Awakened Collector: First Impressions

Greetings everyone, welcome to the first installment of my Reckoning DLC character guides. I've  browsed BSN for tips and tricks for the Collector adept, talked strategy with fellow ME3 players, and played a few games. I've learned a few things (only a few) which I will share with you here.

Dark Sphere is an awesome biotic power with two behavioral stages: the sphere and the detonation. When cast, the sphere primes enemies within its radius for biotic explosions -- you can tell by the green glow. In this stage, it does some pretty good damage per second to enemies within its radius. This damage over time persists even after detonation. Think of it as an ultra-Singularity. Also, it does not trigger a cooldown until you detonate it. Thus, you can cast Dark Sphere without ever triggering a cooldown.

However, there are many benefits to detonating, hence the long cooldown. The detonation deals massive damage, but does not trigger biotic explosions. Also, the explosion does not prime targets, only the sphere phase does. Needless to say, the Collector is extremely powerful with biotic teammates. However, it should be noted that Dark Sphere is buggy off-host and sometimes fires blanks. It's not entirely host-dependent, but it is noticeably better.

When you're fighting Collectors, bees are bad. When you are a Collector, bees are good. Seeker Swarm is similar to Biotic Orbs. When you first cast them, the swarms float around you and then can be thrown one after another, doing slight damage and slowing enemy movement speed. They also trigger biotic explosions, though since they have no detonate evolution, the explosions are rather weak. You can use them passively to create a barrier of bees around you and gain up to 40% damage reduction, which I recommend. Be warned: as with Biotic Orbs, throwing Seeker Swarms off-host is not as responsive as on-host and there is a huge delay between throws.

The last power is Dark Channel, which deals damage over time with a 1.5x bonus against armor, 2x bonus against barriers, and 0.5x penalty against shields. Dark Channel jumps to a nearby target after you trigger it with a BE. Using Seeker Swarms, you can potentially chain up to four BEs in quick succession (if you're host).

One way to utilize the Collector's biotics is to cast Dark Sphere, cast Dark Channel, let your enemies stew in the damage over time for a brief duration, then detonate Dark Sphere (boom). Then throw your bees at the survivors (boom boom boom boom). This combo is excellent for crowd control.

The Collector's passive abilities are extremely good for both power damage and weapon damage. There are a lot of ways to build this character. The best way? We're still figuring that out. I like to take damage & capacity, power damage, and then weapon damage + Collector/Prothean weapon damage bonus.

This character is interesting in part because your heavy melee is replaced by Ascension Stance, which offers up some damage and cooldown bonuses but at the cost of reducing your resistance to damage. I can see a build focusing on this ability, but I'm not experienced enough to recommend it or not. It received a minor buff recently.

The Collector works really well with Warp ammo, since virtually all of his biotic powers prime enemies with a lasting biotic effect, and your powers work in such a way that biotic explosions aren't constantly interfering with your Warp ammo. Needless to say, he is also great with Collector and Prothean weapons.

To be continued...

Thanks for reading. Stay classy.

-Grun7mas7er