Hi, so myself and some friends are playing a Shadowrun 5E campaign. We're all new players and the GM hasnt run it before either so it's relatively casual. I decided to roll a Techno because we don't have a hacker and it seemed like fun. Basically my guy has 1 combat thing he's good at and one social thing and the rest is probably going to focus on matrix stuff.

Here's the barebones character sheet I've got so far (doesnt include all my gear and contacts etc): Noob Technomancer
Some changes I'm looking at myself are:

Get more Electronic Warfare points! Jesus the struggles to open hacked maglocks...

Infusion Firewall also doesnt quite seem as good as I gave it credit for. Maybe it should be replaced with a diffusion or more agressive infusion considering I'm the team's only hacker?

Change resonance abilities. Res Veil seemed better on paper and seems more focused for RP than anything, Transcendent Grid seems meh. Been looking at something like Cleaner or the Static Storm thing. I like the idea of Puppeteer but the fading is crazy and honestly if I ever have to use it in an emergency I'm probably going to cripple my guy.

If anyone has any input or suggestions It'd be great. I'm a total noob at SR but I'm pretty decent at picking up new things so I don't think the Techno is too complex for me to stick with, I'm just kinda lost with options at the beginning. I'm also not really trying to min/max, I just don't want my guy to be a total dead weight in combat and be a competent/maybe even good hacker.

Cheers

I like both Infusion of Firewall (for increasing your rating, though painful at Level 4) and Diffusion of Firewall (to lower the targets rating). I would set your Focused Concentration to a Rating of 4 so you can thread either Infusion or Diffusion and maintain it without penalty. And while Puppeteer seems nice, its Fading is just too damned high to be of much use whatsoever.

Biggest question is whether you will be a Brute Hack Style of Technomancer, or a Sleaze Style Technomancer, since they are different approaches to the same end. With a Charisma of 7, I assume that Brute Hack is the way you are headed.

Hmm, I guess I could take away Ambidextrous and Analytical Mind if I wanted to bump up my Focused Concentration to 4.

Is Diffuse Firewall worth it over let's say Infuse Attack considering I could boost my already quite high attack value. Although I guess if I took Infuse Firewall over attack then I could help the party Rigger defend himself

I guess the brute force hacking is probably what I should try focus on yeah. Any recommendations to help in this area?

Diffusion of Firewall drops the target's defensive Dice Pool vs a lot of hacking type actions. Infusion Attack raises the Limit on your own rolls. The former is superior to the latter.

not to mention that the former also helps with not gaining as much attetion from GOD...

better yet, the diffusion of firewall doesn't require you to use the complex form at a rating equal to the target's firewall attribute, and doesn't disappear if the firewall attribute changes for any reason...

that said, infusion of attack does have one extra benefit: your attack rating is also the DV of your matrix attacks. mind, if you've got a 7 there already, have fun eating the fading of a rating 7 infusion of attack...

in any event, one crazy thing to consider: high edge does a lot for a technomancer. limits are a major problem for you, especially with complex forms.

there's a huge amount of difference between knowing that you want to allow for 5 hits to have a remotely plausible chance of succeeding against a target with 12 defense dice and thus likely taking 5-9 fading, and using the same complex form at rating 1 and spending edge to use all your hits.

honestly, if i was making a technomancer, i'd dump the technomancer part to priority C and put my race high enough to have amazing edge. anything leftover after boosting edge, if any, can go towards resonance, but i'd much rather have more edge to do big stuff in crisis situations, which is really just about the only time threading is worth the fading anyways.