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Reave is a biotic power in Mass Effect 2 and Mass Effect 3's single-player and multiplayer modes.

Reave employs mass effect fields to biotically attack the target's nervous or synthetic systems and prevent healing.

Mass Effect 2[]

Reave

Damages target's nervous or synthetic systems to prevent healing. Restores health and gives a temporary health bonus when the power is used against organics. Reave also deals double damage to armor and barriers.

Power Ranks[]

  • Rank 1 - Biotically attacks the target's nervous or synthetic system and disables any health regeneration. When used against organics, this field regenerates the biotic's health and provides a temporary health bonus. Reave also does double damage to armor and barriers.
    • Recharge Time: 6.00s (Shepard); 12.00s (Others)
    • Damage: 40.00 points per second for 3.00 seconds
  • Rank 2 - Biotically attacks the target's nervous or synthetic system and disables any health regeneration. When used against organics, this field regenerates the biotic's health and provides a temporary health bonus. Reave also does double damage to armor and barriers.
    • Recharge Time: 6.00s (Shepard); 12.00s (Others)
    • Damage: 40.00 points per second for 3.50 seconds
  • Rank 3 - Biotically attacks the target's nervous or synthetic system and disables any health regeneration. When used against organics, this field regenerates the biotic's health and provides a temporary health bonus. Reave also does double damage to armor and barriers.
    • Recharge Time: 6.00s (Shepard); 12.00s (Others)
    • Damage: 40.00 points per second for 4.00 seconds

Rank 4

Evolves Reave into one of the following options:

Heavy Reave[]

  • The biotic focuses on snuffing out a single target's life, increasing the Reave's strength, duration, and damage.
    • Recharge Time: 6.00s (Shepard); 12.00s (Others)
    • Damage: 40.00 points per second for 5.50 seconds

Area Reave[]

  • The biotic becomes a vortex of life, increasing the Reave's radius to affect multiple targets.
    • Recharge Time: 6.00s (Shepard); 12.00s (Others)
    • Damage: 40.00 points per second for 4.00 seconds
    • Impact Radius: 3.00 meters

Player Notes[]

  • This power travels in a straight line from the user to the target, hitting instantly.
  • Reave can also hit enemies behind the physical shields they employ by bypassing those physical shields such as Collector Guardians in Mass Effect 2 or Guardians in Mass Effect 3. This "bypassing" effect doesn't work with normal cover that enemies hide behind.
  • Reave cannot auto-target an enemy unless its cursor info is available, limiting its usefulness at range. This can be mitigated by using a sniper rifle, then triggering the power while targeting an enemy with the rifle's scope.
  • When used against their unprotected health bars, Reave will permanently disable the healing of enemies that can self-regenerate, such as vorcha and krogan.
  • Reave has a disabling effect when used to leech health from most humanoid targets. Organic enemies will double over momentarily before being forced to a standing position as the leech effect continues; while synthetics like geth can be stunned, health cannot be leached from them and they will recover much faster[1].
    • Enemies disabled by Reave are considered "ragdolled" and take double damage from weapons. However, the Reave effect does not lift targets and thus cannot be detonated by Warp.
    • This can be used to set up victims for the killing shot as they are helpless and largely immobile.
    • If a target is hit with Reave again while in its doubling-over animation, it will complete the current animation sequence only; however, damage over time continues, and can stack.
  • Damage against protections (armor/barriers/shields) is instant. If a protected enemy would take enough damage that both its protection and health would be damaged, the health damage is instantaneous as well.
    • Enemy health regeneration cannot be cancelled when Reave is used this way; however, the instant bonuses to the user's health are applied if an organic enemy's health is damaged even slightly (see additional notes on the life drain below).
    • While Reave only deals bonus damage to enemy armor and barriers, the damage is still substantial to health and shields. Area Reave in particular can be perfectly viable to use against groups of shielded light enemies.
  • Damage and Duration: Reave's damage is scaled by duration.
    • It will therefore do less damage on Insanity as power duration is scaled by 0.8.
    • Power duration upgrades/abilities will increase damage and stack additively before being multiplied by the Insanity penalty[2].
    • Damage dealt to protections, despite being applied instantly, is still affected by duration modifiers.
    • Power duration is scaled down for large enemies (e.g. 70% against krogan, 60% against heavy mechs). However, damage is not scaled down.
    • On Insanity, with the 20% Biotic Duration upgrade, Heavy Reave does slightly more damage than Heavy Warp.
  • Life Drain: Reave applies following drain effects if used against health (red bar) of organic enemies[3]:
    1. increases maximum health by an amount equal to its total damage,
    2. instantly restores a portion of health equal to its total damage,
    3. slowly restores health over time at a rate equal to its damage per second.
      • All these components are affected by damage and duration upgrades.
      • The bonus to maximum health and instant health restoration (effects #1 and #2) are not affected by the amount of actual health damage dealt—attacking an enemy with only a sliver of health left or using up the majority of damage for stripping a protection first and barely touching health will still apply the full effects. The health restoration over time (effect #3) will not apply unless Reave hits totally unprotected health. As explained above, this is also the only scenario in which Reave deals damage over time as opposed to instantly, and where enemy health regeneration can be halted.
      • Both health restoration effects (#2 and #3) scale with the number of opponents hit, but the bonus to maximum user health (#1) does not, nor does it stack with subsequent uses.
      • The bonus to maximum health always lasts 30 seconds and is unaffected by duration upgrades. It will remain in effect even if the original target dies or the user's health is partially depleted.

Availability[]

Mass Effect 3[]

ME3 Reave

Power Ranks[]

Rank 1: Reave[]

Drain target's health and disrupt their resistances, receiving increased damage protection while this power is in effect.

Effective against barriers and armor.

  • Recharge Time: 8 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 4 seconds
  • Damage Reduction: 15%


Rank 2: Recharge Speed[]

Increase recharge speed by 25%.

  • Recharge Time: 6.40 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 4 seconds
  • Damage Reduction: 15%


Rank 3: Duration[]

Increase power duration by 35%.

  • Recharge Time: 6.40 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 5.40 sec
  • Damage Reduction: 15%


Rank 4: Duration/Radius[]

Duration

Increase power duration by 40%.

  • Recharge Time: 6.40 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 7 sec
  • Damage Reduction: 15%

Radius

Increase impact radius by 3 meters.


Rank 5: Damage Reduction/Recharge Speed[]

Damage Reduction

Increase damage protection by 10%.

  • Recharge Time: 6.40 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 7 sec (Duration), 5.40 sec (Radius)
  • Damage Reduction: 25%

Recharge Speed

Increase recharge speed by 35%.

  • Recharge Time: 5 sec
  • Damage Per Second: 70 (100 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 7 sec (Duration), 5.40 sec (Radius)
  • Damage Reduction: 15%


Rank 6: Barriers & Armor/Damage & Duration[]

Barriers & Armor

Increase effectiveness against armor and barriers by 75%.

Damage & Duration

Increase damage by 30%.
Increase duration by 30%.
Increase damage protection bonus by 15%.

  • Recharge Time: 6.40 sec (Damage Reduction), 5 sec (Recharge Speed)
  • Damage Per Second: 91 (130 Asari Justicar)
  • Duration: 8.20 sec (Duration), 6.60 sec (Radius)
  • Damage Reduction: 40% (Damage Reduction), 30% (Recharge Speed)


Player Notes[]

Mechanics
  • This power travels in a straight line from the user to the target, hitting instantly.
  • Reave will prevent the health regeneration of Cannibals and Phantoms but only while it is active, not permanently as it did in Mass Effect 2.
  • Reave can also hit enemies behind the physical shields they employ by bypassing those physical shields such as Collector Guardians in Mass Effect 2 or Guardians in Mass Effect 3. This "bypassing" effect doesn't work with terrain-based cover that enemies hide behind.
  • Damage Protection: In contrast to Mass Effect 2, Reave no longer restores health or stuns enemies, but it does grant a temporary damage-reduction bonus when used. This effect is visible as a violet sheen on the user when active.
    • The damage reduction buff applies regardless of what type of enemy protection layer is hit; however, it will only apply if used against organic targets, not synthetic targets such as mechs, turrets, or geth.
    • While this change may seem to make Reave less useful against weaker enemies, the damage-reduction bonus provided by Mass Effect 3's Reave lasts the power's full duration, even if the affected enemy dies before the power wears off. As a result, it is equally as effective against an enemy with full health as against an enemy near death.
  • Reave is one of three biotic powers that can both set up and detonate Biotic Explosions on any enemy without caveats (the other two being Warp and Annihilation Field). This makes it very useful in a biotics-heavy party. However, unlike the other powers, Reave cannot also be used to detonate other types of Power Combos.
  • Detonating Reave will not cancel its damage over time or damage reduction effects.
  • The damage-over-time effect of Reave will stack with multiple uses, draining an enemy even faster.[4] With the Radius evolution one can then rapidly take multiple threats out of the fight.
  • The damage and combo-triggering effects of Reave work normally on all types of targets and protections without restriction.
  • Reave staggers some lower-rank enemies on impact.
  • Although it doesn't show on the kill log in multiplayer, Reave instantly kills all Swarmers in its area of effect.
Strategies
  • Because Reave staggers weaker enemies and impacts instantaneously, it can be used as a crowd control tool. This has a greater impact if the Radius evolution is selected, potentially allowing it to topple entire groups of enemies.
  • As noted above, the effect of Reave is instantaneous (similar to Overload). This makes it a very efficient power for setting up or detonating Biotic Explosions as it can't be dodged and applies to any target.
  • With the Radius evolution, Reave can prime more than one target for biotic combos regardless of their protection status. Combine this with biotic powers that can detonate more than one combo per use such as the "Double Throw" evolution of Throw (single-player only), Cluster Grenades, or Shockwave.
  • The damage-over-time of Reave is useful for preventing enemy shields or barriers from starting to recharge, especially on higher difficulties where the delay before recharging begins is much shorter.

Availability[]

References[]

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