Mass Effect Andromeda - I'm not Commander Shepard and this is my favorite sequel

I’m using the Sandstorm, which is a high damage (possibly the highest?) AR, with the projectile mod that makes the bullets into sticky grenades.

It’s an absolutely insane weapon when kitted out like this… There’s a slight delay from hitting a target and the bullets detonating, but the damage is totally insane… You basically poke out, fire a bunch of shots onto the target, and then a second later it just starts exploding.

All of my combat points are in the AR.

An assault rifle that shoots sticky grenades?

I’m using a Dhan shotgun (just started using it) - amazing damage, perfect for bursting smaller targets but it only has 2 bullets per mag. Previously I was a big fan of the Falcon but I’m liking Dhan more because it has a little bit of tracking to it. Since I’m playing with the pad it comes in very handy.

On equipment I have 20% more power damage when clip full mod on the weapon and on the chest I have On Enemy Kill restore 25% shields. Every other regen, either health or shield, comes from passives.

edit: I mostly spam Lance then ED if situation allows for it (= I won’t need shields in the next 2s) and try to keep the damage bonus from the mod up.

Ya, it’s kind of cool… reminds me of Borderlands kind of.
When you craft guns, you can put mod things on them, that can do stuff like change the projectile quality, or do other stuff like refill shields on kills, etc.

Some other options are plasma bullets (I don’t really know what this does… I made a sandstorm that shot them rather than stickies, and the damage was a total joke by comparison… so I’m not sure what the advantage is?), or tracking plasma bullets, or “electric streams” which I also haven’t seen yet.

Oh, a point to note for folks that I didn’t realize at first… when you break down a gun that you crafted, you get all those augment things BACK, so you can use them again.

I did this very same thing.

That’s awesome, I’ll have to use that for my Insanity strategy.

Is it just me or does the vanguard siphoning strikes profile passive not work? I’ve tried it multiple times now in semi controlled settings and it does not seem to regenerate any shields. I suspect it might regenerate health instead of shields, unless something else is making my melee attacks (which are a pain to use because they take so long) to do that.

Also am i the only one who noticed that ability balance is absolute shit? It seems like a single shotgun shot does as much damage as most abilities that have 10 second cooldowns. That makes no sense.

Shotgun damage is immense, but you need to be close, while most abilities with from range without exposing yourself much.

Shotgun is just an example. Assault rifles do even more damage “in the real world” than shotguns in my experience.

My Sweeper 3 does 96 damage per shot and fires in 3 round bursts. I can snipe enemies from further away than an ability can even target. I can also use it from behind cover to be 95% as safe as just flinging an ability around cover.

Nova does 400 base damage and is point blank.
Charge does 250.

This is even worse for combat power abilities. Not only is most of their damage mediocre, but for some reason they have limited ammo when they don’t have the extra power to justify it?

I find that most of my ability damage is from combos.

Lance alone isn’t that much… Lance on a primed target fucks them up, and creates an AOE explosion.

I noticed this initially just from playing and realizing that unlike previous games, overload doesn’t do crap against shielded enemies even though it allegedly has a 200% damage bonus against shields even at base (which i am not confident works). It was more time efficient to simply fire my assault rifle once than use overload on shielded enemies. The only use of overload was to trigger combos.

This is failed game design. It encourages you to just shoot everything until they are health only, wait until they are primed and then use an ability to detonate them. Abilities that don’t contribute to that path are basically useless. Using a detonate ability on something that is not primed is basically a waste of time.

So i am trying to do a mission to take out a kett base. It has a lot of enemies in it and has multiple steps to take it down.

You cannot save at all during it. I’ve gone through about 2/3 of it MANY times and keep getting unlucky, instantly dying to some enemy that surprised me. Obviously my support for bioware retaining the services of the person who designed the checkpoints in ME A is not sky high at this point.

This is pretty much the norm for AAA games, at least western ones. Which kett base are you having trouble with? I just did the one on Voeld on first try, Sentinel is the real mvp. I was really amused when I saw just how much damage Lance does to Cardinal’s Orb, previously when I played as engi it took me forever to bring it down with incinerate/ED combos.

I obliterated that guy, way easier than the first one I fought.

I threw a turret down, which was fully upgraded to have a flamethrower… The thing just ruined his orb, and then immediately started ruining him when the shield went down… all while getting pretty much constant tech and fire combos on him.

I’m not sure if anyone has mentioned it, and the details are buried in layers and layers of menu:

Weapons/tech/biotics damage is proportional to how many points you invest into the combat/tech/biotics trees respectively.

That means if you want your e.g. overload to do as much damage as possible, you should a) invest in offensive tech passive skill, which buffs your tech damage depending on how many skills you invest into the tech tree, and b) actually invest as many points into the tech tree. By the same token, sniper weapon damage depends not just on investment in passive sniper skills, but also total investments into the combat tree. Etc.

What this means is that hybrid class is not all that efficient, in terms of raw damage output. A build with lots of investment into tech tree will always do more tech damage than another build that e.g. invests in both combat and tech, other things being equal. The profile helps to negate this, to an extent, (or double down on the benefit).

There is also the gated enemy strength, depending on level. Every 10 levels the enemy will be buffed. Just as vendors starts selling higher tier weapons/armour every 10 levels. In order to keep up with the curve, you have to invest in new weapon, armour AND investment into the tree you are specialising in.

PS: Overload can be charged, and charged overload do more damage than a tap, and charged overload jumps to at least one other enemy close by.

I’ve come across a serious bug. From level 61 onwards, vendors are no longer selling improved armour/weapon/mod. In fact they aren’t selling any armour/weapon/mod at all. And there will no longer be any armour/weapon/mod drop. So after level 61, the only way to get better weapon/armour is by crafting. As for mods, it is impossible to get better ones. So stock up and don’t sell any mod after level 61 until they’ve fixed the bug.

Are you saying this goes beyond the passive bonuses that specifically say they get bonuses from your skills in that tree, or do you just mean the skills that say that (which is what i assumed)?

Yes, that is the one.

I did end up beating it after changing up some armor and skills. I was never able to save during the entire area though and it was probably over half an hour. Who knows if it auto saved but my guess is no, or only before the boss guy.

It seems like the kett sword i was using regenerated my health. The Asari sword regenerates my shields though. I’m not sure whether this is linked to the weapon or vanguard’s siphoning strike. I think i probably prefer regenerating health but the kett swords have such long wind up that they are annoying to use.

Origin can’t capture screenshot, and alt-printscreen doesn’t work. What a PITA.

So I am confused. I have blueprints in my inventory. I also have blueprints in my research/dev terminal. However, they are not the same. There are some in my inventory that are not in the research terminal, and other in the terminal that are not in my inventory, and there are some in both places. I have a sniper rifle blueprint in my inventory that I want to make. How can I get it into my research/dev terminal so that I can create it?

Yep. Combos are very powerful.

Incinerate + concussive shot = big boom and fire everywhere (when upgraded). I love it.