Weapons

Melee

Melee attacks are powerful close-range offensive options that deal extraordinary amounts of damage. They’re particularly handy when your gun clip is empty and you need to quickly deal some damage to an enemy within range (instead of waiting for the reload to complete).

Grounded vs. Airborne

There are two types of melee attacks: One is performed while grounded, using your equipped melee weapon, and the other is an omni-tool-based attack executed while airborne, landing with a ground-pound effect. This airborne melee attack does not factor in your equipped melee weapon when it comes to damage or force, although it does scale with melee damage bonuses from other sources like the Vanguard profile.

OMNI-BLADES, AMPLIFIERS, GAUNTLETS

Hand-based melee attacks vary in speed and utility depending on the technology behind them: Remnant cryo gauntlets are heavy and slow, but cause a cryo priming effect. Omni-blades and biotic amplifiers are lighter and faster than gauntlets, although biotic amplifiers are more forceful.

Daggers

Angaran daggers have quick startup speeds. The electric firaan stuns enemies with a jolting current, making for an excellent tech combo primer.

Hammers

Krogan hammer attacks are slow, but deal an extraordinary amount of damage and have much more force behind them.

Swords

Kett and asari sword swipes are deadly, but much slower than hand-based attacks. Asari sword attacks are preceded by a biotic blink forward.

Weapon Encumbrance, Recharge Penalty

All guns are assigned a weight value, which is used to determine a resulting recharge penalty to applicable powers. This may affect your weapon choice, especially if you plan to use your rechargeable powers frequently. At the loadout menu, your weight threshold is displayed as a blue bar. Equipping heavy weapons or too many of them may break this threshold, penalizing all power recharge speeds. Weapon-encumbrance penalties can be mitigated by investing points into specific weapon skills that reduce weapon weight or provide extra weight capacity.

Guns

Guns come in four distinct categories—pistols, assault rifles, shotguns, and sniper rifles—each with a general set of strengths and weaknesses. However, guns within a category may have considerably different properties based on their technology, so some of these strengths and weaknesses may not apply.

Pistols

The pistols category contains all handguns and SMGs. Handguns deal moderate damage and have a limited clip capacity, but are accurate and provide more stability than other guns. Handguns are strong at mid-range and, with proper aim, can deal impressive damage to weak points.

SMGs offer an extremely high rate of fire with decent accuracy, but deal very low damage per shot. They’re similar to assault rifles, but aren’t as effective at mid-to-long range. SMGs are exceptional for finishing off weakened enemies and for consistent damage output, thanks to large magazine capacities.

Pistols are the lightest weapons, making them the preferred weapon for power-reliant combatants.

Assault Rifles

This category contains conventional assault rifles as well as certain beam weapons and grenade launchers.

Assault rifles usually have a high rate of fire and deal light-to-moderate damage per shot, but are inaccurate without tight aim. They provide the best consistent damage and excel in mid-range combat.

Assault rifles, on average, are significantly heavier than pistols, but lighter than shotguns and sniper rifles. Assault rifles are flexible and can fit into most play styles.

Shotguns

Shotguns are high-impact heavy guns excelling at decimating enemies within range, but are ineffective at dealing with far-off threats. As such, using a shotgun carries an inherent risk because of its limited effective range.

Shotguns fire several low-damage pellets. The shotgun damage value displayed in its properties is the sum of all pellets fired, so optimizing shotgun damage can only be done at close range. Additionally, a hidden damage bonus is applied to shotgun pellets against armor-based enemies in order to compensate for the flat damage reduction provided by enemy armor.

“Tank”-type characters can usually make the most out of shotguns, as they’re built to withstand damage. Shotguns are the second heaviest class of weapons, making them less than ideal for certain biotic and tech specialists.

Sniper Rifles

Sniper rifles are all equipped with a high-zoom scope and are specifically designed with a clear purpose: to take out threats safely from long range, excelling at targeting enemy weak points.

Clip size can vary, but the most powerful sniper rifles are single shot, requiring a reload between each. While sniper rifles are arguably the most difficult guns to use effectively, they highly reward players with precise aim.

With the addition of hover fire, sniper rifles can be paired with Tactical Cloak for an effective aerial-ambush play style. Additionally, using a scoped rifle (or any scoped firearm for that matter), allows for increased “soft aim” target locks. For instance, If you can’t target an enemy in the distance with your Overload, try zooming in with your scope and then firing your power.

Sniper rifles are the heaviest weapon type, encouraging intelligent power-use management. Alternatively, sniper rifle users can opt to use cell-consuming powers (without recharge times) like Trip Mine to mitigate this effect.