Gaming Mass Effect Series

What DLC gets you armor for Tali?

 

He's referring to one of the ME2 alternate appearance DLCs; it at least appears to give her some light torso armor. In vanilla ME3 Tali's +25% power recharge outfit is even more reinforced; part of the hood appears to be a blast helmet and the torso and legs are plated. Doesn't make a difference in her survivability though. The additional alternate outfit provided in the "From Ashes" DLC (25% weapon damage) looks similar, but adds metal plating on her visor.

 

ah, okay. I usually max out their defenses in their passive skills while choosing offense-oriented appearances.

 

Practical and still glamorous

 

Not digging the steel over the mask though. Given that Tali has no visible facial expressions, I really liked having the clear purple mask.

I definitely lean closer to style on the realism vs. style debate. I love having iconic-looking characters. That said, don't go too overboard that your characters no longer fit your setting.

Mass Effect, at least, has the excuse of any character in a combat situation having kinetic barriers.

 

I have a new toy! Geth Pulse Rifle V and, with a couple of mods, it absolutely slaughters just about everything!

 

She has that in all the ship scenes and non-combat places, I just prefer to have her wear that when she's out getting shot at. A life-supporting helmet is a large target area for enemies so it doesn't make much sense she wouldn't try to protect it.

 

I usually max out offensive abilities on almost every character, both in terms of outfit and leveling. In Normal mode I find I don't really need to tank up my squadmates. On Garrus this gets ridiculous; he's basically doing 175% bonus damage on every shot. The exception is Ash, since her weapon damage outfits either look like a bridge bunny or a Kai Leng groupie. Plus, if you ditched her for Miranda she does indignantly comment that she wears armor and not a swimsuit. On Tali and Kaidan I prefer to go with power recharge or power damage setups. Shaving 25% of a power-oriented squadmate's recharge time, especially EDI and Kaidan who have cooldown-slowing powers like defense matrix and barrier, is a big help when you're trying to ripple-fire power combos.

Geth Pulse Rifle, eh? Never really cared for the thing since the damage per shot is so low, but if you have explosive burst ammo selected (50% chance of round igniting a 2.5 meter fireball on impact) the damage goes up significantly. It's also the most accurate full-auto AR in the game (zero recoil, near-pinpoint accuracy) and aside from the N7 Typhoon it has the biggest clip size. Gotta love the sound too, unless it's being fired at you.

 

I like the GPR, it fires a lot of shots very fast and burns through shields and health quickly because of it. Plus it's accurate, though I prefer the Plasma Shotgun as a Geth weapon of choice.

 

I loved that gun. The giant clip size, and pinpoint accuracy on that thing lets you get multiple head shots in rapid succession. The relatively low weight also helps to make it a good primary weapon for power based classes.

 

After all the enthusiasm for the GPR, I decided to try a level IV one out in the Armax Arena against high-level Geth. Not bad with a mag upgrade and Garrus's squad AP ammo on it, although I found myself hosing down Pyros and Primes for a seeming eternity muttering curse words to myself. Been on a weapons testing kick lately; my engineer is the only character so far doing Citadel in New Game Plus and I want to test out a few overlooked guns (and rack up creds to upgrade everything I like to X).

I must say that if you have the M-11 Suppressor from Citadel leveled up and with a heavy barrel mod, that thing is devastating. I found myself SOL in a Collector match (again) - Scions on the high ground, a Praetorian flanking from the left (I think I'd managed to take the barrier down), Kaidan down (leaving me only Javik, who can't set up or set off off tech combos on protected targets), and my M-7 Lancer X overheated after hosing down another Praetorian and a few abominations (which, with a full clip upgrade, was a continuous 102-round burst). That left me with the little James Bond pistol. Managed to take down the Praetorian and a few Scions with it; the Scions went down in maybe six rounds apiece. I didn't even have an ammo power or a piercing mod on that thing. Finally got some breathing room to get the Lancer working again, which was good because I had 11 pistol rounds left and a third Praetorian started coming in. That one got possessed after I shot away most of its armor, and I had to burn a medigel after getting flanked by a Scion and a few Abominations. Felt good to pull that one out of the fire.

Other highlights - taking down an Atlas with an M-5 Phalanx and tech powers, and utterly slaughtering Guardians with their own M-357 Talon.

 

Yeah, GPR is terrible for taking out the bulkier enemies. I usually take a heavier gun like the Black Widow for things like Banshees or Geth Primes, and use the GPR for killing mooks.

 

The GPR is accurate; it just doesn't have that quick mook disposal quality I prefer. It's nice when you can point the gun, fire a burst, and then switch targets. The Harrier is great for that, except for the crap amount of ammo you have.

Actually, two guns that I found out worked much better on mooks than heavies were the M-37 Falcon and the Striker, which are freakin' grenade launchers. I had some very ugly moments trying to kill oncoming Brutes with those things, including one where I was sure I'd killed that one that was down to its last armor bar ... nope. Those two are best when loaded with incendiary or cryo ammo - spreads the effect out and opens up the possibility of lighting off multiple combos at once (or, in the later case, just freezing unshielded mooks and making them easy to tear apart with gunfire).

 

I've been using the Tempest and Piranha for my Vanguard. The P for major opponents and the T (with power amplifier) for weaker ones. I only wish I could upgrade the T with both a PA and a scope so I could charge opponents who are farther away.

 

The Tempest became also-rans for me since I got my hands on the N7 Hurricane; the only edge it has is being lighter and cheaper to upgrade. Other than that, the Hurricane is more like a pint-sized machine gun - if you can control the recoil and alleviate the insane ammo consumption, it destroys almost anything.

 

I like using the BP Punisher with AP ammo instead of the Hurricane due to its unmatched ability to tear through armor. If you play without DLCs though, Tempest is probably the best available option.

 

The Punisher is good; I just wish it wasn't so damn ugly. I call it the Grease Gun. My adept uses it as a primary weapon and I equip it on Aria for Omega. With the Hurricane I give it to all my SMG-armed squadmates using a magazine upgrade and the HV barrel; the results work quite well. For Shep, I equip the recoil damper and the heat sink. Plus while the Punisher sounds intimidating, it doesn't quite match the snarl of a Hurricane

 

Beat the Citadel mission again, though I feel bad for 'never picking' Tali. Also, I wish I saved it before the start of the mission so I could replay it with different characters. And I don't care if I'm supposed to be a Paragon, I really enjoy kicking myself off my own ship!

 

Killing clone Shep was fun but killing Brooks was even better.
Brooks: Admit it, you will miss me
Shepard: (shoots Brooks) Not at this range I won't .
Taking a Renegade action has never been so fun!

 

Nah, the one in Mordin's loyalty mission in ME2 was better.

Shep: "You talk too much." *bang!*
Krogan: "You see? The human can't hit a simple target!" *notices gas leaking from tank*
Shep: *Shoots a second time, igniting the gas. Krogan BBQ, anyone?*

Then there's the classic one on Illium...

Merc: "I've got nothing more to say to you--"
Shep: *pushes merc out the window* "How 'bout "Goodbye"?"

I lean more towards paragon, and I still take both of those.

 

I love that one, though I recently found out that if you don't kill him, you have less thugs to fight in the next area. Then again, if you're badd-*** enough to push the mook out the window, you probably won't care about blowing up a few more.

I think that, when I'm a paragon in 2, the only time I choose the renegade choice is at the end of Jacob's mission. Having had problems in the past with my father, I have no problem telling Jacob to shoot the guy.

Also, I hug Tali ever. Single. Time. Even when I'm a Renegade.

 

1st time out, I ended up laughing my arse off at the Illium one, just brilliant.

 

I like in ME2 when Garrus is trying to question Harkin (by question I mean beat the **** out of him) and Shepard grabs Garrus' gun before he shoots Harkin in the leg.

Shepard: "You don't need to shoot him, he won't be able to hide from C-Sec now"
Garrus: "I guess this is your lucky day"
Harkin: "Yeah. I hope we can do this again real soon*
*Garrus headbutts Harkin, who falls to the floor*
Garrus: "I didn't shoot him"

 

For the most part, I'm paragon but... in those select instances....

 

Yeah, playing Shepard as a goody-two-shoes all the time is neither convincing nor fun. Sometimes, a little sadism goes a long way.