How to be less squishy?

[Gamerwolfsix]

I chose second hardest/3rd easiest difficulty. Thought it would be easy since witcher 3 (same studio?) on death march (hardest difficulty) isnt hard with some grinding and picking the right quest.
But I die so quickly in this game too often. Did all the quests before the prologue height, doing side quests, got armor implant and most of the legendary corpo armor. So I should be a walking tank. But so often I sneak around taking out a few guys in not a hard place, get found out. And at best get shot once or twice by one guy and am near death, and at worst just die.
My only two tactics are activating my sandevistan and rushing the AI before it can react (and hope there is no one else nearby) or hind behind cover taking potshots and huffing health packs.
Is there something I can do to make my guy able to take a punch in this game?

[NorthernDavid]

First thing, the worn armor is levelled to when you get it unless you upgrade it. This is important because if you rush getting a legendary armor piece it will have stats base on when you find it, and some later pieces can become better (even common ones). Also some areas are higher level, such as downtown of heywood, if you are in those zones too soon everything will be too strong for you. Some other factors can be your build where you put your attributes and perks. If you do crafting you might hope to find an armadillo recipe to make those armor mods for your armor's mod slots, and replace them every few levels.

[shoopy]

I would just play on normal. It's normal for a reason. If it gets too easy then turn it up.

[5ean5ean]

Armor got nerfed so its not the best source of to mitigate damage. You need to create defensive layers through a combination of

Armor
Resistences
Damage mitigation
Damage reduction
Health regen
Health on Kill

Then when you do die things like Second Heart and Bloodswell gives you a 2nd life. Then you can use a Bioconverter to reduce thier cooldowns.

Even things like staying in stealth, movement, and staying in cover keeps you alive better than just using armor.

[Balekai]

Go stealth character and don't get hit in the first place. :D

[ImHelping]

Dusting off the game after a while, Even at level cap with 20 body, piles of athletics steroid perks and cyberware, and endgame with god tier crafting armor values. Damage still remains very swinging either "haha that tickles" or "Oh this guy just took off half my health in one go, huh..."

It isn't a you problem. And things are even more swinging early on where shooting someone in the back of the head execution style with a gun just annoys them (even on normal) because gear numbers matter more than skill numbers.

*Eyes changing his mind to not run ninja hacker, to instead go body building hacker who is allowed to stealth kill with 6 reflex and a revolver because his gun doesn't suck and he has a fat stack of headshot/crit multiplier items. Then switches to a shotgun against psychos immune to the Good Quickhacks and take zero damage pop ups from his god tier crafted handgun without headshots*

Don't worry, my orange carnage that sets people on fire is no lethal because of an eyeball mod.

[dLFN]

Because the difficulty levels are lazily made and just turns enemies into death stars. It's not hard, just tedious.

[bun E]

You can max armor, level, regen etc and you'll never be tanky. Game just doesn't really allow it. Even if you do get high tankiness itll only be for certain enemies, other enemies in the same group will just instanuke you.
Better off just killing them through walls like most ppl do and hope when they do see you that they miss enough to not have to use second heart and the other thingie.

Issue seems to come from the game seeming to have the horrible armor system of dragons dogma/botw where you either take all the damage or are completely immune, so no matter what you do you're either overpowered or getting tapped on really hard, making higher difficulties really inconsistent (and kinda making getting all the nice body perks and armor crafted feel kinda pointless...)

[CTDemon]

If you're not afraid to mod your game, you should get the one mod which scales the subdermal armor cyberware to your level. It actually makes it worthwhile even in the late game.

There's also this one mod which makes your item stats sync with your level, which makes upgrading your gear more worthwhile.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Bunni:

You can max armor, level, regen etc and you'll never be tanky. Game just doesn't really allow it. Even if you do get high tankiness itll only be for certain enemies, other enemies in the same group will just instanuke you.
Better off just killing them through walls like most ppl do and hope when they do see you that they miss enough to not have to use second heart and the other thingie.

Issue seems to come from the game seeming to have the horrible armor system of dragons dogma/botw where you either take all the damage or are completely immune, so no matter what you do you're either overpowered or getting tapped on really hard, making higher difficulties really inconsistent (and kinda making getting all the nice body perks and armor crafted feel kinda pointless...)

*blowing dust off the game* "Hey how come I hardly bothered with the shoot through walls sniper rifles now that I can craft super ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ versions at level cap-" *Ping glitches out again so not even enemies standing out in the open in plain view get highlighted* "Ah, right."