Ninja?

[Calax]

Anyone tried a literal ninja build of Toughness, Stealth, and melee. I could see replacing toughness with Sabatoge, but I'm thinking that this would either being INSANELY tough or INSANELY easy.

[HoonDing]

Picking Sabotage should be prioritary in a Stealth build, imo, since one wants to avoid combat Toughness shouldn't be needed.

 

Also, gadgets will be necessary for boss fights. Only the Al-Samad luitenant can be defeated by stealth.

[cesko]

Yep, at my stealthrun I'm trying to max those out, but I would advice to go for toughness, cause your martial arts will be your only weapon

[Hell Kitty]

I maxed out stealth and martial arts, and had points in pistols, sabotage and toughness. I beat most bosses with a combo of stealth and melee, but would occasionally resort to the pistol.

 

Maxing out stealth and melee makes it really easy. I was able to run around completely invisible and wipe out groups of enemies, even when they were all bunched together in the same room. Evasion meant I was able to sneak right up to someones face and take them out while momentarily invisible.

 

Also, doing a melee takedown from the front is much faster than from the back.

[Calax]

I maxed out stealth and martial arts, and had points in pistols, sabotage and toughness. I beat most bosses with a combo of stealth and melee, but would occasionally resort to the pistol.

 

Maxing out stealth and melee makes it really easy. I was able to run around completely invisible and wipe out groups of enemies, even when they were all bunched together in the same room. Evasion meant I was able to sneak right up to someones face and take them out while momentarily invisible.

 

Also, doing a melee takedown from the front is much faster than from the back.

Problem i kept having with that was that evasion wouldn't go off when I was chargin the guy.

[Hell Kitty]

Maybe evasion only goes off while you're crouching. So you'd have to set if off first, then charge.

[Oner]

It doesn't kick in if enemies are in alerted status I think.

Edited June 2, 2010 by Oner

[Cl_Flushentityhero]

A ninja without martial arts? I mean, I suppose you could use flashbangs and takedowns, but that just seems wrong . . .

[Calax]

A ninja without martial arts? I mean, I suppose you could use flashbangs and takedowns, but that just seems wrong . . .

Uh, melee=martial arts.

[Tigranes]

All passive abilities, like Evasion, have cooldown as well. I don't think there's a way to check the timers, though.

[Darque]

I'm actually thinking of doing this for my second playthrough.

[Spydude]

Too bad you can't customize Thorton to look like Chuck Norris though. It takes away a lot of the cold fear the enemies must be feeling to face Chuck.

[cesko]

It works great, especially when you use fury at the endbosses

[Sir Ulrich Von Lichenstien]

It works great, especially when you use fury at the endbosses

Yup had great fun with my 'ninja' recruit character last 2 days.

 

My ninja build was

Stealth Maxed

Pistols 3 boxes (for cheap-shot)

Sabotage 2 boxes (for hack help if needed)

Technical Aptitude Maxed (for 2 extra gadget slots, brilliance and some added endurance)

Martial Arts Maxed

 

Was so fun beating the living snot out of Deng and Brayko, latter took 2 attempts but the way I beat the living hell out of Deng was soooo fun.

 

Beat him up before the other CSP could show up. Initially tried wearing him down with some placed shock traps but somehow he avoided all them. But then I went in with shadow op... did a quick 2-hit chain shot to take his armor off, switched to fury and then pummeled him to death. Was funny because he was standing right next to a pillar and it basically just looked like I was smacking him into it constantly.

 

Then later on I got to do same to Marburg in Graybox and then Westridge...

 

Westridge was a blast, used shadow op 3 times to get to where he was, using an EMP on the door to his room, then a quick cheap-shot to remove his armor, followed by fury and beating him to a pulp with my super martial art skills. Made the following cut-scene so appropriate

[Calax]

I actually started trying this out in a fresh recruit game. I've got toughness, MA, and Stealth as my three main pools with Sabotage being right behind.

 

It's... rough, given I don't have a pistols at 3, got it at 1 and shotguns at 3 (gotta have some sort of semi ranged) and I'm having trouble getting used to ranging my attacks because if you're a half inch off you flail at mid air while they blow you to pieces.

[unskilled-]

All passive abilities, like Evasion, have cooldown as well. I don't think there's a way to check the timers, though.

 

Its 300 seconds, it tells you when you look at the information for the skill itself.

 

Although if your refering to checking the timers for when you can reuse the ability again, they don't have that.

Edited June 8, 2010 by unskilled-

[Vahkn]

I think it's a lot easier if you avoid stealth initially for this build

 

Priorities:

 

max MA

max toughness

decent level of tech aptitude (better heals, better armor, more convo options, brilliance to reset fury and iron will on bosses)

 

Optional:

 

1-2 points in sabotage if you don't like the mini-games

5 points in stealth if you want the radar

 

General approach:

 

Until you get the flying knee kick move sneak up on people when possible. You can still get pretty close with no stealth and wearing combat armor - you wont get many actual take downs, but you don't need them the same way a non MA build does. Once you get the knee kick you can sprint at people and effectively do an instant take down (via the follow up move)

 

Use fury if you need to cover a lot of open ground safely (only really needed on hard difficulty) and for bosses, obviously

[JamieKirby]

Its a pity that the scaling of difficulty is screwy, i mean, if you have set amount of ap points, the difficulty of fights, hacking, lockpicking and alarm disabling become way too difficult.

 

From what i have learnt is that the highest ap points you can have and it doesn't have a fit about it, is 320....which is a level 20 veteran character. (i am not taking into account the ap points you can get for getting certain perks.

 

This is what i had for my Assault Rifle boom maker veteran:

 

Stealth: 10

Assault Rifles: 15

Sabotage: 15

Technical Aptitude: 15

Toughness: 10

Marital Arts: 10

 

In total that comes to 275 ap points, which is doable as a Veteran, i am in the process of trying a purely Martial Artist.

[mr insomniac]

In another thread someone suggested a Chuck Norris/Ninja build, with maxed toughness, MA, and stealth, and 10 ranks of tech. I've just unlocked Veteran and I'm trying this out in my current game. I haven't built a stealth character in any previous playthroughs, so I'm finding it to be a challenge, but a fun one. I'm considering maybe a couple ranks of shotgun in case things get messy.

[Vahkn]

I didn't take a lot of notice, but I believe as a recruit you basically get enough points to max out 3 skills.

 

With that said, put 1 point in sabotage, carry as many emp grenades as you can and you can spend every other skill point on combat skills, which is more than enough as long as you specialize.

[macrocarl]

In another thread someone suggested a Chuck Norris/Ninja build, with maxed toughness, MA, and stealth, and 10 ranks of tech. I've just unlocked Veteran and I'm trying this out in my current game. I haven't built a stealth character in any previous playthroughs, so I'm finding it to be a challenge, but a fun one. I'm considering maybe a couple ranks of shotgun in case things get messy.

 

I heard shotgun is kind of redundant since you have MA for tight quarters situations. Maybe a lil' pistol instead? that's what I did and loved it. Although I've heard people using SMG for when things got loud while trying to be stealthy. Dunno.

[Luckmann]

Picking Sabotage should be prioritary in a Stealth build, imo, since one wants to avoid combat Toughness shouldn't be needed.

 

Also, gadgets will be necessary for boss fights. Only the Al-Samad luitenant can be defeated by stealth.

It shouldn't be, I agree, but you just try to beat Brayko on Hard, in hand-to-hand, without Toughness. It's not going to happen, I think.

 

If we're going for a ninja build, I'd say that you should definitely go for Stealth, Toughness and CQC. Gadgets aren't necessary and only Ranged Hacking is really useful for stealth, anyway. That said, I've always found it weird that a "Spy"-build includes CQC instead of Sabotage - all the Sabotage stuff is right up the Spy's alley.

 

But not the ninja's. :D