Mass Effect 3 (Seriously, Use Spoilers People!)

[skeptical scientist]

Are the silver/gold missions just much tougher enemies earlier on, or is it like a difficulty increase where they all do more damage and such too?

The enemies have more health/shields (e.g. a geth trooper has 825 health on bronze, 1238 health on silver, and 1856 health on gold), enemies with special attacks use them more frequently/effectively, you get more boss enemies, and the boss enemies start showing up in earlier waves (so e.g. reapers start spawning banshees at wave 5 on silver, compared to wave 7? on bronze). I think you get more vanilla enemies as well, but I'm not sure.

[Obby]

As for multiplayer I didn't really expect much from it, but its actually a lot of fun. Just been playing on Bronze so far, but its a pretty good challenge. It really seems people don't know much about biotic combos though which means I tend to have to set my own up. Its also annoying that I warp a guy in the middle of a bunch of others and then people kill him instead of letting me blow them all up. Don't have many weapons unlocked so I'm still using the Avenger on my sentinel and my soldier. It works pretty well though so I can't really complain about that. Completing even a bronze mission gets a TON of exp. I mean my level 1 sentinel is level 7 now and I completed one mission and failed another on Wave 10 (arg!!). Are the silver/gold missions just much tougher enemies earlier on, or is it like a difficulty increase where they all do more damage and such too?

Leveling gets a lot slower the higher level you get. My Infiltrator is level 18 right now, it's going to take at least 4 or 5 more rounds before I hit 19. It's something like 500,000 XP per level once you get to 16 I think.

As for the difficulty, basically the enemies get more health/shields/barriers, there are more enemies, and the enemy uses better tactics the higher the difficulty. On Bronze enemies tend to die pretty fast and it really only gets hairy on wave 10. Silver is a pretty big step up. I've only ever completed one Silver mission successfully. I noticed a lot more flanking compared to Bronze, and enemies also take a lot more to kill. It's often easier to stick with the group on Silver, that way you don't get overwhelmed and killed, whereas it doesn't really make a difference on Bronze as long as you're smart about it.

[maybeagnostic]

AEP: I've been running a Vanguard (lvl 15 currently) easily against cerberus and geth; can't stand up against reapers - CCQ with Brute or Banshee? No thanks. Makes the bonus mission this weekend downright impossible (for me, YMMV.)

Been having some problems using biotic charge in MP: cooldown expired and ready to go, enemy targeted and in some cases directly in front of me, can't charge. Maybe lag?

It should be fine if you just play more defensively against banshees and brutes, no? (Or just give them a missile launcher to the face.) That's what I do, although my vanguard's an asari, so she might be a bit happier sitting back and dropping stasis bubbles and lift grenades than a human vanguard would.

I've been having the same problem but I don't think it's related to lag because I've seen it happen when I am the host and a few times in sp as well. Sometimes Shepard just refuses to charge an enemy with clear line of sight and then quickly dies because any vanguard relies on regular charges to replenish shields.

Talking about weird bugs, I fell through the floor of a mp map for the third time this weekend. It was especially annoying because it was the closed reactor map this time and I couldn't even watch what was happening and there was no pretty background picture to look at. Waiting wave after wave for your team to finish the game is super boring but it's even worse if your team gets killed because then you have to quit and get nothing for sitting around all that time.

So, what does everyone make of the relative difficulty of the MP enemies? I think it goes like this (least to most difficult): Cerberus < Geth < Reaper

I think it's a tossup between reapers and geth. IMO brutes aren't so bad, so banshees are the only reaper enemy that I'm really scared of. But usually you encounter few enough of them that whenever you're in a tight spot and a banshee shows up, you can just missile it. Geth don't have any individual enemies as bad as banshees, but by putting lots of smaller threats on the field at once, they negate the rocket launcher solution, and can swarm you with more threats than you can deal with.

Banshees dodge rockets though. I played a few games on Saturday and used up all my rockets on banshees but they dodged all four. I still haven't figured out where brute and banshee weak spots are either. I know the head is a weak spot for brutes but is that the only one?

P.S. Cerberus on silver difficulty is... not boring but a decent team is almost guaranteed to finish. I was playing a reaper game on silver last night with a pretty good team. I think we only needed 5-6 heals (first aid? whatever that thing is called) in the first 9 waves and everyone stuck together. Then on wave 10 we had an upload mission and 4 banshees + 4 brutes converged on our upload position at the same time from four directions. Only two of us could even run away from the banshees but got separated and then penned in by two banshees each. It was pretty brutal and I think sometimes the map+upload mission+final wave+reaper+silver combo can make it impossible to win.

[Telchar]

There are definitely some mission I would rather see on level 10 than others. The hack attempt is almost a death sentence depending on it's location. If your playing the snowbase and it's out by the extraction it's not bad, but if it's down on the left side of the kill corridor with little cover and 3 areas to cover, you get fucked.

Re Brutes: If you look at the brute model, you'll notice large armored plays on it's shoulders, sides, and some of it's back. If you do enough damage to them they fall off but ideally you shoot between them. My level 18 infiltrator with Widow 1 can stealth+headshot one down 70% or so.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Banshees dodge rockets though. I played a few games on Saturday and used up all my rockets on banshees but they dodged all four. I still haven't figured out where brute and banshee weak spots are either. I know the head is a weak spot for brutes but is that the only one?

Brutes are vulnerable on the thighs, upper back, and head (where the armour doesn't cover flesh). As far as I know, Banshees take the same amount of damage whether you shoot them in the pinky or right between the eyes. Ravagers seem to be hit hardest in the middle of their "eye".

Yeah, the Hacking mission is a death sentence on Gold unless everyone has three missile launchers, doesn't miss, and co-ordinates so two rockets don't get shot at the same target at the same time.

[Yakk]

Multiplayer:
I'm tempted to not have all 4 of you hacking on a hacking mission. You can both kill enemies easier, and draw them away from the hacking location, if you aren't there.

This works really well with the "fiddle with 4 widgets" missions -- having a team pull enemies away from the widgets can be really profitable. (The problem is that one or the other team can easily be flanked and trapped, especially at higher difficulties).

---

I'm under the impression that bad guys spawn on a clock in many of the missions. Ie, on the hacking missions, at X minutes in, wave Y spawns.

So if everyone picks up and clumps around the hacking location, you get the entire map's worth of enemies concentrating on that one spot. If you can manage to kill enemies faster than they spawn (possible on Gold/Silver wave 10?), you can keep the density of opponents lower. On the other hand, you run into problems where you lack the "concentration of fire" to drop things like Banshees. And with two teams of two, neither can fully guard their flanks.

The hard part I find about banshees is that they are both mobile and deadly at close range. So you don't have time to drop them as they approach (usually), and as you are all concentrated at one spot you don't have a safe flank to retreat to to "kite" them.

[Dark567]

The hard part I find about banshees is that they are both mobile and deadly at close range. So you don't have time to drop them as they approach (usually), and as you are all concentrated at one spot you don't have a safe flank to retreat to to "kite" them.

Charge->Heavy Melee->Nova->repeat
Although you have a risk of getting one shotted. I mean, that's the real reasons banshees suck.

[Yakk]

Yep: "dangerous at close range".

As far as I can tell, Banshee's do their one-shot attack pretty reliably if their barrier is up?

And on silver (and esp. gold), charge is pretty dangerous unless they have no support... You have to survive for a pretty long time between charges without cover.

[An Enraged Platypus]

Multiplayer:
I'm tempted to not have all 4 of you hacking on a hacking mission. You can both kill enemies easier, and draw them away from the hacking location, if you aren't there.

This works really well with the "fiddle with 4 widgets" missions -- having a team pull enemies away from the widgets can be really profitable. (The problem is that one or the other team can easily be flanked and trapped, especially at higher difficulties).

---

I'm under the impression that bad guys spawn on a clock in many of the missions. Ie, on the hacking missions, at X minutes in, wave Y spawns.

So if everyone picks up and clumps around the hacking location, you get the entire map's worth of enemies concentrating on that one spot. If you can manage to kill enemies faster than they spawn (possible on Gold/Silver wave 10?), you can keep the density of opponents lower. On the other hand, you run into problems where you lack the "concentration of fire" to drop things like Banshees. And with two teams of two, neither can fully guard their flanks.

The hard part I find about banshees is that they are both mobile and deadly at close range. So you don't have time to drop them as they approach (usually), and as you are all concentrated at one spot you don't have a safe flank to retreat to to "kite" them.

On the "fiddle with four widgets" missions, an Infiltrator with low cooldowns (read: + 185 minimum plus specced into cloak duration) can cloak, reach the widget from anywhere on the map, uncloak under cover, and then recloak a split second before activating the widget. In this way, he can be cloaked for the entirety of the widget fiddling sequence and his transit between widgets. In other words, an Infiltrator can fiddle with as many widgets as he likes without being spotted, freeing up the rest of the team to take strategic chokepoints to fight off wave 10 on Gold.

[maybeagnostic]

The hard part I find about banshees is that they are both mobile and deadly at close range. So you don't have time to drop them as they approach (usually), and as you are all concentrated at one spot you don't have a safe flank to retreat to to "kite" them.

Charge->Heavy Melee->Nova->repeat
Although you have a risk of getting one shotted. I mean, that's the real reasons banshees suck.

Have you actually tried that strategy out? In my experience a banshee with barriers up will kill you right after your charge (no chance to pull back let alone heavy attack) and charge->nova->roll away->charge works on banshees with their barriers down but the alternative is charge->heavy melee->nov...->dead. Of course a single banshee is dangerous but only mildly annoying. Two banshees with a couple of brutes and several marauders are the usual wave on silver and that gets a lot harder to handle.

So is there some special trick to hit banshees with a rocket? The only reliable way I have found so far is during the fatality animation but that's incredibly risky and likely to get your teammate killed even if you bring the banshee down in time.

[Dark567]

Have you actually tried that strategy out? In my experience a banshee with barriers up will kill you right after your charge (no chance to pull back let alone heavy attack) and charge->nova->roll away->charge works on banshees with their barriers down but the alternative is charge->heavy melee->nov...->dead. Of course a single banshee is dangerous but only mildly annoying. Two banshees with a couple of brutes and several marauders are the usual wave on silver and that gets a lot harder to handle..

Generally I take out the barrier first with guns, as it doesn't seem to hold too long(unlike the armor). I generally try to take everything else out around the banshee first as to not have to deal with it. The charge->heavy melee->nova->charge is kinda a decision tree. If after I heavy the banshee, I have no shields left, I will immediately charge again instead of novaing, because nova is useless, and I need shields.

This of course all assumes you are spec'd right and have the +200 weight recharge bonus and all the fitness and assault mastery bonus to ensure you can charge constantly.

[ArgonV]

As far as I'm concerned, on MP the difficulty is like this: Reaper > Geth > Cerberus.
Cerberus is easy to beat on Bronze and still not too hard on Silver.
Geth can be tricky on Bronze and I lose quite a lot of the times on Silver.
I beat the Reapers most of the time on Bronze, but have yet to finish a Silver challenge.

The main thing Cerberus lacks is something closing in fast (like Banshees, Brutes or Pyros) while being covered by something have (Ravagers, Rocket Troops or Primes). Phantom sort of fit the bill, but aren't scary enough, though I find them the toughest Cerberus enemy.

Can Banshees insta-kill everything? My soldier, with 900/900 (or so) health and shields, has only been instakilled by a Banshee once, when my shields were down.

[SlyReaper]

I don't know, but whenever I've strayed too close to a banshee, it'll just pick me up and murder me instantly regardless of how much shield or health I have. For that reason, my vanguard is pretty much useless against them.

[Obby]

Can Banshees insta-kill everything? My soldier, with 900/900 (or so) health and shields, has only been instakilled by a Banshee once, when my shields were down.

My understanding is that they can, yes. It doesn't matter how much life you have, if it grabs you you're going to die.

[Dark567]

My understanding is that they can, yes. It doesn't matter how much life you have, if it grabs you you're going to die.

I've definitely been grabbed and survived. My squadmate stunned it somehow(Charge or Heavy Melee?).

[Belial]

I don't know, but whenever I've strayed too close to a banshee, it'll just pick me up and murder me instantly regardless of how much shield or health I have. For that reason, my vanguard is pretty much useless against them.

What's great is when you run past the banshee, and then the lag catches up and says "no, actually, she grabbed you"

[ArgonV]

Yeah, I dunno. I usually spam them with concussive shot, which makes even Banshees flinch, so that might be part of it.

[Obby]

My understanding is that they can, yes. It doesn't matter how much life you have, if it grabs you you're going to die.

I've definitely been grabbed and survived. My squadmate stunned it somehow(Charge or Heavy Melee?).

Huh. Did your squadmate stun it before the Banshee had a chance to finish the attack, maybe? I mean, I'm not saying I don't believe you, I just haven't experienced this so it'd be interesting to try and replicate.

[Dark567]

My understanding is that they can, yes. It doesn't matter how much life you have, if it grabs you you're going to die.

I've definitely been grabbed and survived. My squadmate stunned it somehow(Charge or Heavy Melee?).

Huh. Did your squadmate stun it before the Banshee had a chance to finish the attack, maybe? I mean, I'm not saying I don't believe you, I just haven't experienced this so it'd be interesting to try and replicate.

According to the wiki, it has to be so much damage in a short amount of time. Usually grenades it sounds like. But after the attack I only had one bar of health(while being full before), so it definitely had hurt me.

[maybeagnostic]

My understanding is that they can, yes. It doesn't matter how much life you have, if it grabs you you're going to die.

I've definitely been grabbed and survived. My squadmate stunned it somehow(Charge or Heavy Melee?).

You can save someone by killing the banshee before she finishes them off (although they'll probably still need reviving since they've been pulled out of cover and targeted by all the marauders advancing behind the banshee) but I am pretty sure biotic charge doesn't help. Maybe getting enough force by combining several abilities makes her let go but I haven't seen it happen.

Reapers are definitely much more dangerous than Cerberus but I never noticed geth being that bad. I've played less than 5 games against them (possibly all bronze?) but they didn't seem nearly as dangerous as the Reapers. I think phantoms are probably the second most dangerous enemy type (after banshees, obviously) but Cerberus lacks synergy and their weaker troops are very weak- a centurion is more on the level of a cannibal than a marauder and the assault troopers are trivial to pick off. An engineer could still more dangerous than a ravager but only if people let him walk around and set up turrets- most snipers in mp pick off the engineers first which is much simpler than picking off ravagers.

[SlyReaper]

Geth would be difficult, except the sabotage power can make geth primes and pyros fight on your side which kind of evens the score. Also useful to just make a geth stop shooting you while you murder it.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I've been trying the Drell Adept. It's so squishy it's not even funny, though I've had some really neat biotic explosion combos.

[Weeks]

I think I'll buy this for the MP. I wasn't aware you could play as an alien.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I think I'll buy this for the MP. I wasn't aware you could play as an alien.

Drell, Krogan, Asari, Quarian, and Salarian are available as unlocks. Will you be getting it on PC or console?

[Belial]

I think I'll buy this for the MP. I wasn't aware you could play as an alien.

Drell, Krogan, Asari, Quarian, and Salarian are available as unlocks. Will you be getting it on PC or console?

With Geth and Batarian rumored to be over the horizon.

[maybeagnostic]

I think those are going to be in paid DLC.

[Weeks]

No Turians? Also PC, and I don't expect to buy DLCs of any sort

[Belial]

Yes, Turians also, not sure why those were left out.

I'm unclear on how multiplayer DLC works. Like, can you play with people who don't have it, if you do?

[An Enraged Platypus]

Yes, Turians also, not sure why those were left out.

I'm unclear on how multiplayer DLC works. Like, can you play with people who don't have it, if you do?

Industry standard seems to be you can for this sort of thing. Like in the recent MTG where people could play new decks against you, but you could not play them yourself.

[Dark567]

I doubt they have the models in the code now to let people who don't have the dlc to play it with those that do. I guess they could patch the game so everyone has the dlc, but only unlock the new stuff once you pay for it. But I am not sure fans will take kindly, they are not in a particularly forgiving mood after the day one dlc and the ending.

[SlyReaper]

Turians weren't left out. I unlocked a Turian soldier a couple of weeks ago, though I've not played it yet.

Is it ever going to be possible to trade multiplayer items? It's a system that resembles trading cards, so it's weird that they can't be traded yet.

[An Enraged Platypus]

My bad, of course there are Turians. I probably left them off because I find them fairly bland, even though my first 20 was a Turian Sentinel.

[SlyReaper]

I tend to think of Turians as somewhere between a human and a Krogan; tougher than a human and smarter than a Krogan. Of course that results in them having no particular distinguishing features to make them interesting.

[Weeks]

I thought Turians were smarter than humans, at least when it came to military strategy and tactics. That humans survived first contact was somewhat of a miracle, iirc.

[An Enraged Platypus]

I tend to think of Turians as somewhere between a human and a Krogan; tougher than a human and smarter than a Krogan. Of course that results in them having no particular distinguishing features to make them interesting.

In the lore there's the whole whole-greather-than individuals strict virtue ethics vibe going. In MP they have less maneuverability than humans but less shields than Krogan, so they can't tank the enemy nor backflip out of fire. Lame.

[Belial]

In the lore I tend to think of them as an example of how a system of government/culture that would *never* work for humans can work for a different species because human psychology isn't universal.

Doesn't happen nearly often enough (at least explicitly) in sci-fi.

[Dark567]

Doesn't happen nearly often enough (at least explicitly) in sci-fi.

Wait? Really? Most sci-fi that has aliens has this I feel.

[Belial]

Not really. It's always used to showcase the dystopian-ass way their terrible system works because lol people don't work that way!

It's rarely shown working just dandy within normal tolerances, thanks much.

[Gelsamel]

Turians are just space romans.

[Belial]

Well, yeah, that's the idea. System that worked in a shitty dystopian way for humans. Input alien psychology.