'Mass Effect: Andromeda' Best Builds: You won't need guns with this amazing biotics build

In Mass Effect: Andromeda, you have an almost overwhelming amount of choices when it comes to creating a build for your character. You can choose to invest solely in one skill tree — tech, biotics or combat — or mix skills from all three. It's a system that allows for a lot of creative freedom, but you can easily create a character that doesn't mesh all that well if you're not careful.

Through my own time playing, I've created a biotics-only build that's a total powerhouse. It revolves around using one's own shield as a source for dishing out damage, and then using another ability to restore those shields. It's risky, but when it works — oh boy, does it work. In most fights, I rarely even have to use guns anymore. 

Here's what it looks like in action:

Here's how to do it.

Best Mass Effect: Andromeda Builds: Biotics-only powerhouse

Since this is a biotics-only build, I'm using the adept profile. The three active abilities you'll want are pull, lance and charge. The two most crucial portions of the build revolve around the shield-powered upgrade for lance — which eliminates its cooldown but drains your shields with every use — and the bastion upgrade for charge — which restores your shields back to full.

So you'll open fights using a combination of pull and lance, then charge directly at enemies to restore your shields once they're totally drained. It's counter-intuitive to charge directly at enemies when you're weakened, making this a high-risk, high-reward build — but it's so incredibly satisfying.

For my passive skills, I focused first on offensive biotics and barrier, but haven't delved too much into containment yet.

Here's the full list of upgrades I'm using for pull, lance and charge at rank four and beyond — the point in each skill tree where you actually have to start choosing between one of two upgrades. You can surely make different choices than I did, but the shield-powered upgrade for lance and the bastion upgrade for charge are what make this build work.

Pull

In terms of weapons, you'll want to go relatively light to make sure your cooldowns don't get hampered. This whole build places emphasis on your powers anyway, so you'll only need to use weapons in tougher battles.

Right now, I have a shotgun and a pistol equipped. The shotgun is for those moments after charging where I can't afford to spend my shields by using lance and need to get an enemy out of my face ASAP. I rarely, if ever, use the pistol, but I can afford to carry it without reducing my cooldowns, so I keep it around for good measure.

As I play more, I'll share any other cool builds I come across.

More Mass Effect: Andromeda news and updates

For more on everyone's favorite space opera, check out the rest of what Mic has to offer. Here's an essay on the troubling history of colonialism in Mass Effect, a story about the horrifying harassment campaign carried out against a former BioWare employee, a look at the #MakeJaalBi fan movement and an overview of the historic lack of gay romance options in Mass Effect.