SR:HK - Awesome character/team/strat builds that dominate in a shootout

For SR:HK & Shadows expansion, my team that made light work of combat:

My PC (player character):
I built a fire mage of the philosophy that 'dead is the best debuff' - so direct damage preferred to anything that only puts enemies out of combat for a while. Karma prioritized into Wisdom/Spellcasting results in very high chance to hit, which makes direct damage spells compare more favourably to rifles than you might be expected from a quick reading of damage numbers.
Spent karma on: Wisdom/Spellcasting, Quickness/Dodge, Body, Charisma
Spells: Strip Armor, Wild Aim, FlameThrower III & II, Fireball, Heal
Equip: Armor, Hermetic Fetish(es)

My preferred team:
Duncan: Full auto fire, Mercy Kill, Shiawase Magnet Arm (grenade throwback)
Is0bel: Grenade launcher
Koschei (Racter): Overclock, Rip and Tear, Auto self repair

General Combat Strat:
Buffs and debuffs: First step in every round is to choose an enemy and cast strip armor on them, -5 armor makes an immense difference. Keep an aim buff on Duncan and PC whenever possible. Keep PC on a dragon line whenever possible for insane damage multiplication.

PC starts each fight looking for a suitable crowd to drop a fireball on - but that's usually the only fireball used. After that, strip armor, consider wild aim or heal, then use Flamethrower III then II, hopefully on enemies in the open or flanked, to very often get huge damage multipliers.

Koschei gets overclocked at the start of every fight, and charges into the fray of enemies, getting within 5 squares then unleashing with his gun, but rarely melee to stay clear of Is0bel's grenades. He draws nearly all enemy fire and may get put into self-repair mode, but it doesn't matter because he distracted them for so long, and often causes them to move into positions that let PC or Duncan get a clear shot at them.

Is0bel fires grenades at the thickest crowd of enemies (that don't have a grenadier amongst them - priority kill Grenadiers to let Is0bel fight more). Even with only ~50% chance to kit, just lob those grenades and even when they 'miss' they still often strip armor and do damage. By mostly using ranged attacks on Koschei and not bringing Gaichu, Is0bel is able to fire grenades into groups of 2-3 enemies without much concern of friendly fire damage.

Duncan tries to fire full auto into an enemy that has armor stripped, every round. Uses 3rd AP to move, mercy kill, targeted shot, or reload. Duncan and PC usually stand extremely close together (plus Racter if he isn't busy running errands), drawing enemy grenades, so the augmentation can throw them back.

Racter collects items or interacts with the environment, leaving other characters free to attack more. Also throws buffs at Koschei as often as possible. May occasionally shoot his gun at someone as an absolute last resort when he has spare AP and nothing to do with it.

So there you have it, my guide to a very straightforward build that will absolutely wreck face. Hopefully some other people can contribute some more interesting builds that they found effective!

My character was a decker who wasn't great in direct combat, but was decent with pistols.

Surprisingly, I found a taser (there's this one guy in a side mission who sells one) extremely useful. Both Duncan and Gaichu have moves that could put stunned opponents out of a fight immediately (Duncan's cuffs and Gaichu's coup de gras), so I often ran with those two. I would stun enemies with the taser, then have Duncan or Gaichu run in to finish them off. This let me drop a few enemies really quickly at the start of each fight. I often had Gobbet haste one or the other to make it easier to get in close, and Duncan had the shock baton as a secondary weapon for more stuns.

Hilariously, you can even Main HK campaign spoilers

I've never been a fan of sniper rifles, going back to Eiger in Dragonfall, was just not impressed.

Finally in one HK run recently I decided to not be nice and actually take the prototype laser from the other runners in Misdirection. With a basic rifle focused PC, that thing tears up.

Use Duncan's full auto, Gaichu or Koschei melee, or Gobbet's flush to break enemies out of cover, then just laser blast the hell out of them.

I've played through many times, and never have any trouble with combat any more, but this run with the laser has just been silly.

My most recent playthrough was pretty comically easy.

Hermetic mage with some physical adept. Getting qi casting to 5 is very much worth it for the 0 AP light cover spell. Cast it, go stand on a dragon line and have fun. I used chain lightning, wild aim, focus: drain, and manaball. The other two slots can be for the very very nice defensive qi powers. At qi casting of 5 you can get martial defense 1 which is epic. At qi casting 6 you can get the armor spell which is okay. 9 and 10 respectively offer some great defense. Normal characters can get to 9 qi casting and use pain supression which is hilarious. My main character standing in the open (light cover) was actually blocking all damage from the main campaign bosses melee attacks with 8 armor and pain supression activated (so 8 armor and then 5 damage reduction on top of that and 360 degree light cover so no crits or flanks. At 10, gogo dwarf mage, you can get martial defense 2 which is 4 rounds of MEDIUM cover for 0 AP. So basically I just would just stand in the exposed dragon lines without worrying and own things up. With Martial Defense II (10 qi casting) you would be exactly the same but since you would now be in medium cover you would take .5 damage ON TOP of your other reductions. And then regenerate 6 hp every turn from drain life and bing bang boom, you won't die basically.

Body 5 and cyber affinity 3 lets you grab 1 essence worth of implants. I chose the dodge implant due to cost but I think if you are smart you can afford the +2 armor +1 body implant which would give you 10 armor along with your qi casting defense and life drain turn you into a walking fortress. I saved money and jumped from powerbolt 1 to Powerbolt 4 because why not, wild aim and life drain are both free spells (life drain isn't until prosperity tower, but a heal spell is fine until then) so you really just need to spend money on manaball III and chain lightning II. Then just put enough points into charisma (4 or 6, your pick. Gang/shadowrun/security are my favorite 3) and intelligence to cast the more fun spells and then dump the rest into body or quick/dodge as you like. There is a bit of a difficulty curve while waiting for the end level spells but until the later missions combat can be for the most part avoided anyway. Depending on how many points of karma I get in the mini campaign that I just started I will either get cyber affinity 6 for the second bonus essence point or put everything into quick/dodge which is a measly 3/3 on my guy but that doesn't seem to matter really. I would most definitely save the ares run and the whistle blower missions along with gobbet and gaichu's missions until the end when you will be able to start buying the good stuff with all the money you saved up.

Favorite team was: Duncan, Ractor, IsObel. Koschei is a beast and with the undying upgrade and +2 ap can be used as a turn 1 expendable formation wrecker whom also happens to have good grenades and is very useful for approaching enemies in cover. Use the melee attack to approach and then switch to the shotgun to finish the enemy off. Also there are multiple times where you can use a drone in the vents to access supplies or you can use ractors abilities to avoid fights.

Duncan isn't really that great but neither is Gaichu honestly. Duncan does get the magnetic arm later which is just hilarious. I purposely clump up my guys to abuse the AI's poor grenade decision making. Gaichu's AOE is also very powerful but the grenade protection from Duncan edges it out by the end when every soldier type enemy seems to be carrying at least 2 nades on them but I do wish duncan had way more points in ranged combat then he does but oh well.

IsObel's grenade launcher is insane. The cover formula uses the location of the explosion to decide cover so isobel's misses on opponents behind cover can easily crit since they will blow up behind or to the side allowing them to ignore cover. Also she's needed if your PC isn't a decker. There is almost no reason to use her sliver gun unless you are flanking someone and have a 75% chance to hit them with her burst fire.

I've played the game as a rigger and a street samurai and by the end game the hermetic mage with qi defenses is just out of control. The rigger is a good strat since you can be a better matrix runner then IsObel and you can use two super awesome drones by the end and you can run with Gobbett/Gaichu/Duncan if you want but my character, while effective, felt fragile and basically had to hide the whole time while drones and team members did everything. Magic is much stronger then in the previous games and the rigger build is no longer as overpowered as it was in dragonfall (probably due to the lack of money though...) The AOE damage potential though of having IsObel + Hermetic Mage PC does make a lot of fights really really easy though. I haven't really toyed with using Gobbett with my mage since I feel like it would be redundant but I don't really see why you couldn't replace Duncan with gobbett and focused your PC mage on 4 pure damage spells (probably manaball, chain lightning, flamethrower and fireball if you want to go that route although I feel the AP damage from lightning ball would probably be better then the extra damage from fireball).

Wrecking the highest difficulty with a Control Mage:

• Petrify is very strong for taking care of single high threat targets. If you find an AOE dragonline (the kind that make your spells bounce to additional targets), petrify is crazy OP.
• You have to be careful with the powers that make enemies ignore your team, as those can cause the fight to temporarily end and then restart to basically no effect if you get that on ALL enemies in the combat.

My Team:

Is0bel: here for the decking, and the grenade launching. Gaichu: beastmode. top damage dealer. Remember to use his defense abilities and change stances as needed. Racter: The most versatile team member.

I thought my Cyber sam melee build was strong, but this has been an even easier run.

The team I used was great. My PC was a cybered up Street Sam with razor claws for the ap damage. I added the shock glove and by the time I got to the extended campaign I added the 5-qi sword that does ap damage.

The team is gobbet, racter, Isabel. Gobbet casts haste and aim on PC and you activate wired reflexes to start with 5 ap. PC stuns usually three or four in the first turn.

Koschei gets overclock and aim, melee stun someone then kneecap and laser which can stun on a critical.

Gobbet flushes enemies from cover and buffs aim and heals, plus using her SMG aim attack on stunned people has a high chance to crit.

Isobel uses burst fire for the crit chance and helps round out damage. Mark misses more often than it helps I think.

The PC razor claws have a move that strips armor and so does the shock glove.

The only hard fight was in the extended portion with the young girl if you pick neither side and they both attack you. That was much harder than qian ya

I have a low charisma medium HP fire mage / assault rifle specialist, no cyberware. I completed playthroughs with adept, street samurai, and did a couple missions with a shaman and rigger, but by far, this rifle fire mage is my favorite archetype because I don't try to smooth talk anybody, I just rape all the corporate douchebags and slaughter the security, inflicting maximum collateral damage in the process. I feel like Neo when he walked into the lobby of the government building with Trinity at the end of The Matrix. I also gave my mage the Confusion spell, like I was Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi mindfucking the enemies for two rounds.

 

I equip Duncan with an ARES Alpha and a vindicator minigun, Gaichu with the Emperor's Sword so he can throw ranged lightning bolts, and then I bring Racter and mow down everything in my path. Honestly I love each and every single one of the default party members in this campaign, they are all S+. They are all my favorite of every archetype so far in SR. Reason why I would vary the team composition.

 

I liked the story of Dragonfall, but HATED the team. I felt like I was running with a bunch of white supremacists. The only party member that I liked in that campaign was the hired gun Lucky Strike. She's the best of all worlds, assault rifle + katana + haste / support spells, and her past is decent, compared to the disasters of Glory/Blitz/Dietrich/Eiger's pasts.

 

For strategy, when faced with an open map, I dig in behind cover and send Gaichu off alone on the side of the map to back door the enemy and prevent them from taking cover at the far end of the map while sniping me or buffing their allies. He takes out all the snipers and mages, while the rest of the team turtle behind cover in a defensible position of the map, throw grenades, cast fireball/flamethrower and shoot the enemy to hell with the assault rifles. In the last mission of the bonus campaign, I faced all four of the mechs on Hard without taking control of any of them, and damn that was a good fight. Gaichu soaked up so much damage, what a tank, and Koschei would attract the enemy's attention so they kept shutting him down but he isn't called "Deathless" for nothing, while Racter was as far behind as possible taking cover.