In light of the recent influx of new players to Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer, I decided to make a guide for these new players in order to explain game mechanics and to show how to use the base characters effectively so that they may move up to the higher difficulties sooner. Some of the content of this guide is just my personal opinions and advice (such as the character builds), and these are certainly not the only way to go about things.

Before I get started, it is important to remember that this is a cooperative multiplayer game. Your personal score is not what matters. Success as a group is what is important. The summed score of the group will be rewarded as experience at the end of the match and the credits from objectives are rewarded to everyone in the squad. Going off on your own to get some personal glory is a good way to get yourself taken down which reduces the team’s damage output and results in the enemy concentrating their damage output on fewer players. Working together helps matches be more successful and a coordinated group is far more powerful than any lone wolf can hope to be. Also, N7 rank and challenge points are not good indicators of a player’s skill so don’t just kick because someone has a low N7 rank or low challenge points points. Same goes for the opposite side of this, don’t assume that having someone with a high N7 rank or number of challenge points means that you are going to get a free ride through a game.

Starter Characters

I have made videos with each of the starter classes where I take each character through silver using only the started weapons, and without using any gear or equipment. I also have limited myself to using two of each consumable since that is what new players are limited to (I accidently used 3 missiles during the infiltrator game since I was trying to get a killstreak so that someone could finish a weekend objective). In addition to covering the starter characters, the videos also cover some tips/tricks that can help you out while playing multiplayer. Many of these additional tips/tricks are also detailed in this document with pointers to where they are discussed in the videos. The video playlist can be found here.

Human Adept

Gameplay video
Builds

Build used in the video
Since making this guide I have changed my human adept builds around a bit.

New build

This new build is slightly more survivable and since power damage evolutions do not increase combo damage the loss in damage output is minor.

The other build I use takes the damage evolutions on ranks 5 and 6 of singularity

Weapons

Since the human adept is a power class I would recommend using a lightweight loadout so as to maximize your recharge speed bonus. For starter weapons, I use the combination of the predator and the shuriken. Using only the avenger also works but it is not as effective as the predator against armor.

Notes

While singularity can prime boss enemies for biotic explosions, it is better to prime bosses with warp and then detonate with shockwave since both of these powers have evolutions that can increase the strength of the explosion.
Until you have piercing mods, shockwave will be the best way for this character to deal with guardians since shockwave will knock their shields out of the way temporarily.
Be especially wary of seeker plagues since this is a power class and they will temporarily render you effectively useless.

Human Soldier

Gameplay video
Builds

Weapons

The human soldier can work well with any of the starter weapons. For starter weapons, I use some combination of the avenger, mantis, and katana.

Notes

Until you have piercing mods, concussive shot will be the best way to deal with guardians since it will temporarily knock their shields out of the way. It is also possible to do this with frag grenades but doing so is a bit of a waste of a grenade.

Human Engineer

Gameplay video
Builds

Build used in the video
Since making this guide I have changed my human engineer builds around a bit.

New build

This new build is slightly more survivable and since power damage evolutions do not increase combo damage the loss in damage output is minor. I also decided I wanted to change up my combat drone a little with the new build having area shock, and the detonate evolution allows the drone to detonate tech combos when destroyed.

Other build

This build sacrifices the combat drone for more survivability and more weapon damage.

Weapons

Since the human engineer is a power class I would recommend using a lightweight loadout so as to maximize your recharge speed bonus. For starter weapons, I use the combination of the predator and the shuriken. Using only the avenger also works but it is not as effective as the predator against armor.

Notes

Until you have piercing mods, combat drone will be the best way to deal with guardians. Targeting a guardian and then casting combat drone will cause the drone to spawn right behind the guardian who will then turn around to attack your drone which allows you to shoot them from behind.
Be especially wary of seeker plagues since this is a power class since they will render you temporarily useless.

Human Sentinel

Gameplay video
Builds

Build used in the video
Since making this guide I have changed my human sentinel builds around a bit.

New build

This new build improves survivability quite a bit and since power damage evolutions do not increase combo damage the loss in damage output is minor.

Other build

The good old throw spamming build. This works fairly well on bronze and can still work somewhat decently on silver but it is very weak against bosses unless you have someone priming explosions for you.

Weapons

Since the human sentinel is a power class I would recommend using a lightweight loadout so as to maximize your recharge speed bonus. For starter weapons, I use the combination of the predator and the shuriken. Using only the avenger also works but it is not as effective as the predator against armor. I like to use the katana as my main weapon (if I am using the starter weapons) with the predator as a backup since I prefer to be in the thick of things.

Notes

Since most enemies can dodge projectile powers it is a good idea to use throw before warp so as to use up their dodge without wasting a warp cool down.
Until you have piercing mods, throw will be your best way to deal with guardians since it will temporarily knock their shields aside allowing you to shoot them.
Be especially wary of seeker plagues since this is a power class since they will render you temporarily useless.

Human Infiltrator

Gameplay video
Builds

Build used in the video
A more versatile build

Taking damage at rank 4 of tactical cloak is another option but this is at the expense of some utility.

Shotgun build

Taking power damage at rank 5 of alliance training is another option for sticky grenade builds.

Weapons

Weapons with large burst damage work best with the human infiltrator due to the mechanics of tactical cloak. For starter weapons, the mantis and katana both work well. It is a good idea to carry a backup weapon such as the predator or shuriken. Weapon weight is not a very big issue due to tactical cloak’s recharge mechanics.

Notes

Until you have piercing mods, you will need to either mailslot guardians or use tactical cloak to flank behind them to do damage. It is also possible to shoot their weapon hand and their feet.

Human Vanguard

Gameplay video
Builds

Build used in the video
Another option is to take power recharge at rank 5 of nova as this allows you to do large burst damage and increases the recharge speed of charge which improves survivability since you can recharge your barrier sooner. However, half blast has the advantage of preserving your shield gate which improves survivability in a different way.

Weapons

It is absolutely vital to keep your recharge bonus maximised with this character. For starter weapons, the katana is a good choice since the vanguard is a close quarters character. Having the predator or shuriken as a backup is a nice thing to have but I would recommend going without this until you have fully leveled them since they will weigh next to nothing at that point.

Notes

When playing this character you must be extra wary when it comes to insta kill enemies. If you charge an enemy that can insta kill it is a good idea to immediately dodge away to reduce your chance of being insta killed. However, it is still possible to be insta killed immediately after charging before you have a chance to dodge away so don’t be surprised if this happens.
Both charge and nova will knock guardians’ shields aside temporarily which will allow you to then shoot them until you have piercing mods. Guardians will sometimes manage to shield bash you when doing this which will stagger you.
Be especially wary of seeker plagues since this is a power class since they will render you temporarily useless.

Difficulties and Match Options

Mass Effect 3 multiplayer has four different difficulties: bronze, silver, gold, and platinum in order of increasing difficulty. Higher difficulties grant larger credit rewards and more experience (assuming that your squad is successful).

Selecting unknown map and/or unknown enemy will grant larger experience rewards. Selecting a hazard map also grants an experience bonus. Getting a hazard map through unknown map does not grant an additional bonus to experience gain.
Before you start moving up in difficulty it is a good idea to make sure you can play comfortably at the difficulty that you are currently on.

Bronze

Bronze (~15k credits) is the easiest of the difficulties and is the ideal for a brand new player as it is the most forgiving of the difficulties.

A successful unknown map /unknown enemy bronze game will award around 125k xp.
Fewer boss tier enemies will be encountered and fewer enemies in general will spawn over the course of each wave.
The starting weapons perform perfectly well on Bronze.

Silver

Silver (~30k credits) is a fairly significant step up from bronze when you first make the transition.

Silver rewards more experience than bronze as each wave has a larger budget and each enemy has a larger xp value.

A successful unknown map / unknown enemy silver game will award around 250k xp.

Boss tier enemies begin spawning in earlier waves with more appearing simultaneously, more enemies can spawn over the course of each wave, the damage reduction on armor is increased, and enemies have increased health and damage output.
Everything is also slightly sped up with players and enemies moving faster, powers recharging faster, and timed objectives completing more rapidly.
The starter weapons are still usable on this difficulty but they are not as effective.

Gold

Gold (~80k credits) is another step up in difficulty.

Gold rewards more experience than silver as there is another increase in wave budget and each enemy’s xp value is further increased.

A successful unknown map / unknown enemy gold game will award around 450k xp.

Boss tier enemies begin spawning even earlier and in even greater numbers, even more enemies spawn over the course of each wave, the damage reduction for armor is once again increased, and enemies have a further increase in health and damage output.
There is also another slight increase in game speed.
The starter weapons are mostly ineffective on gold due the increased damage reduction on armor (with the exception of the mantis) but they can still be used.

Platinum

Platinum (~150k credits) is boss crawl mode and is unique in that enemies from multiple factions will be encountered over the course of a game.

Wave budgets and enemy xp values are once again increased which results in an even larger experience award.
Large numbers of boss tier units are encountered on this difficulty with far fewer low tier enemies spawning, armor damage reduction is increased, and enemies have another increase in health and damage output.

Fewer enemies will spawn over the course of each wave than in gold since so few low tier enemies spawn which use up less of the wave budget.

Another increase is speed occurs.
The starter weapons are pretty much worthless on platinum since they cannot really get past the damage thresholds on armor (with the exception of the mantis) but you can still use them if you are crazy.

Equipment should be used when going into gold and platinum games as it will make the game go much more smoothly even if you think you don’t need it.

Many players will kick people who don’t use equipment on these difficulties.

Objective Waves

Waves 3, 6, and 10 are objective waves and completion of these objectives is how you earn credits. During objective waves, one of five objective types will appear which your team will then have to complete before time runs out or the mission will fail. Completing the objective in a timely fashion will reward bonus credits.

Running around and just killing enemies during objective waves instead of helping with the objective is a good way to irritate other players. If you do this, you may find that your teammates are not willing to revive you when you get taken down and some will vote to kick after the game.

Assassination

During assassination objectives, a sequence of four enemies must be killed. Killing a target grants additional time to kill the subsequent targets.
Tips/Tricks

“Switching the Spawn” (Adept 18:40, Vanguard 20:00): On silver and above, all four targets can be Atlases/Primes/Banshees/Praetorians which take more time to kill than lower tier enemies. If you can simultaneously take out the target, the other enemies of the same type that are currently on the map, and one or more lower tier enemy with a single missile, the next target should be one of the lower tier enemies rather than another enemy of the original type. On silver this is only really worth doing on wave 10 since the targets on earlier waves are not top tier enemies.

Devices

During devices objectives, a sequence of four devices must be enabled/disabled before the five minute timer runs out.
Tips/Tricks

Infiltrators are the best class for doing these objectives especially if they took duration spec in tactical cloak. If you are the only infiltrator on your team, it is generally expected that you will be the one to do these objectives.
Having more than one player enabling/disabling a device simultaneously will not speed up the process.
The device must be completely enabled/disabled for it to count as having been completed. Pausing partway through causes the enable/disable progress to reset for that device and you will have to start over.
The player who is enabling/disabling the device can be interrupted by being grabbed. It is a good idea to have someone watch over the player doing the objective to prevent this from hacking. However, the player who is watching over them should not stand too close to the objective since any area of effect attacks they attract will also hit the player doing the objective which could result in them being staggered off the device or getting taken down.
Some of the locations where devices appear are very exposed. If a device is at one of these locations, it is vital to draw the enemy’s attention away from the player doing the objective so that they may finish the objective without getting taken down.

Escort

During escort objectives, a drone appears at some location on the map and it must be escorted to another location on the map before the five minute timer runs out.
Tips/Tricks

The drone decides the route that you will take, no matter how terrible it may seem.
Having more players in the drone’s circle increases the drones’ movement speed which results in the objective getting done faster. If no players are in the circle, the drone will stop moving.
The drone will occasionally restore player shields and shock nearby enemies.
Having tactical cloak active while in the circle makes it so that you do not count towards the drone’s movement speed bonus.
This objective can be especially brutal on Firebase Rio if the drone spawns at the far end of the map which makes it even more vital that all players help with the objective.

Hacking

During hacking objectives, you and your teammates must upload data before the five minute timer runs out by holding a location on the map.
Tips/Tricks

Having more players in the upload circle increases the rate at which the data is uploaded and therefore reduces the total time it takes to do the objective.
Unlike drone objectives, using tactical cloak does not prevent you from helping with the objective.

Retrieval

During retrieval objectives, you and your teammates must take a sequence of two objects from the locations that they spawn to the LZ.
Tips/Tricks

Sprinting, dodging, using tactical cloak, using charge, using shadow strike, and using havok strike all cause you to drop the object.
Walking sideways or backwards lets you move faster while carrying an object unless you are playing a Krogan. For a Krogan, spamming light melee will increase your movement speed.
“Running the Pizza” (Soldier 19:10, Sentinel 8:30, Vanguard 9:40): It is possible to sprint with the objective if you do it a certain way. In order to do this, you must pick up the object, start to sprint with the object, and as soon as you drop the object, begin pressing the sprint button as fast as you can. If you are not hosting, being able to do this largely depends on how much lag there is.

Soloing Objectives

If you are the only person remaining during a device, hack, or escort objective and things are getting hot near the objective, it is a good idea to run away from the objective for a while in order to draw the enemies away before returning to do the objective, and rinse and repeat as necessary. However, make sure you keep an eye on the objective timer when doing this since you may not have enough time left to make this worth doing.

Extraction Wave

During the extraction, you must hold out for two minutes and be alive at the LZ when the timer runs out. Extracting grants you bonus credits along with XP that depends on how many players survive.

DO NOT CAMP THE LZ DURING THE EXTRACTION WAVE, doing so is a good way to get overwhelmed and killed. Instead, it is a good idea to stay away from the LZ until there is only about 20-30 seconds left on the timer and then run for the LZ. If you have missiles left, you can use them to quickly take out any troublesome groups of enemies that are in your way.

Consumables

You can not own more than 255 of each supply. When you first start playing you will only be able to carry two of each into a mission so use them wisely. The numbers in parenthesis are the current maximum carrying capacity that you can reach for a mission without using gear. Mission capacity upgrades are rare cards.

Missiles (6)

High damage, area of effect missile.
Useful for taking down powerful enemies or large groups of enemies.
You should try to save your missiles for the wave 10 objective and extraction wave. While powerful enemies can be difficult to take down, it is entirely doable with only your powers and weapons.

Ops Survival Packs (6)

Instantly restores your health and shields (if you are not hosting there will be a bit of a delay)
Grants temporary invulnerability from damage but you can still be sync killed.

Medi-Gel (6)

Use medi-gel to revive yourself after you are taken down.
You should only use medi-gel if your teammates cannot revive you or if you are about to be executed.\

It is especially important to be conservative with your medi-gel use when you are a new player since you can only carry two into a mission.
If it is an early wave, it probably isn’t worth using medi-gel.

Thermal Clip Pack (6)

Instantly refills your thermal clips and grenades.
Weapons in use are instantly reloaded.
Temporarily boosts your weapon damage.

Useful (And Some Not So Useful) Things

Cover

Hard Cover

Hard cover refers to actually entering cover by using the take cover button.
Being in hard cover provides excellent protection from enemy attacks, improves weapon accuracy/stability, and allows you to perform grabs on some enemies.

Don’t grab abominations unless your character’s grab animation removes enemies’ heads.

Hard cover restricts your ability to react to nearby threats,such as a grenade landing next to you or a sync kill capable enemy showing up next to you since you must exit cover before you can dodge or run away.

Soft Cover

Soft cover refers to placing a structure between you and the enemy.
So long as your crosshair is not blocked by the structure you will still be able to hit enemies.
Some enemy attacks, such as Praetorian lasers, can go straight through walls at this time so soft cover will not protect you in those cases.

Power Combos

Using certain powers in sequence results in combo detonations which do bonus damage.
To detonate a combo, a target must first be hit by a “priming” power and then hit with a “detonator” power that is dependent on the primer that is used.
The “priming” and “detonating” powers do not have to originate from the same player.
List of all "priming" and "detonating" powers for each combo type.
Combos deal more damage on higher difficulties to compensate for the increase in enemy defenses.
This thread gives more details about how combos work.

Damage Over Time (DOT)

Some enemies’ attacks apply a damage over time affect that will prevent your shields from regenerating even if you are in cover.
Examples

Atlas rocket attack
Swarmers
Banshee warp ball
Abomination explosion
Scion cannon shot

You can stop a DOT by using any action that restores shields including but not limited to using an ops survival pack, using adrenaline rush with the shield boost evolution, or using charge.

Executions

Once you are taken down enemies can execute you which leaves you dead until the end of the wave.
The most common execute is the stomp. If you see an enemy going to stomp you while you are taken down it is a good idea to use a medigel. If you see an enemy trying to do this to a teammate who has been taken down you can stagger the enemy to stop them or kill them if you can do so fast enough.
Not all enemies are capable of executing you once you are down. The following enemies are ones who can.

Cerberus: Troopers, Dragoons, and Atlases
Geth: Troopers, and Pyros
Reapers: Cannibals (eating you but this is slow), and Marauders
Collectors: Trooper, and Captain

Sync Kills

Some powerful enemies can instantly kill you. These enemies are Phantoms, Atlases, Brutes, Banshees, Scions, and Praetorians.

Phantoms, Atlases, Brutes, Scions and Praetorians will only sync kill if they have done a normal melee against you at least once beforehand.
Phantoms’ sync kill ability can be removed by breaking their sword. Doing this is difficult and managing to do so causes them to use their palm blaster constantly which can be more dangerous than their sync kill.
Brutes cannot sync kill you while they are in a charge. They are more likely to sync kill if they are enraged (glowing eyes / chest pounding)
Banshees won’t sync kill while they are throwing warp balls or walking around while not glowing (different than the power absorption barrier), but they can switch back to sync kill mode and kill you before you realise that they are once again in sync kill mode.
A Scion’s melee attack animation is very slow which makes their sync kill easy to avoid.
Praetorians cannot sync kill if they are about to leap or they are in the middle of their laser attack.

Sync kill chance increases with difficulty.

Enemies’ sync kill chance for each difficulty can be found in this thread.

The best way to avoid being sync killed is to stay away from these enemies.
It is possible to avoid sync kills by being on a ramp/stairs while you stand at a different level than the enemy.
It is possible to cancel a sync kill by using a missile on the enemy that is performing the sync kill.
Another way to cancel a sync kill is to stagger the enemy performing the sync kill with a large burst of damage or a high force power. This thread has information about how much force is required to stagger an enemy on each difficulty.

Wave Budgets

The Basics

For Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer, each wave has a budget for enemy spawning.
Spawning an enemy uses up part of the budget and once the budget is depleted, no more enemies will spawn for that wave.
Higher tier enemies cost more to spawn.
By focusing on lower tier enemies, you can deplete the wave budget without spawning more high tier enemies. If your team is doing this, you will need to carefully kite the high tier enemies that have already spawned around the map so that you will not have to fight them until the end of the wave.

For a more thorough explanation see this thread.

Reload Canceling

Reload canceling is a way to significantly reduce reduce the reload time for weapons that have long reload animations and is especially useful for single shot weapons.
Basic Method

The basic method of reload canceling is to activate a power the instant that the ammo indicator ceases to be zero. This method relies on your powers not being on cooldown and it does waste a cooldown cycle.

Advanced Method

The more advanced method is the same as above but instead of using a cooldown based power, you just use the medigel button. On PC this can be done very easily by remapping medigel to something more convenient than “7” such as “q” or a thumb button on a mouse. If you get taken down while reloading canceling this way you will probably end up wasting a medigel. If you have used up all your medigel, this method still works.

Reload canceling is covered in the infiltrator video starting at 9:10
Here is a more thorough video about reload canceling that was made by xcalizorz.

Invisible Missile Launcher

Don’t like the look of the missile launcher on your character’s back all the time? Well then this is the glitch for you.
How to do it (heavy melee method)

Take out the missile launcher.
Press the missile launcher button again to put it away.
Do a heavy melee before the put away animation finishes.
This method is covered in the adept, soldier, sentinel and vanguard videos.

This method doesn’t work for some characters. For these characters you will need a ladder to do the glitch
How to do it (ladder method)

Take out the missile launcher.
Press the missile launcher button again to put it away.
Walk into a ladder before the put away animation finishes.
This method is covered in the engineer and sentinel videos.

This glitch is purely cosmetic. You can will still be able to use the missile launcher after you have done it.
If you pick up an object during a retrieval objective, the missile launcher will once again be visible so you will need to do the glitch again to make it invisible once again.

The Store

When you first start it is a good idea to buy recruit packs so that you can max the common weapon mods and common weapons. You can probably max these by the time you get all of the classes to level 20.
Once you have maxed the common mods and weapons, I would recommend buying veteran packs. Some of the best weapon mods (the barrels and piercing mods) are categorized as uncommon and are worth every credit. The uncommon category also includes some good weapons such as the mattoch, phalanx, scimitar, eviscerator and the locust. The drell adept and the turian sentinel are two very powerful characters in this category. The turian sentinel is still one of my favorite characters even with the release of so many awesome characters with the DLCs. Uncommon gear, which provide passive bonuses to your characters should also drop in veteran packs but I am not sure how frequently they will drop since gear was not introduced until after I had maxed my uncommons.
The majority of the characters and weapons in this game are classified as rare. Veteran packs can drop rare cards but it is not guaranteed. Buying spectre packs and premium spectre packs is the way to acquire these cards. However, just because something is categorized as rare does not not mean that it is better than an uncommon or even a common (the mantis is extremely powerful compared to the other common weapons).

Useful Links

Bioware Social Network (BSN)

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer Forum
The multiplayer forums are a place where you can connect with other players and find some useful information such as balance changes and weekend challenge announcements.
The N7HQ is a place where you can keep track of your inventory, challenge progress, and other aspects of multiplayer. You can also use the N7HQ to look up other players’ stats and how they have their characters built so long as they have set up their profile and have set it to public.
If you have any questions, the forum is a good place to ask them but before you start a thread about it you should do a search first since your question may have been answered already.
Make sure you read the cheating compendium so that you are aware of what constitutes cheating which can get you banned from multiplayer. The cheating compendium also covers how to report players who you have seen cheating. Some game mechanic exploitations are not considered cheating (such as reload canceling, “running the pizza”, making the missile launcher invisible, and “switching the spawn”). If you are unsure if something is considered to be cheating, a quick search of the forum should clear things up.

The ME3 MP Resource Library

BSN user DragonRacer has compiled a large list of useful content that has been made by the community. The library contains links to advice, builds, game mechanics, technical help, and other random/fun stuff. Checking this out is well worth your time.

ME3 Multiplayer Discussion Compendium

BSN user randomfoo started a website which is “a collaborative effort by members of the BSN ME3 MP Forums to collate, organize, and distill interesting information about Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer.” From here you should be able to find much of the work that the community has done.

BSN user Narida’s Multiplayer Character Builder

Character Builder
This character builder allows you to see the numbers behind any character build and is a good tool for deciding how to build your characters so that you can avoid having to spend a respec card or promote to change things.

BSN user SeasonedTurtle’s Multiplayer Character Builder

Character Builder
BSN thread
A newer, more visual builder that allows users to do the same as above.

Mass Effect Wiki

When using the wiki as a resource you should be aware that information regarding multiplayer and actual game mechanics may be wrong and/or incomplete. The wiki is generally a better resource for lore.
Mass Effect Wiki Multiplayer

The main multiplayer page

Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer: Character Customization

This page is probably the most useful wiki page when it comes to multiplayer. The first section has links to every multiplayer character which include what the character’s kit is along with some build advice. The weapon links contain information about the behavior of each weapon along with advice. Remember, some of the information found here may be wrong and/or incomplete.