Too Much Too Human

After hitting 50 with my cybernetic bio engineer character, I went back and started playing my cybernetic defender again, to try out some of the melee techniques I'd learned while playing the squishier BioE.

When I first started playing, I had no idea that rolling was a powerful mitigation power - I figured it just let you get away from melee and aoe blasts. I was totally wrong, rolling is an amazing damage mitigation tool - you don't take any damage if you time the roll correctly! Even knockdowns can be avoided (too bad you can't avoid freeze with a roll, only with a well timed jump) Anyways, back to the actual point - I was now a rolling demon with my defender, now that I knew how to avoid the extra bit of damage that my defender used to always absorb standing up.

Besides that, I found that aerial attacks were still useful for a defender even if his hang-time in the air is minimal - you can launch a foe, do an air-slide to them, and set off a finisher attack before they drop back down, and it usually kills whatever it is. The other handy part about the air-slide finisher is using them against trolls - even if you skip the launch step, you can still jump, airslide to the troll's chest, and do a finisher. It takes all the armor off the upper body of the troll in one big hit, and all you have to do is roll around to behind the troll and then mount it's head for the kill. It made troll killing a heck of a lot faster. This was a bit risky on the BioE but it was easy peasy on the Defender, cause of his knockdown immunity. You may take a spot of damage but you will always get into position on the first try.

I was able to get past a lot of things I wasn't able to handle very well previously with these 2 techniques. The Defender's now L50 as well. (and it seems to have gotten a lot more red pieces of equipment than the BioE, I wonder why? Luck?)

I also decided I don't really like the BioE mind control power (Skuld's Embrace) at L50 - there are too many missiles in the mix. Since the AI's AOEs always hit everyone (friend and foe alike) you can get screwed over by a badly timed "friendly" missile barrage as you are meleeing away. At least when all the missiles are aimed at you, you know where they will land, and you can react accordingly. If some are aimed at you and some are aimed at the enemy, you will eat missiles wherever you go - it is hard to tell where the next barrage will land.

Also it's made me time out of a couple of timed secret areas.

What else is there - oh yeah, I heard that the respec cost caps out at 1,000,000 or so bounty. It's getting kind of expensive to respec but at least I know it shouldn't get any more extreme.

Now that the Defender's at 50, I'm not entirely happy with him either. I really miss the BioE ability to heal damage, even if they took a lot more in the first place. At least you can decide when you want to heal, rather than cross your fingers for a health orb.

So the current character I'm playing now is a Human BioE - it's a lot more flexible than the cybernetic one since you can build ruiners much more quickly with the improved hit rate. It's too bad the ruiner doesn't actually siphon enemy health to you like the description says.

I may stagger the development of this human BioE with a human Commando - I hear they are the characters of choice for loot runs since they can dish out ranged damage in the range of 1000-2000 points per shot - that's just a little less than what my Cybernetic BioE is doing per melee swing. :P It takes me a good hour or two to get through hell with the regen waiting etc, but these Commandos can do it in under half an hour? Wow. Plus due to the reliance on ranged weapons, you can basically set up your melee weapon as a ranged weapon buff receptacle, since you would only be using it to set up a juggle.

I have a cybernetic commando already at about L27, who is doing all right... I'll probably build a new human one for comparison. I think the human one will probably be able to dish more damage with it's faster reloads and rate of fire, the cyber one seems to be more focused on range and sustained fire.

Upsen.