What's everyone's favorite apps to use in conjunction with one another? (fully upgraded of course)
 
I like EMP and Damage Link. Provides a nice one-two punch when dealing with the reactives and liquids. Pop the damage link and wear them down and once they're down to their last shield level, just hit them with the EMP for a nice fast chiprip. I pretty much stick with these two all of the time. I feel damage link is a must. The shotgun + Damage link is just nuts and that's before you even turn on DART for added damage. I switch the EMP out from time to time but nothing else really fits with me.
 
I see a lot of people use reboot but i personally hate it for the simple fact that you have to use it while you're still crawling as oppose to fully down which often time enemies will still shoot you while you're crawling so i end up rebooting only to go right back down.

I've been experimenting mostly with Shielding, Virus, Damage Link and Drain Energy lately.

I feel like Damage Link is pulling it's weight, but not sure about the others...

• Virus is a beast fully upgraded - it can do bad things to Liquids (or is it Electricals?), but seems to do nothing about Reactives. Seemed pretty good against Agents on Hard, but I'm not sure.
• Shielding seems good - but it's a popular choice, so I've stopped using it (so many others are using it).
• Squad Heal - seemed good, but I realized I was using it like a personal heal, and that it's rare that more than one person on the team to be low on health.
• Drain Energy is pretty good against the small guys, when you just need to kill off that one guy while reloading, or something, and can get you out of some binds with a quick heal. Also restores pretty quickly.
• C2C Pulse... had way too long recharge time last I tried it, but I guess it could be really good.

Don't see the point in using Reboot, as you are expecting to go down. Doubling it up with Battery seems to be even worse - you are effectively saying that you'll be getting shot down a lot.

Considering trying Focus Breach to see if it's possible to brute-force breach an enemy agent that goes down to self-destruct before the other agents can get him up - the main areas I'm struggling with are the agents on Atlantic Accelerator and New England - and I'm arming for that, more or less. :)

I just use squad heal and shield.

@hbkdx12: Virus ignores shields - I've found that on normal, Virus tends to just outright kill the liquid you put it on. Takes a little while, but considering how often you get double liquids or liquid+reactive, etc, I found it quite handy

Not tried it on Expert yet.

C2C pulses heals in an Area around you - so it can be great for that.

Yeah, not sure about Focus Breach - just want to find a way to make those later expert levels a bit easier to cope with (in terms of enemy agent teams)

My thoughts on some apps:

• Squad Heal - useless, just heal the guy who is taking damage, very rarely will you be in a position to notice several people taking damage at the same time while being under fire yourself, watching the health bars on top of the screen just divides your attention further. There really is no good reason to use this over C2C
• C2C - aoe team regen, this is actually usefull, 2 main situations: fighting armored dudes, pop it when you know or are taking fire to extend the life of you or your teammate; secondly performing chip rips under fire, you need to stay alive to finish that chip rip and frequently be in a situation where there are several dudes/agents shooting at you. Aside from those 2 situations it is still a supperior healing ability to Squad heal to keep your team up.
• Shielding - a must have for at least one dude in your team, it's free extra damage absorbtion, use it preemptively before a tough fight, or to save someone taking damage already. A lot of people run with it already, so I usually don't since it's provided by other players. Added bonus a small basic EMP when fully upgraded upon shield depletion
• Damage Link - this is one of the best abilities on harder difficulties as it is effectively a force muliplier for your entire squad, it makes taking down reactive/liquid armors and agents faster. Combine this baby with a shotgun or a minigun and you can absulutely positively rip apart armors and agents solo. if you are good during big fights you can keep it up almost all the time.
• EMP - in theory this is great when fully upgraded, useless otherwise. it's an oh-shit panic button to make all those armor dudes take a chill pill for a second and get out of their range, line of sight, as well as open them up for damage
• Virus - for the score whores out there, it's an instant kill on standard enemies allowing you to keep rampage up, and by proxy more DART overlay. Also usefull as some extra damage on armors/agents but is outdone in this regard by Damage Link and E-drain
• Focus Breach - never used it, seems too marginal
• E-drain - like the Virus will alow you to do more damage on the fly, not as effective in that regard as Virus tho. BUT it also doubles as a heal that also kills your target. Allowing you to keep fighing in tough situations, weakening the enemy force. Also great to have against armors/agents as it will damage them while healing you, allowing you to stand toe to toe with them longer. Great ability to have, overall more selfish then Damage link, but more benefitial to you personally.
• Reboot - good to have as a backup when your team fucks up, but you should not be relying on your team to fuck up for an ability to be usefull. That said if you are all down and one good player has it ...
• Battery - cool in theory, marginal in practice because it requires your teams abilities to be down to be effective, wastes one of your ability slots, it won't save your ass in bad situations, and in good situations your team can refill their meters by killing dudes anyway
• Focus Target - now we are talking, highlights the target, makes breaching it easier, reduces it's armor, reduces movement speed. If there ever was an ability to fuck with armor/agents this is that. Also makes your dumb team more likely to focus fire on the very glowy dude. Makes your smart team anihalate the target. Combine with Damage Boost for the lulz of watching reactive armor die in seconds.
• Backfire - never used it seems marginal at best

So my top list: Damage Link, C2C, Shield, Focus Target, Virus, E-drain

@hbkdx12 said:

@Mnemoidian: What does virus do to liquid exactly considering they have shielding? I tried it once and was only able to use it on regular guys in which case it kills them instantly. But the time it takes to activate virus i could have just shot them in the head. Seems like a wast in that respect. I hear a lot of people favor C2C but im not even entirely sure what it does. Is that the one that sends out a healing pulse to anyone thats close to you? I found focus breach to be a waste. I felt like the increase in speed was minimal. But that might have been at a time when i didn't have it fully upgraded so im not sure.

Virus can be used on dudes behind thick cover, it can be used while reloading. It can be used on one dude while you are shooting another dude. For liquid/reactive armor it will damage their health under the armor, meaning that they will take damage you just don't see it because of the armor prompt, but once you actually hack their armor you will see that they already took damage from the virus. And in cases where you already stripped their armor visusing them while shooting them effectively increases the damage you are outputting. When you are playing on harder difficulties your team is virtually getting swarmed by the numbers of dudes the game is throwing at you. Being able to take out extra enemies on the fly with the virus comes in very handy.

C2C is basically an AoE health regen. You may notice that one of the enemy agents in the agent groups at the ends of some missions has it (just the permanent version). That's what's making those agents much harder to take down, because he keeps regenerating their health.

@hbkdx12: Yep it's on top.

The recharge time on Focus Target is fine, but it doesn't really matter since it's use is to take down armor (or focus your team on that bastard healing agent) so most of the time you will just be keeping it in reserve untill then. It will recharge by the next armor encounter (unless you're not killing anything).

Squad heal and C2C Pulse are where it's at for me. Squad heal functions as a personal buff, as well as to help any other teammates from a distance out of a quick jam, and C2C pulse works better than a shield. You can just sit in front of a gatling gun with that activated and soak up the bullets without a problem, as it heals not only the agents around you, but you as well.

C2C, Damage Link. I like the concepts of the other apps, but they just don't hold up in adrenaline to utility usage.

virus and damage link but might swap out damage link as it expires too quickly