The whole thing also worked the other way 'round, so Amalur featured some fancy ME3 armor and Omniblade daggers:
And since the only thing that's better than Reckoning is Even More Reckoning, Bioware have released their brand new (and last *sniffles*) ME3 multiplayer DLC, titled 'Reckoning'. Which has nothing to do with that other Reckoning, but I still like to point out just how much Reckoning there is in ME3. Ahem... moving on.
The new DLC introduces a whole lot of fun new toys to the game. There is fun new gear such as the Batarian Gauntlet, which grants your character the 'Falcon Punch', aka the Batarian heavy melee attack, which one-shots mooks and generally hurts like fuck. Hysterically funny when used with a Volus. Another cool gadget is the Geth Scanner, which highlights baddies through obstacles and walls. Use that thing with armor piercing mods or a Typhoon and you can lay waste to whole spawns of baddies before anyone else on the team can even see them.
The new weapons raise the already silly amount of guns in ME3 even higher, without adding any absolute must-haves. They all get the weird Bioware-style 'balancing' applied to them, as well. For instance, the 'Silencer' pistol is an upgraded Carnifex, which can be fired as quickly as you can work that mouse button (bug or feature?) and deals tremendous headshot damage (2 hits kill a Geth Pyro on bronze), but the size and amount of clips you get with the pistol force you to get married to an N7 Demolisher or an ammo box. The Geth Spitfire minigun has a ridiculously large clip, insane rate of fire and decent DPS, whilst sporting an accuracy rating, which is so low, it makes any shotgun feel like a sniper rifle in comparison. And since it's so heavy, it comes with a movement speed penalty. Ew! Most of these new weapons are fun, they're all pretty powerful, but they're not powerful enough to make you throw away your Hurricanes, Talons and Harriers.
The real stars of Reckoning are the new kits - brand new characters with awesome new abilities:
Awakened Collector Adept
He's one ugly fucker! And that's about all I can tell you about this guy from personal experience, as I'm really not into Adepts. The community's first impression is that he's a high risk vs high reward toon, who is very squishy, but also dishes out tremendous damage. Don't let the high base shield rating fool you, as his 'awakened' state drops them down to a much lower level. His biotic explosions are ludicrously powerful and (literally!) melt whole groups of baddies into green goo. He's also handy with Prothean and Collector weapons, which makes boring ass guns like the Collector Rifle almost feel a bit useful.
Geth Juggernaut Soldier
A playable Geth Prime, highly enjoyable in his best, insanely frustrating during his worst moments. To me, this is easily the most awkward kit in the entire game. This guy gets the most insane health and shield ratings and can be specced for added shield regeneration and 40% damage resistance. He's immune to Sync-Kills (the insta-kills we've all suffered from Banshees, Phantoms and the like), his passives grant him extra weapon damage, stability and ammo and he gets to plant a shield, which blocks friendly and enemy projectiles alike, on top of a heavy duty turret. Sounds too OP to be true, right? Well... the guy can't sprint (!), he can't take cover and he's as tall as your average lighthouse. And did I mention HE CANNOT FUCKING SPRINT?! How's that for balance?
Now, if you play mostly bronze and silver and you're not a complete moron, you won't die with this kit, even if you try. You can casually stroll towards an Atlas and its minions, shrug off all incoming missiles and drain that sucker's shields to replenish your own by utilizing your heavy melee attack. And with the 30% extra ammo, even the Harrier becomes a valid option. Fun? Fuck, yes! Challenge? Not so much.
Problem is, once you play gold or platinum, all that awesome survivability will do nothing for you. A Scion doesn't give a shit about your 5k shield rating and with the Juggernaut's inability to run and hide, well... there's just no happy ending here. But let's say you're a really great player, you can somehow 'make it work' and all that. Try playing alongside a Kroguard, a Havoc or any mobile character, who zips across the map at insane speed, soloing entire spawns while you casually walk everywhere. You're not just unable to sprint - you get a fucking movement speed penalty for being so big and fat! This guy isn't just a sitting, if somewhat impenetrable, duck - he won't top the scoreboards. Ever.
Talon Mercenary Engineer
Hey! Isn't that Zaeed but with a mask?
This guy is a pretty cool new build and very cheap and easy to power up, as he doesn't require any ultra-rares to max out his damage. And that's because his melee attack has been replaced with the Omni-Bow. Instead of punching baddies in the face, the Talon Mercenary shoots arrows, the amount and flavour of which can be altered through skills. Not only do quadruple armor-piercing arrows hurt like fuck on any difficulty, but since shooting the bow works like using powers, you don't even have to aim. So if you're a lousy shot, this character is for you. His special arrows have no cooldown and consume "grenades" on use, though you can spec this kit into regenerating arrows without having to visit ammo boxes all the time. The Cain Trip Mines are another nice touch, which deal damage similar to the Volus Recon Mine's.
Since Omni-Bow attacks count as melee, omni blade attachments and hydraulic joints will boost their damage even further. So, Reegar Carbine for bosses and arrows for everything else sound like the best option here. Alas, not all is perfect in Mercenary Land: This kit comes with the usual human engineer squishiness and two glitches. This character's points don't add up correctly upon level ups, meaning you don't get as many skill points as you should. Also, he doesn't know how to grab - the icon comes up, but instead of finishing off his victims, the Talon Mercenary just shoots an arrow at them. Maybe they'll change the animation to make him shoot for their knees.
Krogan Warlord Sentinel
This adorable little fellow is like Marmite. You'll love or hate him, but there really isn't much in between these two extremes. What's to love? Well, not only is he the heaviest, most awesome-looking Krogan in the game, but he sports life-regeneration, tech armor (aka massive damage reduction) and a massive hammer (!), which onehits a bronze Scion when using the right spec and gear. I shit you not, you can just walk up to one of those clowns, whip out that hammer and smash them to pulp like they're some random mooks!
So why would you hate him? Because he's a one trick pony. Sure, you'll pack a shotgun for its 50% melee attachment, but you won't ever fire it, because your hammer is simply that much stronger. And it comes with one attack animation. That's it. You run up to a guy, you squish him, you run to the next guy, rinse, repeat. Imagine somebody telling you the exact same joke over and over again. You may be the kind of guy who cracks up at the punchline every single time, but chances are, you'll get bored after a while, because once you've seen the hammer, you've seen it all. The guy looks awesome, he's incredibly powerful and requires very little skill to play, but if your definition of fun goes beyond "walk up to guy, pound with hammer", then this isn't the kit for you. He's also too massive to take cover, but why the fuck would he even want to?
Alliance Infiltrator Unit
I know, I know, a shameless EDI copy-paste. The community refers to her as 'The Sexbot', and I guess she is a smexed up version of that robot from Metropolis. She's also another incredibly strong Infiltrator kit, which is built around shotguns, of all things. I know what you're thinking, massive bonus damage for breaking from stealth, plus another 25% shotgun damage, ultimate Reegar face-meltage. It's not as "OP" as some make it out to be. First of all, any infiltrator can pack a shotgun and benefit from stealth damage, the Sexbot only gets the added 25%. Granted, that's still a pretty hefty amount, but it's not any more "overpowered" or "game breaking" than any regular infiltrator packing a Javelin.
Snap Freeze is a no-brainer with shotgun builds, the only new thing here is 'Repair Matrix'. It uses a grenade charge and regenerates your shields for 14-22ish seconds, fast enough for you to just waltz into any bronze spawn to gun them down without having to worry about evading any damage. At all. Naturally, this won't work quite so easily on any higher difficulty settings, but it doesn't have to: If you kick the bucket with Repair Matrix active, you will auto-revive, consuming no medigel or health packs. Which, of course, caused another uproar among the community. It's a cool, rather powerful ability, but you will still die if you're out of grenade charges or you simply fail to activate the power before you go down. Considering how many other classes can now recharge their shields at will and with very little to no cooldown, Repair Matrix is strong, but by no means game-breaking.
Cabal Vanguard
Okay, bad news first: Lady Turians are nothing fap-worthy. I'm not saying I couldn't, but I'd find it difficult. It's still great to have 'em! This has always bothered me about Mass Effect: You see Turians everywhere, all the time, they're ever-present throughout the trilogy and they're rather popular, as well (thanks, Garrus!). Yet all you ever see is Turian boys. Why? There's a female Salarian on the council, you bump into Krogan females, but Mr. Vakarian needs instructional videos on how to shag human and Quarian chicks, because his own species was all out of girls? Come on! Aaaanyhow...
Originally introduced as the much cooler-sounding 'Raptor', the now renamed Cabal sports the great resilience, precision and weapon damage you know and love from all Turians. Up to 37.5% passive bonus damage and 50% stability for weapons, 30% bonus headshot damage, you get the idea. As with all Turians, you also get the option to neglegt the health and shield buffs in favour of stronger melee attacks. What's new with the Cabal is the poison damage, which adds 30% of your base melee damage to every melee attack as a DoT. No matter how you spec this toon, this feature will make all your melee attacks more powerful and a bit more fun than those of any other Turian class. Is it a huge advantage or even a game-changer? Of course not. But the next time you punch a baddie in the face and leave him with one leftover stick of health, you won't have to come back for him, because the poison will finish him off. Another nifty feature is the heavy melee teleport, which will transport the cabal near potential victims to tear them apart before they have a chance to fight back. That is, when it doesn't glitch out and teleports you god knows where.
Instead of a Biotic Charge, this kit gets the rather broken and unimpressive 'Poison Strike'. Depending on how you spec it, this ability will teleport you a certain distance into the direction you're currently facing and any baddie you come across will get poisoned. This power is problematic for many reasons. First of all, you don't aim and charge directly at an enemy like other biotics do. You teleport past or through them, making it more difficult to use this power efficiently. And while a biotic charge deals decent direct damage, the damage from Poison Strike is dealt over time, meaning it'll take longer to kill enemies. Players also report that this ability will often fail to trigger at all, making it little more than just a teleport button. Furthermore, biotic explosions rarely trigger at all with this power and using anything but the lightest weapons will raise the cooldown on Poison Strike to a level where it simply takes too long to reuse to be effective. This ability is likely not working as intended right now and you'd be ill-advised to spec into it for now.
'Nightshade Blades' is significantly more powerful, although it still has its flaws. Basically, this ability allows you to fire a set of blades at an enemy, which deals massive instant damage, as well as added damage over time. Depending on how you spec, the blades will explode for AoE damage or cause even greater damage on impact. Both the animation and description suggest that you're shooting the blades at a single target, but as you can see on the video at the end of this blog, the blades seem to hit every enemy near the Cabal, resulting in massive AoE damage and entire groups of mooks biting the dust in seconds. The downside is that some enemies, such as Praetorians, don't seem to be affected by this ability at all. Bug? Working as intended? Better keep an eye on those hotfixes. Nightshade Blades uses grenade charges, so it comes with no cooldown, but has a very limited amoumt of shots.
'Biotic Focus' is your typical biotic melee buff, which raises movement speed, melee damage and damage resistance. Depending on your spec, this ability can instantly restore 40% of your shields upon use, which is incredibly useful with lighter weapons, resulting in a cooldown of 3-5 seconds. While this power does not overcharge shields like stimpacks would, it does not depend on grenade charges and can be used repeatedly with no need to visit the ammo box. While this power isn't strong enough to let you bitch-slap platinum spawns without ever seeking cover, it provides insane amounts of survivability and makes the Cabal a valid option for any difficulty. I smell a nerf incoming.
In its current state, the Cabal is not the mega tough melee powerhouse some might expect her to be when looking at her power set. Some abilities seem glitched (for now), the survivability to punch a Banshee in the face is simply not there and packing a heavy shotgun for the melee omni blade attachment raises power cooldowns too much to make them useful. Still, even without melee attachments and gear bonuses, her venomous claws are deadly enough to take down troopers on any difficulty and her high rate of mobility (teleport-dodge, heavy melee teleport) encourage you to use melee frequently.
For larger spawns, far away enemies and boss baddies, you'll want to bring a decent gun. You're not going to win any punchouts against a Brute, so it's a good idea to buff shields rather than melee DPS, shoot the big guy from a safe distance and punch his minions, instead. It's still a very fun play style and it also looks incredibly cool.
I've done a bronze test solo to see how it all works. As you can see in the video, I'm still struggling with the awkward controls at times, but all in all, it has been an incredibly easy run, which cost me no medigels, health packs or missiles. Naturally, you cannot be so reckless on gold difficulty, but this is more of a demonstration and an experiment rather than, "Look at how fucking special I am". Like all competent Harrier Turians, she still tops the scoreboards on gold.
-Cat
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