Best stats for Very Hard difficulty

[grenadiermolo]

I played my game mostly on medium but when I switched difficulty to Very Hard I noticed one consistent thing:
-Melee resistance is king!
-Melee damage is queen!

I hope this gets rebalanced in Cyberpunk 2 but as a matter of fact both you and your enemies deal far more damage up close and personal than with firearms.

I noticed that every 10% increase in melee resistance made my survival easier than raising armor or other stats, not just that but melee damage against bosses like Max Tac is far more effective than trying to gun them down.

In any case I wish to discuss which cyberware bonus is better for which style of gameplay on very hard and this here is just my tank character review.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I could be wrong, but I assume it's due to the fact that melee attacks entirely ignore armor (yours and enemi's). So at higher difficulty, enemies have more armor which affect firearms, but not melee.

 

[grenadiermolo]

I could be wrong, but I assume it's due to the fact that melee attacks entirely ignore armor (yours and enemi's). So at higher difficulty, enemies have more armor which affect firearms, but not melee.

I can bonk down a Max Tac heavy in 10 or 12 swings but the O'Five with 796 base damage and 50% armor penetration took 25 bullets to the head to kill that same enemy.

I don't know if melee ignores armor but it sure hits faster than the sniper rifle.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I can bonk down a Max Tac heavy in 10 or 12 swings but the O'Five with 796 base damage and 50% armor penetration took 25 bullets to the head to kill that same enemy.

I don't know if melee ignores armor but it sure hits faster than the sniper rifle.

Maybe they changed it after 2.0 not 100% sure, but it was like that since release... It was really obvious before on pre-1.5 versions, because at time we were able to go up to 10k armor which make you almost invulnerable to everything, but melee attacks

 

[Taril]

Melee is balanced very strangely.

This also includes thrown weapons. Which do obscene amounts of damage compared to guns, which is really odd.

Mantis Blades have been extra OP since forever too, with their unique lunge attack (Which was turned into a Relic bonus in PL). Which is even more bonkers now since you just leap like a mile and basically instantly kill all enemies near where you land (And unlike the Gorilla Arms relic bonus, you can just spam this leap back to back endlessly)

I recall doing a Nehan + Satori combo run and the thing was that every thing kind of just died too fast to get any actual healing from the unique combo.

Though, this isn't the only strange balancing... The whole stealth damage thing is kind of odd too and has been since 1.0. What with the existence of takedowns which are instant-kills. I remember in 1.0 looking at the stealth perks in the Cool tree and being like "Why would I invest points into stealth damage, when I can just insta-kill with takedowns anyway?". Meaning that the best Ghost Build wasn't Cool but Strength, so you could hold onto enemies for longer, allowing you to grab them and take them behind a corner out of sight to drop them.

I think much of this stems from their overall design in regards to stats. The initial game handled stats very much in the way of a Looter Shooter, with tons of stats that existed making random items vary greatly in how useful they were, as well as the perk trees being full of various incremental stat increases. 2.0 shifted away from this with the removal of stats on (Most) clothing and more streamlined weapon mods as well as the overhaul to the perk tree. Though the underlying system is still there, with most of the stats still existing in the form of the random Cyberware stats.

Presumably, they've learned their lesson in regards to this and Orion will be designed with less of a Looter Shooter slant to it, given how they handled 2.0 by downsizing this aspect (Maybe it'll resurface in an Online mode, but for the single player game it'll likely be toned down)

We'll have to see though.