In this Cyberpunk 2077 Build Guide I’ll be showing you my Ghost Wire Build which is a Build that uses the Monowire Cyberware to whip enemies to death from a distance, either from Stealth or while in melee combat. If you’ve been trying to figure out how to use the Monowire effectively then this Build is for you!

Cyberpunk 2077 Builds: Ghost Wire (Monowire) Character Guide Weapons Perks

The Ghost Wire Build is a very dynamic Build because it involves both Stealth and melee combat, as well as a lot of running, jumping, climbing and sliding etc. The Monowire Cyberware is a very interesting Melee Weapon because it is considered Blunt Damage, and is affected by the Street Brawler Perks. What’s even more interesting is that it can set Bleeding, as well as dismember enemies despite being “Blunt”.

The Monowire is considered a Melee Weapon, and has exceptionally long range, and can stagger enemies easily. One whip from Stealth is usually all it takes to dispatch most enemies, and should you some how fail to do so, a couple more cracks and your target is sure to die. If you like Stealth and Melee gameplay, but don’t want to have to choose between the two then you’ll love the Monowire.

Ghost Wire Attributes

The Attributes needed for this Build are Cool and Body, and a little Intelligence doesn’t hurt. Cool directly increases your Monowire damage, as well as increases your damage from Stealth and provides access to both Stealth and Cold Blood Perks.

Body is needed for increased Melee Damage per point, as well as Health and Stamina. It provides access to Athletics, Annihilation and Street Brawler Perks, and you will need some of each for this Build.

Intelligence is not required for this Build, but it can give you access to some good Daemons, as well as give you some Quickhacking that is very useful. Additionally, you can get some Cyberware that increases Critical Hit Chance and Damage with higher Intelligence, which is very good for this Build.

Your Attributes should look something like this eventually:

• Cool: 20
• Body: 20
• Intelligence: 15

Early on you will place points into Cool in order to boost your damage, and gain some good Stealth Perks, but you will want at least a few points into Body in order to gain some good Perks like Efficient Blows and Dazed. Intelligence is not needed until much later on.

Ghost Wire Perks

In this section we’ll take a look at what Perks you should acquire in order to get the best performance from this Build. Cool is our top priority, and since it contains Stealth and Cold Blood Perks, we’ll begin there. It’s important to note that in many cases higher level Perks are better than lower level ones, so if you haven’t maxed a lower level Perk out when you unlock a higher level Perk, you might want to come back to it later on.

Stealth Perks

Crouching Tiger – This Perk increases your Movement Speed while Sneaking, which allows you to get where you are going faster. Sneaking can be very slow, and this helps speed things up.

Strike From The Shadows – This Perk increases your Critical Chance from Stealth by a decent amount. You want every swing to be a kill, and Crits help make that happen so take this one until you gain Ninjitsu.

Assassin – This Perk increases your damage against Human enemies, and there are a ton of humans in Cyberpunk 2077. You want every Perk you can when it comes to damage, so this one is an easy pick.

Ghost – This Perk makes it take longer for you to be revealed when in the sight cone of an enemy. This will allow you to get behind cover before being spotted more easily, so you’ll max this one out.

Ninjutsu – This Perk increases your damage with a Melee Weapon from Stealth by 100%, as well as guarantees a Critical Hit. This Perk allows you to one shot just about any enemy you face with this Build.

Cold Blood Perks

Cold Blood – This Perk gives you a buff that lasts 10 seconds when you kill an enemy. It starts out as only a movement speed increase, but as you progress you’ll unlock other benefits as well. Take this one immediately in order to begin gaining experience in this Perk tree since at level 2 you gain a permanent Crit Chance boost. Max this one out after you’ve acquired Merciless.

Blood Brawl – This Perk increases your Melee Damage if you have a stack of Cold Blood on you. This should be all the time, so this is a good Perk to take. It does a modest amount of damage, and there are better Perks, but still you’ll want to max it eventually.

Predator – This Perk increases your Attack Speed by 30% (at max) per Cold Blood stack you have! With 5 stacks this is 150%, which is absolutely insane with a weapon that already attacks at light speed.

Critical Condition – This Perk increases the duration of your Cold Blood buff. You want this to be as long as you can, so this is a must have Perk for this Build. Max it out once you’ve acquired Predator and Blood Brawl.

Coldest Blood – This Perk increases the max number of stacks you can have by 1, up to 4 from the 3 if you maxed out Cold Blood itself. Every stack you can gain just makes you stronger, so take this one.

Cold and Calculating – This Perk gives you a chance of gaining a Cold Blood stack when you Critically Hit. You do lot’s of Critical Hits with this Build so that synergizes nicely.

Coolagulant – This Perk makes you lose only one stack of Cold Blood at a time, further increasing the duration you maintain its buffs. This one can make your buffs last much much longer, so take it.

Unbreakable – This Perk does the same thing that Coldest Blood does, and will increase your max stacks from 4 to 5 if you maxed Cold Blood and took Coldest Blood. The more stacks you can have at once the stronger you get.

Merciless – This Perk increases not only your Crit Chance, but also your Crit Damage as long as you have Cold Blood activated. This can be a staggering amount of damage, so you’ll definitely want this one.

Street Brawler Perks

Flurry – This Perk increases your damage with successive hits with the Monowire. You need this when you blow your cover and have to engage in melee combat to help kill enemies more quickly.

Dazed – This Perks allows you to Stun enemies with the Monowire. This can be very useful when fighting, as it prohibits enemies from attacking you. The best defense is a good offense!

Efficient Blows – This Perk reduces the Stamina cost of attacking with the Monowire. This is very useful when fighting in melee because you need to be able to spam attacks as quickly as you can without worrying about Stamina.

Opportune Strike – This Perk increases your damage against Stunned enemies by a lot, so you absolutely want this one. When fighting in melee you want to kill enemies quickly so you can move on to the next one.

Frenzy – This Perk increases your damage with Blunt Weapons by 100% for 10 seconds after defeating an enemy. This allows you to chain kill enemies more quickly in and out of Stealth.

Unshakable – This Perk allows you to heal while attacking, which can save your butt. When you’re outnumbered and in melee you need to keep killing as fast as you can in order to survive, and this helps you accomplish that.

Annihilation Perks

Dead Center – This Perk increases your damage to the torso of the enemy. Often when you’re attacking with the Monowire you’ll aim for center mass to ensure you hit, so this can increase your damage.

Momentum Shift – This Perk increases your Movement Speed whenever you kill an enemy. You want to move fast between targets so that you can maintain your Cold Blood buff, and that’s hard to do in Stealth, so this Perk really helps out.

Skeet Shooter – This Perk increases your damage against moving targets. This won’t apply all the time, but comes in handy when fighting in melee combat or taking down a patrolling enemy.

Athletics Perks

Invincible – This Perk increases your Health by a modest amount, and that can help keep you alive. This Perk is not 100% necessary for this Build, but I find it to be very effective at keeping me alive.

Steel and Chrome – This Perk increases your Melee Damage, and you cannot have enough of that with this Build. This applies to both Stealth and open melee, so it’s a great passive to have.

Ghost Wire Equipment

In this section we’ll take a look at what equipment is needed to play the Ghost Wire Build. We’ll begin with Weapons first since they are very important to this Build.

Weapons

The Weapon you’re going to be using for this Build is of course the Monowire, and while technically a Cyberware, I’ve included it in this section so we can talk about it separately from other Cyberware you might use.

The way this weapon works is that it charges up while you have it out and are not using it, and then that energy is used in your attacks, with successive attacks doing less and less damage. In my experience, this doesn’t seem to matter a whole lot because you either one shot things from Stealth, or you whip things to death as quickly as you can anyway. Try not to worry about this aspect, since it doesn’t seem to matter much.

The Monowire can be purchased from a Ripperdoc, or you can find them around Night City. There is a Legendary Monowire located in Kabuki that you can get very easily, so I highly recommend you save your money and just go get one. It’s near the Medpoint by the river in a garage, nearest to the Charter St. fast travel.

Your Monowire can also be modded, so you’ll want to do that as soon as you get it as well. You can upgrade its Battery as well as get the Sensory Amplifier Mod for fairly cheap, so get them and slot them ASAP to boost your damage even more.

Armor

Armor-wise, you want to look for bonuses to Crit Chance or Crit Damage ideally. Having more Armor is of course better, but you are not planning on being hit whatsoever, so you should prioritize damage over Armor if you can.

Additionally, you can mod some Armors for added effects, so it’s not a bad idea to craft or find these as well. Use the Wiki for their locations.

Cyberware

There is some great Cyberware for this Build, and I’ll go through them here. Microvibration Generator and Dense Marrow can both increase your Melee Damage so you’ll want these as well, and you should be able to slot both. Their requirements seem to be rather low, so you can get them right away.

Once you gain some Intelligence, Visual Cortex Support is an excellent upgrade for this Build because it increases Critical Damage by a substantial amount and you automatically Crit when striking from Stealth with the Monowire when you have the Ninjutsu Perk. Get this one to enjoy more damage when doing so.

Weakspot Detection and Threat Detector are both excellent Cyberware Mods for this Build because one increases your Critical Chance, and the other shows you which enemies detect you. If you’re in open melee combat you’ll want to know where enemies are hiding, and this will show you exactly that.

Synaptic Accelerator is another good Cyberware that slows time when you enter combat. This allows you a quick second to eliminate an enemy before they can notify others of your presence, and can often save you a reload. Slot it and love it.

Final Tips

A big part of this Build is getting used to the rather bizarre moveset of the Monowire. It’s hitboxes are very strange, and sometimes you miss things that seem to be directly in front of you, and hit things you’re relatively sure you shouldn’t have hit. My best advice is always line us your attacks from Stealth carefully to make sure they succeed, and when in open melee combat just mash attack as fast as you can since that seems to get the job done.

Be sure to use the Big Sleep Daemon before you begin moving into a group of enemies, picking them off. A lot of times it seems like there are no cameras around, but there is generally at least one that is hidden you might not see. Get in the habit of doing this every time, unless there are like 3 enemies, so that you don’t have to reload your game.

Remember that even if an enemy spots you, if you kill him quickly enough the other enemies may not know where you are. Use this to your advantage and get back into Stealth ASAP, so that you can pick them off as they pass by you. Sometimes enemies being slightly alerted works to your advantage.

Make sure to equip and use the Ping Quickhack so that you know where enemies are and you can plan accordingly. Keeping this Quickhack up is a big part of playing this Build from Stealth, so remember to keep using it as you make your way through enemies. It helps a ton.

Lastly, this Build can be played more on the Stealth side or more on the melee side, depending on how you invest your Attributes and Perk Points. If you prefer more Stealth, then boost Cool first and Body second. If you want more open melee then you can do the opposite and boost Body and then Cool. The choice is up to you, but I really love the Stealth!

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Stay tuned for more of Cyberpunk 2077 Build Guides, and be sure to drop by the Cyberpunk 2077 wiki for all your Night City needs. Or you can drop by our Twitch Channel and say hi as we stream the game over the next couple of weeks! And make sure to check out our Early Impressions and Character Creation!