Powers, Skill Trees and Active Abilities (Official Thread)

The thing you said about overload. How does it work that it has the potential to be both a primer and detonator? Can you tell us where in the video we see that?

The thing you said about overload. How does it work that it has the potential to be both a primer and detonator? Can you tell us where in the video we see that?

Some observations from the gameplay trailer.

Warp is gone. RIP Warp. On the one hand, Warp was a boring power. On the other hand, it was very useful, since it was a debuff, a primer, and a detonator. (And don't say that Lace is the new Warp, it shares nothing with Warp other than being a detonator. Neither is Annihilation, that's a returning ME3 multiplayer ability.) What does this mean? It means that pure biotics users will once again be in a serious disadvantage against shielded or armored enemies, since there'll be no way way to prime these enemies with biotics in ME:A.

Happy to see the clever Pull + Throw combination where a held enemy is thrown against other enemies. I guess it remains to be seen whether this is actually useful on any of the higher difficulties or just something that looks neat.

Passive abilities rely on spending points in a given tree branch. I guess this makes sense, since I'd only max out weapon passives from the combat tree and ignore the humdrum powers otherwise.

No more tech combos? Overload, at least, seems unable to prime a combo. It's possible we'll only have fire/cryo/biotic combos, if that's the case. Maybe not.

No more headshot decapitations. Too bad.

Interesting biotic teleport(?) (non-power based, likely a dash upgrade) happens a few times throughout the video. For example, just before the hammer smash. Possibly a profile-tied passive ability?

Overall, looks good. As long as we don't run into ME2 "biotics are useless on higher difficulties" again, in which case tech will be the tree of choice for Insanity playthroughs. Let's hope Bioware manages to strike a good balance this time with how useful biotics are.

I'm pretty happy that Warp is gone given it was the most boring biotic power since it got changed to a projectile and contributed to adepts becoming "blue artillery". I really didn't like it.

I much preferred the ME1 implementation of warp - which reave became the spiritual successor. But it looks like the description of Lance indicates an AoE field at the target location - so perhaps it sets up a warp field or similar debuff? Or perhaps an alternate cast of some power creates a ground targeted warp field - maybe Annihilation? I'm sure there must be some way to access the effects of warp even if it is not present as a standalone power, given everything has alternate cast modes and the different power evolutions.

From the power list it looks lime they are trying to reduce the frequency and accessibility of biotic explosions, which is fantastic - makes them feel more impactful when you are able to combo one and allows each biotic power to stand up on it's own effects rather than only caring about whether they prime, detonate, apply DoT or debuff for weapon damage.

Eh, I'll probably try it out at some point but it's not quite the same. Incinerate was slow as hell through the air, so hopefully it's a bit quicker now. Plus warp had unique upgrades (expose, pierce) that weakened enemies and made them take more damage from weapons and powers.

Firing off a projectile from your omni tool also doesn't quite feel the same as knowing you're weakening an enemy with your mind.