The Biotic Throwdown 2: Acolytric Throwgaloo

So many of you will probably remember my double-stuf-wall-of-text human sentinel thread from a few months ago. You will remember sentinel has been my favorite class since owning husks at lightspeed on the derelict reaper in ME2. However, there have been many advances in buffs/nerfs and just the overall state of the game since I posted it.

Human sentinel buff aside (I'm talking about the 30% power damage bonus tech armor has now, which really isn't even worth talking about aside from saying, "hey cool" because you all should already have maxed tech armor on him anyway), a lot of the recent metagame changes have come in the form of the new weapons classes being able to claim superiority over the powers classes when they deck themselves out in weapon amps, level IV ammo, etc. Up until literally yesterday, for the most part I agreed with it. Asari adept, drell adept, human sentinel and the like used to effortlessly rule over the infiltrators, engineers, and soldiers without even having to equip consumables 2 or 3 months ago. But today we live in the age of destroyers, demolishers, and basically any class with a piranha and shotgun amp III dominating the scoreboard.

It seemed as if the sun had set on my human sentinel. I would still take him out for a spin once every few days, peppering enemies with my phalanx to stagger them so I could hit them with a warp primer that they couldn't roll away from like I instructed all of you to do so long ago, but it just felt like so much work. Literally any enemy with shields would have to be primed for a biotic explosion to efficiently kill, and my favorite ability in the entire Mass Effect series, throw, was for the most part relegated to a biotic explosion detonator.

No more. Do you hear me? NO. MORE. The age of throwing is upon us, comrades! How, do you ask? Through the incorporation of one simple weapon, a weapon that I have seen receive very little recognition on this subreddit: the Acolyte.

You see, the Acolyte has this interesting property to it: a single shot completely removes the shields of any enemy that isn't an atlas or a geth prime on gold.

I'm going to say that again just to emphasize this for human sentinel players who didn't jump for joy out of their chairs the first time: a single shot completely removes the shields of any enemy that isn't an atlas or a geth prime on gold.

The new strategy for human sentinel: shoot with acolyte, throw. That's it. That's all you have to do for almost every standard unit in the game. Rocket troopers, centurions, hunters, nemeses, marauders, combat engineers? Remember when you had to go through all that bullshit to prime and detonate a biotic explosion on each one just to kill them? SHOOT WITH ACOLYTE, THROW. The enemy is now dead. Move on to the next one.

I used to think human sentinel wasn't viable for going up against gold cerberus because asari adept was so much better vs. phantoms because she had stasis. Yeah. Shoot with acolyte, throw. Even phantoms can't stand against this combo for long. Enjoy raping cerberus on gold, members of the sentinel brotherhood.

Remember how it used to take forever to get through the shields of atlases and geth primes with your biotic explosions? Remember how shields used to be the hard counter to biotic classes? Yeah, acolyte says what's up. Seriously, try it on any biotic class, be it asari adept, N7 fury, drell adept, whatever. An acolyte with extended barrel and extended mag (which to my knowledge are the only 2 mods that even do anything on this weapon) can take down the shields of an atlas or prime in a single clip without even having to stop to reload. So yeah, they can enjoy the 5 seconds or so they have shields before you shred their armor with warp/throw explosions.

In fact, targets with armor are now the only enemies you even need to use explosions on. Everything else can just get shot, then thrown. By the way, acolyte shots stagger the target, guaranteeing they won't be able to dodge-roll your throw (as if it wasn't good enough already). I hope you've all taken the top 3 options for 4-6 on throw ladies and gents, because you want to have the highest chance that your throw is going to one-shot the poor sap you just hit with an acolyte so you can move onto the next victim as quickly as possible like I did in the 10 or so rounds I dominated with my new and improved beast-mode human sentinel on gold last night. Geth hunters and phantoms tend to take 2 throws to kill, but I was playing completely vanilla with only a commando package V for gear. If you brought a power amp III along with you I'm positive nothing would be able to withstand a single one of your throws.

I'm almost reluctant to share this with you all because I don't want Bioware to nerf either the weapon or the class, but the new era of human sentinel domination cannot be denied. Throw has achieved its full potential, my friends. The geth are now officially a complete joke to human sentinel players. I almost feel bad for them. Really the only two enemies in the entire game who will give you problems are guardians and banshees with their bio-proof barriers up. Guardians can be killed by bringing a GPSMG with piercing mod and ULM V along as a second weapon (you still stay at 200%), and banshees...well, run away and unleash your onslaught onto whatever marauders, brutes, or ravagers you come across until you hear them scream and can resume nuking them with explosions.

Thanks for reading true believers, now equip that acolyte and get out there. Good hunting.