Urdnot Wrex

Fitting firmly into the "gruff but likeable anti-hero" category that's seemingly always been a part of BioWare games, Wrex is an oversized Krogan battlemaster that combines a prowess with his weapons and powerful biotic attacks to make him a fearsome opponent in combat.

In terms of personality, Urdnot is tormented by the castration of his race, but he keeps his opinions inside, for the most part. Given the choice, he'll pick the most expedient way out of any given situation, even if it means acting unethically. Having seen his race betrayed by the universe, he has a rather nihilistic outlook on life, but is willing to tag along with your team, if only because he gets the sense that it'll be a challenge.

Skills

In terms of skills, we focused Wrex on Shotguns and Combat Armor at the outset. The choice between shotguns and assault rifles is mostly a style one, but you'll certainly have enough points to make him reliable with both types of weapons. You don't need a huge number of points in Fitness, maybe just enough to unlock Immunity.

Wrex is a great character to have along if you're a renegade.

As far as the biotics go, you can proceed along Warp until you unlock Throw, then get that upwards. Warp is a decent skill, but not something necessary to max out. Barrier is also a fine skill, and one that gets very good if you can max it out, but since Wrex will be capable of weary heavy armor with a lot of shields, you may not find it absolutely necessary. Stasis is probably unnecessary to invest in, but if you have extra points, feel free to splurge.

Urdnot's special skill is Krogan Battlemaster. This gives him a bit of health regeneration, which is handy, and also makes him more resistant to biotic attacks and knockdown effects. It also greatly increases his melee damage, but if you fight carefully, he'll rarely use melee blows.

• Assault Rifles
• (u)Shotguns
• Combat Armor
• (u)Fitness
• Warp
• (u)Throw
• Barrier
• (s)
• Krogan Battlemaster

Tali'Zorah nar Rayya

Tali is a young Quarian Machinist who joins your party in search of adventure. She's on Pilgrimage, and is likely to be the only Quarian you wind up encountering in the entire game. She's nice enough, but unfortunately our technician character didn't have much reason to use her during the game.

Skills

Tali is probably a better technician than a human character could be. She loses the mostly useless Medicine skill in exchange for Shotguns, which can be very handy when you have a team consisting of Tali, Liara, and your main character. If your other two main characters use assault rifles or shotguns, you can feel free to max out Pistols for Tali, but if you are going to team her up with Liara or your own bioticist character, having her use shotguns makes for a nice pistols-shotguns-assault rifle combo.

As an engineer, Tali will have a lot of interest in your ship's engines.

Apart from that, Basic Armor, Electronics, Decryption, and Quarian Machinist will probably be your first choices here. You can safely skip Hacking, and even Damping isn't necessary if you don't need it, but if you have extra points to spare, it's one more thing for her to autocast. First Aid is also skippable if Liara or another character that has it is around.

The special skill here is Quarian Machinist, which increases Tali's resistance to tech skills and increases her shield capacity. A maxed Electronics and maxed Quarian Machinist will increase Tali's shields by 480, which will make her almost untouchable in combat, especially when you take Shield Boost into account.

• Pistols
• (u)Shotguns
• Basic Armor
• (u)First Aid
• Electronics
• (u)Damping
• Decryption
• (u)Hacking
• Quantum Machinist

Liara T'Soni

Liara is an Asari scientist that will be the last follower to join your party. As the daughter of one of the primary foes of the game, you'd think her alliegiances would be mixed, but that proves not to be the case; Liara winds up being one of your character's main love interests in the game, should you wish her to be.

While a bit naïve, Liara winds up getting a quick education in the ways of the world after tagging along with you and your group. She may sometimes wish for things to be better than they are, but hey—life's rough, and the grown-ups have to make the tough decisions.

Skills

As a bioticist, Liara is incapable of training in any weapons, which makes it difficult for her to do a lot of damage with guns. Given a powerful enough pistol, however, she'll still contribute in a fight. She won't fire terrifically accurately, but she'll land enough hits to at least make a difference in a battle.

Of course, her weapons are usually only going to come out after she's blown through most of her biotic powers, which will happen pretty quickly if you have them set to Active cast in your options. The two key powers here will be Lift and Singularity, both of which can incapacitate large groups of enemies for lengthy periods of time. Throw and Warp can also be valuable in certain situations, so you'll want to unlock all of them and have her progress through the powers as far as you can.

Awww, yeahhhh.

Barrier is also handy for Liara; she'll likely have the least health of anyone in your group, and since she's incapable of wearing anything but light armor, she won't have much in the way of shielding. Stasis is handy situationally against powerful enemies, but in most cases the Lift/Singularity will be just as good. First Aid is definitely where you want to put a few of Liara's points. Electronics is pointless, since you will almost always have someone else with tech skills to be your Decryption/Electronics monkey. Pumping electronics will boost Liara's shield rating, but at the expense of spending your points in places that they'll really make a difference.

Liara's special skill is Asari Scientist. This passively reduces the cooldown on her biotic powers and First Aid, and enables First Aid to heal for more hit points. This skill should be pumped before the actual First Aid skill is pumped, if possible.

• Throw
• (u)Lift
• Warp
• (u)Singularity
• Barrier
• (u)Stasis
• First Aid
• (u)Electronics
• Asari Scientist