Katana or mantis blade ? or both ?

[Buurt]

Everytime I am playing a blade character I am not sure what arm weapons I should use, because mantis blades and normal blades feel so close that I often just use one of them, while with a body build gorilla arms always feel good etc.
What would you say is the best arm weapon for a blade character if I focus on katanas ? still mantis blades or even maybe something like rocket launcher ? Rocket launcher would be the only one I never really used

[valium]

Katanas can use mods, which will put them above Mantis blades in pure practical terms. If you like how the Mantis blades look and feel to use, Mantis blades are more than good enough to handle Very Hard, and with the relic upgrade, get a nice leap attack.

If you are under 20 body, it is hard to give up the +6 to body interactions with Gorilla arms.

[Amanoob105]

Katana's are better because you can mod then or find iconic versions that can do a number of powerful things, plus they can benefit from more perks in the Reflex tree.
Generally the better option if you need some defense with your hacky slashy.

Mantis Blades are better because you can pop blades, that can also be flavoured to a damage type of your choice, from your arms and then go stabby stabby on peoples faces while leaping about all over the place.

Both are good ideas. Just for different reasons.
If you want an excuse to take Mantis Blades, then a build that was going for Katanas is a very good excuse indeed as they can both benefit from a lot of the same perks.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Katana with arm rocket to take out vehicles and snipers.

[Mr_Purple]

There's honestly no reason to have both if you are using katanas. Blades feel extremely underpowered in comparison

[valium]

Mantis blades fall short until you get the Relic upgrades for them, then they shoot back up to close to katanas.

[Duilf]

As for cyberware weapons that your weapons of choice get bonuses from your build is equally important to if your weapons compliment each other. Gorilla Arms count as blunt, Mantis Blades count as blades, the Projectile Launcher counts as consumables getting bonuses from the tech tree, and the Monowire gets bonuses from the intelligence tree. There is no real reason to use Monowire unless you are also using quickhacks. However if you also went into their trees Gorilla Arms, and Projectile Launcher can provide things lacking from a blade build without them.

If Mantis Blades are better then Katana's is debatable. Katanas can be modded, and there are some fairly insane iconic Katanas like the Satori (during The Hiest when T-Bug opens the doors head up through where Saburo entered from first instead of out the prompted door), the Cocktail Stick, the Scalpel, or the Tsumetogi.

[★REM★]

You can do both.

Mantis Blades are funnier than katana for most players. But Katana is just superior damage wise.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

With katana you are complete badass right from the start when you start with Reflex tree and it only gets stronger and stronger. Can usually get first katana when going after bot in chrome sniffer hole and then grab Satori from the roof of Konpeki Plaza during chip heist.
Plenty of other great katanas as well like the one you get from Wakako after finishing all her gigs. Mantis Blades wont scale nearly as well.

[Armadea]

Both have advantages and disadvantages.
The mantis is the only arm weapon with a 4.8% bonus to melee damage, which also applies to the katana.
Katanas have a greater range and can hit opponents who are standing close together or behind each other.
However, this also has the disadvantage that katana opponents standing close to an obstacle are difficult to hit if you do not have the optimum distance to the opponent.
Mantis do more damage against single opponents, at least at high levels, as I have found with the MaxTac blades.
You can take Mantis and Katana to balance out the respective disadvantages and benefit from the 4.8% bonus (Tier 5).