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A-Team of your dream

By Vitar

I like to figure out game mechanics. And after a few playthroughs I think I have found a team that is pretty close to ideal. Its fast and furious and packs a heavy punch. Also I took into account dialogue skills usable during events (blue choices).

This is a translation of my same guide in russian. It was written for v1.0.1 (but nothing changed much since then).

Also, now I also actively use Void Psyker and want to try Force Psyker which are not really discribed in this guide. Void Psyker primarly nukes enemies but is pretty unstable fella that needs constant attention. Force Psyker should be good in very-very late game to handle heavy-armoured enemies. But anyway I still can say that for all early, middle and late game the team described here is so good you'll love it instantly!

Award

Created by

Vitar
Online

Category: Characters, Classes, Gameplay Basics

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

20 Dec, 2017 @ 9:44am

20 Dec, 2017 @ 10:09am

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Guide Index

Overview

Why you don't need other classes

A bit of theorerics

Soldier (a foundation of your team)

Hacker (its not a cyberpunk game without a cowboy with smokin' hot deck)

Smuggler (I don't get paid enough for this s**t)

Cyberninja (yoroshiku onegaishimasu!)

Comments

Why you don't need other classes

So, why you shouldn't pick:

Void Psyker - actually funny fella. And powerful. So powerful he can shoot himself in a face. Needs constant attention. If you are bored with the game already - try him. In late game useful for depleting shields and nuke damage. He is also pretty funny in dialogues and in one specific mission he shines as a brilliant (in dialogues).
Prototype - I did my first playthrough with Prototype in my team. Mainly because most of the story you deal with all kinds of robots and AI. So I wanted to see how Prototype would interact in all the dialogues. And sadly except last mission (additional chance to take in your team that robot to fight main boss) and special dialogue with Allure Cybergenetics he is not actually very special.
His speciality - door breaking, tunnel crawling, persuading AI. But all this could be done in many other ways. Also, usually you can find a box with robot parts and upgrade Prototype until mission ends (little boost like +15% dmg, +10% accuracy).
He has a lot of good skills and he is very durable. But he draws very little aggro. So its no use that he is so tough, enemies will target your other characters.
Haiku is one of his best skills, heals whole team. But he can read a bad haiku (about 30%-40% chance for bad haiku, not so rare) that gives you debuff instead of buff. You'll get your heal anyway though.
He is also very slow and is too dependable on his malfunctions. In boss battles it is useful but in usual battles he gains his momentum really slow. Most of the time he do not even unleash his Thunderclap because your other characters already dealt with all the enemies.
His best skill, in my opinion, is his passive that counts killed enemies during mission. He then deals crazy damage to such enemies.
But the two main reasons I don't recommend Prototype:
1. He is not affected by ANY drugs. But he can get ANY negative effect. So if you get something really bad like Nano Plague - you just can't heal him until you return to Stix (except you are lucky enough and get some very-very special event like magic crystal in mines). And you can't give him drug buffs. Also, healing in doctor's office is very pricey its always cheaper to heal with CureAll.
2. I took him for damage. But Cyberninja is much-much better damage dealer.
Engineer - he got pretty neat buffs for whole team and good dialogue options. But in battle he is weak. Very weak. He does not have any notable powerful skills. Only reason you can take him in battle with you - in hope enemies will attack him instead of your Hacker (no, they wont).
Engineer is worst class in this game, do not take him.
Force Psyker - why I didn't pick him before - he was dull, not interesting character. Maybe thats a feeling he left in me from some very old version of the game... Anyway, you can use him in late game to give your team some protection/healing. He also can destroy enemy's armor which is very useful in late-late game. He is not very useful in dialogues though.

A bit of theorerics

You should pick ALL passive skills. They are all good. Some of them even better than active skills. I show you all final choice active skills. But to have all of them AND have all passives (at least best ones) - you wont achieve this soon. So you can first focus on one skill branch and later respec skills. Respec is very cheap so don't be greedy.
Why I recommend to choose one specific skill branch first. You will use it in dialogues. The more points you have in a branch - the more is chance of success. And it is especially true for your Hacker. Maxed our Rootkit is a musthave (though it has the worst skills) if you want to hack everything on your way (but its not 100% success anyway).
Important notice. If in front of blue dialogue choice you don't see a level of the skill in brackets - that means this choice only depends on your class, not his skill. That means even less chance of success. Maybe it depends on character level, I don't know.
Do not ever open maglocked safes. You will always get negative rep with the corp whose safe you have cracked. No matter how you cracked it. Only exception is you already have -100 with that corp and do not care about it.
Pick weapons with less shots per attack (rifle, heavy, pistols, hammers). Two shots per attack - max. Especially important if you use "Weapon Ability" skills. That means skill will shot the same way ordinary attack does. For not "Weapon Ability" skills it doesn't matter though. You just care about summary damage then. For example as a Hacker you don't care about number of shots/slashes.
But for Smuggler or Soldier - always try to pick one shot weapons. Why? Because a lot of enemies have armour that depletes a flat amount of damage from each shot.
For example enemy has 200 armour. You can either shoot with a shotgun 210 x 5 or a rifle 800 x 1. You'd think shotgun would deal more damage but that is not true. With shotgun you will deal (210-200) x 5 = 50 damage only! And rifle will do 800 - 200 = 600 damage! (Don't know about elemental damage and how armour affects it. Would like to know if you can elaborate).
Its very useful to get Allied rep with Dablue Yutaki and get Black Hole trinket for 10 favors. Equip one of the characters with it before battle with strong enemy. And in battle you'll see a new skill that will create a black hole damaging all enemies each (each turn growing larger and dealing even MORE damage) until battle ends! Damage is high. Black Hole can be killed though. But usually it survives thebattle to the end. One use per mission but you can alway replace it with your usual trinket after battle. It will remain with you in New Game + and works until your rep wth Dablue Yutaki is equals or higher than Neutral. You can even use it against Dablue corps itself! It wont work if you have negative rep with them though.

Soldier (a foundation of your team)

Soldier is good for any team. He can handle any situation. He has a variety of skills - both for groups of enemies and for single enemies. He has support skills, taunts, he even has heal!
Respeccing your skills you can fit him for any mission.
During my walkthrough I respecced him much more often than the others. The only skill that always was with him is of course Crack Shot, his signature. If your team is weak on some side, soldier will always balance it. He can deal damage and he can take damage. He can smash a door with his tough shoulder and he can snipe security camera with one well placed shot from grenade launcher.

Dialogues:
Specialist branch allows sniping flying things that try to raise alarm and that radioactive drones that make life of honorable crawler miserable (a chance to raise alarm though so careful there).
Demolition branch keeps you from harm from all kinds of explosive traps in dialogues.
Also some small stuff like ability to place a bet in special terminal (where I always choose to snitch anyway to boost corp's rep).
All in all nothing you can't live without.
Battle:
1. Crack Shot. Decent damage with 100% (most of the time) accuracy and boosted crit (with good amount of Stun + Daze). Also shoots through armour. And no cooldown. If you want to destroy mischievous drone or want to daze boss - thats your skill. Don't know what to choose - choose Crack Shot.

2. Flare. Good skill for 25% of Turn. Helps you to concentrate fire on evasive or just tough enemies. Raises accuracy and crit, lasts 4 turns (anyway enemy will last no more than 2 turns with that skill on him). Also blinds and burns (Burn has good synergy with Cyberninja's Cyclone Kick and This Is Fine passive of Soldier himself).

3. Bouncing Betty. Throw at first possibility on the enemy that will act first. Except when its wiser to use Flare on evasive enemy so Cyberninja wont miss with his Flipkick and Ricochet (when your timings are good). When its enemy's turn that has Bouncing Betty on him, the bomb explodes damaging enemy and surrounding enemies, throws bomblets and jumps to next enemy. If there are no other enemies Betty remains on same enemy. VERY good synergy with Bloodthrist passive because it will crit often so Soldier will heal and taunt enemies hit by criticals. Also crits burn enemies.

4. Hot Streak. Great low-cost 25% Turn skill with high Damage (better than Crack Shot), high crit chance, high crit damage. Inflicts burn. Needs charges (you get one charge per 3 crits). Charges are not saved between battles. So shoot Hot Streak whenever you can. No cooldown. Crits from Hot Streak also go for the count to the charges. You get a lot of crits from Bouncing Betty. You can get a lot of charges and spend 1 charge per each use.

5. The Specialist. Actually in this place you can put something else for you liking, like Juggernaut. Depends on your playstyle. Other skills are pretty much enough to dominate on the field.
The Specialist also gains charges from crits (you get one charge per 5 crits here). But you can't get more than 1 charge. On the plus side if you get a charge you save it between battles until you use it.
Skill's mechanic depends on equipped weapon. Most likely it would be:
- Rifle with double-shot and fixed 50% crit
- Heavy with all enemies attack
- Shotgun with attack in a cone on three enemies (best skill variant, but shotgun itself is not the best weapon).

Hacker (its not a cyberpunk game without a cowboy with smokin' hot deck)

You may think Hacker doing not so much damage. But actually he can deal amazing amount of damage when you spill all sorts of viruses on your enemies.
Getting aggro all the time when I play :(
He goes fast (make sure you give him 120 TU swords. He depends more on speed than on damage) and at each turn he gives regen to most wounded character in your team (from Timed Release passive). And if most damaged character is Hacker - he will heal every turn! And because he is fast... So, its powerful character.
Because of specifics of Virus: Hotlink its very useful to fit all your team with one element weapons. Best choice is Nanite damage, second best is Energy.

Dialogues:
You cant make a step in dungeons of the future without a hacker. Consoles to the left, consoles to the right. They asking you to be hacked. Thats the most active person in your dialogues (actualy monologues near technics).
Most important dialogue branch is Rootkit. So if you want to hack every microwave oven on your way you should invest all your points in this branch first.
With Rootkit in fight you usually go like this:
Virus: Overheat is thrown by cooldown, then Scramble on enemy with most Stun. Exploit - on enemies with big-big stun so they receive heavy debuff increasing damage dealt to them.
Then you invest points in Optimization until you get 3lvl of Timed Release.
And after that you go Malware which deals the best damage.
In battle:
1. Virus: Overheat. The only Rootkit skill in my best battle-skill list. Stuns on cast, stun after 3 turns. Burns on crit. Mostly used for stun and damage.

2. Virus: Hotlink. Only Optimization skill. Very good skill. Especially until you invest into Shareware that allows your viruses to jump between enemies by themselves. Because on each Hotlink cast it buffs your whole team: Optimization (+2% damage per stack) and defense buff (depends on Hacker's weapon element. Weapon without element gives energy defense), stacks up to 15%. Also debuffs enemies, lowering their resistance to same element. This works not only on cast but on each virus update too. That means that at battle start enemy has 20% resistance to Energy and at the end of the battle he has -80% (additional 80% from energy).

3. Black Ice. Very, very useful skill. Creats virus entity that flies around and casts Virus: Mindmelt each turn (thats why Mindmelt isn't in the list). Can be attacked and lives 5 turns. If its destroyed he curses all enemies with Mindmelt instantly. You can summon it after his death but usually its not needed, all enemies are dead by that moment.
Also, besides Mindmelt your flying friend attacks for 150% Hacker's weapon damage with a chance of instant kill. Can insta-kill ANY enemy. And by any I mean even game's final boss.

4. Virus: Logic Bomb. Nanite damage every turn. If enemy affected by this virus is critically damaged, he also damages surrounding enemies with 50% Hacker's weapon damage. Each turn a chance of insta-kill.

5. Kill Switch. You cast this when every enemy is affected by every virus (well, at least most of enemies with most of viruses). All viruses are instantly updated with damage boosted by 50%. Then all viruses terminate themselves dealing 50% weapon damage and then they are casted on your poor enemies AGAIN.
All virus effects fully work on each step so usually cast of this skill means all enemies are dead by the end of the cast.

As you see all 4 possible viruses are used so synergy wuth Shareware passive is incredible. As is Kill Switch efficiency. Only minus is Hacker attracts a hell lot of aggro.

I do not use any support skills from Optimization branch. Why use them if Hacker can kick a** as anyone else? And how satisfiying insta-kills from Logic Bomb and Black Ice are... You can't describe it with words alone.
Ultimate skills from Rootkit and Optimization usually gather only one charge per mission which is miserable. And you have enough heal from Timed Release. If you need more heal - just you your first aid kit before boss battle. But usually its not needed anyway.

Smuggler (I don't get paid enough for this s**t)

Ah. the smuggler fella. Typical "good bad boy". Excellent humour, sarcastic notes and great battle skills.
I started with Dirty Moves, only later I recognized the power of Cheap Tricks. Though Bounty isn't in the list of my active skills. Maybe I'll add it later I don't know. It's important to understand that even if you don't see any traps in list of active skills, you are supposed to invest in Dirty Moves up to 2-3 lvl of final skill so you automatically throw holo grenade when battle starts.

Dialogues:
Most useful is Gunslinger branch. Allows you to snipe leader of Paladins group (a mission from Dablue Yutaki), assassins, guards and so on. When you success in that you make the battle easier or even scare enemies so much they retreat in terror. In case of guard it allows you to stop guard from raising alarm.
Also he can appraise some loot, for example drugs. In case of drugs Smuggler instantly gets drug's buff. When you find barrels with stones/crystals in mines, you can appraise them and grab most pricey stones.
Dirty Moves allows you you to disarm demolition traps on scrolls in mines.
Also sometimes you can talk your way out and get better reward or pay lesser bribe.
Quite useful to me.
In battle:
1. Coin Toss. Use it instead of normal attack. 1 coin is spent, you deal 100% damage and then you got either heads or tails. If you get heads - you deal additional 150% damage and further Coin Tosses cost 40TU less. In case of Tails one of the enemies gets Bad Luck debuff with random effect. My favorite is 150TU stun. If one enemy gets 7 Bad Luck debuffs "something terrible happens" with him. I don't know what happens, never saw 7 Bad Luck debuffs. I'd like to know though.

2. Flash Bang. Very good skill, especially at battle start when a lot of enemies start action before your team. Inflicts Daze and Blind. Can also Stun and Confuse. Before using it always check if you mess Cyberninja's good TU position with Flash Bang.

3. Slot Machine. You spent 2 coins (further uses cost more, but per battle, not per mission, so basically it costs nothing as Coin Toss). Hits 3 enemies (usually). So choose middle enemy for skill's target. You can get different effects. If all 3 slots get same icon skill will damage all enemies (and damage will be very good). If at least 2 slots are the same, enemies get debuffs. Even if all 3 are different, you damage 3 enemies. Better use either before or after Coin Toss to gain stacks of Ante Up.

4. Bag of Wonders. Might skill for difficult battles. Stuns all enemies on use. When turn comes to thrown artifact, some weird s**t happens. Can cast mighty buff on you or mighty debuff on enemies. Can stun all enemies, can 100% heal all your team. Can jump back in your purse without any other effect. Can cast barrier on your team (worst possible cast). You have a chance to run out of artifacts and you can no longer cast this until mission ends. Starts from 10% and raises by 10% per cast. If you run out of artifacts and then artifact's effect is to return to your purse, you can cast it again, but chance to run out of artifacts is increased nonetheless.

5. Showdown. Do crits to gather charges. Maximum amount of charges raises per each skill activation (+1 per activation, 9 charges max), cooldown raises too. Stacks for whole mission. If you cast twice on same enemy, chance to crit is 100%. But usually that never happens (cooldown is too big). But the damage is very high, especially at 9 charges.
Per each charge you shoot with 110% damage and get +5% damage for 3 turns.
Also this skills is very cool looking..

Cyberninja (yoroshiku onegaishimasu!)

Should you choose Cyberninja? That depends. How 20 000 - 30 000 damage from skill sounds to you? At 50 lvl with mediocre weapon. Not good enough? Then what if this 30k damage is from just one hit and you do 5 hits? Overall 100 000 - 150 000 damage to single enemy. And that's just after 200TU of first Cyberninja's turn. What about 200TU Daze?
Yeah, you should definitely choose him. Don't understimate Cyberninja.

Dialogues:
Actually, he is pretty bad in dialogues. Only good skill is Assassination in same situations where you can use Gunslinger. But you already have Smuggler, so... He can also crawl in all kinds of tunnels. Also if you f*ck up some explosives Cyberninja usually makes a hasty retreat to closest corner and evades damage. Alone. Thats kind of a**hole Cyberninja is.
In battle:
Only branch you need is Combination. Only skills you need in other branches are passives. So its easy to lvl-up and make him useful fast. Pay attention to Kougeki from Assassination because it gives you also a passive too (and very good at that).
Pay attention to skill icons at the picture. Some designer did a crappy job with these icons. How can you tell which arrow means which skill? Its good you remember positions of the skill and you don't need to remember the icon.

1. Flipkick. use only when you DON'T have enemy right after you in TU chain. Then TU cost of the skill will be equal of TU until next character. For example you have allied character in front of you that will act in 5TU. Then Flipkick will cost 5TU. If next character will act in 45TU, Flipkick will cost 45TU. What if next character in the chain is enemy? Well, that means your skills turns to pumpkin and do not use it in this situation.
Applies some combo-points and damages fine.
Best use is when you take in consideration its synergy with Ricochet when chain looks like this:
Cyberninja - your another character - enemy

Use Flipkick on this enemy and after your another character acts (be careful with that character, so you don't put anything in the chain between enemy and Cyberninja) use Ricochet.

2. Ricochet. Be ultra careful with this skill. It hits next character in TU chain so you can hit your ally if you are blindly push your buttons at random. But even if you act like that you'll definitely win with our incredible A-team ;)
Applies Daze for 100% Weapon TU. So its best to equip your Cyberninja with Heavy Melee. If enemy has combo-points on him, it will also damage for 75% for each combo-point. And it do not wastes the points! They remain there.
Very useful to hit the boss and push him in the deepest depths of TU chain. As a cherry on top this skill costs only 5TU. How do you like that?

3. Takedown. That is his greatest skill which deals a hell lot of damage no one can withstand. Ever heard of katana slicing whole train in half? That is what happens when you use Takedown.
When you use Combination skills, Setup stacks are applied to enemies. Each stack increases the chance to hit enemy by 3%. 10 stacks max. Takedown attacks ALL enemies that have at least 1 stacked combo-point on them. One hit per each combo-point. And damage is based on Setup stacks. And even if enemy survives he gets vulnerability debuff (4% per combo-point) and resistance debuff (-5% per Setup stack). Then all combo-point and setup-stacks vanish. But usually then new stacks are applied due to Deadly Focus passive.
Best way to gather stacks on tough enemy is to use Combo Strike.

4. Cyclone Kick. Tricky skill (like are all Cyberninja skills actually). Costs 125% TU. Hits all enemies you pass through in TU chain after using this skill. So if your weapon is 200TU skill will cost 250TU and every enemy that act sooner than 250TU will be affected. If enemy acts in 255 TU he will not be affected. You can't miss with this skill.
If any of enemies you hit is affected by Burn, then skill will fun the flames and every enemy will burn!!
If enemy is hit by ally after being hit with Cyclone Kick, 2 combo-points applied to him (once per enemy).

5. Combo Strike. Hits one enemy and applies Combo Strike to him. If enemy is hit by ally while affected by Combo Strike, Cyberninja will assist with 30% attack and apply 1-2 combo-points and Setup stack. If ally critically hits then Cyberninja will attack twice. Triggers from ANY attack (Soldier's bombs, Hacker's viruses).
Best way to use this skill - apply it to most powerful enemy. Then hit him with each ally. If you have some summoned scum (Black Ice, Rai'el, Barkleby, Black Hole, Evie, corp's Engineer that helps you on a mission) skill will trigger from their attacks too. After that its usually 7-9 stacks of Setup which is pretty much enough for sure kill from Takedown.

11 Comments

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Purple Box Cutter 19 Nov, 2024 @ 5:07pm

I didn't care much for the Force Psyker, until I tried the guardian tree and discovered he can crystal-prison any enemy pretty reliably.
Now, Guardian F-Psyker and Optimization Hacker are my go-to for a party with an unbreakable defence

Scorpias 20 Dec, 2022 @ 6:47am

Things must have changed since this review was written OR the author was playing NG+ games. Two things I'd note:
1. Outside of NG+ games, It is impossible for the smuggler to have showdown, slot machine and bag of wonders. There just aren't enough skill points. This is possible in NG+ games

2. Void Psyker is the multi-target version of the Cyberninja. Voidstorm can wipe out all 5 enemies including bosses. When vulnerability/Corrupt hits (from critical hits), I've seen VoidStorm go for over 200k. Even without the debuffs, it is still very good. Void Psyker needs heals though, so prepare for that.

The spec is:
* Evoker to Ascendance
* Summoner to Rifts
* Manipulator to Psi Blades.
When you have a choice, always get the passives.

Skills:
* Shadow Coil/Drain to get Energy and take down shields
* Miasma - great dps DOT to add stacks vulnerability/blind,corrupt.
* Void Storm - When you want to clear the room
* Torrent - When you want to kill a single target (that doesn't have shields)

jvincentnix 12 Feb, 2022 @ 11:03am

I did think the Engineer was useful (for the reasons you said s/he was not) but only if I re-selected the order of my party. I am not sure if that was supposed to make a difference, but before each mission, if I unselected all, then selected the Engineer first, she seemed to take more attention. That also makes the Engineer the one character that is doing the negotiations in all of the vendor interactions.

TheValidPerson 22 Mar, 2021 @ 8:50pm

Just a thing to note, with Smuggler's lvl.3 Bounty active skill, pairing that with the lvl.3 passive of Ante Up does allow you to gain money with proper usage, gaining half of the money spent as profits.

Niriel 6 Jan, 2021 @ 3:08pm

To be fair, a Force Psyker with Guardian, optimized for speed (pirate sword and adrenaline pump accessory), will cast prisms so often that you will hardly ever lose a hit point. Mirror prism reflects damage onto the enemies: they hit themselves and you feel nothing. Purity prism cleans your entire team from all their debuffs, applies those debuffs to your enemies, and from there on reflects all debuffs like a mirror. Oh, and when prisms finally break, you heal and the enemies get damaged again. And because you optimized your Force Psyker for speed, she can just cast it again immediately.

Daimon 20 Sep, 2020 @ 11:44pm

I literally went with those on my own, as Ninja, Hacker and Rogue are the perfect harem for my soldier and I just love how they link together perfectly!

Anzer 19 May, 2020 @ 2:34pm

@Proutos - The target needs to have combo points on them for the skill to do damage. If you use it early in the battle, you may not see any damage. Depending on the TU order, I usually open with either Combo Strike > Flipkick > Ricochet or just Flipkick > Ricochet.

Proutos 11 May, 2020 @ 7:22am

Ricochet have never made any damage until now, nerfed?? I used it like 20 times.

el0ax 25 Mar, 2020 @ 12:46am

Excellent primer, much appreciated.

Woofy 10 Nov, 2019 @ 6:30am

This helps a lot. I was and still am pretty lost, but I'm a bit better now. Thanks!

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