Hey everyone 
A few of you may have seen me around in game, but I'm relatively new to the forum. I've lurked for a while and my biggest beef? Y U NO LIKE VOLUS?!?
I get that people like big booms and dead bodies, but nothing can match the niche that the volus can fill. And I'm not talking about healing, shield boost spamming is detrimental to the team and should be punished.
But let us consider for a moment. As a race, the volus are small, can't take cover, and 'squishy'. They have very little carrying capacity so get bogged down with their weapons very quickly. However, they can cloak whenever they like, restore their shields if needed, and their powers always work nicely, if you know when to use them!
I find the volus to be ridiculously mobile. You can walk right through the spawn if you want. Cloak, shield boost, and the inability to get stuck on all those walls, plus a surprisingly awesome dodge makes them ridiculous at flanking, distracting, and just generally getting around.
The adept has stasis, an awesome power, even if it doesn't affect armour. Biotic orbs make a nice detonator, and the expose evo is ridiculously good. With a light loadoat and careful timing, you can continuously create biotic explosions on anything without armour, and anything that does can have orbs to the face, stacking up their lovely debuff and teabagging them to death with his godly power. And you can do all this while cloaked. Sure there's no damage boost but you're invisible....you're not drawing any more threat.
The sentinel has to be one of my favourite characters of all time. The combo of decoy and combat drone can work out beautifully, especially against Geth and Cerberus, less so against the others. I love to pair him up with the scorpion, and use the aforementioned mobility to blast everything sky high. Plus, watching Marauders, Primes, Phantoms, Captains....most people, spin around in confusion being shocked by the decoy in front and the combat drone behind is just amusing. Played right, you can annihilate the entire field without ever being shot at!
People already love the engineer, so I won't sing his praises. He's my least favourite anyway...
The vanguard is seriously underestimated. Like seriously. Biotic charge and the cooldown reduction from the orbs pair really nicely. Charge and roll to the side. Oh look, your charge is ready again. BOOM. This biotic ball of destruction needs some awareness of sync-kill conditions etc and careful timing, but you can spend the majority of your time bouncing off enemies, invisible if you so choose (and you should do), restoring your shields, invulnerable, and staggering enemies! Got someone who can prime for BE's? MUAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
I think the thing that holds most people back from the volus is his diminutive stature and different perspective. Yes, sometimes he has trouble seeing over low walls, yes he can get stuck in those corners in White and Glacier if you're not careful. But he's not as squishy as you think! He's harder to hit, easier to hide, his health is low but that doesn't matter. As soon as someone starts to shoot at you, cloak and roll, restore your shields if really necessary.
Also, learn the actual properties of your shield boost. Learn to time it right! Banshee ball incoming and it's not feasible to dodge it? Shield boost for invulnerability, DR (assuming you chose DR at rank 6, and you should), instant shield top up, and lasting shield regen! Also, shield boost kills swarmers. Just so you know. Stuck in the reactor? Shield boost just as your shields drop and you'll have no trouble riding out the rest of the ride!
Nothing can keep enemies running around like headless chickens quite like a volus. The Sentinel excels at this, but the others have their place. Brutes are the best example, although most enemies will fall for the volus' magic with varying degrees of success. Since all enemies (excluding the banshee) must perform a melee attack before they sync-kill you, there is no harm in getting close to actively provoke a melee attack, providing you can put some range between you afterwards. This can be used to keep a scion from pinning the rest of your team, or triggering a brute to charge well before he can get to the rest of your team, and then keep him busy so he can't knock everyone flying. I do not recommend that anyone uses these tactics unless they are aware of the enemy's attack routines, visual cues, and vulnerable windows. Once you have this knowledge, you don't need Dominate, you can trigger the behaviours you need, whilst minimising the ones that are dangerous. I say minimising, because there is always the possibility of something happening that you didn't expect, either due to typical space magic, or someone else deciding to try and melee the scion you just taunted and getting synced in the process :/
Yes I know you can do this with most characters, but the volus is much more forgiving, and able to control threat far better than other characters (imo) due to his light melee. An independant cloak on it's own, short, unreliable cooldown. Nothing breaks your magic cloak of invisibility, and you can use it whenever you want, and you should. Oh and don't forget his heavy melee! The Praetorians and the Phantoms have their lolbubble, you have yours. Their's blocks projectile powers, yours is the uber super stagger bubble of protection. Dragoon harrowing your sniper? Plop your bubble at his feet and watch him reel away. Pyro toasting your mate's toes? Plop your bubble.
There is much more I could say, but I think you get the idea 
TL;DR: Learn to volus before you hate!
Retour en haut
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