Name: HK-47 (Huntress-Killer 47)

Class: Alliance Infiltration Unit Infiltrator

Map Difficulty Rating: This build has the potential for Gold gameplay, Platinum gameplay is untested.

Power Evolutions:

Tactical Cloak: (4) Weapon Damage, (5) Recharge Speed, (6) Shotgun Damage

Snap Freeze: (4) Damage

Repair Matrix: (4) Survivability, (5) Charge Capacity, (6) Enhanced Repair Matrix

Unshackled AI: (4) Weapon Damage, (5) Power Damage*, (6) Weapon Damage

Fitness Module: (4) Durability

*Personal preference, I went with Power Damage to strengthen Snap Freeze

Weapons

Any shotgun that keeps your recharge speed at least 100% is ideal as you’ll want to be cloaking a lot to maximize your damage outputs. I prefer the Wraith with the barrel attachment as I feel it’s the most versatile; it’s essentially a lightweight Claymore at this point with an extra shot in the clip (see below). Other options include the Disciple and the Eviscerator, also with damage mods. A thermal clip or accuracy mod is recommended, but not imperative.

If you prefer to go for higher damage at the expense of longer cooldowns, then go with the Graal Spike Thrower, AT-12 Raider, N7 Crusader, or M-300 Claymore. Do keep in mind that both the Crusader and Claymore have little room for error, with the former being insanely precise and the latter having only one shot per clip.

Gear:

For the Weapon bonus, roll with a rail amp. Shotguns, of course.

For permanent gear, use either the Shotgun Amp, or the Shock Trooper Upgrade. I personally recommend the Shotgun Amp as you get a better damage bonus. I’ll explain in the strategy section.

For the Ammo bonus, I’ve found Incendiary rounds work best. I’ll explain this as well in the strategy section.

For the Armor Bonus, just use whatever’s comfortable, though I would recommend the Power Efficiency Module for further reduced cooldowns.

Strategy:

“Query: Is there something you need killed, master?” – HK-47, Star Wars: the Knights of the Old Republic 2: the Sith Lords

Your Systems Alliance-built “huntress-killer” assassination gynoid is ready to serve. This curvy little robot may not look like much, but she packs a shotgun and is more than eager to let you know how she uses it. Just follow a few simple steps and your huntress-killer will lay waste to any meatbags (metalbags) that dare threaten the peace of the galaxy (or really anything else if you just ask, like that one doctor who stole Jacob from your FemShep  ).

Now, while you *can* go balls-out and charge into the fray thanks to the extra

shields and the Repair Matrix, your huntress-killer works far better if you focus on her namesake: hunting and killing (not necessarily in that order). Break off from the rest of the group and eliminate anything that might wanna try and cause some problems. That said, the strategy is pretty simple: find an enemy, cloak, aim shotgun, spread brains or other major internal/external organs across 10-foot radius, laugh, repeat. Good times.

Of course, your damage dealing doesn’t stop there. Maybe you’d like your enemies to chill out for a bit before you start performing rather brutal surgery with your shotgun. Or maybe you’d like to light them ablaze, then shock-freeze them into millions of little pieces (hence the Incendiary rounds – they can prime a tech combo with Snap Freeze). Or maybe you’d like to reenact a few Mortal Kombat characters by cloaking then uppercutting them into oblivion? Cloaking then shotgunning will be your primary method of dealing damage, but if you’re looking for better experience gains, you certainly have plenty of options.

If you’re quick enough on the controls, you can fire your shotgun *and* Snap Freeze an enemy before the cloak physically breaks (but it has to be in that order). The timing is a little tricky to pull off, but if you can do it consistently, you’ll maximize your overall effectiveness that much more.

Keep in mind is that you don’t have a lot of time to cloak, so try to be quick with your huntress-killing to maximize your effectiveness for the rest of the sortie. Also, for objectives, be vigilant if you happen to find yourself volunteering for enabling/disabling the 4 nodes – the cloak may last just long enough to get enemies to redirect their attention, but try not to rely on that (especially the “smart” enemies like dragoons and geth bombers).

So, the offensive capabilities of this sexy little huntress-killer are all fine and dandy, right? How does the Repair Matrix fit into all this, you may (or may not) be wondering? Simple, young padawan – if your shields ever drop (and let’s be real: they WILL), just activate your matrix, flip some ways away from the gunfire and you’re good to go. And should you actually go down while your matrix is active, you’ll stand right back with full health (it still counts as a “death” however). But so long as you’re not swarmed, you’ll actually regain shields faster than you lose them (similar to the vorchas’ Bloodlust and the krogans’ Rage).

Your huntress-killer may not be the best choice for most objectives – especially enabling/disabling the 4 nodes – but one objective where she’ll be particularly effective is Object Retrieval, since you get a speed boost while the Repair Matrix is active. Find the object, grab it, activate your matrix (since this particular build almost completely negates the speed penalty), and you and your sortie will be getting paid in no time. 

 Another thing that’s great about the Repair Matrix is that it functions a bit like a grenade. That means that it’s impervious to certain “breakdown” attacks like getting hit by a seeker swarm; so long as you’re not in hit-stun or preoccupied with an objective (the aforementioned 4 nodes, to be specific), you can activate your matrix at almost any time. Also, when active, the Repair Matrix overrides the “recharge penalty” from cloaking, so that’ll be one less thing you’ll have to worry about.

If/when you get up from the repair algorithms doing their repair algorithms, remember that there’s a slight delay before active control of your huntress-killer is given back to you. So before you start drumming that button trying to activate your matrices to restore your shields, nothing will actually happen until your character is up and able to move freely. Also, the Repair Matrix doesn’t revive you from insta-kills.

Now… remember when I said that if you so chose, you could forgo the Shotgun Amp for the Shock Trooper Upgrade? Here’s why: the Shock Trooper Upgrade gives you a shotgun damage boost in addition to *extra grenades*. Extra grenades means *extra charges for your Repair Matrix*. The trade off with this is that you end taking a slight hit in shotgun damage (+12% shotgun damage at max level vs +15% shotgun damage from the Shotgun Amp). It’s entirely up to you how you wanna go about your huntress-killing.

Since the Repair Matrix qualifies as a grenade, you can go with a Grenade Capacity mod to expand your repair charge count, if you feel so inclined. I don’t recommend that however – you’ll be forgoing extra shotgun damage in favor of a couple of extra charges you may not even need.

N00b Rating:

3 – As mentioned before, you won’t have a lot of time to cloak, so you have be quick on you huntress-killing. But if you stick to whittling down the enemy meatbags (or metalbags), things become easier for everyone involved, and everyone gets paid.

“It is my primary function to burn holes through meatbags that you wish removed.”