Talon Mercenary - Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Character Discussion and Review

Talon Mercenary

And so we reach the half way mark, three Reckoning DLC character kits reviewed and three more to go, well technically two after today but you know what I mean lol This weeks article is on the Talon Mercenary, classified as an Engineer, he brings to the fight three brand new powers in the form of Cain Trip Mines, Armour Piercing Arrows and Concussive Arrows. In another first for ME3 MP, every single one of his powers are based on grenade count, so each time you use a power it will consume a grenade (and of course you can only carry a limited number). If you read last weeks character review of the Krogan Warlord, you'll know that he's a melee centric character and that most of your damage output will come from charging his hammer with powers then releasing them via heavy melee. Well if you enjoyed that style of play, I think you're gonna like the Talon Mercenary but unfortunately if you didn't like it that much, this guy might not be your cup of tea either. But having said that, unlike the KW, the TM wasn't designed with purely CQC engagements in mind, I think his powers are just as powerful at point blank range as they are from across the map (though considerably less reliable). Due to the stupid button mapping (and lack of custom options), I'm generally not a big fan of any attacks or character kits that require me to release control of the right stick and dash button more often than not, so at first glance I already have my reservations about the TC. But I've been pleasantly surprised with one or two character reviews in the past, so the question is, does the Talon Mercenary join these select few or does he get dumped on my ever growing pile of "meh" kits?

As always we begin with a brief analysis of the powers. The Cain Trip Mines are exactly what it says on the label, they're placeable mines that detonate once an enemy has interrupted the trip laser and they seriously cane anything that gets caught in the blast radius :P If I'm not mistaken they are the most damaging of any of the explosive based powers currently available in MP, by default each mine has a generous impact radius of 5 meters and does a whopping 1200 points to health, 1800 points to Shields/Barriers and 2700 to Armour! Both the damage and radius of the mines can be increased fairly significantly and if you then factor in the potential for additional damage bonuses via the kits passives, you're looking at some crazy killing potential. You can plant up to three mines at any one time and they'll stay active until an enemy triggers it to go off or you place a fourth mine, which will then cause the first planted mine to explode on it's own. The mines are particularly useful for locking down choke points on a map, doorways and narrow corridors in particular make for excellent mine fields and if you place all three of the mines a couple metres apart, theoretically nothing but a top tier boss should make it through alive (though heavily weakened).

I think Armour Damage evolution at rank 5 is a must, it makes your mines stupidly lethal to almost all of the Reaper faction (Gold Brutes will go down in 3 blasts and Ravagers in 2) and if you think about it, all the other top tier bosses have armour as part of their defences, so the mines will soften them up real good. I'm not sure what the range of the trip laser is but I noticed during my time playing with the TM that they sometimes won't trigger, even though an enemy is clearly interrupting the beam, it could be lag related or it could be a built in delay timer, either way you should be aware of it. Another thing I noticed was that, while the mines could be placed on most surfaces and at almost any angle you fancy, there are a few locations that deliver weird results, for example some crates/box object things will seemingly swallow the mines and not display a trip laser at all. I don't know if the mines could still be triggered or if they were lost for good but at the very least it's still annoying not being able to see which mines actually need replacing. It's important to place the mines on a vertical surface i.e. the surface of a flat wall as opposed to on the floor, this gives the mines a much easier chance of being triggered by a passing enemy. I've seen too many players slap the mines on the ground in the middle of a massive open map, the chances of an enemy walking directly over that spot is very small and even if they did, you wouldn't be getting the most out of its explosive blast. Remember, you want the laser to be perpendicular to the wall (or whatever) and parallel to the floor, then somewhere at waist/chest height.

Before I start talking about the arrow powers, I think it's a good idea if I provide a bit more background information on the Talon Mercenary. If you haven't played him yet, you might not know that the kit does not come with any melee abilities at all (not even over cover grabs), instead the light melee and heavy melee are both replaced with an attack that revolves around the TMs "Omni-Bow". Despite not being called a melee attack, the Omni-Bows damage is still influenced by anything that increases damage to normal melee attacks i.e. melee mods on weapons, Strength Enhancer amps and Bonus Gear. When you use either of the default Bow attacks you'll fire a volley of 5 arrows; light melee will launch them in a cone spread pattern (in the direction you're facing) and heavy melee with shoot them in a tight grouping at one target (if you specifically highlighted them first). While it might be tempting to keep tapping light melee at a group of enemies and potentially hit multiple targets with each attack, the damage from each single arrow is pretty low and when I was playing on Gold, all it really did was aggravate them. Before the buff that BioWare implemented, you might have had some reason to spam light melee because it was much faster to use than heavy melee but post buff, I feel you have very little excuse to not use the heavy melee attack in most circumstances. If you use some melee enhancing amps/gear/mods, you can pretty much one-hit-kill any basic troop with the heavy melee Omni-Bow attack (in difficulties Gold and below), which is pretty cool if you consider that this is the damage you put out before applying any special arrow powers.

Right, so now you should be clued up on the Omni-Bow and how it operates, we can start talking about the arrow powers in more detail. First up is Armour Piercing Arrows, when you activate the power it doesn't do anything by itself apart from applying three charges to your Omni-Bow (after consuming a grenade), these charges are then represented by the three orange-ish tinged arrows on your characters right shoulder. When you next use either of the melee attacks, your character will launch arrows with these Armour Piercing charges applied, each melee attack (light or heavy) will use up one of the three charges. As the name suggests, this power is very effective against armour but they're not exactly weak against the other defence types either. I personally go with the following evolutions: Damage, Shred and Arrow Count. The reason for damage is obvious enough, you want to make sure you get the most out of any single attack using the bow, I mean if an enemy is still standing after the attack, what's the point? I think the Shred evolution is much better than additional damage to armour alone because for starters if you let the damage over time take place, it'll eventually do more damage and second, it makes the arrows that bit more lethal across the board. As for Arrow Count, well another arrow thrown into the volley means even more damage (or spread if you use light melee) and who wouldn't want to take that?

Lastly we have the Concussive Arrows, operating exactly the same way as the APAs, these charges are instead represented by three blue tinged arrows. CAs are considerably less powerful than APAs, doing roughly 66% less damage at default values, meaning you'll seriously struggle to kill basic Gold troops in one hit, even if you decide to max them out. But what they lack in killing potential, they certainly make up for in force and by this I mean, even at rank 3 they can already knock all non-boss enemies, flat on their asses. Unfortunately when I was playing I found very little use for the CAs, granted if you spam light melee, they could provide some decent crowd control options but the damage output is soo low that it's usually not worth wasting a grenade on CA charges. While it never gets old sending a enemy flying across the room after hitting them a heavy melee volley of CA arrows, apart from the "lol factor" you're practically always gonna be better off just shooting them dead. The "Shock" and "Chill" evolutions allow power combos to be detonated but unless you've got players in the lobby who will be spamming their powers, its not really a viable game plan. I'm not sure if the Cain Trip Mines will set them off but even if they did, I'm telling you now the mines would probably already have killed the affected enemies, making it a moot point - you might as well just have used them from the off.

Just like the Krogan Warlords Hammer from last weeks review, if you activate either of the arrow powers with charges already in place, they do not stack and will get overwritten. Also, say you've got APAs charges stored and decide to activate the CAs power, the CAs charges will replace the APAs charges and they're effectively lost/wasted. Something else you might not immediately pick up when you first start playing with the Talon Mercenary is that he's able to regenerate his own grenades, which can be incredibly useful on grenade dry maps but before you let your mind wonder to the 'nade spam goddess that is the N7 Demolisher, you should know that the regen times are pretty lengthy. With a +200% cooldown you'll get a single grenade every 20 seconds or 15 seconds if you decide to take the "Charge Regeneration" evo in rank 6 of the TCs passives. The problem is if you're planning on getting the most out of your Omni-Bow attacks, you're going to be using the very heavy Omni-Blade on a shotgun. It appears that even increases of mere percentages in the cooldown times will increase the grenade regen time exponentially, I checked out a -200% cooldown time and it was well over two minutes for a single grenade (most match waves don't even last that long).

Now its time to cover the game plan, well when I first started out I was all set to use the arrow powers non-stop but then the more I played, the more I realised they weren't that great. Concussive Arrows are little more than an amusement and I personally don't see the point in using them to send an enemy crashing across the room, if instead you can more or less kill the same target by using a volley of Armour Piercing Arrows. I mentioned above they could be used to keep groups of enemies occupied via staggering but again I think this only delays your process of killing them. Let's say you rush a spawn and tap light melee to use your CAs, the enemies are all staggered and you begin to pick them off with your weapon, when they recover you stagger them again and continue shooting, rinse and repeat until all enemies are dead. You then rush another spawn but this time you're using APAs, you use heavy melee and the first troop dies as you enter the immediate area, you then have two other APAs charges that you can use, which means potentially two more dead troops. If like me you chose the "Killing Spree" evolution in the Omni-Bow Mastery tree, your melee damage will have been boosted with the first kill, meaning your next two targets can be something other than a basic troop. I'm not saying you'll never have to use your gun with APAs but if enemies are killed in one heavy melee attack, it just makes your life easier and ultimately the game go faster. If an enemy isn't killed outright by a APAs heavy melee attack, it just so happens that due to the lock on mechanics of the Omni-Bow, you'll find that if you aim your weapon immediately after the arrows are launched, your first few shots will automatically be trained onto the target (useful for finishing off the wounded if you're too impatient to wait for the DoT to do its work).

A major issue I have with using the Omni-Bow as my main for of attack is that in order to fire grouped volleys, you have to expose your self to enemy fire for an uncomfortable amount of time (the arrows can't be curved around obstacles). It might not be such a problem on Bronze/Silver but on Gold+, where enemies can put you down in moments, it's a strategy that isn't particularly appealing and more risky than the rewards are worth. To make matters worse I swear the arrows are buggy, for example shooting at enemies in cover (even when you have a clear side/rear shot), quite often produces no damage done at all. Moving targets are also problematic but given the arrows are considered projectiles, they will be subject to lag and so I guess it's understandable but not any less annoying when you think you have a clear lock. After being annoyed by the lack of consistency I was getting with the Omni-Bow, I then came up with my second game plan for using the Talon Mercenary, forget the arrow powers and instead, just concentrate on shooting basic troops dead and then spamming Cain Trip Mines at everything else. This isn't a unique strategy by any stretch of the imagination, as many other existing characters can do exactly the same but the TM has one major advantage over them, in that he can spawn his own 'nades without being restricted to a single location. If you pack light enough and make a point of regularly visiting the various ammo boxes, you should theoretically never be without grenades for too long. Despite not using the arrows often, I always had a set of APAs ready to go in case I needed them but apart from softening up the occasional bosses, that was as far as I could be bothered. Even though the plan of action is nothing more than good old fashioned 'nade spamming, there's still some strategy involved, it's not just running around like a mad man (though, whatever floats your boat lol).

On some maps, teams tend to linger in certain areas, if that's the case it's a good idea to set the mines up, either to watch your rear or at the entrances/corridors that you know the enemy will have to use in order to reach you. Like I said earlier, most non-bosses are killed in one blast and any bosses that do make it though will be much easier to put down, having lost a big chunk of their defences. If you're planning on rushing spawns, I think it's best to take advantage of the auto-detonate feature of placing a fourth mine and use them sort of like remote controlled bombs. Instead of planting mines at potential spawn sites before the wave starts (a very hit and miss tactic in my experience, especially on the bigger maps), you wait for the enemies to spawn wherever, then you launch a load of mines into their midst. The key here is to spam more than three mines, this way you're effectively detonating them at will, if done correctly you'll find that this plan can be very effective at eliminating crowds of enemies quickly. The problem is you can burn through your grenade stock pile at an alarming rate, so you can't afford to miss with your mines and that's where the radius evolutions can be really handy. A couple points to note about the mines, I'm not 100% sure on this but I'm fairly certain some enemies can walk straight through the lasers without tripping them, cloaked Geth Hunters seemingly slip through, as do teleporting Banshees and on occasion, rushing Dragoons/Phantoms. Something else that I witnessed and that made me chuckle, was watching Geth Bombers gliding harmlessly over them, in light of this I started placing two mines horizontally and one vertically, directly in the middle of the path. This way I should be covered for all enemies concerned.

Moving onto weapon loadouts, this will depend entirely on how you're planning to play the Talon Mercenary. If you're going with my Plan A and using the arrows as your main for of attack, you're going to get the best results by using the shotgun Omni-Blade, which means you're going to need a shotgun. If you want to try and regen as many 'nades as possible during the match, go with whatever you have lightest, like a high level Wraith but be prepared to suffer a lack of DPS from weapon damage. If you don't care about regenerating grenades, pick your heaviest hitter, the TCs powers have no cooldowns to worry about, so technically you could go -200% and not be affected at all. I'd advise bringing along a back up weapon for those longer ranged engagements but the chances are you probably won't even need it, so anything you fancy should be fine. The Berserker and Juggernaut bonus gear are really complimentary to the TC using his Omni-Bow often, the extra shotgun/melee damage or extra melee/shields really help increase his killing and survivability potential, respectively. For those that prefer to go with Plan B, you'll want to pack as light as possible, I tried rolling with a Cerberus Harrier and Hurricane on separate occasions, the usual concerns over lack of ammo were reduced slightly because I was purposely visiting ammo boxes at every free moment. If these weapons elude you, a heavy pistol like the M-11 Suppressor can offer reasonable weapon DPS for its weight, it too runs out of ammo in no time at all but again the issue is minimised. If you've unlocked either of the Power Magnifier weapon mods, these will boost the Cain Trip Mines damage but to be honest when I was playing, I did fine without it. The only bonus equipment you should be using here is the Grenade Capacity, if you chose to spec into additional grenade carrying capacity in the TCs powers, you can go into any match with double figures (and that's a lot of potential kills ^_^). Don't forget to use your Thermal Clip packs if you find yourself in a pinch, they don't just re-up your ammo supply (weapon and grenades) but also increase all your damage output by 100% for 10 seconds.

In summary then, I think BioWare made a good attempt to try and introduce a new and unique playstyle to MP via the Talon Mercenary and his powers. While I'm not partial to using the arrow powers myself, others might enjoy the change of pace but I'm pretty sure everyone will love the Cain Trip Mines. On paper the TC isn't squishier than any of the other existing human character kits, though in practice he certainly feels like he goes down a bit too easy. In hindsight when I went with game Plan B, I didn't go down nearly as much, so maybe it's was just because I was spending prolonged periods of time out in the open trying to use the Omni-Bow XD. Due to the arrows being projectile based, if you're wanting to get the best performance out of them, it's best to host your own matches or be prepared to only shoot stationary targets (that are not in cover). I think the TC might just make my list of 'regularly played' character kits but only because of the insane damage you can do with the mines. The arrows are nothing more than something novel to me, if I want to kill troops in one hit (basic or shielded), I'll be better off with any number of power/weapon based kits, for example I could use Biotic combos or one of my shotgun/sniper classes. I can play those kits off host without having to worry too much about lag, while still reliably racking up kills and more importantly, without having to ration their use because they're not restricted by a universal grenade count. I don't know if I'd label the TC the best 'nade spammer, that title probably remains with the N7 Demolisher but he's definitely made an impression and if I know a grenade rich map is coming up, he's got a good chance of getting a run.