5 Most Useful Powers In Mass Effect 1 (& 5 You Can Just Ignore)

Mass Effect's combat uses a mix of third-person shooting and "powers," unique class-based abilities that Shepard and their squadmates can use. Each class, from the soldier to the adept, has its own unique powers that they can use before requiring a cooldown period. These range from healing teammates to enhancing one's defense or hurling enemies across the battlefield.

The first game in the Mass Effect series had the widest variety of powers available, but as one might expect, some are far better than others. Many players will go out of their way to bring someone on their squad with certain powers, while other options may go unused in the power wheel for entire playthroughs. Mass Effect 1 players should absolutely make use of the best options on the table, but choosing which ones to skip is deprioritize is equally important.

10 Hacking Is Far Too Situational To Be Good

Powerful Against Geth, But Not Much Else

Hacking is a power available to players using the engineer class, as well as the Quarian Mechanist, Tali'Zorah. At its base, this power passively decreases the recharge time for several other tech abilities, which isn't bad, given how much engineers rely on their powers. But its active ability, AI Hacking, is much less useful.

Geth And Quarians from Mass Effect on a red and blue background.

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AI Hacking causes a synthetic enemy to lose the ability to tell friend from foe, attacking anything around it. This can be useful against hordes of Geth, but it has no effect on the game's many non-robotic enemies. To make things worse, the ability can easily miss the intended target or be resisted by higher-level enemies, and it has a long recharge period. Plus, if there are no other enemies within the hacked synthetic's sights, it will still attack the player and their squad.

9 Medicine Is Essential For Better Healing

Enhanced First Aid And A Powerful Ability To Boot

Medicine is a power that is definitely worth putting points into, even if its active ability suffers from downsides similar to AI Hacking. Medicine is available to sentinels and engineers, including Kaiden Alenko, and unlocks an ability called Neural Shock that temporarily paralyzes organic foes. This won't work on synthetics, but it can knock threatening enemies like Krogan battlemasters to the ground for a few seconds, letting you score some free hits.

Unlike some other powers that shut down enemies for a short duration, Neural Shock doesn't render them immune to damage, making it more useful.

That ability is somewhat niche, but the passive component of medicine is what's really important, as it reduces the cooldown time for first aid by a great deal. Being able to consistently use Medi-Gel to heal your squad is essential to beating the first Mass Effect game, especially on higher difficulties, and this significant cooldown reduction is very helpful.

8 Basic Armor Is The Worst Of The Defense Modifiers

A Power That Doesn't Stand Up Against Its Competition

The first Mass Effect game gives different classes access to different levels of armor: light armor for engineers, sentinels, and adepts, medium armor for vanguards and infiltrators, and heavy armor for soldiers. Alongside those armor types, there are three powers that enhance these armor types: basic armor, tactical armor, and combat armor.

One might think that, because basic armor is available to the largest number of classes and squadmates, it would be the most useful. But it's worth noting that the enhanced features of Basic Armor are the most lackluster and contribute the least to a character's overall defense. Each of these armor-based powers provides the same active ability, Shield Boost, making that part of the comparison a moot point. All in all, Basic Armor is absolutely the worst of the armor-enhancing powers.

7 Assault Training Is Great For Characters That Rely On Their Powers

Resetting The Cooldown On Your Favorite Abilities

Assault Training may sound boring in comparison to some of the more exciting powers in the game, but it is absolutely worth investing in for any character that has it. It's available to Soldiers, Vanguards, Ashley, and the iconic companion Garrus. On top of increasing weapon damage across the board, it provides an active power called Adrenaline Burst.

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While this ability doesn't have any effects itself, it does immediately recharge every other power on a character's wheel. This is a monumentally powerful ability, giving immediate access to their spent powers as well as the ability to heal twice in quick succession. Vanguard can make excellent of this to double up on their biotic powers, while Garrus could do the same with his tech abilities, and anyone could essentially double the duration of their weapon-enhancing powers.

6 Damping Is The Worst Of The Engineer's Niche Powers

A Weak Move That Is Easily Outperformed

Much like Hacking, Damping is another low point on the Engineer's list. It's available to them, infiltrators, Garrus, and Tali, and it increases the range of certain tech abilities. That part of it is actually quite nice for getting better AOEs, but the way Damping's actual power works is nearly useless. It puts down a proximity mine that, when activated by nearby enemies, temporarily deprives them of their tech and biotic powers.

The way that enemy powers are categorized is not always the same as player character's powers, meaning some abilities that seem like tech or biotics don't count as such.

This can be good during certain encounters, such as the fight with the Asari commandos on Noveria, but it's relatively niche in the overall scheme of things. Couple that with the fact that it doesn't do any damage and has quite a long recharge timer, and this ability will rarely see any use.

5 Decryption Is Essential For Planetary Exploration

Awful In Combat, But Needed Nevertheless

Next up is Decryption, which would be at the bottom of the barrel if it weren't so important. It's available to nearly half the classes and squadmates in the game, basically to everyone with tech powers, and slightly increases the damage from tech abilities. That part of it is fine, but its active ability is not great: Sabotage. Sabotage can temporarily disable some enemy weapons by overloading their cooldown.

This can temporarily stop a fight against basic enemies, but will not affect melee-focused foes like Thorian Creepers, Husks, and Krogan. It's hard to use effectively during a fight, but unfortunately, Decryption does have other uses that require some investment. Certain locked safes and storage containers around the game will only be accessible by players with a high enough Decrpytion skill. They will need to complete a small minigame or spend Omni-Gel to do so, and can only attempt it if a squad member meets the Decryption requirement. As such, this power is essential, but by no means beloved.

4 Assassination Pales In Comparison To Other Weapon Powers

The Worst Of The Four Weapon-Enhancing Abilities

Each of the four weapon types in the game gets a unique power associated with it: Marksman for pistols, Overkill for assault rifles, Carnage for shotguns, and Assassinate for sniper rifles. The first two are effective, if not particularly exciting, increasing accuracy and fire rate for a short amount of time. Carnage allows shotguns to fire an explosive blast that can knock down several enemies, which is quite handy in a pinch.

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And then there's Assassinate. This ability boosts the damage and accuracy of your next sniper rifle shot, making this already-deadly weapon even deadlier. But usually, this isn't necessary, as headshots from sniper rifles will already put down most enemies in the game without this power. While the other powers will frequently be useful, this one is only really good against large enemies at range, an opportunity that doesn't come especially often. When it does, using the Mako is usually also an option.

3 Singularity Is Hands-Down The Most Fun Biotic Ability

Liara's Signature Move

The biotic abilities don't tend to stand out as Mass Effect's best or wort powers, mainly because the majority of them are quite fun and useful but not especially overpowered. Singularity is the exception. This power, available to Adepts and Liara exclusively, is phenomenal, creating a small black hole that lifts and damages groups of enemies. This is the ultimate shutdown power for biotics, disabling several enemies at once, damaging them, and making them easy targets for gunfire.

Singularity reappears in the second and third games, each time with updated and more powerful mechanics.

This is the main ability players think of when biotic powers come up, and for good reason. It basically combines the strengths of several other biotic powers, like Lift and Warp, into one massive area-of-effect attack. It is definitely the most exciting power to use, and it can really make you feel like a biotic powerhouse.

2 Stasis Has Almost No Practical Application

A Much Worse Version Of Neural Shock

On the other end of the biotic spectrum is Stasis. This power is available to Adepts and Sentinels, along with Liara and Wrex, and freezes enemies in place for a short time. This would be great if it left them in a state where they could be hurt or debuffed. But it doesn't: enemies in Stasis are essentially off-limits until the power ends.

The only use for this power is buying some time to heal or regroup, but it has little combat effectiveness outside of that. On top of that, the ability has some issues when squadmates are concerned. They won't ever use it unless directly ordered to, even when powers are set to active, and sometimes, they will continue shooting at an enemy in Stasis. To add insult to injury, enemies that use Stasis on you can still hurt you.

1 Electronics Is Powerful In And Out Of Combat

Never Leave The Ship Without This Power

The complete antithesis of Decryption, Electronics is the most useful Engineer ability to have in the squad during Mass Effect 1. Much like Decryption, it is occasionally needed to crack certain locks and interact with certain electronic items, making it necessary during planetary exploration. Unlike Decryption, the power granted by Electronics, Overload, actually does damage and proves useful in combat.

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Specifically, Overload can fully shut down the shields of enemies that have them, which are most enemies in the game. Shields act as additional defense and can prevent certain status effects from working, so taking them down quickly is very powerful. There's a reason this power remained in the rest of the Mass Effect games largely unchanged.

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