Vorcha Soldier: 200 Waves Edition

Greetings, fellow Mass Effect enthusiasts. Today I would like to present another edition of my 200 Waves guides, the awesome interchangeable Vorcha! To be honest, I actually did my 200 waves with the Vorcha Sentinel for various reasons, but I used a build that can be done exactly the same with the Soldier. I prefer this build on the Soldier rather than the Sentinel because Carnage has proven too slow in my experiments with it, and so it's an easy power to skip over. So without further ado, the build:

Vorcha Soldier
Bloodlust: 4-health regeneration, 5-weapon damage, 6-health regeneration
Flamer: 4-damage, 5-damage, 6-armor damage
Carnage: N/A
Vorcha Resilience: 4-damage & capacity, 5-power damage, 6-weapon damage
Fitness: 4-durability, 5-shield recharge, 6-fitness expert

Yeah, I know. "Reegar and Flamer are for scrubs" blah blah blah. Well I'm of the opinion that when Bioware gave us the Vorcha and Reegar in the same DLC they were aware of the synergy between them. Why not admit to this synergy and use it to your advantage?

For your ammo power, both Incendiary and Armor-Piercing mods work well on the Reegar, compensating for its weakness against armor (if you plan on using AP rounds, you can take off the high-velocity barrel). You can even use Cryo to mix it up, but it's more useful for supporting your team than actually dealing damage. The Reegar tends to panic smaller enemies anyway, so freezing them is almost redundant. Also, if you're using the High-Velocity Barrel, you don't need the armor-weakening as much, though your teammates can still benefit from it. The most useful part, in my opinion, is the slowing effect. Say there's a Brute in front of you. Hit him with Cryo ammo and flame him while backing away. You can get more burning damage done before you have to dodge if he's slowed down. Don't use Disruptor or Phasic ammo on the Reegar, it's utterly redundant.

As far as weapon synergy goes, I think the Reegar is the best choice. If you are boycotting the Reegar, which is understandable, then use a good infantry-killing weapon. Vorcha are scavengers, after all, and you have to be opportunistic. No really. Preying on the weak means quick kills. Quick kills keep your Bloodlust charged up, which in turn keeps you alive. The Claymore is good for one-shotting mooks. The Graal is also a classic on this character. I don't see people using the Piranha on this guy much, but it's more or less like the Reegar. Other than that, I've elected to take a sidearm for ranged combat if necessary. I had the misfortune of playing a game on Firebase Reactor and the enemies got stuck in one of the spawns above the map and I couldn't even throw rocks at them. It doesn't have to be powerful, just lightweight. If all goes well you'll never have to use it.

Bloodlust is the Vorcha's signature power and skipping it is blasphemous. As you can see, I take all health regeneration evolutions. The Vorcha isn't exactly tanky. He can't sit in front of a Cerberus Turret and laugh like a Kroguard can. That said, he has much greater endurance than the average character and can survive repeated close-quarters and close-call encounters. Improving your health regeneration lets you get back into the fight much faster -- almost immediately if you have Bloodlust charged up. And besides, if you're playing on higher difficulties, why would you take melee damage? Then I take weapon damage because this is primarily a weapons build and the stacking damage adds up quickly.

You have shielded enemies covered with the Reegar, but what about armored enemies? You have Flamer for that. I opted for all damage and then armor damage, which boosts your armor damage multiplier from 1.5x to 2.25x, meaning you'll do massive damage to armored targets with all your damage bonuses. You can opt for the range evolution if you prefer. There's a minor exploit/trick with the Reegar and Flamer. Not the one where you can fire both at once (Bioware patched that), but if you activate Flamer while firing the Reegar, you can use Flamer with normal walking speed, as apposed to being slowed to a crawl. The added mobility is useful.

Fire explosions are all well and good, but the thing is that Carnage recharges too slowly with Bloodlust on. I find it to be inefficient, but it can be done.

For Vorcha Resilience, I take all power damage to give Flamer a boost. The extra capacity helps a little too. Then I take weapon damage because cooldown is not too much of an issue for Flamer. You will be better served by the additional damage. For Fitness, I take the entire bottom row. The more health, the better. Though your shields are secondary, they still give you a shield gate, which can negate the greater part of massive damage attacks. On that note, don't waste a Cyclonic Modulator on the Vorcha. You'll be better served by a Power Amplifier, Adrenaline Module, or even Shield Power Cells.

That's really all there is to the build. Reegar for shields/barriers, Flamer for armor. Bring a teammate who can trigger Fire Explosions. Have fun with the build, stay tuned for more in the future. Enjoy the fireworks.

-Grun7mas7er