28 réponses à ce sujet

[Sabresandiego]

1. If you have both, when is it better to use one over the other?

2. Ive noticed that unstable warp sometimes causes a huge explosion, and sometimes is just a mini attack. Why is that?

3. Reave vs Warp please some details thx

Edit: I have learned biotics much better since I created this thread. Mainly that using your squad to setup biotic combos makes the game trivial even on insanity. I personally think reave is the best standalone ability in the game, but warp explosion is easily the coolest ability and maybe the most powerful. So I now use both, area reave to strip defenses, pull field to setup a warp explosion, unstable warp for a big warp explosion.

is a video of the combo in action.

Modifié par Sabresandiego, 24 février 2010 - 11:33 .

[rumination888]

To answer your 2nd question:
All ranks of Warp cause detonations. Warp detonations are caused when the enemy is at their red health bar and they're being lifted by either Pull, Slam, or Singularity.

[Staylost]

Other threads on this.



Reave is better on easier difficulties, better for Soldiers, and has a slightly higher max damage possible for the "heavy" version of warp/reave. Reave is instant like most tech powers.



Warp is better if the enemy is currently being slammed, pulled, singularitied, etc.



In reality the difference is irrelevent. If you have a character that can use warp, just use warp. If you don't have a character with warp, but want this powerful defense stripper, you'll have to take Reave.



They are both good, so it is no big sacrifice either way.

[Sabresandiego]

Ok the explosions Ive been seeing from warp are called warp explosions. Im getting warp explosions under the following circumstances tested on collectors on the last mission end of the game:



Enemy has a barrier

Enemy has armor



Im not getting warp explosions when:



enemy is at health bar with no armor or shields

[cruc1al]

huh, that's never happened to me

[Sabresandiego]

Staylost wrote...

Other threads on this.

Reave is better on easier difficulties, better for Soldiers, and has a slightly higher max damage possible for the "heavy" version of warp/reave. Reave is instant like most tech powers.

Warp is better if the enemy is currently being slammed, pulled, singularitied, etc.

In reality the difference is irrelevent. If you have a character that can use warp, just use warp. If you don't have a character with warp, but want this powerful defense stripper, you'll have to take Reave.

They are both good, so it is no big sacrifice either way.

This info is wrong, reave and warp are biotics not tech. Also, Reave is very good on insanity. Im still not sure why I can get warp explosions on collectors by just casting warp on them before their shields drop. On harbingers, every warp is an explosion.

[Coughee Brotha]

If you have warp stick with it. Reave is a really useful skill if you dont have it. For what reave does double damage to barriers and armors. it also drains the health from organics and gives a temporary health boost. Also organics being effected by reave writhe in pain leaving them open to additional fire.

[Coughee Brotha]

Sabresandiego wrote...

Staylost wrote...

Other threads on this.

Reave is better on easier difficulties, better for Soldiers, and has a slightly higher max damage possible for the "heavy" version of warp/reave. Reave is instant like most tech powers.

Warp is better if the enemy is currently being slammed, pulled, singularitied, etc.

In reality the difference is irrelevent. If you have a character that can use warp, just use warp. If you don't have a character with warp, but want this powerful defense stripper, you'll have to take Reave.

They are both good, so it is no big sacrifice either way.

This info is wrong, reave and warp are biotics not tech. Also, Reave is very good on insanity. Im still not sure why I can get warp explosions on collectors by just casting warp on them before their shields drop. On harbingers, every warp is an explosion.

I dont think he was saying they were tech powers but saying that reave shoots instantaneously like tech powers

[Roxlimn]

Sabressabdiego:



As far as I can tell, there's a graphic and there's a meaty sound when a Warp hits a Barrier, but there is no actual area effect going on. It's just doing 2x damage to the Barrier, which is a base property of both Warp and Reave.

[Sabresandiego]

I see roxlimn, is the graphic for warp hitting a barrier the same as the graphic for warp explosion?

[Roxlimn]

No. The graphic for Warp Explosion is a very clearly delineated AoE around the Warp target - normally around 5 meters in radius, so it's a little hard to mistake it for anything else, since it's so big. The graphic for a Warp hitting a Barrier isn't that large, but it appears similar (to me, anyway) - only smaller.

[DragoonKain3]

Reave is straight up better, particularly the Area version. The best way to use it is to Reave every cooldown, shooting/reloading your weapon in between.



When you need a health boost, pause the game and look for an unprotected organic and Reave them. If you can't find one, use a teammate with a protection stripper power (Overloaders against Blue Sun organics, Mordin or Samara later on against armored/barriered enemies) and fire off reave. It's instant travel time means you are in no danger to be killed even under fire as long as you have ~1/3 health remaining and no rocket troopers are around (which should always be public enemy #1 regardless of your class/powers).



Against synthetics, you gotta use Warp Explosion combo with Adepts, or Area Overload with Sentinel, and play much more defensively with either, as Reave does not CC synthetics nor does it regain your health against them. But for everything else, Area Reaving does it better and faster than trying to set up warp explosions, as you don't need to hide to behind cover for like 5 seconds every time you're low at health. and you do AoE damage, CC, AND constant gun toting all non-stop.



I see you've played Dragon Age. As an analagy, Reave basically is Warp against protected units (ie. someone with shields/barriers/armor), but Reave is also the equivalent of Blood Wound against unprotected organics that makes you GAIN health instead of spend it. And if you've played with BW with Blood Mage spec in DAO, you'd know how crazy powerful BW already is; add on to that health gain, and yes, its THAT broken if you know how to use it.

[SmilingMirror]

Reave is not better than Warp....they are two of the most useful damage biotics, each with different purposes.

[Roxlimn]

DragoonKain3:



Nonsense. Setting up Warp Explosions can be instantaneous. Reave may take less resources, but it is not a faster deploy power.

[Vaern Sul]

Agreed with Roxlimm. Mass Pull + Warp clean the house every time you sucessfully use it.



That is why Jacob is not that bad a companion. (At least ofr me, as a Sentinel)

[DragoonKain3]

@Roxlimn

Nonsense. Setting up Warp Explosions can be instantaneous. Reave may take less resources, but it is not a faster deploy power.

What I meant is getting the entire job done, as you can start playing offensively with the skill even in Insanity.

With Reave, you almost never have 'downtime' against organics. Either you are shooting, reaving, or reloading every single step of the way.

Without it as an Adept, you can not nearly have as much time out of cover as you do not have any powers that lead to replenish your health/shields, and so less DPS right there because you're not shooting your gun as nearly as much per unit of time. Add to fact that you have to actually wait for like 5 seconds once you're low on health means even MORE time taken to complete the mission.

So yes, overall, relying on WE as your main tactic takes time, mainly because, as you said, it takes less resources to use Reave. And in a lot of situations, like melee rushes, advancing heavy enemies, or timered missions, time is of the essence. You simply cannot wait under these conditions.


@Vaern Sul

Mass Pull + Warp clean the house every time you sucessfully use it.

Not in insanity it doesn't. Which is basically where all this min/maxing, number crunching, and powergaming actually matters.

For the record, most minions survive WE at full health in Insanity. And since every enemy has some sort of protection, you wouldn't even be able to pull in the first place, much less mass pull.

[E96 B]

Warp was awesome as an Adept on veteran because you get throw a singularity, a wave of enemies would walk into it then you detonate it with Warp.

With my Sentinel I use Reave since it won't work with Throw.

[Roxlimn]

DragonKain3:

What I meant is getting the entire job done, as you can start playing offensively with the skill even in Insanity.

With Reave, you almost never have 'downtime' against organics. Either you are shooting, reaving, or reloading every single step of the way.

Without it as an Adept, you can not nearly have as much time out of cover as you do not have any powers that lead to replenish your health/shields, and so less DPS right there because you're not shooting your gun as nearly as much per unit of time. Add to fact that you have to actually wait for like 5 seconds once you're low on health means even MORE time taken to complete the mission.

So yes, overall, relying on WE as your main tactic takes time, mainly because, as you said, it takes less resources to use Reave. And in a lot of situations, like melee rushes, advancing heavy enemies, or timered missions, time is of the essence. You simply cannot wait under these conditions.

Hm... haven't had problems clearing those, and I'm not using Reave. As for time shooting - well, generally Warp Explosion is used against groups of mooks bunched up together. Once you get that off, you can be pretty aggressive about moving up and mopping up the remains. You're right that one WE won't kill a bunch of enemies, but once you get that off, the defenses are usually off and you can pretty much do what you want with them. No need to regen - you should not have taken much damage to begin with.

Clearly, you haven't tried the tactic yet, since you don't know how it works.  Defenses are not a problem.

Here's the setup:  Grab a squaddie who can strip defenses in one shot.  Target the center mook, clear his defenses.  Should take less than a sec.  Pull the guy - should also be nearly instant if using Jacob or Jack.  Then deploy your Warp.  Instant Warp Explosion.

I believe that when you say, "It takes time," you're referring to Gatsby's tactic of setting up a trap and detonating a floating mook after stripping defenses with guns.  I am not talking about that.  I'm talking about clearing entire sections of the game without firing a shot at all.

Modifié par Roxlimn, 24 février 2010 - 09:16 .

[DragoonKain3]

Roxlimn wrote...

Hm... haven't had problems clearing those, and I'm not using Reave.

In Insanity? Trying to clear IFF mission with WE's (impossible) and Dominates (inefficient) might be possible, but I certainly don't think you'd have no problem doing it. Or at least, not nearly as easy as it would've been if you used Area Reave. >_>

As for time shooting - well, generally Warp Explosion is used against groups of mooks bunched up together. Once you get that off, you can be pretty aggressive about moving up and mopping up the remains. You're right that one WE won't kill a bunch of enemies, but once you get that off, the defenses are usually off and you can pretty much do what you want with them.

Incorrect. Enemies at a sliver of their hp does as much damage as full hp. You still have to exercise caution when 'mopping' up enemies this way, especially since anyone caught in the explosion with protection still up (which is all the enemies around the WE'ed guy) will not be thrown off by the blast. This means they are still shooting at you, allowing the exploded guy time back up, AND you need to set up another WE to clear them all.

Which in total is more or less 2.5 cds worth of warp (since you need to do the lifting yourself for the second WE, as your third member is the one who stripped the defenses in the first place) to clear just one group of enemies. Note that while doing this tactic, you will NOT be using your gun often since you have no way to recharge your health apart from not taking damage for 5 seconds or so.

Compare this to double Area Reave with a teammate. One Area Reave to clear protection, another to CC/damage them. After its just a matter of shooting them down, which should be real quick since you get a damage bonus already. Then you move on to your next target.

Granted, Samara's CD won't be up by the time Shepard's will be, but that's the beauty of the timing. You can strip another group of their protection with Shephard at around the 3.6sec mark, then at 7.2s mark when both Samara's and Shephards CD are both up again, you can now choose between the two who gets to CC the unprotected group in order to regain health. This usually ends up being Shepard because enemies tend to shoot at him; in any case, the fact that from on you should have at least one unprotected enemy means that you can regen 200+ health every 3.2seconds from now on. Allowing you to shoot for as long as you like, of course.

So in essence, you can clear 1 group of enemies within maybe 1 to 1.5 cds worth of warp. Why so much faster than WE? Because, again, you can shoot your gun non-stop because you know you regen 200+ health every 3.2 seconds or so.

No need to regen - you should not have taken much damage to begin with.

That's because you've been hiding under cover for most of the time. With Area Reave, you can pretty much go trigger happy out of cover

Clearly, you haven't tried the tactic yet, since you don't know how it works.  Defenses are not a problem.

Defenses its not my problem; that can be taken care of with enough time. Its the amount of time and resources taken in order to set up WEs that's my problem.

Here's the setup:  Grab a squaddie who can strip defenses in one shot.  Target the center mook, clear his defenses.  Should take less than a sec.  Pull the guy - should also be nearly instant if using Jacob or Jack.  Then deploy your Warp.  Instant Warp Explosion.

And as I have said before, you need another WE to actually clear the group out, as you won't be doing the gun dps. And again, that takes more time.

To be quite frank, it takes less time/resources to do double Area Reave as it is to set up one WE. This is because with WE, you need one person to strip defense, another to lift, and another to detonate; you need an entire team to do it 'instantly'. Sure you do major damage to one target, but you only strip the defenses of the ones around that guy. Compare that to double reave, where you only need 2 people to strip not only an entire 3metres worth of enemy defenses, but also CC and damage them as well. All this while recovering your health, allowing you to gun them down to death, which is not possible with WE without the need to regene your health back.

I believe that when you say, "It takes time," you're referring to Gatsby's tactic of setting up a trap and detonating a floating mook after stripping defenses with guns.  I am not talking about that.  I'm talking about clearing entire sections of the game without firing a shot at all.

Considering I played the tactic of 'clearing entire sections of the game without firing a shot at all' for all the times before I got Area Reave, I think I know what I'm talking about how incredibly inefficient it is. I can tell you know, WE was my bread and butter before I unlocked Samara's loyalty mission. And once I started Area Reaving + shooting non-stop against organics, I NEVER looked back, because organic missions proceeded so much smoother because of it.

[Varenus Luckmann]

From what I've been gathering, Reave is better overall. But since you can only have one Bonus Talent, the difference isn't big enough to warrant putting points in Reave instead of Warp, because they are so similar.

It is much better to invest your one bonus talent in something that is really functionally different, such as Barrier or Dominate.

rumination888 wrote...
To answer your 2nd question:
All ranks of Warp cause detonations. Warp detonations are caused when the enemy is at their red health bar and they're being lifted by either Pull, Slam, or Singularity.

Not just Pull, Slam or Singularity, but any biotic that "blues" your enemy.

Such as Dominate. Dominate has the advantage of not pushing or pulling your enemy away, and being instant (no fly time). This means that you can dominate someone in the middle of a pack of enemies and throw a Warp on them, detonating them.

And that's nothing short of amazing.

Modifié par Varenus Luckmann, 24 février 2010 - 11:44 .

[Arhka]

I favor Reave over Warp since I don't have powers to set-up a Warp Explosion with Sentinel powers, and because I favor a tech-oriented team. Also, Reave is very nice for setting up headshots on unshielded enemies.

[Roxlimn]

 DragonKain3:

I want to clear the air here a little bit.  I'd like some detailed instructions and some specific material here.  I WANT to see the awesomeness that is Area Reave, but I just haven't been able to do it.  Since you say it's better than Warp, I just want to know that we're on the same page.

In Insanity? Trying to clear IFF mission with WE's (impossible) and Dominates (inefficient) might be possible, but I certainly don't think you'd have no problem doing it. Or at least, not nearly as easy as it would've been if you used Area Reave. >_>

Don't use Warp Explosions or Dominates for that.  I use Throw and Throw Field.

Incorrect. Enemies at a sliver of their hp does as much damage as full hp. You still have to exercise caution when 'mopping' up enemies this way, especially since anyone caught in the explosion with protection still up (which is all the enemies around the WE'ed guy) will not be thrown off by the blast. This means they are still shooting at you, allowing the exploded guy time back up, AND you need to set up another WE to clear them all.

Which in total is more or less 2.5 cds worth of warp (since you need to do the lifting yourself for the second WE, as your third member is the one who stripped the defenses in the first place) to clear just one group of enemies. Note that while doing this tactic, you will NOT be using your gun often since you have no way to recharge your health apart from not taking damage for 5 seconds or so.

Compare this to double Area Reave with a teammate. One Area Reave to clear protection, another to CC/damage them. After its just a matter of shooting them down, which should be real quick since you get a damage bonus already. Then you move on to your next target.

Granted, Samara's CD won't be up by the time Shepard's will be, but that's the beauty of the timing. You can strip another group of their protection with Shephard at around the 3.6sec mark, then at 7.2s mark when both Samara's and Shephards CD are both up again, you can now choose between the two who gets to CC the unprotected group in order to regain health. This usually ends up being Shepard because enemies tend to shoot at him; in any case, the fact that from on you should have at least one unprotected enemy means that you can regen 200+ health every 3.2seconds from now on. Allowing you to shoot for as long as you like, of course.

So in essence, you can clear 1 group of enemies within maybe 1 to 1.5 cds worth of warp. Why so much faster than WE? Because, again, you can shoot your gun non-stop because you know you regen 200+ health every 3.2 seconds or so.

Well, here's the thing.  Even on Insanity, even on the Suicide Mission, guys like Drones are easily cleared of defenses AND thrown off with one application of Unstable Warp (not even Heavy Warp).  Average Gatsby demonstrates how to do this on his Suicide Mission video run, if you want to see a demo of it.  I know it works because that's what I do (except I don't generally use Singularity to start off the Warp Explosion).

This should work for most of the game since you can easily ramp up biotic upgrades especially after Horizon, and Reave and Warp are both biotic powers with similar defense stripping capabilities anyway.

I can confirm that even full-protection enemies caught in the WE blast WILL be thrown off as long as the defense is stripped and some Health damage is taken.  You can also see this in rumination888's video in the ***** Biotics thread where he uses Reave on a Soldier to strip defenses and Pull+Warp for the win.

Generally, a well-placed WE will clear the encounter area of most significant threats and you can just advance aggressively without anyone shooting at you.  Then finish off the threats with Pulls and Throws to keep them down.

This takes up 2 Warps (or Overload), and 1 Pull, which is half the cooldown of Warp - 2.5 CDs spread over the squad as you figure.  It also covers a 7 meter radius, which is no small thing.

My problem with using Reave in my games is that its area is only 3 meters in radius, which is usually only enough to catch 2 enemies, where an encounter could have 6 or 7, and 2 applications of Area Reave will only usually remove 2 enemies, with the remaining enemies still having their protections up.

Specific point to illustrate: Collector platform.  When those things come in, the Drones are usually spaced such that they cannot be all be hit with a 3 meter radius power (or so I noted - am I mistaken?).  You can remove one Drone with 2 applications of Area Reave, but one Unstable Warp Explosion placed correctly will clear the platform even before it sets down - and the next platforms usually arrive long enough that any cool down is moot (self-tested.  Can provide notes).

Example #2: In the Grunt recruitment mission, Heavies will sometimes place themselves at opposite ends of a long panel cover.  From my use of Throw Field to control these enemies, I can estimate a 3 meter radius area, and that is in no way sufficient to cover more than 2 enemies in most cases.  Unstable Warp's 7 meter radius is more than twice the radius - over FIVE times the area.  This is easily enough to cover nearly half a Collector Platform - enough to span a medium length cover panel, enough, in fact, to engulf the entire back cover of a large crate with generous room to spare.  It covers nearly the entirety of an end corridor segment in Ilium.  

It is common for me to catch three enemies in this area, sometimes 4 or 5 in close quarters like Ilium Spaceport or Eclipse Headquarters.

How can I cover the same area with Area Reaves?  Is there some trick to getting them to bunch up?

My estimate of the limits of 3 meters is the three bunched Collectors you stumble on in the Tech section of the Suicide Mission.  THOSE you can double Area Reave and I have no doubt that in that instance, you will gain 1 Pull's worth of cool down on a WE.

Do we have video of Area Reave in action here on the forums?

Defenses its not my problem; that can be taken care of with enough time. Its the amount of time and resources taken in order to set up WEs that's my problem.

Time?  No time.  It's nearly instant, as I said.  Additional resources is 1 Pull extra.

Considering I played the tactic of 'clearing entire sections of the game without firing a shot at all' for all the times before I got Area Reave, I think I know what I'm talking about how incredibly inefficient it is. I can tell you know, WE was my bread and butter before I unlocked Samara's loyalty mission. And once I started Area Reaving + shooting non-stop against organics, I NEVER looked back, because organic missions proceeded so much smoother because of it.

Is that the secret?  So I'm not supposed to seek cover?  The times I've tried that under Reave on Insanity I almost always died.  Is there some trick to it?

[akintu]

Reave is an overrated ability, and some here are overstating its advantages. Don't get me wrong, it is an excellent ability, but it is not the end all be all.



Caveat: I've mostly played with a Sentinel.



Reave is great on a class without Warp. I find it Meh on a class with Warp. Dominate is better, in my opinion. For a Sentinel (at least), the health effect is irrelevant (and I believe the usefulness of the health effect has been dramatically overstated in this thread, even for an Adept).



Reave: Strips armor and barrier. Crowd Control and DOT on health. Can be detonated with Warp in the right situation, with the right upgrades to cooldown.

Dominate: Crowd Control on health. Can be detonated with Warp quite easily. Distracts most enemies away from you. Indirect DOT due to enemies firing on dominated target. Dominated target provides indirect DOT to enemies around him. A hit with Warp detonates and does damage to enemies in large radius.



Basically, by the time my first dominate and warp explosion is off of cooldowns, there are multiple targets with stripped defenses ready to be dominated, followed by another warp explosion. It goes outrageously fast. Dominate > Warp > Dominate > Warp, etc. The slowest part of a fight is the opener, stripping the defenses of the proper target, but once that happens, its like falling dominos. The whole thing snowballs and ends quite fast.

[Gaidren]

Having played an Engineer with Reave most of the game, and then played an Adept with Warp (but no Reave)....



I Reave, and hate Warp.....largely because of the instant cast nature of Reave, and the fact that Reave on an unshielded organic = crowd control. It's actually great crowd control...they go to their knees for a sec or two, then stand perfectly upright...making headshots easy. *AND* you get health back at the same time, negating some of the damage you take from other enemies as you fire off those headshots.



Warp annoys me. It does zero CC on an unshielded enemy, and it has a travel time. Yes, you can fire it around corners and such but it can easily miss on enemies moving in/out of cover. If I can see the enemy when I fire Reave, it hits. Simple.



Warp explosions are the only sexy thing about Warp. They are situationally awesome, but on single targets they are no big deal.



Long story short: Take Reave and love it with Engineers/Sentinels. Take Energy Drain with Adepts since they don't have Overload and learn to live with Warp.

[the120Truth]

Gaidren wrote...


Long story short: Take Reave and love it with Engineers/Sentinels. Take Energy Drain with Adepts since they don't have Overload and learn to live with Warp.

agreed, Reave is slightly better than warp, but if you already have warp, the amount you gain from using reave over warp is less than what you gain by using a different bonus power (barrier for defense, energy drain for shield, or an ammo power)