Worst or least useful Profiles?

I kind of think adept is. The reason why is sentinel just adepts better. It is pretty god awful design actually, on top of echos just being a lore bending bit of silliness.

Wait a second.

Soldier's marksman focus may not escalate, but it still gives you the big 50% weapon damage bonus as well as the big health bonus. Other than that, it also gives straight weapon damage instead of situational weak point and you can't sleep on the mag size buff either. 2 Shot Isharay...

Infiltrator gets a lot more accuracy and stability, but unfortunately most of the best guns don't need a lot of that. Recharge speed buffs are not too useful after Harvarl since you can have Fusion Mod of Adrenaline and just break the whole cooldown system. Weak point bonus is only mildly higher than Soldier's straight weapon damage bonus but on the whole it probably works to lower damage overall (when you can't hit a weak point, and after Soldier goes into Marksman's Focus).

Explorer is ok to me. Second most weapon damage, second most DR (even if it is half at max compared to the most), and some other token junk. A lot of Power Restoration and Defense for some reason.

Adept and Engineer seem like the two worst to me because they are pretty combo-centric, and combos are not that great. Engineer is also burdened by Construct buffs, which are nearly completely useless to me.  Plus if you want combo damage, Sentinel has a lot of that anyway.

The odd one out is Vanguard since it is somewhat specialized. Melee damage is ok, shield stuff is ok, it really only makes sense to me if you want to run Charge, Lance, whatever, and Melee. The whatever is probably going to have to be Annihilation Field to stack debuffs though.

I like the infiltrator's ability to spot enemies behind cover as well as being briefly invisible while evading.  Probably the profile I've used the least is the vanguard.  I'm just not inclined to want to melee much at all in this game.

Yeah I'm not great at meleeing either though I do find it a little easier in MEA than in the trilogy.

Ithink it's just a matter of taste I just found it slightly easier to use melee in MEA than in the trilogy though personally like in the trilogy I prefer to attack at range. I think it's mostly because of how the shielding works with the Vanguard profile though and the way  shields recharge and all that.

I did Vanguard one PT, basically rotating Charge/Dhan/Hammer for damage.   I think I used Explorer profile that time though, not Vanguard.

And I almost forgot.

Really I am not sure there is a huge difference in power between the profiles though. I know in my "Vanguard" run, I swapped between Vanguard, Adept and Sentinel profiles just for the hell of it, and there wasn't a game breaking difference.

Similarly, on my current Infiltrator game, I have run Soldier on it briefly, and it isn't hugely different (although that is with Adrenaline).

Same with Engineer and Explorer on a tech / debuff NG+ character.

Yeah I've done a couple of Vanguard playthroughs. I do prefer MEA's Vanguard to the trilogy one though but I do enjoy playing Vanguard in both as I do all 6 classes.

I use the piranha a lot in MEA. Some levels it’s good. Some levels it’s a lot of shooting to kill a random goon. The dhan seems solid all the time though. The hesh I’m using on a adept currently with autofire and bioconvertor augs. It’s super impressive sounding. But without a lot of combat buffs it’s usually more than 15 shots to kill someone. My soldier build would be doing about double damage per shot. Throw in turbocharge and it’s killing madness.

Which reminds me I need to try turbocharge on a vanguard build. I almost always went biotic heavy on my 3 actives.

I'm sweeping into all of these threads months late.

Infiltrator is pretty meh. Soldier is the better gunplay profile.

Explorer is unfocused. It combines some good and some tripe.

Engineer is meh. Adept is meh. Sentinel does combo casters better than each and adds durability.

Soldier, Vanguard and Sentinel are great. They are well designed, providing appropriate, meaningful benefits.