So, I made it a strict habit of playing only the Soldier class throughout the Mass Effect series thus far. I'm new to this wide variety of different and hit/miss elemental/biotic damage, and I didn't want to get stuck with a class that I didn't enjoy, or with a majority of powers only worked on a tight enemy kind. The Soldier class was very much up my alley, and after all, how hard is it to point and shoot?
 
Well, after enjoying my time, but regretting much on my playthrough with the Soldier class, I decided it was time to try something new, so I dove head first into the Sentinel class. I can't remember the last time I've had so much fun combining different biotic and tech effects to create massive damage against my enemies. My personal favorite is using Jack's Shockwave, or Garrus' Concussive Shot combined with my Slam ability, (it was advanced trained).
 
The main, and almost only reason I went with the Sentinel class, is I wanted a class that could take down all kinds of enemies with all kinds of armor and shields, and not have to worry about not having a certain ability, and I wanted to be as well-rounded as possible on the battlefield.
 
What are your thoughts on the biotic powers and the different combos in battle?

Playing as a biotic on Insanity is a little broken. 
 
However, watching someone fly away because of your abilities is always satisfying.

They are quite fun to use. Sentinel is by far my favorite class.

i played an adept in the first game, and in this game, and it's much improved.
 
some of the powers have different uses now, and the whole combo system is neat. warp especially is really strong now, where i barely used it in 1.

Yeah Sentinel was the first class I played, and I loved it. Some really satisfying stuff. The shooting is definitely still fun, but the powers are even better.

i love the infiltrator cloaking like the predator is sexy 

I played firstly as an Infiltrator, and now I'm on Insanity as an Adept and it's such a blast. I have Warp mapped to RB, Reave mapped to LB and Singularity is of course Y. I also have Pull in my radial menu, that's for special occasions when I can hit an unarmored guy and get him with a quick Warp blast. 
 
The whole idea of having to arc the shots is what draws me in, and Adept is quickly becoming a favorite class... I can't wait to start an Engineer next!

Yep, biotics are pretty damn awesome. I'm really glad they redid everything, including making warp do far more and be so damn useful. I had a ton of fun playing through as an Adept. I'm gonna go through next as a non biotic user, not sure yet..then eventually go for a Vanguard.

Arcing a throw to push someone out of cover is way too bad-ass.  Using Pull before hitting them with a throw is just insult to injury.

You should use Miranda's loyalty ability... it is down right fun.  You lift a dude about ten or fifteen feet in the air and slam them straight down with insane force.  It usually causes robots to explode. 
 
Yes engineer and adept are my two favorite classes... I don't like the combo classes because I can't help but feel like I'm playing gimped or something.  Soldier is just sort of boring to me... or at least it was in ME1 it seems like a better fit here.

i played vangaurd and i liked it alot, especially the one that sends a wave in front of you blows everyone away!

" Playing as a biotic on Insanity is a little broken.   However, watching someone fly away because of your abilities is always satisfying. "

Pull has got to be one of my favorite moves in the game. I don't even care about shooting the enemies...I just wanna see 'em floating around in a blue cloud. It's a great setup for either throw or warp...or my personal choice: strolling up and punch them in the face.

My second Character was an adept in the first ME and the same goes for ME 2.  A lot of fun to play, espicially once you get your biotic mastery maxed.  You can shoot off throws every two seconds combined with a maxed out singularity and their is enough limp bodies for everyone.  I also chose the Fortification talent as my extra  power and got my Shotgun training when I got to "that" part so my adept is not only a biotic badass, but can deal some gun damage too.  Oh and she is a hot Renegade to boot.

What is everybody's opinion on the Biotic Charge for the Vanguard character class? I've been hearing it's broken because it lands you right in the middle of combat. What happens when it's upgraded fully? Does it do enough damage to negate putting you in the middle of battle once it's maxed?

 What is everybody's opinion on the Biotic Charge for the Vanguard character class? I've been hearing it's broken because it lands you right in the middle of combat. What happens when it's upgraded fully? Does it do enough damage to negate putting you in the middle of battle once it's maxed?

I played a Soldier first and then went to a Sentinel second. Definitely agree with you, biotic powers are completely awesome. They are WAY different than the first game and WAY cooler. The ability to curve them around boxes and everything...oh its awesome.

" @SeriouslyNow: Not on Insanity. Most of the powers on insanity don't work until the enemy has its barrier/armor gone. "

"  What is everybody's opinion on the Biotic Charge for the Vanguard character class? I've been hearing it's broken because it lands you right in the middle of combat. What happens when it's upgraded fully? Does it do enough damage to negate putting you in the middle of battle once it's maxed? "

" @Death_Unicorn said:

" @SeriouslyNow: Not on Insanity. Most of the powers on insanity don't work until the enemy has its barrier/armor gone. "

Good to know.
 
@Napalm said:

"  What is everybody's opinion on the Biotic Charge for the Vanguard character class? I've been hearing it's broken because it lands you right in the middle of combat. What happens when it's upgraded fully? Does it do enough damage to negate putting you in the middle of battle once it's maxed? "

It's not broken, often the fully charged version will save your life if your shields are low and there's nowhere to get to cover; just use to fly at a dude and he'll stumble while you're either in bullet time or he gets knocked down (the two evolved bonuses to choose from). "

I can't imagine how people play as a soldier. The biotics are amazing. Especially since you can actually use them to kill people now. Soldier seems hella boring but hey, different strokes I guess. When I have some motivation to play the game again, I wanna try out some of the other new powers. There's alot of sweet looking ones I didn't try yet.

" @SeriouslyNow: The big draw for the Vanguard will be using that skill, so if I max it out and it turns out to be "alright" on damage, I'll be a little disappointed. I was getting ready to start a Vanguard game, but I didn't know the damage/skill specs on the character. "

As a currently leveled 20 Adept, I use the "one-two punch" of Singularity followed by a quick Warp.  Singularity holds the enemy or pulls them from their cover position.  Then when a Warp attack is shot into the Singularity field, it explodes.  So far on Normal difficulty, it one-shot kills most things unshielded and critically injures anything shielded.  If there is armor on top of that, then the whole process takes longer.  I switch to my heavy weapon to rip the armor away.  In the past, that was the Collector Particle Cannon, but I've started using the Cryo Gun and I have the portable nuke launcher, but haven't used it yet.  Ha-ha, I love walking around with an "unlicensed nuclear accelerator" on my back.  At least, that's what I call it.  I've started using Pull more often now too and am experimenting with Shockwave.  I haven't put any points into Throw yet, so we'll see how that works at some point. I've noticed that Warp and Pull are much better at finding their target even if it is behind cover while Singularity can sometimes get hung up on objects in between you and your target. 

Soldier can be fun too if you want to make it so. 
Sure you can just do the cover thing and take out enemy one by one. But if you are playing normal/veteran it is much more fun to just mess around with a Soldier. With some weapon upgrades and skills developed you can become a whirlwind of destruction tearing through enemies insanely fast. Soldier just does so much damage I find myself trying to see how far I can go rambo style, constantly moving around the battlefield flanking enemies or taking out groups of 3-5 buy just laying down shitloads of firepower right after jumping out and hitting slow. Just saying it could be fun too if you wish to make it so and are not so conservative. Also Zaeed's granades are fun and can add to the chaos of action, theyre fun to mess around with as a soldier.
 
@PenguinDust:
It's not really a nuke launcher if you read the codex, just a nickname. Thankfully Bioware avoided the mistake of F3 and did not insult our intelligence with it.

" @SeriouslyNow: The big draw for the Vanguard will be using that skill, so if I max it out and it turns out to be "alright" on damage, I'll be a little disappointed. I was getting ready to start a Vanguard game, but I didn't know the damage/skill specs on the character. "

If you only played a soldier in the original Mass Effect, you're missing out.  Adepts are fun in ME2, but in ME1, they were gods.  Lift affected pretty much every enemy in the game including bosses, and singularity could suck in half a room when fully specced into it.  If that wasn't ridiculous enough, if you chose the right specialization, you could kill things while they were completely trapped in your stasis.  And don't forget, all of these were on different cooldowns.

Loved Adept in the first game so played it on this. First playthrough was on hardcore so everything is biotic immune until you remove their shield/barrier/armour... found it kind of boring, spent most of my time using the Tempest SMG until I could use a biotic on them and by that time I might aswell just keep shooting.
 
Playing on Insanity as Infiltrator now, much more enjoyable... if I don't one shot the enemy then it will be damaged enough for Samara to use her biotics. Works much better.
 
Im sure Adpet would be more fun on Normal as everyone seems to say.

" If you only played a soldier in the original Mass Effect, you're missing out.  Adepts are fun in ME2, but in ME1, they were gods.  Lift affected pretty much every enemy in the game including bosses, and singularity could suck in half a room when fully specced into it.  If that wasn't ridiculous enough, if you chose the right specialization, you could kill things while they were completely trapped in your stasis.  And don't forget, all of these were on different cooldowns. "

i restarted my game after i was disappointed with vanguard (enemies always at medium to long range, didnt use the shotgun at all except for when i wanted to see cool animations). 
 
i played adept and finished the game that way, nothing could touch me, i had miranda doing Warps along with me and the Salarian doing heavy incinerate which gets rid of targets in less than a second. I upgraded my shockwave to wide angle and it obliterates everything in front of me. Also pulling someone up in the air and then throwing them 900m/s to the left or right is highly satisfying, specially when you can throw multiple people at the end.

" @SeriouslyNow: The big draw for the Vanguard will be using that skill, so if I max it out and it turns out to be "alright" on damage, I'll be a little disappointed. I was getting ready to start a Vanguard game, but I didn't know the damage/skill specs on the character. "

I'm using an Adept for my Insanity playthrough and while it is very hard, it's also very rewarding. I can't tell you how difficult the fights against the Collector's are though... I'm level 29 and need to finish off my N7 missions before I head over there, so hopefully I'll get to 30 sometime soon.  
 
I like the biotics themselves better in ME1 because they didn't have so many limitations on them, but I like how you use them wayyy better in ME2.

Yeah I want to play through again, but as a full Biotic, not a Soldier. 
 
But I need to do it on Insanity too. I think I might actually go insane.

" I had miranda doing Warps along with me and the Salarian doing heavy incinerate which gets rid of targets in less than a second.

" @warxsnake said:

" I had miranda doing Warps along with me and the Salarian doing heavy incinerate which gets rid of targets in less than a second.

This is key to defeating all the Harbiner's. Warp/Incinerate/One or two bullets. "

Yeah, on higher difficulty settings any time I used charge it pretty much equalled death shortly afterwards.  On normal however you can charge around a lot since enemies are pretty dumb.  Also if there's a group of enemies charge at the front one, they fly back and knock down their friends also.

Charge has more uses as a tactical tool, rather than as a damage dealer.  Use it to destroy frozen enemies, or to get in someone's face and blast them with the shotgun.  Knock enemies off a cliff with it, or get yourself out of harm's way.  The whole point of the Vanguard class is to get up in someone's face and deal damage.  Charge allows you to do just that.  Just don't try to use it like a Psycho Crusher.