What is the best short range stealth weapon?

[tbloyzz]

A) a throwing blade with 2x Silencio Mod
B) a throwing blade with Silencio and Pax Mod
C) a Nue/Tamayura with Silencer, Scope and 2x Sliencio Mod
D) a Nue/Tamayura with SIlencer, Scope, Silencio and Equalizer Mod

assuming ultimate Tiers and all effecting perks/skills taken or achieved?

[tbloyzz]

Originally posted by Xengre:

Originally posted by tbloyzz:

As for pax why? Are you using it for Cyberpsychos? Just a heads up you only get a pair of purple pants for doing all 16 of them non-lethal. IIRC, I don't think there was even an achievement for it. A completely pointless venture, though you can just cloak and sneak up or disable their movement and grab them from behind if you want an easy solution.

No, I usually overheat the psychos. I like a silent ranged weapon for these situations where you cannot get near enough for a takedown. And pax gives 20% bonus damage as long as you are not in combat yet. So I acutally do not care if they survive. I just want the bonus.

[valium]

Pax is great for silenced weapon, the extra damage is applied as long as you are not in active combat, which means your stealth kills get the 20% damage with no drawbacks with the orange rank one.

[tbloyzz]

I think the pax drawback is not so big. Considering that you would change weapons as soon as you have been detected, you would not really suffer from the damage malus anyway.
I usually have the stealth weapon in the first slot, then a versatile weapon in the second and Overwatch in the third. Gorilla arms are deactivated for weapon scrolling.

[Xengre]

Gotcha. Been a while since I used pax after swapping over to Death and Taxes iconic since it is the best by a huge margin so I forgot about that detail but good point.

Speaking of detected, one of the Phantom Liberty relic perks you can unlock at basically the start of PL (after the lengthy intro section that is, back when you get free roam again and can go back to base game to finish it first) is a camo perk that cancels combat mode for all enemies when activated. Super useful for this, too.

[Bjørn]

I've started a new game now, and didn't play the first game to the end, but I was lvl 60 for a long time, and used thrown knives from the start. With Pax I always had a 1200+ crit hit with stealth headshots, so it was excellent.

Originally posted by DubbelNuggen:

Originally posted by tbloyzz:

Wait. Are you saying I can attach it to a throwable weapon, but it does not apply if I throw it???

Yup, throwing it doesn't apply the crit chance. Only if you swing it as a melee weapon.

That's a shame. Can anyone else confirm this? Thrown knives are supposed count as melee weapons also when thrown, I thought.

I played with non-iconic knives most of the time, with Pax and some other random mod, but I 'discovered' the Silencio mod quite late, and was planning to use that a lot in my new playthrough (only lvl 12 now). But if this is true, it's not so interesting anymore

But as mentioned, I usually made crit hits every time with the Pax and thrown knife perks at high lvl, so I'll still go for them.

[tbloyzz]

Yeah, I share your disappointment. Since a tech pistol would benefit from the pistol and the tech weapon mods, I would have thought that a throwable melee weapon also benefits from the mods of both classes. And actually it does, just not in the way we would like it to be. The throwable weapons are unique in this regard. All other weapons have only one purpose and it is clear how their mods work.

[Xengre]

I can't confirm if Silencio works on throwing weapons but the final perk guarantees crit, anyways, so it doesn't matter too much. The bigger issue is throwable weapons simply scale very poorly compared to pistols as you level up and start getting better gear.

If you aren't high enough level to get the guarantee crit perk I recommend to just choke hold (distract if need be, or use camo) the tankier targets with 3 health bars. Either way, throwing weapons are not viable stealth option on Very Hard at higher levels except maybe the one that stuns briefly. The issue is enemies will not die in a single hit and turn to kill you while pistols can fire multiple times before it triggers combat letting you stack up the DPS (and each individual shot does as much or a lot more than even the best throwing weapons). Ex, the Death and Taxes is equivalent of throwing 2-8 throwing weapons in a 1-2 burst fire depending on range of dmg fluctuation.

Now, if you need a weapon when going loud the Smart Pistol Genjiroh is hilariously overpowered. Even against late game enemies in the final missions and on very hard it will still melt entire groups. It makes a good back up option if going stealth build despite having zero investment in smart-weapon perks.

Again, the other alternative I recommend is System Collapse with Raven deck (when you can get it for the range, helps a lot) and Spillover (final perk middle Intelligence tree, activates probably around 50% of the time). You will want to also get Second Heart, Biomonitor, and Blood Pump to fully support abusing Overclock though. Could just instantly knock out most or a large number of enemies with zero effort often clearing entire combat portions of missions in seconds.

[CrimsOnly]

Which throwable knife or blade is good, actually I dont think it matters anyway. As long as it is iconic it is always good. Some of them better depends of how you play ( for example silenced sniper or pistols are good for sneaky game play etc) Some weapon applies bleeding, other toxic, some of it gives you armor pen.

In short it depends on how you play and who is your enemy. I personally choose whose look i find good, because im a steath player and headshots with throwable knifes generally oneshot enemies.

Btw i dont have any iconic throwable knife. Did i missed something? Where to find one? Tier 5 punknife is good thou (1.8 sec return time or something like that is very good)