Some mean person made it so you can't use breach directly on npcs anymore. :-E

Now if the machines near them were connected to their network, this wouldn't matter... but the machines are NEVER CONNECTED to the npcs!

So how am I supposed to apply the breach effects to npcs?????

Ok then I shall rephrase.... previously I could weaken enemies to all my attacks with the breach effect.
How do I weaken them before getting into a firefight now?

... because right now, out in the freeroam, everyone is a bullet sponge!

It's funny you say this because everyone felt bullet spongey before 2.0 and now the game feels significantly better. I have heard they are more of a pain on Very Hard, I play on hard so maybe turn down the difficutly if you don't like it?

Since a lot of people dislike 2.0, it can't be everyone by any stretch of the imagination.

The only thing I can think of to explain this odd viewpoint difference is that I ALWAYS play as a hacker, so I usually get breach (physical) and then breach (quickhack),
So to me, the 1.63 enemies were much squisher then their default.

That said, I'm playing on normal.
Tonight I've noticed that some enemies go down in 3 shots, while others take around 10.
That's still more then in 1.63

I'm wondering if this is their armour difference...?
Wierd thing is, these enemies look the same... like the armoured troops coming at us when breaking out with the biochip.

I guess it could be location damage. Can't tell what I'm shooting at 30+ feet with a pistol... just if I hit or not.

v2.0 adds some mooks with two or three health bars. Depending on your build, you can smoke them in one shot anyway, at least on Normal. It's probably possible on Hard/Very Hard if you're optimized for it.

If you're going netrunner, you'll notice that all the daemons that came along with Breach Protocol are just gone, so you can't rely on those anymore. Instead you're expected to use Overclock and queues and stuff to boost your output. There's the option to synergize with monowhips and/or smart weapons. Not too fond of them railroading netrunners like that but eh what're you gonna do.

On the flipside, my V who has 3 Intelligence (but for some reason still has a cyberdeck) can knock out regular baddies with one cast of Contagion using a Militech Paraline Mk3 (Tier3+ Paraline). If you get enough netrunner levels and upgrade your deck and quickhacks, you can still do some decent damage. Haven't switched over to a sandevistan yet, but eventually I'll probably have to. Anyway, based on that observation, a fully-specced netrunner using Overclock and the right cyberware could probably wipe an entire location before getting traced.

If you really want to avoid bullet spongi-ness, the perks under Cool have you covered. Once you get Deadeye you're a one-shot wonder, even at relatively low levels, and the enemies generally can't outscale your damage. Just bosses and cyberpsychos, though they usually only take a few shots. If I ever found a proper Tier3 or higher sniper, even the bosses might go down in 2 hits. As an added bonus, you can probably synergize the Cool perks for pistol/sniper with the smart weapon perks under Intelligence and be an unholy terror with an Ashura.

Long story short, you can score automatic crits on headshots with pistols or snipers as long as your stamina is above 85%.

Oh that is handy for a first strike!

There's more: one perk under Cool gets you 33% of your stamina back on a pistol/sniper headshot kill. Then there's a Cool capstone perk that let's you hipfire pistols at no stamina cost.

You can keep Deadeye running forever. Infinite headshot crits.

sadly that one you mentioned first is at the top, so requiers 20.
I already planned on maxing Int and Tech, since that what I did in 1.63, so I wanted a direct comparison.

Sadly hacking is such a pain in the butt now!