Krogan Vanguard Builds

The tier 5 and 6 talents are far better than the talents before them, that's why everyone omits an ability entirely.

I've swapped between omitting nova and fortify. Either way I tend to charge and use guns and melee. A key note on meleeing, usually if you melee once you can bait the target into meleeing back - rather than meleeing a second time you take a step back and headshot.

A strong gun is critical though, the kroguards strength in DR and shield restore is offset by fairly weak damage numbers from abilities and no damage taken debuffing.

The gameplay in InfamousSparkman’s run on Vertigo with the Krogan Vanguard looks fun:



He uses Charge to rush in, Explosive Purge of Fortify to stun, and head butts to finish the enemies off.

Well I mean, I'm a Vanguard player all around so fuck the Remnant Entirely! Haha. I also forgot to mention that Siphon weapons are pretty much a must for this guy... I have a Siphon Ruzad IV (I managed to get all 4 cards before the change to how the special weapons are unlocked!), and I'm working on getting the special mods maxed as well for as much accuracy as possible. Generally I like the Ruzad and the Venom... the Venom is actually really reliable for Priming Targets with Disruptor Ammo somehow.

So I guess I'm a little crazy for wanting to do a powers-based build? Haha. I did the old Melee build for a long time but I wanted to try something new. Some of my discoveries:

-With the Multicapacitor, Rage active, and the shield regen boost (5A) from Fortify, shields recharge in like, 1 second. Lol.
-Shield Powered Nova doesn't need full shields to cast, only any amount of shield, so as long as you have a sliver left, you're fine.
-The builds from this site recommend... Shield Enhancer equipment. I'm sorry, what? For the lowest shield character in the game?
-I don't think going all Melee is quite optimal, as you can kill most mooks in one hit when you have rage with only a few melee perks, especially moreso with the veteran bonus (+40% Melee).
-The Ruzad is great for damage, it will be better with a maxed Light/Heavy choke but it doesn't seem so great for ammo priming. Meanwhile, I can hover, fire a charged Venom shot into a group and get a primed target pretty much every time.

Actually, it's better than Multicapacitors for that particular character when we're talking of Gold or Platinum.

Given the Krogan Vanguard relatively low Shields, he can drop pretty fast on Gold and Platinum. No amount of Shield Regeneration Delay Reduction can cover for that at those difficulties.

The extra bit of Shields, however small the bonus, is better than anything the Shield Regeneration would give you before you can use Charge. The Shock Trooper (6a) evolution is what's giving you your Shield Regen and it maximizes a lot better with more Shields than with Shield Reduction Delay...

Multicapacitors is extremely good for many characters, but sometimes there are better options...


P.S. I am that site and I made that recommendation. Some people will disagree with my choices, but the build works on Gold, and even Platinum, with relatively low skills. Sometimes it's just a matter of personal playstyle, maybe you won't be able to make it work, but someone else will.

Since they revamped Rage to be 'kills within 5 meters', it's much easier and more efficient to do Charge, Shotgun than it is to do Charge, Melee. Throw in a Hesh, and you're putting out more damage faster and have more mobility than if you do Charge, Melee.

Melee is rather slow.

Here's my take. On Gold and lower, you can do whatever and get away with it.

For platinum,
- He can be made very tanky with Rage 4a5a6a and fortify 4(extra dr), 5(power armor), 6 purge/stun/prime.
- You need radius, power synergy and shocktrooper on charge for detonations with as little recharge time as possible. (Bastion at the expense of damage output if you're still dropping like a fly even with full rage and fortify. If you're still dropping with Bastion, rage and fortify, drop down to gold and quit being a disgrace to the platinum battlefield)
- 1 point in nova.
- Passive - power damage, accuracyboost/combo damage, weapon damage/accuracy

With rage and unstoppable, there's no danger in frequently purging armor to prime and detonate with charge. I use dual piranhas (siphon and bulwark) and hover frequently to boost accuracy from mid-range when its too dangerous for charging up close.

Alternate weapon: You can also use a ammo primed hurricane as a secondary weapon for quick priming and combo detonation with charge. If you get a good handle on when to charge/not on plat, it should work.

Other: He generally lacks the damage output of his krogan counterparts (the merc, gladiator and engineer) on platinum. The above indicated build would be the best attempt to maximize his damage output. I would recommend against shield powered nova for him, as he doesn't have annihilation field like the gladiator to get shields back. He's forced to charge for shield replenishment and that can put you in dangerous situations. Priming nova (6a) and charge to detonate is inefficient because Nova's recharge time is high and it makes you sacrifice points in fortify. 1 point in nova gets you the i-frames and damage magnified with charge's power synergy for oh shit moments. If you want to get even higher on the scoreboard (from the build described above), do inspirational on the rage tree (get those support points). But, if you're dropping like a fly, revert back to Beserker. It all comes down to your skill level.

Haha, that makes me a little sad; His shield pool is just pathetic. Still, whatever works, works, right? Meanwhile, Shield Enhancer on the KroMerc? Holy shit. For the record, I basically only play Krogans in this game, regardless of how much worse they are from their ME3 counterparts. I really miss my Krogan Wizard (Shaman) the most, and the Gladiator just doesn't do it for me... sigh.

I personally am thinking at this point it's better to go with a shotgun for damage instead of melee, just because you don't need to spec into anything when you have a Ruzad, a Venom, or a Hesh. The Hesh is just ridiculous, by the way, haha. I knew it was broken after using it once or twice. I'm still convinced there's a way to make a powers-focussed build work, even if I am crazy, but I'll keep messing with my builds and post anything I find that's noteworthy.

I personally love to use more defensive abilities like Unstoppable and Inspirational, and stacking recharge reductions to get myself back in the game faster. I play really aggressively but also defensively; I love using Nova to cheese through deadly attacks, that's why I'm trying to get Shield-Powered to work on this guy.

Better.

Lol, really though, it comes down to having the highest shield pool in the game instead of the lowest, better passives, and charge not being dogshit.

And I know, I’m probably delusional about damage output; I’ll snap out of it someday, but in the meantime I’m going to be in denial because I want a Krogan Space Wizard.

I do agree about explosive purge... it’s a huge risk. They should have made it so that it doesn’t strip you of your DR. And don’t get me started about Nova. It could do double the damage it does with 6A and still be garbage because 12 seconds is a looooong time.

I do love the Piranha. And yeah, that accuracy boost from Special Combat Training is scary!

I'm happy to announce that after months and months of experimenting ever since I got the character, I finally have a build that I'm happy with. It's high APM, it's all about powers and combos, but literally everything is good with this: Weapons, Melee, whatever. If you have rage you can 1-shot melee redbars and save the riskier stuff like Explosive Purge for tougher enemies. I more or less combined the Shock Trooper build and the Thunder God build into what's best described as a happy medium. My mistake was trying to make the (totally garbage) shield powered nova work, lol.

Charge: 4B 5B 6B
Fortify: 4A 5B 6B
Nova: 4A 5A 6A
APEX Training: 4B 5B
Rage: 3 only

Equipment: Structural Ergonomics

With the addition of ammo priming packs I can always have disruptor ammo handy so I effectively have 3 primers and one detonator which is available every 3 seconds. Outside of this it's just go go fucking go all the time. Stacking the +40% Combo Detonation bonus with the 50% Combo bonus from APEX is the key, as it makes all combos do crazy amounts of damage. I'm interested to see what everyone else thinks... I honestly wasn't expecting to finally find something that makes me happy but this dude is a really flexible character in the end.

Beware the dreaded Bioware Nerf: The deadliest nerf of them all.

I can say from my experience that rubberbanding still exists but it’s not as bad as it can get in ME3.

The Kroguard is a shell of his former self to a degree, but he does have a few handy tools over his predecessor, like Seismic Nova and Explosive Purge, which just nuke everything in the area. Siphon weapons are also handy in a pinch, stacked with the healing from rage.

Sync Attacks aside, I really miss the maps and enemies from ME3... they felt a lot more iconic and interesting.