Is it just me, or is melee combat impossible?

[Amalia_Quinn]

I need to know if this is just me having a skill issue. I did a bit of melee combat before 2.0, and it usually went fine. I was never able to pull off the counter-attacks, but I was able to get by just by dodging enemy attacks.

Just now, I decided to break out the Mantis Blades to try to work up my Shinobi skill a bit. I attacked the first enemies I saw; three random Tyger Claws standing on the street. It was a disaster. I've been trying to kill them for about half an hour now, and its getting ridiculous. I can just about kill the first one before the second guy knocks out half my health with a single attack (he's using a knife, which would do ~30 damage if I was using it, but for him it seems to deal 100+ damage). If I manage to dodge that first hit, he will slide towards me and hit me with his follow up. Blocking seems to have no effect on how quickly he kills me.

I feel like its important to point out that when I say "slides towards me", I'm not being poetical. He will start his follow up attack, I backpedal (maybe even dodge back if I'm feeling fancy), and then he will slide towards me mid-attack and suddenly be in range. There's no animation to indicate that he suddenly charged at me. He slides in like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ chess piece and shanks me. And then I die, because super-knife.

Is this happening to anyone else? Am I just missing something fundamental?

Maybe its related, but I've also had issues fighting those enemies who can dodge ranged attacks. They could do it pre-2.0, but now they seem to be able to effortlessly avoid any ranged attack. Even when they're in the middle of vaulting over something, or reloading, or looking in another direction. If I blind them with a quickhack I can get one hit in, but then they'll immediately start dodging again. Fighting those guys has become an exercise in frustration. -_-

[Jandi]

I went full melee for 2.0 for fun and thought melee is OP at first but realized how ridiculous melee is endgame and felt like I had god mode cheats on. Went the blunt weapon route first cause RNG gave me a pink bat, in the early levels, then transitioned into Gorilla arms.

BTW mantis blades in CP2077 fall under the category "blades" with the katana, not melee so hope you didn't put a bunch of investment into "melee" while going full mantis. Mantis Blades scale off your "Reflexes" in attributes along with anything that says "blade" skills.

Didn't have the NPC sliding issue in a fight but if you are with in 5 meters of enemy AI they will swap to melee or do a superman lunge attack with the butt of their rifle or handgun so maybe your game isn't properly displaying the animations? Or enemy AI has a cyberware with Sandevistan?

Do you just mash the melee button in the direction of the NPC? Aiming around the head should have better crit and take the head clean off...

If you have all the blade perks, just remember you can deflect incoming bullets but just manage your stamina above 33% and the reflected bullets will go where you are aiming.
If you also run Tailwind in your build just air dash end hold down your attack for a heavy and you will lunge at them paired with flash & thunderclap, doing this AI loses their lockon.
Also paired with other perks your mitigation % chance greatly increases reducing mass damage, so good to raise mitigation "strength" that reduces all incoming damage.

In the blade perks already has its own bleeding effect so if you get poison mantis it's a deadly combo too, having 2 bleed effects wont stack. Also you mention you mostly dodged, if you are on mouse & keyboard holding down right click is block.

If you feel like you are too squishy relocate some perks to Pain to Gain and prioritize mitigation strength stats cause mitigation % chance can always be high with the perks under "Reflexes"

Hope that helps, have a good one.

[Amalia_Quinn]

Originally posted by Jandi:

I went full melee for 2.0 for fun and...

Hope that helps, have a good one.

When I say "melee", I just mean melee weapons in general. Not specifically blunt or blade. I don't have any perk investment in them at the moment; I'm still fairly early in the game, and I've been dumping all of my perks into stealth/throwing weapons.

Maybe melee is just something that needs to be avoided if you're not built for it. I could swear that its a lot more... "unpredictable" than it was pre-2.0, though. Like I said, I've done melee builds before (specifically using the Mantis Blades), and it wasn't easy, but it also wasn't terribly difficult. Even without perks I used to be able to pull out a katana and do some damage, but now I just die immediately if an enemy with a knife charges at me.

[funkynutz]

Originally posted by Amalia_Quinn:

...I've been dumping all of my perks into stealth/throwing weapons.

Then focus on those play styles, or you're putting yourself at a disadvantage. Be the ghost that strikes from the shadows, disembowelling and beheading your enemies from behind before they even know you are there; or while they're looking the other way to see what that noise was (it was you, throwing a knife at a wall to distract them so you could take them out cleanly without alerting their gang).

[BMC]

I did melee entire play through, I completed the game before dlc dropped so I run "Pride" which is Rogues pistol, I have 20 reflex, 20 technical ability and 20 cool, rest goes into strength for health and so on. I would focus on your cyberware if you are struggling, since it is what makes you the strongest, stuff that slows down time on detection, when your health gets low and using a sandevistan, then I just ended up adding whatever had it looked better, I'm at like 600+ armour as a result.
Mantis blades are the worst thing you can use if your levelling up shinobi, use a sword, you have plenty of choices for katanas to choose from.
The cyberpsycho ability in Technical skill tree is strong for melee btw, ups attack speed when it activates.
I always use a katana, only boss I struggled with was Kurt Hansen, I ran through entire groups of enemies and bosses like they aren't there, it's all cyberware pretty much

[Wedge]

Lol ye I melee'd smasher to death even with -70% damage. 100% crit with errata + sandy was okay enough dps still. Getting one shot by the spawned snipers was frustrating though.

[Death Approaches]

Well, what's your criteria? Yes it's a "harder" than pre-v2.0, but so is everything in that, I am no longer an edgerunning god, wasting every everything until I get bored, thousands of kills...

Case in point, v2.02 fully-leveled endgame 20s Blade and 50th/50 level/cred and all 60s attribute, very end-game... whose found enough shard chips to max out any combination of cyberware you might want to slot, with room to spare.

Take "Bullets", the Jinuchi cyberpsycho fight... afterwards, all those, what, 10? 12? MaxTac standing inside and out front by the Militech heli, even as a Solo Blades specialist with Bladerunner, Slaughterhouse, Adrenaline Rush, and Air Leap, and blade finishers and three sugar cookies, it's STILL a lot more of a challenge to zero those guys with Katana or Mantis. You probably won't do it on your first try on Very Hard, whereas in v1.63 Very Hard you wouldn't even need to heal or activate your Sandy more than once. (since normally they arrive in 4s for a 5-badge crime response, that's much more manageable, huh?)

Can you still do it? Oh yes. Yes you can. And it's much more fun because it's much more challenging. However jack-of-all-trades builds are suicidal in v2, which is why "refund" your spent points is right there to re-spec on-the-fly to try another approach.

God I love this game!

[valium]

20 body, 20 tech, Gorilla Arms, Sandevistan, Quake, win.

Picking up and throwing enemies is fun, but largely a waste of time, just punch them again.

[Tokenn]

Originally posted by Amalia_Quinn:

When I say "melee", I just mean melee weapons in general. Not specifically blunt or blade. I don't have any perk investment in them at the moment; I'm still fairly early in the game, and I've been dumping all of my perks into stealth/throwing weapons.

This may be your problem. I think you have to commit some Perks/Attribute points into Body and Tech...stuff that gives you armour and health boosts. In my games, I generally build on strength and health in the earliest part of the game and build on weapons and fancy abilities next. Otherwise you get into the 'glass cannon' effect.

[Tex ArCana]

Body for blunts.
I felt OP in my first playthrough (Only on hard) with Gorilla Arms. And once i started using a baseball bat as well it was hilariously fun.
PS. Golden Baseball Bat ftw!

[skOsH♥]

Katana + cool + ninjitsu + body + reflexes = Fun, but also OP

Edit: well, I shouldn't say OP, but it's powerful.

[Wedge]

Reflex + tech + body is fairly strong and very fun I wouldn't say OP. Netrunning is 100% OP even with lvl scaling nuking my damages I still simply look at groups and they die lol. It's boring af though.

[Death Approaches]

yeah but trying to go melee blunt or blades with a deck slotted might lead to lots of flatlining and cussing late-game and all skull-showing enemies, cause if you ramped up for quickhacking intelligence then should have been quickhacking and not jumping in with blades doing <80 damage... same as slotting a sandi when you spent the points to get up to 36 RAM and Overclock, but then aren't currently decking... that's kind of the idea, specialize or grind and run away a lot. and remember to respec when appropriate.

it always seems it's the jack-of-all-trades types that it never "clicks" for. You can do almost everything, but not everything at once.

[skOsH♥]

Originally posted by Badmanticore:

Reflex + tech + body is fairly strong and very fun I wouldn't say OP. Netrunning is 100% OP even with lvl scaling nuking my damages I still simply look at groups and they die lol. It's boring af though.

I am doing minimal net running to try and do actual stealth. I'm only disabling cameras, and with the in game music on, it's a whole new experience. Everywhere I sneak in each mission I am tense. It's epic. Great way to play. With high reflexes I can easily kill someone quickly enough with a suppressed pistol if they notice me. Reminds me of Splinter Cell.

[CoffeeBro]

The 2 OP blunt weapons imo is guerrilla arms and the electric dildo. The dildo stuns. So it may not cause a tone of damage, but you take next to no damage at all. As for the arms, they are just way over powered imo. A little strategy in fights and you will win every fight, 1st try. I've never tried mantis blades, so no idea how effective they are.

[mhent]

i played on hard without arm cyberware, without melee weapons, simply used bare fists. got no problems with melee combat.