I can't work out which operating systems fit best with which types of builds.
Any advice?
Any advice?
You got cyberdecks which is ofc for hacking, stealth and hybrid builds utilizing stealth. Even if you opt to use weapons as your dmg source, hacking still gives you access to powerful utility stuff like Ping (see everyone thru walls) or machine hacks (cameras, turrets) or blinding guards. Or you can go full int build for the most broken build in the game and kill everyone with one press of a button.
Then you got Sandevistans. It's good ol' slow mo. Broken af. This is best for melee but also okay for guns (guns got slowed, too, tho, melee doesn't, melee only got the fast attack combos bugged, but strong attacks you can apply at full speed). Cool thing is that the best one (QianT MK 4) is available pretty early with very low investment in reflex so you can hybridize it with anything.
Then you got Berserk. It's a temp buff that gives you tankiness and some bonuses, and you can jump down from very high. Kinda stupid plain compared to the others. Haven't made my play through with it but I suspect it being the least broken of all. It was probably supposed to provide the kind of play style like a "push forward combat" from Doom with shotguns, miniguns and blunt weapons. Sadly, movement perks from body tree don't work (and AI can't hold a candle to Doom, and I mean the 1993 Doom...
).
Then you got Sandevistans. It's good ol' slow mo. Broken af. This is best for melee but also okay for guns (guns got slowed, too, tho, melee doesn't, melee only got the fast attack combos bugged, but strong attacks you can apply at full speed). Cool thing is that the best one (QianT MK 4) is available pretty early with very low investment in reflex so you can hybridize it with anything.
Then you got Berserk. It's a temp buff that gives you tankiness and some bonuses, and you can jump down from very high. Kinda stupid plain compared to the others. Haven't made my play through with it but I suspect it being the least broken of all. It was probably supposed to provide the kind of play style like a "push forward combat" from Doom with shotguns, miniguns and blunt weapons. Sadly, movement perks from body tree don't work (and AI can't hold a candle to Doom, and I mean the 1993 Doom...
).
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I haven't tried out Berserks yet but I have done Cyberdecks and Sandevistans.
Sandevistans:
These slow everything around you to x%. The in-game description is wrong, so if a Sandevistan says it has 10% time dilation, what it really means is you press E, and everything becomes 10 times slower than you. If it says 25% time dilation, it means everything becomes 4 times slower than you.
Your fire rate and melee normal attack (combo) also decreases while Sandevistan is active. Normal melee combos also break due to the slow animations so you can't really do them properly. Melee heavy attack animations are unaffected and swing just as fast as they normally do. Sandevistans are best suited for melee. You activate it, rush in and heavy attack everyone to death. When Sandevistan duration expires, you see all the headless bodies hit the ground at the same time.
Its good for guns too if you don't have godlike aim. You can do Matrix/Max Payne style slow motion kill sprees with it.
The best Sandevistan is probably QianT Sandevistan MK4 (from Fingers MD on JigJig street, so if you want it, you can't punch him or kill him in the main story). The reason this thing is busted is because it has a 15 sec cooldown, which is by far the lowest in the game.
Sandevistan cooldowns start after the active duration expires. With crafted cooldown reduction mods, you can get this down to 3 seconds. This means perma bullet time with Kerenzikov. Without crafting, the highest cooldown reduction mod you can get is uncommon (-2.5 seconds) for a total of 7.5 seconds cooldown.
There is a MK5 iconic variant of the QianT Sandevistan called "Warp Dancer" but I don't think it is as good. It slows things down a lot more but the cooldown is 30 seconds.
Cyberdecks:
These allow you to use hacks. These are like spells in fantasy roleplaying games and Netrunners are basically techno mages.
Hacking can be used for utility (root enemies in place, blind them etc) or kill them outright. There are lethal and non lethal options if this is important to you for roleplaying reasons. If you invest in high intelligence (16 or more), hacking is absurdly broken and can wipe out entire floors of enemies non lethally in 1 button press.
Legendary quickhacks also have passive effects. Some of them are extremely busted like Short Circuit. This passive auto triggers its damage on crit and works for everything - fists, blades, bullets and other direct damage hacks. In many cases, unless you are min/maxing a fists/guns/blades, the shock proc will do significantly more damage than your weapons do.
Cyberdecks are good for all types of builds (run n' gun/melee/stealth/hacker mage) and allrounders (a combination of some or all of the aforementioned). They provide your character with a lot of useful options - the ability to see through walls, root enemies in place, stagger enemies repeatedly, one shot strong enemies (even ones that are massively above your level).
The best cyberdeck imo is Tetratronic Rippler MK4. The reason this thing is crazy is because it makes your hacks propagate really fast and make them highly spammable due to cooldown reduction. There is an argument to be made for Netwatch Netdriver MK5 but the increased jump distance is not that noticeable in practice.
Sandevistans:
These slow everything around you to x%. The in-game description is wrong, so if a Sandevistan says it has 10% time dilation, what it really means is you press E, and everything becomes 10 times slower than you. If it says 25% time dilation, it means everything becomes 4 times slower than you.
Your fire rate and melee normal attack (combo) also decreases while Sandevistan is active. Normal melee combos also break due to the slow animations so you can't really do them properly. Melee heavy attack animations are unaffected and swing just as fast as they normally do. Sandevistans are best suited for melee. You activate it, rush in and heavy attack everyone to death. When Sandevistan duration expires, you see all the headless bodies hit the ground at the same time.
Its good for guns too if you don't have godlike aim. You can do Matrix/Max Payne style slow motion kill sprees with it.
The best Sandevistan is probably QianT Sandevistan MK4 (from Fingers MD on JigJig street, so if you want it, you can't punch him or kill him in the main story). The reason this thing is busted is because it has a 15 sec cooldown, which is by far the lowest in the game.
Sandevistan cooldowns start after the active duration expires. With crafted cooldown reduction mods, you can get this down to 3 seconds. This means perma bullet time with Kerenzikov. Without crafting, the highest cooldown reduction mod you can get is uncommon (-2.5 seconds) for a total of 7.5 seconds cooldown.
There is a MK5 iconic variant of the QianT Sandevistan called "Warp Dancer" but I don't think it is as good. It slows things down a lot more but the cooldown is 30 seconds.
Cyberdecks:
These allow you to use hacks. These are like spells in fantasy roleplaying games and Netrunners are basically techno mages.
Hacking can be used for utility (root enemies in place, blind them etc) or kill them outright. There are lethal and non lethal options if this is important to you for roleplaying reasons. If you invest in high intelligence (16 or more), hacking is absurdly broken and can wipe out entire floors of enemies non lethally in 1 button press.
Legendary quickhacks also have passive effects. Some of them are extremely busted like Short Circuit. This passive auto triggers its damage on crit and works for everything - fists, blades, bullets and other direct damage hacks. In many cases, unless you are min/maxing a fists/guns/blades, the shock proc will do significantly more damage than your weapons do.
Cyberdecks are good for all types of builds (run n' gun/melee/stealth/hacker mage) and allrounders (a combination of some or all of the aforementioned). They provide your character with a lot of useful options - the ability to see through walls, root enemies in place, stagger enemies repeatedly, one shot strong enemies (even ones that are massively above your level).
The best cyberdeck imo is Tetratronic Rippler MK4. The reason this thing is crazy is because it makes your hacks propagate really fast and make them highly spammable due to cooldown reduction. There is an argument to be made for Netwatch Netdriver MK5 but the increased jump distance is not that noticeable in practice.
Raven microcyber (legendary, sold at kabuki market ripperdoc) for hacking and you can get it early as you can once you earn $35k.
Qiant sandevistan mk.4 (legendary, 15 reflex required, sold by fingers MD) for bullet time;
Purchase overclocking heatsink spec from Heywood ripperdoc to reduce cooldown.
Qiant sandevistan mk.4 (legendary, 15 reflex required, sold by fingers MD) for bullet time;
Purchase overclocking heatsink spec from Heywood ripperdoc to reduce cooldown.
NETWATCH NETDRIVER MK.5
if you are doing a short circuit build ( +30% Short Circuit Damage)
Warp Dancer got huge crit damage bonus tho. Militech Falcon is most endgame with 18s uptime. But QianT MK4 is most broken with hardly any cooldown.
Raven is hands down most broken to be upgraded for Netwatch later.
For body builds i suggest a berserker implant because with aktive berserker you can skill body almost a hundred times faster than without.
I never used sandevistans but even if you choose to use those in normal playing i would keep a berserker in your inventory to have one for shadow boxing body training.
I never used sandevistans but even if you choose to use those in normal playing i would keep a berserker in your inventory to have one for shadow boxing body training.
Raven Microcyber MK4 is good because it requires 12 street cred and you can get it early (like sub level 10). Netwatch Netdriver is the better version of Raven MK4 but requires 50 street cred.
I still think both of them are not as good as Rippler though. Raven and Netwatch increase spread distance but the way enemies are distributed throughout the game, they tend to be in tight clusters of 3 or confined to tight spaces inside buildings so I never really felt like I was losing anything by going Rippler. And Rippler gives massive cooldown reduction, upload time reduction, +1 jumps for ultimate hacks and ultimate hack cost reduction. With hacking perks you reset your cooldowns faster and you require less kills to reset. It kills faster too.
Even if you only go hacking solely for the contagion memes, the upload speed makes contagion just burn out 5 dudes near instantly instead of having to wait for it jump from one target to another. I used to use Netdriver but after switching to Rippler I can't turn back!
Warp Dancer is really good but yeah the cooldown on QianT MK4 is so low it feels like an oversight.
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Sandevistan would've been awesome, if it didn't have some glaring issues. Applying heavy attacks in melee immediately interrupts the slow time effect for some reason. And if you're carrying grenades, it's liable to throw a grenade right in front of you when you activate slow time. It's basically suicide if you didn't take the perk which renders you immune to the effects of your grenades.
From my experience, cyberdecks are the best bet. I agree about Tetratronic Rippler MK4 for the same reasons, but when I eventually hit street cred 49, I immediately swap it for Netwatch Netdriver MK5 because of the spread distance of hacks. At that point, nearly all my daemons are legendary and the effect really shows.
Netwatch is just an upgrade from Raven. It's pretty much the same item but with better auxiliary stats. Reason why it's most broken is because one button ends every encounter. You don't need cooldown reduction.
Finisher animations stop Sandevistan. Strong attacks alone don't. Katanas have rare finishers, good to go. Mantis Blades are unplayable with Sandevistan.
Finisher animations stop Sandevistan. Strong attacks alone don't. Katanas have rare finishers, good to go. Mantis Blades are unplayable with Sandevistan.
TETRATRONIC RIPPLER MK.4:
NETWATCH NETDRIVER MK.5:
Note that cooldown isn't an issue with the way some perks are currently working. Also, ultimate quick hacks don't work on some enemies/bosses. So the idea is to optimize your combat quickhacks. And Netwatch deals 30% more damage as well in addition to the extra spread distance for your combat quickhacks. It also lets you upload those combat quickhacks to multiple enemies nearby. I did use the Rippler to compare, and while the upload time was very nice, the lower damage was ultimately why I decided to not use it.
The hardest combat sequence in the game is the (Don't Fear) The Reaper. And Netwatch absolutely destroys in this setting, even on very hard. I might run the sequence again with Rippler to see how it fares later, but yeah, Netwatch is absolute beast.
- Ultimate quickhacks can spread once.
- Cost of ultimate quickhacks is reduced by 3.
- Upload time is reduced by 75%.
- All quickhacks have cooldown reduced by 45%.
NETWATCH NETDRIVER MK.5:
- Increases RAM recovery rate by 9 units per 60 seconds.
- Quickhack spread distance increased by 60%.
- Combat quickhacks can be uploaded on 3 targets within 6-meter radius.
- Quickhacks deal 30% more damage.
Note that cooldown isn't an issue with the way some perks are currently working. Also, ultimate quick hacks don't work on some enemies/bosses. So the idea is to optimize your combat quickhacks. And Netwatch deals 30% more damage as well in addition to the extra spread distance for your combat quickhacks. It also lets you upload those combat quickhacks to multiple enemies nearby. I did use the Rippler to compare, and while the upload time was very nice, the lower damage was ultimately why I decided to not use it.
The hardest combat sequence in the game is the (Don't Fear) The Reaper. And Netwatch absolutely destroys in this setting, even on very hard. I might run the sequence again with Rippler to see how it fares later, but yeah, Netwatch is absolute beast.
I prefer the Raven for the ability to slow down enemy hacks. It gives me time to run outside of the radius of the enemy netrunners should something go wrong with my stealth approach. I know 'overheat' doesn't do a lot of damage but it's kinda annoying and enemy continue to spam it without cooldowns.
Biggest benefit of Raven Mk4 is its low street cred requirement. I think its SC 14 or 15 - you can get it really early in the game and its the single biggest upgrade you can get in Act 1 - you can equip 6x hacks, have a lot of RAM capacity and big buffer size so you can do high Int breach protocols.
Breach protocol + advanced datamining lets you generate fast cash so you can trick out your cyberware in act 1 where there are several gigs with as many as 5 or 6 access points.
Rippler is SC 29 and Netdriver is SC 49 or 50. I would like Netdriver more if the 3x upload worked on Contagion but I suppose it would be completely busted if it did. By the time I was rocking Netdriver I already had Legendary Contagion and Short Circuit so the damage and spread didn't really matter. If not playing a pure netrunner, control quickhacks like cripple movement and reboot optics have spread capability so as long as you have Legendary Contagion equipped, you can lock down entire floors of enemies.
I guess I just came to like the upload speed of Rippler where contagion jumps so fast its like a chain lightning spell or something.
Breach protocol + advanced datamining lets you generate fast cash so you can trick out your cyberware in act 1 where there are several gigs with as many as 5 or 6 access points.
Rippler is SC 29 and Netdriver is SC 49 or 50. I would like Netdriver more if the 3x upload worked on Contagion but I suppose it would be completely busted if it did. By the time I was rocking Netdriver I already had Legendary Contagion and Short Circuit so the damage and spread didn't really matter. If not playing a pure netrunner, control quickhacks like cripple movement and reboot optics have spread capability so as long as you have Legendary Contagion equipped, you can lock down entire floors of enemies.
I guess I just came to like the upload speed of Rippler where contagion jumps so fast its like a chain lightning spell or something.
Millitech,, hands down the best you need to get,
Legendary/Iconic
・When active, It reduces weapon recoil by 15%, increases melee damage by 15%, and increases Armor and Resistances by 10%. Duration: 60 sec. Cooldown: 60 sec.・
While Berserk is active, jumping from a high height initiates a Superhero Landing, causing you to fall at high speed and land with enough force to create a shockwave that damages nearby enemies.
・Defeating enemies restores 5% max Health when Berserk is active.
・Gain 40% more max Health and Stamina when Berserk is active.
Upload speed is less important than damage. But if you plan to use breach protocol, then damage is more than enough so people can prioritize upload speed. Breach Protocol for me got really boring by the end and it slows down the pacing too much. So I prefer using quick hacks straight away without using breach protocol. What this means is that the damage without reducing enemy resistances might be low. It's for this reason the Netdriver with its 30% more damage is so crucial. If you watch the above video, you can see I don't use the Breach Protocol at all, and can still one shot enemies with Short Circuit and Contagion.
I do plan to redo that run with the Rippler, so will report back findings then.
I do plan to redo that run with the Rippler, so will report back findings then.
Of the legendary cyberdecks the one you can get in the kabuki market in act 1 is the best defensive deck, the arasaka deck is the best for stealth, the netwatch is the most aggressive, I cant remember the other two but one works best with ultimate quickhacks so if you do not have them do not bother and the other is fastest.
all personal opinion
Sandevistan: QianT Sandevistan MK4, the insanely low cool down is tough to beat (my no hacking stealth build uses this)
Cyberdeck (hacking): depends on what quickhacks you're using. if you have a lot of ultimates' loaded, the rippler is likely what you want, however, i feel if you're going with combat quickhacks the netwatch rig is the better option, as it has that extra base ram loadout, and the high ram regen as well as hitting upto 3 targets with a single combat quick hack.
haven't used any berserker yet so can't comment on em.
Sandevistan: QianT Sandevistan MK4, the insanely low cool down is tough to beat (my no hacking stealth build uses this)
Cyberdeck (hacking): depends on what quickhacks you're using. if you have a lot of ultimates' loaded, the rippler is likely what you want, however, i feel if you're going with combat quickhacks the netwatch rig is the better option, as it has that extra base ram loadout, and the high ram regen as well as hitting upto 3 targets with a single combat quick hack.
haven't used any berserker yet so can't comment on em.
