I prefer to do the sneaky and non-lethal approach until I screw it up; in those cases, I try to take down the alerted party by either using one of my ranged LTL weapons (gas grenade, pepper spray, tranquilizer darts), and if all else fails, take them down with a headshot from the crossbow or a double-tap from the stealth pistol. In furtherance of that, I pump up electronics, lockpicking, and computers, and also dump as many points as possible into pistols as my primary weapon skill. That last one might seem a bit nonsensical, but by equipping a laser sight onto the stealth pistol gives it pinpoint accuracy at all ranges and wile the player is in motion; this makes the stealth pistol highly versatile, able to serve as a sniper rifle for scoring headshots, quickly taking out guards who stumble upon you while sneaking, and due to the already low recoil of the weapon, firing as quickly as possible turns it into obscene DPS that stunlocks targets until they die (or until you land a headshot on higher difficulties).

After all, even on normal difficulty, it's smarter to avoid combat; that said, going stealthy doesn't require that one do so at the expense of common sense by, say, trying to use LTL force even if it gets you killed. For all the shit the game tries to give you if you kill early in the game on the basis that you are police, even police are legally allowed to kill in self defense, so don't reload if you get spotted, try to salvage the situation as discreetly as possible.

If you need a character type to compare it to, think of it akin to the new James Bond or Jason Bourne: attempt to avoid action, but when fighting becomes unavoidable, let loose with a hail of bullets and/or a variety of LTL tools to restore quiet and return to stealthing it up. To the professional, it's not so much that violence is the last refuge for the incompetent as it is a tool that should be used only to the extent necessary to keep enemy forces unalerted; underuse it and you risk getting killed, overuse it and you risk putting the enemy on alert and getting yourself killed as a result.

I have a couple of ideas for my next playthrough. I really want to avoid being the teacher's pet doing all that ridiculously implausible (but in game terms very easy) sneaking and LTL stuff for the 20th time in a row. NO MORE VENTS AND CRATE STACKING! I want to do a no-nonsense "red shirts will be red shirts" playthrough where I avoid open combat but the end justifies the means and anyone who stands between JC and his objective is expendable. Günther and Anna will be impressed.

What I want to avoid:
- No Dragon's Tooth sword. I've been using it extensively in every other playthrough in the past ~13 years to the detriment of more challanging melee weapons

- No computer hacking. Again, did it every single time I played the game before and I want more of a challange.

- No exploiting the AI by blocking their paths with waist height boxes. It's just lame, though quite clever.

- No silenced sniper rifle for a main weapon. The same goes for the scoped pistol or stealth pistol. It's just overdone and too cookie cutter for what I'm hoping for with this playthrough.

- No using gamey alternate paths. I'm going to use the main enterance on Liberty Island and generally try and do that for most of the game. The amount of times I've swam into LaGuardia is quite ridiculous considering there are a couple of more paths to take. Basically I'm going to play JCD like he is not an OCD completionist explorer.

- Generally just avoid invincible style stealth gameplay. It's just too easy to stay hidden and only ever do silent takedowns. I want the AI to challange me, I don't want to completely circumvent the AI like I did every single time before.

- No abusing saves. While I'm not playing my games Iron Man style, I never backtrack on saves these days. So many guides on GameFAQS are written by min-maxers who reject half the skills and equipment in RPGs because you can just load a save if you fail an action. Save scumming and save abusing ruins cRPGs!

The idea is to go with something like the 10mm Pistol+Combat Knife coupled with grenades for anti-bot work. While generally trying to avoid confronting the enemy, sometimes you just have to activate your augs and spring out of the shadows and slash and blast everyone before they figure out where you are. I would like to make the Mini-Crossbow a primary weapon, but as I remember it there aren't that many arrows to be found in the game. The Combat Knife serves as a plausible weapon in it's own right as well as not being a perfectly silent weapon for dead easy stealth kills. It ups the challange compared to prodding without consequence.

I'm also considering a silenced assault rifle build where JCD is just a no-nonsense special forces kind of guy who is ready to spring into action with bursts of hot lead and rifle grenades when the situation calls for it. Complement the load out with a combat knife and hand grenades for more of that Schwarzenegger feel.

I've been trying some stuff out with G-Flex's Human Renovation mod and I'm totally liking what he did with it. The AI feels a bit more attentive which has actually forced me into violent confrontations even as I'm trying to avoid them. I even died a whole bunch of times trying to muscle my way through Liberty Island, though it may have something to do with me not using my standard 100% sneak route.

The build I seem to be going for is Melee (Combat Knife mainly) and heavy weapons (LAW and Plasma Gun, because the GEP is too easy), with a mini-crossbow for those rarely needed headshots and possibly a pistol as a backup weapon (you know, an actual sidearm). I'm probably going to go for combat survivability when it comes to augmentations (ADS, ballistic protection) as I'm going to avoud abusing quicksaves as much as possible. As I said before, most cRPGs become a lot more exciting and less power-gamey when you take away the ability to backtrack every single action you attempt. When things go south in my playthrough I'm going to whip out a big gun and be happy that I have ammunition for it, however rare it may be.

If you like to quickload about 10 times to succeed in a die roll where you have a 10% chance of success in your given cRPG, don't bother talking to me about character builds and useless or suboptimal choices.