Vanguard Guide (Mass Effect 3)

Feared frontline opponents, Vanguards favor a biotic charge that immediately brings them in contact with opposing forces with a devastating effect.

Overview
Many of the vanguard's powers are offensively-oriented, albeit each one has a different function. While a solid weapon helps, one of the better ideas for a vanguard is to keep your recharge times low--not least because Biotic Charge restores your barriers, allowing you to keep in the thick of the fight as long as you can keep Charging enemies.

A Charge can be immediately followed by a Nova for grenade-like damage within at least 5 meters. Charge also gives you a moment of slowdown in singleplayer, letting you line up a point-blank shotgun blast.

The Vanguard has no easy way to reduce shields aside from shooting them down or one of the Nova evolutions, and shields counter a couple of the Vanguard powers.

Biotic Charge
One of your first and best weapons. Charge inflicts damage, can throw enemies, and restores your barriers. With some practice and minimized recharge times, allows

Cryo Ammo
Equip this on an SMG or assault rifle and spray down groups of enemies before you charge into them. At least a few will be frozen or otherwise hindered, making it marginally safer for you--and making Nova all the more devastating, as frozen enemies take more damage.

Incendiary Ammo
Incendiary ammo hurts armor and inflicts a burning damage-over-time time effect good enough to finish out enemies that are wounded to the last two blocks of health.

Nova
Nova explodes your barriers to deal damage to everyone within its radius, like a living grenade. Charge restores your barriers. The two go together very well, and following up a Charge with a Nova can outright kill assault troopers, cannibals, and geth troopers on Normal difficulty. If you're defending a spot against enemies coming to you, the Charge-Nova combo can become Nova-Charge-Nova, since Nova doesn't have a recharge time.

Pull
It brings enemies out of cover for squadmates and yourself to fire upon. Pull also yanks Guardian shields out of their hands, and it has a low recharge time. It's a good use of a few points.

Shockwave
Shockwave throws enemies and travels through cover. If you know an enemy's in cover and you're within range, Shockwave shake them out of it. It also does moderate damage and the low recharge time means that you may have it cooled down before they recover.

Fitness
Fitness gives some extra health and shields, essential aids for a vanguard, giving the amount of time they spend in the middle of enemy forces. It also boosts melee damage and weapon carrying capacity, all of which can help the Vanguard.

Bonus Power
Although Defense Matrix is considered a tech power, it synergies greatly with a Vanguard's other abilities. First, the damage reduction helps the close quarter specialist a lot. Second, purging instantly restores shield in the heat of the battle, this can greatly help when charging to restore shield would be suicidal or the player is trying to retreat to a safer location and his shield goes down. There is 60% cool-down penalty however, which can be mitigated by choosing a proper load out, armor and/or choosing one of the the 6th evolution that reduces penalty to 30%.

Weapons and Equipment
Mass Effect 3 opens up additional weapon possibilities beyond the shotgun/SMG/pistol combination available for most of Mass Effect 2, but since the Vanguard class is built around close combat and use of powers, a good shotgun and a lightweight overall loadout are both important.

If you're willing to spend the money, the Blood Dragon Armor gives bonuses to health, shields, power recharge times and power damage, all of which are useful to a vanguard. If you're willing to sacrifice the defense boosts, Inferno Armor gives a whopping +30% to both power damage and power recharge

Shotguns
A good shotgun is an important part of most Vanguard builds. Though each player's style will be different, it's useful to have a gun that is quick to fire, to take advantage of split-second opportunities available after Charge, and lightweight, in order to keep power recharge quick. A wide pellet spread can also be useful if you have trouble with fast-moving enemies at close range. The M-22 Eviscerator is an excellent choice because of it is well balanced with decent damage output, shot capacity per clip, and weight. It is available early in the game on the mission Grissom Academy: Emergency Evacuation. The M-11 Wraith is also a good choice -- it's similar to the Eviscerator in weight and handiness, but with somewhat higher damage and only two shots per clip instead of three.

For weapon upgrades, a shotgun-reliant Vanguard particularly benefits from the Shotgun Spare Thermal Clip upgrade, to avoid having to worry about ammunition. The Shotgun High Caliber Barrel upgrade is also useful if you rely on weapon damage, or the Shotgun Blade Attachment if you melee frequently. It's a good idea to prioritize upgrading your shotgun to level 5 over upgrades to other weapons -- most shotguns are heavy, making weight reduction important, and the extra damage and ammunition capacity are also handy.

The Disciple is arguably the best shotgun for Vanguards that wish to use their powers as often as possible without sacrificing their damage output at close range. It is the lightest shotgun with high damage and good accuracy.

Submachine guns
A submachine gun is a useful short to medium range weapon for a Vanguard. An SMG is not as useful with Charge as a shotgun, but it's handy for situations where Charge isn't advisable, such as when facing enemies that can instantly kill at close range. The M-4 Shuriken is a surprisingly capable SMG for the early game, with decent accuracy and damage. Later on, the M-9 Tempest improves on the Shuriken's damage output, at the cost of long-range accuracy. Additionally, the M-25 Hornet has a relatively long range for a submachine gun, but has low accuracy.

Any Vanguard carrying an SMG will benefit greatly from the SMG Ultralight Materials upgrade, which can reduce the weight of the gun by up to 90%, allowing faster power cooldown. Other upgrades are very dependent on the particular gun and play style, though most SMGs have too much recoil to benefit from the SMG scope. Upgrading the SMG's level is less critical than other weapons unless you use it heavily, since its weight can be brought down with the ultralight materials upgrade.

Heavy pistols
The heavy pistol is the Vanguard's classic answer to enemies at long range. There are a variety of effective heavy pistols in the game, but some of the more exotic ones such as the Scorpion or the Arc Pistol are also quite heavy. The starting M-3 Predator is fairly effective and very lightweight; notable later weapons include the M-5 Phalanx, which is essentially a more powerful version of the Predator, and the M-6 Carnifex, which is extremely powerful but has only six shots per clip; the M-77 Paladin has higher damage than any of the conventional heavy pistols, and is limited only by its low magazine capacity of 4 rounds.

Since a Vanguard will mostly be using heavy pistols at long ranges, a very useful upgrade is the Heavy Pistol Scope Upgrade, which turns the pistol into a sort of jury-rigged sniper rifle. The magnification and accuracy improvement are very useful at long range, especially with powerful pistols with small magazines, such as the Carnifex. Other upgrades are a matter of preference, though if you primarily use the pistol at long ranges the melee stunner will probably not see much use. Since heavy pistols are somewhat heavy, don't have weight-reducing modifications, and may be a major tool for dealing with enemies at long range, upgrading their level should be a second-tier priority, after heavier weapons such as shotguns.

Sniper rifles
Sniper rifles are quite a bit unconventional choice for Vanguards, given they are the close quarter combat specialists; however, sporting a lightweight, rapid-firing, and fully-upgraded sniper rifle like a Level X M-90 Indra or M-13 Raptor can make a very versatile Vanguard. These snipers enable the Vanguard to safely pick off enemies from afar when charging at them would be suicidal, especially on higher difficulties. Combined with proper ammo upgrade the Level X M-90 Indra can have almost 45 shots and it also can be fired without the scope similar to an assault rifle with very low muzzle climb. Just by carrying an Level X M-90 Indra and Level X Disciple, one could have a versatile Vanguard who can adapt to any situation even on higher difficulties, while also making sure the power recharge cooldown delay stays to a minimum.

Combat Guide
Because of the changes to the biotic explosion mechanics in Mass Effect 3, the Vanguard can benefit greatly from using two biotic squadmates with the "set-up" powers Reave, Warp, or Dark Channel. Because these powers can adhere to targets through armor, shields, and barriers, you can produce serial biotic detonations on many targets. The tactic benefits if cooldown times are kept low on all powers involved, as well as from upgrades to powers' detonation potency. You should use the first squadmate's set-up power, followed by charging the target to detonate. Then, use the second squadmate's set-up power, followed by Nova, to produce a second detonation. By this time, the cooldowns for the first set-up power and biotic charge should be over, or almost over, and the process can be repeated. Because detonations stagger nearby enemies, you are somewhat protected from retaliation. Charge can also detonate other powers, such as Overload.

With a lightweight weapon loadout and an emphasis on cooldown-reducing upgrades and armor pieces, the cooldown on Charge may be extremely short, allowing an extremely aggressive play style. Especially with cooldown speed bonuses of +100% or greater, a Vanguard can charge one enemy in a group (optionally detonating another squadmate's power), kill a few enemies with Nova or their shotgun, then charge again to replenish their barrier. This sort of tactic is extremely effective, even on insanity (however you may need to focus more on faster cooldowns than what would be enough on Normal difficulty), and can allow a Vanguard to destroy an enemy force with great speed; the only time it becomes problematic is when facing tough opponents with powerful close-range attacks, such as Banshees or Brutes, although it can still be feasible if you make sure to dive away from the enemy immediately after coming out of Charge.

The Vanguard's combat approach in multiplayer should be much different from singleplayer. Rather than using Charge to get into the thick of the action, it should be "held in reserve" for when the player loses their shields or needs to make a quick getaway. One should resist the urge to charge every enemy in sight and to instead plan out their attack and (more importantly) escape route if things go sour. As funny as it sounds, the Vanguard is a thinking man's (or woman's) class for those that want to use it the most effectively.

Squad Members
Biotic squadmates, such as Kaidan Alenko, Liara T'Soni, or Javik synergize well with Vanguards, because of their ability to set up biotic detonations.

Liara's Singularity is unparalleled at setting up large numbers of unprotected enemies close to each other, and her warp can adhere to targets through protections. These powers allow vanguards to maximize the potential of their signature charge.

If you have downloaded the From Ashes DLC, Javik is a great squadmate because of his unique Dark Channel power. Because the channel will leap to the closest enemy when its current target dies, the Vanguard can use it for serial detonations on low-level enemies.

Vanguards notably lack methods of dealing effectively with shields. For this reason, squadmates such as Garrus Vakarian, EDI, Kaidan Alenko, or Ashley Williams are useful for their access to Overload, or, in Ashley's case, Disruptor Ammo.