Beginner Melee / Athletics Help plz!

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So I've already created my character, Nomad, and I had planned to go for a Primary Melee (Katana) / Some LR (sniper) / and some kind of crafting build for my character. I'm new to the game though i've had it for awhile. But I read that there is a huge problem with Athletics? Should I altogether avoid a Melee build? Or What are some recommendations to either get around this dilemma? Do you really need Athletics to have a good Melee build?
I'd greatly appreciate and welcome any tips & suggestions! Thanks
-BattouZen
 
I dont know. There probably is someone who knows the ins and outs of the system. In my opinion there is some kind of problem with athletics, in that it doesn't level up properly.

My attempted second playthrough I meant to make a "strong solo" who uses gorilla arms as the main weapon. I'm currently lvl 30, with 54 perk points spent, used gorilla arms melee all the time and my athletics is 5. I dont know but that seems low.
Cyberpunk 2077 Screenshot 2022.01.05 - 01.42.38.53.png

Melee as a build works just fine, as long as you focus on body (blunt melee) or reflexes (blades). Or maybe both like my first playthrough. I took cool here because I wanted to see if a "tank"-like build is possible. Not very good at least.
 
So I've already created my character, Nomad, and I had planned to go for a Primary Melee (Katana) / Some LR (sniper) / and some kind of crafting build for my character. I'm new to the game though i've had it for awhile. But I read that there is a huge problem with Athletics? Should I altogether avoid a Melee build? Or What are some recommendations to either get around this dilemma? Do you really need Athletics to have a good Melee build?
I'd greatly appreciate and welcome any tips & suggestions! Thanks
-BattouZen

"ATHLETICS DESCRIPTION"

"Related Attribute: Body"
  • "This skill can be leveled up by executing physical actions such as Running, Climbing, Sliding, Using your melee weapon and ripping out guns from turrets...
  • The Athletics skill focuses on improving V's physicality by increasing the weight cap, stamina, regen. rate, and health.
  • The easiest way to gain XP with Athletics is by exhausting your Stamina bar with melee attacks.
  • The best way to level up Athletics is to simply start punching and doing other athletic activities all the time. These include the aforementioned punching but also dashing, sliding, climbing, and jumping. The more you do these actions the more you will level Athletics. The key is to just make sure you’re expending your stamina.

    And the best part is that you don’t really need to do these with any purpose or intention. Punch walls nearby or just the air around you. Jump while you walk around Night City or climb every ladder you see. You can also focus on dodging while in combat or just sprinting as much as possible. It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing as long as you’re using up your stamina, as that is what will actually level up Athletics. Just make sure you do this because fully leveling up Athletics gives you some great benefits."
  • "Here’s what you get at each level."
    1. "N/A – Default
    2. Increases Carrying Capacity by 20
    3. 1 Perk Point
    4. Increases Stamina by 5%
    5. Increases Stamina Regen Rate by 10%
    6. Increases Carrying Capacity by 40
    7. 1 Perk Point
    8. 1 Perk Point
    9. Increases Health by 5%
    10. 1 Perk Point
    11. 1 Perk Point
    12. Max Health +5%
    13. Increases Carrying Capacity by 100
    14. 1 Perk Point
    15. Health regen out of combat +10%
    16. 1 Perk Point
    17. Max Health +5%
    18. Armor +3%
    19. 1 Perk Point
    20. Trait"

    Never use melee but, knowing how CDPR operates, and seeing for how long it has been said that Athletics would be broken, I would say, almost with full 100% confidence, that Athletics is fully working as intended.

    Seems to me that CDPR would have it for Athletic Vs to be: Exercising, exercising, exercising, exercising, exercising, exercising, exercising. To be more specific, the "challenge" here is: Patience. It will simply take a long time to get Athletics maxed leveled.
 
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  • The easiest way to gain XP with Athletics is by exhausting your Stamina bar with melee attacks.

The problem with this is that my opponents tend to be dead on one hit, at most couple, so exhausting stamina bar basically never happens. Also perks/cyber to give me stamina when I defeat enemies.

I think I got the perk that lets me run forever too, iirc. Been awhile since I played. How to level athletics?
 
The problem with this is that my opponents tend to be dead on one hit, at most couple, so exhausting stamina bar basically never happens.
"The best way to level up Athletics is to simply start punching and doing other athletic activities all the time. These include the aforementioned punching but also dashing, sliding, climbing, and jumping. The more you do these actions the more you will level Athletics. The key is to just make sure you’re expending your stamina.

And the best part is that you don’t really need to do these with any purpose or intention. Punch walls nearby or just the air around you. Jump while you walk around Night City or climb every ladder you see. You can also focus on dodging while in combat or just sprinting as much as possible. It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing as long as you’re using up your stamina, as that is what will actually level up Athletics."
 
So I've already created my character, Nomad, and I had planned to go for a Primary Melee (Katana) / Some LR (sniper) / and some kind of crafting build for my character. I'm new to the game though i've had it for awhile. But I read that there is a huge problem with Athletics? Should I altogether avoid a Melee build? Or What are some recommendations to either get around this dilemma? Do you really need Athletics to have a good Melee build?
I'd greatly appreciate and welcome any tips & suggestions! Thanks
-BattouZen
I don't know how much level scaling affects this at higher difficulty levels, but on normal difficulty leveling up Athletics somewhere around 8-9 shouldn't be that difficult. While punching air is mentioned as way to level it up and works technically, meaning that it doesn't really work that well practically. IIRC Leveling Athletics up from level 7 or so to level 20 would take ~7 hours of air punching. I think most players have better experience with the game if they spent their time to something else than punching air or whatever.

High Body / Athletics builds can be very fun, but were achieved by using glitch in game that allowed leveling Athletics skill faster than currently possible. Glitch has since been fixed and so that method (unfortunately) isn't available anymore.

For now, at least if you play on normal difficulty, you might try going for 12 Body and seeing how things work out from there. You can go higher Body then if you decide to sacrifice missing potentially 5 perk points from Athletics skill level rewards.

Something from earlier post I found:
"From Street Brawling Perks regarding boxing matches Crushing Blows, Opportunity Strike and Dazed has very good synergy and with low Body character I might also take Invincible, Like a Butterfly from Athletics and also perhaps Steel And Chrome. It's good to note that it's quite counter intuitive that many Perks related to Stamina cost are counter productive for leveling up Athletics.

Some Perk synergy with Cyberware can be gained by picking Pack Mule from Athletics and install both Dense Marrow and Microvibration Generator combination instead of Titanium Bones with just either."

Notes:
Dense Marrow cyberware can help leveling up Athletics a bit: Melee weapon damage +7% / 15% / 25%, but stamina drain +10%
Microrotors cyberware can also help: Increase attack speed by 10% (faster punches to drain stamina) but even basic version requires Reflexes 8.

So like I wrote, see what works for you. Games are supposed to be good experiences and I like CP 2077 a lot, but you know, someone punching air for hours and that, maybe that works for someone but that doesn't need to be you. Find what works for you and is fun!
 
"The best way to level up Athletics is to simply start punching and doing other athletic activities all the time. These include the aforementioned punching but also dashing, sliding, climbing, and jumping. The more you do these actions the more you will level Athletics. The key is to just make sure you’re expending your stamina.

And the best part is that
you don’t really need to do these with any purpose or intention. Punch walls nearby or just the air around you. Jump while you walk around Night City or climb every ladder you see. You can also focus on dodging while in combat or just sprinting as much as possible. It doesn’t really matter what you’re doing as long as you’re using up your stamina, as that is what will actually level up Athletics."

My point was, that its troubling if athletics hasn't leveled up almost at all by the time I reached lvl 30. I have been doing all those things all the time.

Is the system working correctly if I have to put a weight on my space bar to make my character jump and go afk for three hours?
 
My point was, that its troubling if athletics hasn't leveled up almost at all by the time I reached lvl 30. I have been doing all those things all the time.

Is the system working correctly if I have to put a weight on my space bar to make my character jump and go afk for three hours?
It is troubling, but apparently it's suppose to be like that. Seemingly, in no way did CDPR ever had the intention for you to max out athletics before you reach level 50.

The way I see it, is that the system works correctly that when you put a weight on the spacebar that'll make V jump for 3 hours, you gain athletics exp. points. (Does V jump continuously when holding the spacebar? She only jumps once when holding jump button on the controller).

Again,
the stamina bar depleting is generating athletics exp. points. Nothing else! And it apparently progresses super slow at best. The very fact it's been like this since launch, signals to me that, how Athletics is now, it is working as intended. Else, you can ask CDPR Support to confirm it.
 
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It is troubling, but apparently it's suppose to be like that. Seemingly, in no way did CDPR ever had the intention for you to max out athletics before you reach level 50.

The way I see it, is that the system works correctly that when you put a weight on the spacebar that'll make V jump for 3 hours, you gain athletics exp. points. (Does V jump continuously when holding the spacebar? She only jumps once when holding jump button on the controller).

Again,
the stamina bar depleting is generating athletics exp. points. Nothing else! And it apparently progresses super slow at best. The very fact it's been like this since launch, signals to me that, how Athletics is now, it is working as intended. Else, you can ask CDPR Support to confirm it.
Where that 3 hours come from? For all I know it's 7+

It doesn't matter if this has been intended (when it's oversight at design level) or if it's something else that could be called a bug in implementation, most players complete and aim to complete the game in 30-40 hours.

It's also worth a note, like I mention in my previous post, that as leveling up Athletics skill is more technical than practical possibility, that means missing quite a few perk points from skill level rewards, players need to compensate for that by using perk points from other skills (Reflexes / Blades, Cool / Cold Blood) for example to unlock Perks in Athletics skill tree.

That method leads to other issues such as player needing to lend their focus to level up skills / weapon and so play their character in a way they did not intended to and/or also making compromises by not reaching intended goal for their character build, not only via missing other rewards form Athletics skill rewards, but also not being able to take benefit from Perks from Cold Blood for example.

This has been discussed over many times on forums and while single skill, issue leveling it up leads to snowball for other things impacting to player experience in negative ways.
 
This has been discussed over many times on forums and while single skill, issue leveling it up leads to snowball for other things impacting to player experience in negative ways.
Then I would recommend for you to file this issue as a bug-report to Support, for them to eventually reconsider a different approach concerning the progressing of the Athletics skill.
 
Then I would recommend for you to file this issue as a bug-report to Support, for them to eventually reconsider a different approach concerning the progressing of the Athletics skill.
Why are you quoting me? It's been discussed many times over for over a year and bug reports has been submitted, for volume of that I don't know and that's not my responsibility.

I do recommend OP @BattouZen to file one when/if encountering this issue.

OP had simple, very relevant question. I don't see how this is adding to what I wrote in my earlier post in topic here.
 
Why are you quoting me? It's been discussed many times over for over a year and bug reports has been submitted, for volume of that I don't know and that's not my responsibility.

I do recommend OP @BattouZen to file one when/if encountering this issue.

OP had simple, very relevant question. I don't see how this is adding to what I wrote in my earlier post in topic here.
Think we misunderstood each other. Lets leave it at that.
 
Again, the stamina bar depleting is generating athletics exp. points. Nothing else! And it apparently progresses super slow at best. The very fact it's been like this since launch, signals to me that, how Athletics is now, it is working as intended. Else, you can ask CDPR Support to confirm it.

If that is true that is pretty stupid design. Doesnt surprise me though, not many things in this system are well thought out.

CP2077 is still full of ridiculous design decisions, that are still there after a year of being out. During this time they have done very little besides fixing obvious bugs. I have come to attribute this to their lack of developers since I can't comprehend any other reason.
 
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