Mass Effect 3.7: "That was for Thane"

[Zevox]

On volus, I sugget 6/6/6/5/3. Fitness is almost a waste of time if you have shield boost.

Hm, in that case, wouldn't it be best to take 6/6/6/6/0? Or is that too much of a risk?

Recon mine, area of effect/?????/invasive scan is boss. I species my most recent for straight damage and it's honestly underwhelming. The lack I radius hurts and the damage isn't accuse enough to make up for not being able to shoot things better.

Hm, okay. I'd likely take damage at 5, since I go for minimum cooldown time with my guns anyway, making recharge a bit redundant. You're sure about invasive scan over armor damage at 6 though? That 75% damage boost looks awfully big, given how much damage the power does even with just the rank 5 damage boost.

For the passive, pick up 30% better shield boost at rank five.

Really? Even though the power itself gets several boosts to that, and it's up against a general power damage boost?

It's only been a noticeable problem this last week, but I have enemies sporadically drop highlight for a split second. Several instant powers seem to have trouble tracking, mostly against geth. You haven't had annoying until the fifth time you fail to chain-stun a group of hunters and get dropped instead.

Huh, weird. I can't say I've seen the highlight dropping myself though.

In any event, whatever the specific bug may be, I really hope they fix it soon.

Does it really do more than warp?

Eeyup. Warp's Expose does 15%, Cryo Blast with both Cryo Explosion at rank 5 and Frozen Vulnerability at rank 6 is 25%.

It only increases damage on frozen targets.

Not unless the power description is wrong - both upgrades specifically say "frozen and chilled targets." And I'd swear I've seen it do just that when I hit big, armored enemies that my allies are shooting at with it.

I've found cryoblast to be all around disappointing with anything but the havoc soldier. Before the new burst mechanic, there was no noticeable damage increase against chilled or frozen targets from incinerate, there was no noticeable increase from cryoblast on weapons, either from straight freezing or armor weakening. I use it anyway just in case but it seriously seemed like wasted effort aside from the area still hitting and getting enemy dodges out of the way early.

I certainly noticed the difference with Incinerate before the burst change - when I promoted my Engineer class to respec my Demolisher's arc grenades, I played a game with my Quarian Engineer while leveling up during which she had Incinerate at rank 5, just shy of having the upgrade that doubles its damage versus frozen/chilled enemies. I was trying to make cryo bursts out of mooks as I usually did, and found it much harder, because I couldn't simply cryo blast -> fire a little -> incinerate for a quick kill, since incinerate wasn't doing nearly as much as when I had her with that upgrade.

And cryoblast can trigger bursts once in a blue moon. I've gotten tech burst on occasion and one highly anomalous fire burst. No one else targeted or shot the guy as I was in a solo match, and ammo wouldn't cause a burst even if it primed it. But there we were, silver, at the bottom of tuchanka, and the assault trooper goes up in bloody red chunks and a fiery sphere instead of freezing.

Huh, that's weird. Must be some kind of bug though - if the power were supposed to trigger bursts but wasn't doing so, I think they'd have noticed and fixed it by now. The reverse happening in extremely rare cases though, I could see slipping through the cracks.

You only get a Cryo-Burst when the enemy is frozen, they can't just be chilled. So, in other words, you can only get a cryo explosion on an enemy that has health and no barriers/shields and only once they've completely frozen (ie they're falling over).

Once you have that in mind, cryo explosions drop in usefulness since...well...just look at what you need to do to tripper a cryo explosion with cryo blast!

That's what I thought when I first played my Quarian Engineer after that change, but I've since seen cryo bursts go off on enemies that don't even have health, including Dragoons and Geth Primes. So yeah, there's something screwy there.

Zevox