It's always a bit hard to give a roadmap for a build, it really depends on how you like to play. It also depends on the component you find. No point pushing Mechanics if you can't find a good assault rifle frame. But I'll try to give some useful generic rules, and an example of what I think is a proper order.
General idea:
There are two sides to the build: assault rifle and psi. Overall you want to start playing as a pure gunner and progressively add psi. In particular, it is useless to take the pill at level 1, neural overload is really weak early on. Better wait level 4-5 when frighten and mental breakdown become available.
Base stats:
start: 7 STR, 3 DEX, 3 AGI, 3 CON, 10 PER, 7 WILL, 7 INT
Then you need to put 3 points into PER and 3 points into WILL during level up. You need to have at 10 WILL at level 16 so you can pick Locus of Control (the feat is extremely strong, we absolutely don't want to delay it). So you have to pick 1 PER and 3 WILL before level 16, then 2 PER at level 20 and 24. I feel like the best choice is to pick PER at level 4, then WILL at level 8, 12, 16, then PER at level 20, 24.
Another noteworthy point: 15 PER is a lot for an assault rifle build. I did it to compensate the absence of critical, and because I played on dominating. If you play in a lower difficulty, you should be totally fine transferring one or two points from PER to CON. This build doesn't need the extra HP, but it would give you some error margin during the fights.
Skills:
Just a few rules:
- max Guns and Stealth every level
- max Thought Control from level 4
- invest in Temporal Manipulation when you have access to Psycho-temporal Contraction / Stasis
- raise throwing until you are comfortable with your grenades accuracy
- raise electronics early to craft a taser (and do that on every build, btw ^^)
- crafting skills: Mechanics is the most important (rifle), then electronics (shield and headband), then tailoring (tact vest and footwear)
- specialization: Commando, then Concentrated Fire, then Full Auto
Build order:
I used Destroyor's modified build as a basis. I delayed investment in Mercantile compared to what I did, which should be fine unless you play on dominating. Once again, you should feel free to modify it to match your preferences. As long as you max Guns / TC, which you should be doing, you will meet the skill requirement for the feats.
level 1 : no psi yet, wait for level 4; push effective chemistry to 20 at level 2 for Molotov crafting
level 4 : max TC from there, only using it for control at this point ; Suppressive Fire / Opportunist combo makes bursts slightly better
level 8 : 60 hacking for depot A turrets ; enough mechanics to craft a decent AR (try to get a Muzzle Brake) ; Full Auto makes burst significantly stronger at this point
level 12 : put a lot of point in Temporal Manipulation to get to Stasis threshold as soon as possible ; Concentrated Fire makes single target burst deadly at close range ; try getting a rapid reloader as soon as possible
level 16 : push mercantile to start looking at the good stuff of the merchants that should now be available ; with Commando the dps starts being ridiculous
level 20 : push crafting skills to make nice things ; Neural Overload is now fully effective (Mania + LoC) ; specialization into Concentrated Fire significantly increases single target burst damage
level 24 : the build is pretty much finished, the last few feats can be safely exchanged according to personal preferences
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As I said, against melee, running beats armor almost every time. But I think those heavy leathers would be very nice against crawlers, and probably make spider nests even easier.
Actually I started this build after reading for the thousandth time that conditioning was not useful. A common misconception, probably because damage reduction has increasing returns, so it only shines with heavy investment.