PSA: Body focused builds now valid without Athletics grind in 1.5

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My platform is Xbox One X and I play on normal difficulty.

The ultimate test was fight against Razor (final opponent in: Beat the Brat). I managed to do that without any cyberware (such as Gorilla Arms) installed on character.

My build was at level 39 or 40.

Body 19

Body / Athletics level 10.

Perks from Athletics:
  • Pack Mule (Increases carrying capacity by 60)
  • Epimorphosis 1 point (Health regenerates up to 70% / 80% / 90% of max Health outside of combat)
  • Dog of War 1 point (Increases Health regen in combat)
  • Steel and Chrome 2 points (increases melee damage)
  • Invincible 3 points (Increase max Health by 10% / 20% / 30%)
  • Steel Shell (increases Armor by 10%)
  • New Perk? (getting hit doesn't stop health regeneration)
  • Divided Attention (Allows you to reload weapons while sprinting, sliding and vaulting)
I had also relevant perks from Street Brawling


Cyberware:
  • Dense Marrow (Rare) Melee weapon damage 15%, but stamina drain +10%
  • Synaptic Signal Optimizer (Uncommon) Increases Health by 30%
  • Neofiber (Uncommon) Increases mitigation chance by ?
  • Cataresist (Uncommon) Increase all resistances by ?

Other:

Reflexes 6 or 7 (movement speed)
I used boost from consumables, drink and food before every fight during Beat the Brat and helmet that reduces incoming melee damage in final fight against Razor.

Notes: Armor and armor related perks are not relevant to Beat the Brat as melee damage ignores armor.


I'm not at console while typing this so lots of information is from cyberpunk2077.wiki.fextralife.com and isn't necessarily up to date with changes introduced in 1.5

The most important thing is, that even though Athletic skill is still a bit slow to level up. I have noticed that in the end, it's about two levels behind other Body skills (Annihilation and Street Brawling) and in the big picture, if you player aims for normal playthrough and knows location of turrets to rip off and doors to open for Athletics XP grinding Athletics XP is for most part irrelevant.

While I did during early in game grind for Athletic XP in intervals for overall about 30 to 45 minutes, XP gain from that was small compared to XP gain achieved by normal game play. I used resting, dense bone marrow, drinks, to boost skill exp, Stamina spend speed and Stamina recovery speed during my relatively short grind and that remains of course a possibility. Overall though, for players who aim for level ~40 end game character, that might be time spent to activity that isn't very fun compared to leveling Athletics by normal means.

The big thing here is about Athletic skill progression rewards, including Perk points available in skill progression rewards are actually achievable up to level 10-11 which is enough with spending some Perk points gained by leveling up and finding Perk shards from the world, to get good Body focused build without needing to resort harvesting Perk points from other skills such as Blades and Cold Blood.

For my opinion, I still wish CDPR would consider increasing skill experience for Athletics from ripping off turrets and force opening doors as there's very good skill progression reward at level 13 increasing carry weight with 100 units. Also, unlocking final perk in Athletics requires level 20 Athletics skill, which is still practically impossible to achieve with any sort of normal game play.

I have found my current V very fun to play, similar to my first playthrough where I used so called Kerenzikov glitch to level up Athletics for my Body 20 character. While for my opinion there's still room for improvement regarding leveling up Athletics, builds focusing to 10+ Body are IMO viable and can be very fun in 1.5.
 
Progression is definitely better. I'm level 7 without really focusing on it (usually reached level 5 previously if I didn't use berserk to level it up faster when you could do that) and I'm only level 32 or so. Ripping doors and turrets gives you more exp now and you can always boost that an extra 20%. Punching to low stamina gives 90 exp if you have the boost, every 30 swings or so, so a lot better than it used to be. Still excruciatingly slow compared to all other skills.

I just think you should get an athletics exp bump if you use any form of melee attacks to kill something.
 
Summary from my playthrough with 1.5

With my end game level 50 character (Body 20, Int 20, Cool 12, Reflexes 12, Tech 7) with 100% completion of game, I ended up with Athletics skill level 11 or 12. Think 11 so where I estimated and there were no need to harvest skill points from other skills to unlock Perks I wanted from Body Tree including Athletics to practically play character I wanted to realize.

I didn't do any additional grinding for skill xp, I don't think that's anything most player out there find fun. Things work for most scenarios in game with high Body character, even though leveling up Athletics still drags a lot behind leveling up any other skill. I had Annihilation and Street Brawling at level 14 in the end game, despite also leveling up Intelligence / Quickhacking to 20 and Cool and Reflexes skill trees up to 12 that was attribute limit. For Athletics, that it drags down is downplayed by that past level 11 there are only two more perk points available in skill progression rewards. Other than that, at least if played on normal difficulty I can't imagine but some quite weird scenarios where lack of other skill rewards couldn't be compensated with just Armadillo mods.

While I maintain that I hope CDPR still looks additional ways to easy leveling up Athletics as it evidently still isn't easy to level up, issue isn't bottlenecking Body character builds and those builds are viable to end game without grind / unintended compromises in Perk point usage. Note though that was 100% completion and I think that's far from how most players play the game, so suggestions and additional information, how it's with level 40 character and so on, are very welcome.


Other:

Intelligence / Breach skill, as noted by someone in other discussion months ago also seems to drag behind a bit considering that I used about every opportunity. I think my end game build Breach skill was at 16 or 17.
 
Based on my current play through, I'm about 12 Athletics but that was with a macro running for about 2 levels worth (not natural play) and I'm not quite done.

Either they should add other stuff to award athletics, as I suggested above, or they should just double the exp that we currently get and call it a day. Even then, by the time you hit level 19 you're going to have a huge grind to get that final level. The way this ramps up is huge.
 
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