MEA Tactics: Level up strategies for low-mid level Ryder?

Stick to a main profile initially and get that sorted before you branch out. Then when you done go for the passives specifically, team support, barrier and combat fitness and after that start working on your second profile.

I initially went with soldier profile filling out turbocharge, flak cannon , omni grenades, assault rifle, sniper, combat fitness and tools. Then went on my vanguard profile with charge, annihilation, barrier, lance, offensive biotics and containment. Finally after this came tech tree with flame thrower and team support. Now with my basics done went back to soldier profile to rank it up to 6 which also ensures that vanguard is at 6 as well.

Do also pay attention to your armor and gear and spec them depending on your character.

I suppose I mostly agree with above. Although at level 12 it isn't like you are swimming in points anyway.

If you want to be an Engineer but invest somewhere else, I would go to the weapon class passive for the type that you like the best first.

As a more or less Soldier, I haven't really found much utility in worrying about more than 3 active powers though, as the way Favorites reset your cooldowns doesn't really make it seem beneficial to me to switch in the middle of fights. Which means the passives area good way to dump points.

Profiles have been pretty secondary to me, switching from Soldier profile to say Engineer to screw around with something like EDrain or Flamethrower didn't end up making a lot of practical difference, but part of that was that Soldier was always ranked ahead of Engineer by a bit... and Infiltrator's bonuses weren't that great for the weapons I mostly was using.

Btw did any one actually figure out how to use the flak cannon properly, its extremely inconsistent. The only way i could get some use out of it is via stunning. But atm more and more it feels like mass effects version of the flakker from BL2.

With the kett armor and full soldier the omni grenades are excellent. Trip mine is not my style as i suck at using them, barricade is always good. Finally flak when it works it devastates a group especially if you have it set to stun and more shrapnel explosions and with kett armor adding 49% more combat power damage. It absolutely murders enemy shields but its unpredictable.

I mainly use it for close to mid range stunning and damaging a group of enemies and it works nicely when explosive barrels are near by. Still wish a profile had atleast 4 slots as that would have been handy, just having three is way too limiting.

Portable cover is useful for instant shield regen. As long im behind it i have no shield regen delay and i get 100 more DR when im in cover in general. That helps a lot when i screwed up and need to survive. Besides some random spawn sites like shuttle crashes etc end up having 10+ enemies/kett without any cover and barricade really is a life saver in that situation.

Hoping they add a few more abilities in the future as i really would like power armor, fortification etc basically some defensive abilities in the combat tree. And more skill slots per profile, 3 is way too little.

Liams Havoc Strike should have been a combat power for Ryder. Honestly IMO the Combat powers we have, while not ineffective, are rather boring.

Pretty much.

That's why in my first game I just got 3 actives then started filling all the combat passives and then the team friendly tech passive.  The downside was that halfway through I felt like I was just putting points places.  Mostly just picked up powers that helped for achievements (like the secret tech power).

Also I noticed something kind of annoying about the power cells, it seems like if I had 3 regular cooldown powers on the current set / favorite, I wouldn't actually pick up cells even if I was empty.  So I would have to switch to a favorite that had a cell power to pick them up.

My big question is how an Adept (at least, a traditional Caster Adept like the previous games had) is supposed to survive a fresh Insanity run. I've hit a brick wall at the second monolith on Eos because there are multiple Observers. They kill my squadmates in seconds, leaving me with the entire group looking at me. Worse, Observers exclusively use that beam attack that inflicts major damage extremely quickly. If you're in destructible cover, it's destroyed in moments. If you're not in destructible cover, they meander around until they have a bead on you (because they don't take cover), and you're dead in seconds. And you can't play ring around the rosie with them, because getting out of the line of fire of one of them puts you in the cross hairs of the others. And while I can take out one of them by priming with Singularity, then Detonating with Throw or Lance, and finally shooting them for the last bit of health, that leaves me with two of 3 powers on cool down, a third that can't inflict significant damage to their Shields, much less their health, and a couple of weapons that are nowhere near being able to kill a full-health Observer in the two to three seconds I have before they kill me.

The reality annoying thing is that if I could get to and complete Havarl, this would go away. After completing the Vault there, I can pick up the Fusion Mod of Adrenaline, which resets all powers on cool down when I get a kill. Killing one Observer would give me back my powers, allowing me to start on the next immediately. Unfortunately, the sheer number of Observers make me doubt that I could get that far. And sure, I could go Annihilation Field -> Charge -> Nova and still technically be an Adept, but if I wanted to play a Vanguard, I'd already be doing so.

Anyway, this was mostly to vent more than anything, and I apologize for that, but I'm hoping there's a solution that doesn't require me to throw myself at the wall over and over until the game gets stupid enough to let me win each fight.

Have you tired Backlash?