General information | Character profiles Mass Effect: Andromeda Guide
Last update: 11 April 2017
Despite the fact that Mass Effect Andromeda doesn't have any class system implemented, there are profiles one can choose from. Those are, in general, specializations of a character and their effectiveness depends heavily on the distribution of skill points across all of the skill trees. Each profile gives various bonuses and special passive abilities, offering a tremendous boost to the character and allowing the player to fully customize the character to their liking.
At the start of the game most of the profiles will be locked, as they require certain amount of skill points to be invested in specific skill trees (Combat, Biotics and Tech). However, you will quickly gain access to most of them. Each profile has 6 levels and you can freely swap between different ones at any moment, even during combat. The available profiles are as follows:
- Soldier,
- Engineer,
- Adept,
- Sentinel,
- Vanguard,
- Infiltrator,
- Explorer.
Additionally, those are divided into three groups:
- "Pure" profiles - those that focus on a single skill tree. Those are Soldier (Combat tree), Engineer (Tech tree) and Adept (Biotics tree). Those require 6 / 24 / 54 / 99 / 156 / 232 points to be invested in a particular skill tree to advance them to 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th / 5th / 6th level.
- Hybrid profiles - those that focus on two skill trees at once. Those are Sentinel (Biotics and Tech trees), Vanguard (Combat and Biotics trees) and Infiltrator (Combat and Tech threes). Those require 3 / 12 / 27 / 50 / 78 / 116 points to be invested in a pair of skill trees to advance them to 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th / 5th / 6th level.
- Jack of all trades - combining the skills of Combat, Tech and Biotics. There's only one profile here, Explorer. It requires 2 / 8 / 18 / 33 / 52 / 78 points to be invested in all skill trees to advance it to 1st / 2nd / 3rd / 4th / 5th / 6th level.
You should familiarize yourself with each and every one of them (descriptions of them can be found in the following chapters of this guide), as this will allow you to drastically alter the gameplay - Adept will allow you to harass enemies from a safe distance with powerful Biotic Powers, but if you use both Biotic powers and firearms, you should switch to Vanguard to gain bonuses to both of those skill trees.
Before you venture to the chapters about specific profiles, you should read the following tips:
- Remember that you can swap the profile at any moment, even during combat. All you have to do is to pause the game, enter the Profiles screen and change it.
- If you were building your character around one of the profiles and you want to change it now, don't worry - just head to the respec terminal (more on that in "How to respec your character?" chapter), reset skill points and redistribute them once more.
- Remember that it's generally a good idea to invest some skill points in a tree you're currently not using in a profile. If you are using, for instance, the Vanguard profile, a number of abilities from the Tech tree will still be useful to you.