Armadillo mod - the only viable choice?

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In general, Cyberpunk 2077 is very likely the worst balanced game ever. By freaking far. You can become virtually immortal, freeze time permanently, kill just about everyone without knowing you're there, shoot through the planet for a few million damage. The only difference between normal enemies and cyberpsychos/bosses is that the former are generally one-shot, while the latter is dead before they can respond.

The worst thing you can do in this game is actually be good at it. Totally ruins just about any challenge in combat even on very hard. Total snooze-fest.
 
20 Reflex+18 Tech IS A TRAP.

Instead of going for a 20 body/20 reflex/18 tech/10 cool/3 intel build, I dumped down from 20 to 18 reflexes, dragon strike is overrated and even in highest difficulty Don't Fear The Reaper you don't need the 25% extra crit damage, 2 attribute points for a bonus that's less than a single bully mod is overrated.

Tech also is wasted attribute points, you don't need Satori legendary at all.

I went 20 body for the knockdown immunity, which is invaluable against exoskeleton cyberpsychos who stunlock you to death in melee without it.

I then dropped Tech down to 14, and used those 6 points to pump Cool to 16.

16 cool is huge. You get Cataresist for 35% resistances, Inductor for 50% extra armor instead when you are shocked/EMP, gives you a 4th stack of Cold Blood, Cold Blood trigger on critical hits, Cool Blood maxed and refreshed instantly when you hit 45% HP, 5% resistances per stack of cold blood.

At 16 cool, with an extra 6% resistance and extra 12% extra crit damage with cold blood up just from the attribute (so you are merely missing 13% crit damage from dragon strike, 2 % chance to crit, and 6 mantis blade damage)

Cold Blood at 16 cool gives you:

-50% extra headshot damage
-80% more armor
-20% extra resistances
-120% more attack speed
-40% increased weapon damage
- You only lose stacks 1 at a time between periods of non-combat, and it's very easy to max them


You exchange 40% armor from tech for these, but it's actually 20% armor loss only because 16 cool gives you one extra stack of cold blood, so 20% armor x4 vs. 20% x3, in exchange for 6% more resist+ access to legendary cataresist for 35% resistances vs. 12% from 8 cool green (23% extra resistances).

16 cool also allows you to pick up Inductor for 50% extra armor when shocked/EMP, on top of instead of being vulnerable to burn, you do 10% more damage while burn debuff is on you.

More importantly, Tech perk levels are garbage, they only affect crafting costs.

Going from 10 cool to 16 Cool nets you 5% more resistances, 10% extra chance to crit, 5% extra crit damage, and 3% movement speed. You lose 3% dps from 19 reflex perk.

Yes, you crafting Legendary Satori and armor will yield higher baseline armor (much less mitigation, however, than Cold Blood at 16 cool when it's up), and Satori is plain broken damage.

But you'll be much more glass cannon with 18 tech and 20 reflex with honestly redundant extra damage.

Meanwhile using my Legendary Mantis Blades with 16 cool on Don't Fear The Reaper, I grab the enemies with the normally annoying mantis blade animations that would in other situations get you melted, and I TAKE NO DAMAGE BECAUSE WITH COLD BLOOD I AM LITERALLY IMMUNE TO DAMAGE. I'd have to run into multiple explosions or tank like 3-4 machine gun goliaths in Don't Fear The Reaper to be in any dange, and not once was my biomonitor or second heart popped.

I was still 1 shotting regular mooks with heavy mantis blade attacks and 2 shotting the machine gun Goliaths. Killed Adam Smasher in 12 seconds without taking any damage.

The one noticeable loss from dumping Tech is that Mechatronic Core cyberware legendary which gives 50% extra damage to mech/drones/androids drops down to green version of 20% extra damage, so you lose 25% extra damage to mechs, but it doesn't really matter because I am still 2 shotting the mechs in Don't Fear The Reaper on Very Hard.

The main attraction of Tech was supposed to be able to not look like a clown since you'd be able to craft your own armor, but the legendary armor specs are super limited, most of them ugly as sin, the only extra helm you get is an awful beanie or a decent cowboy hat.

I suppose you can go Tech if you plan a gun based build since being able to craft legendary guns is pretty nice. But if you play melee and enjoy Mantis Blades or Gorilla Arms or Monowire, Cool is such a vastly better investment.

Crafting in this game is very tedious too, single craft components you have to mod in PC to be able to multicraft, since leveling crafting takes long, by the time you want to craft legendary stuff, the mats cost, especially epic and legendary armor is crazy high, so you either dump money.

In any future runs that don't involve gun play, such as net runner or melee, I am going 16 cool instead of 18 Tech.
 
On my 1st playthru I ran fortuna and other damage/crit mods on my armors. Beyond stacking only sometimes, not only did it not work as it was supposed to but it left me with almost no armor by the end game, leaving me to be basically insta killed by everything in the game.

2nd playthru, I'm purposefully stacking armadillos and after having thousands of armor, enemies do 1 damage per shot, regardless of their weapons, excluding melee.

Armadillo is so OP it's literally the only good choice of armor mod in the game. Change my mind :p

Yup. You can raise your crit chance and crit damange in other ways, so clothing wise the best choice is stacking armadillo.
 
Yeah, I basically just keep stacking them on the clothing sets I like so that I'm not forced into wearing headgear.

The whole clothing mod system seems weird in concept. In your cyberware there is a slot to buff armor, so I don't understand why they didn't simply expand this a little so that clothing was purely cosmetic. When a rabbit-ear hat is more durable than a tactical helmet, it's an issue :ROFLMAO:

How would cyberware armour work? Clothing is outside your body, it can absorb energy from projectiles and melee attacks before they reach the skin, or prevent them reaching the skin altogether. The Mox girls use a form of cyberware where the skin is basically replaced by a much more impact resistant synthetic layer, and I can sort-of see how that would work to some degree but it would be bound to have vulnerabilities in areas of high flexion. Human skin is actually pretty awsome stuff given what it does; making a better synthetic replacement need a lot of explanation in lore which as far as I can see just isn't there.

There are materials – what used to be sold as "silly putty", for example – which have a maximum speed of deformation, and are effectively rigid to impacts at greater speed. A composite material comprising a matrix of such a material and a highly cut-resistant fibre such as aramid could effectively block bullets and fast moving melee attacks. This works for clothing based armour, but aramid is also extremely dimensionally stable – it will not stretch – so couldn't be used for a skin replacement.

I'm ognoring, here, the obvious silliness of bras and hotpants with high armour stats. Yes, an armoured bra could prevent a certain amount of injury to your boobs, but it isn't going to stop a stomach wound; and similarly, hotpants, no matter how armoured, aren't going to protect your legs.
 
How would cyberware armour work? Clothing is outside your body, it can absorb energy from projectiles and melee attacks before they reach the skin, or prevent them reaching the skin altogether. The Mox girls use a form of cyberware where the skin is basically replaced by a much more impact resistant synthetic layer, and I can sort-of see how that would work to some degree but it would be bound to have vulnerabilities in areas of high flexion. Human skin is actually pretty awsome stuff given what it does; making a better synthetic replacement need a lot of explanation in lore which as far as I can see just isn't there.

There are materials – what used to be sold as "silly putty", for example – which have a maximum speed of deformation, and are effectively rigid to impacts at greater speed. A composite material comprising a matrix of such a material and a highly cut-resistant fibre such as aramid could effectively block bullets and fast moving melee attacks. This works for clothing based armour, but aramid is also extremely dimensionally stable – it will not stretch – so couldn't be used for a skin replacement.

I'm ognoring, here, the obvious silliness of bras and hotpants with high armour stats. Yes, an armoured bra could prevent a certain amount of injury to your boobs, but it isn't going to stop a stomach wound; and similarly, hotpants, no matter how armoured, aren't going to protect your legs.
I think they could just call it something like synthetic skin...there is a mod slot that currently lets you add an armor upgrade...just add a few more and let us not look...well...:eek:
 
I think they could just call it something like synthetic skin...there is a mod slot that currently lets you add an armor upgrade...just add a few more and let us not look...well...:eek:
They could call it that, but how would it work? The Cyberpunk world is not a magical world. It's a world which works on physics and engineering. There may well be – there certainly will be – engineering advances in 2077, but they have to be explained in terms of physics.
 
There's already a subdermal mod you can add to your cyberware in-game thar adds armor...its literally just adding slots for more of them so we don't have this ridiculous clothing system.
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Quite honestly, they should have tied stats to cyberware, kept the tech tree as a specialist tree for enhancing tech weapons and cyberware effects and the effects of consumables.

This Tech system of crafting is horrendously implemented, and if they removed stats off clothing and weapons and moved it to cyberwear upgrades, it would have opened up a lot more room for appearance customization.

Even then, the available fashion leaves a lot to be desired, and the abysmal lack of technological visors/helms that don't make you look like a dorky dumbass or a thrift shop reject is so annoying.

I don't understand why 95% of the game's armor makes you look from the 70's or off some LA gang. It's 2077 and none of the available clothing looks remotely technologically enhanced or advanced.
 
I don't understand why 95% of the game's armor makes you look from the 70's or off some LA gang. It's 2077 and none of the available clothing looks remotely technologically enhanced or advanced.

Well to be fair, it IS the 70s in this game -- and there is clothing that look technologically advanced, but it's only for NPCs, choom :)

But seriously: I think what they're going for is that the Cyberpunk future is a "degraded future". Things got more advanced than they are now, but the world has been through some unprecedented disasters in the meantime. Supply chains and global manufacturing systems are impeded by war, climate changes, political upheaval, huge population disruptions and migrations. They still make advanced tech, but its not at scale anymore because you just can't coordinate things on that scale or get the scarce materials required anymore. The systems that make those things possible at scale just don't work in current conditions (or work slower and only in smaller amounts). So there still is advanced tech, and there's really shiny stuff in the world, but only for the wealthy, not for the masses.

Plus, economic disparity is so high that even what passes for the middle class lives in what we today would consider very poor conditions, using old devices that have been refurbished, or stuff built using older, cheaper, more accessible technologies. It's supposed to feel a bit desperate. The ragged and worn textures on a lot of the clothes are supposed to reflect that, I assume.

My $0.02
 
Well to be fair, it IS the 70s in this game -- and there is clothing that look technologically advanced, but it's only for NPCs, choom :)

But seriously: I think what they're going for is that the Cyberpunk future is a "degraded future". Things got more advanced than they are now, but the world has been through some unprecedented disasters in the meantime. Supply chains and global manufacturing systems are impeded by war, climate changes, political upheaval, huge population disruptions and migrations. They still make advanced tech, but its not at scale anymore because you just can't coordinate things on that scale or get the scarce materials required anymore. The systems that make those things possible at scale just don't work in current conditions (or work slower and only in smaller amounts). So there still is advanced tech, and there's really shiny stuff in the world, but only for the wealthy, not for the masses.

Plus, economic disparity is so high that even what passes for the middle class lives in what we today would consider very poor conditions, using old devices that have been refurbished, or stuff built using older, cheaper, more accessible technologies. It's supposed to feel a bit desperate. The ragged and worn textures on a lot of the clothes are supposed to reflect that, I assume.

My $0.02


Yeah, but that Mad Max future applies mainly to the plebs. V is a merc that ascends to take down a corporation. Own enough eddies for super sophisticated cyberware, weapons, and cars, but somehow clothes are off limits in the high tech realm?

Look at Hanako, Oda, Takemura, MaxTac. Surely when I'm at the top of the chain where I can afford this amount of crap and weapons to smoke the entire Arasaka tower, I can afford at least some decent stylish clothes that don't look like some Fresh Prince of Bel Air throwback or trailer trash wear.
 
Yeah, but that Mad Max future applies mainly to the plebs. V is a merc that ascends to take down a corporation. Own enough eddies for super sophisticated cyberware, weapons, and cars, but somehow clothes are off limits in the high tech realm?

Look at Hanako, Oda, Takemura, MaxTac. Surely when I'm at the top of the chain where I can afford this amount of crap and weapons to smoke the entire Arasaka tower, I can afford at least some decent stylish clothes that don't look like some Fresh Prince of Bel Air throwback or trailer trash wear.

Oh you can afford them, but they're only for NPCs. They sell that stuff in all those stores whose doors tell you [LOCKED] ;-)

I feel your pain, choom. I want those clothes too. I mean also look at V's apartment building. It's a crap place, and you never get the chance to move someplace better no matter how much cash you earn.

Part of it is that the game's PoV is that the entire time between when you wake up form the coma and when you attack Arasaka is a really short time, so they don't accommodate things like moving to a new apartment or improving your station, since it wouldn't make sense (in the author's view) for that to happen such a short time.

Though it's fine for you to go from Street Cred 1-50 and amass a FLEET of cars! :)
 
Oh you can afford them, but they're only for NPCs. They sell that stuff in all those stores whose doors tell you [LOCKED] ;-)

I feel your pain, choom. I want those clothes too. I mean also look at V's apartment building. It's a crap place, and you never get the chance to move someplace better no matter how much cash you earn.

Part of it is that the game's PoV is that the entire time between when you wake up form the coma and when you attack Arasaka is a really short time, so they don't accommodate things like moving to a new apartment or improving your station, since it wouldn't make sense (in the author's view) for that to happen such a short time.

Though it's fine for you to go from Street Cred 1-50 and amass a FLEET of cars! :)


Don't get me started on being unable to dye my cars :*(, virtually all red, yellow, or black. Wanted so much to give my cars an electric purple with turquoise paint job :mad:
 
Hopefully, there will be an expansion that is much more....laid back and allow us to buy new apartments etc and no main quest that rushes us so much.
Offtopic sorry.

To get back to the topic - it is nice that the mods are more important than the actual clothes, as that allows you to choose your looks and not lose too much for not mix/maxing and end up looking like a clown, but how the armor works (you are either almost immortal or 1 shot) is not ok. Maybe they should introduce some soft capping when it comes to armor?

Edit: forgot...I was quite surprised that the main armor gain wasn't from cyberwar:)
 
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