JanePhoenix insanity adept build
My second playthrough is now complete (I'll make a separate post on that), this time on insanity difficulty from start to finish, and adept has been the favored profile here. Thought I'd share my bui...
Forum Discussion
@mcsupersport Thanks for sharing your thoughts. The above represents simply the "final build" I happened to have towards the end of the game, after tweaking to my particular playstyle, and the skill numbering also doesn't indicate priority, but simply the order in which they are found on the game menus. It's interesting to see your interpretation nevertheless, according to how your playstyle differs. I will give some explanation below as to why I made the specific skill choices that you highlighted.
Shotgun rank 4 - Spare Ammo. This was actually for the ability to carry a second shotgun like the Piranha, which is much better at close range than the Scattershot. The weight capacity is available, and I always had 100% recharge rate on my powers.
Combat Fitness rank 5 - Heavy Lifting. This was almost purely for clip size bonus on the Scattershot, and again extra spare ammo for a second shotgun. The build itself doesn't rely much on being able to carry many different weapons, so for me it was more worthwhile to optimize for a small loadout.
Combat Tools are still helpful when playing from cover. The bonus melee damage is good for the occasional cloaked Challyrion/Wraith that gets in close. Damage resistance boost with evasion helps just as much for approaching cover (with forward evade) as it does for escaping from sometimes tricky situations. A bit unorthodox perhaps, but dodge is quite an effective method of forward travel, and I preferred it to running. And the extra hover time with damage resistance helps for popping out of cover to get at enemies who are also hiding behind cover.
Pull, I am undecided as to the advantage of either Expose or Crushing Grip. Once detonated I believe the bonus from both disappears, and I tend to detonate with Throw immediately after Pull, killing targets fast and not leaving much time for either option to reach much effect.
Throw with area effect does absolutely insane damage to groups of enemies caught in a Singularity. Suppose you have 5 in there and launch Throw at a central target, you just set off 5 biotic combos, every one of which causes further biotic echoes.
Singularity I use specifically as an enormously effective primer. The bigger its radius the more enemies it catches and primes, which means more combos achieved from area effect Throw, and which in turn creates more biotic echoes. I use Pull & Scattershot instead to strip shields, and even use team commands to take out shields.
Containment rank 5 is another one I was a bit undecided about, as by the time of detonation I had already myself taken care of most shields with Pull/Scattershot/Teammates, so didn't see much benefit to either choice. Even the knockdown effect I didn't notice, except on the off chance a combo detonation touched a straggler that was just outside the Singularity. Those caught inside the Singularity (if surviving the initial combo detonation) were instead again caught in the Singularity where they could be combo detonated once more.
Team Support rank 4 I opted for the more general increase in teammate offensive powers, since I never really paid all that much attention to teammate skills (in fact I had them auto-leveled), and tended to select teammates based on whose personality I preferred at that time rather than the skills they possessed. And I opted for the boost in shield regeneration delay not so much because it affects the team, and more because it also affects yourself. Tactical Revive didn't interest me that much, as bosses seemed much more interested in targeting myself anyways, and if a teammate has fallen I'd be more inclined to try and solo the rest of the battle than to attempt revives.
The melee weapon wasn't used all that much by my adept, and in this build existed more for the sake of holding augments to boost combo detonators. But I do like the biotic attack animation, and I believe you are invulnerable during the attack, and it's also near impossible to miss your target. Besides that I had the Asari Sword already researched to a very high level from my previous vanguard build, so it just seemed an easier choice than to put research points into something new again.
As for your closing comments, in this build I had full 252 points invested into biotics, so all powers were already as optimized as they could get, and even then didn't recharge quite as fast as I would have liked. I do also see the benefit of stacking points into tech for the passive bonuses from there, but I opted instead to supplement combat passives as much as possible for the increase in damage output from guns.
I've already begun preparing a soldier build now for another new game plus, and I'm not sure if I will be returning to adepts again in the near future.
Shotgun rank 4 - Spare Ammo. This was actually for the ability to carry a second shotgun like the Piranha, which is much better at close range than the Scattershot. The weight capacity is available, and I always had 100% recharge rate on my powers.
Combat Fitness rank 5 - Heavy Lifting. This was almost purely for clip size bonus on the Scattershot, and again extra spare ammo for a second shotgun. The build itself doesn't rely much on being able to carry many different weapons, so for me it was more worthwhile to optimize for a small loadout.
Combat Tools are still helpful when playing from cover. The bonus melee damage is good for the occasional cloaked Challyrion/Wraith that gets in close. Damage resistance boost with evasion helps just as much for approaching cover (with forward evade) as it does for escaping from sometimes tricky situations. A bit unorthodox perhaps, but dodge is quite an effective method of forward travel, and I preferred it to running. And the extra hover time with damage resistance helps for popping out of cover to get at enemies who are also hiding behind cover.
Pull, I am undecided as to the advantage of either Expose or Crushing Grip. Once detonated I believe the bonus from both disappears, and I tend to detonate with Throw immediately after Pull, killing targets fast and not leaving much time for either option to reach much effect.
Throw with area effect does absolutely insane damage to groups of enemies caught in a Singularity. Suppose you have 5 in there and launch Throw at a central target, you just set off 5 biotic combos, every one of which causes further biotic echoes.
Singularity I use specifically as an enormously effective primer. The bigger its radius the more enemies it catches and primes, which means more combos achieved from area effect Throw, and which in turn creates more biotic echoes. I use Pull & Scattershot instead to strip shields, and even use team commands to take out shields.
Containment rank 5 is another one I was a bit undecided about, as by the time of detonation I had already myself taken care of most shields with Pull/Scattershot/Teammates, so didn't see much benefit to either choice. Even the knockdown effect I didn't notice, except on the off chance a combo detonation touched a straggler that was just outside the Singularity. Those caught inside the Singularity (if surviving the initial combo detonation) were instead again caught in the Singularity where they could be combo detonated once more.
Team Support rank 4 I opted for the more general increase in teammate offensive powers, since I never really paid all that much attention to teammate skills (in fact I had them auto-leveled), and tended to select teammates based on whose personality I preferred at that time rather than the skills they possessed. And I opted for the boost in shield regeneration delay not so much because it affects the team, and more because it also affects yourself. Tactical Revive didn't interest me that much, as bosses seemed much more interested in targeting myself anyways, and if a teammate has fallen I'd be more inclined to try and solo the rest of the battle than to attempt revives.
The melee weapon wasn't used all that much by my adept, and in this build existed more for the sake of holding augments to boost combo detonators. But I do like the biotic attack animation, and I believe you are invulnerable during the attack, and it's also near impossible to miss your target. Besides that I had the Asari Sword already researched to a very high level from my previous vanguard build, so it just seemed an easier choice than to put research points into something new again.
As for your closing comments, in this build I had full 252 points invested into biotics, so all powers were already as optimized as they could get, and even then didn't recharge quite as fast as I would have liked. I do also see the benefit of stacking points into tech for the passive bonuses from there, but I opted instead to supplement combat passives as much as possible for the increase in damage output from guns.
I've already begun preparing a soldier build now for another new game plus, and I'm not sure if I will be returning to adepts again in the near future.
Lol, which means most of the choices you made different than I would have, were based off gameplay style differences. Basically you spec'd your character to your playstyle and I was specing mine to my playstyle. Which means what you did was correct for you. I hope you have fun on your next run, but I personally don't find soilders fun to run in ME universe....if I want a more pure shooter, then I will play FarCry or Ghost Recon Wildlands, as I think the pure shooter mechanics are better in those games, but the fun and biotic romp is better in ME games.
I was playing with my son in Ghost Recon Wildlands running Co-op in the game, and as a team we made a 750m shot, with him spotting and me sniping.... It made me laugh when i considered trying to shoot an enemy in MEA over about 140m and seeing the bullet just disappear......Both games are fun, but I play them for different reasons. GRW is a good shooter and is fun to play Co-op, MEA is fun for story and making things fly for me...
