Mass Effect 2 Catch All

Don't know about Vanguard, but generally I like Warp Ammo for my extra skill.

I think Vanguard already has ammo powers, so Reave is probably the best other bonus skill.

I seem to recall having Reave on mine.

Clemenstation wrote:

Let's talk sniper rifles. Widow vs. Viper -- massive single-shot damage (spend more time in cover) vs. semi-auto (more headshots / crowd control).

Who is winner!?

Widow all the way! Speced decent, you don't even need a headshot for one shot kills, you just need a headshot to one shot kill Harbinger as he spawns. And the reload action makes you look like a badass.

SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Clemenstation wrote:

Let's talk sniper rifles. Widow vs. Viper -- massive single-shot damage (spend more time in cover) vs. semi-auto (more headshots / crowd control).

Who is winner!?

Widow all the way! Speced decent, you don't even need a headshot for one shot kills, you just need a headshot to one shot kill Harbinger as he spawns. And the reload action makes you look like a badass.

ME2 is like two different games for an infiltrator. You had the part where you didn't have the widow(hard), and the part where the widow killed everything you encountered.

On hardcore, my loadout was to use warp ammo'd SMG to take Harbinger's barrier halfway down, then a stealthed warp ammo Widow headshot.

Uses, on average, half a clip for the SMG, then one Widow shot.

For soldier characters I think the Viper owns it, simply because of Adrenaline Rush. Widow = one shot per slow-mo. Viper = 8+ shots. At 2-3 headshots per kill, that's a lot more bang for your buck.

Agree about the Widow reload animation, however!

Also had another bug last night... I swear I don't remember any before... although this one wasn't game-breaking. The admirals on Tali's loyalty mission were just invisible during the dialog cutscenes. Well 2 of them were. The other 2 were there. So one would talk to an invisible one, and the invisible one would respond. Pretty funny really.

Widow is epic for the punch it delivers. Viper is fantastic for whittling down an enemy shot by shot. I'd be happy with either really, but I like having the choice. As an Infiltrator on Hardcore, Widow is definitely helping me quite a lot.

Playing a Widow soldier was definitely the most fun I've had with the class. I do like the Viper/Revenant combo but I don't think it provides anything that the Vindicator(or Mattock)/Widow can't cover better.

My first playthrough (on Normal) was as a soldier; he took the Widow. That thing is nuts. The only other weapon that has anywhere near that kind of impact on your lethality is the SMG from the Kasumi DLC.

I'm quite enjoying the Revenant on my Sentinel.

I should have hacked this in for my Adept on the Insanity run too. Never have to look for ammo again.

I don't think it's possible for someone to design a worse system for buying DLC than Bioware/EA did with Mass Effect 2. I played through the first two games on the 360, but never played any of the ME2 DLC. I'm in the process of getting rid of the 360, so I've decided to play through everything on the PC. I picked up ME and ME2 during the Steam Christmas sale. Bring Down the Sky was a bit of a pain to get ahold of. You can still download the installer from the original Bioware site, but the page to get your key for it has long since disappeared, so I had to chat with someone at EA support to get it working. I didn't bother with Pinnacle Station, because it was awful, but I did notice that it was available via Origin for $5.

Now I'm ready to buy and install the ME2 DLC. Thinking it'd be on Origin like Pinnacle Station, I checked there first. Nothing. Next I went to the Bioware Social site - and there it is. But they don't have any purchase prices, they sell the games in Bioware Points. These can be purchased from Origin in 1600 or 800 point increments, or they can be purchased from the Bioware Social site in sets of 1600, 1200, or 800 points. Unless you go to the Dragon Age skinned part of the 'purchase points' area where you can also get 560 point or 400 point increments. Oddly, you can only purchase one set of points at a time. So if I want to buy the Overlord, Kasumi, Shadow Broker, and Arrival DLCs, I have to make four purchases - three for 560 points and one for 800 points. So I currently have 4 separate transactions going against my credit card, which is just slightly ridiculous.

Well, hopefully four. My first purchase went through without a problem. After that it seemed to be a coin flip as to whether the purchase would go through or Bioware would dump me to some generic error page that told me nothing about what the actual issue might be. Given that the same info would occasionally work, I have to assume any problem was on their end.

billt721:

The entire DLC business model of companies like Bioware misses a fundamental concept in designing DLC and IAP's:

Don't stop the people from giving you their money.

Designing a labyrinthine process for securing DLC only encourages piracy; or, which is worse from a seller perspective, people just not giving a damn and skipping the entire content altogether.

Run 4 done!

Have p/r m/f shep all ready to go for ME3.

Makes it worse when they offer something for 160 points too. Or whatever those other packs are. If I can't buy 160 points, then I call BS. Let me pay in real money. Not some phoney baloney Bioware money.

BlackSabre wrote:

Makes it worse when they offer something for 160 points too. Or whatever those other packs are. If I can't buy 160 points, then I call BS. Let me pay in real money. Not some phoney baloney Bioware money.

And Bioware points are much worse than more general use MS points. I probably would have bought another DLC pack for ME2 back when they had the sale on points a few months ago, but I couldn't make the math work, and I had no guarantee that they'd let you use those points on future games.

At least with the MS points I can buy tons of stuff (games, music, videos, game DLC, etc). And I don't think I've ever bought them at more than 70% of their retail cost, so it's like everything is in a bit of a sale with them. But the Bioware points have only been on sale once that I know of, and I don't have much use for them.

Anyone know if they're abandoning the BioBucks system for ME3? You'd think so, but they didn't for Dragon Age 2 and they didn't add controller support for ME3, which seemed like a no-brainer.

Sorry if this was discussed elsewhere in the thread, I may have missed it. I've already got a completed ME2 save on my 360 that I'll be importing into ME3 but last year, I bought all the good DLC when they had a crazy sale promo on for it. Given that I'm playing a couple of other games right now, is it worth doing another run of ME2 just to experience the DLC? I probably have the time to finish that run before ME3 comes out, I'm just curious if the DLC is worth another 20+ hours to do the whole game.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Anyone know if they're abandoning the BioBucks system for ME3? You'd think so, but they didn't for Dragon Age 2 and they didn't add controller support for ME3, which seemed like a no-brainer.

I don't think so. I don't think they've specifically said, but I've already got the Amalur armour in my bioware social account, so it looks like they're going the same way again.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

I'm just curious if the DLC is worth another 20+ hours to do the whole game.

At this point I'd say unless you're really into the particular story a DLC tells, probably not. If you feel like you're missing out on story then hit a wiki or youtube.

Hmm, Kasumi and The Shadow Broker are very good. I'd say The Shadow Broker is probably better than anything in the main game, honestly. But 20 hours, when you don't have any interest in repeating the main game? Maybe not.

You don't have to replay the whole thing to play the DLC, though. Just play the DLC (assuming you're alive).

LobsterMobster wrote:

Anyone know if they're abandoning the BioBucks system for ME3? You'd think so, but they didn't for Dragon Age 2 and they didn't add controller support for ME3, which seemed like a no-brainer.

Counting on them not, that's why I bought extra in that Origin sale in Oct.

Clemenstation wrote:

Let's talk sniper rifles. Widow vs. Viper -- massive single-shot damage (spend more time in cover) vs. semi-auto (more headshots / crowd control).

Who is winner!?

Widow all the way. Especially on harder difficulty levels, being able to pop out for a second and squeeze off a single shot that takes a significant portion of the health bar off is awesome.

Admittedly, I love to combine it with Tactical Cloak so once the enemy gets close, I can turn invisible, run off and find a new spot to hide in and take potshots.

MannishBoy wrote:

You don't have to replay the whole thing to play the DLC, though. Just play the DLC (assuming you're alive).

Wait, you can do that? Do you just trigger it from a menu or something? From everything I've read, it integrates into the game and you had to do it through a normal runthrough?

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
MannishBoy wrote:

You don't have to replay the whole thing to play the DLC, though. Just play the DLC (assuming you're alive).

Wait, you can do that? Do you just trigger it from a menu or something? From everything I've read, it integrates into the game and you had to do it through a normal runthrough?

ME2 doesn't close off once you end it, you're back on the Normandy bridge so you can go finish side-quests and romance aliens.

Yep, just check your private messages and your star charts. They'll pop up.

It should also be on the galactic map as "Give Liara Evidence", or something.

Finished off the main story, great fun. Thankfully I didn't run into any of those weird frustrating segments that I found in ME1.

Many thanks again to our unctuous Spheniscidae for the contribution.

Indeed. I'm just doing shadow broker dlc again now and it's still as good as I remember it. It is by far the best DLC i've seen come out for a game.

The Locust is an SMG replacement for an Assault rifle, but when you get a proper AR you're much better off with the Tempest in my opinion.

I am 24h into my latest playthrough, so I guess 2/3 to 3/4 through. Have a couple of loyalty missions left and Legion to recruit (so pre IFF). On Stele's recommendation I got the Kasumi and Shadow Broker DLCs and I haven't regretted it.

I am playing a Vanguard on Veteran and I have to say that I love this class. The combination of heavy charge and heavy shockwave is just awesome. Unfortunately I feel like this would be a much less enjoyable experience if I didn't have the Locust SMG, which is Kasumi DLC exclusive. The alternative, the Tempest, is just a POC with a spread that would make even a shotgun look bad. Take that away and you're left with 24 pistol and 11-15 shotgun rounds. Not a whole lot for some of the ammo starved encounters like the Horizon courtyard or the Tali or Thane recruitment missions. So the Locust definitely makes a difference, much more so if I played on Hardcore or Insanity.

That being said, Kasumi quickly became my favorite squadmate. The combination of her one-shotting the first enemy (causing her CD to drop by 80%) while I dispose of the shield/barrier of the second, followed by sticking her onto that damaged target while I charge the leftovers - like a well oiled machine. Compared to floormats like Jack and Jacob, it gave me good idea why BioWare wants to favor quality over quantity with regards to squadmates in ME3.

I also enjoyed the Shadow Broker arc for so many reasons. The well written story arc. The encounters. The car chase. Most importantly, having Liara as a squadmate and romancing her again got me so much more excited for her return in ME3. And the squadmate talent point reset. And dossiers, oh the dossiers. Mordin's had me grinning, while Miranda's completed her character so perfectly well, it reminded me why BioWare writing is one of my favorites.

TL;DR: if you plan to play ME2 for the first time or just replay it, do yourself a favor and get the Kasumi and Shadow Broker DLCs.