26 réponses à ce sujet

[Average Gatsby]

 Let me start off by saying two things:

1) This part of the forum recently has too much QQ controversy instead of Pew Pew controversy, so I wanted to stir that up again and stifle those "other" threads. Campaigns and storylines forum! You'll get 100 responses in an hour!

2) This is not going to be a cut and dry, every instance Attack Drone > Explosive Drone argument, nor will I say that the Attack Drone is leaps and bounds better than Explosive Drone. I will say though, that for the majority of the game, due to the types and situations the drone is used for, the Attack Drone is the better choice.

Myths About Drones:

1) On insanity, your drone dies instantly: False. The drone, as it is upgraded more, not only gets more health but more attack speed. Drones can survive multiple warp hits from vanguards, and shotgun blasts from krogan, even at later levels. At the max level, the drone attack is fast enough enemies outside of YMIR's, Harbinger, and Charging Krogan will be completely neutralized by the stun effect for, if not the full duration, more than 10 seconds. Even Scions will have trouble killing the drone quicker than that.

2) Drone doesn't do any damage until it is attack or explosive: False. The drone does shield damage even from level one. I'm not certain how much, but I believe it is 40 points per hit. The attack drone simply expands that damage to include Armor, Barriers, and Health. The Explosive drone will still do shield damage.

3) Explosive Drone AOE has a knockdown: False. It is a pulse of damage. That pulse has a brief stun effect.

4) Engineers do/should drone spam: False. If your spamming drone for DPS, your playing incredibly inefficiently and doing very low dps vs spamming other powers.

On to the comparison:

Note: For the purposes of this section, I will be strictly talking about damage against health, but technically armor and barrier damage would apply too in certain circumstances. While I am focused on insanity, these principles cover all difficulties, and also because enemies have more health than protection.

1) After 6 seconds against a single target, the Attack drone has greater DPS than the Explosive Drone:
All drones fire off an attack as soon as they are cast, provided they are cast on or near an enemy. So it is not a 3 second wait before the Attack Drone begins to do damage, its starts at around 0-1 seconds. At 3-4 seconds, the Attack drone has done 80 damage, vs the Explosive Drone doing none. The Explosive drone must die before the third attack at around 6-7 seconds after casting in order to do more damage

2) Against 2 targets, the explosive drone must die before the 12 second mark to do equal damage as the attack drone. The attack drone will have had 5 attacks in this time, meaning 200 damage.

3) Against 3 targets, the explosive drone must die before the 21 second mark, or it will do less damage than the attack drone. At 21 seconds, the attack drone has done 320 damage. If it survives fully, the attack drone will do 360 damage.

4) With 4 or more targets in rage, the explosive drone is always better.

5) Attack drone benefits near equally in total damage when paired with Mechanic or Demolisher: After 24 seconds, Demolisher attack drone will have done 414 damage. After 27.6 seconds, the Attack Drone has done 400 damage.

Now I would like to note that this becomes less clear against enemies with lots of shields, because it depends greatly on whether the engineer or her allies are using the drone before shields are down or after they are down. If before, and not using overload (which would probably be unwise not to use), explosive drone will do more total damage. I'm not going to attempt to calculate that here but it makes the explosive drone somewhat more attractive vs mercs, unless they are spread out.

I have a video on this for my engineer guide coming later today, but I thought I'd just stir up some discussion before the video is ready. Debate me.

[Spyndel]

Engineer is the one class Ive not played as yet, and Im sure the Shepard version of that power is probably better than the squad version.



But I've never seen a squad drone, even fully upgraded, last longer than a couple seconds on Insanity. I'd be hard pressed to see how its not better to just turn it into a bomb at that point.

[Arde5643]

Damn, nice work, Gatsby - I've always preferred the attack drone since my engineer gameplay use Ai hack/cyro to its fullest and I rarely spam drones every cooldown recharge unless it's again YMIR.



Like you said, the explosive drone will still not do as well unless it's going against a YMIR, charging krogan, or high level lieutenants.

Only the enemy affected by the drone will attack the drone and most enemies just focus on you or your teammates so the effectiveness of the explosive drone is halved already.



Can't wait to see more of the debate following this.



Suggestion for next thread : you should try to find the usefulness of shockwave for adept/vanguard since that will also bring lots of great discussion.

I think I'm probably the only one who supports using shockwave besides thisisme.

[Grand_Commander13]

Can you talk about the stun on the Explosive Drone vs Attack Drone? I observed much better stun on attack from the Attack Drone (stun locking Scions, etc...), but that might just be because I switched to Attack Drone after I had learned how to employ the thing better and because the best spot to observe it I only went through with the AD. Do they both stun the same with their attacks?

[Arde5643]

Good point, Grand_Commander:



Gatsby, do the stun from attack drone fully stun any protected opponent instead of just staggering them like how the explosive drone sometimes do when attacking non-shielded enemies?

[kefka004]

I absolutely agree. However, I have to wonder what the better option for Tali/Legion is. Their drones don't seem to survive as long as Shepard's drone, so I've been using explosive drone for them in my current Soldier playthrough. I really wish I could respec my teammates so I could test them both.

[Average Gatsby]

Grand_Commander13 wrote...

Can you talk about the stun on the Explosive Drone vs Attack Drone? I observed much better stun on attack from the Attack Drone (stun locking Scions, etc...), but that might just be because I switched to Attack Drone after I had learned how to employ the thing better and because the best spot to observe it I only went through with the AD. Do they both stun the same with their attacks?

They should. The Explosive drone has the same attack speed of 3 seconds as the AD. I haven't seen any difference as far as insufficiency to keeping something stun locked with the explosive drone.

One thing I have noticed is that the stun lock effect on scions can vary wildly. I once did a collector platform run where I cast my AD and it never died from a scions attack. Other times its died in about 10 seconds or so. I think this is because the scion is an easily confused enemy, and if it keeps having the option to target multiple enemies, its attack speed drops. Thats why you'll notice that when you and your allies are all moving around and it keeps switching targets it will rarely fire, whereas when just shepard is alive and standing still it'll seem to rapid fire that shockwave.

[Arde5643]

@Kefka:
For Legion, if you max his passive skill to get the bonus cooldown, attack drone is probably best.
He can use drones every 18 seconds so this helps out a lot.

For Tali, I hardly max her combat drone since AI hack and energy drain are more useful than her drone (heresy, I know). Since the drone won't last long enough to counter her awful 24 second cooldown, I mostly use her for area energy drain and AI hack (lvl 3 or maxxed to heavy AI hack).

Modifié par Arde5643, 07 mars 2010 - 12:34 .

[Spyndel]

Arde5643 wrote...

@Kefka:
For Legion, if you max his passive skill to get the bonus cooldown, attack drone is probably best.
He can use drones every 18 seconds so this helps out a lot.

For Tali, I hardly max her combat drone since AI hack and energy drain are more useful than her drone (heresy, I know). Since the drone won't last long enough to counter her awful 24 second cooldown, I mostly use her for area energy drain and AI hack (lvl 3 or maxxed to heavy AI hack).

Against the type of enemies you're probably fighting with a tech specialist in your squad, AI hacking seems like a superior version of Combat drone anyways.  Maxed out, it creates a far more durable "drone", with probably as good an attack or better, that seems superior at attracting enemy attention, and is far more likely to last the entire duration of the ability than Combat drone is.

But I'm probably doing something wrong, as usual.

[Arde5643]

Nope, you're right, Spyndel.



AI hacking is the better choice of power to go with when using either Legion or Tali - however, for Legion at least, maxxing drone to an attack drone isn't a bad choice since with his max passive upgrade he can recharge every 18 seconds.



For Tali, area energy drain proves far too useful compared to her passive skills and drone ability. It attacks shields and synthetics, extends her survivability even better than Legion's GSB, making sure that she's your main AI hacker in the team.





Sorry for derailing the thread, Gatsby - I really don't have any disagreement on the attack>explosive drone since my playthrough with the engineer proves the same thing.

The explosive drone so far is far more situational than the attack drone.

[Average Gatsby]

Arde5643 wrote...

Nope, you're right, Spyndel.

AI hacking is the better choice of power to go with when using either Legion or Tali - however, for Legion at least, maxxing drone to an attack drone isn't a bad choice since with his max passive upgrade he can recharge every 18 seconds.

For Tali, area energy drain proves far too useful compared to her passive skills and drone ability. It attacks shields and synthetics, extends her survivability even better than Legion's GSB, making sure that she's your main AI hacker in the team.


Sorry for derailing the thread, Gatsby - I really don't have any disagreement on the attack>explosive drone since my playthrough with the engineer proves the same thing.
The explosive drone so far is far more situational than the attack drone.

No its not derailing pointing out that CD is just simply not as good as the other moves available to Tali or Legion. However, I'm going to be testing out what 2 CD's on one target is like, if it produces a mega-stun or if it is pretty much useless. So if it does work like a trapping effect, it may make CD more viable on legion. Tali is just... lackluster...

[FoFoZem]

I've always been an Explosive Drone guy.



Your points are nothing but valid and persuasive.



However for someone like me who rarely uses drone, and does so for the hardest enemies usually, I think Explosive wins out. For me it's a quick distract -> damage boost

[kefka004]

Average Gatsby wrote...

Arde5643 wrote...

Nope, you're right, Spyndel.

AI hacking is the better choice of power to go with when using either Legion or Tali - however, for Legion at least, maxxing drone to an attack drone isn't a bad choice since with his max passive upgrade he can recharge every 18 seconds.

For Tali, area energy drain proves far too useful compared to her passive skills and drone ability. It attacks shields and synthetics, extends her survivability even better than Legion's GSB, making sure that she's your main AI hacker in the team.


Sorry for derailing the thread, Gatsby - I really don't have any disagreement on the attack>explosive drone since my playthrough with the engineer proves the same thing.
The explosive drone so far is far more situational than the attack drone.

No its not derailing pointing out that CD is just simply not as good as the other moves available to Tali or Legion. However, I'm going to be testing out what 2 CD's on one target is like, if it produces a mega-stun or if it is pretty much useless. So if it does work like a trapping effect, it may make CD more viable on legion. Tali is just... lackluster...

Before the Eviscerator was available I would have agreed with you about Tali being lackluster, but it makes her (and the other shotgun based party members) a heck of a lot more viable on insanity.  I've been using a party of Jack and Tali with my soldier and I have to say that between CD, Shockwave/Pull, and Squad Cryo ammo I can play my soldier much more aggressively than I'm used to playing it.  I know that someone like Grunt would probably fulfill the CC role better than Tali, but hey it's viable and I'm enjoying myself

As for hacking>CD, for synthetic heavy missions I completely agree.  If I could respec my party members I'd definitely drop the drone altogether and take improved hacking.  But, since I can't and since I use Tali in a much broader role than simply anti-Geth, I favor maxing out the drone and leave AI Hacking at level 2 so that my target gets a shield.

[Xanfaus]

Average Gatsby wrote...

No its not derailing pointing out that CD is just simply not as good as the other moves available to Tali or Legion. However, I'm going to be testing out what 2 CD's on one target is like, if it produces a mega-stun or if it is pretty much useless. So if it does work like a trapping effect, it may make CD more viable on legion. Tali is just... lackluster...

I have been testing this with Tali and afterwards with Legion. Its works fairly well since if the enemy manages to kill one drone, it will immediately target the other drone and by then Shepard's cooldown will be over and the drone can be respawned.

As a side note, two drones on a scion is absolutely hilarious. The scion generally spends most of its time rapidly switching targets, never firing off a shockwave before it expires pitifully.  

[qq151069]

Average Gatsby wrote...

4) Engineers do/should drone spam: False. If your spamming drone for DPS, your playing incredibly inefficiently and doing very low dps vs spamming other powers.

I'm a horrible engineer and will be the first to admit that I drone spam.  But one thing that I do like about drone spamming is for the pseudo-CC effect it provides.  By constantly refreshing the drone, it often buys me quite a bit of time to go pew-pew on targets.

Most of all, I can stand outside of cover and wittle away at YMIR mechs by throwing the drone behind him. 
(That is until the Loki mechs behind him comes up and kills me, but that's another story).

Edit: I play a very passive engineer so the drone-spam also gives me more time to flank and move. 

Modifié par qq151069, 07 mars 2010 - 04:44 .

[Arde5643]

qq151069 wrote...

Average Gatsby wrote...

4) Engineers do/should drone spam: False. If your spamming drone for DPS, your playing incredibly inefficiently and doing very low dps vs spamming other powers.

I'm a horrible engineer and will be the first to admit that I drone spam.  But one thing that I do like about drone spamming is for the pseudo-CC effect it provides.  By constantly refreshing the drone, it often buys me quite a bit of time to go pew-pew on targets.

Most of all, I can stand outside of cover and wittle away at YMIR mechs by throwing the drone behind him. 
(That is until the Loki mechs behind him comes up and kills me, but that's another story).

Edit: I play a very passive engineer so the drone-spam also gives me more time to flank and move. 

Do you use viper or assault rifle as a passive/defensive engineer?
It seems viper might work well if you can keep enemy at bay with cyro/ai hack/dominate/drone.

[qq151069]

Arde5643 wrote...

Do you use viper or assault rifle as a passive/defensive engineer?
It seems viper might work well if you can keep enemy at bay with cyro/ai hack/dominate/drone.

I used the viper.  But I am a big fan of sniper rifles.  The vindicator would also be a good choice as well, but the viper was a better fit for my playstyle. 

[DragoonKain3]

I see this the same way I see Heavy vs Wide Singularity. Wide is better for general stuff, while Heavy is better for situational stuff. In the same way, Attack Drone is better for general targets, while Explosive becomes situational.

But quite unlike the Singularity debate, where Heavy Singularity does its situational job extremely well that no other power available to them can do (read: disabling tragets with protection like Harbingers, Scions, Krogans, etc.) and the general stuff almost as well as Wide (it still has a 1.2m AoE which with it sticking around past its cast time makes it almost as useful as wide in general cases), this is not the case with Combat Drone. 

Explosive Drone is only really better against single target bosses and melee rushes, where they tend to bunch up so they get blasted by the pulse blast. Granted, melee rushes are probably the Engineers main weakpoint as they have no 3s cd instakill power against them, but my problem with this is that Explosive doesn't even do it all that well. It stuns briefly, but I find that even the 100 point pulse isn't even enough to knock down their armor, in order to set them up for Cryoblast/incinerate blast instakill. And against single target bosses, I find Attack Drone at the very least survives long enough to get its second attack off, meaning it will already do 80% of the damage you'd get with explosive, and maybe even more if it survives longer.

Of course, against minions, it's not even a question which is better. A lot of times, I have to reposition the drone simply because it tanks a wee bit too well, meaning that I do no damage with explosive drone at all. Heck, there were a number of times where the drone died due to its duration expiring.

So yeah, there are situations where explosive is better, but those situations are not numerous, not particularly dangerous, not situations where your other powers can't handle it, nor are those situations done particularly well anyway by explosive drone. So unlike my preference for the specialized Heavy Singularity, I'd have to put my vote in for the general Attack Drone for the Engineer as my evolution of choice.

[Cookie775]

I'm using Attack Drone over Explosive Drone on my current insanity run with the engie, it does it's job well. I honestly don't miss the damage form the explosive drone, I use it primarily for the CC, and quicker attack means more stuns.



I almost forgot how easy things get because of this drone, the toughest enemies in the game are a complete joke.

[Lumenadducere]

Yeah, I think a lot of this depends on how you use the drone. I use it primarily as CC on tough enemies and bosses, so the drone dies fairly quickly. Judging by what you've written (and the video) I can definitely see how the attack drone is more useful when up against almost anything else, so for anyone that uses it with some regularity they probably want to go with attack drone.

[Orfinn]

I may think the explo drone needs some damage boost with like 20-50 points in an update to be justified.

I've still got to play an Engineer though..

[Arde5643]

The fully upgraded attack drone can actually kill a regular mook by itself or get it to close death without your help at all.

[Average Gatsby]

If they ever upgraded the explosive drone, what I want is an AOE knockdown.

[RighteousRage]

I've already been using attack drone on my engineer this whole time because, well, it's better, haha

[Arde5643]

Average Gatsby wrote...

If they ever upgraded the explosive drone, what I want is an AOE knockdown.

Something similar to the sentinel's AoE knockdown will be a huge reason to choose it over the attack drone.