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I played a few matches with the new DLC, i only unlocked the new quarian infiltrator and the new sniper. Tactical scan will be VERY useful on gold against big enemies, although it is rather slow to target. The sniper isnt even a sniper, its a mini rocket launcher and it is extremely good. However due to the rocket delay its impossible to quick scope, making it very difficult for me to use it. The new "shotgun" also seems to be very good, it essentially seems to be an "electric flamethrower" or the "ghostbuster gun". Im disappointed to find out the harrier is N7 listed, due to its limited amo it seems far worse than the other two weapons.

vodo40k wrote:However due to the rocket delay its impossible to quick scope, making it very difficult for me to use it.

The shots are semi-homing. You can still quick-scope with it because as long as the reticule is over the target when you pull the trigger the shot should hit or land close. Also, try aiming for the feet. It's an explosive, splash damage weapon allowing you to insta-kill multiple enemies within close proximity.

So far I have unlocked the following:

Phoenix Adept - Interesting, but Singularity is a complete waste on this character. There is no reason to ever put points into it over specing melee damage in Fitness. Between Smash and Heavy Melee, the adept does plenty of close range damage, and can set up/detonate biotic explosions with Lash. It can also rip targets out of cover and into the line of sight of other ranged characters, though usually Lash is enough to kill anything without a shield/barrier/armor.

Phoenix Vanguard - Biotic Charge is a minor boon on this character. I wouldn't spec all the way into it but having it around to recharge shields isn't a terrible idea. Even still, the character is almost functionally identical to the Adept. Lash/Smash/Heavy Melee do all the work.

Quarian Male Infiltrator - Best. Character. Ever. Seriously, it's the best character I've ever used. Tactical Scan is excellent party utility and increased damage. On Gold it makes a pretty big difference. The Arc Grenades are just silly! It's got an 8 meter base spread, which means it hits EVERYTHING, and does a pile of damage to shields and barriers. Combined with Tactical Cloak, and followed up by shots from the Krysae Sniper, it will rip through just about anything.

Quarian Male Engineer - Functionally inferior to the Infiltrator. Seriously, they have identical powers except the Infiltrator has Tactical Cloak instead of Incinerate. If you want to play a Male Quarian, and you have both, the Infiltrator will do more DPS and be more survivable in every instance. There is some talk that if you spec Incinerate to hit an area and set up Arc Grenades for max area and to add an electrical effect to targets, you can walk around blasting areas and detonating your own tech bursts, but the lack of Tactical Cloak means you have to be conscious of your cooldowns and your weapons choices are limited (probably a Talon with Cryo Ammo would be the best option)

Krysae Sniper Rifle VII - At rank I this gun is a monster. At rank VII it's the most OP thing I've ever used, and at rank X it's going to be silly. Seriously, it's not so much a sniper rifle as it is a scoped Cobra Launcher. There is absolutely no way BioWare will let this weapon stay the way it is unless they intend to significantly buff everything else and drastically increase difficulty. Expect a nerf in the next week or so. For those that don't know, here's how it works. It has a dynamic scope that automatically zooms based on distance, so that every target you scope will be the same proportion visually. IE if I scope a target 100 feet away, then scope a target 10 feet away, the scope will adjust so that both targets appear to be the same size in the scope. You can also hold down the right trigger to zoom further if you want. It fires armor penetrating explosive rounds that track their target. Let me say that again. Armor penetrating explosive rounds that TRACK THEIR TARGET! Granted, the tracking isn't much, but the rounds also air burst when they get close, so if you fire a near-miss, the round will explode in mid air next to your intended target and deal massive damage. The explosion doesn't have a huge spread, less than a meter, but if you fire it at the ground next to clustered enemies it WILL kill them. It also bypasses shield gate if you actually hit your target. A single shot strips the shields from a Marauder and knocks it down to half health on Gold. It has 3 rounds in the clip, but spare ammo is a little sparse so taking a clip is a good idea until you have the thing at rank X.

Reegar Carbine V - A strong weapon but it absolutely blows through ammo. It's 25 round clip is depleted in about a second and a half of holding the trigger, but the damage it does is staggering. Basically it's the flame thrower from the single player campaign but with less ammo in the clip, a faster depletion of ammo, less spare ammo, and about 50 times the damage. At rank I against a Brute, I stripped it from full health to dead in less than two clips. I could definitely see this being a strong weapon on melee type characters like Krogan, melee speced Geth Infiltrators, and anything that likes to get close like the Cerberus characters.

Cerberus Harrier II - My favorite Assault Rifle in the game, but with a major drawback. This gun has strong damage, excellent accuracy, no recoil and a good rate of fire. The ONLY drawback is that it has VERY limited ammo. At rank I it has 20 rounds in the clip and 80 spare rounds. Combined with the fact that it's an Ultra Rare, and you only get 2 extra bullets with each rank, it makes for a very difficult gun to use. On Gold you will strip an Atlas from full to dead in 100 rounds, but you will need to run to ammo boxes between every single one, and it's not uncommon to see 6-8 Atlases in a single wave on Gold. It's just not a viable weapon on that difficulty unless you plan to run from box to box for Grenades, so perhaps on the new Quarian characters it will shine. On anyone that uses a weapon as their primary means of damage, however, it won't work very well, which is a shame because if it had 150-200 spare rounds, it would be the first full-auto Assault Rifle in the game that's viable as a primary damage dealer on Gold difficulty.

I still have not gotten a Vorcha character, which is a shame. I want the Sentinel because I want another character with Cluster Grenades, but the Soldier would work fine as well. Like the other classes, they are basically the same except for a single different power. If anyone has a Vorcha and cares to review them, please do so here.

As for the new maps, I very much like Fire Base Jade, but I'm not a big fan of Goddess. Jade is effectively a ring and has reasonable cover in various locations. It presents some challenges but the scenery is nice and it has something for every class. Snipers will like it for the open visibility across the courtyard, and melee/close quarters characters will like it for the long hallways out of view where they can corner enemies and be protected from turrets/Ravagers. Goddes on the other hand is a tough map against Geth and Reapers. There are too many locations for Hunters to sneak up on you or Banshees to pin you down, which makes for a tough match if people don't stick together and cover all the angles. That said, it looks very nice, and I do enjoy playing on it, but only with a team that knows the map and knows where things are going to spawn. I've had precisely ONE extraction on Goddess out of about 8-9 games on various difficulties, and it was against Cerberus on Gold. We had a very defensive party and everyone knew how to play their class.

Anyway, that's my take on the new stuff. I'm quite pleased with this DLC.

I saw your question over on the ME3 boards, Aldarionn about the drop rate of Ultra-rares.

They didn't really "up" that drop rate, but they did change how the system works a bit. If you get multiple PSPs all at once, as you get items it will have a higher chance to repeat them.

For example:
I bought a pair of PSPs back to back. Both of them were Reegers/Krysaes. Then I bought 4 back to back to back to back--same thing happened.

It wasn't until I waited about four or five hours to space it out that I started seeing other stuff.

Also:
I hate you for having the Harrier.

Ugh, out of all the N7 weapons i could get in a commendation pack I get a crusader, the only N7 weapon i already have (apart from the javelin which I hate even more).

Kanluwen wrote:I saw your question over on the ME3 boards, Aldarionn about the drop rate of Ultra-rares.

They didn't really "up" that drop rate, but they did change how the system works a bit. If you get multiple PSPs all at once, as you get items it will have a higher chance to repeat them.

For example:
I bought a pair of PSPs back to back. Both of them were Reegers/Krysaes. Then I bought 4 back to back to back to back--same thing happened.

It wasn't until I waited about four or five hours to space it out that I started seeing other stuff.

That explains it. So if I got a Harrier, a Black Widow and a Javelin in one grouping of PSP's then my chances for getting another one of either of those goes up. Interesting.

I'm getting nothing but Krysae/Reegar upgrades at this point though because every single one of my Rare weapons is maxed except those two, Once I max those, it should just be character cards and gear. I also need to buy a few Veteran Packs to get my uncommons up to par, and then I should start getting more gear options, but it's hard to pass up the chance for another Javelin/Talon/Black Widow upgrade.

Kanluwen wrote:Also:
I hate you for having the Harrier.

It's a delicious weapon, but as I said, it basically tethers you to an ammo box all game. I wish Assault Rifles had an actual upgrade for extra ammo. That alone would make the gun worth it, and it would be enough of a drawback to not be broken. You'd have to choose between Barrel and Piercing, which would be fine. Both have merit.

Oh, as a side note (and to punctuate my earlier point about the Krysae being overpowered) here's a Gold difficulty speed run with 3x Infiltrators and a Salarian Engineer, all using Krysae Sniper Rifles. It clocks in at just under 14 minutes for full extraction.


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vodo40k wrote:Ugh, out of all the N7 weapons i could get in a commendation pack I get a crusader, the only N7 weapon i already have (apart from the javelin which I hate even more).

I think you are mistaking what can actually come in a Commendation Pack.

To be clear, Ultra Rare weapons (Black Cards with the N7 Logo) are NOT the same thing as "N7" Weapons, which are what come in Commendation Packs.

The "N7" weapons are:
N7 Harrier SMG
N7 Valiant Sniper Rifle
N7 Crusader Shotgun
N7 Eagle Heavy Pistol

Those four weapons were the promotional weapons given to people who bought the Collectors Edition of the game in their single player campaigns.

The Ultra Rare weapons are a different set. They are:
Javelin
M-358 Talon
Scorpion Pistol
M-99 Saber
Black Widow
Wraith
M-77 Paladin
Cerberus Harrier
M-90 Indra

These weapons can only be obtained by buying Specter Packs (~4.5% chance to drop in each Specter Pack) or Premium Specter Packs (~9% chance to drop in each Premium Specter Pack). If you are looking for one of these weapons, just keep playing and keep buying packs and you will eventually get them. A 9% drop rate isn't terrible. That's 1 in every 10 packs or so, and Premium Specter Packs have a small chance of granting two.

So far, all I'm getting in terms of ultra-rares is pistols.

Got a Talon today and a Paladin yesterday. I guess I really need to start doing more Silvers to make more cash, and stop doing Bronze and feeling safe.

And of course, my next PSP was both Vorcha.

Blegh.

Do Silver and Gold. You will get FAR more credits that way, and it's the only way you will get better at the game. Basically, force yourself outside your comfort zone. Without that you will always be doing bronze, and your manifest won't fill up that quick. Once I started doing Gold on a regular basis, my weapon completion shot through the roof. It also makes it easier to get the characters you want because the weapons stop appearing in your packs once you have them at rank X.

Hate to threadjack here, but any news on the ending DLC?

Aldarionn wrote:Do Silver and Gold. You will get FAR more credits that way, and it's the only way you will get better at the game. Basically, force yourself outside your comfort zone. Without that you will always be doing bronze, and your manifest won't fill up that quick. Once I started doing Gold on a regular basis, my weapon completion shot through the roof. It also makes it easier to get the characters you want because the weapons stop appearing in your packs once you have them at rank X.

You've seen my manifest right?

The difficulty I myself have with playing Silver and Gold is not my own ability, its what team you get. The amount of times ive tried to play on these difficulties and you have people who dont know what their doing. I wouldnt mind so much if I didnt loose all my weapon/armour upgrades every failure (yesterday my internet was being weird, i got disconnected at about wave 8 in two gold games, I didnt get given any credits but of course i lost my upgrades).

Yeah its the dummies I always seem to end up with that has really been turning me off lately too.

Kanluwen wrote:

Aldarionn wrote:Do Silver and Gold. You will get FAR more credits that way, and it's the only way you will get better at the game. Basically, force yourself outside your comfort zone. Without that you will always be doing bronze, and your manifest won't fill up that quick. Once I started doing Gold on a regular basis, my weapon completion shot through the roof. It also makes it easier to get the characters you want because the weapons stop appearing in your packs once you have them at rank X.

You've seen my manifest right?

Actually no, not until you just linked it. I've seen you online but I never knew that was you, lol. I tend to approve friend requests because I assume I know the person from somewhere. I'll throw you an invite next time I see you on.

As for your manifest, damn! And you did that on Bronze?

vodo40k wrote:The difficulty I myself have with playing Silver and Gold is not my own ability, its what team you get. The amount of times ive tried to play on these difficulties and you have people who dont know what their doing. I wouldnt mind so much if I didnt loose all my weapon/armour upgrades every failure (yesterday my internet was being weird, i got disconnected at about wave 8 in two gold games, I didnt get given any credits but of course i lost my upgrades).

Necros wrote:Yeah its the dummies I always seem to end up with that has really been turning me off lately too.

What platform are you guys on? If any of you are on 360 we should set up some games when 2 or more of us are available. I play a lot in the evenings and I'm on pacific time. Next week I have Thursday and Saturday completely free for gaming, and potentially Friday in the evening as well. I'll also be on tonight from about 6:30 to 11 or so, pacific.

If any of you want to hit me up, send me a message on 360 and I'll be happy to host some Gold runs. I may have some of you on my friends list, but unless your forum name and gamer tag are the same I might not know it, so if I'm on your list send me a message that you come from Dakka.

Bronze/Silver.

vodo40k wrote:The difficulty I myself have with playing Silver and Gold is not my own ability, its what team you get.

Truth. When playing with Randoms I prefer Silver, as my failure rate is comparatively low there, but Gold I only do with my friends. The only exception was that one time when we didn't manage to form a group in time for the Banshee challenge.

I've run random/random Gold and yeah, sometimes it sucks, but sometimes you get into a really strong group and just murder everything. Also, there's always FBW/G/G if you are just looking to farm some credits for a while. Take any given Infiltrator and stick the Krysae on them, and watch stuff explode. Two of us in a group had those last night and we ran FBW/G/G without any kind of decoy/engineer. There wasn't even a challenge.

Aldarionn wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Aldarionn wrote:Do Silver and Gold. You will get FAR more credits that way, and it's the only way you will get better at the game. Basically, force yourself outside your comfort zone. Without that you will always be doing bronze, and your manifest won't fill up that quick. Once I started doing Gold on a regular basis, my weapon completion shot through the roof. It also makes it easier to get the characters you want because the weapons stop appearing in your packs once you have them at rank X.

You've seen my manifest right?

Actually no, not until you just linked it. I've seen you online but I never knew that was you, lol. I tend to approve friend requests because I assume I know the person from somewhere. I'll throw you an invite next time I see you on.

As for your manifest, damn! And you did that on Bronze?

vodo40k wrote:The difficulty I myself have with playing Silver and Gold is not my own ability, its what team you get. The amount of times ive tried to play on these difficulties and you have people who dont know what their doing. I wouldnt mind so much if I didnt loose all my weapon/armour upgrades every failure (yesterday my internet was being weird, i got disconnected at about wave 8 in two gold games, I didnt get given any credits but of course i lost my upgrades).

Necros wrote:Yeah its the dummies I always seem to end up with that has really been turning me off lately too.

What platform are you guys on? If any of you are on 360 we should set up some games when 2 or more of us are available. I play a lot in the evenings and I'm on pacific time. Next week I have Thursday and Saturday completely free for gaming, and potentially Friday in the evening as well. I'll also be on tonight from about 6:30 to 11 or so, pacific.

If any of you want to hit me up, send me a message on 360 and I'll be happy to host some Gold runs. I may have some of you on my friends list, but unless your forum name and gamer tag are the same I might not know it, so if I'm on your list send me a message that you come from Dakka.

I have a 360 and would like to join you, however being in the UK i think thats a 7 or 8 hour time difference....

Pacific Time is GMT -8 hours, though currently we are on Daylight Savings Time which means we are ahead an hour. At the time of this posting, it is 1:40PM Pacific Time. Use the time stamp for this post on your end and work out how many hours difference it is.

8hrs, your timestamp says 21:41

and Kanluwen, I am JEALOUS of your manifest

also two questions;

1. Is gear a permenant thing, i've not got any yet to see if it is

2. once you get all your common stuff to X if you still buy basic packs will it move to rarer stuff or just give more medigel/rockets etc.

FM Ninja 048 wrote:
1. Is gear a permenant thing, i've not got any yet to see if it is

2. once you get all your common stuff to X if you still buy basic packs will it move to rarer stuff or just give more medigel/rockets etc.

1) "Gear" is permanent and is the new 4th slot that gives you an added bonuses of some sort. It can be ranked up like weapons and is not consumed between matches. The other consumables (Ammo, Rail Amps, Armor Bonuses) are used on a match-by-match basis and will be consumed if taken into any match, regardless of outcome.

2) Recruit Packs will only give you commons, consumables, and a chance for uncommon items. Veteran Packs give you Consumables, Common items, a guaranteed Uncommon, and a chance for rare or more uncommon items. Specter Packs give you consumables, common/uncommon items, a guaranteed rare, a chance for more rare items, and a chance for Ultra Rare items. Premium Specter Packs give you consumables, uncommon items, two guaranteed rare items, a chance for more rare items, and two chances for uncommon items. Jumbo Equipment Packs give you 5 of each consumable and then a collection of random consumables of varying quality.

Once you have Recruit Packs maxed, buy Veteran Packs until you have your uncommons maxed, then buy Premium Specter Packs for rare/ultra rare items.

What is this heresy humans and Xenos fighting together? well I'd never!

Ugh. The N7 Matchmaking system needs to go. I spent 3 hours playing last night and more than half of my matches put me directly into a match in progress that was failing, and the rest of the matches I got were FBW/G/G. I think I had 4 successful matches all night, and only one of them was Gold difficulty. That is a far cry from the success I've had in the past. Spending 20 minutes in a lobby waiting for it to fill up only to have the host leave along with everyone else is not my idea of fun. Bah!

They're discussing rolling it back, so hopefully they do.

Need to play more, but I've been busy with terrain and modelling in general.

Barely played anything in the last few weeks, heck Aura played more than me on the xbox with Sims 3.

Kanluwen wrote:They're discussing rolling it back, so hopefully they do.

Yeah I saw that but there has been no update as of yet. I'm waiting til Tuesday, but if I don't hear anything by then I'll be putting the game away until I do hear something. I'll play with friends, but no more random matches because it's just too frustrating to wait 20 minutes for a lobby to fill up only for the match to never happen, or to get stuck in a failing random/random/gold match at wave 4, so I can't even get the wave 3 credits. It's BS.

GalacticDefender wrote:Hate to threadjack here, but any news on the ending DLC?

I haven't seen anything else about it myself.

So there is a cryptic sounding update on the BioWare site that they "made changes" to the matchmaking system with the server maintenance last night, but so far I haven't seen anything about what those "changes" actually are. They claim the "changes" will deliver a much better experience.

So far, I've noticed they have.

I'm not getting put into games "In Progress" as often anymore.
I'm not getting ten minute waits for a match around my N7 rank.
I'm not getting put into different difficulties than what I selected.

Bah, they also nerfed the Harrier. They made it heavier but didn't give it any additional spare ammo, which sucks because that gun would be near perfect if it had like 160 spare rounds. It would be 100% perfect with 240, which I suspect is why they haven't increased it. 80 spare rounds is just too low to be useful on anything above Silver though.

They did buff the Eagle, which I still don't have, not that I particularly care about that gun anyway.

A.) Did they change the Krysae? I haven't gotten it yet. Also, I'm not sure why any weapon can be considered OP, per se: there is no PvP so what difference does it make it players are super powered, really? Just keep adding more goodies IMO.

B.) I really only play golds now, or silvers when I'm wanting to level a class up to 15 or so. I'm still in the credit farming part of my career and a fail on Gold at wave 6 or 7 is more profitable (and possibly faster) then a win on wave 10 for Silver. I never play bronze at all for any reason anymore, but I might if I get a class I've never played before ever.

C.) Wait, so I should move directly from Vet packs to Premium Spectre ones, bypassing Spectre ones? Because that's totally not what I did, I've been getting Spectre packs. I could have sworn earlier in this thread someone said the premium spectre packs were overpriced.

D.) On a non-MP related topic: Why couldn't Legion be returned to Shepard-Commander after uploading? He's just a collection of different apps on a mobile platform, right? Why not just upload the data and then re-download to a new platform?

They haven't changed the Krysae yet, but it's almost inevitable that they are going to change it considering how stupidly overpowered it is.