Balancing the skill tree

[LRobin89]

I'm 100% positive I didn't take any Perk from the Cold blood tree and in fact you know what, since it's free, I took a screenshot:

View attachment 11147450

That made me realize that I though I was at 5 but I'm at 4. Either way, that Skill levels up and I never invested any point in it.
In fact, I didn't even took any Perk from Cool since a very long time. Only recently I added a couple points into it to pick up Hidden dragon (which feature a Spider on the icon of course lol) but Cold blood were already at 3 when I did and then it kept increasing.

It could be a patch that caused that but apparently, my game isn't affected somehow because that character I'm playing, he's kicking since Day 1 (I'm what you could call an extremely slow player, haven't finished the game even once lol) and as you can tell, I keep building up Cold blood (I'm not even caped at 4, the Xp bar is still filling up).

I though it was normal and to be fair, maybe it is and you encounter some sort of bugs with your game (that would be a pretty big one in fact). It would be interesting to hear from other players see how it goes with them.

Thank you for the screenshot! So that's a bug on my game... :/
But I am not the only one. Youtubers playing on good PCs too.
This is even written in Fextralife wiki that the first perk is a requirement to level XP in this skill...

In some sites, they say you need to realize finishing moves with melee weapons, with a strong attack. Did you experienced those finishing moves?

I don't remember for myself, I used baseball bat and hammer during several hours, it should have happened in my game...

 

[Royal_ish]

I currently have three Attribute points available, and nine perk points. I spend Attribute points as needed (such as for opening locked doors), but I don't know what else to spend perk points on, I have most everything I want.

 

[Gen_Liu]

Thank you for the screenshot! So that's a bug on my game... :/
But I am not the only one. Youtubers playing on good PCs too.
This is even written in Fextralife wiki that the first perk is a requirement to level XP in this skill...

In some sites, they say you need to realize finishing moves with melee weapons, with a strong attack. Did you experienced those finishing moves?

I don't remember for myself, I used baseball bat and hammer during several hours, it should have happened in my game...

Absolutely, my build primarily focuses on Standevistan with lots of points in Body and Reflexes and that includes the use of Mantis blades (and I started with Katanas first).
While I mostly use Pistols/Revolver and Shotgun, I do use those melee weapons regularily either when enemies gets close and personal or when there's an isolated one somewhere that I can get easily without getting shot (the tactic is trigger Sandevistan, run to the choom, slice him/her in dices).

So, long story short, I do use melee finisher regularily and something that attract my attention based on what you said, unless I'm mistaken Baseball bat and Hammer are none lethal (I have a doubt for the hammer though but I'm sure Baseball bat are, I even used them for Cyberpsychos specifically for that reason), could this be a factor? Do you have to perform lethal melee finisher for Cold blood to gain XP?

 

[TouPoutsou]

Half the skill tree doesn't work. I hope they fix that before any attempt towards balancing it.

Also if we are talking about "balance", what about weapon attack speed? If your melee weapon is picked up or crafted at max attack speed it cannot be increased further, meaning all the perks, weapon, mods or cyberware that enhances it are completely useless. If it does not spawn at max speed, a single perk is enough to max it out making all other ways to increase attack speed useless again.

Also on my max level build i got exactly 125 perks (10 were aquired through perk shards), which is ridiculous. Balance in this game makes Skyrim seem the most balanced game of all time.

 

[Mordalak]

I'm level 50 with Reflex/Int/Cool build and Body at 8

I wanted to test some stuff with Body skills for a future build

Start levels
Athletics : 4.25 (I did a lot of running/jumping around and trying to go to hard to reach area during gameplay)
Annihilation : 3.25
Street Brawler : 3.5

Plan : Walking around Japantown punching in the air with Gorilla Arms to exaust stamina and gain Athletics XP while searching for Tiger Claws

Test 1 : Get Street Brawler to 8
4.5 level in about 3.5 hours
Athletics now at 5.75 (+1.5 level)

Test 2 : Get Annihilation to 8
4.75 level in a little more than an hour
Athletics now at 6 (+0.25 level)

Observations :
Street Brawler progression is 3 times slower than Annihilation
Athletics is at least 3 times slower than Street Brawler even when actively exausting all stamina

I got a total of 9.25 levels in Street Brawler and Annihilation and less than 2 levels in Athletics

Fighting a medium group of Tiger Claws can give over 650xp in Street Brawler or Annihilation
But I never saw more than 20xp in Athletics

 

[LRobin89]

I'm level 50 with Reflex/Int/Cool build and Body at 8

I wanted to test some stuff with Body skills for a future build

Start levels
Athletics : 4.25 (I did a lot of running/jumping around and trying to go to hard to reach area during gameplay)
Annihilation : 3.25
Street Brawler : 3.5

Plan : Walking around Japantown punching in the air with Gorilla Arms to exaust stamina and gain Athletics XP while searching for Tiger Claws

Test 1 : Get Street Brawler to 8
4.5 level in about 3.5 hours
Athletics now at 5.75 (+1.5 level)

Test 2 : Get Annihilation to 8
4.75 level in a little more than an hour
Athletics now at 6 (+0.25 level)

Observations :
Street Brawler progression is 3 times slower than Annihilation
Athletics is at least 3 times slower than Street Brawler even when actively exausting all stamina

I got a total of 9.25 levels in Street Brawler and Annihilation and less than 2 levels in Athletics

Fighting a medium group of Tiger Claws can give over 650xp in Street Brawler or Annihilation
But I never saw more than 20xp in Athletics

Yup. The only action with decent XP for Athletics is when you open windows/doors with raw strength. Too rare to be sufficient.

 

[GVArcian]

But Witcher 3 has no stealth mechanics and you are supposed to always kill enemies as fast as you can, thus making adrenaline relevant. But in stealth gameplay it is useless. Here, cold blood is even placed right next to stealth in the skill tree, which is puzzling.

You've very clearly never played a netrunner.