Been playing Cyberpunk all weekend. It's definitely better with the rebalancing. Combat just feels more... consequential. Armor seems to work and I'm encountering better ranges of weapons, armor, and mods. I'm running around with pistols, shotguns, and snipers. I'm not having a hard time keeping the armor rating up high enough, without even wearing headgear. I'm building an all-around aggressive gunner. Even the gorilla arms come in handy, with no melee perks. The epic ones give you +4 in body. Body gives the gorilla arms damage. It's a lot of damage and stamina. When you're stripped of your super-guns, they actually end up being extremely effective on a body-specced build, 2-3 hits and done. Move quick.
Reflexes gets equal priority going up to the max, it gives me the movement speed and skill trees for my snipers and pistols. For pistols I'm going in on headhosts and crit (chance>dmg.) Legendary ballistic hands give you good bonuses to ricochet and there's a perk in engineering that lets you see the bounces. With automatic pistols in tight spaces, the boosted-up multi-bounces are nasty. Charged bursts can ricochet through a wall, into a hall, and hit somebody as they bounce. The perks for 'assault' weapons have specific designations. Some will do say... only assault rifles and smg's. Others will say "rifles and smg's," which means they'll affect your precision and sniper rifles as well. I'm sticking with ones that affect the latter. I pick the perks strategically, only grabbing the ones I see uses for, which I learn as I use different types of guns.
By not grabbing every available perk for every gun that I use, I have plenty of points to distribute across different areas - I want to bring in many different combat strategies. Basically have a jack-of-all-trades solo. Looking through the perk trees, you can see tempting late-progression perks, but when using the stuff, you may find a strategy with that class that makes it not so useful. An alignment with things from another attribute. Even within the already narrow range of available perks *focused* on snipers/long range, are some that aren't worth dumping several perk points into. They all have stuff like this. If you just do combat willy nilly, having it all will benefit you. But otherwise it makes more sense to go for certain strength in a gun type and play mostly to that in combat. Use different guns for different roles.
I may use smg's and some of the perks I grab will boost them anyway. But assault rifles are too vanilla. I wanna really run and gun. Maybe I pick off enemies from a distance leading in. It's something I have when I'm not feeling good about sticking it out.
The perks in athletics are really helpful in enduring combat and moving around. Just from foundational boosts and having several different ways to increase regen. Fast regen + fast movement + this new fangled mitigation stuff gives you a lot of headroom when it comes to minimum armor rating. It becomes about how easily and how long it takes for them to hit you enough to overcome your regen. I'm just getting into perks where I can reload while sprinting and dodging.
Body also grants you access to a lot of good cyberware that I'm just pecking into. Tech will be the secondary for crafting and tech weapon perks, as well as some of the cyberware that becomes available. And then maybe 7 or 8 into cool for some of the perks there. Cool has some sick cyberware that you can get towards the higher levels - like a cataresist that grants >35% resistance to everything. Pain editors that reduce flat incoming damage (as in, final calculation) by a sizable 10%. Maybe I can stretch towards those if I cap body/reflexes 2 under max and tech say... 4 under max - I just haven't worked out the math. It depends on which perks I ultimately need from each attribute. I'll find out just by reaching for those.
She looks like someone who carries an assault shotgun well.
My one gripe is that I can't put epic armadillo on these pants. These pants are rad. But alas, you can only put more common or equal rarity mods on gear. Since those pants are the lowest rarity, I can't put crafted armadillo on them. My crafting level is too high - I mostly make epic ones. This still ends up being more than enough for me to survive with the help of regen stuff and legendary subdermal armor. I'm really not having a hard time finding good enough stuff. I stop at clothing shops a lot, too - easy to catch them as you go when you have a scooty bike. Hit the little events that pop up for chances at more clothing. Slam the brakes on the Yaiba and flip a 180, getting around places is pretty quick. Everything drives way better, btw.
These guns are fun. I found that epic Crusher somewhere random... maybe rescuing Saul. It's great to run around with. I really like the Crusher for being really mobile with a quick round cycle and magazine reload. It may not one-hit kill, but it knocks most enemies on their backs in one shot. A high quality sample can compete for DPS with the 'heavy' class shotguns that require mid-level body to use and chamber/reload slowly. Only it can get more mods and you can put sights on it. I can run and jump around while reloading, and the clip reload is fast with the right perks. The single-feed shotguns are the worst.
The Lizzie is just really fun to use with the high elemental damage, two-shot burst pattern with charged multi-burst that penetrates. A few headshot boosting perks and buffs send that thing off. The trick is to be aggressive with it. Even without tech perks, I score kills shooting enemies trying to hide behind doorways. I'll see them from down the hall and pop a charged burst or two to kill them while they're hiding. I charge it while also sprinting straight towards the cover an enemy is ducked behind and let a burst go on their face through their cover, popping their heads like melons most times. Judy says "Wow V, you really don't fuck around, huh?!" immediately after. Really satisfying.
I also have the Overwatch, the Iconic SPT32 Grad with faster reloads, extra damage, a built-on silencer... it packs a wicked punch and actually functions pretty well as a stealth rifle. I take advantage of the confusion to pick them off in order. I have the stealth skin cyberware, too. So I can go invisible for a bit to relocate - draw them around while I one-shot them in the heads. I can double jump back to a higher elevation point, or bunny hop over to a different set of cover points. I had a regular Grad for a while before this and it was solid, but the Overwatch is just mean. It has a way of making you cocky with how quick and effective it is.
I carry the dying night too. Believe it or not, running in with headshots from the hip kinda blows enemies away like turning a leaf blower on them. They just go down.
Need to hone in more on cyberware, At least I have a good biomon - takes me from 15% health to 50% once every 2 minutes. I know there's good stuff I can get with this cred level. But I'm happy to have stealth, burn, and legendary armor subdermal. That last one is really helpful for offsetting not using all of the strongest clothing. It's nice to not have overheat constantly fucking with me, too. Epic gorilla arms are great, they really are just handy for getting things done quickly and quietly. I think they count towards the checks for ripping through doors, too. So at low-ish body levels,. you can rip through every possible door. And of course double jump is essential. Gotta get a good sandevistan. I just haven't really needed it because I'm always moving and dispatching enemies. I have endless stamina and fast hands with guns that dish out quick damage.
I really do need to get my cool up. At least get assassin for the permanent 15% damage boost to humans. Engineering has the 20% to machines. Quick easy damage boost for everything. This is working well so far, though.
The game still has some bugs, but at least it seems like a lot of the broken stuff is now working, and new items/features have been added that make it a lot more interesting.
'I love looter shooters so thats all fine with me'
'I have the Chaotic Great Edition and the game supposed to have 4 DLCs over time, that was already announced'
