Tuesday, July 17, 2012

ME3: Earth DLC First Impressions

Hello my two readers, welcome to the blog. Today is a big day because we get to play the new Earth DLC. I was a little late to the party, but I've been anticipating this one since I found out about it. Like three days before it came out. And it delivers.

I won't go over the basics of the DLC because you can always find that elsewhere on the internet. I'm here to offer opinions and strategy, not facts. I think Shakespeare said that.

Anyway, let's go over the new weapons and characters. I had almost 2 million credits saved up prior to the DLC, which allowed me to get much of the new content right from the beginning. First, there's the Piranha shotgun. I got it up to level X, tried it out a few times... I don't think it's anything special. It fills the niche of the Scimitar; it's a lightweight, low-damage, high-fire rate shotgun. Quite inaccurate as well. Next!

The Acolyte pistol... not what I expected. It's a strange pistol that's good against shields and barriers and shoots an arcing, bouncing projectile, and I think it has some splash damage. Think of the Falcon in pistol form. What stops it from being a grenade launcher is that you have to charge it for a second or so before you can fire. Once you get used to it, I think it's quite good. I tried it on a bronze solo run since I was afraid it would be a Disciple in pistol form, so it performed better than expected. It even did well against Phantoms and Atlases. Phantoms were hard to hit, but the splash damage seemed to work since I got a few delayed kills. It took down Atlas shields in two shots. Given it was on bronze, but still. I expect you would have to get pretty good with it to use it on Gold or Platinum. But hey, this could be Mass Effect's plasma pistol, since it makes for a great shield-draining sidearm.

The last weapon is the Typhoon LMG. I only got it to level I since it's an Ultra-rare, but I can already tell that this is a great gun. I think Bioware is getting the hint that the assault rifle class is laughably subpar on higher difficulties. The only good ones were the Falcon and Saber, and neither one is a "true" assault rifle. So they gave us the Harrier, which is a personal favorite of mine, and now they've blessed us with the Typhoon, which is what the Revenant wants to be when it grows up. While I don't like the gradually increasing rate of fire -- I would prefer a steady rate of fire like the Harrier -- I like the addition of an LMG type weapon. It's not as accurate or powerful as the Harrier, but the high fire rate and capacity allow you to shred boss-level enemies. It even seems to have an inherent wall-piercing ability like the Black Widow. Now complement this with a supply pylon. Yes.

I won't go into too much depth with the new characters, since I'll probably be writing up some builds for them later. I'll just say that they seem to be designed with Platinum in consideration. The new characters have some really good powers (Devastator Mode, Supply Pylon) that I'm sure would be considered OP for most people based on the Gold standard. I haven't tried Platinum yet, partly because I don't have a team to work with and partly because I don't know if I'm equipped for it. Personally, I'll take any OP powers I can for Platinum. I'm good, but I'm no soloist. This is what I get for playing public games...

So there it is. I probably forgot something, but they don't pay me enough to do this anyway. Thanks for reading, you two. Questions? Comment. Don't like. Don't subscribe. I hate those Youtube subscribe whores.




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