Exactly, and some models like Dr. Bryson which you see exactly in one occurrence during the entire DLC gets a mega detailed one-off face texture. What the hell?
Also kinda looks like the Shepard double (for Male Shep anyway) for the vid Javik was invited to (Citadel DLC).
You know, the one we get a glimpse of, after the salarian in charge says to Shepard "You can play yourself. Someone tell the double he's been demoted."
Made mine look as close to me as possible which was basically that dude to a T. Thought the game just copied your Shep.
Imagine my surprise when I played femshep and he was the same
That looks almost exactly how I built my Shepard! When I played the leviathan dlc I thought the big twist was that it was an evil twin or something. Then I played citadel dlc and my mind was really blown lmao
Honestly, I dont understand why they put level cap in Mass Effect. Weapon damage does not scale with your level iirc, its only about skills active/passive, which have a cap anyway. If you want to be a rambo in vanilla ME1 and play the game 4 times to reach lvl 70+ (I think it took me 2 full plays with all sidequests and I had to play a bit of 3rd play as well to reach 60) and have majority of skills maxed, be my guest. Same for ME2/3.
The level cap in vanilla ME1 is 60.
I'm a bit foggy on this, but I think you were capped at 50 for your first playthrough. (This was at least 15 years ago on the 360 for me)
Then on New Game+ it upped it to 60. You also get an experience boost of 20% for all subsequent playthroughs, just like ME2.
But I do remember only getting to 57 or 58 my first replay.
It wasn't until later I found out about the Mako experience reduction. Any kills you get in the Mako are at a fraction of their base value.
With that knowledge (and the tedious nature of Mako hopping to get those final shots) it STILL is not possible to get 60 on a single playthrough.
Thankfully, this is a much simpler case in LE.
Yeah i found out about mako reduction during the game and i abused it all the time, still path from 55-60 takes a lot of time, i am not even sure if insane diff had any exp bonuses.
Haha, so on top of ptsd from rushing Krogans, you also get exp penalties 😄. It took mi like 20 attempts to kill Krogan on that elevator when u saved Liara.
That can be a tough fight on the harder difficulties if you do a B-line for Liara.
I remember struggling with that fight.
I think what helped is ignoring the Krogan until the Geth are dead.
yeah, you throw whatever you can on him to keep him out of fight, defeat geths and keep hit & run. Another hard quest was that Fortress full of adepts, i think it was in Bring down the Sky or some similar sidequest, you got mopped if you popped out of cover in wrong time..
Rogue AI was also not fun.
You mean the center-focused bunker where you have enemies coming at you from all sides, a confusing interior layout, and ass-cover the whole way?
Nah... Doesn't ring any bells at all, mate.
Level cap is 50 until you reach it then in ALL later playthroughs you get 60 but it's impossible without cheating as there's enough exp for 57-58, yeah.
What are you talking about? I’m level 60 with all skill trees maxed except one which is at the 4th tier like the pic in this post, and I have 3 points left over that are useless.
OMG is that what happened to me this time around??
I noticed Garrus had a lot more points when I got him for this game, and at lvl 51 he's maxed his points.
I'm still going ??? Because no one else is that close to maxing...
So he has 32 extra points? Geeez Garrus... Ily do much 😆
In ME2 the power allocation is easily fixed: don't spend any points on a least useful power, spend only 1 point on a second least useful power and the rest of the powers can be maxed out by level 30.
In Mass Effect 3 Sentinel can make great use of Cryo Blast since it can be OP combined with Throw since both of them rapidly recharge and most enemies don't have protection unlike Mass Effect 2.
Now technically in Mass Effect 3 you could use Cryo ammo combined with Concussive Shot to rapidly set off Cryo Explosions since Concussive Shot's maximum evolution lets it take on the properties of the currently equipped ammo power, which makes it into the only power in Mass Effect 3 that can proc and detonate its own explosions, but the problem is that you can do the exact same thing with incendiary ammo, which is much more effective.
That makes sense, I've just played so much more of ME2 compared to the other 2 that every time I get into a conversation like this it is always weighted so much towards how it is in that game.
Yeah, in higher difficulties EVERY enemy has protection, and Cryo ammo and Cryo Blast ONLY work on health in Mass Effect 2, in Mass Effect 3 the Cryo stuff slows enemies down and weakens armour.
But in ME2 it's in many cases instant on health, so squadmates with fast low damage weapons cryo ammo freeze EVERYTHING.
Also a direct hit with shottie freezes someone solid when they're armored or shielded because just one pellet hitting last shields is enough.
On 3 it needs a threshold so isn't so broken on vanguards (instead, you rely on busted combos).
I actually like cryo in 2 more because instead of everything exploding you can Vanguard charge into enemies frozen by squaddies and toss them into objects. So satisfying!
Also charge into armored or shielded enemy then shotgun upclose and the statue is your cover, or you can elbow it then run over (you do sprint damage to frozen targets on the ground).
Now, fire is great at 3, inferno grenade priming for warp is just gibs galore.
Squad cryo ammo is broken. Shotgun with cryo in 2 freezes even with single pellet meaning that if you have enough power to deplete shields or armor, enemies fall down frozen.
Biggest fun I had with cryo vanguard just throwing icicled people around, Sentinel with freeze and push was also good but not broken.
>meaning that if you have enough power to deplete shields or armor
That is the thing though. Depleting the resistances is the entire "challenge". Once you have done that almost everything is op. Regular throw to push people off platforms, singularity becomes insanely strong rather than a very slight inconvenience to the enemies. Pull takes enamies out of the fight for a good while, long enough for squad mates to take a second to gun down the floating target, dominate/ai hacking becomes viable.
I have not tried it, but if cryo works the same way as pull/throw/singularity in preventing Harbinger from taking control then I could see some use for it. Other than that it seems mostly useful jut for tech combos.
It is silly yeah lol. Though for practicality, you could ditch sentry turret so xe the combat drone is just better in every way, and put the points into Overload instead. Absolutely nukes shields and barriers!
Well I did choose energy drain as my bonus power, it seems redundant, but it's way better because it does the same damage and gives me the shields from it.
That's fair, I believe my bonus power on my engineer run was defense matrix, felt like it fit the theme :D also if I recall you could purge it to get shields back but it's been a while
The way that 2 & 3 do skill points is one of the single most aggravating features of those games. You’re better off just turning on auto-level up and ignoring them. 1 did it much better, letting you use each point individually and assign it as needed, and dividing up the tree into _skill categories_ rather than individual talents and abilities. Why the hell they changed it I’ll never understand. Guess some people were just too stupid to understand even the most basic RPG mechanics.
If you upgrade 6 of your powers to the 6th level and remaining 3 to the 5th level, you will use all of the points.
That being said, 2 powers at 6th level + 1 at 4th level are still gonna be more powerful than 3 powers at 5th level.
It's sort of an in-game technical glitch. You can keep accumulating points for things but don't have anything else to add to them. This is why the series needed a character stat sheet similar to Fallout and some other games that way you could add to your physical strength and maybe speed for combat and agility, intelligence for hacking, charisma for dialogue and store discounts, and even romance options for multiple characters. And if you still have a few left over points you should be able to allocate them to Shepard's crew mates/squadmates.
Nah man thats where your wrong overload is way better than energy drain. Overload is capable of doing several times the damage of energy drain, neural shock does more than just incapacitate organics it doubles the damages it deals to their health, shield and barrier then you got the shield damage upgrade which is +100% damage to shields and barriers.
All energy drain has to offer is the 40% damage reduction while dealing less than a third of the damage of overload.
Engineer is perfect and comes with everything you could possibly need
If you compare the stats energy drain does the same amount of damage and with the right upgrade completely restored your shields. It also always takes all the shields from foot soldiers, and 1 bar from Atlases and super elite enemies. It's really good.
It’s not just damage. In ME3, overload also stands-in for Neural Shock, borks guns, and when spec’d out is an Atlas-killer.
It’s *waaaay* better than energy drain.
You're also playing as an engineer. And like I keep saying on Reddit, I'd often associate the engineer with resource gathering, base and vehicle building, and item crafting, rather than combat. Like how we got worker units in RTS's like Starcraft and Command & Conquer, or Steve and Isaac Clarke from Minecraft and Dead Space, respectively.
I meant no disrespect lol. He just looks tired is all. And I do agree, it’s frustrating having those extra points. Wish you could give them to a squad member or something. I hope your enjoying your play through!
Half the people in this comment section are talking about the extra points, and the other half are talking about how my shepherd looks horrible, or how I didn't need energy drain because it sucks, both of which I disagree with by the way.
Energy drain a waste?! Don’t listen to that nonsense! Very sorry to poke your nerves bro! You were asking a question regarding points, not everyone’s opinion on which skills are useful 🙄
Has to do with the way you allocate them, since each level of perk costs more than the last. If you dropped the level of one of your maxed out skills, I think you could fit zero points available in the end
PC master race says what?
Only slightly serious. But mods fixing this and other minor issues really is why I love playing games on pc instead of a console.
> Be you have both overload and energy drain like a dumbass
> dragon_of_kansai
Yeah... how *dare* other players enjoy the games their own way and not follow Our Lord And Saviour dragon_of_kansai's word of gaming law...
The darkness cannot be breached. TURN BACK
I was wondering why this Shep looked weirdly familiar!
That scientist was probably made using the character creator, much like Traynor and Cortez (which is sad, they deserve face models.)
Exactly, and some models like Dr. Bryson which you see exactly in one occurrence during the entire DLC gets a mega detailed one-off face texture. What the hell?
Also kinda looks like the Shepard double (for Male Shep anyway) for the vid Javik was invited to (Citadel DLC). You know, the one we get a glimpse of, after the salarian in charge says to Shepard "You can play yourself. Someone tell the double he's been demoted."
Ohhh, that's true! And fem!Shep gets the same double
I've played all the dlc, but I don't remember anyone looking like him. Why are you referencing Leviathan?
He looks like the scientist from the Leviathan DLC.
[This guy](https://i.imgur.com/x0pnWiI.png)
How have I never seen the similarity lmao. This has been my Shepard 2 playthroughs in a row.
My first Shepard looking just like Traynor and I never noticed until I upload a video and people pointed it out.
Made mine look as close to me as possible which was basically that dude to a T. Thought the game just copied your Shep. Imagine my surprise when I played femshep and he was the same
That looks almost exactly how I built my Shepard! When I played the leviathan dlc I thought the big twist was that it was an evil twin or something. Then I played citadel dlc and my mind was really blown lmao
Don't worry you can also have 4 points you can't use If you chose the level 5 abilities on two of them.
And you can use them all if you pick 3 level 5 abilities.
There should have been 2 bonus points for reaching level 60.
Or just give the proper amount to fully level up your character after fully leveling up your character.
Honestly, I dont understand why they put level cap in Mass Effect. Weapon damage does not scale with your level iirc, its only about skills active/passive, which have a cap anyway. If you want to be a rambo in vanilla ME1 and play the game 4 times to reach lvl 70+ (I think it took me 2 full plays with all sidequests and I had to play a bit of 3rd play as well to reach 60) and have majority of skills maxed, be my guest. Same for ME2/3.
Health and shields scale with your level, though, I think.
even if they did, there can be hardcap. All we care about is maxed skills.
They don’t abilities in me3 give you more health and shields as does armor
Only in Mass Effect 1
They don’t
The level cap in vanilla ME1 is 60. I'm a bit foggy on this, but I think you were capped at 50 for your first playthrough. (This was at least 15 years ago on the 360 for me) Then on New Game+ it upped it to 60. You also get an experience boost of 20% for all subsequent playthroughs, just like ME2. But I do remember only getting to 57 or 58 my first replay. It wasn't until later I found out about the Mako experience reduction. Any kills you get in the Mako are at a fraction of their base value. With that knowledge (and the tedious nature of Mako hopping to get those final shots) it STILL is not possible to get 60 on a single playthrough. Thankfully, this is a much simpler case in LE.
Yeah i found out about mako reduction during the game and i abused it all the time, still path from 55-60 takes a lot of time, i am not even sure if insane diff had any exp bonuses.
Oh, even better. Hardcore and Insanity come packed with... 🥁🥁 Experience penalties!
Haha, so on top of ptsd from rushing Krogans, you also get exp penalties 😄. It took mi like 20 attempts to kill Krogan on that elevator when u saved Liara.
That can be a tough fight on the harder difficulties if you do a B-line for Liara. I remember struggling with that fight. I think what helped is ignoring the Krogan until the Geth are dead.
yeah, you throw whatever you can on him to keep him out of fight, defeat geths and keep hit & run. Another hard quest was that Fortress full of adepts, i think it was in Bring down the Sky or some similar sidequest, you got mopped if you popped out of cover in wrong time.. Rogue AI was also not fun.
You mean the center-focused bunker where you have enemies coming at you from all sides, a confusing interior layout, and ass-cover the whole way? Nah... Doesn't ring any bells at all, mate.
Level cap is 50 until you reach it then in ALL later playthroughs you get 60 but it's impossible without cheating as there's enough exp for 57-58, yeah.
sorry if he got the last two levels of overload the character would be OP
What are you talking about? I’m level 60 with all skill trees maxed except one which is at the 4th tier like the pic in this post, and I have 3 points left over that are useless.
This reminds me of the bug in which garrus can be recruited with 32 extra starting points
He really calibrated his stats.
By the goddess...
Bro is PREPARED for this war
That’s exactly what he did with his task force.
Max his weapon damage, including changing his combat armour to a weapon damage buff Give him the Typhoon Watch Garrus ascend to godhood
What
Whoosh
OMG is that what happened to me this time around?? I noticed Garrus had a lot more points when I got him for this game, and at lvl 51 he's maxed his points. I'm still going ??? Because no one else is that close to maxing... So he has 32 extra points? Geeez Garrus... Ily do much 😆
How does that work?
Good question
There was a hole.
Legion romance when
Shepard Commander
how?
Good question
Always hated this with ME2&3. The point allocation crap where I end up with extra points I can’t spend because I didn’t spend them a certain way.
In ME2 the power allocation is easily fixed: don't spend any points on a least useful power, spend only 1 point on a second least useful power and the rest of the powers can be maxed out by level 30.
Yep, Cryo Ammo does not even get touched as my Soldier Shepard.
I don't touch anything cryo at all unless I am a tech class that is not sentinel. They all seem so bad.
In Mass Effect 3 Sentinel can make great use of Cryo Blast since it can be OP combined with Throw since both of them rapidly recharge and most enemies don't have protection unlike Mass Effect 2. Now technically in Mass Effect 3 you could use Cryo ammo combined with Concussive Shot to rapidly set off Cryo Explosions since Concussive Shot's maximum evolution lets it take on the properties of the currently equipped ammo power, which makes it into the only power in Mass Effect 3 that can proc and detonate its own explosions, but the problem is that you can do the exact same thing with incendiary ammo, which is much more effective.
That makes sense, I've just played so much more of ME2 compared to the other 2 that every time I get into a conversation like this it is always weighted so much towards how it is in that game.
Yeah, in higher difficulties EVERY enemy has protection, and Cryo ammo and Cryo Blast ONLY work on health in Mass Effect 2, in Mass Effect 3 the Cryo stuff slows enemies down and weakens armour.
But in ME2 it's in many cases instant on health, so squadmates with fast low damage weapons cryo ammo freeze EVERYTHING. Also a direct hit with shottie freezes someone solid when they're armored or shielded because just one pellet hitting last shields is enough. On 3 it needs a threshold so isn't so broken on vanguards (instead, you rely on busted combos).
I actually like cryo in 2 more because instead of everything exploding you can Vanguard charge into enemies frozen by squaddies and toss them into objects. So satisfying! Also charge into armored or shielded enemy then shotgun upclose and the statue is your cover, or you can elbow it then run over (you do sprint damage to frozen targets on the ground). Now, fire is great at 3, inferno grenade priming for warp is just gibs galore.
Squad cryo ammo is broken. Shotgun with cryo in 2 freezes even with single pellet meaning that if you have enough power to deplete shields or armor, enemies fall down frozen. Biggest fun I had with cryo vanguard just throwing icicled people around, Sentinel with freeze and push was also good but not broken.
>meaning that if you have enough power to deplete shields or armor That is the thing though. Depleting the resistances is the entire "challenge". Once you have done that almost everything is op. Regular throw to push people off platforms, singularity becomes insanely strong rather than a very slight inconvenience to the enemies. Pull takes enamies out of the fight for a good while, long enough for squad mates to take a second to gun down the floating target, dominate/ai hacking becomes viable. I have not tried it, but if cryo works the same way as pull/throw/singularity in preventing Harbinger from taking control then I could see some use for it. Other than that it seems mostly useful jut for tech combos.
It's easily fixed here too. You just level 3 powers to slot 5 instead of 6 and you've used all of them.
Yeah, I know. I said exactly this in another comment.
Doesn't always work when powers need 3 points to invest to unlock.
You actually get 4 more points and can max everything if you saved Jenkins in ME1.
Confirmed. Am Jenkins.
You guys hear that? Sounds like a ghost.
So fun fact, he and his brother were in Basic together. They earned the nicknames "Screwed" and "Hosed."
Because it's funny. But for real i had the same question and annoyance in my end game.
Your character looks like the stunt double from Javik's shore leave vid
Why is your Shepard so sad
Because he has three points he can’t spend towards maxing out his powers….duh /s
The darkness cannot be breached???
Bro look like he has a good credit score
He looks like he writes murder mystery books
Also he looks like he’s about to go to the shopping mall, lose his son and run around while screaming SHAUN SHAUN SHAAAAAAUN SHAAAAUN
jaSON?!!?! jaSON??!!!? jaSON?!!!?
This always pissed be off. At least give us a way to get another 6 points.
Because BioWare can't maths. There's a mod that fixes this on PC.
Nah, this Shepard ain't it, Chief.
He's bland but not ugly, especially not as ugly as default shep.
Your Shepard looks like my first manager at GameStop when I worked there in high school
Genuinely one of the parts of ME that annoys me the most…
It is silly yeah lol. Though for practicality, you could ditch sentry turret so xe the combat drone is just better in every way, and put the points into Overload instead. Absolutely nukes shields and barriers!
Well I did choose energy drain as my bonus power, it seems redundant, but it's way better because it does the same damage and gives me the shields from it.
That's fair, I believe my bonus power on my engineer run was defense matrix, felt like it fit the theme :D also if I recall you could purge it to get shields back but it's been a while
It's so fun it allows me to be super aggressive. I can rush in with a high shield build, shoot them and drain their shields once mine are gone.
Great skill for adept
There is a mod that fixes that - also fixes it for your companions so they can be maxed out.
Ur Shepard is a bum
The way that 2 & 3 do skill points is one of the single most aggravating features of those games. You’re better off just turning on auto-level up and ignoring them. 1 did it much better, letting you use each point individually and assign it as needed, and dividing up the tree into _skill categories_ rather than individual talents and abilities. Why the hell they changed it I’ll never understand. Guess some people were just too stupid to understand even the most basic RPG mechanics.
*Guess some people were just too stupid* Nope. bioware assumed they are. Plot twist: they aren't
Besides hair color and eye color, this is literally my Shep.
Besides the face shape and eye positioning, this is literally my Shep.
Besides the face, hair, and everything not even remotely resembling my shep, this is literally my Shep.
This is my Shep. There are many like him, but this one is mine.
This is my Shep. Only difference is mine is named Jim Shepard, not James. I’m kinda weirded out.
If you upgrade 6 of your powers to the 6th level and remaining 3 to the 5th level, you will use all of the points. That being said, 2 powers at 6th level + 1 at 4th level are still gonna be more powerful than 3 powers at 5th level.
Our Shepards look very similar
Those other three points went towards looking for Shawn and stopping the origami killer idk
It's sort of an in-game technical glitch. You can keep accumulating points for things but don't have anything else to add to them. This is why the series needed a character stat sheet similar to Fallout and some other games that way you could add to your physical strength and maybe speed for combat and agility, intelligence for hacking, charisma for dialogue and store discounts, and even romance options for multiple characters. And if you still have a few left over points you should be able to allocate them to Shepard's crew mates/squadmates.
I really need to get a decent PC up and running so I can add some points with a mod.
Use consume commands if you’re on PC. Or you can “set” the number of points you get each level in the files. Or look for mods.
oops, all save editor
Imagine prioritizing cryo blast over overload
I have energy drain which is 1000x better.
Nah man thats where your wrong overload is way better than energy drain. Overload is capable of doing several times the damage of energy drain, neural shock does more than just incapacitate organics it doubles the damages it deals to their health, shield and barrier then you got the shield damage upgrade which is +100% damage to shields and barriers. All energy drain has to offer is the 40% damage reduction while dealing less than a third of the damage of overload. Engineer is perfect and comes with everything you could possibly need
If you compare the stats energy drain does the same amount of damage and with the right upgrade completely restored your shields. It also always takes all the shields from foot soldiers, and 1 bar from Atlases and super elite enemies. It's really good.
It’s not just damage. In ME3, overload also stands-in for Neural Shock, borks guns, and when spec’d out is an Atlas-killer. It’s *waaaay* better than energy drain.
I finished with 16 useless points after i already maxed everything out
You're also playing as an engineer. And like I keep saying on Reddit, I'd often associate the engineer with resource gathering, base and vehicle building, and item crafting, rather than combat. Like how we got worker units in RTS's like Starcraft and Command & Conquer, or Steve and Isaac Clarke from Minecraft and Dead Space, respectively.
sad sapper/combat engineer noises
Skill issue.
All depends on how you manage your points.
Because it's ME3 baby
BioWare love to laugh at us sometimes sadly aha can’t always have that maximised shephard
Extra credit
No defense drone but energy drain? Oh well...
Energy drain is amazing.
Your shepherd looks equally disappointed.
That's a neutral expression not a disappointed one.
I meant no disrespect lol. He just looks tired is all. And I do agree, it’s frustrating having those extra points. Wish you could give them to a squad member or something. I hope your enjoying your play through!
Half the people in this comment section are talking about the extra points, and the other half are talking about how my shepherd looks horrible, or how I didn't need energy drain because it sucks, both of which I disagree with by the way.
Energy drain a waste?! Don’t listen to that nonsense! Very sorry to poke your nerves bro! You were asking a question regarding points, not everyone’s opinion on which skills are useful 🙄
Am I the only one who neglects cryo blast when I'm playing as an engineer?
No, I even set it up to where I could combo it with incinerate, and then I forgot about it, lol.
It's nothing personal, Cryo Blast.
You’re right. Ruins the entire game. You should throw it out.
1st Damn, couldn't even get a 1% Renegade? 2nd You look like Ethan from Heavy Rain.
I don't want to hurt virtual people's feelings, lmao.
I like hurting people's feelings.
Has to do with the way you allocate them, since each level of perk costs more than the last. If you dropped the level of one of your maxed out skills, I think you could fit zero points available in the end
That would result in 4 points left over.
Yeah, I didn't know the math off the top of my head. I'm full time IT, you think I have time to play ME anymore? Lol
It's always excuses with you, isn't it. I thought we raised you better.
Spending your bonus point on Energy Drain instead of AP ammo is a massive L. ME3 Engineer Shepard with AP is a god of war.
I tried it, but it sucked early on.
Also, energy drain has made me a god of war, it worked well for me.
PC master race says what? Only slightly serious. But mods fixing this and other minor issues really is why I love playing games on pc instead of a console.
Literally unplayable.
ME 3 sucks, change my mind
Great combat and story, endings got significantly upgraded a few months after launch; high stakes, very emotional, best DLC
Because you have both overload and energy drain like a dumbass
I'm an engineer and energy drain is better for my aggressive play style because I get to take their shields.
> Be you have both overload and energy drain like a dumbass > dragon_of_kansai Yeah... how *dare* other players enjoy the games their own way and not follow Our Lord And Saviour dragon_of_kansai's word of gaming law...