------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mass Effect Guide - Creating the Perfect Commander Shepard Written by Huy Tran Last Modified February 2, 2010 Copyright 2008-2010 Huy Tran ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Terminology III. The Process IV. Extra Skills V. Passive Game Bonuses VI. Free Charm/Intimidate Points VII. Class Guide A. Adept B. Engineer C. Infiltrator D. Sentinel E. Soldier F. Vanguard VIII. Update History IX. Credits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I. INTRODUCTION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This guide was originally created to create the best min/maxed character to go into Mass Effect 2 with. Since Mass Effect 2's character import only deals really with the overall power level, a lot of this information really isn't required. Your character level, paragon/renegade rating, and your choices seem to be the only thing that really affects your character save. So if you were max level, you'd start at a slightly higher level than 1, a few extra credits, and a few extra resources. These minor advantages don't merit replaying the game over and over just to import your character so I would recommend simply making all the decisions you want to make in the first game and importing right away. However, if you still want to get every minor advantage (starting at a higher level, extra credits, etc.) or just completely dominate Mass Effect 1, this guide is still useful. By using this guide, you will accomplish: * Maximizing charm/intimidate skills without using a single skill point * Create a Commander Shepard that suits your play style * Pick the best extra power for your class & play style * Min/max your character in every aspect The end result of this process is the most powerful Commander Shepard you can possibly make that suits your play style. What this guide will not cover is how to play the game effectively in general terms. You should always use weapon mods that counter the enemy (ex. synthetic damage bonuses against geth enemies) and you should always equip armor mods that will help you the most for the situation at hand (ex. armor mods that will help you resist being lifted and pushed against enemy biotics). Play efficiently, use cover, use squad commands, save often, etc. These basics are outside the scope of this guide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- II. TERMINOLOGY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Crowd control: The ability to disable enemies to make situations easier to deal with. Debuff: Weakening enemies so that they are easier to kill or survive against. Min/max: Minimizing penalties and maximizing bonuses. This is a term originally used in Dungeons and Dragons describing a player that makes character decisions with the strict mind-set of making the most powerful character possible. Skill points: Points that you get from leveling, these can be assigned to various skills to make your character more powerful. Tank: An MMORPG term, character that can take a lot of damage before dying. Unlocker: A character that can open locked chests and salvage various artifacts on planets. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- III. THE PROCESS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Your first Commander Shepard can never be the strongest character you'll ever make. This is due to the fact that you can unlock extra skills, giving any class an additional power that they would not have normally. However, these unlocked powers can only be assigned at the creation of a new character, so your first Commander Shepard will always be weaker than your later ones due to the fact that s/he cannot start with extra skills. The overall process looks like this: 1. Create your first Commander Shepard that unlocks extra power(s) that you will want to use on your real character. 2. Create your real Commander Shepard that will use one of those unlocked powers. 3. Replay the game multiple times with the same character, keeping this in mind: - Never spend any skill point in the charm/intimidate skills. - Try to get as many free charm and intimidate skill points as possible regardless of how you want to be aligned at the very end by making paragon and renegade decisions. - Unlock as many passive game bonuses as possible regardless of which romance options and ally selections you want to have at the very end. - Try to get as much experience to get to the highest level possible. 4. One final play through that will carry you into Mass Effect 2 with the final version of your character and decisions you would like to make. You will want to do the following on your final play through: - Complete every quest in the game. - Explore every world in the game. - Pick the romantic relationship with the partner that you will want to see develop in Mass Effect 2. - Make the Paragon or Renegade decisions that you will want to carry with you in Mass Effect 2. - Choose between Ashley or Kaiden, picking whoever you would like to potentially use in Mass Effect 2. - Have the best gear for your character. - Have the maximum amount of credits possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IV. EXTRA SKILLS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- As I have mentioned before in section III, you can unlock extra skills that any newly created Commander Shepard can pick that is outside his or her class. This creates an option of being able to create a Commander Shepard that is more powerful and customized to suit your play style. For more information on which powers you should unlock for use first, read the class guide in section VII of the class that you will want to finally have for Mass Effect 2. To unlock extra skills, complete the achievement with the associated power. * Assault Rifle: Kill 150 enemies with an assault rifle. * Barrier: Use Barrier 75 times. * Decryption: Use Sabotage 75 times. * Electronics: Use Overload 75 times. * First Aid: Use medi-gel 150 times. * Hacking: Use AI-Hacking 75 times. * Lift: Use Lift 75 times. * Medicine: Use Neural Hacking 75 times. * Shielding: Use Dampening 75 times. * Shotgun: Kill 150 enemies with a shotgun. * Sniper Rifle: Kill 150 enemies with a sniper rifle. * Stasis: Use Stasis 75 times. * Throw: Use Throw 75 times. * Singularity: Use Singularity 75 times. * Warp: Use Warp 75 times. In general, the unlocked weapon powers are the most worthless to generally have. Whereas skills such as lift, electronics, decryption, barrier, etc. are extremely useful. The reason for these powers being favored over the weapon are rooted by the fact that every class starts with base weapon specializations or bonuses already. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- V. PASSIVE GAME BONUSES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Passive game bonuses are awarded to the player for achievements in the game that are not tied with unlocking skills. These will help all your characters regardless of their creation date, class, or progress through the game. To unlock passive game bonuses, complete the achievement with the associated bonus. * +10% Experience: Complete 75% of the game. * +10% Hardening: Complete 75% of the game using Ashley. * 10% Barrier and Stasis Cooldown Reduction: Complete 75% of the game using Liara. * 10% Lift and Throw Cooldown Reduction: Complete 75% of the game using Kaiden. * 10% Overload and Damping Cooldown Reduction: Complete 75% of the game using Garrus. * 10% Sabotage and AI Hacking Cooldown Reduction: Complete 75% of the game using Tali. * Regenerate 1 HP per second: Complete 75% of the game using Wrex. * +5% Experience: Get level 50 with any character. * +10% Shield: Take more shield damage than health damage in a play through. * Character Levels 51-60: Complete the game once. * +5% Weapon Damage: Complete the game twice. * +10% Health: Kill 150 organics. * +10% Shield: Kill 150 synthetics. * 25% Marksman Cooldown Reduction: Kill 150 enemies with a pistol. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VI. FREE CHARM/INTIMIDATE POINTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After playing multiple characters several times through the game, myself and many others realized that you get free Paragon and Renegade points without having to spend any point towards those skills. Experiments and general testing have gone into understanding how these points are achieved and it generally amounts up to checkpoints in the story and your paragon/renegade rating that reward you with free paragon/renegade points. What does this mean for min/maxing a perfect Commander Shepard? You can essentially spend 0 skill points in both charm and intimidate skills and have the maximum skill of both charm and intimidate on your character, regardless of whether you'll decide if your final character will be a heavily Paragon-based or Renegade-based character (or neither), they will have all of the skills to make any game decision at any given point in time. There are many ways to approach gaining these "free" points, but they involve two approaches. The first approach is to complete the game as quickly as possible, doing only story required missions. The second approach is to constantly play the game and do everything within the game to amass the most possible Paragon or Renegade rating for that play session and therefore get the most points possible. While this approach leads to less replays of the game, it also makes each replay dramatically longer. Both approaches are good and generally depend on your tolerance of the using the Mako. If you have no tolerance for it, do only the story missions. If you love using the Mako, do the entire game. Note that if you still need to unlock achievements for using your squad members, the longer approach is recommended as it is the only way to reach a high game completion percentage for ally achievements. There is also a glitch that I've been informed of that will help you easily cap your current Paragon and/or Renegade rating for your current play through if you have enough charm and/or intimidate skill. Last Vampire has documented this trick and submitted it to GameFAQs' Mass Effect Cheats section. The glitch basically involves abusing a loop in a conversation with Lorik Quinn. Using this trick, once you've unlocked all the passive game bonuses, you can easily speed through multiple sessions of the game, constantly getting to the point where you can max your rating with Lorik Quinn and then complete the game to do it over and over again. For more details, please visit GameFAQs' Mass Effect Cheats section. http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/code/930279.html Ultimately, the essence of getting these free points is replaying the game, making decisions that favor Paragon or Renegade and reaping the benefits of free points that the game will give you until you reach the maximum skill levels for both. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VII. CLASS GUIDE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Before going into class specifics, it is good to know the basics of making a good character. The fundamental basis of the decisions that I've made with every class are formed by the following: * You should always try to spend only enough points to reach milestones within the skill. So you always want to spend enough points in a skill to upgrade the power that is associated with that skill or to unlock another skill. You should always try to avoid spending points that doesn't help you achieve a milestone. * Party members, in general, should always try to round out your main character or take advantage of the main character's strength. You will always need and want a tank, an unlocker, and a crowd controller. The lines will blur based on your own character class and the selection of members, but you always want to be able to do all three of these types of actions. * A good extra skill selection should either diversify the character outside their class so that they have a smaller dependence on allies or they should take a skill that allows them to do what they're good at more effectively. A poor selection would be giving them a skill that gives no noticeable benefit or only allows them to accomplish the same thing in a different way. Now let's get into the specifics. NOTE: The following section definitely has some overlap, but it just goes to show that the strengths and weaknesses of various classes also show similar ideal skill selections and class specializations. A. ADEPT =============================================================================== Adepts are the true crowd controllers of this game and they will lock down entire battlefields, making your enemies useless and easy to pick off. They have decent damage output when the crowd control is coupled with pistol specialization, but their defense is heavily lacking. Adepts are definitely one of the harder classes to play, requiring smart use of allies to do the needed damage and tanking for the group. Between the two classes, the Bastion Adepts win out because it helps the adept deal with the very tough situations on harder difficulties where they can easily die in one shot. Bastion Adepts get: * Barrier duration bonus, cooldown reduction, and shield bonus * Biotic skills cooldown reduction (on all biotic skills) * Stasis cooldown reduction and allows enemies to be damaged Nemesis Adepts get: * Biotic skills duration bonus * Lift (falls under throws) damage bonus and radius increased * Throw damage bonus * Warp damage bonus and radius increased Bastion adepts give adepts the most important things they need for the highest difficulty, defense. The barrier bonus becomes vital on harder difficulties and the biotic cooldowns allow them to apply control for entire fights when needed. The stasis cooldown, while not taken advantaged of by the AI, will at least let you stop and destroy enemies that are giving you too much trouble. Nemesis adepts have some impressive bonuses. The increased throw damage and duration bonuses to all biotic skills lets you open opportunities for that much longer to do more damage. However, on higher difficulties, enemies will be putting out a lot more damage and taking a lot more damage as well. The barrier bonus and cooldown reduction simply wins out in these situations. The lift and warp bonuses are also not so amazing that it would warrant losing defenses over. In conclusion, bastion adepts just provide the needed bonuses and is the clear winner when compared on the harder difficulties. Best Specialization: Bastion Adept Best Extra Skill(s): Electronics Good Extra Skill(s): Hacking Electronics: Electronics adds a lot to the adepts defenses and gives them a passive defense that they don't need to activate. Rockets that you may not see from the side, snipers that you may not see from afar, etc. will no longer have chances of one-shotting you on higher difficulties with the shielding that electronics provides. Electronics also provides another way for adepts to burst enemies down quickly by removing their shields instantly as well as relieving the electronics burden from the squad. Hacking: Hacking is fairly good skill for adepts to deal with geth enemies that they cannot control with their crowd control and to deal with turrets that arise later in the game. Hacking also gives you temporary tanks and is especially useful for soaking up damage and removing rocket launching geth enemies. =============================================================================== B. ENGINEER =============================================================================== Engineers are an interesting class that can debuff enemies and do a lot of burst damage with their skills. Because they can't specialize in any other weapon besides pistol without an extra skill and because they don't have great defensive skills besides electronics, they struggle in basic gun combat. But when enemies become debuffed and disabled heavily, engineers don't need it to finish fights. Good use of teammates will easily cover up this weakness and it proves that the engineer is one of the more advanced classes to play. Of the two specializations, both medic engineers and operative engineers provide fun playstyle differences and are both equal in terms of effectiveness. Medic Engineers get: * First Aid cooldown reduction, healing bonus, ignores toxic damage, and revives allies * Neural Shock cooldown reduction, damage bonus, and duration bonus Operative Engineers get: * Damping cooldown reduction * Overload cooldown reduction, damage bonus, radius increased, and shield damage bonus * Sabotage cooldown reduction, damage bonus, damage over time bonus, duration bonus, and radius increased Medic engineers play a strong support role and can essentially stand back, disable enemies, and heal all frontline squad members or revive them with extreme efficiency. Add that with the neural shock bonus and you can nullify many organic enemies from even moving or doing a single thing. Definitely the ideal class for those who want to control squad members and never see them stay down very long. Operative engineers allow players to go crazy with tons of damage from their skills as well as being able to debuff enemies constantly. Removing their shields, removing their weapons, removing their ability to use biotic powers, etc. Operative engineers excell at this. The damage bonuses give operative engineers a lot of burst damage power, taking down any focused enemy almost instantly. Overall, they are equally good and provide an interesting play style choice. Best Specialization: Equal (Medic Engineers and Operative Engineers) Best Extra Skill(s): Barrier, Lift Good Extra Skill(s): Singularity Barrier: The barrier skill is a good choice here because engineers lack an active defense skill and it fills the defense void very well. Since engineers already pack a good offensive punch and last decently long, they don't need much in terms of offensive. Barrier is the best they are going to get on the defensive end. Lift: Lift is a very strong crowd controlling move that lets you unleash all of your skills and damage. It also doubles as a way to stop enemies that have rushed up close to you or pull enemies out of cover. An overall strong skill that competes with barrier as it provides defense as well as offense. Singularity: Singularity is a much weaker version than lift since it doesn't allow easy shooting, has randomness issues, and can be hard for allies to shoot based on weapons they are loaded out with. I would always pick lift over singularity for engineers, but singularity allows a whole room to be controlled. That's never a bad thing and if you need it solely for defensive purposes, it works very well. =============================================================================== C. INFILTRATOR =============================================================================== The infiltrator is a powerful blend of debuffs and damage that overwhelms opponents in a short amount of time. Their long-ranged nature gives them big advantages of being able to apply overload and sabotage coupled with the large damage output that they get from specializing in sniper rifles. If enemies do creep up on them, they are able to deal with them with pistol fire as well. They definitely represent the "sniper" for those looking for the perfect class to pursue such goals. Between their two specializations, I would say that commando infiltrators easily win out because operative infiltrators don't add much to the infiltrator base class. Commando Infiltrators get: * Assassination (sniper rifle) cooldown reduction * Immunity cooldown reduction * Marksman (pistol) cooldown reduction * Passive bonus to damage Operative Infiltrators get: * Damping cooldown reduction * Overload cooldown reduction, damage bonus, shield damage bonus, and radius increased * Sabotage cooldown reduction, damage bonus, damage over time bonus, duration bonus, and radius increased Commando infiltrators add the most important thing an infiltrator can ask for, damage. The passive damage bonus coupled with the cooldown reduction on assassination and marksman makes it an essential specialization for infiltrators to dispatch their enemies. The immunity cooldown reduction also adds a nice defensive perk to an already strong package for infiltrators. Operative infiltrators reduce the cooldowns of damping, overload, and sabotage. Unfortunately, at higher difficulties, enemies will get large amounts of health yet the debuffs will still work with the same effectiveness that they have been working at since the beginning difficulties. This creates a heavy contrast with the commando infiltrator specialization, which has the necessary bonuses to deal with high health enemies later on. Overall, commando infiltrator simply wins out, especially on higher difficulties where they clearly shine over operative infiltrators. Best Specialization: Commando Infiltrator Best Extra Skill(s): Lift Good Extra Skill(s): Barrier, Throw Lift: Lift is the best extra skill choice for the infiltrator by far. It allows infiltrators to slow down enemy offense as well as create opportunities for massive damage output without worrying about enemies using defense or cover. Lift often shines as a great skill when infiltrators pull enemies from cover and gets the perfect shots on them. Barrier: Barrier is a useful skill for infiltrators because it provides another defensive move that they can use. However, infiltrators come decked out in good defenses already, being pretty resilient with good armor, great shields, and the immunity skill. The fact that they should be fighting at a long distance most of the time nullifies their need for barrier. It really is only good for sticky situations. Throw: Throw is a much weaker version of lift, allowing you to only push enemies away. This will generally mean much less opportunities and damage because enemies will get back up much quickly than if they were to stay in the air, fall down, and then get up from the lift skill. A lot of players will pick throw, thinking that it will allow them to stay at ranged, but I feel that lift already lets you control enemies extremely well. If you need range, move your character back until you have sufficient range after a lift. =============================================================================== D. SENTINEL =============================================================================== The sentinel is the most weakest character in terms of damage output, but make up for it in support abilities with crowd control, debuffs, and defense. They are an advanced class to play, utilizing all of their skills constantly to make the battle situation better. Good use of skills and squad commands are key to playing the sentinel well. They are also the only class where getting a weapon specialization is actually an ideal choice. The two specializations of the sentinel are interesting, providing a good play style choice that allows you to specialize in the way that suits you. Bastion Sentinels get: * Barrier duration bonus, cooldown reduction, and shield bonus * Biotic skills cooldown reduction (on all biotic skills) * Stasis cooldown reduction and allows enemies to be damaged Medic Sentinels get: * First Aid cooldown reduction, healing bonus, ignores toxic damage, and revives allies * Neural Shock cooldown reduction, damage bonus, and duration bonus The decision on which class specialization to play lies solely in play style. Do you value being able to lock things down with your biotic skills and using barrier or do you value healing your allies and shock disabling your enemies? The most interesting aspect of this decision probably lies within the bastion's ability to still attack a target in stasis and the medic's ability to revive allies simply by using medi-gel. Unfortunately, the decision is a bit one-sided when comparing these two great abilities. Reviving allies works as it sounds and its great, but you should be using strong tanks to carry out the front line and deal the damage. Ashley and Wrex are great here to support the medic sentinel. On the other hand, the stasis falls from AI problems. Whenever you stasis an enemy, even if they are attackable from the bastion specialization, your allies will never take advantage and attack them. This means that only you can take advantage of this impressive skill and it waters down the overall effectiveness. Nevertheless, the stasis ability can allow you to take on extremely tough challenges as well as save you defensively. The core decision then ultimately comes down to the comparison of whether you want your medi-gels to revive allies or whether you want to use your biotic skills at a much quicker rate. Both choices are good. Best Specialization: Equal (Bastion Sentinel and Medic Sentinel) Best Extra Skill(s): Singularity, Sniper Rifle Good Extra Skill(s): Assault Rifle Singularity: Singularity completes the Sentinel's impressive crowd control and support capabilities. However, singularity is the only good because it is the only useful skill to pick besides weapon specializations. In addition, The fact that sentinels already get pistol bonuses makes many players who are comfortable with the pistol forego picking a weapon specialization and just pick up singularity. Sniper Rifle: A weapon specialization is ideal for sentinels because they don't have much else to take in terms of extra skills. Singularity is nice, but it doesn't add much to sentinels. The sniper rifle's usefulness over other weapons stem from the fact that sentinel already has a bonus to pistols, covering the short-ranged situations. The sniper rifle allows the sentinel to cover a much longer range so that they can pick off enemy snipers, which may be useful if your two allies happen to be Ashley and Wrex (who ideally should be using assault rifles or shotguns and tanking damage in the front). You can also make use of the pistol specialization whenever anyone gets close. Assault Rifle: Assault rifle itself provides a good balance that is useful at all ranges. The only reason it isn't a great choice is because pistols, a built-in sentinel bonus, already cover close-ranged combat situations. It would be more beneficial to get a sniper rifle so that you can get better long-ranged capabilities. =============================================================================== E. SOLDIER =============================================================================== The soldier is a basic run and gun class and is by far the easiest class to play. Strong, effective, resilient, and does a large amount of damage. They are the true tanks of the game and possess one of the best damage outputs in the game. Their only flaw would be their lack of crowd control, debuffs, and inability to contribute towards salvaging or unlocking. When looking at the two specializations that a soldier can choose, the shock troopers will win out overall, but just by a touch. Commando Soldiers get: * Assassination (sniper rifle) cooldown reduction * Immunity cooldown reduction * Marksman (pistol) cooldown reduction * Passive bonus to damage Shock Trooper Soldiers get: * Adrenaline Burst cooldown reduction * Immunity cooldown reduction * Passive bonus to health The commando soldier specialization has role issues and it certainly shows. A soldier is a heavily armored combatant that can soak up damage, but to be able to do that, they must stay within relatively closer range than others and be able to lead them into battle. The commando falls heavily short here as they use sniper rifles and pistols. There are some odd considerations when you think about this closely. Why would you make a soldier to use pistols, which all the weaker non-weapon based classes get? You wouldn't, so the decision lies solely with the sniper rifle. After establishing that frame of mind, why would you need the soldier's impressive defense (and forsaking other abilities s/he could have gotten) when you are a long-distanced fighter? As a sniper, you would never go in first, which means someone else is tanking the damage and your defensive capabilities is a waste. The best way to make use of a commando soldier would be to specialize in multiple weapons (assault rifle and sniper rifle at least) and make use of the fact that a soldier can fight at any range given the right weapon. Add to that, you should not use allies that heavily rely on slowing down the enemy (Kaiden and Liara) opting for a high damage party because of the fact that all members defenses, including your own, would be useful when there is constant fire. You take this crowd control trade for members that consist of Ashley, Wrex, Garrus, and/or Tali for their high burst damage. Assassination is is useful for taking down heavily shielded targets and will help you dispatch of enemies quickly and efficiently. Your soldier defense will still be important in this party configuration because you rely on killing quickly under pressure and not controlling the situation for longer fights. The shock trooper soldier is better overall in many ways. The adrenaline burst means they can keep up and put out huge damage in long fights. They also last longer defensively, giving you breathing room for push and pull strategies dependent on the situation at hand. Their passive health bonus is nice, but with the more powerful adrenaline burst, immunity, and the soldier's natural defense -- it is not really required. You get more freedom of party members as well and you don't have to run a strong combat heavy party to make use of your bonuses, although you always have the option to. Basically, you get a more well-rounded package that gives you more breathing room and ways to play the game. Overall, the shock trooper soldier wins out due to the flexibility that the specialization offers. Room to retreat, room to strategize, room to run low damage squad members, etc. Best Specialization: Shock Trooper Soldier Best Extra Skill(s): Electronics, Lift Good Extra Skill(s): Barrier, Singularity Electronics: The electronics skill is an amazing skill for the soldier as it adds so much to the class. First, you will get more shields passively, allowing you to take more damage as well as making your shield boost skill more useful. Secondly, it allows you to remove an opponents' shield and attack his health directly more quickly. Lastly, electronics will also grant you the ability to fix the Mako and salvage artifacts. This last utility feature will remove some of the burden from your squad members, allowing your squad members to choose other skills earlier without having to worry about fulfilling the electronics requirement of the squad. Lift: Lift is an extremely powerful skill and rounds out the Soldier very well. With lift, soldiers are able to control situations better, disabling enemies so that they do not damage you when there are too many as well as opening up opportunities for soldiers and their squad to unleash all of their damage without fear of being blocked by objects or the enemy using defensive abilities. Barrier: The biggest problem with barrier is the fact that it only helps you on defense. A lot of players love Shock Troopers with barrier because they become an extremely strong tank, but barrier ultimately loses to electronics because it is so one-note in comparison. Electronics gives you defense that is comparable to barrier, offense, and utility. Barrier simply is not strong enough to make up for the losing the advantages of electronics. However, it is still a strong skill for soldiers who want to fulfill the tanking role exclusively. Singularity: The singularity skill selection for a soldier is similar to choosing lift, but not as effective. There are a few enemies that can't be controlled by singularity when they can be controlled by lift. However, the key deciding factor is the fact that singularity has a few peculiar random features that make it inferior to lift for soldiers. First, the enemies float around with quite a bit of speed and randomness, making you and ally members unable to score as much damage as you would normally (based on your squad's weapons). Secondly, enemies will often float behind areas and obstacles when placed far away, leaving unpredictable results where they will float behind objects and structures, not allowing you to shoot at them. However, even with these disadvantages, singularity covers big area and is still a good skill for soldiers to gain control of the battlefield and slow enemies down. =============================================================================== F. VANGUARD =============================================================================== The vanguard is a hybrid class that marries the adept and soldier class to provide a powerful close-ranged, heavy hitting, and crowd controlling character. It is a moderately skilled class to play, providing a simple run and gun effectiveness paired with the biotic skills that will let you slow enemies, disable enemies, and attack enemies more effectively. When looking at the two specializations, shock trooper vanguards will clearly edge out over the nemesis vanguard due to the fact that nemesis vanguard bonuses being neglible. Nemesis Vanguards get: * Biotic skills duration bonus * Lift (falls under throws) damage bonus and radius increased * Throw damage bonus * Warp damage bonus and radius increased Shock Trooper Vanguards get: * Adrenaline Burst cooldown reduction * Barrier cooldown reduction * Passive bonus to health Nemesis vanguards get a bigger bang for their buck. All of slightly more duration and slightly more damage. However, this bonus is so small that it will generally prove insignificant in the higher difficulties. According to Brian Roberts who did the math to show me, this bonus is generally around 1-2 seconds for each skill. This essentially renders the nemesis vanguards as worthless simply because the bonuses that they do have don't really mean anything. Shock trooper vanguards have a big jump in defense from their barrier cooldown and the passive health. However, the adrenaline burst cooldown is the most interesting of the shock trooper package, allowing shock trooper vanguards to deal a large amount of damage quickly, boost their defenses often, and crowd control often due to the simple fact that they can refresh all of their skills for use at a more frequent pace. The nemesis vanguards lose out because their bonuses just don't add enough of anything to make a difference. The shock trooper vanguard specialization adds impressive amounts of options for the vanguard, leaving the nemesis vanguard an extremely weak alternative. Best Specialization: Shock Trooper Vanguard Best Extra Skill(s): Electronics Good Extra Skill(s): Singularity Electronics: Electronics is the ideal skill for the vanguard as it helps the vanguard deal with one of its biggest issues, defense. While vanguards have a large amount of defense, because of their closer-ranged arsenal (pistol or shotgun), they have to be in close quarters often enough to require more. Electronics provides the shields that will allow vanguards to get a much more solid defense. Electronics also helps vanguards quickly pummel shields down, even while an enemy is controlled by skills such as lift. This allows vanguards to quickly chip away and deal the amount of burst damage that they need in the short time-frame of their crowd control skills. Lastly, electronics also allows vanguards to fulfill a utility role, salvaging artifacts and repairing the Mako. This frees up allies from having to invest into electronics as the vanguard already has it covered. Singularity: Singularity adds another crowd control to the impressive arsenal of vanguard crowd control powers. It opens up more opportunities to shoot and gives you breathing space if you need it. The only reason it loses to electronics is because of the randomness of the skill. Issues with some weapons (and the AI using those weapons) having a hard time hitting enemies that have been put in singularity as well as enemies actually flying to areas and positions that make them hard to kill make this skill lose the "great" cut. =============================================================================== ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- VIII. UPDATE HISTORY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- v1.5: Updated introduction to reflect Mass Effect 2 character import. v1.4: Grammar fixes. v1.3: Grammar and minor clarifications. v1.2: Vanguard and soldier section revamped from the suggestions of Brian Roberts. Grammar fixes. v1.1: Grammar fixes. v1.0: Engineer class completed. Final review before submission to GameFAQs. v0.9: Adept class completed. v0.8: Operative class completed. v0.7: Vanguard class completed. v0.6: Remaining classes fleshed out in skill selections and specializations. Sections still need explanations. v0.5: Sentinel class completed. v0.4: Completed introduction of classes section and soldier class. v0.3: Passive game bonuses section completed. v0.2: Table of Contents updated. v0.1: Initial creation of the FAQ. Introduction, terminology, the process, extra skills, free charm/intimidate points and credits sections created and written. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- IX. CREDITS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Myself (Huy Tran): For writing this guide and replaying this game so many times. Brian Roberts: For showing me that the nemesis vanguard is inferior to the shock trooper vanguard and for helping me clarify the strengths of shock trooper soldier and commando soldier. BioWare: For creating a game worth replaying so many times. GameFAQs: For hosting my guide.