132 réponses à ce sujet

[Aurellia]

gr00grams wrote...

Just add this to your considerations;

The game is balanced around normal difficulty.
Let that sink in.

Insanity is just there really for people to see if they can do it.
It will require very specific skill abuse, etc.

Basically, it will pigeon hole any build, playstyle etc there is, regardless of build.
That is the nature of 'extreme' difficulties.

I will play insanity with my adept. I also understand the game was not balanced around the extreme difficulty level, so I take it with a grain of salt. If I'm forced to do xxx move to everything, that is just the nature of extreme difficulty modes.

I have played Halo1-3 on legendary and uncharted on crushing as well as various other shooters. In fact I play almost everything on the hardest level because I enjoy the steep learning curve. Halo 3 is hella fun. Uncharted was kind of linear and got boring but the story rocked. One of the best examples of Insanity done right is Darksiders where the bosses are crazy difficult until you figured out their weaknesses which reminded of classic Zelda bosses.

But you confuse challenge with tedium. The fights in mass effect 2 on insanity are pretty straightforward. You take cover and deal first with mobs that are rushing you. You look at what defense the enemy has and apply rock-sissors-paper and choose the best abilities. You repeat this until they die. Due to the unified cool-down you are pretty much stuck doing the same thing over and over again. Killing a big mech on insanity is not hard it just takes a long time. That is not challenging it is boring.

The fact that while I am whittling away the armor on this mech with warp I can't use my other biotic abilities to crowd control due to a stupid design choice regarding shields I'm stuck doing repetitive/easy actions on whatever happens to be the greatest threat. Due to crappy AI it is almost always possible to find a position you can camp and kill stuff off one by one.

IMHO, Mass Effect 2 took a bad approach for scaling difficulty for biotics. 

Hiding behind cover firing warp, wait a few seconds fire again, lather rinse and repeat is not challenging it is boring. Sitting and waiting on team-mates power timers because my shield is gone and I can't shoot is boring. I can kill stuff no problem it just takes a while. The unified cool-down timer eliminates the ability to do other stuff while you are waiting for powers to cycle and generally there is one optimum move at a given time when your powers come up (eg overload if it is shielded, warp if it has armor, etc)

There is little sense of accomplishment in doing this. In Halo, jump running up to a Wraith tank with all hell breaking loose on legendary and hoping I last long enough to plant my grenade and blowing the f*cker up. Now that is fun and when I succeed gives me a sense of accomplishment.

What would have been fun is continue to have biotics function on all defenses. Have their effects diminished or altered. For example

armor (have abilities scale based on % of armor left)

pull: lifts in the air for a reduced duration but little horizontal movement so you can't yank stuff off edges very easily

singularity: does no damage but throws them around for reduced duration

shockwave: reduced damage and knockback and they can get up faster

shields (have random chance of nullifying the effect)

pull: %change of not working 0-50% based on shield strength
singularity: 20% chance per second of nullifying the effect scaled by shield strength
shockwave: %change of not working 0-50% based on shield strength

both shield and armor

combine the effects above

Something like this would make using the powers harder and eliminate easy kills until you debuff the enemies some. It adds some unpredictability and when things get bad sometimes your hail Mary move works and sometimes it doesn't.

Had they not taken the cheap (from a game design point) way out of implementing higher difficulty levels then I would have loved it.

As of now, IMHO, Adept is a broken and boring (not hard just boring) class to play on Insanity

Modifié par bioware-sucks, 02 février 2010 - 09:57 .

[T1l]

The only thing I'd change from the original list is making Soldier first; but the OP acknowledges the reasons for that.



Fair list, honestly. Biotics pulled the short straw in ME2.

[Makoto SFG]

vhatever wrote...

I must have read your psot wrong, Unelss it was changed. I thought you had vanguard above engineer and adept. But when I look now it only shows vanguard over adept. Which I still don't agree with,.

If you are a really good/smart player, adept can be better than engineer. The engeer "tops out" at a lower power level than adept, I guess I'm trying to say, but for most players the engineer is a bit better and safer and a big ZzzZz on insanity.

You're a fool. 

The OP gave a well-thought-out analysis of his preferred classes for beating an insanity run, and you come in and accuse him of lying?  All the while managing to sound like an illiterate 14-year-old know-it-all punk?

With your logic, I can jump in and say "no ur dumb for not putting Vangard furst cuz I did beat insane w/ him like 3 times, cuz vangard rockz.  u obviously don't know nuthing".

Just what exactly were you hoping to achieve with this??  That you're better than the OP and YOU'RE the authority on the best classes for insanity??  I didn't see YOU creating a post.

God damn.  ****ing kids.

/breathes deeply

[rumination888]

Havokk7 wrote...

tetracycloide wrote...
Warp works on everything even if it's marked as orange with the red 'target has blah blah' message. It does damage to shields the damage is just reduced.

Are you sure? I thought the power was not usable because I couldn't click on the button to select it. Now I'm not sure so I'm going to have to try it tonight.

tetracycloide wrote...
Singularity is not useless. It does stun and DoT things with protection, even if orange, but it only detonates if protection is down.

Agreed. It is very useful in all sorts of situations. It can be used as a trap in choke points. It pulls foes from behind cover. It lasts a long time. It collects multiple foes (even after the original target is dead).
It has two big downsides to balance all of this. First, its cooldown (and thus the cooldown of every biotic power) is huge. Second, it doesn't affect the really big foes (IIRC).

B

The DoT is pathetic compared to Warp. Even though Singularity is on a 4.5 second cooldown compared to Warp's 6 second cooldown, it still doesn't beat Warp in damage. That is because duration on powers is reduced on higher difficulties. Basically, Singularity is being punished twice on Insanity, and Warp becomes even more effective due to the prevelance of enemies with Barrier/Armor. And to add insult to injury, the Sentinel is capable of doing more damage with Warp than the Adept!

[T1l]

Did Christina Norman ever give a reason for why all powers are on a shared cooldown?

Did anyone ever ask? It seems like a really odd design decision; but then again, a lot of the changes made in Mass Effect 2 don't make a lot of sense to me.

Modifié par T1l, 02 février 2010 - 10:05 .

[BuffetPorpoise]

Vanguard really shouldn't be so low.  I'd put it more up at 2nd or 3rd.  I guess I can understand that charge is probably the hardest ability to use correctly cause if you don't know what you're doing, it'll get you killed a lot, but if you know how to use it right, it's incredibly useful (and I only play on Insanity).

Also you shouldn't get hung up on shotguns just because you're playing a vanguard.  I found the tempest SMG to be better.  It does comparable damage but if you miss with a few bullets it's not as big of a deal (which is important when you just charged 3 guys and have to kill them asap) and the clip lasts longer so you're less likely to get smoked while reloading.

Also incendiary ammo is definitly the best ammo in the game cause of the stagger effect it has on unshielded enemies (yeah it's only organics, but there aren't many synthetic enemies in this game).

[SorrowAndJoy7]

Infiltrator is king... right now i'm playing sentinel and to me it just flat out doesn't even compare. I'm sure that has a lot to do with my playstyle but infiltrator face rolls sentinel.

[Skemte]

.. Am I the only one who loved using the Claymore heavy shotgun? Granted it has only 1 fire before you need to reload, it does a absurd amount of damage... Add in melee + with melee increasing gear and research.. And you are a force to be reckoned with.. Add in Barrier, and The slmo version of charge..

[_Dannok1234]

Yay I'm not alone. *cheers BuffetPorpoise*

Charge is usefull on all difficulties and so much fun!

As someone pointed out earlier. On insanity it doesn't really matter which class you're using, you will need to use guns a fair amount. (tho I found adepts and sentinels can get away with using them less then others)
It also seems(to me) like any class has something you will spam. Be it AR for soldiers, Cloak for infiltrators or singularity+warp (yeah both) for adepts.

By the way, all that stuff about health being nothing compared to shields and armor(in terms of usefullness of affecting), I find that quite odd.
Being able to snuff someone out with pull/throw etc and not using a single shot is very useful. Health lasts nearly as long as armor in some cases.(depending on gun/ammo)

Modifié par Dannok1234, 02 février 2010 - 10:24 .

[SsevenN]

I agree with everything you said except singularity, which I DON'T think should affect the Adepts rank in you list anyways.

This is some copypasta explaining why I don't agree.


I've got a level 21 Adept that I've played 100% on insanity.

I don't find it that difficult. But it's definatley a challenge.

From my experience, an Adept on Insanity is the most difficult to play from around level 5 to 16, when you get your extra firearm, and are able to max out Singularity (wide) and warp (heavy) you start to produce massive damage. (Pin them in place with Singularity, direct your squad to target pinned guy, his defenses go down and the singularity lifts him, if it's a tough foe like a boss or krogan I'll send a warp at it in the air. If it's a generic bad guy I'll let my teammates gun him down while I pick a new guy to singularity and stick in place. Rinse and repeat.

But here's the thing, once you hit level 20 with an adept, all the useful powers (for insanity) are maxed out. So I have a feeling it's going to get a bit harder again near the end.

FYI my Adept is as follows

Heavy Warp
No pull
No throw
Wide singularity
Nemisis (maxed passive skill tree for adept)
Heavy Warp Ammo

Here's the thing, I have a couple points to spend now, and I'm going to aquire more, the thing is there is NO useful skill to put the points in. Singularity already does what  pull does, except  sigularity is faster and has an effect regardless of defenses. Throw does some minor damage and speedbumps defenseless guys. Well warp does more damage and singularity speedbumps more consistantly.

So that's the problem I'm seeing now, I have no useful skills to spend my points in anymore. It's going to make for a very interesting playthrough.

[tommythetomcat]

Why whenever someone who loves the Infiltrator talks about how much ass it kicks all I can think of are Rogues in WoW who hide and backstab people and think that equates to skill.

The Infiltrator is a good class no doubt but a lot of classes can beat insanity just as easy sadly they can't just rely on a single weapon and skill to do the work for them.

Modifié par tommythetomcat, 02 février 2010 - 10:30 .

[Looy]

I think the higher difficulties would have been more balanced if they just bumped up the enemies current defences instead of giving them new ones. I.E Enemies that just had health before now just have more health, rather than a token amount of shields that offers virtually no protection versus firearms, yet makes you immune to powers.

[SsevenN]

Looy wrote...

I think the higher difficulties would have been more balanced if they just bumped up the enemies current defences instead of giving them new ones. I.E Enemies that just had health before now just have more health, rather than a token amount of shields that offers virtually no protection versus firearms, yet makes you immune to powers.

I like that idea, I think it offers better balance.

Too bad you just play the game huh?

[ushae]

I agree for the most part. Adepts got the shaft this time around, their Warp and Throw abilities are great but their core talent Singularity is wasted. It should have had a damage over time effect on both shields and health to make it worth taking. The idea behind shields was a very good one, but they needed to make certain talents viable too.

Generally speaking, I think the following talents need a boost.

1- Vanguard needs to have Barrier as a baseline ability for survival.
2- Engineers need somewhat more powerful combat drones. The served as great distractions, but they didn't pack a punch whatever the evolved version.
3- Adept need their abilities to have more armour/shield penetration via Singularity, this talent should also be able to grab enemies with one bar of shielding (i.e. health+shield or barrier)

just my 2 cents worth 

Modifié par ushae, 02 février 2010 - 11:10 .

[RamsenC]

An adept with energy drain, assault rifle, and squad armor piercing ammo from Garrus tears insanity apart.



I would rank sentinel #1 by far though. Soldier and Infiltrator can't compete.

[tetracycloide]

rumination888 wrote...
The DoT is pathetic compared to Warp. Even though Singularity is on a 4.5 second cooldown compared to Warp's 6 second cooldown, it still doesn't beat Warp in damage.

It doesn't by itself but it can generate more damage when effectively applied than warp can.  Take a target with a sliver of protection left, you have a power ready to go what deals more damage:

Two warps would take 6 seconds, one full warp cooldown, to deal 400 damage.
Singularity + warp would take 4.5 seconds to, at a minimum, deal more damage than two warps to the target in question and, ideally, to any other targets withing 5-7 meters (the largest radius of any AoE power as far as I know).

Now sure, after you get reave, it's even better since the DoT is stronger than singularity's DoT but the trade off there is it doesn't CC so if you're fighting, say, a YMIR Mech it's still pumping rounds at you.

That said, singularity is pretty god-awful compared to the unique abilities of other classes.  It doesn't change the way an adept looks at the battlefield the way the others do.  You're never going to do anything as an adept but try to leverage as much damage as you can out of warp/dentonate, not in optimal play anyway, and singularity is nothing more than a means to that end.

Modifié par tetracycloide, 02 février 2010 - 11:51 .

[AlphaJarmel]

tommythetomcat wrote...

Why whenever someone who loves the Infiltrator talks about how much ass it kicks all I can think of are Rogues in WoW who hide and backstab people and think that equates to skill.

The Infiltrator is a good class no doubt but a lot of classes can beat insanity just as easy sadly they can't just rely on a single weapon and skill to do the work for them.

Wrong, it's for a bunch of factors.   The first being the ridiculous damage bonuses you get from the Cloak and the class.  The second being the flexibility in that the Infiltrator can take downy combination of shields, barriers, and armors without the help of their squad which on Insanity is a must.  They have Incinerate for armor, disrupter ammo for shields, and can choose reave for barrier.  Cloak is excellent and debately the best class skill.  All their guns are useful from the get-go unlike the shotgun or the Sentinel that only really starts off with the SMG and heavy pistol.  So from a power point of view, Infiltrator is far and away the best class as it can dish out damage and avoid it as well.

While the different clases are designed for different playstyles there are obviously better overall designed classes and the OP hit on it.   Just because someone can kill another person with a dull knife doesn't make the knife good, it just shows how much skill the user has.  Likewise just because a knife is sharp doesn't mean the user doesn't know how to use the knife just that the knife is sharp.  Stop bringing personal opinions into an intellectual analysis and back up your statement with some facts.

Modifié par AlphaJarmel, 03 février 2010 - 12:10 .

[SorrowAndJoy7]

tommythetomcat wrote...

Why whenever someone who loves the Infiltrator talks about how much ass it kicks all I can think of are Rogues in WoW who hide and backstab people and think that equates to skill.

The Infiltrator is a good class no doubt but a lot of classes can beat insanity just as easy sadly they can't just rely on a single weapon and skill to do the work for them.

Here we go, classic world of warcraft player mentality. My class is teh hard sauce and yours is noob/no skill. Except all classes in wow are easy button combinations repeated adnauseum.

I don't think people who think Infiltrator is the Strongest class think it's the hardest o.O... When did which class is the most powerful become the which class takes the most skill debate. Unlike in wow where everything is a constant e-peen contest, me2 is a solo player game and you just play whatever class you think is the most fun. Oh noes people like infiltrator and I think that class is easy, boo hoo. /rolls eyes

[AlphaJarmel]

Incinerate-Better for Armor than Warp

210 vs 200

Reave-Better for Barriers than warp

440 vs 200

Disrupter Ammo-Better for shields and inorganics

+60% of weapon damage(second smg damage base is 700 per clip) which means 1120 per clip against shields vs 200 points



Oh and we're not even talking about the widow.



Source for weapon info

http://social.biowar.../index/895465/1

[Mordigan]

Skemte wrote...

.. Am I the only one who loved using the Claymore heavy shotgun? Granted it has only 1 fire before you need to reload, it does a absurd amount of damage... Add in melee + with melee increasing gear and research.. And you are a force to be reckoned with.. Add in Barrier, and The slmo version of charge..

No you're not alone

All of these people saying the shotgun is useless or that Charge is useless have no clue.

The Claymore can kill an enemy with two shots (or 1 shot followed by melee), even if they're shielded and armored.  And charge allows you to move around the field of battle, or recharge your shields in the blink of an eye.

I think a lot of people were upset that charge didn't make them "invincible."

[sinosleep]

Mordigan wrote...
No you're not alone

All of these people saying the shotgun is useless or that Charge is useless have no clue.

The Claymore can kill an enemy with two shots (or 1 shot followed by melee), even if they're shielded and armored.  And charge allows you to move around the field of battle, or recharge your shields in the blink of an eye.

I think a lot of people were upset that charge didn't make them "invincible."

Amen to that. My first playthrough was as a 3/4 renegade vanguard on hardcore, tried out an adept on insanity until I picked up Jack and got bored, have now started a paragon vangaurd on insanity. I don't feel any weaker at all really. Even with the default shotgun I mow through vorcha/mercenaries/robots in two shotgun blasts or one shotgun blast and a couple of melee attacks. People who complain about charge must not know what they are doing since I'm having a hard time remembering the last time charge got me killed.

Charge people behind cover then steal theirs. If you are going to charge into a group try to make sure at least one of them has only health left so you can charge that one, send him flying, turn and fire on the other guy, then storm the guy who you sent flying and finish him off. Charge is meant to get you into shotgun range, at which point you can positively WRECK anything that's not an elite enemy.

Modifié par sinosleep, 03 février 2010 - 04:27 .

[tommythetomcat]

I love how I was quoted and people just put words in my mouth. I was commenting on the fact people that play Infiltrator just assume it's the easiest class to beat insanity with, when without a doubt they've never even tried an Engineer. I die far less as an engineer on insanity then a infiltrator, and no I don't suck at aiming.

Modifié par tommythetomcat, 03 février 2010 - 04:32 .

[Mordigan]

sinosleep wrote...

Charge people behind cover then steal theirs. If you are going to charge into a group try to make sure at least one of them has only health left so you can charge that one, send him flying, turn and fire on the other guy, then storm the guy who you sent flying and finish him off. Charge is meant to get you into shotgun range, at which point you can positively WRECK anything that's not an elite enemy.

Yep, here's another good tactic.  Charge an enemy to the rear, kill him, take his cover and now you're behind them while the rest of your team is shooting at them from the front..

Basically, they're now in a crossfire

What bonus power do you use for your Vanguard?  I favor reave myself.  Reave is the best for Vanguard imo. 

[sinosleep]

Mordigan wrote..

Yep, here's another good tactic.  Charge an enemy to the rear, kill him, take his cover and now you're behind them while the rest of your team is shooting at them from the front..

Basically, they're now in a crossfire

What bonus power do you use for your Vanguard?  I favor reave myself.  Reave is the best for Vanguard imo. 

I settled on warp ammo (squad evolution) last game (after trying barrier/fortification/grenade) since I brought Samara along and used her to cast Reave when necessary. This playthrough I'm going to go with armor piercing ammo (damage evolution).

Modifié par sinosleep, 03 février 2010 - 05:56 .

[_Dannok1234]

Do you notice any difference in damage with AP ammo over inferno? I tried it and didn't see it, and with the loss of the panic effect on organics it didn't seem worth it.