When you are evaluating a sniper weapon, you need to take the synergy with cloak and/or turbo charge in account. 1. Black widow (with bio converter) 2. Isharay (with vintage heat sink) 3. Inferno
don't forget to combine Fusion Mod of Rupture +25% Weapon Headshot/Weak Point Bonus -70% Weapon Clip Size with isharay Add bio converter Add +dmg on last shot in clip Add +dmg on full shield (optionally add powershot) Use tactical cloack .. Laugh at your dmg output!
I have yet to find an information source on ME: A that isn't largely guess work, the big companies putting out guides are all assuming, I do a certain amount of assumption myself, but some of theirs are so lacking I wouldn't have rolled it out. It's difficult to know who to trust when a youtuber/gaming news company says things as fact as in almost all situations, they don't know for sure. Essentially, it's uber on the Isharay because the 70% reduction in clip size makes no difference to a gun with a single shot clip, meaning the plus side is all you get :D
I am not as far in game as you guys are.. but i wonder if the above stated combo works in combination with Heat vent.. then it becomes totally sick (instead of bio converter) (or if you can combine bio converter with Heatvent? )
Fusion mods are all chest-mods, AFAIK. So yes. There's also a stasis pod perk that reduces the negative effects by half. Hope you didn't sell the one you get from the Eos Vault like I did, because shields are better than health in this game
I completely disagree with the Black Widow at #4. It is easily the best sniper rifle in the game. It's only slightly less dmg than the Ishray but with a higher clip size and rate of fire. It's also an ultra rare blueprint, so it can hold more augs than the Ishray or Vanquisher can as well. Haven't tried the inferno yet but I MUCH prefer high damage per shot with my sniper rifles and the Inferno is wanting in that area.
Черная вдова на мой взгляд лучшая потому что в ней 4 патрона при полной прокачке с модом (старый приемник) бесконечные патроны и если использовать навык Тактическая маскировка +90% урона от оружия она убивает за 1 выстрел и с комбо Адреналин можно сразу снова в Маскировку уходить, а Ишарай к сожалению только 1 патрон получается если получится хотя бы 2 патрона с максимальной прокачкой можно будет её брать но 1 патрон слишком для меня плохо, на всех оружиях я использую ( старый приемник) без него не играю уже не хочу бегать искать ящик с патронами.
I was a big fan of Vanquisher (still am, it's a solid #2 for me), but I remembered how sought after the Black Widow was in ME3, so started using one as soon as I could craft one...then a Black Widow V dropped about halfway through my first playthrough and it's been my go-to sniper since. About a third the way into an Insanity run and it's still great.
After messing around with the Black Widow and the Isharay. The 2 sniper rifles that catches my intention the most, I must say I much prefer the Isharay with the Bio-converter installed. Don’t have to worry about reloading and pretty much have infinite ammo. (Tactical Cloak recovers my health) Because if I’m gonna use a sniper rifle, it better kill most of my enemies with one bullet and with damn good accuracy. Awesome video as always though. It definitely helped me boil down my choices between those 2
N7 Valiant is my fave. Low recoil combined with high magazine capacity and high rate of fire while still having very good damage is the best combo for dealing out the best DPS IMO. Even if it was half the damage of the widow (not quite) you could still get more shots on target in a short period of time to deal more DPS and a miss is less of as big deal.
The Black Widow is my favorite. Great damage, long range, enough ammunition to justify using Battlefield Assist, and I just love what they did to the look of it in Andromeda. I usually play Mass Effect with whatever weapons I like the look of more than what's statistically better. If I'm gonna be looking at this rifle for hours of gameplay and story, it's not going to be a Kett piece of shit or a Remnant metal... thing, it'll be good old Milky Way.
vanquisher is the best in MP in silver and gold and valiant is best in bronze as they can one shot with the correct builds black widow is the best in single player on insanity as the extra damage is overkill on lower difficulties since enemies are also a lot more bullet spongy. i always use the 20% damage when full shield/health. the game is very generous with ammo box and spare clip size. unless u are a terrible shot ammo is not an issue even with spongy enemies if u play on lower difficulties then the lower damage higher clip guns are better (inferno) anyways the whole point of this message is that there different best weapons in different situations u should really indicate what difficulty u are rating the gun for.
As a base, considering I didn't mention multiplayer or difficulty, it's logical to assume single player on normal, as that's what the majority of people would play. The different guns for different situations is why I topped it with the 3, to go into detail about every possible situation would be insane, the video would be an hour or more. These videos are meant as base knowledge to build on via your own playstyle and experience, that's generally the best way to learn, multiple source with some hands on. Plus because of the playstyle aspect, it's largely opinion based, I like to use sniper rifles in general at full range, so the ammo packs aren't too close, it's the only gun I would insist on having the heat sink on really. I'm liking the comments on these vids, they're giving some good counter points and mini debates :D
Pretty much. Plus with the 25% clip size skill, it gets 4 shots per clip. Snipers I also don't really put a double mod slot on, as they only need the 3 mods (penetration, damage, ammo). The scope augment just makes the gun look worse, but thats Fashion Effect: Andromeda speaking.
for sp I really like black widow with bio converter. with its high damage good rate of fire and no need to reload it melts every boss, and having 3 bullets per magazine doesn't drain your health that crazy also allowing to reload after 2 shoots and replenish your health a little.
I made the mistake of starting on insanity. After much time wasted on retries (especially the first dropship attack on Habitat-7 and the first Fiend encounter with Kett troops on Eos) I realized an unshielded basic mook not dying to a single anti-tank rifle shot to the face was kind of immersion breaking. So I lowered it to normal. Smooth sailing ever since.
Yaaaas, love the Inferno. It's just a lovely weapon to use and can be your one and only weapon (although I've taken to also slotting a Piranha to use when enemies insist on melee range).
Although I pro-orded the game, I went back to ME3 after beating it. I've recently returned to the game and am exploring the Developed Weapons portion of the game. Your videos have been very helpful in doing so! Thank you! Something you do in your videos that is, unfortunately, too rare these days, is that you are direct and do t pad your videos. Thank you!
Vintage heatsink black widow is a beast, with mods you can up it to three shots and dump heat upgrade in turbo charge you can easily bump that clip size to 6. Enough to clear most camps before the end of duration with some skill. The big draw of Black widow for me is that it's power with the operative profile will allow you to 1-2 shot most things through cover with a good penetration mod.
By far the most informative and most interesting video on weapons so far (Trust me... cuz I still can't make up my damn mind after watching others before this video...)
i'm just wondering why didn't you like the black widow? it has higher damage than all other sr except the isharay (which only has one shot per clip) and more than twice the dmg of the inferno (which i also like but not as much) i don't use the vintage heat sink but i still have yet to run out of ammo... all in all my top three would be: 1. black widow 2. isharay (with vintage heat sink) 3. inferno
+Nils Winkelmann i agree with you top 3 by 2 thirds, for me it was super close between the black widow and the Vanquisher for that sub section of sniper rifle. I just felt the Vanquisher had the edge.
Bio-Converter solves the Black Widow ammo problem and makes it the best gun for me. You just need "Mod of Shielding: gives 50% increased shields but reduces health by the same. Obtained from Eos Vault" and Combat Fittness to regenerate your "ammo" while you are shooting.
+1, a little surprised to see the Black Widow in 4th position given it basically manages to net the majority of both single-shot and semi-auto SRs into a single weapon and what weaknesses it has can be wiped with mods/augs. About the worst I can say is how many MW research points it eats.
+1 for the Vanquisher getting some love. So far it's my favorite of the new weapons. Have my Ryder using that as primary, been using it since I got one as strike team loot and started crafting them as soon after as I could. Carry a Raptor as a backup weapon - essentially because it's a decent semi-auto AR but uses sniper skills. Haven't tried the other top 3 yet tho, might later. Gave me something to think about, thanks!
Hey nice one dude .. I've cracked out the game on hardcore and just goin into insanity mode.. which I think makes the game much better.. Been using vampire leeching bio mode Blackwidow but , really enjoyed your video , keep up the good work pal . fed up of burning all my research to lvl 10 (X); only to find out its a waste of time..
Quick tip for anyone wanting to play a sniper with the Isharay, carry 2 of them, both with the vintage heat sink. Then just swap weapon while cooling as its faster than the cooldown but still gives you unlimited ammo, this does require you to be able to carry more weight. I am playing on PC however so I don't know how easy it is to change weapon on console.
I appreciate these tutorial vids and find them quite informative. However, regarding the N7 Valiant vs Vanquisher, at least statistically the N7 appears to have the better numbers. Perhaps the RoF appears slower if one follows the audio rhythm, but is supposedly faster than the Vanquisher on paper. And the N7 Valiant can one shot kill with a head shot, I believe.
The one shot head shot would depends on many variables, it would at a high enough level and wouldn't at say rank 1 with no skills. The vanquisher vs valiant thing is currently under question as apparently the patch fix an issue witch caused the vanquisher to do 100% extra damage than it should have on headshots which if true has massively skewed the results of my testing, when I get chance I intend to take another look
I think the problem behind the "black widow" comments is the fact that the "Sniper Rifle" category can be divided into two subcategories: Marksman Rifles and Sniper Rifles. The first for the "weak but fast" ones, the second for the "one shot kill" ones.
Bio converters are definitely more dps than vintage augments. You kind of need the Life Support evo in the Team Support skill, and Regeneration in the Combat Fitness skill helps too. Cora is good too. Take charge away from her and spec her Shield Boost for radius and health regen. Spec her Asari Commando passive for the "Power Restoration & Defense" evolutions. Regarding the Remnant weapons , they gain clip size as they rank up which helps to improve their dps. I play on Insanity. I use the Dhan shotgun with the Seeking Plasma augment and 25% shield restore on clip empty. I use the Valkyrie with the Heat augment which buffs Incendiary ammo. These two guns kind of negate the need for a sniper and are the 2 guns i used to kill 4 of the Architects on the Insanity difficulty. For the trash that the Architect spawns I use an Equalizer or Hornet (with the Seeking Plasma augment) and sometimes the Piranha. In regards to snipers, I have used the Isharay with a Bio converter, and I have also killed myself using it. lol. It's tops for dps though. Because Remnant weapons get increased clip sizes at higher ranks, and the fact that the Inferno fires almost 3x faster than the BW, I think the Inferno may be able to out dps a BW at higher ranks, but math is not my strong point. I will leave those calculations to someone else.
I use the Shadow with bio-converter. I don't use it as a sniper at that point, rather an LMG. Imagine bipodding behind some cover scope up, and spray with lots of DPS (can't remember my damage, might be ~75K+ DPS), perfect accuracy, and constant but consistent recoil, with shield/health recharge delay reduction augs, shield capacity mods, and shield oscillator on the chest. Even if shields buckle, Life Support, Energy Drain, and Charge keep me alive if I need it, and finally Turbocharge assists in increasing DPS some more. afaik, snipers deal half damage while unscoped, and the Shadow does more than twice the damage of the PAW. So I'm not missing out.
im looking forward to your Assault rifle video, back in ME2 and 3 i was a mattock or saber person but they dont feel the same in MEA (and the saber isnt here at all) so in MEA im using the Valiant in any fight with a bit of range or a shotgun if stuff is too close, but after this vid i may be swapping my sniper to one of the top two.
For the Black widow + vintage heatsink: have you try using a clip mod? I Got two shots, in the clip, meaning you can continue steady fire with almost no risk of overheating. I also like to combine it with a power augment since it'll be at full clip most of the time...
The inferno was my “frontier” rifle if you will. Good at most any range, and decent enough stopping power power for the weight. For a full on sniper, l like the ishray, oneshots feel so good, but my favorite has to be the black widow. Had it sense ME2 and beat almost every boss with a combination of it and a claymore (I know, weird combo). I don’t use snipers all the time, but I did use my inferno all the time with a dahn and a sidewinder or carfenix.
Black Widow wasnt in ME2 I think. That one was Widow. Black Widow was an upgrade to Widow that happened during the period when Shepard was serving his time as Alliance scapegoat. It targeted Widow's reload issues as well as clip size, allowing Alliance snipers to be more effective at shooting more targets.
Great video mate, really loved it and found useful!! Thought to combine it with sticky grenade, Cryo effect on black widow ..maybe lil more stuff for hit and cover type when you hitting that super huge gigantic remanant dude with his pets..that stick grenade splash will cover all casualties near it.. Black widow will be tricked one and isharay will be a simple classic hitting one.
Thanks for this video. The Inferno is amazing, yet I don't find it mentioned much. A question though: Why did you put the N7 Valiant at 5th place when it has superior stats compared to the Vanquisher?
I've been using the Valiant recently, and its like the inferno with more damage (with a bio-converter that is). The only catch is the shots kicking back hard. It's much harder to stay on target at max fire rate.
+Dual Wield cheers for reminding me :) I put the valiant back in 5th as the inferno has an edge on it due to already having the heat sink reload system, freeing up that augment conflict to put a shield oscillator in it, that mixed with instability decided it's fate (in my opinion any way lol)
Raptor is still my favorite, I know its basically a medium-long range Auto Rifle rather than a true Sniper. It is however AMAZING with Supercharge and I never had any problem dealing with any targets once I switched over to it.
great video, it's hard to know what is good with so many available, would be interested to see a review for multiplayer as well, as there are no augments
Isharay with Bio-Converter and healing on every tech ability usage is busted. Endless ammo, insane damage etc. Two shotting Architect legs on Insanity.
i use the Isharay with bio-converter mod solves the one shot reload issue i had with that gun on insanity granted with the way i have my set up i have to spec into team support so it doesn't kill me (6 B,A,B) and i'm investing into combat fitness when i have the points. oh and cora helps too. but this way 4 or 5 shots before my hp is halfway with the current hp pool i have and usually when i use cloak or overload or invasion my hp is back to full anyway plus usually one or two shots get the job done just more room for error
GT bioconverter is stupidly good with tech builds (life support). I run around and spam my Dhan shotgun on insanity, and tech skills keep my at or near full health.
woah dude i just tried the dhan out with that mod and holy hell its nice! i wanna try turbocharge out with this mod as well for the clip size (and the damage) but i wouldn't know what skill to swap out
Why are you using a Kinetic Coil for 3% increase in damage on the Isharay? The Power Booster which is 20% when the clip is full is made for the Isharay, in order to fire the Isharay the clip must be at 100%
because the vintage heat sink and the power booster cannot both be on the gun and the isharay doesn't really have enough extra ammo otherwise, I put a sniper rifle having unlimited ammo above that in terms of priority. But that is an opinion thing so, each to there own really.
Thanks bud and it's called Universal by Vibe Tracks you can download it for free here th-cam.com/users/audiolibrary_download?vid=17e734e382f109e6 It's part of the youtube audio library and can be used in anyway as it has a creative commons license
"Ammo capacity and clip size because reserve ammo is a concern" Vintage heat sink, the weapons cool in the background so once you have weight reduction and appropriate skills, you can rotate weapons and never run out of ammo and never 'reload'.
I really liked this video. I currently play a high biotic+tech build and only feel lacking at very long ranges. I could take a look into a sniper rifle for that (I think it would also need to replace my shotgun though as carrying both would lead into weight penalties. What was the difficulty level in those videos btw so I can put the damage into right perspective?
+Innocentius Lacrim that's great to hear bud and the difficulty was Normal. Imo if i could only take 2 weps would be the inferno and the Dahn, but the penalties would be harsh for an adept player yeah
M90 + Sticky Grenades + Vintage Heat Sink is an amazing weapon, just a shitty sniper rifle. The non-scoped accuracy is good enough to use it like an assault rifle and the sticky grenades are great for clearing enemies in cover and adds a nice stagger effect when they get hit by more than a couple explosions. I pair it with an Electrical Conduit PAW and feel the combo is quite potent from my experience.
Subbed! Very informative and with a nice voice!! I have to admit I'm not convinced about the top 3. I love the Black Widow too much! Perhaps the Isharay is better, but I like to stay scoped to quickly go to one head to another and fear the Vanquisher won't have enough juice to one shot the cloud emitting dudes from cloak... Still struggling with the augments tho. Bio-converter seems unnecessary with spare ammo mod and Battlefield Assist seems like the obvious choice... What do you think?
+Andrés De la Oliva Guzmán Iade those choices as the Vanquisher imo was better than the black widow, the isharay-ness and inferno are not as such they are good for different reasons. It seems however the Vanquisher had a bugged headshot damage and has been merged in the patch so the black may be 2nd place now, I'll have to revisit
+Andrés De la Oliva Guzmán also depends on the gun and your spec for augments, if you have tech skills then go life support to full for regeneration and go bio converter for instance reload almost and unlimited ammo, otherwise vintage, battlefield assist is great but only for the ultra long range sniper who doesn't take fire back
Xaine's World Thank you for replying!!! I like the approach you take, have to give it a try :D Ammo is not really a concern for me right now, it's that the reload gets interrupted by doing almost anything... I'll try Bio-converter with tech regen and maybe ditch the double mod and Battlefield Assist... Black Widow FTW!!
The inferno is my number one too. How have you liked the game as a whole so far? I think this might be my favorite mass effect to date. Just me personally.
+iRateGamer91 awesome! And this is my first, I'm absolutely loving it, unfortunately spend most of my time making these vids so don't get as much time on it as I'd like, 20 of my 50 hours have been testing and research lol, about to go live in a sec for some awesome finishing off of EoS, 2nd vault etc, super pumped!
My number 1 is the Black Widow with the vintage heat sink and ammo passives. With 2 shots per cooldown (if rushed, if not, you fire endlessly without cooldown animation) you can drop anything in those 1-2 shots except for things like armored animals (fiends, etc.). The biggest thing for most sniper rifles is to have armor penetration so you can peg folks through cover and make them stand up for the blessed headshot.
Nice video. My personal preference is the Black Widow though. With the Vintage Heat Sink and the Clip Size rank, one can fire continuously without reloading just by slowing their rate of fire slightly to allow the rifle to cool a little between each shot as opposed to firing 2 to 3 quick shots and then waiting for the gun to come back from being completely overheated. With the VHS, It also has the added bonus of a shot always being ready in the clip. Conversely, the Isharay will overheat with every shot. I also like the Inferno, but tend to use and think of it as an extremely accurate and high powered assault rifle with decent range. My ideal loadout involves carrying both, A Black Widow (either with the VHS or with the Battlefield Assist Module) and an Inferno (with the Battlefield Assist Module). I had absolutely no problem getting through every quest and situation in the game on insanity carrying only these two weapons.
+J. M. Aah nice, yeah at the end my favourite was the Black Widow, this video is a little outdated, for instance the gun I named top was needed not long after this video etc. iirc, I went with the vintage heat sink, double mod and 2 coils, either that or no heat sink and 3 coils, for sniping, you generally can take your time a bit. In a later vid I tested the isharay with burst and bio, with high level isharay I got it to 3 shots per mag and with the bio was able to kill myself without any help from the enemy in a few seconds lol, bio on a sniper is sooo dangerous
I really miss the classic "chonk" of the Mantis in this game (I stuck with it throughout the original trilogy, all three games and multiple characters). However, where's its cousin the Widow? Or, White Widow I suppose if you want to differentiate it. Surely that's decently powerful enough to be worth including?
just want to thow this up here, the vanquishers headshot/weakpoint dmg was bugged aparently and did +100% extra, bioware fixed the bug in 1.05...... i still use her but shes not the same :[
I agree with your assessment of these rifles, only i would swap the Black widow with the vanquisher. But i suppose that is personal preference. The Vanquisher is indeed reliable and the Ishiray is a a death machine.... but like you I want a rifle where i can afford to miss every so often or take a follow up shot.
+Noisecode it appears the Vanquisher had a bugged 100% extra headshot damage, so it may have warped the results, I'll be testing it again the widow when I'm back in the country
I completed the game before seeing this. Vanquisher was the sniper rifle for me. Accurate and hits hard, not just damage but force. So if you can't get a head shot, you can keep them stun locked with body hits.
Here's a tip: want to use a sniper as an assault rifle with the capability to still snipe and only use one skill? Raptor. Want to be thematic with one shot kills? Widow. Want to be able to take on multiple targets and possibly one shot them or deliver more damage in the span of a one shot reload? Black widow. Want the most one shot damage? Isharay. Want to minmax the hell out of this? Isharay with health reload. Want to be thematic about it? Raptor+Black widow. So no need for the vanquisher, the Indra or the valiant. The raptor is my mobile combat one skill fits all sniper additive. Don't see the regular widow. Remnant snipers and most remnant weapons are shit, don't use them, no need to put them as a weapon option.
You should tell what difficulty you are playing on... I somehow doubt your Top 2 one shot Chosen on Insanity... I only play Insanity and my Nr. 1 pick is the Black Widow + Bio-Converter Augmentation + Turbocharge skill :-) There is no killing faster^^
Well that sounds logical, but you probably can beat the game without any skillpoints using the cheapest pistol when playing on normal... Most people that look online for good builds will play higher difficulties. People that just wanna beat the game on normal will probably not care about build videos...
I disagree in general, a big part of the fun for me is getting the best gear, regardless of the difficulty, I could definitely be either in the minority with my opinions or just a general strange person, but I can only judge properly from my own experience. The correct gun makes the gameplay for me, my perfect AR (coming next) is a semi automatic, high power, very accurate rifle, with burst or fully automatic guns, I find now fun using them (it's Sandstorm btw, that's my fav :D) All that being said though, I see no reason to not mention the difficulty in the parameters section at the beginning, will take 2 seconds and you are the first to point out the difficulty issue.
Yeah, I was actually quite confused by your video's ranking until I saw you one shotting enemies with the lower damage weapons and figured out you were on a lower difficulty. I was 3/4ths of the way through the video by then. It only occurred to me then that the lower damage weapons would be better, since the higher damage ones were overkill. On insanity, some of your top rifles can't even kill the shielded enemies in a full clip of headshots.
Isharay + bio converter = instant reload laser sniper rifle. It's damage is so high it might as well be an anti tank weapon, it absolutely melts fiends and architect legs. with life support skill, coras rank 6 shield/health regen, and other similar skills, health is no longer a concern. idk how isharay only got rank 3 here.
COMMENT SECTION!!?! ahh, I struggle to chose between huge damage and 1 shot, vs rate of fire. The Isharay can take out shields in 1 shot opening them up for a quick kill. I got the whale version of the game, came with the M-13 Raptor, which was pretty cool at lower levels - can go full auto - but needs a bigger clip if you're going to use it as an AR replacement (and scoping in for the SR damage increase is potentially hazardous at closer ranges). Haven't tried out the Remnant snipers yet - nor have I played with the M90 or Widow (Isharay takes my preference for the high damage SR - and have already invested enough play hours in those weaps in previous ME games), keen to try out the Valient at some point. and, as always, my augments revolve around + power dmg, combo stuff and recharge. not as important with my SR, I prefer to stack on +dmg (on shield conditions and on last 20% of clip).
+K Fuji unfortunately most of the special augments don't stack :( its kind of a one special, a double mod and stack kinetic with a certain behaviour or 2. It's annoyingly limited is some respects
m90 indra is still good if maximum stability but this gun only begin stable after 3rd shot on full auto, just control the recoil and u will have powerful assault rifle
Black widow is a better choice for one shot 9-12 targets in one hit 1. Cloak 2. Kill 3 targets 3. Activate Turbocharge (with bonus clip size) 4. Kill 6 targets 5. Reload 6. Cloak is back up again Push up to 4 clip and with Turbocharge you get 8 in a barrel :/
+Leon O thank you kindly, AR video is coming in the next few days, I'm not in England atm but I'll be back on the 14th at which point I'll be furiously testing assault rifles
Thoughts on incisor? I’ve been using that because I like it’s repeating fire functions and high clipsize (really it’s about 5 shots a clip due to repeat fire) but have been debating about changing things up
+Treston Smith DPS wise it doesn't hold up, though could be massively improved by putting in a auto fire system or beam emitter to negate the burst fire delay, but personally I'm not a fan of auto or burst snipers, I like single shot power. I used a Black Widow almost entirely for the last half of my playthrough, great balance between great damage and mag size
+Tony Hamilton haha, not yet, pistol is coming, just out of the country atm, sitting in a bar with free WiFi to reply to comments :). I'm back on the 14th to continue the field test vids
where does the Viper and the widow fit into that hierarchy? also did you cover sniper rifles like the raptor as assault rifles (cause the raptor is like a scoped assault rifle after all
Xaine's World singularity has great range and can reach enemies in most situations but the travel time can cause some annoyance, have yet to test throw though.
Singularity/Throw ranges are great, they even autotarget the enemies so you can bioattack arround obstacles. The only problem is that they are bad on insanity when the enemy has shields... so I rather use something that works against shields as well.
thank you for the info folks :) Also Martin, a viewer made a quick test video of his adept loadout, using singularity and throw on insanity and it was working rather well th-cam.com/video/LQZKbMO2ixA/w-d-xo.html
I havent tried Adept since level 12 I found it to be underwhelming at that point. After that I played Infiltrator up to insanity lvl 31 and it was much easier. Maybe I give it try again since I have enough skill points now to get all I need :-)
Only a couple of snipers are effective in Hardcore or Insanity. In normal mode you can basically use any weapon you like. The real differences only become relevant in the higher difficulties.
all weapons are useful to an extent yes, but even in normal some are just awful, if nobody cared about getting a good weapon or not in normal, this video would have far less views
Say, what's your recommended setup for architect hunting? Seems like a sniper would be a very good idea, but since it's a fairly specialized discipline, there might be some combination that would work better there than in other, more normal fights.
I'm working on a vid for this very subject, first the primary skirmish build then a secondary auxillary build purely for hunting archis which only adds 2 powers and a wep, the wep being an isharay, isharay combined with 3 powers to deliver insane damage to the face and a seeking piranha for the legs, that mixed with a crap tonne of survival power
Cool! I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that that build involves the tech perks necessary to run the isharay with a bio-converter in combination with Life Support. If so, I'd be interested to see what you'd recommend for someone trying to steer clear of tech-tree perks! (As I advance in levels, I'll probably start grabbing tech perks anyway, but I'm at least TRYING to stick to biotics and combat ... )
+Mike Gray its an infiltrator build so yes it's largely tech hehe, but you don't need bio converter for architect, its all about huge power shot when you get the chance, spending a lot of time in cover, I'm not super well versed in biotics but you need powers that compliment each other to deliver single huge sage shots to burst on its face when you have the opportunity while using a piranha for the legs as its simple and quick
I'm confused - N7 Vanliant has higher damage, rate of fire, clip size and capacity than the Vanquisher. Why do you say Vanquisher is better? Do those comparisons change at the max rank?
unfortunately, the test may have been suffering from a glitch which has since been fixed, I haven't had time to test this but apparently the vanquisher was doing 100% of what It should have on headshots, this could definitely account for the higher damage I saw in the field test as I based everything from real world conditions (real world, game world, yah know) as apposed to just statistics, stability isn't listed as a stat yet plays a large part in many weapons etc
I have to disagree with a couple of these. The Black Widow at #4 is obvious. The Shadow at #7 is where a by the numbers ranking falls short. It's a beam weapon, and, even without elemental ammo, it'll extend the range of your powers to whatever you can target in-scope. But, as a beam weapon it's, great with elemental ammo. Prime target, cast space magic. Explosion. Also, it's in the Remnant research tab, and the only shortage there is items to spend your research data on.
I'm a little confused as to why compared to the Vanquisher, the Valiant is ranked so low when it has higher damage, better rate of fire, and slightly higher clip size and max ammo. Also you say the Vanquisher can 1-shot a chosen but the Valiant can't, even though the Valiant has a higher dmg shot?
it appears the vanquisher was subject to a positive glitch where it did 100% more damage than it should have on headshot which altered the results, reports say it has since been fixed, haven't had chance to confirm anything yet
I just found out a lame fact, the enemies health scales, I used the shall not be named way to make my toon lv81+. Also the enemies have increased in spawn count, like fucking 3 minigun guys and 2 invis guys in normal around large camps. Taking 3/4 hits for standard kett with a fucking Black widow is D: (8xx dmg).
Aye, if you're pointing toward the scaling of the guide, I've done my best to pit them against each other more than the game itself, so you know the best out of them and not the best to one shot a specific mob
It's more for the fact that the game caps out, an the player is hurt by levelling past lv81. The passive bonuses don''t overcome the scaling health, this is on normal I'd run at what insanity looks like on 82-132 (max level all skills) A 300% damage Max tech tree overload was doing 1/3 of a shielded mini gun guy CHARGED. On normal.
if anything I like that outcome, it gives the game a constant challenge instead of so many I've played in the past where it's gotten so easy so quickly I've quit before even completing once
+Noisecode unknown, i haven't tested it with all clip size buffs, interesting question though, i don't think there is 200% so i don't think that's possible, you can negate the clip size effects of the vintage but i don't think you can fully overpower it to go further, bio converter is where that's at but i don't think there are enough buffs to double a clip size
I'd rather put the bioconverter on the Isharay. The heatsink overheats the Isharay, adding a cooldown that prohibits you from utilizing the lower Tier 6 Tactical Cloak skill.
tbh, if you're using the tactical cloak skill then you are at least partially in the tech tree so life support in team support really isn't a far shoot, so the bio-converter is a great choice for those, it's made for infiltrators that setup
I do have a question and have a hard time finding the answer. I found a Widow VI, at what level does the black widow become better? I compared a BW level 5 to my Widow level 6 and it still seems my widow is better. Odd thing is I can't seem to find the blue print to The Widow.
If I remember correctly the Widow has a one shot clip, it takes too long to reload after each shot and with Bioconverter you loose your health too fast. Plus even if thats not a problem, the Isharay would be the better one shot rifle... The Black Widow has a 4 shot Clip with the right skills, so you do rounabout 3 times the Widows damage per clip... (or per 5% health)
+Hepha Cinema I'll be looking into bio converter Vs vintage when I'm back in the UK. Prob bio converter with life support maxed to replenish health lost from reloading. Always put a double mod aug and stack with kinetic if bio or vintage clashes against everything else, if not sheild oscillator, for inferno shield oscillator with double mod and 2 kinetic coils for long range, if going short a plasma seeker is an option worth exploring for shooting from cover. Many variables to think of, hope this helped
+Kevin N that video is coming, I'll be starting testing this Friday when I'm back in England, should be out for Sunday. My current favourite is Sandstorm, but it may change and that's favourite for single precision shooting, its semi automatic so won't pepper any enemies and isn't hugely forgiving for missing your target
I sure hope they fix the game so snipers are usable in multiplayer. Unless you're the host, headshots just refuse to register as headshots. Sometimes, the shot doesn't register at all, even though the enemy will stagger like they got shot, but health doesn't move. It's a buggy mess with lag and stuff in multiplayer.
That sucks :(, I haven't touched multiplayer really, just been focusing on single. It's probably due to the game being just so insanely resource heavy, it's obliterates my i7 4790k just loading up which is a little ridiculous, also what game needs 6gb of ram when paused and minimised lol gah! I expect hosting a match really really pushes things
+James Hughes it's because the thermal clip mod gives you more spare ammo but as the inferno has unlimited ammunition with its heat sink, it's pointless to use the thermal clip mod on it.
Yes, this was done a fair while ago in the terms of the games release, I was not fluent with the bio-converter, didn't realise it's potential at the time, that being said, the vintage is still the standard with the bio converter being better but requiring skill investment for proper use
IDK I think the black widow is actually the best. Like I was using your number 1 for a long time, but it doesn't cause enough damage. I was something with high damage and 1 shot to kill if possible. This game has a bug where if you kill someone with 1 shot, then all the other NPC won't or shouldn't react. This making it where you can pick off them But playing as a sniper broke this game. If you have a penetration mod on the thing. You can shoot through doors. So make your profile infiltrator so you can see the NPCs. Then just shoot through the door. They can't hit you or open the door, and you can clear out entire areas with this. I think a sniper is the most powerful person in this game if you play it smart. But it can easily become the most boring since there is no real challenge. Even more so if you use the tactical cloak.
I only use Black Widow. I have grown a disturbing attachment to the thing.
When you are evaluating a sniper weapon, you need to take the synergy with cloak and/or turbo charge in account.
1. Black widow (with bio converter)
2. Isharay (with vintage heat sink)
3. Inferno
don't forget to combine Fusion Mod of Rupture +25% Weapon Headshot/Weak Point Bonus -70% Weapon Clip Size with isharay
Add bio converter
Add +dmg on last shot in clip
Add +dmg on full shield
(optionally add powershot)
Use tactical cloack ..
Laugh at your dmg output!
haha, does that one shot a fiend on insanity or something, that's insane!
Great Idea^^ But Gamepedia says "Fusion Mod of Rupture is an assault rifle mod." does it work with a sniper rifle?
I have yet to find an information source on ME: A that isn't largely guess work, the big companies putting out guides are all assuming, I do a certain amount of assumption myself, but some of theirs are so lacking I wouldn't have rolled it out.
It's difficult to know who to trust when a youtuber/gaming news company says things as fact as in almost all situations, they don't know for sure.
Essentially, it's uber on the Isharay because the 70% reduction in clip size makes no difference to a gun with a single shot clip, meaning the plus side is all you get :D
I am not as far in game as you guys are.. but i wonder if the above stated combo works in combination with Heat vent..
then it becomes totally sick (instead of bio converter)
(or if you can combine bio converter with Heatvent? )
Fusion mods are all chest-mods, AFAIK. So yes. There's also a stasis pod perk that reduces the negative effects by half. Hope you didn't sell the one you get from the Eos Vault like I did, because shields are better than health in this game
I completely disagree with the Black Widow at #4. It is easily the best sniper rifle in the game. It's only slightly less dmg than the Ishray but with a higher clip size and rate of fire. It's also an ultra rare blueprint, so it can hold more augs than the Ishray or Vanquisher can as well.
Haven't tried the inferno yet but I MUCH prefer high damage per shot with my sniper rifles and the Inferno is wanting in that area.
@Kinsey the ishray is better than the widow in literally all but one stat though
@@spark9189 he sent that 3 years ago you think he really cares by now lol
@@adimart2214 We still watching and reading, as with most videos
@@zion5637 exactly
Черная вдова на мой взгляд лучшая потому что в ней 4 патрона при полной прокачке с модом (старый приемник) бесконечные патроны и если использовать навык Тактическая маскировка +90% урона от оружия она убивает за 1 выстрел и с комбо Адреналин можно сразу снова в Маскировку уходить, а Ишарай к сожалению только 1 патрон получается если получится хотя бы 2 патрона с максимальной прокачкой можно будет её брать но 1 патрон слишком для меня плохо, на всех оружиях я использую ( старый приемник) без него не играю уже не хочу бегать искать ящик с патронами.
I was about to write "I like the black widow", but I see almost everyone has already taken care of that for me. Huehue. Cheers.
+Hemming Lindström haha xD
I was a big fan of Vanquisher (still am, it's a solid #2 for me), but I remembered how sought after the Black Widow was in ME3, so started using one as soon as I could craft one...then a Black Widow V dropped about halfway through my first playthrough and it's been my go-to sniper since. About a third the way into an Insanity run and it's still great.
After messing around with the Black Widow and the Isharay. The 2 sniper rifles that catches my intention the most, I must say I much prefer the Isharay with the Bio-converter installed. Don’t have to worry about reloading and pretty much have infinite ammo. (Tactical Cloak recovers my health)
Because if I’m gonna use a sniper rifle, it better kill most of my enemies with one bullet and with damn good accuracy.
Awesome video as always though. It definitely helped me boil down my choices between those 2
N7 Valiant is my fave. Low recoil combined with high magazine capacity and high rate of fire while still having very good damage is the best combo for dealing out the best DPS IMO. Even if it was half the damage of the widow (not quite) you could still get more shots on target in a short period of time to deal more DPS and a miss is less of as big deal.
Black Widow! Always was and is!
The Black Widow is my favorite. Great damage, long range, enough ammunition to justify using Battlefield Assist, and I just love what they did to the look of it in Andromeda. I usually play Mass Effect with whatever weapons I like the look of more than what's statistically better. If I'm gonna be looking at this rifle for hours of gameplay and story, it's not going to be a Kett piece of shit or a Remnant metal... thing, it'll be good old Milky Way.
vanquisher is the best in MP in silver and gold and valiant is best in bronze as they can one shot with the correct builds
black widow is the best in single player on insanity as the extra damage is overkill on lower difficulties since enemies are also a lot more bullet spongy. i always use the 20% damage when full shield/health. the game is very generous with ammo box and spare clip size. unless u are a terrible shot ammo is not an issue even with spongy enemies
if u play on lower difficulties then the lower damage higher clip guns are better (inferno)
anyways the whole point of this message is that there different best weapons in different situations u should really indicate what difficulty u are rating the gun for.
As a base, considering I didn't mention multiplayer or difficulty, it's logical to assume single player on normal, as that's what the majority of people would play.
The different guns for different situations is why I topped it with the 3, to go into detail about every possible situation would be insane, the video would be an hour or more.
These videos are meant as base knowledge to build on via your own playstyle and experience, that's generally the best way to learn, multiple source with some hands on.
Plus because of the playstyle aspect, it's largely opinion based, I like to use sniper rifles in general at full range, so the ammo packs aren't too close, it's the only gun I would insist on having the heat sink on really.
I'm liking the comments on these vids, they're giving some good counter points and mini debates :D
Once you get to X weapons you can bring a Black widow on Par with a Widow, its pretty insane
Pretty much. Plus with the 25% clip size skill, it gets 4 shots per clip. Snipers I also don't really put a double mod slot on, as they only need the 3 mods (penetration, damage, ammo). The scope augment just makes the gun look worse, but thats Fashion Effect: Andromeda speaking.
for sp I really like black widow with bio converter. with its high damage good rate of fire and no need to reload it melts every boss, and having 3 bullets per magazine doesn't drain your health that crazy also allowing to reload after 2 shoots and replenish your health a little.
I made the mistake of starting on insanity. After much time wasted on retries (especially the first dropship attack on Habitat-7 and the first Fiend encounter with Kett troops on Eos) I realized an unshielded basic mook not dying to a single anti-tank rifle shot to the face was kind of immersion breaking. So I lowered it to normal. Smooth sailing ever since.
Yaaaas, love the Inferno. It's just a lovely weapon to use and can be your one and only weapon (although I've taken to also slotting a Piranha to use when enemies insist on melee range).
Inferno is the first gun I crafted! I stuck with it since the beginning of the game. Glad to hear I chose right!
+15liran same, unlimited ammo built in makes for a nice gun
Although I pro-orded the game, I went back to ME3 after beating it. I've recently returned to the game and am exploring the Developed Weapons portion of the game. Your videos have been very helpful in doing so! Thank you! Something you do in your videos that is, unfortunately, too rare these days, is that you are direct and do t pad your videos. Thank you!
Vintage heatsink black widow is a beast, with mods you can up it to three shots and dump heat upgrade in turbo charge you can easily bump that clip size to 6. Enough to clear most camps before the end of duration with some skill. The big draw of Black widow for me is that it's power with the operative profile will allow you to 1-2 shot most things through cover with a good penetration mod.
By far the most informative and most interesting video on weapons so far
(Trust me... cuz I still can't make up my damn mind after watching others before this video...)
+Jo3 excellent, glad i could be of service. More coming for different weapon types, Assault Rifles is in progress and will be here today or tomorrow
i'm just wondering why didn't you like the black widow? it has higher damage than all other sr except the isharay (which only has one shot per clip) and more than twice the dmg of the inferno (which i also like but not as much)
i don't use the vintage heat sink but i still have yet to run out of ammo... all in all my top three would be:
1. black widow
2. isharay (with vintage heat sink)
3. inferno
+Nils Winkelmann i agree with you top 3 by 2 thirds, for me it was super close between the black widow and the Vanquisher for that sub section of sniper rifle. I just felt the Vanquisher had the edge.
I am a supper fan of the Black Widow but I must admit that I did find one as a random loot drop right after Habitat 7.
Bio-Converter solves the Black Widow ammo problem and makes it the best gun for me. You just need "Mod of Shielding: gives 50% increased shields but reduces health by the same. Obtained from Eos Vault" and Combat Fittness to regenerate your "ammo" while you are shooting.
100% agree with your Top three.
+1, a little surprised to see the Black Widow in 4th position given it basically manages to net the majority of both single-shot and semi-auto SRs into a single weapon and what weaknesses it has can be wiped with mods/augs. About the worst I can say is how many MW research points it eats.
I never really considered double mod slots, as most other mods are very potent on guns, something to look in to. Cheers!
+1 for the Vanquisher getting some love. So far it's my favorite of the new weapons. Have my Ryder using that as primary, been using it since I got one as strike team loot and started crafting them as soon after as I could. Carry a Raptor as a backup weapon - essentially because it's a decent semi-auto AR but uses sniper skills.
Haven't tried the other top 3 yet tho, might later. Gave me something to think about, thanks!
Hey nice one dude .. I've cracked out the game on hardcore and just goin into insanity mode.. which I think makes the game much better.. Been using vampire leeching bio mode Blackwidow but , really enjoyed your video , keep up the good work pal . fed up of burning all my research to lvl 10 (X); only to find out its a waste of time..
Glad it was of help :)
what about the raptor? A great short range full auto "sniper"
Quick tip for anyone wanting to play a sniper with the Isharay, carry 2 of them, both with the vintage heat sink. Then just swap weapon while cooling as its faster than the cooldown but still gives you unlimited ammo, this does require you to be able to carry more weight. I am playing on PC however so I don't know how easy it is to change weapon on console.
Isharay !!!
You deserve way more subscribers man, you make really good videos! Can you maybe do best assault rifles and best armor sets?
+Chris Downing aaw thx bud :) and aye, AR then SMG's are the next 2 via requests. Can't started till I'm back though which is the 14th
I appreciate these tutorial vids and find them quite informative. However, regarding the N7 Valiant vs Vanquisher, at least statistically the N7 appears to have the better numbers. Perhaps the RoF appears slower if one follows the audio rhythm, but is supposedly faster than the Vanquisher on paper. And the N7 Valiant can one shot kill with a head shot, I believe.
The one shot head shot would depends on many variables, it would at a high enough level and wouldn't at say rank 1 with no skills.
The vanquisher vs valiant thing is currently under question as apparently the patch fix an issue witch caused the vanquisher to do 100% extra damage than it should have on headshots which if true has massively skewed the results of my testing, when I get chance I intend to take another look
I think the problem behind the "black widow" comments is the fact that the "Sniper Rifle" category can be divided into two subcategories: Marksman Rifles and Sniper Rifles. The first for the "weak but fast" ones, the second for the "one shot kill" ones.
That is why I have Black Widow + Inferno (Black Widow when I wanna oneshot or two shot an enemy and Inferno for the rest)
You are very informative. Keep up the good work bro. Subbed
thank you! and welcome :)
Bio converters are definitely more dps than vintage augments. You kind of need the Life Support evo in the Team Support skill, and Regeneration in the Combat Fitness skill helps too. Cora is good too. Take charge away from her and spec her Shield Boost for radius and health regen. Spec her Asari Commando passive for the "Power Restoration & Defense" evolutions.
Regarding the Remnant weapons , they gain clip size as they rank up which helps to improve their dps.
I play on Insanity. I use the Dhan shotgun with the Seeking Plasma augment and 25% shield restore on clip empty. I use the Valkyrie with the Heat augment which buffs Incendiary ammo. These two guns kind of negate the need for a sniper and are the 2 guns i used to kill 4 of the Architects on the Insanity difficulty. For the trash that the Architect spawns I use an Equalizer or Hornet (with the Seeking Plasma augment) and sometimes the Piranha.
In regards to snipers, I have used the Isharay with a Bio converter, and I have also killed myself using it. lol. It's tops for dps though. Because Remnant weapons get increased clip sizes at higher ranks, and the fact that the Inferno fires almost 3x faster than the BW, I think the Inferno may be able to out dps a BW at higher ranks, but math is not my strong point. I will leave those calculations to someone else.
I use the Shadow with bio-converter. I don't use it as a sniper at that point, rather an LMG. Imagine bipodding behind some cover scope up, and spray with lots of DPS (can't remember my damage, might be ~75K+ DPS), perfect accuracy, and constant but consistent recoil, with shield/health recharge delay reduction augs, shield capacity mods, and shield oscillator on the chest.
Even if shields buckle, Life Support, Energy Drain, and Charge keep me alive if I need it, and finally Turbocharge assists in increasing DPS some more.
afaik, snipers deal half damage while unscoped, and the Shadow does more than twice the damage of the PAW. So I'm not missing out.
im looking forward to your Assault rifle video, back in ME2 and 3 i was a mattock or saber person but they dont feel the same in MEA (and the saber isnt here at all) so in MEA im using the Valiant in any fight with a bit of range or a shotgun if stuff is too close, but after this vid i may be swapping my sniper to one of the top two.
Great vid u got a sub with this one looking forward to other weapon types showcase
Great to hear, just finishing up the editing on the shotgun one at this very .. well 2 moments ago, at this very moment I'm replying to a comment O.o
For the Black widow + vintage heatsink: have you try using a clip mod? I Got two shots, in the clip, meaning you can continue steady fire with almost no risk of overheating. I also like to combine it with a power augment since it'll be at full clip most of the time...
The inferno was my “frontier” rifle if you will. Good at most any range, and decent enough stopping power power for the weight. For a full on sniper, l like the ishray, oneshots feel so good, but my favorite has to be the black widow. Had it sense ME2 and beat almost every boss with a combination of it and a claymore (I know, weird combo). I don’t use snipers all the time, but I did use my inferno all the time with a dahn and a sidewinder or carfenix.
I did grow to love the Black Widow especially in the trilogy
Black Widow wasnt in ME2 I think. That one was Widow. Black Widow was an upgrade to Widow that happened during the period when Shepard was serving his time as Alliance scapegoat. It targeted Widow's reload issues as well as clip size, allowing Alliance snipers to be more effective at shooting more targets.
Very informative vids this is good for new players and vets alike.
+acetraker1988 Glad its helped! :)
really enjoyed your video keep up the good job
Thx bud! :D
Great video mate, really loved it and found useful!!
Thought to combine it with sticky grenade, Cryo effect on black widow ..maybe lil more stuff for hit and cover type when you hitting that super huge gigantic remanant dude with his pets..that stick grenade splash will cover all casualties near it..
Black widow will be tricked one and isharay will be a simple classic hitting one.
Thanks for this video. The Inferno is amazing, yet I don't find it mentioned much. A question though: Why did you put the N7 Valiant at 5th place when it has superior stats compared to the Vanquisher?
+Dual Wield in an airport atm, I'll answer this when i can review the vid to remember why lol
I've been using the Valiant recently, and its like the inferno with more damage (with a bio-converter that is). The only catch is the shots kicking back hard. It's much harder to stay on target at max fire rate.
+Dual Wield cheers for reminding me :)
I put the valiant back in 5th as the inferno has an edge on it due to already having the heat sink reload system, freeing up that augment conflict to put a shield oscillator in it, that mixed with instability decided it's fate (in my opinion any way lol)
Oh? Shield oscillator works with overheat-based weapons? That's news to me.
+Dual Wield aye, unless I'm insanely wrong. 20% damage on full shields augment incase i said the wrong name
Raptor is still my favorite, I know its basically a medium-long range Auto Rifle rather than a true Sniper. It is however AMAZING with Supercharge and I never had any problem dealing with any targets once I switched over to it.
I really like the Raptor as well. Played the hell out of it back in ME3 multiplayer, and it's pretty damn decent in this game as well.
N7 Valiant is the best SR for me... good dmg, big clip, fire rate. Without any fancy augments works for me just fine :) Didnt play on insanity tho.
great video, it's hard to know what is good with so many available, would be interested to see a review for multiplayer as well, as there are no augments
Isharay with Bio-Converter and healing on every tech ability usage is busted. Endless ammo, insane damage etc. Two shotting Architect legs on Insanity.
oh nice! ill be looking into the bio converter a fair bit when I get chance, using with the regen skills etc
i use the Isharay with bio-converter mod solves the one shot reload issue i had with that gun on insanity granted with the way i have my set up i have to spec into team support so it doesn't kill me (6 B,A,B) and i'm investing into combat fitness when i have the points. oh and cora helps too.
but this way 4 or 5 shots before my hp is halfway with the current hp pool i have and usually when i use cloak or overload or invasion my hp is back to full anyway plus usually one or two shots get the job done just more room for error
aaah nice, have been thinking about how bio converter could be a well used viable option! thanks for the info!
np with the right setup that mod can works wonders
GT bioconverter is stupidly good with tech builds (life support). I run around and spam my Dhan shotgun on insanity, and tech skills keep my at or near full health.
woah dude i just tried the dhan out with that mod and holy hell its nice! i wanna try turbocharge out with this mod as well for the clip size (and the damage) but i wouldn't know what skill to swap out
GT personally I like energy drain over overload just for the added survivability. Maybe swap out invasion?
Why are you using a Kinetic Coil for 3% increase in damage on the Isharay? The Power Booster which is 20% when the clip is full is made for the Isharay, in order to fire the Isharay the clip must be at 100%
because the vintage heat sink and the power booster cannot both be on the gun and the isharay doesn't really have enough extra ammo otherwise, I put a sniper rifle having unlimited ammo above that in terms of priority.
But that is an opinion thing so, each to there own really.
Ahh, I was unaware that Power Booster and Vintage Heat Sink were mutually exclusive.
yeah, they don't say which are with which, another video coming soon! lol
Great vid man. Question for you, what's the name of the song you have playing in the background?
Thanks bud and it's called Universal by Vibe Tracks you can download it for free here th-cam.com/users/audiolibrary_download?vid=17e734e382f109e6
It's part of the youtube audio library and can be used in anyway as it has a creative commons license
Sweet, I added it to my favorites. :)
"Ammo capacity and clip size because reserve ammo is a concern"
Vintage heat sink, the weapons cool in the background so once you have weight reduction and appropriate skills, you can rotate weapons and never run out of ammo and never 'reload'.
yes, which is why I generally think a sniper rifle needs a vintage or bio to negate the ammo concerns.
The Valiant with burst fire. You'll need at least one skill of clip capacity increase to get 6 bullets per clip .
It makes it an Incisor on steroids.
Now that's a big tooth!!
I play on Insanity and for me it's Black Widow at first but once I get Isharay that is my preferred. You can't stay in open or you die very quickly.
I really liked this video. I currently play a high biotic+tech build and only feel lacking at very long ranges. I could take a look into a sniper rifle for that (I think it would also need to replace my shotgun though as carrying both would lead into weight penalties. What was the difficulty level in those videos btw so I can put the damage into right perspective?
+Innocentius Lacrim that's great to hear bud and the difficulty was Normal. Imo if i could only take 2 weps would be the inferno and the Dahn, but the penalties would be harsh for an adept player yeah
M90 + Sticky Grenades + Vintage Heat Sink is an amazing weapon, just a shitty sniper rifle. The non-scoped accuracy is good enough to use it like an assault rifle and the sticky grenades are great for clearing enemies in cover and adds a nice stagger effect when they get hit by more than a couple explosions. I pair it with an Electrical Conduit PAW and feel the combo is quite potent from my experience.
All I need is that damn Battlefield assist module. Shit thats tough to find.
Subbed! Very informative and with a nice voice!!
I have to admit I'm not convinced about the top 3. I love the Black Widow too much! Perhaps the Isharay is better, but I like to stay scoped to quickly go to one head to another and fear the Vanquisher won't have enough juice to one shot the cloud emitting dudes from cloak... Still struggling with the augments tho. Bio-converter seems unnecessary with spare ammo mod and Battlefield Assist seems like the obvious choice... What do you think?
+Andrés De la Oliva Guzmán Iade those choices as the Vanquisher imo was better than the black widow, the isharay-ness and inferno are not as such they are good for different reasons. It seems however the Vanquisher had a bugged headshot damage and has been merged in the patch so the black may be 2nd place now, I'll have to revisit
+Andrés De la Oliva Guzmán also depends on the gun and your spec for augments, if you have tech skills then go life support to full for regeneration and go bio converter for instance reload almost and unlimited ammo, otherwise vintage, battlefield assist is great but only for the ultra long range sniper who doesn't take fire back
Xaine's World Thank you for replying!!! I like the approach you take, have to give it a try :D Ammo is not really a concern for me right now, it's that the reload gets interrupted by doing almost anything... I'll try Bio-converter with tech regen and maybe ditch the double mod and Battlefield Assist... Black Widow FTW!!
What about the Viper, Raptor, and Widow?
and the lanat
The inferno is my number one too. How have you liked the game as a whole so far? I think this might be my favorite mass effect to date. Just me personally.
+iRateGamer91 awesome! And this is my first, I'm absolutely loving it, unfortunately spend most of my time making these vids so don't get as much time on it as I'd like, 20 of my 50 hours have been testing and research lol, about to go live in a sec for some awesome finishing off of EoS, 2nd vault etc, super pumped!
My number 1 is the Black Widow with the vintage heat sink and ammo passives. With 2 shots per cooldown (if rushed, if not, you fire endlessly without cooldown animation) you can drop anything in those 1-2 shots except for things like armored animals (fiends, etc.). The biggest thing for most sniper rifles is to have armor penetration so you can peg folks through cover and make them stand up for the blessed headshot.
+Jerokhna Aye, I'm leaning toward the Vanquisher with vintage, double mod and kinetic, need a little more time and to find my ideal mid range
Cryo pod perk for extra augment slot is really handy as well.
+Jerokhna oooh! I've been looking for that, does it appear after a certain level or mission?
Nice video. My personal preference is the Black Widow though. With the Vintage Heat Sink and the Clip Size rank, one can fire continuously without reloading just by slowing their rate of fire slightly to allow the rifle to cool a little between each shot as opposed to firing 2 to 3 quick shots and then waiting for the gun to come back from being completely overheated. With the VHS, It also has the added bonus of a shot always being ready in the clip. Conversely, the Isharay will overheat with every shot.
I also like the Inferno, but tend to use and think of it as an extremely accurate and high powered assault rifle with decent range. My ideal loadout involves carrying both, A Black Widow (either with the VHS or with the Battlefield Assist Module) and an Inferno (with the Battlefield Assist Module). I had absolutely no problem getting through every quest and situation in the game on insanity carrying only these two weapons.
+J. M. Aah nice, yeah at the end my favourite was the Black Widow, this video is a little outdated, for instance the gun I named top was needed not long after this video etc.
iirc, I went with the vintage heat sink, double mod and 2 coils, either that or no heat sink and 3 coils, for sniping, you generally can take your time a bit.
In a later vid I tested the isharay with burst and bio, with high level isharay I got it to 3 shots per mag and with the bio was able to kill myself without any help from the enemy in a few seconds lol, bio on a sniper is sooo dangerous
Lol. I agree wholeheartedly about the Bio Converter. :)
Very nice, Thanks.
I really miss the classic "chonk" of the Mantis in this game (I stuck with it throughout the original trilogy, all three games and multiple characters). However, where's its cousin the Widow? Or, White Widow I suppose if you want to differentiate it. Surely that's decently powerful enough to be worth including?
just want to thow this up here, the vanquishers headshot/weakpoint dmg was bugged aparently and did +100% extra, bioware fixed the bug in 1.05...... i still use her but shes not the same :[
+DiableXX avionics thank you for that info, will have to revisit that, it has twisted the results
I agree with your assessment of these rifles, only i would swap the Black widow with the vanquisher. But i suppose that is personal preference. The Vanquisher is indeed reliable and the Ishiray is a a death machine.... but like you I want a rifle where i can afford to miss every so often or take a follow up shot.
+Noisecode it appears the Vanquisher had a bugged 100% extra headshot damage, so it may have warped the results, I'll be testing it again the widow when I'm back in the country
I completed the game before seeing this. Vanquisher was the sniper rifle for me. Accurate and hits hard, not just damage but force. So if you can't get a head shot, you can keep them stun locked with body hits.
Here's a tip: want to use a sniper as an assault rifle with the capability to still snipe and only use one skill? Raptor.
Want to be thematic with one shot kills? Widow.
Want to be able to take on multiple targets and possibly one shot them or deliver more damage in the span of a one shot reload? Black widow.
Want the most one shot damage? Isharay.
Want to minmax the hell out of this? Isharay with health reload.
Want to be thematic about it? Raptor+Black widow.
So no need for the vanquisher, the Indra or the valiant. The raptor is my mobile combat one skill fits all sniper additive.
Don't see the regular widow.
Remnant snipers and most remnant weapons are shit, don't use them, no need to put them as a weapon option.
I like one shot kills when sniping and the inferno doesn't deliver that but the Black Widow does.
You should tell what difficulty you are playing on... I somehow doubt your Top 2 one shot Chosen on Insanity...
I only play Insanity and my Nr. 1 pick is the Black Widow + Bio-Converter Augmentation + Turbocharge skill :-) There is no killing faster^^
+MartinP0815 by default if it's not said surely you'd assume normal as that's what most play
Well that sounds logical, but you probably can beat the game without any skillpoints using the cheapest pistol when playing on normal...
Most people that look online for good builds will play higher difficulties. People that just wanna beat the game on normal will probably not care about build videos...
I disagree in general, a big part of the fun for me is getting the best gear, regardless of the difficulty, I could definitely be either in the minority with my opinions or just a general strange person, but I can only judge properly from my own experience.
The correct gun makes the gameplay for me, my perfect AR (coming next) is a semi automatic, high power, very accurate rifle, with burst or fully automatic guns, I find now fun using them (it's Sandstorm btw, that's my fav :D)
All that being said though, I see no reason to not mention the difficulty in the parameters section at the beginning, will take 2 seconds and you are the first to point out the difficulty issue.
Yeah, I was actually quite confused by your video's ranking until I saw you one shotting enemies with the lower damage weapons and figured out you were on a lower difficulty. I was 3/4ths of the way through the video by then. It only occurred to me then that the lower damage weapons would be better, since the higher damage ones were overkill.
On insanity, some of your top rifles can't even kill the shielded enemies in a full clip of headshots.
BW and Isharay are top rifles with a proper build. The rest is trash.
Its either the vanquisher or the isharay for me although its annoying that I miss a lot with the isharay.
Isharay + bio converter = instant reload laser sniper rifle. It's damage is so high it might as well be an anti tank weapon, it absolutely melts fiends and architect legs. with life support skill, coras rank 6 shield/health regen, and other similar skills, health is no longer a concern. idk how isharay only got rank 3 here.
COMMENT SECTION!!?!
ahh, I struggle to chose between huge damage and 1 shot, vs rate of fire. The Isharay can take out shields in 1 shot opening them up for a quick kill. I got the whale version of the game, came with the M-13 Raptor, which was pretty cool at lower levels - can go full auto - but needs a bigger clip if you're going to use it as an AR replacement (and scoping in for the SR damage increase is potentially hazardous at closer ranges).
Haven't tried out the Remnant snipers yet - nor have I played with the M90 or Widow (Isharay takes my preference for the high damage SR - and have already invested enough play hours in those weaps in previous ME games), keen to try out the Valient at some point.
and, as always, my augments revolve around + power dmg, combo stuff and recharge. not as important with my SR, I prefer to stack on +dmg (on shield conditions and on last 20% of clip).
+K Fuji unfortunately most of the special augments don't stack :( its kind of a one special, a double mod and stack kinetic with a certain behaviour or 2. It's annoyingly limited is some respects
oh damn lol - thanks man. luckily you get your augs back when deconstructing custom weaps.
check my other commend on your vehicle upgrades vid yea.
+K Fuji aye am working through them, sitting in a bar with free WiFi atm to reply to comments lol
I can't wait for your pistol and AR reviews. Soon please.
+Kirt Pobje aye, they are coming soon, in back in England on the 14th so working on AR as soon as i get back
Why NOBODY talks about Lanat? I would really like to understand how it performs with the vintage heatsink...
m90 indra is still good if maximum stability but this gun only begin stable after 3rd shot on full auto, just control the recoil and u will have powerful assault rifle
Black widow is a better choice for one shot 9-12 targets in one hit
1. Cloak
2. Kill 3 targets
3. Activate Turbocharge (with bonus clip size)
4. Kill 6 targets
5. Reload
6. Cloak is back up again
Push up to 4 clip and with Turbocharge you get 8 in a barrel
:/
I take the javelin over all of mass effect sniper but to bad that its not in MEA
Nice weapon videos! Pls do Assault Rifles!
+Leon O thank you kindly, AR video is coming in the next few days, I'm not in England atm but I'll be back on the 14th at which point I'll be furiously testing assault rifles
Thoughts on incisor? I’ve been using that because I like it’s repeating fire functions and high clipsize (really it’s about 5 shots a clip due to repeat fire) but have been debating about changing things up
+Treston Smith DPS wise it doesn't hold up, though could be massively improved by putting in a auto fire system or beam emitter to negate the burst fire delay, but personally I'm not a fan of auto or burst snipers, I like single shot power.
I used a Black Widow almost entirely for the last half of my playthrough, great balance between great damage and mag size
Have you done one about the pistol's? I think the M-8 one has the power of the 44 Magum. Every time I use it makes me want to say that famous line.
+Tony Hamilton haha, not yet, pistol is coming, just out of the country atm, sitting in a bar with free WiFi to reply to comments :). I'm back on the 14th to continue the field test vids
where does the Viper and the widow fit into that hierarchy? also did you cover sniper rifles like the raptor as assault rifles (cause the raptor is like a scoped assault rifle after all
Would be nice to see where the Viper fits in, yes.
Wrong #1 is Isharay+bio-converter+Tactical Cloak+Turbocharge. But if it's only normal, might as well just melee everything.
What about the "lanat" sniper rifle, you can research and development that as well later in the game.
+pale dragon not research though is it? Just have the blueprints pop up don't yer?
I prefer singularity or throw and then snipe them with widow X with damage and scope upgrades
how far is the reach on singularity & throw?
Xaine's World singularity has great range and can reach enemies in most situations but the travel time can cause some annoyance, have yet to test throw though.
Singularity/Throw ranges are great, they even autotarget the enemies so you can bioattack arround obstacles. The only problem is that they are bad on insanity when the enemy has shields... so I rather use something that works against shields as well.
thank you for the info folks :)
Also Martin, a viewer made a quick test video of his adept loadout, using singularity and throw on insanity and it was working rather well th-cam.com/video/LQZKbMO2ixA/w-d-xo.html
I havent tried Adept since level 12 I found it to be underwhelming at that point. After that I played Infiltrator up to insanity lvl 31 and it was much easier. Maybe I give it try again since I have enough skill points now to get all I need :-)
Only a couple of snipers are effective in Hardcore or Insanity. In normal mode you can basically use any weapon you like. The real differences only become relevant in the higher difficulties.
all weapons are useful to an extent yes, but even in normal some are just awful, if nobody cared about getting a good weapon or not in normal, this video would have far less views
surprised the remnant sniper came in first place. I was using it before but put a plasma seeking mod on it. perhaps that's why it was bad.
yeah when I first go the inferno I put the plasma charge on and it was awful, once I made another without it, it was fantastic!
Xaine's World good to know. thanks for the vids btw. very helpful.
Say, what's your recommended setup for architect hunting? Seems like a sniper would be a very good idea, but since it's a fairly specialized discipline, there might be some combination that would work better there than in other, more normal fights.
I'm working on a vid for this very subject, first the primary skirmish build then a secondary auxillary build purely for hunting archis which only adds 2 powers and a wep, the wep being an isharay, isharay combined with 3 powers to deliver insane damage to the face and a seeking piranha for the legs, that mixed with a crap tonne of survival power
Cool! I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that that build involves the tech perks necessary to run the isharay with a bio-converter in combination with Life Support. If so, I'd be interested to see what you'd recommend for someone trying to steer clear of tech-tree perks! (As I advance in levels, I'll probably start grabbing tech perks anyway, but I'm at least TRYING to stick to biotics and combat ... )
+Mike Gray its an infiltrator build so yes it's largely tech hehe, but you don't need bio converter for architect, its all about huge power shot when you get the chance, spending a lot of time in cover, I'm not super well versed in biotics but you need powers that compliment each other to deliver single huge sage shots to burst on its face when you have the opportunity while using a piranha for the legs as its simple and quick
Raptor with turbocharge is the best dps sniper rifle in the game. Spec for magazine capacity and spare ammo. I use this to grind gold difficulty.
lokken23 Thats in multiplayer.
I'm confused - N7 Vanliant has higher damage, rate of fire, clip size and capacity than the Vanquisher. Why do you say Vanquisher is better? Do those comparisons change at the max rank?
unfortunately, the test may have been suffering from a glitch which has since been fixed, I haven't had time to test this but apparently the vanquisher was doing 100% of what It should have on headshots, this could definitely account for the higher damage I saw in the field test as I based everything from real world conditions (real world, game world, yah know) as apposed to just statistics, stability isn't listed as a stat yet plays a large part in many weapons etc
I have to disagree with a couple of these. The Black Widow at #4 is obvious.
The Shadow at #7 is where a by the numbers ranking falls short. It's a beam weapon, and, even without elemental ammo, it'll extend the range of your powers to whatever you can target in-scope. But, as a beam weapon it's, great with elemental ammo. Prime target, cast space magic. Explosion. Also, it's in the Remnant research tab, and the only shortage there is items to spend your research data on.
I'm a little confused as to why compared to the Vanquisher, the Valiant is ranked so low when it has higher damage, better rate of fire, and slightly higher clip size and max ammo. Also you say the Vanquisher can 1-shot a chosen but the Valiant can't, even though the Valiant has a higher dmg shot?
it appears the vanquisher was subject to a positive glitch where it did 100% more damage than it should have on headshot which altered the results, reports say it has since been fixed, haven't had chance to confirm anything yet
I just found out a lame fact, the enemies health scales, I used the shall not be named way to make my toon lv81+. Also the enemies have increased in spawn count, like fucking 3 minigun guys and 2 invis guys in normal around large camps. Taking 3/4 hits for standard kett with a fucking Black widow is D: (8xx dmg).
Aye, if you're pointing toward the scaling of the guide, I've done my best to pit them against each other more than the game itself, so you know the best out of them and not the best to one shot a specific mob
It's more for the fact that the game caps out, an the player is hurt by levelling past lv81.
The passive bonuses don''t overcome the scaling health, this is on normal I'd run at what insanity looks like on 82-132 (max level all skills)
A 300% damage Max tech tree overload was doing 1/3 of a shielded mini gun guy CHARGED. On normal.
if anything I like that outcome, it gives the game a constant challenge instead of so many I've played in the past where it's gotten so easy so quickly I've quit before even completing once
So if fitted with a Vintage heat sink, the Ishiray is capable of firing more than once before over heat?
+Noisecode unknown, i haven't tested it with all clip size buffs, interesting question though, i don't think there is 200% so i don't think that's possible, you can negate the clip size effects of the vintage but i don't think you can fully overpower it to go further, bio converter is where that's at but i don't think there are enough buffs to double a clip size
I'd rather put the bioconverter on the Isharay. The heatsink overheats the Isharay, adding a cooldown that prohibits you from utilizing the lower Tier 6 Tactical Cloak skill.
tbh, if you're using the tactical cloak skill then you are at least partially in the tech tree so life support in team support really isn't a far shoot, so the bio-converter is a great choice for those, it's made for infiltrators that setup
I do have a question and have a hard time finding the answer. I found a Widow VI, at what level does the black widow become better? I compared a BW level 5 to my Widow level 6 and it still seems my widow is better. Odd thing is I can't seem to find the blue print to The Widow.
If I remember correctly the Widow has a one shot clip, it takes too long to reload after each shot and with Bioconverter you loose your health too fast. Plus even if thats not a problem, the Isharay would be the better one shot rifle...
The Black Widow has a 4 shot Clip with the right skills, so you do rounabout 3 times the Widows damage per clip... (or per 5% health)
What about the Raptor as a sniper/assault rifle combo build using just one weapon?
Or is Indra better for this job?
+Rothank for this is go with the sandstorm, its damage isn't crazy but it fires well and effective at long range as well as mid
for vanquisher what weapon augmentation should i get? also for inferno what augmentation do i need? thanks
+Hepha Cinema I'll be looking into bio converter Vs vintage when I'm back in the UK. Prob bio converter with life support maxed to replenish health lost from reloading. Always put a double mod aug and stack with kinetic if bio or vintage clashes against everything else, if not sheild oscillator, for inferno shield oscillator with double mod and 2 kinetic coils for long range, if going short a plasma seeker is an option worth exploring for shooting from cover. Many variables to think of, hope this helped
lol the same it’s Black widow or widow sniper since mass effect trilogy 😅👍
I REALLY wish Inferno have similar damage as black widow, instead its like half of it. Inferno is only half sniper half semi auto rifle..
whats your top pick for assault rifles???
+Kevin N that video is coming, I'll be starting testing this Friday when I'm back in England, should be out for Sunday. My current favourite is Sandstorm, but it may change and that's favourite for single precision shooting, its semi automatic so won't pepper any enemies and isn't hugely forgiving for missing your target
With heat sync, I prefer the Widow (not Black Widow) over the Isharay.
interesting,
I'm curious why?
Apparently, because I misread the numbers. Oops.
lol :)
I sure hope they fix the game so snipers are usable in multiplayer. Unless you're the host, headshots just refuse to register as headshots. Sometimes, the shot doesn't register at all, even though the enemy will stagger like they got shot, but health doesn't move. It's a buggy mess with lag and stuff in multiplayer.
That sucks :(, I haven't touched multiplayer really, just been focusing on single.
It's probably due to the game being just so insanely resource heavy, it's obliterates my i7 4790k just loading up which is a little ridiculous, also what game needs 6gb of ram when paused and minimised lol gah!
I expect hosting a match really really pushes things
I tryed out the inferno sniper rifle, and I noticed I can't equip any thermal clip mods to it, is anyone having the same problem?
+James Hughes it's because the thermal clip mod gives you more spare ammo but as the inferno has unlimited ammunition with its heat sink, it's pointless to use the thermal clip mod on it.
Side note this video did not contain guide for Augments. e.g. bio-c etc etc
Yes, this was done a fair while ago in the terms of the games release, I was not fluent with the bio-converter, didn't realise it's potential at the time, that being said, the vintage is still the standard with the bio converter being better but requiring skill investment for proper use
Is there any grenade launcher? I know some of the tech power has explosive effect but what about the weapons?
+toby199020 Falcon AR is a grenade launcher
In my opinion... Black widow ftw
IDK I think the black widow is actually the best. Like I was using your number 1 for a long time, but it doesn't cause enough damage. I was something with high damage and 1 shot to kill if possible. This game has a bug where if you kill someone with 1 shot, then all the other NPC won't or shouldn't react. This making it where you can pick off them
But playing as a sniper broke this game. If you have a penetration mod on the thing. You can shoot through doors. So make your profile infiltrator so you can see the NPCs. Then just shoot through the door. They can't hit you or open the door, and you can clear out entire areas with this. I think a sniper is the most powerful person in this game if you play it smart. But it can easily become the most boring since there is no real challenge. Even more so if you use the tactical cloak.
yes, I tend to use my sniper as a backup, I don't go to intentionally use it anymore, the fun I find is closer up on this game.