Melee/Mantis blades feel weak now

[Majestic]

Speccing into blades again, but even picking up a random gun with absolutely no perks or attributes kills enemies much faster. What is going on?

Takes forever to kill something and then sandevistan runs out and you get put full of holes. Having to run away all the time now, heal and run back. What am i missing...

[Majestic]

Originally posted by Chaosolous:

Honestly, I know it's not the answer you want, but that makes a lot of sense that a gun is way more destructive than a sword. That's just me though.

Perking properly helps, it's hard to say though. Level Scaling makes the same build play differently depending on difficulty.

Well, that might be true IRL but this is a videogame. Surely they wouldn't have balanced it like that and make only one playthrough viable?

Originally posted by A P O 1 1 0ⁿ:

Originally posted by Majestic:

Cyberware capacity. But still, explain how melee isn't scuffed when i just find a shotgun here that does 7 times the DPS as my melee build.

That's really fast for a shotgun. I have a tier 3 that does 2 attacks per second, but it's a double barrel, the reload kills its DPS. The next best tier3+ shottie I have does .8 aps with 220 dmg, but is a combat shotgun. The auto shotgun at tier 3 does 74 damage at 3.5 aps. Maybe tier 3-4 is a big jump

Here's a screenshot:
https://i.imgur.com/y2rop5E.png

Originally posted by joji.perez13:

i would be wary of doing too much of the math because while your not wrong on the shotgun part, your build has so many modifiers for melee attacks that you are likely doing more with melee attacks than the shot gun, its just the amount of dmg you take while you swing or perhaps you stamina regen isn't good enough to get in and get out.


i would say that upgrading if you have access to the tech tree is better, but it is very costly on the materials so its importatnt to basically dismatle almost everything lol but when you do it that way, and with your perk on, it really helps to tailor your build to what you want since all those little stat modifiers on your cyberware are more likely to actually be useful.

Yeah true, but it's pretty difficult to quantify if its all hidden modifiers.

That tree is in my build I showed above. I haven't upgraded stuff much past tier3 so its still viable. But im having difficulties finding blue items lol.

[Battosai]

also do not underestimate the utility in this game of using the smoke grenades. eps since you have the 'activate camo automatically when crouch running' perk you can use your camo bascially anytime you want anyways. this lets you free up a button to use a smoke grenade, you could use regular grenades too i guess, but the smokes specifically will really help to mess up the enemy's ability to see and shoot you and let you run around the battle more freely to slice up what you need to. something to consider, it has saved me many times.

it should probably go without saying but perhaps there is a target priority issue as well, being you are sword only, picking the right enemies to elimiate first can drastically change the outcome of the fight. your fight style will basically almost always necessitate you taking out the strongest guy first, lest you want to run around cutting down small fries while the big gun shoots at you the whole time lol

[Majestic]

Also sucks that most wiki's are woefully out of date so its a crapshoot whether you're buying your BIS items from cyberdocs :( Especially since its so expensive now.

Thanks for the tips guys, and thanks for keeping it cordial. I just did the same camp with that shotgun and the blade and the DPS didn't seem 7 times lower. So there must be a lot of hidden modifiers as suggested.

[Battosai]

just a heads up all the ripperdocs now sell the same stuff with exception being that in the DLC area they offer iconic cyberware.

So other than dogtown, you can get all the same things at any ripperdoc :) it is just gonna change what is offered depending on i think your street cred level.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by joji.perez13:

just a heads up all the ripperdocs now sell the same stuff with exception being that in the DLC area they offer iconic cyberware.

So other than dogtown, you can get all the same things at any ripperdoc :) it is just gonna change what is offered depending on i think your street cred level.

I just looked again and discovered defensikov + kerensivok. Basically 50% of the time you can have +70% mitigation that way by just sliding around, what i'm already doing. Guess I just needed some new chrome :P

Also, its cheaper to just sell things and buy the upgrades. Takes 75 blue parts to upgrade mantis blades to tier 3+, which is about 15 disassambles. Which is roughly about 15 * 3K=45K you're spending on it, if you sold it. The price of the tier4 mantis blades is 48K. So, considering you need to upgrade twice, its cheaper to just buy it.

[Majestic]

Originally posted by joji.perez13:

just a heads up all the ripperdocs now sell the same stuff with exception being that in the DLC area they offer iconic cyberware.

So that also means you should only buy from the one near pinewood prior dogtown? Since you can get a 20% discount from the quest.

[Battosai]

its cheaper for sure, you just don't get to pick three modifiers out of three options. whereas if you upgraded it you could have selected for like something like headshot dmg or something which will nicely stack up. its kind of a tough call since you tbh money at times is easier to come by then the materials.

[Battosai]

ya thats exactly what i do lol

[Bogmore]

You also need to remember sometimes the arms slots downgrade themselves stealthily.

[Majestic]

Does the 21% melee damage from "Dense marrow" count towards blade damage? Or only blunt? I dont see the stats change for mantis blades atleast.

[Djentleman]

Try also using the weapon glitch hack if your build allows for it while using any melee weapons, glitching weapons as you run up to enemies and keep glitching them out as you swing to prevent them from firing.

If your build allows for it, it's a low cost hack that can be used a lot mid-fight.

[Dragon]

The picture you linked is a Satara, which does some of the highest single target per shot in the game outside of sniper rifles.

It's also a TECH shotgun that requires you to charge it and reload it every 2 shots.

You can slash with a katana 3 or 4 times in that time period, with nothing except stamina useage. I play on Normal, because I don't particularly care to be sweaty with a shooter rpg, but maybe that isnt enough to deal with very hard enemies. It works just fine on normal.

Make sure you've invested points into dashing in reflex as well, if you have that and a sandy you can pretty much melee or shotgun everything in an area to death very quickly, and dashing gives you mitigation.

[Jámez Bondo]

Most of your damage comes from secondary effects that are not displayed on the weapon stat sheet. Go to dogtown and take a thorough look at all available cyberware to figure out how to max your build, paying close attention to attunement bonuses and attributes. Skill into tech to get max cyberware capacity and additional attribute choices for upgrades.

This also has the nice side effect of making you increasingly resilient, since armor is largely gated behind cyberware. For melee, Berserk + Poison blades + black mamba implant could be a good place to start. Relic perks also drastically improve arm weapons, so make sure to get those asap.

Reflex has an entire tree of abilities that make you nigh untouchable, lightning fast and stronger in melee. Finishers are unique to melee and can be enabled by throwing flash grenades and having opportunist perk.

Don't just rely on the weapon stat sheet because it is not taking into consideration secondary effects and synergies.

[Cacomistle]

As I've gotten further, I've seen a lot of cyberware that benefits melee. Whereas I've not seen a lot that benefits shotguns.

It felt to me like shotguns started a lot stronger. And they've stayed strong. But I imagine that melee catches up.

Also as you get to high levels you just become strong in general. I can use pretty much anything except blades and kill stuff effectively (because I have no skill point investment into blades, no good cyberware for melee, and blunt works because it has more stagger so I can get around the lower damage than my guns by just perma staggering enemies).

In other words I don't really know how to make them good early (I made them work early before switching to guns but I was mostly just reflecting bullets because my weapon did crap damage), but later on I think you just stack everything that says "melee" on it and you should be fine.

Oh and you probably want tech second. Tech is really good assuming you can afford cyberware. Grenades could also pair nice with blades (by knocking enemies over or otherwise stun/staggering them).

[Pharis Gough]

Originally posted by Majestic:

But seriously though, I just looted a tier4 shotgun, with 3.33 attack speed and 280 damage. So that's 3.33 * 280 = 932.4 dps. My mantis blades tier 3 are 2.44 * 52.8 = 128.8 dps. And I haven't put any points into shotgun. It just feels like melee is scuffed AF. I dont know...

Originally posted by joji.perez13:

want to add while your not actively upgrading your cyberware there isnt a need to keep the perk that lets you get more rolls. there isn't any punishment for swapping it in when you upgarde gear and then swapping it out when you go out to do missions. (its called chipware connosieur)

also if you are lacking dmg, try out the accelerated toxin absorption. it will basically let you throw a knife to apply poison stack, but then let you 'cash' out the poison stack on a follow up strong attack with your sword. if you also have the tiger leap perk your sword heavy should dash at them so it should make for quick kills

also the because you have the blind spot perk any time you get mitigation increase you will also get the detection time increase as well so might as well use the 30% mitigation while crouch running because i nthe event you get seen crouch running will give you 30% more time to get away (more or less). idk if you are predicated on being undetected for dmg, but my build is so getting into the right position before you actually engage really helps a lot.

But the weapons swapping is so slow, does that really work to mesh in a thrown knife?

I will admit that the cyber weapons tend to be pretty scuffed. I use a katana on my reflex character and it is far, far better.