Build Title: Saboteur Strikes Again!

Class: Turian Saboteur Engineer

Map Difficulty Rating: This build has the potential for Platinum gameplay

Power Evolutions:

Sentry Turret: N/A

Sabotage: (4) Backfire, (5) Explosive Hack, (6) Tech Vulnerability

Homing Grenade: (4) Radius, (5) Fire Damage, (6) Armor Damage

Armiger Legion: (4) Damage & Capacity, (5) Power Damage, (6) Damage & Stability

Fitness: (4) Durability, (5) Shield Recharge, (6) Fitness Expert

Weapons:

My favourite weapon on this class is the Particle Rifle with Piercing Mod and Extended Magazine. The Particle Rifle is excellent at triggering ammo powers so that’s why we use it. Other options include: N7 Hurricane with SMG Recoil Systems and High-Velocity Barrel; Cerberus Harrier with Extended Mazagine and Piercing Mod; M-11 Wraith with High-Velocity Barrel and Spare Thermal Clip; M-358 Talon with Pistol Heavy Barrel and Piercing Mod. You can also take the Acolyte with Pistol Heavy Barrel (or High Caliber Barrel if you don’t have it) and Ultralight Materials as a sidearm.

Gear:

You’ll want Incendiary Rounds with this guy; using sustained weapon fire to prime and then detonating with Homing Grenade because that’ll be half of all your tech bursts. Use Cyclonic Modulators for armor bonus or Power Efficiency Module. You want to use Sabotage often, but it has the same base cooldown as Biotic Charge and its even longer if your weapon is low level or heavy. Use the respective weapon bonus for the weapon you’re using and use Grenade Capacity for the gear bonus.

Strategy:

The recent change to Sabotage has just made the Turian Saboteur all the more useable and likeable. He was pretty fun to begin with, his powers go well together but he’s a bit different to play as in regards to the other Armiger Legion Turians.

You want to skip Sentry Turret, this is because he is a bit more fragile than the other Turians, plus Sentry Turret isn’t an amazing power especially considering his other two powers are vastly superior. For Sabotage, you want Backfire. This is the gold of Sabotage, once an organic enemy is hit with Sabotage and tries to shoot, that’s when Backfire deals damage and primes the target for a Tech Burst. At Rank 5, Explosive Hack is incredibly handy for Geth, and Cerberus Turrets and Atlases. In saying that, if you don’t intend to play Geth or Cerberus with this class often then go for Recharge Speed so you can spam Sabotage for tech bursts. Tech Vulnerability is half the reason you spec into Sabotage (the other being Backfire), its 50% more tech damage to targets for 10 seconds. I believe that Homing Grenade will receive that damage bonus because it is a tech grenade. As for Homing Grenade, Radius allows Homing Grenade to stretch as wide as Sabotage. Fire Damage gives Homing Grenade a nice amount of DoT but does not set up Fire Explosions. And Armor Damage makes Homing Grenade amazing against bosses. You need to spec into Homing Grenade to get Tech Bursts out of Sabotage, as it is your only detonating power. For the passive, you want maximum Power Damage, followed by Damage and Stability at Rank 6 for improved weapon damage and control. Finally, Fitness is all shields.

The Turian Saboteur is better against Cerberus and Geth because Sabotage better against than Reapers and Collectors solely because of Sabotage. But no matter what enemy you are up against, you will need Sabotage! Between the minions and bosses, you’ll have to switch from Sabotage and Homing Grenade to gunfire and Homing Grenade. This is for the Tech Bursts and Fire Explosions. The strategy for the organic trooper enemies is to prime them with Sabotage. Because Backfire only affects organic enemies, they’ll hurt themselves a few seconds after Sabotage does its damage and that is what primes them. That’s when you launch the grenade. Geth can be mowed down with Sabotage and gunfire, with Homing Grenades for clusters of enemies and Pyros/Bombers. At mid-tier armored foes, you’re better to switch to gunfire and Homing Grenades. Sustained fire from the Particle Rifle with Incendiary Rounds III or IV should prime the target rather quickly, only to be followed up with Homing Grenade, causing massive damage because the targets are armored and doing additional damage for the Fire Explosion. Finally for our big bosses (Atlas, Prime, Banshee, Praetorian), Sabotage will hack Atlases and Primes which is a hilarious feat. And fast-fire Assault Rifles are some of the weapons against shields. Once the bosses have their shields down, abuse Fire Explosions with Incendiary ammo and Homing Grenades.

The Turian Saboteur has the least room for error in terms of every Turian in the game. The basic Sentinel has Tech Armor for enhanced Protection, the basic Soldier has Proximity Mine for staggering, and the Ghost and the Havoc have Stimulant Pack. Even after the nerf of it, it still applies a massive survivability bonus to the Turians, and not having that requires maxed shields and smarter play. He is very grenade dependant, as that is half of his damage output. He’s flawed, but wholly useable. He is the only engineer to have Sabotage which is an incredibly handy power and who doesn’t like Homing Grenade? The downside is that since the lowered the cooldown time of Sabotage, but weakening its damage in the process, it has made his Sabotage the weakest in terms of Backfire damage; but remember, we’re using it mostly for the Tech Bursts. Plus, this is all on a Turian, meaning you get the handy stability bonuses to help handle those weapons with shocking recoil.

N00b Rating:

3.5 – The Turian Saboteur is neat, has a great skill set, has Turian weapon stability and an awesome dodge. But the lack of Stimulant Pack makes him harder to use over the other two Retaliation Turian characters. Still powerful, you’ll base this one around power damage unlike the other two, but you’ll still benefit from the weapon handling. For those using the Particle Rifle, at lower levels it is quite heavy and you need to be very carefully to not run the clip dry, or you’ll suffer that tragic and deadly 3 second warm-up period. Practice makes perfect.