Do this first
- 01Name the weapon, cyberdeck or stealth loop the build must support.
- 02Open the official browser planner and mark the enabling perks first.
- 03Trace each selected perk back to its attribute threshold.
- 04Reserve a defensive or resource-recovery answer before luxury damage.
- 05Redistribute perks outside combat when testing; protect the attribute reset.
Start with an action, not a label
A build name such as netrunner, solo or ninja is too broad. Write the action you expect to repeat: queue quickhacks, close distance with blades, hold space with heavy weapons or clear a route without raising an alarm.
Every selected perk should enable that action, restore its resource, improve its safety or solve a known counter. If it does none of those, it is a later luxury.
Plan attributes backward
The official planner exposes the base-game trees and the Phantom Liberty Relic tree. Start from the ability you want to reach and walk backward through the required attribute level rather than scattering points among attractive low-tier nodes.
Check the live game tooltip before committing. A browser plan explains the route, but the installed patch and owned expansion determine what appears in the save.
Understand what can be changed
CD PROJEKT RED states that perk points can be redistributed outside combat. Its Update 2.0 explanation separately describes a one-time redistribution of attribute points for continuing characters.
That difference matters: experiment with perk combinations, but treat attribute allocation as the build's durable skeleton unless the live interface explicitly offers another reset.
Test the whole loop
Run the build through a short encounter that requires entry, survival and recovery—not only a perfect opening attack. Watch ammunition, RAM, stamina, healing and cyberware cooldowns.
Change one layer at a time. If you replace weapon, cyberware and perks together, a successful test cannot tell you which change fixed the weakness.