Per request, apparently it still exists! I found out someone archived this old post of mine. Gods we

Volus

Some hate, some love. Some think they're between the two, but really they're just on their way to love or hate.

I love.

Some tricks I've noticed that are useful. Some on the board might not know all these tricks yet.

Double Cloak: You can cloak twice with Volus. Once when you are standing still or walking, and once when you are running. They are on separate cooldowns. Using this you can be cloaked for nearly twice as long without using this trick. Now that sounds amazing, except you can't Heavy Melee when you are cloaked. And Volus Heavy Melee is their secret weapon, offering the most utility of any other button in the game. <-- I don't even think I'm exaggerating with that one.

Heavy Melee: This button works wonders and turns one of the least healthy kits into something capable of facetanking. Literally the only kit on platinum I can honestly say that with.

Gives you damage reduction of 50% for the duration. Additive to Shield Boost D.R. to the hard cap of 90% . <--This is untrue, this can be stacked higher than Shield Boost's description states.

Gives you 1.0 sec of iFrames. (Invulnerability frames) My personal experience is that this is greatly impacted by lag however.

Can be canceled by tapping Heavy Melee again to restore control quicker.

AoE reliable stagger. Can stagger Dragoons that are in their "smash" animation.

Makes you immune to Banshee Balls.

Shield Regen. You get back 10% every tic.

Things to look out for, the multi-damage nature of Geth Bomber bombs/Scion Grenades means a Heavy Melee will not always protect you. In my experience you'll get shield/health-gated. Heavy Melee as a last resort and try to time the iFrame. Dodging the aforementioned is much more preferable. Also, although not strictly a volus-only trick, in case you didn't know, if you destroy the Geth Bomber before it's bombs detonate, they do nothing at all. So yes, you can James Bond walk through the explosions cool as a cucumber with the bomber dead at your feet and take no damage while your teammates are all scattering. I don't know yet if that works for Scions or not.

You are still very, very sync-kill-able. Again, not a volus only trick but something useful to know if you already don't. Enemies that can sync-kill you are unable to do so if you are vertically higher or lower than they are. If you stand higher or lower on a ramp, you cannot be grabbed by a banshee/brute/scion/etc. Volus on a ramp also have a chance to gain a special moral bonus for everything in LoS that I'll go into at the end of this topic.

As fun as nutpunching is with the Batgaunt the amount of tricks you lose for the hilarity makes it a bit less enjoyable for me. Stunlocking three dragoons at the same time has a bit more appeal to me.

Heavy Melee Versus Shield Boost. Shield Boost is great, but if you don't want to be relegated to "That support class guy" all the time you need to watch how often you are shield boosting. You can do great damage but Shield Boost I've found is much of the reason I was falling behind. It's a crutch that well timed Heavy Melees can help reduce. You should be using your other powers to help your overall damage output whenever you can. Heavy Melee to regen instead of Shield boost. Unless you know you'll need the 6 seconds of D.R. from Shield Boost. On top of that, you can start preempting damage taken by already being in Heavy Melee stance to reduce the damage.

Shield Boost: When your allies are reloading and you shield boost them, you break all your toys and make baby jesus cry. Also you make baby reaper-jesus come back from the dead.

Shield Boosting an N7 Slayer that's using Phase Disruptor might just make that Slayer a very happy person, momentarily. Been on both sides of this, it's actually pretty fun.

Volus Roll: Fun with Banshees. When they are in their teleport phase and are roughly one jump away from you, time it so that when they are jumping, you are rolling towards them. You'll roll "through" them. This gives you a moment to 180° faster than the banshee. This will often stop the banshee in her tracks as well as triggering her claw-slash animation. This means you have a moment to hit her with a power that she won't block, or do some quick damage. Give yourself about five guilt-free sync-kills to get the timing down on this one though if you've never done it. Don't cloak after you roll. I've found that if you cloak after you roll through you don't lose any aggro, and instead leave yourself vulnerable. It's likely you'll need to Heavy Melee in the next three seconds to avoid having to Shield Boost and lower your damage.

I've read the rolling actually gives DR as well, but if anyone's reading this and has a link with info on that, I'd love to see it. Preferably from one of those people that spams numbers at you until you're indoctrinated and believe anything they say.

The Balance: The real trick between doing damage, dying all the time, or just being "support", I've found (again, in my experience) is the balance of Cloak, Heavy Melee, and Shield Boost. You want to limit your Shield Boosts as much as possible. It's a damage-sink unless you're facetanking with a weapon and need the DR/Shields. Heavy Melee helps mitigate the damage loss from Shield Boost without putting your other powers on cooldown, along with all it's other great properties. Cloak (indirectly) helps your dps and helps mitigate damage taken. Finding the right balance between those three buttons would be the crucial step to getting a volus to work on Platinum, imho. Everything else is just rolling and cheese.

Weapon Movement Penalty: Certain weapons while being fired reduce your movement. Volus ain't got no time fo' that. (Weapons like the Reegar, for instance.) Honestly this little tidbit doesn't really do much as far tricks go, but it's useful knowledge regardless. I think.

A couple kit specifics I can think of.

Adepts: the Orbs can detonate ammo primers. Shoot-prime-orb-detonate is a pretty good combo.

Sentinel: Decoy and Drone for detonation and shock. They shock, they detonate ammo primers. Not just yours either. They die and detonate themselves, they do a bunch of upfront damage and detonate your ammo primer again. You want your Drone and Decoy dying as often as possible. Place them in harms way. If your Drone is detonating as often as you can put it back up, you're doing it right. (So long as it's detonating next to an enemy ofc.)

To put it in a different perspective, pretend your Decoy and Drone are time-bombs. And how you place them determines the length of the fuse. You want them detonating ideally as often as you can put them up. Place them near Primes, Primes are great for getting locked down by both of these. Place them near teammates that seem to attract a lot of splash damage towards you. Better your drone than you.

Drone/Decoy Phantoms, cloak, then move away from where you cloaked. Phantoms are actually pretty stoopid when it comes to these things.

Engineer: Only thing I can think of that's even remotely "tricksy" with this guy is to lay your recon mine at a choke point you know big enemies will be moving over soon. When they are in range, drop a prox mine at their feet for the increase damage taken then detonate your recon mine with prox mine's added damage. This assumes you have prox mine and it's specced 5A. If your recon mine is specced 6B then try to time the Recon detonation for the last few bars. It's not kill-stealing if there's an actual tactic behind it, right?

Vanguard: Cloak before you Charge. Not a trick, a survival trait. Also Bonus Charge really shines on this little bowling ball of vol.

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If you have any other tricks, general or kit specific, I'm curious to see what they are.

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Finally:

If you're going to die.

And you know you will.

You better do it near the top of a ramp.

It helps morale, yours and your teammates. Trust me.




TL;DR? Hey look ^ it's a volus rolling down a ramp. Laugh at it.

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Link where I found the archived post also has the old replies if you're curious.