Quote Originally Posted by Beowulf DW View Post
Just out of curiosity, what would you guys say is the key to making an effective character for multiplayer, in any class? Do powers=power? Or should you focus on a couple powers and dump your remaining skill points into passive bonuses like Fitness?
Depends on the class. Basically, you want to know what your game plan is, and build around that. Easy example: the Asari Adept's normal game plan is biotic combos. She wants to max out all three powers, taking the Detonate upgrades on Warp and Throw, plus put plenty of points into her class power for all those power damage boosts and weight capacity increases, but can skimp on Fitness. From there it becomes a question of which particular upgrades for each power are worth taking at each rank, some of which are obvious (Bubble for Stasis rank 6 is the main reason that power rocks so much), some of which may not be (duration vs extra damage before drop-out at Stasis rank 4, for example). Just keep in mind what you're trying to do and think about what will best help you do it: for that Stasis 4 for example, I took duration, because the extra damage before drop-out didn't tend to result in enemies staying in stasis long enough to make a difference when being shot at by my allies, but the extra flat duration made it easier for me to get biotic combos off of it.

Personally, as someone who primarily plays casters, my builds all tend to follow a 6/6/6/5/3 pattern - max out the powers, 5 ranks in class skill, 3 in fitness. The general idea being that characters focusing on power use practically always want their powers maxed out, and benefit more from their class skill's power damage increase than from Fitness' shields/hp or melee boosts, but the last rank of their class power usually is not relevant to a power-focused build and thus can be skipped for the extra shields/hp. The only exceptions to this are my Vanguards, which are the only class I play that's not a straight caster, so I instead gear them towards being close-range killers. I max out charge and another relevant power (Nova on Human, Barrier on Krogan), max out both the class skill and fitness (fitness going for pure defense on my Human, going for a mix of defense and melee on my Krogan), and ignore the other power (Shockwave and Carnage, neither of which would be anything more than a backup power at most if I put points into them).

Zevox