SegmentNextCyberpunk 2077 Best Builds: 7 Ways to Spend the Same Attribute Points
Update 2.0 rebuilt the perk trees and moved defence onto cyberware, and Phantom Liberty added a fifth tree on top, which between them turned character building from a set of presets into an actual decision. What did not change is the constraint underneath it. Eddies come back and experience regenerates, but attribute points have a ceiling, and every build below is a different answer to the same question of where to put them. Read them as seven commitments rather than seven shopping lists.
The seven at a glance
| Build | Leans on | What it asks you to do | Where it hurts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Assassin Ninja | Cool, Reflexes, Relics | Stay unseen, kill quietly, leave | Suppressed weapons hit softly and a miss is a crisis |
| Immortal Shield | Body, Reflexes | Walk into the room and stay there | Heavy weapons fight your movement speed |
| Beginner | Reflexes | Point an assault rifle at things | Nothing clever, which is the point |
| David Martinez | Body, Technical Ability | Sandevistan in, Gorilla Arms out | Cooldown management is the whole game |
| Lucy Kushinada | Intelligence, Technical Ability | Quickhack, then close with the Monowire | Complex to juggle, and the wire is mid-range at best |
| Savage Slugger Solo | Reflexes, Body, Technical Ability | Whatever the situation needs | You have to work it out yourself |
| Bladerunner | Reflexes, Technical Ability | Katana, at speed, between targets | Squishy, because nothing stops the incoming damage |
The Cyberninja, the netrunner build, is the eighth and it has a page of its own. Our Netrunner build for Update 2.0 commits 20 points each to Body, Intelligence and Technical Ability, holds Reflexes at 8 and Cool at 3, and says where Phantom Liberty's ten extra points belong, which is the level of specificity none of the seven above are written to. Start with Hack Queue, Embedded Exploit and Proximate Propagation, then move to Overclock, Queue Acceleration and Spill Over as the RAM economy opens up.
Stealth and tank, the two opposites
The Assassin Ninja runs on movement and detection rather than on damage. Ninjutsu and Feline Footwork and the perks below them let you move, aim, shoot and sprint out of a crouch without standing up and giving yourself away, and Optical Camo plus Emergency Cloaking from the Relics tree let you leave a fight you have already started. Be honest with yourself about the trade: suppressors cut damage, the pace fights against most of the content outside the main story, and a missed shot in a room you have not cleared turns a stealth build into a badly equipped gunfight. The Relics tree also needs Phantom Liberty, so this build is only half available without the expansion.
The Immortal Shield is the answer for anyone who keeps dying. Body goes as high as it will go, for health regeneration and for the ability to absorb a burst, and Adrenaline Rush is the perk everything else hangs off, because its upgrades add immunity windows, damage and a slower decay on the buff itself. It carries LMGs and shotguns, which are slow, so Reflexes perks go in to buy back the movement speed those weapons take away. Rush of Blood, Die! Die! Die! and Like a Feather are the three that make the heavy weapons feel less like furniture.
The two Edgerunners builds
Both of these exist to let you play as somebody from the anime, and both happen to be good. David Martinez is the Sandevistan build: the Militech Apogee for time dilation, thermal Gorilla Arms for the damage, and the Axolotl and Newton Module to bring the cooldowns down so the dilation is available more often than not. His weapons are the Lexington, the M-76E Omaha and the DB-2 Satara. Points go into the middle of the Body and Technical Ability trees, and Adrenaline Rush, License To Chrome, Edgerunners and Extended Warranty are the four that hold it together. A free copy of that Sandevistan is lying in two rooms in Night City, which our Militech Apogee Sandevistan guide maps, and finding one saves this build a great deal of money early.
Lucy Kushinada is the Monowire build, and it is two things rather than seven: the wire, and hacking. Intelligence takes the quickhack upgrades and Technical Ability takes the cyberware enhancements, and the Jailbreak skill in the Relics tree is what fuses them, letting a Monowire hit at full charge install a quickhack on whoever it lands on. The payoff is damage arriving from two directions at once. The cost is that you are managing a hack queue and a charge meter at the same time, and the wire runs out of reach before most enemies do, so a secondary weapon is not optional. Monowire also moved to Arms cyberware in 2.0 and stopped collecting melee weapon bonuses, which our Netrunner page covers.
The two that ask the least of you
The beginner build is an assault rifle and enough chrome to survive: Kiroshi Optics, a Shock Absorber and the Militech Apogee Sandevistan. Reflexes is the obvious attribute, Ready, Rested, Reloaded and Tunnel Vision are the cheap early picks, and Sharpshooter and Salt in the Wound are what you take once twenty points are in. It is not a build anyone writes home about and it will carry a first playthrough through the entire main story. The Savage Slugger Solo is the same philosophy with more money spent: Reflexes, Body and Technical Ability together, License To Chrome, Air Dash, Aerial Acrobat, Calm Mind and Pain To Gain, and cooldown cyberware like the Axolotl and Newton Module to keep abilities rotating. Its strength and its weakness are the same sentence, which is that it decides nothing for you.
The Bladerunner
Katanas came out of 2.0 in much better shape than they went in, and the Bladerunner is the build that noticed. Blades sits under Reflexes and does three jobs at once, raising damage, lowering the activation cost of abilities and unlocking the finishers, while License To Chrome and Extended Warranty under Technical Ability keep the cyberware uptime high enough for the whole thing to work. It bounces between targets quickly and it has no answer to a room that shoots back, so it lives or dies on closing distance. If it appeals, our best weapons guide puts the Errata thermal katana third overall, and it is available early in Act 2.
Whichever of the eight you pick, the attribute spread is the part you cannot walk back, which is why our main Cyberpunk 2077 guide treats attribute points as the one currency in Night City that never regenerates. Settle the spread before the late game rather than during it.
FAQ
What is the best build in Cyberpunk 2077?
For a first run, the beginner assault rifle build, because it needs no setup. For a finished character, the Netrunner and the David Martinez Sandevistan builds do the most.
Do you need Phantom Liberty for these builds?
For two of them. The Relics skill tree only exists with the expansion, which is what the Assassin Ninja and the Lucy Kushinada Monowire build both rely on.
Can you respec attributes in Cyberpunk 2077?
There is a respec item, and the fastest way to get hold of one is the console. Plan as though you cannot, and treat the item as a rescue rather than a reset button.
Which attribute should you max first?
Whichever the build's weapons run on. Reflexes for rifles and blades, Body for heavy weapons, Intelligence for quickhacks, with Technical Ability second in almost every case for the cyberware perks.