The Daily Fail: Novice Solo-ers Support Thread (Now with less fail!)

Seriously, if you are doing 35 minute gold solos, I'm sure you have the skills to do a plat solo. Compared to you I am so underqualified it's not even funny.

Come on, do it with me and Qui Gon and Alfonse and MaxCrushmore! It'll be fun!

Thanks for your well wishes! I've only recently started using HM on the GI because I'm a coward who loves shields.

I'd make love to you for that if you were an Asari justicar.

wave 8 Reapers sucks super donkey balls, definitely a multiple nuke wave if you can manage it.. still, if you're making it to wave 8 with gels left, after 2x devices no less, you're definitely not far off- just need a good roll of the dice from RNG and you should be in business!

I have done a 23 minute gold solo ;_;

Indeed, this can be used to buy few more seconds when you chip away the approaching atlas in a good right hand advantage cover.
Shooting away the kneecaps and shoulder plates also staggers them.

An other atlas control technique is to "show yourself", this triggers the missile launch which also stops the progress for a few seconds.
Both can be seen here.

Other pest controls:

Something similar as above works for banshees, if you managed to stop her she will slowly walk towards you, but if you show yourself it will stop to throw a warp ball, few more seconds to maw at her.

Phantom at distance will stop (and put up her bubble) if a "projectile" power is cast on her. (Closer she just does her flip.)
So the TSent's Warp, while not doing damage, will stop her, allowing lining up a good headshot. (Overload strips her shields but does not stop her.)

For Infiltrators, an approaching phantom, when she is close, but not in direct line of sight, will retreat and seek cover if you activate cloak. And it will stay put in cover for few seconds allowing lining up good headshots. This is best used with Geth scanner and sniping/piercing. (example)

TTT already showed the hack glitch. There is also a little tip to use for short cloak infiltrators for devices. Activate the cloak already when approaching the device, not only when you are at it (example). Unless you are in plain sight enemies will first investigate the place where they last "heard" your footsteps, e.g. where you activated the cloak and only after that will they come for you, this can often buy you bit of extra time on the device.
Once I even had a phantom walk by me while doing the device at the bottom of the central ladder on White, I had already decloaked, but was motionless of course.

Thank you for all the great advice! I really admire the way you can skate on the edge of one health bar -- it's like watching a highwire act. It's scary, but you're so good at it you make it look like the most natural thing in the world.

How do you know when to time the Ops pack? It looks in the phantom gif that you push the button just after she does the slash animation. With brutes do you wait for them to pick you up? I never had luck with ops packs stopping sync kills, so I gave up trying long ago, but this is a skill I really should learn. Can ops packs work against banshee sync kills?

I'm going to try to do hacks the regular way, but we'll see how long that resolution holds. In another 40 attempts or so I may give up on that.

I remember canceling an Atlas' sync-kill with an ops pack at least twice (on host, in a solo). 

Ha ha ha! My fastest gold solo was 76 minutes! You should definitely be ready to solo Plat!

Yes, I remember this feeling not so long ago, but
1) HM only halves your base shields (=shields without any point in fitness). For the GI it is 750, with HM on you loose only 375. A GI, with 4 points in fitness and Cyc4 has 2175 shield, HM on it is still 2175-375=1800, plenty.
2) the higher the difficulty you play the less significant your shield (and health) size is, well, ok, lets put it this way, damage output and situational awareness outweighs shield/health even more on platinum. This is because enemy damage is scaling with difficulty and on platinum no amount of shield will keep you upright out of cover.
It is really "shieldgate" and "healthgate" what keeps you alive. These are game mechanics, shieldgate means that if you have any positive amount of shields then a single shot, regardless how powerful it is, will only deplete your shields and damage will not be carried over to you health. Shieldgate also provides a very short (like 0.1s and decreases with difficulty) period of invincibility.
Healthgate similarly, if you have any positive health, single shot will not kill you off, again comes with few invincibility frames.
Important that both have cooldown, e.g. if you have been shieldgated, even if you regain shields a few more seconds needed before you are protected again by shieldgate.
So, practically, you get 2 warnings before you are down, regardless how much shields you have. And on platinum even mooks will strip shields fast +375 or +500 does not make much difference.
Why have any fitness then at all you might ask. If you can have ~1800ish shield that is about the amount what a banshee warp ball or an atlas missile does, of those one usually eats a few in a solo and it helps if you don't need to eat an opspack for every one of them.
I sucked too, I tried lots of keys but none was handy, I had to bind gelling to right mouse button, sucks but RC is life.