The Glass Cannon (aka pure melee Geth Infiltrator)

Edit: The Geth Plasma Shotgun is the highest dps weapon that I can find at the moment. In addition Proxy mine is still a higher damage spec then going into Networked AI. Also added links to videos posted below, much thanks to Left2Dead4 and RandyRu for recording them!

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Here's a recent gold run that I did in a public group. Only a couple deaths, mostly in the extraction phase but we still full extracted. I used no rockets for this run. http://i.imgur.com/u2Dz0.jpg

In addition here are two videos of the build in action. One Two

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Fair warning, there is a steep learning curve that comes with this build. I was confined to Silver for a while until I got a feel for dodging back around corners and learning just how little damage I could take. This build is not for everyone. While learning you are going to die. A lot. More than a level 1 vanguard in gold. No I'm not kidding.

I have, however, been constantly topping damage in gold runs, mostly Geth farming on Firebase White. And I've stopped dying constantly, usually only dying once or twice per run at most.

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The Build: 6/6/6/0/6

Tactical Cloak: Derp. Going to need it to get into melee range. Points go into 40% damage, 50% melee, and extra power when cloaked (which is needed for proxy mines, see below).

Proxy Mine: Used to stagger opponents and to apply damage buff. Points go into 50% Impact Radius, Increased damage to targets by 20%, and increased damage by 50%.

Hunter Mode: This is why you're a glass cannon. While losing half your shields is not ideal, the added speed and damage more than make up for it. Points go into 20% Recharge Speed, 15% Power Damage and 10% Bonus Damage.

Networked AI: Skip it. Damage modifiers don't apply an additional buff to the cloak bonus.

Advanced Hardware: Fairly self explanatory. Grab all the melee damage modifiers. No point in getting shield upgrades if you're losing half of them to Hunter Mode.

Weapons: I recently went back to the Geth Plasma Shotgun for a couple reasons. You can get a full charge on the shotgun and then cloak with a full charge ready. Also you can still drop a proxy mine while staying cloaked and keeping the charge. Also while holding charge every time yuou use heavy melee the gun fires as the animation for melee begins, so it's like getting extra shots for free.

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So how does it work?

Luckily the concept behind the build is really simple. Engage hunter mode, wait for the round to start, find a couple enemies that are grouped up, cloak, drop a proxy mine at their feet and smash heavy melee till they're dead. Which for an unshielded enemy will be one hit, two for most things with shields and three for anything with armor (minus bosses). Though once you've killed something with heavy melee the bonus 75% melee damage and 30% power damage kick in, so you should be effectively one and two shorting anything on the map. And for bosses (I've mostly dealt with Geth Primes) you should be stripping away three bars of shields and two to three bars of armor per melee hit.

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Tactics:

Now this is the tricky part. Because of hunter mode you're already half down on shields. Also the Geth melee attack drains shields so it leaves you even more exposed. The idea is to get in and get out as fast as possible doing as much damage as possible. This takes a lot of practice to master. As stated above you're going to die a lot. It's ok. This is a high risk/high reward build.

The first thing you'll want to do is get inside. Being in wide open areas is dangerous as crossfire will kill you almost instantly. You want to make sure that you know where all the enemies currently active are at all times. Hunter mode helps greatly by letting you see through walls. This way you know where safe cover is at all times and where you next target is.

Choose your targets carefully. You don't want overly-large groups (more than 5) if at all possible. Single targets are, of course, the easiest to deal with, but because the Geth heavy melee is and area of effect attack and pulses this is not the most efficient way of killing everything in front of you. One is ok, three is ideal, and at most engage five.

For engaging you'll want to select a target and try to engage it in a way which allows you to get into cover quickly. At most you'll get two, maybe three pulses of the heavy melee in before they're too far away for it to affect them and you'll be dead. But those two pulses should be all you need to kill whatever it is you're fighting. So, for engaging. Cloak up, run to your target and drop a Proxy mine. This will stagger them for a brief moment which will allow you to get a good angle of attack. Once you're in a good position hold start using heavy melee. This should stagger the enemies back farther and do massive damage to them. After two pulses they'll likely be dead.

Now you dodge back to cover, regen shields, rinse and repeat. For larget bosses there's a bit more finesse to it, but it's a simple rotation. Cloak, proxy mine, 2 melee pulses, dodge to cover. Once you get back to cover the cooldown for cloak should be up, so just cloak again, rinse repeat.

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Why play a melee based Infiltrator?

Cause it's ridiculously fun. It's sort of like playing a Human Vanguard. You get right in the middle of the action and blow everything up, except you're a Geth and therefore way cooler. Honestly The build is viable at gold levels and I'm enjoying it more than sniping. It is, however, a very high risk build. Also I haven't had much experience on gold versus Reaper or Cerberus, though I'm going to be trying those out this weekend, so I'll let you guy know how it works out (cause it's a breeze vs Geth, you just have to watch out for Turrets and learn how to engage pyros correctly).

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And that's it! If you have questions feel free to ask away.