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[Mass Effect 3] Operation LODESTAR. Are you bad enough a dude/dudette to quad Platinum?

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Posts

  • LorkLork Registered User regular
    So nobody knows? I'd settle for a basic explanation of which weapon types are effective or ineffective against which resistance types, although knowing how much of a difference it actually makes would be nice.

    Steam Profile: Lork
  • Phoenix138Phoenix138 ArizonaRegistered User regular
    The Acolyte is the best gun for most casters, is up there with the Scorpion for best sidearm for most weapon platforms.

    Skexis
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Lork wrote: »
    So nobody knows? I'd settle for a basic explanation of which weapon types are effective or ineffective against which resistance types, although knowing how much of a difference it actually makes would be nice.

    This isn't ME2 where some weapon types do more damage than other based on defense.

    For the most part, you want to worry about shield gating and armor.

    Shield gating makes it so whenever a bullet would break an enemies shield, a portion of that bullets damage is negated entirely. Its about 50% on bronze I believe, and 75% on the other difficulties. Rapid fire weapons and shotguns really don't care about this, while it can be something to keep in mind for single shot or slow firing guns.

    Then there is armor. Armor is the yellow health bar that some enemies have. What did does is causes a flat damage reduction for every bullet that hits the enemy. I believe that's -15 on bronze, -35 on Silver, and -50 on Gold and Plat. Basically, on Gold, if a bullet does 100 damage it would instead do 50 damage. And if a bullet does 50 damage, it would do 5 damage because even if a bullet's power is under armor negation it will always at least do 5 damage. There are ways around this of course but that's the basics.

    There are also weapons that get bonuses/penalties against certain defenses but those are few.

    Really, powers and ammo types are what you want to look at when you're trying to see what's effective against what.

    Dragkonias on
  • Phoenix138Phoenix138 ArizonaRegistered User regular
    Lork, there isn't a whole lot to it.

    Armor shaves off a flat amount for each shot. Varies by difficulty but is 50 at gold. Fire does double damage. Some powers have evolutions that make them do more damage to armor. The Typhoon and Collector SMG do 1.5x damage to them. Some powers have no effect on armor.

    Shields have a set value and then reduce the amount of damage that carries over to health by a certain percentage when the shields drop. Some powers have evolutions that make them more effective. Guns like the Reegar and Acolyte do massive (8X?) damage to them. Some powers have no effect until shields have dropped.

    Barriers are the same as shields.

    Health is health.

  • Phoenix138Phoenix138 ArizonaRegistered User regular
    Damnit.

  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    Resistance Damage Multipliers

    Every weapon and power has a hidden damage multiplier on the 3 resistance types (Armor, Barriers, and Shields). Most of these are 100%, meaning they do normal damage to that resistance type. A value of 50% means half damage to that resistance type, and a value of 200% means double damage. Below are the multipliers for some of our weapons and powers.

    Weapons

    Acolyte Pistol (Armor=100%, Barrier=500%, Shields=500%)
    Krysae Sniper Rifle (Armor=150%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
    M-358 Talon Pistol (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
    N7 Typhoon Assault Rifle (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
    Reegar Carbine Shotgun (Armor=50%, Barrier=200%, Shields=200%)
    Collector SMG (Armor=150%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)

    All other weapons not listed here have a value of (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)

    Powers

    Annihilation Field (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Arc Grenade (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=200%, Shields=200%)
    Barrier Detonation (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Biotic Charge (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Biotic Orbs (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Biotic Slash (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Carnage (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=50%, Shields=50%)
    Cluster Grenade (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Concussive Shot (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=400%, Shields=100%)
    Dark Channel (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=200%, Shields=50%)
    Electric Slash (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
    Energy Drain (Base against organics) (Armor=50%, Barrier=300%, Shields=300%)
    Energy Drain (Base against robots) (Armor=100%, Barrier=300%, Shields=300%)
    Flamer (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
    Incinerate (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=50%, Shields=50%)
    Inferno Grenade (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
    Lift Grenade (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Nova (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Overload (Base against organics) (Armor=50%, Barrier=300%, Shields=300%)
    Overload (Base against robots) (Armor=100%, Barrier=300%, Shields=300%)
    Reave (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=200%, Shields=50%)
    Sabotage (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=150%)
    Shockwave (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=150%, Shields=100%)
    Smash (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=150%, Shields=150%)
    Tech Armor Detonation (Base) (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=150%)
    Warp (Base) (Armor=150%, Barrier=200%, Shields=50%)

    All other weapons not listed here have a value of (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)

    Power Combos

    Biotic Explosion (Armor=200%, Barrier=200%, Shields=100%)
    Cryo Explosion (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
    Fire Explosion (Armor=200%, Barrier=100%, Shields=100%)
    Tech Burst (Armor=100%, Barrier=100%, Shields=200%)

    and some non-obvious skill properties here

    Ardol
  • Renegade WolfRenegade Wolf Registered User regular
    I get that the acolyte is pretty great

    but I hate using it because of the charge time and it seems pretty susceptible to lag because the shot has travel time

    envoy1
  • LorkLork Registered User regular
    OK, thanks. I was under the impression that it worked like ME2.

    However, according to that math, shouldn't that mean that rapid fire weapons would be the most effective to use against armor, given that they would lose the least amount of damage potential due to the 5 damage minimum? While actually playing I've found the opposite to be the case, where pistols and sniper rifles seemed to do the most damage to armor, while assault rifles and smgs were seemingly useless against it. That could have just been confirmation bias though.

    Steam Profile: Lork
  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    5 damage is basically 0 in this game

    higher difficulty bosses have tens of thousands of HP

  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    Lork wrote: »
    OK, thanks. I was under the impression that it worked like ME2.

    However, according to that math, shouldn't that mean that rapid fire weapons would be the most effective to use against armor, given that they would lose the least amount of damage potential due to the 5 damage minimum? While actually playing I've found the opposite to be the case, where pistols and sniper rifles seemed to do the most damage to armor, while assault rifles and smgs were seemingly useless against it. That could have just been confirmation bias though.

    Most single-shot weapons do considerably more per shot. Let's pretend you take a gun that fires once per second at 700 DPS. Every time you hit armor, you lose 50 damage, so you are down to 650 DPS.

    Let's pretend you have a rapid-fire gun, 10 rounds per second at 70 damage each, so 700 DPS. Since you take 50 off of every shot, you lose 500 DPS, for a final count of 200 DPS.

    Rapidfire weapons and shotguns need armor-piercing mods to be as good against armor.

    dN0T6ur.png
  • Phoenix138Phoenix138 ArizonaRegistered User regular
    Lork wrote: »
    OK, thanks. I was under the impression that it worked like ME2.

    However, according to that math, shouldn't that mean that rapid fire weapons would be the most effective to use against armor, given that they would lose the least amount of damage potential due to the 5 damage minimum? While actually playing I've found the opposite to be the case, where pistols and sniper rifles seemed to do the most damage to armor, while assault rifles and smgs were seemingly useless against it. That could have just been confirmation bias though.

    Most rapid fire weapons do very small damage per shot, so they're losing a huge percentage of their damage. A sniper rifle on the other hand, might do something like 1000 damage per shot, so that 50 ends up being a small percentage.

    Shotguns also lose a great deal of damage to armor, since most shoot 8 pellets at a time, meaning without mods they lose 400 damage per shot.

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Lork wrote: »
    OK, thanks. I was under the impression that it worked like ME2.

    However, according to that math, shouldn't that mean that rapid fire weapons would be the most effective to use against armor, given that they would lose the least amount of damage potential due to the 5 damage minimum? While actually playing I've found the opposite to be the case, where pistols and sniper rifles seemed to do the most damage to armor, while assault rifles and smgs were seemingly useless against it. That could have just been confirmation bias though.

    No.

    Most rapid fire weapons have very low per bullet damage, while most slower firing guns have very high per bullet damage.

    Say you fire 40 50 damage bullets on Gold with no armor negation.

    That's 40x5 = 200
    Compared to the 40x50 = 2000 damage it would normally do. You're basically losing 90 percent of your damage output.

    Compared that do a Sniper Rifle that does 500 per shot and has a 3 round mag or whatever.

    3x450 = 1350

    Compared to 3x500 = 1500

    So you've only lost about 10% of your damage potential.

  • LorkLork Registered User regular
    Yeah I didn't think that the differences in per-bullet damage were that massive. I was thinking in terms of a 6 damage/shot smg losing 1 damage per shot vs say, a 40 damage/shot pistol losing 35 damage on silver, for example.

    Steam Profile: Lork
  • Warlock82Warlock82 Never pet a burning dog Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Ugg, hate this weekend challenge. Two reserves packs and still no Krogan or Batarian Soldier :( It really should have been the Avenger OR the Inferno Grenades. Requiring an ability only available to two classes sucks :(

    Edit: Ha, and right after I bitch my 3rd reserves pack has a Krogan Soldier in it :D So yay, challenge done. Still, they need to cut it out with these challenges that require super specific characters to do (or at least give us better odds by picking stuff that can be done with more than two characters)

    Warlock82 on
    Switch: 2143-7130-1359 | 3DS: 4983-4927-6699 | Steam: warlock82 | PSN: Warlock2282
  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Wait...is that a Collector?

  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Wait...is that a Collector?

    Leviathan thrall is the word on the street
    BSN

    Elendil on
  • WybornWyborn GET EQUIPPED Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Oh lordy

    gonna need me summa dat

    Wyborn on
    dN0T6ur.png
  • ArteenArteen Adept ValeRegistered User regular
    Those six characters look great, but I wonder if there are any "extra" characters like with the last DLC. I want a salarian sentinel so I can pretend to be this guy every match:
    me2_prodigal___the_renegade_option___ellis_by_chicksaw2002-d5s21eg.jpg

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    Well. There were three Salarians in the Salarian banners and only two Salarians out currently.

    So Salarian Sentinel might be a possibility.

  • OlivawOlivaw good name, isn't it? the foot of mt fujiRegistered User regular
    Elendil wrote: »
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Wait...is that a Collector?

    Leviathan thrall is the word on the street
    BSN

    It... looks more like a prothean...

    Which, you know what? At this point, final update, who the fuck even cares

    signature-deffo.jpg
    PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
  • Phoenix138Phoenix138 ArizonaRegistered User regular
    A dominated Collector would solve a lot of lore issues.

  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    Phoenix138 wrote: »
    A dominated Collector would solve a lot of lore issues.
    yeah

    i figure this is probably the most lore-appropriate way to scratch the prothean itch

    i like it

    OlivawArteen
  • TheSecretSeventhTheSecretSeventh GARegistered User regular
    holy shit those characters look awesome, if they're real.

    I only have 300K saved up, because I don't play this game nearly enough anymore. Got the Eagle X in my commendation pack, making it my first UR at level X. feels like a waste...

    PSN: DW_Drummer22
    XBL: MightyManotaur
    PA: TheSecretSeventh
    wait....
  • HuddsHudds Fool Just Outside TimeRegistered User regular
    I was playing with my Eagle 1 earlier today. It's not bad at all.

  • PreacherPreacher Registered User regular
    Thanks to Ardol and crew for some gold games, I have now 400k saved up to dissapoint me in not getting anything new. I figure batarian soldiers and cerb adepts!

    And I have converted to the church of the acolyte after going 130k on gold on rio. She's a tricksy bitch but I'm getting the hang.

    I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.

    pleasepaypreacher.net
  • ComradebotComradebot Lord of Dinosaurs Houston, TXRegistered User regular
    I'm up to 600k saved up. Not much, but neither is my free time right now.

    Shame I gotta study: it'd be fun to shoot some stuff with the KHP right now.

  • DragkoniasDragkonias That Guy Who Does Stuff You Know, There. Registered User regular
    I've found I have a lot of fun when the MP when I just play instead of grinding out challenges.

    That said...I just like the Earth classes too much. I've pretty much completed them three times over while I still have finished most of the other alien things once(even though they take a lot more time).

  • OlivawOlivaw good name, isn't it? the foot of mt fujiRegistered User regular
    I'm guessing they might throw out a ton of new packs in the store, based on those art assets we saw that never got used on the disc

    Plus a new pack just to get some of the new classes/weapons

    Because it's the last update, man! Fuck it!

    signature-deffo.jpg
    PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
  • IblisIblis Registered User regular
    Just finally found the time to start getting back into the multi here. Saved up 300K so far. Not much, but still have some more time tonight and tomorrow to play.

    I also had a ton of fun playing a Destroyer with the Particle Rifle and Collector Sniper Rifle. Lasers! Lasers everywhere!

    Steam Account, 3DS FC: 5129-1652-5160, Origin ID: DamusWolf
  • Blackbird SR-71CBlackbird SR-71C Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    Reminder: The Bioware livestream will begin in approximately 10 hours from now on the Bioware channel on twitch.tv. Be sure to check out this twitch.tv channel of one of the devs playing for a different PoV!

    Possibly more leaked banners:
    t5fwb

    5lxf3

    xnwpc

    bmkpx

    266to

    shblm

    Last banner indicates we'll get a new Salarian. These banners are from the same source as the Collector one.

    Blackbird SR-71C on
    steam_sig.png
    Steam ID: 76561198021298113
    Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird

  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    i guess the revenant is pretty usable on the destroyer

    i guess

  • Mild ConfusionMild Confusion Smash All Things Registered User regular
    I don't see why a resurgent prothean species can't be a thing, at least in a future ME game. Two scenarios:

    One: They find another cache of prothean stasis pods, but this one had enough power to last the 50,000 years. Kinda iffy, since the two on Eden Prime and Ilios couldn't hold out that log.

    Two: They take Javik's DNA and mix it with the remains from Eden Prime and Ilios and clone the protheans, with or without Javik's permission. I know the salarians would do this as they sure as hell wouldn't care about Javik's consent. Hell, maybe Javik, if he's in a sequel, is especially hateful of the new prothean race.

    Speaking of that, I wonder how long protheans live?

    steam_sig.png

    Battlenet ID: MildC#11186 - If I'm in the game, send me an invite at anytime and I'll play.
  • Blackbird SR-71CBlackbird SR-71C Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    I'd rather them just be possessed Leviathan thralls, otherwise we'd go into synthesis-husks territory again.

    I'd also be ok with them being Prothean. Stasis pods, clones, partially cyborgs maybe - if it's possible for Javik to survive and Shepard being brought back from the dead, I don't see why this shouldn't be possible.

    Blackbird SR-71C on
    steam_sig.png
    Steam ID: 76561198021298113
    Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird

  • ElendilElendil Registered User regular
    2 million credits

    yesh

  • LuxLux Registered User regular
    Olivaw wrote: »
    Elendil wrote: »
    Dragkonias wrote: »
    Wait...is that a Collector?

    Leviathan thrall is the word on the street
    BSN

    It... looks more like a prothean...

    Which, you know what? At this point, final update, who the fuck even cares

    Man the diversity of this alliance is getting ridiculous.

  • SorceSorce Not ThereRegistered User regular
    Two: They take Javik's DNA and mix it with the remains from Eden Prime and Ilios and clone the protheans, with or without Javik's permission. I know the salarians would do this as they sure as hell wouldn't care about Javik's consent. Hell, maybe Javik, if he's in a sequel, is especially hateful of the new prothean race.
    Also, Javik and Mordin did have a conversation about this very thing. Javik said if he wanted a sample, he'd have to beat him in a fight. Problematic... but still doable, I'd think.

    sig.gif
  • chiasaur11chiasaur11 Never doubt a raccoon. Do you think it's trademarked?Registered User regular
    Sorce wrote: »
    Two: They take Javik's DNA and mix it with the remains from Eden Prime and Ilios and clone the protheans, with or without Javik's permission. I know the salarians would do this as they sure as hell wouldn't care about Javik's consent. Hell, maybe Javik, if he's in a sequel, is especially hateful of the new prothean race.
    Also, Javik and Mordin did have a conversation about this very thing. Javik said if he wanted a sample, he'd have to beat him in a fight. Problematic... but still doable, I'd think.

    The real problem would be keeping Javik from murdering the other Protheans the second they were born.

    Or giving you a fake tissue sample that releases a flesh eating virus.

    Or one of any number of things, because Javik is a dick.

  • Albino BunnyAlbino Bunny Jackie Registered User regular
    I'm calling it right now but in my first week of this DLC I'm gonna get nothing but Alliance Sex bot and Talon Engineer Cards.

    Honestly the two I'm most excited for are the female turian (cabal something or other aren't they?) and the Geth juggernaut.

  • Blackbird SR-71CBlackbird SR-71C Registered User regular
    edited February 2013
    I can't wait to see what tricks the Talon Merc has up his sleeves!

    Some more info on the livestream:

    Characters played:

    - Eric Fagnan: Geth Juggernaut Soldier (Live stream perspective)
    - Bryan Johnson: Female Turian Cabal Vanguard (Recording of livestream session from different perspective, uploaded immediatly afterwards)
    - Chris Schanche: Talon Mercenary Engineer
    - Bjorn Taylor: Krogan Warlord Sentinel

    Blackbird SR-71C on
    steam_sig.png
    Steam ID: 76561198021298113
    Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird

    Geth
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