The Krogan Battle Master: a different path

Krogan Battlemaster: a different path.

Since the demise of the old bioware forum, it has become more challenging to piece together the necessaries for building a character. Hopefully some may find this small presentation useful in that regard.

For a gold solo run it is fairly easy to find the ordinary Kroguard melee build. They can be found here in the archive threads, they can be found in YouTube, Reddit, Textralife, and various blog posters. Here is an excelent writeup for that style of Kroguard : fextralife.com/forums/t342015/krogan-vanguard-gold-guide-retaliation-update--novice-friendly/ . This is not the melee build.

This is the shotgun build.    link    It is directed at the geth, gold, solo. The more conventional build would be better for teamplay with unknown enemies. The Geth are chosen simply because they dont know how to do synch kills. The Krogan Battlemaster was chosen because it can survive the up close confrontations. Hopefully you have already heard hints that the Reegar can get goofy with Incendiary ammo.


The Kroguard melee build is nice, lots of people like it. But it is so easy to miss the charge you want, and melee into thin air and get in over your head... Medigel. The Krogan Battlemaster carrying a wimpy light shotgun or pistol with the melee blade can deliver a Biotic Charge - Melee combo worth a couple thousand bits of damage on any enemy in a second. Yeah, that never gets old. Big beefy shields restored every few seconds, a couple of mooks drop cause you are awesome...yada yada. Yet the damage it causes pales in comparison to what can be done with a Reegar Incendiary build. Think double or triple damage per second. With the Reegar, its always faster to just shoot them. You see, the Reegar doesn't deliver Incendiary rounds as advertised, it amplifies them. For the Kroguard, maximize weapon damage feels like a win.


Here is the deal, especially with the Reegar, Incendiary IV ammo creates a massive DOT. With a rapid fire weapon Incendiary DOT gets funky. On a single shot weapon Incendiary DOT does as advertised. The shot does its ordinary damage, followed by the DOT of six ticks of 50 over three seconds. Fine and good. But nothing special, (50+50+50...). They will die of old age before the DOT gets them. What is special is what happens with the Reegar. Things become a bit strange when you can land more shots inside those first three seconds. If one can do this, and the Reegar always does it, the DOT does not merely add, but it stacks. No longer does the DOT do 50+50 damage per second, it does 100+100, and etc.. . Subsequent shots increase this. The Reegar fires at 1000 rpm, which means lots of shots will land inside the three second windows, and thereby a doubling or tripling of the damage done by any burst into any enemy. Test it yourself if you wish. I hope you do. You will see every enemy simply melt, long before they ought to.

Doctor Trick has posted a sub 20 solo video here . He uses the big (180) magazine and Cyclonics. In the vid there are many examples of shooting enemies with just a few shots, and letting the insane Incendiary DOT finish them off. Watch how he uses Biotic Charge. Not for damage per se, but it is used to recharge barriers, move across the map, or to trigger the big weapon bonus. Which is how it should be done. It should not be done to simply attack. He does get in a few Melee slams, but they seem almost accidental. He also uses the extra rockets to his advantage.

Charge and Melee is not the primary damage dealer, it does 2000 or so damage with each flury. The Reegar Incendiary is the thing, it can hit 8000 dps or so. Melee is slow, Reegar is fast. 1000 rpm fast.

Substitutions can be made on several of those choices.

Trading Armored Compartments for the Stronghold is viable defensive move, yet this leaves the Reegar with a very small magazine. Swapping out the shredder mod for the spare thermal clip is an easy fix for this. Yet that will drop weapon damage by a chunk. And also give you too many bullets. Small maps like Glacier with akward ammo boxes may benefit from the big magazine. Big maps like Rio or Giant with easy ammo boxes dont seem to need it. On those maps Armored Compartments seems to offer the Reegar the right sized (101) magazine, not to mention the tremendous advantage of 3 extra missles for a solo run. Bigger maps will be slower to extraction. An extra missle will wipe out any spawn. A five shot burst will kill any mook, (the DOT) allowing you to take down four troopers with each reload.

You might want to add more Melee damage perks. But as described above, tanky perks seem way better than rage damage here. And getting involved with fueling rage is the antihesis of this build.

You might wish to swap the lighter barrel to reduce your Biotic cool downs, it is up to you.

Trading Cyclonics for Adrenaline is a tankier choice. On a Krogan, Cylonics offer a massive shield boost. Yet speed is also a weapon. Speed will help on objective rounds, kiting, backing out of a swarm, it will reduce dangers encountered during extraction. For a Krogan on small maps, tankiness seems to outweigh speed. But i prefer large maps like Rio or Giant for gold solo runs. So i tend toward speed. You find your balance.

Lets talk.