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summoned "allies" can turn against you - so I only did those if my team was not near it
but there are numerous other builds that can do it better, but thats my pen&paper char so I went with it
I get the feeling the devs expected pen&paper players and that's why they don't really explain the system and your options. I might try a shaman since they focus on CHA and I really the narrative options etiquettes provide.
I got an Autoloader Arm and used grenade launchers and a taser (the gimmicky weapons). Had enough Karma to be decent at a weapon of skill of choice too. Alternatively, you could go into arcane magic. Everyone is moaning about the expensive fetishes, but were they cheaper Shamans would be beyond overpowered.
I played the first game with a Mage, the second with a Samurai, and this with a Shaman, and I think Shaman was the most fun.
The fetishes is something that worries me. Sure, I'm not gonna use them in every fight, but how viable are they? I'd save them for mission end fights, the big ones. But is the shaman still effective the rest of the time?
Especially since I can have Gobbets and her fetishes replenish every mission
In the end you can complete SRHK with every class, but pure shaman is one of the worst choices, compared to others. If you want to play a pure shaman, then I'd recommend playing it in Dragonfall. cause of the creator's symbol totem.
Dove Totem + Gobbet's Steal Spirit skill helps. That way you can keep summon control forever.
Nevertheless unless you mix spellcasting or gunnery into your build, your shaman doesn't do much dmg, cause there don't exist any dmg dealing shaman spells and for the end game it means that 2 of 4 party members are mainly shaman supporters.
In death city and the bonus campaign most of the enemies have 6+ armor - means your shaman base attack (nerve bolt?) does almost no dmg, cause the weak DoT (=damage over time) gets nullified by armor.
On high armor you need spike dmg or you need to reduce the armor. mages are awesome in both, while shamans are weak in both. Once more: yes, you can complete SRHK as shaman, but I doubt it's much fun overall. And every class can invest 6 karma for a totem. Generally I would recommend evreyone a totem just for the passive totem bonus (Cobra, Leopard, Fish, etc.). Every gunner, mage, melee takes profit of it, while it's only an investment of 6 karma.
One other approach would be...
play mage or gunner and invest 6 karma for the dove totem to support gobbet as shaman. with the dove totem you can keep the control over gobbet's summon. dove's cool down lasts longer than its duration, but you can always steal the control over a broken-free spirit, too. So, it's a cheap alternative.
First things first. Hong Kong is a very easy game. You'll have no trouble playing on Hard in any case, so optimize for fun, not numbers.
Now, there is almost no such thing as a pure Shaman. There's simply too much Karma to stay within Shamanic skills only. You can be a perfectly capable e.g. gunner on top of your Shamanic arsenal.
Next, Conjuration is a highly tactical skill. All the spells it grants you must be utilized intelligently, with situational awareness. E.g. Shadow is the best defensive spell in the game, if you use it at the very end of your turn with other characters placed in positions to flank enemies. Barriers are perfect crowd control if you place them at choke points at the right time. In most cases, you can force a group of enemies to take Ap damage and end up huddled together only to decimate them with AoE damage in the next round. Haste is obvious. Dual Blur and Armor make your melee damage dealers (Gaichu?) safe no matter where they are. All of these spells are fantastic, but they're not straight forward to use. And this is exactly why I find Shamans fun. I was bored to tears while playing a Mage by casting the same 2 spells in the same order in every situation. Playing a Shaman made me stop, think, and rejoice at the results.
Spirit Summoning is really not useful if you'll have Gobbet around. She'll always be a better Shaman than the player, due to free fetishes and Acidic Fog. But, as a complete character, the player is way better as you can also deal good damage if you choose to. If you won't be taking Gobbet (which IMHO you shouldn't if you're a Shaman yourself), Spirit Summoning is still only moderately useful, as the Shrine spirits are never too powerful and fetishes are too expensive to use freely. Still, it's not useless either and it must again be used tactically, which I appreciate. Again, I think the player would be ridiculously strong if you could spawn spirits at will. While Gobbet can do this, her shooting is crap, to compensate.
Even with 6-8 in both Spirit Summoning and Control, you can still have at least 6 in both Ranged Combat and a weapon skill of choice. With Autoloader Arm and a grenade launcher you can do AoE damage all day. You can easily shoot rifles on Full Auto as well. I never ever used Acid Bolts for damage when there's better options available.
To summarize, if you play a Shaman, you have 2 distinct highly tactical skills, awesome support spells, enough Karma to shoot at least decently and every etiquette you'll ever want. How is that not fun? I absolutely loved my character.
Death City is the final mission, right? And where is this bonus campaign?
I think I'll tailor my shaman as an ehnancer (Aim, Haste, etc) with a side of spells maybe. If I'm branching, let's do it in magic, feels more flavorful. Anyway I think that if you can use spells, shooting a gun is like... why, bro?
If I decided to go melee it seems I have 3 options: use weapons, be an adept or use cyberware? Which you folks think is best? Cyberware weapons seem interesting, but it looks you need to really focus on the skills to take advantage of them.
You choose a campaign when you start a new game.
Absolutely doable and viable. If you forgo Spirit Summoning, you can master both Spellcasting and Conjuration. Even if not, you get to a decent level in all. The only problem is that you have a very limited number of spell slots, so having access to many spells doesn't really mean you can use them all simultaneously. (That's where guns come in handy for damage)
For full auto, mostly 😋 Joking aside, there's something about the idea of a mage with an assault rifle that amuses me endlessly. Break their armor with a spell and slice through with machine-gun fire. It's exactly what Shadowrun is about: cyberpunk with magic, and I love it. But I can see it your way too :)
Unfortunately, I know nothing of these...
where guns come in handy for damage)
For full auto, mostly 😋 Joking aside, there's something about the idea of a mage with an assault rifle that amuses me endlessly. Break their armor with a spell and slice through with machine-gun fire. It's exactly what Shadowrun is about: cyberpunk with magic, and I love it. But I can see it your way too :)
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Yeah, I feel you. This mix is what makes Shadowrun so interesting to me. I know there's the matter os essence to explain why magic and tech don't mix more, but I'd love to see things like ensorcered shells or magical IC.
Actually... I mentioned it in another thread... you only need Strip Armor III (or Spellfocus SA II). Combine that with an Ares Alpha (or the Ares HvAR later on) and you've an awesome setup. I would say that works even better than with Haste III or IV.
1. HK - decker/rigger (rigger was the combat feat, no quickness/ranged weapon proficiency)
2. DF - Adept (fist) using adept mostly for passives as I dropped 2 essence for cyber as game progressed
3. Returns - Mage (damage carry style)
4. HK - Cybered street samurai with hand razors and shock hands 2nd weapon for utilty
5. HK - Pistol street samurai with a bit of cyber
1. decker/rigger
Actually an interesting build but I generally enjoy grenade launcher style weapons so I regretted pulling isobel out later in the game. In hindsight this build would've been more fun in Returns or even DF.
2. DF - Adept was my biggest regret but purely because I was most curious about the cybered medic girl and didn't really get to play her for comp synergy reasons. I didn't like the decker in that story so I'll probably run decker/rigger next or maybe decker/sniper to enable dog as #4 in the late game.
3. The damage carry mage was also a lot of fun and felt very smooth overall except super early. I felt like AI in Returns was more systematically going after the player character than in the other 2 as well. On the other hand, I suspect the lack of initiative control when opening door in HK would've made it much weaker in the HK storylines. I'd often park units to attack right from the door opening, use a buff mage or shaman to +1 AP and accuracy my carry mage and double AoE 3 targets in the opener. Like a fanatic spellcaster roleplay really fun and I got to divest into charisma since mage doesn't need a gun utility with powerbolt.
4. Far and away the most trivial game was HK cybered street samurai. As soon as I got Wired Reflexes(WR) and Hydraulic Jack(HJ), I'd +1 AP with gobbet, WR and HJ and CC 2 targets, one with shock hand and one with the kick/punch cyber ability (forget the name) and trash a third to the ground. It really felt broken. Even the extended story line was ridiculously easy. I deliberately sided with neither team on each storyline occasion, which are certainly the most difficult encounters in the game, and barely took a scratch. Hell, on the extended edition mission to rescue the little girl, I even deliberately played around keeping the NPC shadow runner that joins your side for the fight thinking she might join the team and I could toy with a microfilament cyber.
Just the sheer amount of CC that a high mobility melee with near 100% close combat hit rating can dish out is absurd. I thought Gaichu with buffs and Jazz was OP on my first playthrough but he paled in comparison to cyber+shock gloves. Basically I felt like I could've 3-manned almost everything. The nice part is my main character was so strong that I could slot any 4th between Duncan, Racter and Gaichu.
5. I wanted to see if it was viable for a main damage carry to use pistol. It was certainly very difficult in the early game. I think I needed 4 attempts against the 5 mages in the temple on the qi disruption run. But by the late game it went very smooth. Especially after I bought the taser because it enables you to blow a target's cover and CC another target (or possibly zip a target with duncan, effectively taking out 2 targets in the opener). Lots of fun. Definitely don't recommend to beginners though. I have the extension left to do with this crew. I suspect it will also be challenging because of the lack of armor shredding on the crew and the number of units with jolt arm / stun immunity / high armor in the extension.
I'm curious, does anyone find success on highest difficulty with comps that don't run a shaman (or a buff mage with conjuring for Haste)? i.e. with comps that don't have a dedicated hyper carry but rather like 3 good dps + 1 utility instead of 1 damage carry, 1 good dps + 2 utility?
Interesting choices!
I like that the games make alternative builds viable, usually you need to min-max or brute force your way through save scumming
I'm curious though, what exactly is a 'carry'? You carry the team or the team carries you?
1. Rigger always felt the most dubious to me, maybe because comparing drones isn't as straightforward as comparing guns. Any tips on a rigger?
4. Cyber augmentations looked real tempting to me in HK, but my street samurai was already focused on ranged combat. It seems you were less kamikaze and more tactical with your CCs, which I probably would've overlooked
I'm sorry, I believe it's a term coined for MOBAs although I really only watch Smite Pro League. I think I heard some ex-LoL pros use it too in Teamfight tactics. It refers to the unit on the team that deals far and away the most damage, at least later in the game in MOBAs by contrast to others that may offer more utility like buffs or CC. In runs 2,3,4,5 above, my player character was my primary damage dealer or carry while in run 1, it was generally Gaichu.
But in run 4, that carry probably dealt about 70-80% of all damage pretty much throughout the game whilst in run 5,it was probably in the 40-50% range until the very late game where it tipped over 50% with 6 AP after buffs and spammable double tap ability. On top of that, melee generally provide more utility than guns because of AP damage abilities and passively on melee crits. I think an adept Katana Samurai for the one Katana that requires 5 chi casting would probably play out similar to my melee cyber. When you run a melee behind enemy lines and take 1-2 AP off all targets, the AI basically spends their entire turns moving units to take cover from that backline melee unit and because of the AP damage, they don't have enough left to attack after repositioning.
About riggers, truth be told, the game doesn't give you too much drone options. You basically have several tiers of drones, each tier usually with one attack drone and one utility drone. I don't feel like utility drones really bring enough utility to warrant it, at least not until you unlock equipping 2 drones. So I guess the bigger consideration is likely whether you want to rock 2 attack drones or 1 attack + 1 utility. I ran the A tier attack + utility in the late game but didn't put the utility drone to much utility use if I'm being honest. He was mostly using his weak mortar attack. So odds are I'd run A tier + B tier attack drones if I ran another rigger. Which with high rigging skills for hit chances, packs about as much punch as a gunner street samurai with karma spread too much (like most NPCs). The biggest thought you need to put into drone selection is if they are offered with gun mounts. If so, be wary that drones with shotgun mounts behave like any shotguns so they synergize very poorly with melee characters like Gaichu that will get cleaved from the shotgun.
If you play rigger in HK, there seems to be a glitch that may create a copy of Koshei that you can use. It's less strong with you than it is with Racter but still felt close to A tier attack drone. I'm not sure what's causing this glitch though. In my first playthrough I got copies of most weapons and armors from NPCs, in the second I think I only got Izz's decks and racter's buff gun + Koshei. In the third run only Izz' deck that can be sold for like 500 nuyen. My best guess for a glitch cause has been trying to slot in replacement weapons and armor in teamates slots during preparation for a run.
As for cyber tactical play, I can say I clearly undervalued cheap CC items like shock gloves and tasers on a skill-suited damage dealers in my early runs. On the cyber run, I'd typically use the CC on low armor covered targets to make them trivial to take down with my other characters since the stun removes the cover.
After using the cheap(1k nephilim network) utility mage for most of my last gigs in Returns, I'm probably going to try a CC/utility mage with conjuring in a future run of HK or DF. Maybe in a dedicated Duncan Subdue run for giggles although I need a break from HK runs.
Thanks for the answers!