 |
| Vorcha Hunter |
If you read my review of the Geth Soldier from last week you'll know that I'm a big fan of the two existing Vorcha characters, mainly because of their Flamer but also because they can regenerate health via Blood Lust. So would this new Vorcha join those two or will i be disappointed with yet another of the new characters? Well let's begin with Submission Net, while i don't love the power I don't think it's bad, it's pretty similar to the Asaris Stasis but it can only ever snare one enemy at a time and has to travel to it's target. In contrast the Asari Stasis appears more or less instantly on the targeted enemy and can be evolved to the 'bubble' form, which can trap multiple enemies. This is my biggest issue with the SN, it's travel time is pretty long and when you're playing off host in a laggy-ish game, the chances are enemies will dodge the SN more often than they are caught by it and that's assuming the SN travels correctly towards the enemy you targeted in the first place.
The SN does however have it's good points too, for starters it can specced to do extra damage against shields/barriers (can be useful for bosses) but i personally prefer to go with the Electric Field evolution, which upgrades the net to send out a pulse of electricity every second, dealing damage to any enemies within range. Stasis doesn't usually deal any damage of it's own (though on rare occasions it can kill enemies but i've no idea how or why this happens) but the biggest difference between SN and Stasis is that SN can be specced to affect armoured units, it can't freeze them but it can slow them down, which with all the recently added new armoured units, is a nice option to have. Oh and of course SN can be fired at surface and act like a "spider web", trapping the first (non-armoured) unit that steps into it, a nice idea in principle but if i'm honest why would you wait for an enemy to get caught when you can just fire the net directly at them? [Using the net soley as a rear guard defence is definitely not a good idea]
Moving onto Incinerate, currently not one of my more used powers but in the past i used it quite a lot for taking on bosses with armour, specced correctly it can do alot of damage and with the recent changes to how fire explosions can be detonated, it's even more effective at dispatching armoured units. Using Incinerate on the Vorcha Engineer is the same as any other character equipped with Incinerate, it does decent damage up front and can be specced to do extra damage over time as and of course not forgetting the option of extra damage to armour. While Incinerate does well against unprotected enemies i.e. basic troop and can do really well against armour, it does not fair so well against shields/barriers, doing less damage than you would like. This is why it's a good idea to strip enemy shield through some other means before hitting them with Incinerate, in the case of the VE; a SN followed by Incinerate will set off a Tech Burst, this will severely harm shields and do a decent amount of damage at the same time.
 |
| Batarian Sentinel |
OK, so now we've talked about the powers, it's time to see whether the Vorcha Engineer is similar to any of the existing characters. As it happens the VE is similar to quite a few characters, pretty much any character than has Incinerate has some grounds for comparison but i personally think the key power on the VE is the Submission Net and only one other chracter has this power; the Batarian Sentinel. Just in case you can't remember what powers the Batarian Sentinel has in addition to SN, it's Blade Armour and Shockwave. Well both Submission Nets are the same, so no need to talk about that. I think a good place to start is health and shields, well at base levels the BS has about 75% more shields than the VE but their health values are more or less than same. The BS is less mobile than the VE, so i guess the extra shields is warrented but only you can decided what you prefer in your character.
Next we'll move onto defenses, well the BS has Blade Amour, which when activated offers damage reduction to all incoming enemy fire and can be specced to increase melee damage, it can also be specced to increase the amount of damage returned to an enemy trying to melee you. The VE doesn't get any form of damage reduction via Blood Lust but is given the ability to fully regenerate health, which to can be specced for an increase in melee damage. The one thing that BL does have over the BA is that it can specced to provide a small increase to weapon or power damage, this damage further increase with each kill aquired while Blood Lust is active. The extra weapon/power damage you can get from BL is nice but not really a winning argument for picking one character or the other, the main thing to note here is that BL allows you to fully regenerate your health, this ability on the higher difficulties is extremely useful.
Now onto the offensive powers; Incinerate and Shockwave, if you use these on an enemy caught in a Submission Net, it will set off a Tech Burst but if you're using these standlone Incinerate has the the chance of causing an enemy to panic while Shockwave can stagger/knock over enemy units. Both powers can affect multiple targets when used but Incinerate needs to be specced for radius while Shockwave has a default radius, which can be further increased. At base values Incinerate deals a tiny bit more damage than Shockwave but as i said, it will only hit one target at a time unless specced otherwise. In terms of usefulness, well i guess that depends on which faction you're up against, if there's lots of armoured units then Incinerate would be more useful but don't forget that Shockwave can set of Biotic Explosions, so if you've got someone spamming Warp on armoured targets, Shockwave can be just as useful or even more so in some situations.
The final point of discussion is what weapon to use with the Vorcha Engineer. Well at first i tried using Submission Net like Stasis, trapping enemies and then blowing their heads apart with my Paladin heavy pistol. When i successfully caught enemies it worked out pretty well but that's the problem, the net missed too many times, making it more infuriating than fruitful. So then i tried him out like i use my Batarian Sentinel, bringing along a fairly heavy hitting weapon (assault rifle/shotgun) and if you can catch enemies in your net, then by all means blow their skulls apart but if (or rather, when) you fail to trap enemies just go about shooting things up. I don't recommend using a sniper rifle because a decent one will probably be too heavy, this will just slow down your power usage and if you're not using your powers often then you've got no reason to be using the character in the first place. A light sniper suffers the same fate as using a heavy pistol; you just simply won't be getting kills via headshotting trapped enemies reliably. An SMG is not a bad choice (ideally the Hurricane), you'll be able to use your powers quite frequently and like using a shotgun, you'll be able to do some decent damage when it comes to CQC. The problem is you might find long range engagements a bit tricky, so i'd recommend a back up heavy pistol (like the Phalanx) for those cross map firefights.
I think the game plan for the Vorcha Engineer is like any other power based character, setting off combos where you can and use your weapon to mop up survivors/soften up bosses. The only snag being that because Submission Net is very unreliable and you may end up shooting enemies to death outright, instead of setting up Tech Burts with Incinerate. Overall i've been very underwhelmed by this new character, he doesn't bring anything new to the table and there are many other characters i would much rather use when i need burn or trap enemies. The Paladin Sentinel for example is just as mobile as the VE but can prime/detonate soo many more different power combos and much more consitantly. The Asari specced with Stasis bubble offers a much better option for crowd control as well as being able to reliably set up multiple enemies up for easy headshots. True she can't slow down armoured units but a good ol' Warp + Throw combo deals plenty of damage and staggers all non-bosses, which i think might be better than just slowing them down. Also don't forget Biotic Explosions are more damaging than Tech Bursts to targets in general, so if you're goal is to set up/detonate endless power combos, then she's your girl.
In summary, the Vorcha Hunter is a pretty average character mainly because his powers just aren't that great, Submission Net is far too unreliable and using Incinerate alone is just a waste. Several other existing characters do almost every role you could imagine for the VH but much better. His one redeeming feature is that he can regenerate health when Blood Lust is active but when you've got two other Vorcha characters (Soldier and Sentinel) who can also do the same thing, while having access to better powers, there's really very little argument for using the Engineer counterpart. Let me put it this way, if the Vorcha Hunter actually needed to catch food to eat with his Submission Net, i reckon he goes hungry most nights XD. But seriously, i'm beginning to wonder if any of the new characters Bioware intends to release will actually be any good, let's hope next week we get something better but i'm not holding my breath.
No comments:
Post a Comment