I'm curious if use of either Bionics or Symbiote triggers Survivalist. Does anyone have any experience with these? I'm guessing Bionics doesn't trigger Survivalist, it just makes 40% life a very narrow window. If it DOES trigger, does it keeping you at a low % health continually trigger Survivalist every ~12 sec (the internal cooldown for Survivalist)? If Symbiote triggers Survivalist when it damages you, does the continuing damage from Symbiote continually trigger it every ~12sec? My guess is that the best use for Survivalist is ironically to pair it with Carapace and just give up on the shield benefit (since you won't have shields). This gives the effects triggered at 40% health a much higher margin for activation rather than having to be near death's door. If this is the case, the "best" place for Survivalist is probably in the garbage.
The only thing that triggers Survivalist is damage from an enemy. So no, those combos won't do it. I don't have Bionics on any character, but I bet Bionics and Survivalist would be pretty fun on an Engineer. So right now I run Survivalist and Health Regen. Right now I end up using Survivalist with Symbiote on my Medic. With my health regen I'm always waiting on my shield after each trade. Survivalist gets me back in the fight quicker. Not super meta, but it works for me.
I finally got Bionics yesterday ! I was spending all my certs for two or three months in Deluxe implants box to try to get it (I finally got it by using recycling ISO-4). I’ve tried Engineer with Bionics and Survivalist only a little, but it seems very cool. I need to have cover to have the possibility to got some (shorter) time to recover, but when it’s the case, the combo is useful. To answer your question, Bionics doesn’t seem to trigger the temporary effects of Survivalist. But, to be honest, I did not notice them before in normal conditions (before having Bionics). I don’t have Symbiote yet. I was thinking about a combo Bionics + Survivalist with Advanced Shield Capacitor (ASC rather nano-armor to get a quick shield recovery with ASC and Symbiote to get a small damage resistance). Howewer, I’ve tried Symbiote 5 in the Virtual Reality training room and, combined to Bionics, it reduces your 100 health to 1 apparently. So, you end up with 900 hits all of the time... I also need to try Bionics with others classes. I also got Carapace but, even on a Medic, I don’t have found it wonderful. I must give it another try however. Speaking of implants, I really don’tt like the idea of implants with temporary effects and/or activation times. You never know if the effect is working and for how long, and it’s really frustrating : when I use Deep operative, I must mentally count up to 12 (or 9) seconds to know if it is activated and I died an inifinite number of times because of this...
I think it would be hard to convince me to drop health stims. The survivability under fire is just too great. This topic was more to discuss potential than anything else. I'm currently focused on playing a Drifter LA and can't see that changing any time soon. So I'm trying to pick implants for that play style. I've found I can't live without Infravision. The ability to sweep scan a visual area and instantly pick out all targets is just too much awareness to give up. Sure you can't see very far, but you can see the relevant space on the battlefield and long range navigation is done more by map and HUD than anything else. Right now I run Ammo Printer in my secondary and find it invaluable, but my goal is to eventually get the Eclipse, making Ammo Printer unnecessary and opening up a whole new world of combos. The question is what to pair with Infravision. Right now my top picks are Awareness, Carapace, Sensory Shield, or Sidewinder. I think I'll probably switch around between them and see what sticks, but I'm looking for other ideas as well.
