Game Breaker / Mass Effect

Mass Effect

• Soldiers and Infiltrators can both get Master Immunity and a cooldown reduction specialization so it cools down before it runs out. A.k.a the timer can be reset before it runs out, making the player virtually invincible. It completely negates the need for cover, which is supposed to be a major defensive component. It also negates the benefits of taking defensive bonus talents, which are otherwise pretty logical choices for a Soldier if you don't realize how effective Master Immunity was. It gets nerfed in Legendary Edition, losing a lot of duration and recharge speed (although at least the enemies suffer the same penalty when they use Immunity).
• The humble pistol is the weapon of choice for most people, even beyond several of the weapons found later in the game. It has the best accuracy, damage, and rate of fire, and it's available from the beginning of the game for all classes. With a little tweaking, you can turn it into a good long-range killing machine (without bothering to use a sniper rifle). The pistol's Marksman ability, at maximum, will also out-shoot assault rifles easily - more rounds, more damage, less heat and more accuracy. With the Infiltrator class, specializing in Commando, as well as a Medical Exoskeleton, it can speed up the recharge on Marksman to the point where you can have the skill enabled permanently.
• Now combine Pistol's Marksman with the Immunity ability. You can stand still right in front of a pack of six enemies who all have guns blazing on you and methodically take them all down one by one before Immunity wears out. This will work on any game difficulty! The only enemies you'll have trouble with are biotics who can knock you down on the floor repeatedly, but there are only a handful of those kinds of enemies in the whole game, and they're trouble for everyone, not just pistol-users.
• Mass Effect 1 shotguns do have very tight pellet groupings that grant considerable range. With the right shotgun stats and equipment, you have a non-scoped sniper rifle in your hands. Add to that high force upon hits and the ability to equip shotguns with specialized ammunition that increases impact force even further and the only thing you can't tie down to the ground are krogan. And those still die fast enough, even on Insanity if you can hit them before they cast Immunity.
• An Adept's skills, when set up properly, last longer than it takes for them to recharge. On top of that, they can have the ability to make anything in a Stasis field damageable, which normally renders things invincible for the duration in return for it being unable to fight back. This ability works on the final boss.
• Biotics in general are deliciously overpowered in the first game, not simply because of how effective they are but also because nothing can counter them. Even if Shepard lacks any biotics themselves, taking along Kaidan and Liara (the two weakest squadmates combat-wise) both with marginally upgraded Lift and Throw makes all of the side missions and even some of the main story missions laughably easy, and that's before considering Barrier (fully upgraded, it makes you almost indestructible to anything except poison attacks), Singularity (renders whole groups of enemies harmless and draws them together for easy shooting), and Stasis (targets a single powerful enemy to completely immobilize them, and as mentioned Sentinels and Adepts can take a Prestige Class to allow enemies to be damaged while immobilized).
• Adrenaline Rush. Unlike the later games, each power in ME1 has cooldown periods independent of all the others. What Adrenaline Rush does is reset the cooldowns of all your powers so you can use them again instantly. In the hands of a Vanguard, this essentially amounts to dual-casting Lift, Throw, and Barrier, with a side of Marksman/Carnage for good measure. And by the time all those expire, you'll probably be ready for another Adrenaline Rush. Oh, and since you've got a bio-amp anyway, Vanguards are ideal for using a biotic bonus power like Singularity for even more chaos. And in case you're worried that tech powers were left out of the fun, Garrus also packs Adrenaline Rush for all your rapid-fire-Overload/Sabotage needs. Enjoy.
• A simple method to clear any exploration planet's outdoors in even the highest difficulty is to fire on enemies at a distance that is so far away, that their health bar and name info will not pop up upon being engaged. The AI will bug, holding down their triggers to return fire against you but staying completely still to maintain a range that almost every enemy will have no hope of hitting you in any way. With just about every exploration planet's outdoors being ridiculously open and spacious, this is pretty much always possible to do on all of them against every enemy—just take out any snipers they have first with a sniper rifle (just about the only weapon capable of hitting anything reliably from so far), keep an eye out for any rocket or large energy ball projectiles they might fire to easily dodge by moving to one side, and you can kill everything outdoors on a planet assuredly (if slowly).
  • Alternatively, you may utilize the Mako similarly. It can be hit by enemies at such a range, but can usually quickly run to a safe spot on a regularly completely open exploration planet to wait for its shields to recharge. Get out of the Mako to land killing blows on enemies when they've gotten low to get full XP for your trouble. This'll probably take a while to do as well (especially since the Mako's shields take a damn long while to recharge), but again, the strategy can make it pretty much impossible for stuff outdoors to kill you when pulled off with no requirements to set up. And in the Legendary Edition, you didn't even need to get out of the Mako to get full XP of the kills.
• The Spectre Master weapons, gained by amassing a million credits and buying them from the C-Sec/Normandy requisitions officer (and can be done very early on, if you save enough). Every other gun pales in comparison, though in Insanity difficulty they are merely what you need to survive.
  • And you can get them the moment you first enter the Citadel - once you've saved Doctor Michel, she sells you items at a sufficient discount that you can make a profit re-selling them to other vendors. A dozen or so trips and 20 minutes of gameplay allow you to qualify AND amass enough funds to purchase every Spectre weapon.
• The Mako can be this at times; just about every outside fight is meant to be fought from within the Mako, but if you manage to find one that isn't and still get the Mako there? Well, then you have what's essentially a sniper rifle with the ability to kill anything meant to be fought from the ground in one shot. Goodbye, difficulty! Although this does significantly decrease the XP received from kills, nothing prevents you from damaging enemies down to a sliver of health and then Cherry Tapping an enemy to death—which you can also do with any fight you use the Mako in, allowing you to get more XP than any fight in the Mako is intended to give you.
• Frictionless Material weapon mods, the high-level variant of the early game Heat Sink mods, reduce the heat buildup of any weapon to such a degree that they get infinite ammo. And in most cases you only need to equip one, leaving your higher tier weapons free for another non-ammo mod.
• On the companion side of things, Wrex. Between his massive passive health regeneration, access to Immunity, Barrier, Combat Armour, his natural bulk, and access to Heavy Armour, Wrex is one tough son of a bitch, to the point where he can be sent in alone against waves of enemies on all but the highest difficulties and come out no worse for wear. He's no slouch in the offence department either, packing the aforementioned shotguns, while still being handy with an assault rifle for those occasions where a shotgun isn't enough, and still having a couple of Biotic trump cards up his sleeve, including Stasis and Warp, the latter of which plays almost too well with Wrex's affinity for close-quarters combat, leading to many instances of a freshly softened enemy decorating a nearby wall with their innards following a point blank Carnage-boosted shotgun blast.
  • On the other end of the spectrum, Tali is a devastating Glass Cannon in this game, due to the Geth making up a large portion of the enemy encounters. While she shares most of her abilities with Garrus, she has one particularly nasty ace in the hole with her AI Hacking ability, which she shares only with an Engineer Shepard, allowing her to force Geth units to attack their allies. While the basic level of Hacking works against most Geth rank and file, she's able to turn even Juggernauts, Armatures and their mounted turrets against the enemy for up to 30 seconds once she's maxed out the skill. While this is not only an easy way to clear out encounters with one "miniboss" Geth and a platoon of Mooks, it also tends to draw a large portion of the enemy fire away from the squad even in more mundane firefights. Oftentimes, the hacked units will be the last ones standing, making it easy to execute them in their weakened state and move forward.

Mass Effect 2

• The Mattock Assault Rifle for the soldier. It deals ungodly damage in Adrenaline Rush ^note Adrenaline Rush drastically boosts damage while slowing time and weapon fire rate slows proportionally. While the Mattock has a maximum fire cap, it's at a rather generous 750 RPM, and on top of this, it's not reduced while under Adrenaline Rush., is extremely accurate, and is available from the start of the game.
• The M-29 Incisor Sniper Rifle is a DLC weapon that does decent damage when Shepard equips it and is available from the beginning of the game. Give it to your allies, however, and you can walk through most of the game without firing a shot, especially on Insanity difficulty (and right from the beginning of the game). As this video shows, Zaeed and Garrus will mow down most enemies in three or four shots, while the player can stay behind and play "spectator" as the AI kills everything in the way with massive damage. According to the game coding, squadmates do reduced damage on higher difficulties with most weapons except those obtained through DLC, making the M-29 king of the hill.
• The M-300 Claymore in the hands of a skilled player can one-shot most enemies with a well-timed headshot. This is due to the game having a rather infamous exploit where you can quick-reload your guns. This can effectively turn what is an otherwise Awesome, yet Impractical weapon due to its slow reload time, into a rapid-firing beast. While the caveat is it is limited to close range, this made it the go-to shotgun for Vanguard and Soldier players.
• The Sentinel goes from the bottom of the class heap in Mass Effect to nigh-unbeatable status here. The variety of available powers and the short cooldown time means you can run through the game without firing a single shot, and Tech Armour lets you restore your shields whenever you want on your own time as well as knocking back and stunning anyone nearby whenever they go down. A properly prepared Sentinel can stroll casually through the entire game tossing power combos left and right while ignoring enemy fire and his/her guns.
• The M-98 Widow Sniper Rifle, for Soldiers and Infiltrators. Damage-wise, the only non-heavy weapon that does more damage is the Claymore, except the Claymore becomes useless at more than a few feet from the enemy, while the Widow can take down enemies from halfway across the map. Add in its Anti-Armor bonus, Headshot Damage upgrade and the bonus damage given by Adrenaline Rush/Tactical Cloak, and you've got a long-range death-dealer with damage second only to the Cain.
• For a squad composition, Miranda paired with Garrus is utterly devastating, particularly on Insanity difficulty, where every enemy has defences. Both of them have Overload which tears shields to shreds, Garrus has Concussive Shot and Armor-Piercing Ammo which are useful against barriers and armor respectively and Miranda has Warp which is effective against both and stops krogan and Vorcha from regenerating health. In other words, both of them are effective against every single defence in the game, and have synergy with each other, covering blind spots in their abilities' coverage, such that no enemy can't be dispatched in short order. On top of this, Miranda's passive ability can add 15% weapon damage to the entire squad and Garrus' damage output is already extremely high on its own. Simply put, they are useful in virtually any situation.
• Fully upgraded Cryo Ammo with the Squad Ammo specialisation chosen is arguably the deadliest of all the ammo powers. Cryo Ammo automatically freezes enemies once shot when they don't have any shields left. When the whole party has the Cryo Ammo equipped this creates insane crowd control potential. Frozen enemies are especially susceptible to momentum attacks, meaning biotic attacks like Charge/Push and Sniper Rifles instantly shatter enemies.
• The Soldier Class, thanks to Adrenaline Rush combined with the aforementioned Mattock Assault Rifle and Widow Sniper Rifle can become arguably the largest damage-dealing class in the game. In exchange for not getting any special powers like the other classes, the Soldier gets access to three ammo types (Incendiary, Disruptor and Cryo) and all of the weapon types. The Mattock and Widow are already stupidly powerful on their own, but the buff provided by Adrenaline Rush effectively trivializes almost all of the boss fights in the game.

Mass Effect 3

• Vanguards have become field-wipers thanks to their new ability, Nova. Nova is normally a Death or Glory Attack because it drains your shields to cause a huge biotic explosion. However, the vanguard staple Biotic Charge regenerates shields, up to 100% capacity with the right upgrade. Should a vanguard equip a light enough weapon, the cooldown between the two can be short enough that a skilled player can jump around blasting any enemy in the view over and over again until all that's left is a pasty smear on the wall. And have we mentioned that both Biotic Charge and Nova give the player invulnerability during their duration, making a skilled Vanguard all but invincible?
  • Nova or not, Vanguards with maxed-out Biotic Charge and a strong shotgun will turn you into Superman thanks to the weapon weight/power cooldown mechanic. Equipping light weaponry will leave you with a fast enough recharge to practically spam Biotic charge, which both means practically unlimited shields and the ability to reach every enemy on the terrain in a matter of seconds (knocking them down on impact) and making it impossible to corner you.
  • Vanguards also have access to the Shockwave ability. These stumble and harm even the toughest of enemies and can be fired around corners or through walls. If you can max it out for range and cooldown a Vanguard becomes almost unstoppable.
  • Vanguards also have access to the Incendiary Ammo skill, explained below. It's interesting to note that the skill only applies the extra damage to Health and Armor, but the Nova skill above can get a massive damage boost to Shields and Barriers. Vanguards have all their bases covered with game-breaking abilities.
• Now that Overload works against both regular shields and biotic barriers, it's surpassed Warp as the go-to anti-defence power. In addition, its later evolutions can make it jump from target to target chain-lightning style, as well as impart a neural shock effect. Put all these together, and you've got multi-target, anti-shields, anti-barrier, and stun, all in one power.
  • Likewise, the Energy Drain power has also gotten a similar boost. It can't chain like Overload, but simply making it usable against barriers means that no matter whether you're fighting husks, Cerberus, or geth, there's at least one enemy type available to drain from. This is particularly useful for Infiltrators since they don't get Overload by default, and the main drawback of Tactical Cloak is that your shields do not recharge while it's active. Energy Drain solves both problems, which is why Salarian Infiltrators (who have Energy Drain) are so prominent in multiplayer.
• Incendiary Ammo. The final stage of the skill grants a chance of an explosive burst. The damage of the burst is a set amount of damage (roughly 100 points), unlike previous games where the damage was a percentage of the weapon damage. The upshot? Fast-firing weapons trigger this explosive damage more often. With fast-firing, low-damage weapons this skill can effectively boost damage by +200% while adding an area effect. The Particle Rifle is generally the best weapon to use with this skill, as it has a fast fire rate, can be upgraded with cover penetration, has perfect accuracy, and regenerates ammo. The Geth Pulse Rifle, which has a much lower weight, enormous ammo pool and nearly perfect accuracy, or the M-7 Lancer, which also has regenerating ammo plus reasonable base damage and a very low weight, are also strong contenders.
• This game's version of Stasis has the most potential for game-breaking yet. Unlike the first two games, enemies under the effects of Stasis can take damage (though too much damage will break the stasis effect). It also acts as a source power for biotic explosions (which means you can follow up with Warp or Throw for massive damage), it ignores shields and barriers (so Phantoms among others are not immune to it), and a Rank 6 evolution lets it create a bubble that will stun any unarmored enemy that walks into it, essentially making it a multi-target trap like Singularity.
• Infiltrators in general.
  • On anything less than Insanity, where the AI becomes smart enough to work around it, Tactical Cloak is this. While the Infiltrator's signature weapon is the sniper rifle, using Tactical Cloak with just about any shotgun, the Carnifex, or the Paladin means you can run around a map free from enemy fire, walk right behind them, shoot them in the back of the head for massive damage, hide behind cover for what might be, depending on your level, 3 seconds and then you can do it all over again.
  • They benefit from Tactical Cloak's unique cooldown mechanic - should the Tactical Cloak be cancelled before it naturally expires, it has a reduced cooldown. You can break Cloak early by shooting or using a power and getting a damage boost from Cloak. Normally, you'd want light weapons (which give bonuses to cooldown) to ensure the cooldown for a useful power like Tactical Cloak remains short. However, by breaking Cloak immediately after engaging it, you can force its cooldown to be as low as three seconds. This means Infiltrators get an unparalleled damage boost to both powers and weapons (most classes only have passive skill trees that benefit one or the other) and can carry the heaviest (and generally most powerful) weapons in the game while still spamming powers freely with Tactical Cloak's damage boosts.
• Power combos are nice enough on their own, but what truly broke the difficulty in the single-player was when some observant players discovered the ability to chain different types of power combos. Before patches, it was discovered that using Warp to detonate a Tech Burst did not stop it from priming the target for a Biotic Explosion. Patch 1.04 introduced the ability to keep up repeated Tech Bursts and Fire Explosions just by alternating between Overload and Incinerate. Once this was discovered, Atlases, Geth Primes, and Banshees became the only enemies to provide any challenge. All other shielded enemies found themselves being wiped out en masse. This feature is especially kind to the Engineer and Sentinel classes. The former can damage and stunlock everything at a rapid rate while their drone and turret distract enemies or just shoot rockets at them while the latter went from the Jack of All Stats to the Master of All, especially with Warp Ammo.
• Flare, a bonus power unlocked upon completing the Omega DLC. It's a biotic power that triggers a powerful explosion with a huge radius. It has a base radius of 6 meters, roughly twice that of any power other than some of the grenades, and can be evolved up to a potential maximum of 10.8 meters. Meanwhile, it inflicts close to or over 1000 points of damage, much better than other offensive powers like Warp, and it can be used to detonate Biotic effects and even has an evolution for increasing the damage, force, and radius of Biotic Explosions. Although it's got the longest cooldown time of any power to date in single-player, Shepard can still pretty easily bring it down to six seconds or less by selecting lightweight weapons and gear and bonus power recharge rate boosts. Doing nothing but heading for cover and casting it multiple times is sufficient to win most encounters since each casting will inflict heavy damage to all large enemies in the radius and instantly kill all mooks. Oh, and it sets off pre-existing biotic primers, such as Reave, Warp, Singularity, and a few others. Double explosions FTW! And it can be upgraded to make Biotic explosions more powerful. And it's the only Biotic power in the entire game that's highly effective vs Shields. Properly built, Shepard can go an entire game never doing anything but chucking a Biotic primer power and Flare at everything they come across. In other words, Flare can be akin to hitting the "I Win" button.
• Lash, the other Omega bonus power, is also extremely powerful. Normally it flings enemies around with a relatively low cooldown, as well as dealing a reasonable amount of damage. The final upgrade, however, makes it the only biotic physics power to work on shielded enemies, albeit for lowered damage. That is, enemies that normally need to be extensively damaged before they can be pulled out of cover/knocked around can be sent flying right at the start of the fight, and are entirely powerless to keep themselves from being thrown from wall to wall until they’ve been easily shot to death. In levels with pitfalls, normally dangerous enemies can be thrown over the edge before they have a chance to do a single harmful thing. In particular, it breaks the Kai Leng boss fights. Normally, he is impossible to knock over or hinder, as he always has shields, and so will constantly pursue Shepard with dangerous melee attacks; with Lash, he can immediately be slammed into the wall and Shepard and crew can stand over his defenceless body shooting him repeatedly until he tries to stand up, at which point he can immediately sent flying again and the process can start again. Lash makes this normally tricky boss defenceless and harmless.
• Surprisingly enough, the humble Concussive Shot. Exclusive to the Soldier class, it was only useful against barriers and unshielded husks in 2, but its final rank allows it to have the effects of the active ammo power applied to it, allowing it to burn, freeze, disrupt, warp, or pierce armor. Mind you that the Soldier has three different ammo powers just to start, and can pick up the remaining two as bonus powers, allowing them to set up combos of their choice at will. Selecting the right weapons can give the Soldier a maxed-out power recharge rate, allowing you to chain combos and buzz-saw through enemies with little resistance even on Insanity.
• The M8-Avenger is the game's starting rifle, and as such is a Jack of All Stats, with no major weaknesses except being unpredictable at long range, and no major strengths other than being very lightweight. The High-Velocity Barrel from the Omega DLC turns the Avenger into a death machine as it ignores 90% of armor and punches through cover like it was made of toilet paper. The reason why the HVB is the perfect match for the Avenger is that the HVB adds a weapon's weight by 50%, but the Avenger is so light that with a few upgrades, it practically negates the weight penalty, making it an awesome combination for power-spamming classes. Oh, and if you find the accuracy to be a problem, slap a scope on it and you can snipe enemies across entire hallways. This also works with the M7-Lancer, which is an Avenger with a bit more recoil but with the cooldown mechanic from the first game.
• The Cerberus Ajax Armor (from the Alternate Appearance Pack DLC) is the most powerful armor for soldiers in the game (outside of the Cerberus Nightmare Armor from the Citadel DLC). Not only do you get the Ajax Armor at the beginning of the game, but it has more cumulative benefits than any other suit in the base game (+25% ammo capacity, +10% weapon damage, +10% power damage, +10% shield-regen speed and +25% shields), making Shepard a near-unstoppable tank who can mow through enemies in any difficulty.
• The N7 weapons included in the Collector's Edition are all near or at the top of their class, are available from the start of the game, and (with a mod or two) become devastating:
  • The N7 Crusader Shotgun. It fires a single, accurate, solid slug rather than buckshot. This essentially makes it an unscoped sniper rifle, with comparable stopping power to the single-shot sniper rifles... except it's semi-auto.
  • The N7 Eagle. It's got the accuracy and power of a pistol, and the fire rate of a SMG. Put a scope on it, and you have a full-auto Sniper Pistol. Like the Particle Rifle, you can probably take nothing but the Eagle and do just fine. Note that this doesn't apply to multiplayer, where the N7 Eagle is seen as one of the worst guns in the game.
  • The N7 Valiant sniper rifle. Like the prohibitively expensive Black Widow, it combines a three-shot clip with good stopping power. Unlike the Black Widow, its recoil and reload time are practically nonexistent, making room-clearing a breeze, and it's light enough to keep power recharge high, and cheap enough to upgrade that you'll get it up to level V moments after the first level.
  • The N7 Hurricane; if you can learn how to handle the prohibitive recoil, it's got more power per shot than any other SMG, and with magazine expansions, can dish out a whole world of pain. It's especially game-breaking when employed by the Turian Soldier class in multiplayer with level V heatsink and thermal clip mods. The Turian Soldier's signature skill, Marksman, increases the firing rate and ammo count and decreases the recoil of his guns. In his hands, the modified Hurricane becomes a super accurate death machine that never stops firing.
• Several of the weapons obtained through DLC packs are ostensibly broken from a damage output standpoint, and most of them can be accessed from the beginning of the game:
  • At the top of this list should be the Cerberus Harrier, from the Firefight Pack DLC and the multiplayer Rebellion DLC. It's a modified version of the M-96 Mattock DMR (which is already listed in the ME2 section of this document) that fires in full auto, and as of the MP Reckoning expansion it is the most commonly used weapon in multi-player. Why? It deals great damage, has a superb rate of fire, and is only a mid-weight assault rifle. It stands head and shoulders above every other assault rifle and can be used by a wide variety of classes, save the most power-centric. Its only flaw is a truly horrendous clip size, which can be fixed with a weapon mod.
  • The Particle Rifle (from the From Ashes DLC) runs on the same "cooldown" system from the original game but also uses a beam that gets stronger as the trigger is held down. Not only can the weapon be acquired right after Mars, but it can also be augmented like the other weapons with mods. A Particle Rifle with a magazine upgrade and extended barrel will have much more ammo than normal and will chew through enemy defences easily, even on Insanity difficulty. Even better, if a Soldier class runs the beam's ammo down to 0 and uses Adrenaline Rush, the weapon's reloading animation (which often takes several seconds) is skipped and the ammo will refill again, saving precious seconds in combat. Finally, it allows Loophole Abuse: the weight system penalizes you with increased cooldowns if you overburden your character, but grants cooldown reduction if you manage to find a single gun that can handle both long-range precision operations and fending off swarms of Husks. You know, like the Particle Rifle can. You can go through the entire solo campaign with no other weapon equipped and never even notice.
  • The Venom Shotgun from the Groundside Resistance Pack DLC is described, even on the ME wiki, as having all the benefits of a heavy weapon from the previous game, minus the ammo issues. It fires high-power grenades, rather than shotgun blasts. Like the Geth Plasma Shotgun, it can charge for added damage, but the similarities end there. Whilst the Geth shotgun can empty its magazine with one fully charged shot, the Venom only uses one shot for each fully charged attack, allowing for four high-power blasts before it needs to cool down. With maxed-out upgrades, an extended barrel and incendiary ammo (which is fairly easy to accomplish early on), the Venom becomes a beast that can one-shot Brutes and Phantoms, and take down Geth Primes, Banshees and Atlases (some of the hardest enemies in the game) in three-four shots. Aside from weight issues, it makes any difficulty up to and including Insanity a complete joke.
  • The N7 Piranha shotgun (also from Groundside Resistance and the Earth multiplayer pack) has very poor accuracy and a small clip size, but with the right stability upgrades, it can do monstrous damage with near-perfect accuracy. To put this in perspective, in single-player, the Level I version of the Pirahna is better than the Level X Katana shotgun (which is also acquired near the beginning of the game).
  • The Krysae Sniper Rifle (from the Firefight Pack and the Rebellion multiplayer pack) might as well have been called the Krysae Rocket Launcher. Though it can't get headshots, the rounds it fires are explosive and operate on a proximity charge, allowing it to blow up groups of targets with one or two shots each, even on Gold difficulty. With a few damage bonuses, even boss-type enemies fall prey to the Krysae's wrath. This gun was the reason that Tactical Cloak and Hunter Mode were nerfed in multiplayer since they both provided too much synergy with it. And even after being nerfed, it's still in widespread use to this day.
  • The N7 Typhoon is the most obscenely powerful weapon in the series. It has a damage bonus against all types of protections on top of its already considerable base damage. Once it reaches its maximum firing rate, its damage doubles. When used by Shepard or in multiplayer, it's balanced by being extremely heavy and having horrible stability. What breaks the game is that Shepard's squadmates are completely unaffected by weapon weight and have perfect stability no matter what. It is a testament to the power of the Typhoon that even Kaidan and Javik, who need to rely on other squadmates for ammo powers and potentially have no weapon damage bonuses at all, are capable of easily melting the toughest enemies. Ashley's Marksman ability, James' Incendiary Ammo that was mentioned above, or Garrus' extreme weapon damage bonuses break it even more. Some players eventually stopped giving their squadmates Typhoons because the game became too easy.
• From the Citadel DLC:
  • The M-11 Suppressor Pistol (also from the Citadel and Reckoning DLC) might not have the stopping power of other pistols like the Carnifex or Paladin, but it makes up for it with one of the largest head-shot bonuses in the game. If used with the correct mods (the scope and cranial trauma mods are the two best choices) and enough skill, the Suppressor can reliably kill just about anything except for the heaviest of heavy enemies in two shots or LESS. You don't even have to go out of your way to get it - it's handed to you at the beginning of the first mission. There's a reason even Wrex is amazed at such a "little gun" packing such a "punch".
  • The M-7 Lancer Assault Rifle (also from the Reckoning DLC) combines the recharging ammo of the Particle Rifle with the power and high rate of fire of the Cerberus Harrier, giving you arguably one of the most powerful weapons in the game. On top of that, it is also one of the lightest assault rifles in the game, so all but the most power-dependent of classes can use it without any problem. Combined with the explosive burst evolution of incendiary ammo, it can kill a Brute on insanity in around five seconds of sustained fire. The only downside is the slightly less-than-forgiving recoil, which can easily be taken care of with a stability mod.
    • A Soldier, using their ammo powers and an armor set that improves weapon damage (like the Hahne-Kedar pieces), using the M-7 becomes a true one-man destructive force, capable of shredding enemies to pieces without needing to retrieve any additional thermal clips.
  • The M-90 Indra (formerly a Pre-Order Bonus) is handed to Shepard by Liara after completing the "Shore Leave" mission. It's a full auto sniper rifle that might not have the punch of, say, the Widow, but add-ons and upgrades fix that. Throw in special talents like Cloak or the ability to slow down time when aiming and you could take down Harvesters. Unaided.
• The Claymore shotgun, while already a partial game-breaker in the second game, is even more of a game-breaker here, especially with a vanguard. It only fires a single shot, but it will one hit kill almost any enemy in the game, even powerful enemies like brutes or phantoms, and only a few enemies remain genuinely dangerous once Shepard gets it, such as Banshees or Atlases. Throw in a Vanguard's Biotic Charge, which allows you to get into a group of enemies very quickly, and a lot of enemies can be easily beaten. Shepard can just walk through otherwise challenging levels just fine with the Claymore shotgun with no real danger of taking damage.
• Even in the vanilla game, there are a few things that stand out as impressively broken. The Javelin sniper rifle has a scope that highlights enemies hidden behind cover, is virtually as powerful as the Widow, and has innate cover penetration. Combine this with Armor Piercing Ammo and a high-level Piercing modification, and the Javelin can pierce multiple consecutive layers of cover and still be lethal. It is entirely possible to kill enemies several rooms away, or from such a huge distance that their A.I. routines don't even trigger a response to the multiple heads exploding around them. Seems that both the Quarians^note The ones who created the Widow and the Geth^note The creators of the Javelin had a thing for creating overpowered sniper rifles.
• Slam is subject to some... interesting interactions with the physics engine. A properly timed combination of Slam to lift a target, followed instantly by warp as the target begins to rise off the ground will result in them being launched dozens of meters into the air before slamming back down at tremendous velocity. Absolutely no Slam-vulnerability enemy in the game will survive this combo, even on Insanity. Mixing in Overload/Energy Drain to strip shields off priority targets essentially translates to any humanoid opponent dead in a single fast-recharging combination attack. While not much use against larger reaper enemies, missions against Cerberus become a series of 'who can bounce the highest' contests, as only Atlas mechs cannot be Slammed.
• Several of Shepard's squadmates can be game-breakers in the right hands.
  • Kaidan is the king of power combos. He can set up three, something no other character can do outside the Citadel arena, and detonate all four. As long as there is another biotic in the team, Reave and Overload ensure that there is no situation where Kaidan cannot prime a power combo that will wreck the enemy's day. The combination of Barrier and Reave also gives Kaidan utility as a damage sponge that surpasses the squad's designated tank even with his significantly lower health, and his ability to use both pistols and assault rifles lets him keep his damage up. If evolved properly, Barrier's cooldown penalty can be nearly negated by Kaidan's default outfit.
  • Ashley has the squad's second-highest base weapon damage. Later patches ruined her Marksman ability, but gave her some other deadly tools to work with since, out of her remaining three powers, Concussive Shot is the only one with a cooldown. Ashley can blast an enemy for a bit while empowered by Disruptor Ammo, then throw an Inferno Grenade to trigger a Tech Burst and wipe out her target's shields, then immediately follow up with a Concussive Shot to trigger a Fire Explosion that will heavily damage health or armor. Combined with her high weapon damage, Ashley can mow through large numbers of enemies with no help from Shepard or the third squadmate. And as of Legendary Edition, Marksman works, which combines the power of the different patch levels.
  • Garrus has the highest weapon damage of all of Shepard's squadmates. With the right evolutions in his passive ability and Armor-Piercing Ammo, as well as an outfit that improves weapon damage, his damage per shot is roughly tripled against armor and health, and is still more than doubled against shields and barriers, which are easily removed with his Overload. If Proximity Mine is evolved to reduce the target's damage resistance, Garrus's already insane damage output is pushed even higher, as is the rest of the party's. Here's an example of how ridiculous a well-built Garrus can be.
  • Liara's Singularity and Stasis powers let her lock down large groups of mooks at once, leaving you to either blast them with a biotic explosion or ignore them in favour of priority targets. Warp is also useful as a general damage-dealer and biotic detonator, and with a Paladin, she can be entirely reasonable at gunplay as well.

Mass Effect 3 - Multiplayer

Multiplayer has its share of incredibly broken classes and skills:

• The final MP DLC, Reckoning, all but cements the place of Infiltrators as the most powerful class, in the form of the Alliance Infiltration Unit. The AIU has a unique cloak similar to the Turian Ghost's: its final evolution at rank 6 can give a boost to shotgun damage fired from Cloak. Powerful, but not game-breaking. Its true power lies in another ability: Repair Matrix. Repair Matrix offers the AIU some general buffs (speed boost, damage reduction, and shield regeneration), and most importantly, a free revive when she would be downed. For literally every other character in the game, going down means you either wait for a teammate to revive you (and risk being executed by an enemy or simply bleeding out in the meanwhile), or use a medi-gel (of which you can bring at most 6 per game). Proper application of Repair Matrix means you will never die because you'll revive instantly. The kicker? Repair Matrix is a grenade-based power. This means you can freely refill from ammo boxes. Because Repair Matrix can have a duration of roughly 20 seconds, you can simply run from ammo box to ammo box, all under the protection of Repair Matrix, and so completely trivialize damage taken and death.
• The Asari Huntress is perhaps the most powerful asari class. They have Tactical Cloak, of course, and Dark Channel, a powerful biotic damage-over-time power (previously only available to Javik in single-player and the N7 Fury in multiplayer). These two powers combine for a devastating ability that eats up foes' health. First, the Huntress's Tactical Cloak was released bugged—it only gave damage boosts to melee attacks and powers, not weapons. Rather than wait for a patch to fix the bug, it was decided that the Huntress would be given a unique Tactical Cloak: her Tactical Cloak can give a 120% bonus to general damage (though that still only applies to powers and melee) as opposed to the 80% of other Infiltrators, with a further 40% boost to biotic powers instead of sniper damage. Second, Dark Channel while decently powerful but not exceptional on its own, gets a damage boost from Tactical Cloak for the entirety of its duration. So while your cloak may break right after you use Dark Channel, it keeps that 120% damage boost until it runs out... and if its current target dies before that duration expires, it'll simply jump to a nearby foe. A Dark Channel cast under Cloak is capable of killing a Banshee from full health on Gold difficulty, all while the Huntress is running about targeting other foes.
• The Drell Assassin Infiltrator, as yet another example of why Infiltrators are often considered the most powerful class. Drell have excellent passive bonuses to power and weapons damage, with a unique speed boost evolution in another skill tree, making them fast and hard-hitting. As an Infiltrator, he also gets Tactical Cloak. And he gets Recon Mine, which highlights all enemies in a rather large radius, making them visible through smoke and even walls, as well as potentially slowing them and making them more vulnerable to damage. The icing on the cake? You can detonate the mine, dealing massive damage to all enemies in range. Recon Mine is only available on the Drell Assassin and the Volus Engineer, which as a support class offers much less damage potential. It's fortunately balanced by the fact that Drell are Glass Cannons, with low base health and shields.
• The Geth Infiltrator toting an N7 Piranha is agreed by many to be the best multiplayer character. The already overpowered Piranha loses its spread thanks to accuracy bonuses, becoming viable at range, and its already high damage is amped up by cloak, hunter mode and (optionally) proximity mine debuffs.
• The Geth Trooper Soldier can deal obscene amounts of damage against armor and health using its flamer ability. While the class has no abilities effective against shields, this can be counteracted by equipping it with an anti-shield/barrier weapon such as the Acolyte or Reegar shotgun while still maintaining a relatively low cooldown period. To top this all off, the Trooper has 1000 base shield which can be further upgraded using its class ability with damage reduction added on by Fortification. And of course, the Trooper has access to Hunter Mode. At the cost of slightly reduced durability, the Trooper can see through walls and deal even more damage with weapons and abilities alike. And unlike most "tank" classes, the Trooper still maintains its agility
• The Geth Juggernaut, basically a playable version of the Geth Prime, is so big that it can't use cover and moves very slowly (it can't even run), but it has more health and shields at Level 1 than most classes could get at full upgrade, and all of its powers can be evolved to further increase its toughness. It also has a heavy melee that recharges its shields and, more importantly, immobilizes small-sized enemies, allowing it to Cherry Tap terrors like Phantoms and Dragoons. It's also immune to sync-kill moves, which makes it a viable strategy to have a Juggernaut walk up to a Banshee or Atlas, throw a turret or hex shield in front of it, and then heavy-melee the closest enemy while the rest of the squad pour fire on enemies converging on the Juggernaut. This is viable even on Platinum difficulty, where the Juggernaut can stand at an entryway or corridor, and then become a Stone Wall by using the heavy melee, turning the entryway into a chokepoint as the hordes of enemies plug up the bottleneck trying to reach the Juggernaut. If executed properly and not flanked, the Juggernaut can do this pretty much indefinitely to buy the rest of the squad precious time to deal with other threats. There's even a piece of gear (aptly named the Juggernaut Shield) that improves shields and melee damage to further improve survivability. A group of Juggernauts is even more devastating, as they can assist each other by stunning enemies, deploying energy shields as cover and turrets that can restore each other's shields. It's Boring, but Practical, but the Jugg's survivability and usefulness make the N7 Destroyer pale in comparison.
• The N7 Destroyer Soldier is basically Iron Man brought to the Mass Effect universe. The character is in a big suit of powered armor and is quite powerful. Devastator Mode, even after being nerfed, increases weapon damage, rate of fire and magazine capacity in exchange for losing a bit of movement speed. Additionally, with Devastator Mode active, the Destroyer cannot be stunned. That means that all those overpowered Geth attacks that cause you to stumble will still damage you, but your firing won't be interrupted. Secondly, the Destroyer has the Hawk Missile Launcher. It's an auto-firing missile launcher that can be upgraded in a variety of ways. Its only drawback is that it decreases your max shields. That's a small price to pay for a missile launcher that has an unlimited ammo capacity, doesn't need to be manually locked on or fired and stuns most regular enemies. Finally, the Destroyer has the Multi-Frag Grenade, which is pretty good when it comes to grenade powers. All that, though? Not the best part. The best part is that apart from enabling Devastator Mode and the Hawk Missile Launcher at the beginning of a match, the Destroyer never has to worry about cooldown. That means that a Destroyer player can equip the heaviest two weapons he or she wants with no penalty whatsoever. It's no wonder why Bioware nerfed the Destroyer.
• The N7 Shadow possesses Shadow Strike, a teleporting backstab that synergises with its cloak and lets it zip around the field like a Vanguard. When set up properly it can inflict massive damage (boosted by both melee, Cloak and power attack bonuses) without breaking Cloak, possibly twice in a row. The class also has the benefit of Cloak (handy for objectives and reviving allies) and a cover-piercing shockwave attack that can set up tech bursts and be used in combo with Shadow Strike.
• The Targeting VI is an item that will augment headshot damage by 25%, 50%, or 100%, depending on the level. If you can consistently get headshots, you can use this in conjunction with a semi-automatic sniper rifle - say, the Raptor or the Viper. Watch yourself score at the top of matches every time.
• The Turian Ghost infiltrator class has amazing synergy with assault rifles, with class passives improving stability and a cloak variant that boosts their damage even more than normal damage-specced cloaks. They combine this with the general utility of cloak, a cloak-boosted overload for stunning and shield-stripping, and Stim Packs, which are deployed instantly like grenades and instantly refill shields (temporarily raising them above max) and give a damage bonus. They can get all this power and survivability and still use heavy weapons without penalty by breaking Cloak as soon as it deploys.
• The Krogan Warlord Sentinel is what Shepard would be if s/he had four testicles and a hammer large enough to kill a small elephant. He finds the concept of guns and keeping distance from a fight quaint, launching into the fray with a biotically- or electrically-charged hammer that can kill lesser foes in one shot, and demolish bigger ones with a few more. He gains strength from the ludicrous amounts of enemies he can kill and has tech armour to replace shields. Which probably won't be needed, since he regains shields and health at an ungodly rate. He does have two particular weaknesses: He is still vulnerable to sync-kills, so he shouldn't just run up to a Banshee or an Atlas head-on, and must either come from the side or back or exploit whatever precious little range his hammer gives him. At higher difficulties, this can become a Crippling Overspecialization, as enemies will use sync kills at every opportunity, and the Battlemaster has no long-range powers, but that doesn't mean he can't equip a gun. His powers being limited to recharging the effects on his hammer and applying and detonating his tech armor means that players can load up on the heaviest weapons they like with minimal drawbacks. Getting swarmed by enemies where you would want to detonate tech armor simply means he can use the hammer more. His other weakness is a complete inability to take cover or dodge, but this can be mitigated by finding big enough things to hide behind. His Mighty Glacier speed (his walking pace is roughly half that of human characters) is offset once he enters the Krogan Rage, which is triggered by killing two or, with the right upgrade, just one enemy in melee in a relatively generous period and upgrades your weapon and melee damage output and resistance and health regen and movement speed. Considering enemies tend to come in clusters, it's easy to stay in Rage for an entire game, only possibly slipping out due to the time between waves.
• With the human vanguard, if the player is hosting, however, a certain trick you can perform when you use the Nova ^note The game grants about a second of immunity to any form of damage whatsoever, which you can exploit by cancelling the Nova by, for example, rolling to the side or performing a quick melee attack. Provided you don't run into enemies that can instantly kill you or stagger you, you could walk across a field of Cerberus turrets and come out none the worse for wear by abusing this. turns you into an unstoppable killing machine with some practice. Slap a powerful, yet light enough gun on the human Vanguard and you won't need teammates.

Mass Effect Andromeda

• Weapons
  • The angaran Isharay Sniper Rifle is an absolute beast that puts even the old favorite M-98 Widow to shame, by being lighter but doing a sixth more damage. It's supposed to be balanced by its extremely low amount of spare ammo and long reload (base of 14 shots), but add in a Vintage Heat Sink mod, and you can run around battlefields just scopin' and droppin' everything in sight, without worrying about ammo. The VHS even speeds up its effective fire rate by cutting out the default reload animation.
  • The Asari Huntress Sword. It has the highest damage of any melee weapon, and its attack is essentially a short-range Biotic Charge with no cool-down, allowing you to melee attack targets from much further away and are much less likely to miss. Its sole weakness is a longer attack animation than the others, but that's hardly any trouble at all since Ryder is invincible for the duration.
  • The N7 Piranha, an Ultra Rare fully automatic shotgun. Its damage output from a single magazine allows Ryder to mow down any enemy at close-to-mid range, and its reload speed is pretty good for a shotgun as well.
  • The Talon pistol is a very handy weapon to have in this game, as it is a shotgun masquerading as a pistol. Although it has a pistol's weight, it has the damage of a shotgun, making it particularly useful for a Ryder that switches between profiles. Since the Talon's weight is low, it has a minimized effect on cooldowns, allowing Ryder to also bring along say a Sniper Rifle and/or an assault rifle. Ryder can now switch to a Vanguard profile and murderize enemies up close and personal, from any other profile, without a significant cooldown penalty. Want to combine being an Infiltrator and Vanguard? Now, with this Talon you can!! The Plasma Charge and Seeking Plasma augs, which are normally found in the scrap heap, really shine with this pistol, as the seeking plasma ensures that all pellets will strike your target, doing more damage, while the plasma charge lets you operate this pistol as a plasma grenade launcher that does increased damage.
  • Remember the Particle Rifle from 3? It's back. It's called the Particle Accelerator Weapon and it's Remnant instead of Prothean, but it works the same as its Milky Way counterpart did: a continuous beam delivering face-melting amounts of damage with pinpoint accuracy, even at long-range. This means that, even before Weapon Mods are added, it's once again versatile enough to be carried as Ryder's only weapon, especially if our Pathfinder has opted for a power-heavy build and doesn't want to exceed weight limits. The P.A.W.'s only downside compared to the Particle Rifle is that it lacks the "do more damage the longer you've fired" thing, but let's face it, none of us ever went into battle thinking, "But it's the fact that my gun is a miniature Void Ray that will really trounce the Reapers."
    • Put the Grenade launcher or Sticky Grenade launcher augmentation on the PAW and it becomes a beast that can even take Fiends down in ten seconds. Since the Grenade launcher’s rate of fire is meant to mimic that of a ballistic weapon, combining it with the PAW means you are practically beaming over a continuous stream of grenades. Which then explodes at the same time like a cluster bomb. And since the PAW doesn’t have an ammunition limit, you can keep launching these cluster grenade streams indefinitely.
  • The Remnant Tech tree allows you to turn any weapon into a PAW. The Hornet has the highest DPS in the game, except that it isn't full auto. With a Vintage Heat Sink, it becomes an unlimited ammo face-melter, but the magazine size leaves something to be desired. It weighs virtually nothing; leave off the VHS, carry two, and laugh maniacally as Architects on Hardcore and Insanity are broken down after about ten seconds of fire from your tiny little death laser. Did we mention that the Hornet is more accurate than most assault rifles?
• Biotic Powers
  • Who needs aim when you have Singularity? Just lob one of these into a crowd of enemies and then detonate an enemy with another power... and another, if available. If they have Barriers or Shields, this almost certainly strips them and leaves unarmored foes floating helplessly. Then pop the bubble itself for even more damage with its final evolution.
  • Charge is as broken as ever, allowing a Pathfinder to go from far away to up close and personal. It can be used to detonate abilities (like Singularity, since you can now use BOTH), recharges Shields (to full if that evolution is picked) and can even increase melee abilities after use. Even better, if your other abilities are Annihilation and Nova, you become a walking Biotic Detonator.
• Tech Powers
  • Once you invest enough points to max both of them out, the Assault Turret and the Remnant VI, an Observer combat drone that fights for you, become a truly devastating combo, that makes it feel like you have two more squadmates. The Assault Turret can be turned into a hovering flamethrower that primes enemies, while the Remnant VI fires missiles to detonate them. By spamming these two, you can just sit back and enjoy the slaughter.
  • Cryo Beam and Flamethrower not only deal serious damage to enemies, but they also cause them to panic or freeze, giving Ryder time for a free detonation. Enemies that are immune to those effects (such as ones with armor) will have their defences severely weakened for several seconds after either power is used. One of the best methods for taking out Fiends is to order both squadmates to attack them while alternating between Flamethrower and Cryo Beam. By the time one has finished firing, the other's cooldown will be almost finished if not completely. While both abilities are slightly hindered by their limited range and necessity to stay out of cover for the duration, they are so powerful in their specific niches that it's worth keeping one Profile with both of them at the ready, with either Energy Drain or Biotic Charge as the third ability to both detonate a combo and restore shields if necessary.
  • In his in-depth review of the game, Lucas Raycevick mentioned that Overload, Cryo Beam & Energy Drain (in that order) were enough to carry him through a Hardcore playthrough. Overload catches the enemy out in the open and strips off their shields, allowing you to Cryo through their health bar, with Energy Drain on backup to heal yourself and pop the Ice Combo. Unless the target of this combo is one of those mini-bosses like a Fiend, Hydra or Eiroch, they are almost certainly dead, and you are back up to full shields and, depending on your cooldowns, ready to do the whole darn thing over again.
  • The Life Support upgrade for the Team Support passive. Regenerating health every time you use a tech power is an enormous boost to survivability, especially on Insanity Mode, and combining it with the Team Drain upgrade on Energy Drain essentially allows the player to create their version of Shield Boost, the very power that makes Cora so useful, that sacrifices a bit of power for the ability to use it at will while dealing with the enemy's shields and possibly priming Tech Combos.
  • The Cobra RPG, a consumable power that is not unlike the heavy weapons from 3. Launched from the omni-tool with next to no priming time, they're a one-hit-kill on most enemies with incredible splash damage, and heavily damaging to things like Remnant Architects and all those larger forms of wildlife you'll run into. A vendor on Aya will sell five at a time, so a player that visits frequently (or just saves and loads a game to refresh the vendor's inventory) can stock up enough to use them like candy. They're expensive, but considering the amount of Shop Fodder an average player will drop off throughout a single planet it's very easy to build up a reserve. The only other downside is that they take up a slot in your consumables list, so early on you may have to choose between that and a special ammo type or shield capacitors.
• Squad members
  • Cora, being The Medic and an extremely powerful Lightning Bruiser to boot. As long as you don't have serious issues with her personality, chances are good you'll never go into battle without her. She's very resilient thanks to her high health and shield pools - it takes concentrated boss-level firepower to even have a chance at downing her in combat. Her Shield Boost makes both her and the rest of the squad (including Ryder) next to unkillable and can be upgraded to have a ridiculously short cooldown, so it can be active almost constantly; depending on upgrades, it can even regenerate health. To top it off, her offensive abilities are among the strongest of any squad mate you have, what with being a full-fledged Vanguard with all the game-breaking biotic powers that entails. Also, since she tends to fight at melee distance, a lot of enemies will be focusing fire on her instead of you much of the time. If you're exploring and fighting without Cora, you must be desperate for that extra bit of challenge.
  • Drack continues the trend of Krogan being nigh unstoppable monsters on the battlefield. Between a massive health/shield pool, the best damage resistance in the squad, and Blood Rage making him unkillable for its duration, practically nothing can stop him. With Unstoppable, even if he does somehow go down he'll get back up on his own, meaning so long as Ryder lives Drack will never stop fighting. His Incendiary Ammo upgrade also means every shot he fires can Prime targets for combos. Incinerate can both prime and detonate combos with proper upgrades which makes him perfect for setting up lots of fiery explosions. Bring him and Cora together and your squad will roll through all but the toughest encounters with ease.
• Augments/Mods
  • Vintage Heat Sink brings back the original Mass Effect cooldown mechanics for guns. Popping this into one of the overpowered weapons, like the Isharay, N7 Piranha, or Black Widow, will turn Ryder into a death-dealing juggernaut that will never run out of ammunition.
  • When using the infiltrator profile (which lets you see the silhouette of enemies when scoped, even if they're behind walls) the mods that increase penetration are completely unfair. Whenever your enemy takes cover, they become sitting ducks for you to just shoot through said cover, especially with an Isharay to kill them with one shot. You can even penetrate the normally invulnerable forward-facing barrier on Nullifiers.
  • The Fusion Mod of Adrenaline is in a class of its own. In exchange for increasing all power recharge speeds by 50%, you gain the ability to reset all power cooldowns every time you kill an enemy. You'll essentially be able to spam Biotic/Tech/Fire/Cold combos without worrying about cooldowns and wipe out entire camps of mooks like they're nothing.
  • Patch 1.08 added augments that can alter a weapon's firing type. For example, a semi-auto assault rifle can be converted to a full-auto rifle. This comes at the cost of a 40% reduction in damage per hit, which is not nearly enough to balance it out. Placing the full-auto augment on an N7 Valkyrie will create a weapon that still has very high damage per hit for its weapon class while having an exceptional firing rate and being more accurate than an assault rifle has any right to be. A full-auto Valkyrie will melt enemies on Insanity mode for pretty much no drawback other than ripping through your ammo just as fast... which is why you install the Vintage Heat Sink on it.

Mass Effect Andromeda - Multiplayer

• Early on it was discovered that a bug allowed players to equip two boosters from the same category, Ammo, Weapon, XP etc. For practicality, it meant people could use two different ammo types at once and utterly dominate a lobby, even on Gold, to the point it became the best way to farm credits for a good portion of time. Bioware eventually realized and patched the bug, preventing boosters of the same class from being equipped.
• The Angaran Insurgent possesses Trip Mines—explosive devices that go off whenever an opponent steps on it or trips the laser sights. It not only does major damage but can either prime or detonate combo powers depending on which evolution is taken. He also has Shield Boost, which makes them the Combat Medic of the group, if his teammates stay in range. This kit makes him the ultimate camping character: if your team needs to defend an area during a Hack or tense Hold the Line standoff, the Insurgent is perfect.
• The Human Kineticist has one of the most devastating kits in the game, with a Super Mode that allows her to deal more damage, take more damage, and bypass Cooldowns. Plus, the lack of Cooldown means she can be outfitted with obscenely powerful weapons and bypass the Necessary Drawback every other biotic has. The one weakness is that her powers become Cast From Hitpoints while Ascended, but investing in points in shields, and using the right Boosters and Equipment makes this a non-issue. Also, she has amazing synergy with the aforementioned Angaran Insurgent; not only can she Pull or Throw enemies over his Trip Mines (which can create Combo Detonations), but his Shield Boost is just what she needs to stay at peak fighting performance and spam her attacks without fear of losing Super Mode.
• The Regeneration and Berserker evolutions on the krogan passive skill tree. Regeneration allows the character to fully recover health while raging (instead of capping health recovery at 50% like normal) while Berserker switches it so that it only takes two melee kills within 30 seconds to trigger Rage and causes Rage to automatically trigger any time the character's health falls below 33%. At that point, only sync kills or large mobs concentrating their fire represent a threat. The 1.08 patch heavily changed the Rage evolution tree, giving Regeneration as a starting effect for taking a single rank in it while switching the Regeneration evolution to Unstoppable, boosting the krogan's damage resistance for 2 seconds after every kill. It further changed Rage so that instead of requiring melee kills to trigger, it can now be triggered with any type of kill that the krogan character scores against an enemy that's within 10 meters.
• The P.A.W. rifle doesn't use ammo, does ridiculous amounts of damage very quickly and is perfectly accurate. It makes almost any other weapon in the rifle category obsolete the moment you first pull it out of a pack. Its only drawback is its above-average weight, but since you'll never run out of ammo and it's great at any range there's no real need to bring a backup gun in your second slot...

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