The Bulldozer (Krogan Solider, Melee)

Preface

Currently I am going for the Bloodpack Mastery challenge, which means that I am primarily using Krogans, Batarians, and Vorcha. You will see this as a theme for the next several guides. Some are going to be fun and interesting (like this one), while others will probably be bland (Krogan Vanguard comes to mind). I would also like to repeat that we need this big bad list of builds on the sidebar, as it may help those who are new to look at some class ideas and see a decent discussion talking about the merits of each character.

As far as guides are concerned, after the Bloodpack Mastery, I plan to fill out any holes in that list of builds to make sure each character gets some love. But let's actually talk about the melee god that is the Krogan Soldier.

Introduction

This is a fun build that I have quite enjoyed, despite my dislike for using melee in nearly every video game I have played. The Krogan Soldier is capable of dealing tremendous melee damage and is still meaty enough to take some damage in the process. It is just as fearsome as the Bulldozer in Payday: The Heist, and I believe this character can live up to the name Bulldozer.

Side note- For anyone who wants a more mission oriented version of ME3 Co-op, I would highly recommend Payday to fill that niche.

Anyways, now to talk about strategy for this big bad boy.

Powers and Evolutions

The ultimate end goal is to maximize melee damage first, and survivability second. Fortification and Fitness are both specced in that manner to optimize melee damage, and then survivability. The Krogan Berserker passive maximizes power damage for both Carnage and Inferno Grenades, which are quite useful to help the melee attack and survivability. Carnage is useful to setting off Fire Explosions from Inferno Grenades and as a way to deal damage with minimal risk of sync kills on bosses who have them.

Inferno Grenades serve three unique and useful purposes.

A) Panicking enemies in preparation in getting launched into low orbit. You think I'm kidding about the low orbit part, but I am not.

B) Damaging armor and priming for Fire Explosions on dangerous enemies that can sync kill.

C) The best is to find cloaked enemies to be heavy meleed as cloaked enemies are notoriously difficult to heavy melee.

Melee

Now why is melee damage so important that all the powers are geared around it? Math will explain that the Krogan Soldier can make an enemy panic in their presence. Note that Melee is not affected by shield-gating or nor armor reduction (99% positive on this one). Heavy Melee is certainly more time efficient unless you know you can kill the enemy with one light melee attack.

Now for the math. The base heavy melee damage of the Krogan Soldier is 700 and the multipliers it can get are mostly additive. I will put parentheses for what causes which bonus to occur. First, let's assume that it is the start of Wave 1 with the appropriate equipment, gear, and no in combat modifiers.

Melee Damage = 700*[1 (base damage) + 1 (Strength Enhancer III) + 1.05 (Fitness passives) + .12 (Juggernaut Shield V, the 3% extra with Hydraulic Joints V isn't significant enough compared to 20% shielding imo)]* [1.25 (Shotgun Bayonet V, may be up to 1.50 with Omni-Blade V, thanks I_pity_the_fool)] = 700*[3.17]*1.25 = 2773.75 damage. That's a lot of damage and that's without in combat modifiers.

Now let's assume we are in Rage Mode and had Fortification purged in preparation to attack.

Melee (Max Rage) = 700*[3.17 (prep) + .8 (Rage Mode buff) + .75 (Martial Artist kill buff) + 1 (Fortification Purge)] = 700* [5.72] *1.25 = 5005 Damage. That's a lot of damage and will pretty much 2 hit any non-boss enemy in the game. The heavy melee is also capable of staggering nearly every enemy in the game, including Atlases and Banshees.

Attack Phases

The playstyle of this build is simplified into three phases; a preparation phase, an aggressive phase, and a defensive posturing phase.

Bulldozer coming through!- The first phase is where Fortification is on and you are posturing to get aggressive with heavy melee. Try and focus down enemies that are weak or alone to build up that Rage. You may wish to soften them up with Carnage and Inferno Grenades, but that will be a rare occurrence.

FUCK! BULLDOZER! - Once you have found your first target to heavy melee, purge Fortification (and ideally re-activate, but time may be of the issue there) and heavy melee them (this deals 3094 damage] . Get into Rage mode and then see how far into orbit you can launch enemies. Just try and avoid dying if possible, ideally by targeting enemies that have Health instead of Armor. If Rage expires and there are still plenty of enemies with Health, go back to Phase 1. If not, proceed to Phase 3.

Retreat and regroup!- The final phase occurs when there are more enemies than you want to handle with heavy melee, just leave Fortification off and spam Carnage/Inferno Grenades to deal with their armor. Once you feel confident to heavy melee again, go back to Phase 1.

Miscellaneous

Weaponry is anything you want, ideally something with a melee damage bonus. I prefer the Graal because I like how I can wing someone to partially damage the enemy and it is quite effective at killing armor.

The defenses of the Krogan is nice, especially the stagger resistance from being a Krogan and damage reduction from Fortification. Don't let your shields go down, because no one wants to revive a Krogan next to a swarm of enemies.

Conclusion

So melee is pretty good. I'm certain you have plenty of Strength Enhancers and I want you to burn them all with this build.

If you have ideas about the Krogan Soldier or something tangentially related, post them in the comments. Now have fun launching enemies into low orbit, and perhaps one day Bioware will let us record how far we have sent enemies. They go pretty far, as Fittyman can confirm.

Edit- Thanks to I_pity_the_fool, I learned that the Bayonet/Omni-Blade mods are multiplicative of the final melee damage and not additive.