Struggling with the bloody gladiator

i haven't played the gladiator myself much yet, but i did read somewhere that annihilation field's vortex evo is very good on her. makes sense too, seeing as how with vortex, anything that is unshielded/unarmored will be floating around helplessly as you bash their heads in.

Annihilation: Take radius, expose, and vortex.
Offensive Biotics: Take power efficiency and expose, leaving biotic warrior alone.
Rage: Resilience, regen, and berserker.

Play defensively using melee when you know you won't get overwhelmed running into a crowd and pull the lone mob to you when they're exposed. For some reason, your melee deals extra damage when they're being held and it one shots everyone you can pull. Use Nova for the iframes.

This is all possible with a rank one. If you have rank two or higher you can put your extra points pretty much into whatever. I'd say pull for the cooldown and radius (once you have a rank four).

You don't have to have biotic warrior because it doesn't synergize well. You're not charging and then going into your Duelist's melee 95% of the time. Your pull is killing everything anyway after you melee. You can waste a pull or nova to deal more melee for one or two hits, but then you potentially waste that cooldown, either for the nova iframes or pulling an unshielded enemy.

Let her be a glorious dog hunter and human squasher.. while she run away from real armored threats.. 

well apparently (again, i read this in someone else's post, i have no real experience with this character) meleeing a pulled enemy within your annihilation causes that target to explode violently and deal like... massive damage to any unit within the range of your hammer smash. according to that post, it is capable of chunking a third of a hydra's health.


www.reddit.com/r/MECoOp/comments/648ozo/the_krogan_gladiator_is_insanely_overlooked_and/

i think that's why vortex is the preferable EVO for her, as that will effectively disable any and all red health enemies in melee range. then the only things that can stagger you are things ilke flak cannons, and armored enemies.

You don't rush into a crowd and punch things.
I use Pull from afar to pull in a red bar mook and one-hit melee kill it.
If you use melee regularly it takes 2-3 hits. But enemy rag-dolled by Pull got killed by one melee.

If you build her tanky, she clocks in at just over 1500 combined shield+health w/10% damage resist(while enraged). Of course, if you do that, then you give up 75% melee damage and rage mode up time. 

In terms of survivng staggers, I mean, it depends on what else is focusing on you at the time. She's definitely beefy, but she can't take focus fire from a pack of mooks for long. Best way of dealing with staggers, is to avoid them. You can do this by carrying a Dhan and using it to stagger just before you swing. From there, you can dash back out, and then repeat. You can also bait npc into using their melee and just back up so that they whiff. From there, u can swing and backup.

In terms regards to vortex, the red bar CC is nice, but the sustain you give up for it just feel like from my experience with her.

I find it too squishy...even with the shields restored.... whats the point of putting all that into rage when rounds are barely two minutes and that great hammer if I really can't use it on gold....I mean you can but you have to be super careful...might as well just use a weapons platform with the piranha... though it is fun pulling and smashing with the hammer....

Rage needs more damage reduction or something...or I just need to L2P...

Not a fan of the character on gold, personally...I suppose if a team is spamming powers your annihilation will save you/get you tons of points but as a solo melee build its meh...

This is actually one of the best characters in game. It's pull and melee combo does something like 5 times damage and the hammer is an AOE. You spec annihilation to 6 for radius, 20% damage to enemies in the field, and 30% shield recharge on kill. Spec into the passive that further increases damage by 20% in the offensive biotic passive tree. Spec rage to 6 straight across the top for health regen and auto proc on low health as well as only needing 2 melee kills at this point. Use Jug shield equipment.

The strategy is pull red health enemies to you and bash crowds with them. The AOE of the 5 times damage melee will hit them all and one shot most things, even gold level shielded enemies. If you can't pull hit them with your talon once in the face and melee them a few times. The shield regen and rage healing will allow you to face tank in almost any situation.

Gold tier leaderboard topper every time.

Not at all. There's no reasonable justification to invest more than 1 point into pull. And while nova is a half-decent power, it does not synergise at all with the rest of this character's powers and therefore makes absolutely no sense and barely adds to the damage output.

It's about the principle. I simply can't accept or justify playing with a gimped character who is missing an entire skill tree. Even if those powers don't add to the damage output of the character, the point still remains that the character isn't meant to be played in this way. It's meant to have at least 2 powers maxed out. In my mind, the krogan gladiator is meant to have vortex on her annihilation field and she's meant to be walking around with seismic nova, fully specced into melee and have her passives fully decked out. That's the only way I'll have it. It's just my preference, this is definitely a matter of taste. I see a whole bunch of people rocking their rank 1 characters on gold, silver and bronze and that is totally fine. More power to them. But I just don't enjoy it. Tried it a few times, just couldn't bring myself to accept it. It's more of a psychological hurdle than a practical one.

You are supposed to hold one pulled red bar, then walk them over to anotther enemy and slam them both (including the pulled red bar). If you do that it amplifies your damage a lot.