If your default pool isn't 9 or higher, forget about it.

Why Mundane Fighting

Cheating (Or: The Art of Magic Enhancing Abilities)

Spheres at 1 are extremely useful for modifying mundane combat rolls
Reducing mundane combat difficulties should generally use spheres at 1 or at most 2, higher ones are generally better for direct combat
Standouts: Entropy 1 (fate, fortune, weakpoints), Mind 1 (multitasking), Forces 1 (positions, velocities), Corr 1 (distance, vectors, movement)

Ideally you want to kill something before it can hit you again. This means dealing 7 health levels of damage in one blow.
- At difficulty 6, this requires an average of (14 + enemy soak) damage to do so 50% of the time. This is why Entropy 1 is so useful for reducing difficulty, as at difficulty 3, this only requires (10 + 2*enemy soak/3) damage.
Most mundane handheld weapons lack this capability (exceptions: .50 caliber sniper rifles, grenades, huge swords wielded by Str 5 dudes, rocket launchers). The breakpoint of being able to instantly kill most combatants in one attack is extremely beneficial and if you wish to do any sort of mundane combat should be a high priority (dead things can't hurt you most of the time). Note that frag grenades do 12L damage according to Technomancer's Toybox: This makes them a very good mundane lethal option for characters with high Athletics.

Being a squishy human it is often better to stay at range than it is to get into brawls.
Most pistols do 5-6L damage, with rifles doing 6-8L damage. This means that if you are very strong, fighting at range can significantly reduce your dice pools
However, the safety of not being right in the face with a werewolf cannot be understated. Everyone seeking to use mundane combat skills extensively should consider having at least one ranged and one melee combat skill at a high rating.

Soak is generally unreliable for ordinary humans against lethal damage, but is never worthless
Stamina 4 allows soaking of lethal damage at difficulty 8. This provides a ~71% chance of reducing incoming lethal damage by 1 HL and a 42% chance of doing so by 2 HLs. Stamina 5 increases these odds to 76 and 51%.
Primarily you will be getting lethal soak from armor. Your average 0 mobility penalty suit of armor with 3d soak will provide an 86% chance of at least 1 HL reduction in damage.
Against high accuracy enemies, 1d of soak is approximately worth 2d of dodge: This ratio decreases in favor of dodging as the enemy's accuracy decreases.

Dodging is more reliable than soak against lethal damage but also compromises your offensive capabilities
If dodging and attacking, even with 9d dice pools you will significantly impact your attack and defense, unless you give up your defense (9d vs 7d)

The most common multiple action type: Attack + Dodge (penalties of -2/-3)
Generally multiple actions are extremely risky unless you have high pools (8-10d recommended in both areas)
Having to take multiple defensive actions in a turn is almost always a losing game unless the enemy is incompetent. In this case seek to eliminate one enemy quickly (note the "How to kill things" section)

Called shots may allow you to do things like ignore soak, increase damage, etc.
Called shot difficulty increases also reduce your damage dice-be careful
Each +1 difficulty modifier cuts down average successes on a pool by (dice pool)/10 and increases botch chance
At very high pools called shots for extra damage may actually reduce your damage.
However at low pools called shots are extremely risky (w/o WP).