Cerberus Jedi: my cerberus vanguard build and playstyle

Out of all the Rebellion characters, the ex-Cerberus ones were the only ones that looked at all appealing to me. I've never much liked male quarians or vorcha in the single-player part of the game, and I tend to be somewhat biased about playing my favorite races/classes that I grew to like in the single player. Sentinels, infiltrators, turians, asari, geth, and the like. That's getting off topic though. Point is, after looking briefly at both Phoenix characters, it became pretty clear to me that since the only difference between them is singularity and charge, there was no reason to ever pick the adept over the vanguard.

After a couple games messing around with the vanguard's powers, I came to a conclusion and noticed a lot of problems I had with the class: one, it really struggles trying to use its powers to beat armored enemies, and two, that I really, really, hated smash. I don't care how good the perks you get from using smash are, the frame data on that move made it unusable for me. It has massive startup time, massive recovery time, limited range, no invincibility, and triggers a cooldown. Using this move out in the open on higher difficulties is a death wish. I see people saying it's most effective when used through walls, and this sort of highlights how gimmicky and unwieldy of a move it is. I have something of a fighting game background as well as RPGs, and something you learn from fighting games is that it doesn't matter if one of your character's moves takes off half a lifebar on its own, if it's so slow that you can't safely or reliably hit someone with it without it whiffing or getting punished, it's still a bad move no matter how much damage it does, and will likely be completely ignored by top players in favor of more utilitarian moves with better frame data. Now this tends not to be a big deal in most traditional RPGs, but we have to remember that ME3 multiplayer really isn't an RPG at all. It's a third-person action game with some light RPG elements in terms of character building.

So I started looking at his heavy melee move, and saw how fast it was in comparison. Very little startup and virtually no recovery coupled with a large area of effect with no limit on how many targets it could hit made this far more appealing to me than smash. So I decided that I would try to eliminate the aspects of the class I didn't like and try to make the things I did like about it as powerful as possible. And when I designed the build, everything fell into place and I endedup with one of the most unique, fun playstyles I've used in this game so far. Check it.

The class I ended up with didn't miss smash at all. In fact, smash would only slow him down/get him killed. It took me a couple games to decide what the perfect weapon would be, but as soon as I tried out the reegar carbine, I knew I had a keeper. With a reegar X with blade attachment and shredder and the alliance training weight perks, you're sitting at 185% cooldown bonus. I played a bunch of games with it on silver and really, really liked how playing it felt; the playstyle felt much more unique than pretty much any other class I had played, being equally dependent on biotics, melee, and weapons instead of just specializing in one. After a while, I realized what I had done: I had created a Mass Effect jedi.

So now, I'm going to break the class down for you in jedi terms: lash is your force pull. It's your only ranged attack, but it's really the only one you need. The fact that it can penetrate shields and barriers makes it an excellent move. Spam it at enemies at the beginning of rounds. You have 2 options you can go for with this. You can either lash, then charge to make your own biotic detonation, or lash to pull them close and finish off with a heavy melee to activate your fitness perks and go into hyper mode. Generally it's a good idea to detonate shielded enemies since you likely won't be able to pull them into melee range and try to yank unshielded enemies directly at you and heavy melee them as they're flying by. Once you start getting into the thick of battle, you won't use lash much since you need to keep your shields up, but it's a great round starter and also good for hack missions.

Now for the big 3: Your charge is your force jump. Your dual whips from heavy melee are your lightsabers. Your reegar is your force lightning. The bulk of your time spent in rounds will be up close and personal with the enemy. Charge, heavy melee, then force lightning with your reegar while mashing on your charge key. It's a cycle that's sustainable against groups of regular enemies even on gold. It can be helpful to try and lash a lone enemy at you to kill with melee before you go Mace Windu on all the bitches though, that way you'll already have boosted melee damage when you charge into a group and it will be easier to continue to rack up the melee kills and refresh your bonus. Enemies on gold won't all die in one melee or anything, but that's not the point. This is a sustainable cycle. Your area charge staggers, your heavy melee is so fast that it's finished almost exactly as the stagger ends, and your reegar can often re-stagger in the 1-2 seconds it takes your charge to finish cooling down. The reegar does massive damage as well and can actually be finishing off one or two enemies in the group on the first cycle.

So yeah, that's pretty much the strategy for all regular enemies of any enemy type. You can be fairly braindead and just charge, lightsaber, force lightning over and over, even on gold. The class is also an excellent phantom-slayer, but you have to be a little more careful about it. You can still charge them and stagger, but do not melee after. You'll open yourself up for an instakill. Instead, charge, roll backwards, and then immediately empty a reegar clip into them. This tends to either make them stagger again, swing their sword at you, or do a ninja flip. Hit them with a lash so long as you're not taking fire from other sources and your shields are still up, they wont be able to go into block stance because they're no longer in neutral stance and can't cancel into block from their other animations. You can then detonate them with a charge to knock them down and deliver the coup de grace with a heavy melee. If the melee doesn't quite finish them, either do it again, charge them again, or just spray them with more force lightning. Few classes can fight phantoms up close like the cerberus jedi can, and none can do it with as much style.

Patience! You must not leave the Dagobah Thread until your training is complete! Part 2 is in the comments...