TT Kairen said:
Having a limited resource of basic equipment makes no sense with the game lore. People have miniature fabrication plants on their arms, you think a warship won't have the resources to duplicate weaponry, given the schematic? That's why you can equip everyone when you acquire a single instance of any given weapon. The "super" weapons like the Widow and Claymore have an in-universe explanation about why only Shepard and Legion, or Shepard and Grunt, respectively, can use those. Anyone without cyborg strength or a massively hardy physiology couldn't make use of a weapon with that kind of recoil. Sadly they chose to ignore these established explanations in the third game.
Which is why in Mass Effect 1 Shepard was Mass Producing weapons on his arm and ship to sell for infinite cash, and could create infinite medigel and mods and weapons and everything!
Except he couldn't, because you need resources for that, and the Omnitool still has its limits, as does medigel, and then there's the DRM on designs of weapons, and licenses required to use, produce and sell them. There are lore reasons for everything here. Unfortunately, ME2 took all the lore and went "Lol fuck that, better make EXPLOSIONS" with it. Once you hit ME2, half of ME's lore is moot. ME3? All of it means nothing.
Its also why in ME2 we mass produce heavy weapons for the squad, and why money isn't an issue because we're just making all this stuff we can sell even on black markets because we ballin' it. But its not. Its an excuse for why they removed the mechanic. Per the series lore, that mechanic existed to begin with. It was removed to make the experience simpler, and so that Bioware didn't have to bother redesigning the inventory system.
We also obviously can't mass produce those armoured exoskeleton suits for increased strength we had in ME1 to let our squadmates use the Claymore or Widow, no no, that'd be too easy, and require some internal consistency. Honestly, the lore defence falls to pieces as soon as considered. It was a gameplay choice, nothing more.
This is highly inaccurate, in my experience. For reference, I play only on Insanity difficulty, so take that into account when I explain my weapon choices. Also keep in mind I don't like to metagame the system, yes I know different weapons would work better against given foes, but you aren't always supposed to know which enemies you're facing. I make my loadouts balanced to handle any possible threat.
Assault Rifles: On the Soldier, I actually prefer the Avenger or the Revenant. Since I use the Viper sniper rifle, I find the Vindicator and Mattock rifles to be redundant, filling the exact same purpose, so there is no reason to carry them. Long range is covered, so I want something more mid-range and anti-shield. The Vindicator also performs poorly with Adrenaline Rush in general. On the three "non-combat" classes, I take Assault Rifles, and generally use the Mattock, since the Tempest is far superior DPS in close range engagements than any automatic Assault Rifle, so they need to cover long range.
SMGs: Yes, the Shuriken sucks. On the Vanguard, I stick with the Locust, just in case I need something long range anti-shield. For the non-combats, I use the Locust until the Collector ship, where I swap to the Tempest for reasons listed above, since I've acquired Assault Rifle usage.
Pistols: On the Soldier the Predator, pound for pound, is actually the highest DPS during Adrenaline Rush, since it functions best with rapid fire weapons. On all other classes I stick with the Carnifex, purely because I can't stand that shaky laser sight on the Phalanx.
Shotguns: The Soldier I use the Scimitar, because again, Adrenaline Rush functions best with rapid fire weapons. However on the Vanguard, I use the Claymore or Eviscerator, depending on how many melee damage upgrades and armor pieces I've accrued. If I'm at max, the Claymore shot and one or two punches can finish pretty much anything. If not, I prefer the extra buffer before a reload the Eviscerator provides.
Sniper Rifles: The Soldier uses the Viper for long range engagements, due to the functionality of Adrenaline Rush. Since Tactical Cloak only affects a single blow for massive damage, the Infiltrator functions much better with the glorious power of the Widow.
I only play on insanity as well, and if we're going for the role playing approach, there was no problem with weapon styles in ME1 either. Much like in ME1, there were single best weapons in each category.
Assault Rifles: Against shields Mattock does 60.5 damage per shot, and doesn't really fire that significantly slower than the Avenger [750 RPM vs 850 RPM], which deals 13.5 damage per shot to shields. Revanent is a superweapon, which is why I excluded it from the list, because if you have it you should be using it in terms of assault rifles, with it dealing 25.56 damage per shot to shields, and firing at 700 RPM vs the Mattock's 750 RPM [I know right?], but having a clip size large enough that its actual DPS outpaces the Mattock's thanks to the Mattock's constant reloads. Vindicator deals 46 damage per shot to shields. You'd need to get three and a half shots out of the Avenger for every shot from the Vindicator to match its DPS [850 RPM Avenger, 900 RPM per burst for Vindicator].
SMGs: Tempest does 21 damage to shields each shot, Locust 31.25. Against armour, Tempest does 14, Locust does 31.25. The Locust is also incredibly accurate. One of the closer competitions, but the Locust ends up winning out as the better overall weapon due to an only slightly lower ability to reduce shields at close range, against being better in literally any other situation. Tempest had an immensely niche use, and one oftentimes you were better off avoiding - I.E: Insanity YMIR Mechs at close range with the missiles and the chainguns and the death. You could make the argument that for one or two missions a game it could be better, but that's pushing calling it an equal choice of weapon to the Locust. Even in those situations though, if you were anything but an Infiltrator the Locust was still the obvious choice as being a replacement assault rifle for the casters, and the Vanguard just not needing a close range weapon outside the shotty. Infiltrators would stay at range anyway, and had an easy way of getting to range, so even then the Locust was predominantly the better weapon, outside of the handful of missions you were stuck in close range with an enemy that had high shields and low everything else.
Pistols: 37.2 base damage for Predator, 85.4 for Carnifex, 109.8 for the Phalanx. All have the same multipliers against armour [1.5], shields and barriers [1]. Phalanx comes about as plainly better than the Carnifex. I can understand potentially not liking its laser sight, though honestly that made it one of the most accurate weapons out there, but it was just the better gun. Predator may have been situationally better with Adrenaline Rush, even if only slightly, though again we're talking very niche use of the last gun anyone is ever going to choose to use on a class that has access to assault rifles, snipers and shotguns that outclass the Predator in all roles, and then only in tandem with their ability. The Predator essentially doesn't get used.
Shotguns: Still should use Geth Shotgun. Scimitar does 162.7 base damage, Geth Plasma does 250.4, if every single pellet hits which is far easier to do with the Geth than the Scimitar, and also assuming you only hit one enemy, where if you hit 2 the Geth would actually deal over 350 damage per shot. As if this weren't enough, the Geth fires at 174 RPM in instant fire mode, the Scimitar fires at 100, making it benefit even more from Adrenaline rush when tap firing [At least if the wiki's info is to be believed]. Fully Charged the Geth also does 556.4 damage per shot, and is reasonably accurate at long range, making it a good short, mid and semi-decent long range weapon, with insane Damage. They have the same modifiers against shields and barriers.
Eviscerator vs Geth; Eviscerator has higher damage per shot if every single pellet hits [294 vs 250] [Harder than with the Geth], however loses out due to the reduced fire rate from its smaller clip. Eviscerator fires at 48 RPM vs the 174 of the Geth as well, making the Geth the clear DPS and accuracy winner. Surprisingly, the Geth arguably beats out the Claymore as well. With 37.5% more damage per shot fully charged, which you can do before charging as a Vanguard, and the ability to follow up with an instant 250 damage follow up round. Even without chargeup its a 174 RPM fire rate vs a 40 RPM fire rate, allowing for more rapid DPS, though not necessarily an instant kill, from the Geth. They literally made the Geth Shotgun OP as all hell, even after they tried to nerf it by making any shots after the first that hit the same enemy only deal 30% damage, vs the 100% damage every other shotgun has.
Snipers: Basically what I've said. Viper is the best weapon, outside the Widow for Infiltrator which is an 'ultimate' weapon that essentially only the Infiltrator will acquire, seeing as soldiers should get the Revanent.
This is patently false. Soldiers used Adrenaline Rush most of the time, but Concussive Shot was useful for taking down Barriers quickly, since that was the only defense they had no ammo for (unless you went the "screw lore" path and took Warp Ammo, despite Soldiers not being Biotics). Sentinels had their Tech Armor to keep up, and both Warp and Overload for dealing with different defenses. Engineers had their Drone, immensely useful, and then Incinerate to stop regenerators and armor, and Overload to deal with Shields and Synthetics. Adepts had the ability to detonate Biotic Explosions on their own, which, when combined with Squadmates to rip down their defenses quickly, was capable of laying waste to enemies far faster than your guns ever could. The only classes guilty of using a single power 99.9% of the time were Infiltrators with Tactical Cloak, and Vanguards with Biotic Charge. But... even if those two classes had other useful powers... would you ever bother? Biotic Charging is the most fun shit in the entire game.
Was it better to use one concussive shot and knock out 1/3rd to 1/2 their barriers, or hitting Adrenaline Rush and taking 6-7 shots with the Viper and utterly eliminating their barriers? The answer was always Adrenaline Rush. It was just a patently better option.
Unless you remained in perfect cover all the time, waiting for longish cooldowns so you could use abilities, tech armour was usually what you used, popped out and used the tanking power to get a lot of shots on an enemy, then back to cover. The others could be fun to experiment with, but rarely matched effectiveness with that, let alone having to refresh tech armour anyway mid battle with its longer cooldown that put those abilities out of commision for long enough for your armour to have died again. Theoretically I guess you could just ignore your armour and pump out warps or overloads exclusively, dependent on the enemy, but never found that to be as effective.
Was it worth using incinerate, or just keeping your fire ammo on and using your drone to distract enemies? Almost always the Drone. Overload saw some occasional use against bosses I guess, but usually distraction with the drone and a few quick headshots from the pistol/smg was a faster way to kill.
Adepts were Under Powered as fuck and near useless on Insanity. Warp was useful against barriers. Singularity NEVER saw use as it only effected things without armour, shields or barriers - and at that point they were 1 shot off dead anyway. Same goes for throw. Same goes for Pull. Same goes for Shockwave. Cooldowns also weren't ignorable on them, meaning warp+SMG/Pistol was the best option for an Adept at all times. On Normal, sure, they may have had a bit more variety. Insanity? They were a joke.
And yeah, Infiltrators and Vanguards were exclusively their specials as well. As for what would you use instead of Charge? That's the wrong question, and everything that went wrong with ME2s ability cooldown. Its not what would you use instead of, its what would you use with - which noted with ME3 was a Nova, or in ME2 could have been shockwave or pull followed by a charge to send them flying, or all sorts of combos without relying on teammates that had the exact same abilities as you because your had to have one on cooldown. Though, again, I guess any ability but charge on insanity would have been useless - damn armour, shields and barriers.
These aspects were only improved in the 3rd game with the Weight system giving you even more thought to your loadouts. Soldiers could pack up on guns to deal with threats, or use their wide array of ammos to detonate the new Tech Bursts near-constantly. Vanguards had the Charge-Nova combo, as well as more useful Charge combos because of the renewed ability to crowd control defended targets. Infiltrators could cause insane amounts of damage with a Tactical Cloak enhanced, Tech-Bursting sniper shot (this can take down Banshees in a single blow, provided their barriers are down). Engineers could now control a veritable army of drones and turrets, in addition to their already wide array of Tech-based attacks for bursts. Adepts could create frankly absurd Biotic Explosions now, given the new Flare power from the Omega DLC. And Sentinels were just completely broken, being a Master of All Trades class, rather than the Jack of All they used to be. All of this plus the new grenade and melee systems, the absurd number of weapons, and the restored mod system made for the best gameplay of all three games by miles.
I did indeed say the third game improved a lot of it - by going back to its ME1 roots. You could equip a variety of weapons - like in ME1 - but they improved the system such that instead of it being your weapons that you weren't as effective with, which felt weird, it was your abilities having increased cooldowns. You no longer had completely shared cooldowns, you now had the ability to combo abilities yourself, rather than having a full party of pull users so you could pull charge someone, or pull off biotic combos. You had weapon mods again, like you had in ME1, but more thought out. Basically, they took half the stuff they removed from ME1 moving to ME2, and threw it back in having redesigned it like they should have for ME2 in the first place. The downsides here, of course, still existed; limited, short range combat encounters, removal of the player's Shepard to be replaced by BioShepard, complete removal of vehicle sections, inventory management still not being a thing, still largely linear and small hub worlds and other bits and bobs that just gave the game less depth, and that's before we hit the story.
In more subjective terms I also preferred the more open and natural combat of ME1 than ME3. ME3 was Gears of War in Space; chest high walls as far as the eye can see, and unless you're a Vanguard you better be behind them. ME1 you took cover behind cliffs and buildings more often than artificial chest high walls [Though they still existed], and had a number of times where cover wasn't available and you had to keep moving and shooting, and you had the health to be able to survive that. It was a plain change in gameplay style there, rather than a 'dumbing down' or a streamlining, but that's neither here nor there.
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