Thanks for suggestions. Unfortunately I can only pick two more feats before I hit the level cap so those two will likely end up being Expertise and Expose Weakness. On the other hand, my throwing is reasonably high so I might decide to take Grenadier instead of EW.
I did think about going with a Psi build as well, but I can't quite settle on a build. I don't want to take crafting but apparently you get some pretty crucial items through it (psi vest and such). I'd also hate to lose lockpicking, stealth and electronics which I'm currently using and loving all of them.
I was thinking of these attributes (please feel free to weigh in, even though it's offtopic
Dodge, Evasion (could drop Dodge if I'm gonna keep my range), Lockpicking, Stealth (also a candidate to be dropped), Electronics, Psychokinesis, Metathermics, Persuasion. Stat spread would be focused on Will and Dex. Is it generally recommended to focus on all 3 psi abilities since you're already heavily invested into Will stat? What about social, is one enough or should one generally get both persuasion and intimidate if going that route?
Your strength/will idea also sounds very appealing. If I can convince myself to drop container opening skills I might just go that route.
edit: missed a post
Hey there and welcome to the forums!
The gist of your problem is that fast & small hits with poor armor penetration (like punching or stabbing) are easily stopped by armor threshold - Expose Weakness is a direct solution to that problem.
Expertise also works with fist weapons and is very powerful - it adds to every number of damage you do, so a single hit with (8-13,2-4) glove will get the expertise bonus twice. Its effect doesn't show up in combat stats as it doesn't add damage to all hits, only to non-critical hits.
Hit chance is based on your melee skill vs target's dodge skill. Higher level enemies will have higher dodge, so yeah, level difference indirectly affects it. Keeping your weapon skill maxed is obvious (it increases both damage and hit chance), but having a very high attribute (dex for fast melee) to increase the skill further is also very helpful.
Somehow I completely missed your post, was scrolled down too far
. Thanks for the detailed info, very much appreciate it. It sounds like Expertise should be my first priority since I'm going to get 34 extra damage becase I'm using gloves with two different types of mechanical damage (blunt and spikes). Unless my math is wrong this will give me more benefit at this point - the enemies I ran into had about 20-25 mechanical treshold so adding 34 on top would put me at ~+30, EW would be at +~13-15 only.