As for a bonus power, I took energy drain. Any non-boss will be drained enough by it that the bonus damage from disruptor ammo will finish off their shields, thus letting the rest of your shot ignore shield gates. Note: I haven't played sp in ages, so I don't know if the shield gate nerf (lowered to 75% on gold/plat instead of 100%) got copied over. If it did, you can probably ignore this point.

[capn233]

Ignoring that the Black Widow itself will be sufficient to deal with armor with cloak bonus, Incinerate will have more than enough damage to supplement it for a couple of reasons. And Quarian Engineer is not a good comparison on SP Infiltrator...

For one thing you have Tactical Cloak to boost the damage of Incinerate. Also you have Sabotage available... take the Tech Vulnerability evolution. Cloak-Sabotage-Shoot-Cloak-Incinerate-Shoot.

Whatever you do, only very important things in a Black Widow build would be taking SR damage at Rank 6 of Cloak, and the Sniper evolution at Rank 6 of Operational Mastery as both of those are "multiplicative" damage bonuses (technically they are base damage modifiers...).

As far as leveling priority, start with TacCloak, Disruptor Ammo and Operational Mastery. You will then be Rank 3 on Mars (if new game or modded import from 1). Prioritize leveling TacCloak until Rank 6 unlocks, at which point at the minimum put a point in Sabotage for stagger / backfire unless you took Energy Drain as a bonus. As far as the vanilla skillset goes, you can get away with TacCloak, Sabotage, Operational Mastery and Disruptor Ammo. It is nice, however to have a skill to easily set off tech bursts from Disruptor ammo, so that could be Energy Drain (against shielded targets) or Incinerate for the others (Cloak -> Mantis w/ Disruptor shot -> Incinerate -> tech burst).

I did a whole game with Mantis, Katana, Predator (before most of the DLC came out).

[seacrest3000]

Tech vulnerability works on organics? Did not know that...
Does incinerate's freeze combo and sabotages's tech vulnerability stack? If they do, will incinerate do 2000+ damage with cryo ammo, tac cloak and sabotage?
Also, is incinerate rank 5 DOT affected by all of the above?
Thanks for the help guys... I shall test them out

[HolyAvenger]

The only skill you need to learn is headshotting.

I played a Black Widow/Revenant Soldier for my first PT (insanity). BW is ridiculous.

[Abraham_uk]

Energy Drain is a great bonus power.

Learn to play the infiltrator salarian style.

Cloak (with bonus power), energy drain, snipe.
I recommend disruptor ammo.


I rolled with Mantis Sniper Rifle and Prothean Particle Rifle.
It's not the most damaging setup, but it works pretty well.

Modifié par Abraham_uk, 12 avril 2013 - 06:51 .

[RA RA XD]

I think AP ammo deserves a mention. It builds on what the BW main strength over something like the valiant: Boss killing. You can kill a brute with a single clip under TC damage buff on insanity, which is nothing to be sneezed at.

Of course, you won't be able to one shot shielded mooks like centurions and marauders without taking down their shields, but given the fact that over half the squadmates in the game have sheild stripping powers I'm not sure it is far from esential. Then there's the fact that, being a tech power, i'm pretty sure incinerate has a "hidden" 1.5 damage multiplier against shields. Combine that with your sabotage and you should have a pretty potent anti shield combo.

I play on xbox, so the main reason I use AP ammo is because I only have three hotkeys for shep, one for cloak, one for incerate and one for sabotage. Opening the powerwheel breaks up the action a bit so I tend to avoid it one non caster classes.

In a nut shell if shielded mooks are your priority you'd be better off taking the valiant/ED combo for a faster recharge. If bosses are your priority, BW/AP ammo is the way to go.

Modifié par RA RA XD, 13 avril 2013 - 08:43 .

[spockjedi]

You won't get much of the benefits of AP or Warp ammo since (1) you have alreay an ammo power to deal with barriers, (2) the BW has native penetration (3) you already have the BW, Incinerate and grenades to deal with armor. Couple it with and Ultralight SMG and you're ready for anything. I would suggest picking a bonus power that increases your survivability. You're already used to Defense Matrix, so it wouldn't hurt picking it again. The tech damage evolution boosts the damage of Incinerate very nicely.

[RA RA XD]

spockjedi wrote...

I would suggest picking a bonus power that increases your survivability.

If you're going to choose a defensive ability for a sniper infiltrator, go with fortification. It has a higher damage bonus than DM (30% compared with 25%?), which affects ammo powers in addition to tech abilities. The trade off is having a far less useful purge bonus: instead of getting a free shield recharge, you get a bonus to melee damage. 

As for not getting much out of AP ammo, sure the BW has some innate penetration and good armor damage, but it lacks the "ignor x% of targets armor" that you gain from AP ammo, and the majority of snipers are pretty poor at applying the chill effects of cryo ammo (indra withstanding) which is the only power that grants a similar effect. In my experience, BW procs the chill effect on the second or third shot, giving you just one or no shots when the armored target is chilled while still under TC damage bonus. If you use AP ammo all three shots are going to ignore a percentage of the targets armor while under TC damge bonus, leading to some very quick kill times.

To put this in perspective, think of this armor bypass effect as the anti armor equivalent of phasic rounds, with the addition that it works against both armoured enemies (atlas, ravanger, banshee, brute, prime, pyro etc.) and enemies with armor plating (Buffed reaper enemies).

Modifié par RA RA XD, 13 avril 2013 - 08:50 .

[RA RA XD]

Incinerate is also arguably better spec'd as a CC power. Many infiltrators opt for AOE over damage (at least in ME2), and the synergy between squad cryo ammo and the freeze combo evolution of incinerate is very hard to pass up. If the player chooses these evolutions, then its damage against armour really isn't all that impressive. AP ammo fills that gap for an infiltrator who wants to deal with all forms of protection with ammo powers, while still possesing two AOE CC powers on tap.

Modifié par RA RA XD, 13 avril 2013 - 08:50 .

[spockjedi]

RA RA XD wrote...

The trade off is having a far less useful purge bonus: instead of getting a free shield recharge, you get a bonus to melee damage.

True, but since the infiltrator can't recharge his shields while in cloak mode, a instant shield recharge could save his life more often. That's what I felt in my experience. I'm also REALLY used to instant shield recharge armor powers. I guess most players who used Shield Boost/Barrier in ME1 and any defensive power in ME2 find very annoying that the other armor powers can't do that in ME3. Any Shepard of mine in ME3 gets Defense Matrix.

RA RA XD wrote...

To put this in perspective, think of this armor bypass effect as the anti armor equivalent of phasic rounds, with the addition that it works against both armoured enemies (atlas, ravanger, banshee, brute, prime, pyro etc.) and enemies with armor plating (Buffed reaper enemies).

Does it make any difference if I shoot the soft parts of a target? Like the unprotected parts of a brute? Concentration mod + Operational Mastery can give you a lot of time to aim.

[Athenau]

Armor damage reduction doesn't matter to the black widow at all. Insanity armor reduction is a flat 50 points, with the BW and all the stacked infiltrator bonuses you're looking at well over 2000 damage per shot (and that's for a body shot).

As far as bonus powers go, if you want maximum cheese, take marksman, but playing something that OP gets old fast. Otherwise, my favorite bonus power is proximity mine. It does great damage in a huge radius, staggers everything, debuffs enemies, and can be used to set up traps and flush enemies out of cover.

[capn233]

If you want AP Ammo, go damage... the extra 30% (actually higher under TC, or with OpMastery 6) would be fairly substantial on a Black Widow.

Other things... radius evolution on Incinerate is not nearly as good as it was in ME2. They made the radius smaller on a lot of powers, and even going Area it doesn't seem to catch all that many enemies very often.

Proximity Mine is a good power. It hits targets through cover, which is a rare trait for a power. Fortification would be alright if you want DR and extra ammo damage (TA and Fortification might be a little OP for SP now...).

[RA RA XD]

capn233 wrote...

If you want AP Ammo, go damage... the extra 30% (actually higher under TC, or with OpMastery 6) would be fairly substantial on a Black Widow.

My bad on that one, I forgot that weapons over 125 dmg favour the damge evolutions  

Shame about the incinerate, I never bothered to respec my infiltrator after ME2 (despite having just about finished ME3 twice with him) so I never realised I was gimping myself quite so much.

[capn233]

RA RA XD wrote...

capn233 wrote...

If you want AP Ammo, go damage... the extra 30% (actually higher under TC, or with OpMastery 6) would be fairly substantial on a Black Widow.

My bad on that one, I forgot that weapons over 125 dmg favour the damge evolutions  

Shame about the incinerate, I never bothered to respec my infiltrator after ME2 (despite having just about finished ME3 twice with him) so I never realised I was gimping myself quite so much.

Every once and a while you might be able to get a couple targets at once.  But it unfortunately is not as great as Incineration Blast in ME2.

[kw0lf]

Stasis.

But, the problem with the BW Infiltrator is that the Harrier Infiltrator is so damn fun!

[RA RA XD]

Why would you need stasis when you have sniper dilation from your passive and/or concentration mods ? If you can't hit targets under those two combined... Nothing can save you.

[Abraham_uk]

RA RA XD wrote...

Why would you need stasis when you have sniper dilation from your passive and/or concentration mods ? If you can't hit targets under those two combined... Nothing can save you.

That's what I bring Liara for.

I slap energy drain onto my infiltrators.
I only use stasis for guardians and phantoms anyway.

[kw0lf]

Stasis can end some fights very quickly. If you know the places that the mooks drop down from, you can drop a Statis bubble below the drop down locations and they jump right into it. Then you can make an explosion using Warp (Liara) for example. It just makes some of the "harder" combats easier.

[Cmpunker13]

When I played my infiltrator I only used Sabotage on turrets and Atlas; I simply shot the rest and never used Incinerate. It can be easily done with the Black Widow. You really don't need anything else.
I used Defense Drone as a bonus power. It saved my life a couple of time but, honestly, a bonus power is a bit redundant for the infiltrator.

[RA RA XD]

The only times I've ever used Liara's stasis was for phantoms, and there are less than 20 of those in the entire game... Granted you'd probably get more use out of it with the biotic powerhouse squad of Liara and Javik, but I tend to stay away from those two with my infiltrator. The game is already easy enough with TC bonuses