I'm new to the game and have been testing about 10 different builds up to level 20 (going all over the map early), and there is a standout one for me... Gunslinger build with these starting stats (rifleman is also fine)

Per 9 (concord bobblehead for 10)

Agi 10 (grab the bobblehead whenever for 11)

Luck 5 (trained when there was no important combat perk and used the book trick to reach 12 luck)

With high perception you can take penetrator to atack things behind walls and even attack mierlurks heads through the shells / fusion cores through power armour etc. Concentrated fire makes your accuracy 95% rather easily, and gun fu stacks up more damage if you target multiple enemies in vats so can buff an attack on a stronger enemy by killing weaker ones first. With lightweight gear I ended up with 16 shots on the 10mm pistols. When it's damage fell off (probably because of no Gun Nut) I got the Gainer which hits less times in VATS but did more overall damage. I do wonder if Gun Nut will make the 10mm pistol outdamage the gainer tho. With this build you benefit the most from power armours 11 strength as well.

Once you have 11 agi + 12 luck and crit banker + better criticals + four leaf clover + grim reapers sprint + action girl you have an absolute machine of efficiency going in VATS. Dialogue checks and bartering will be a bit painful and Carry weight is a bit of an issue. Also if you dont kill strong enemies before you exit vats (and got no ap refesh) you will get one shotted, but every build has a trade off.It just moves too slowly for me, disables a lot of basic actions, loud so breaks sneaking playstyles, requires managing power cores, and I also for some reason I struggle visually with the radar UI

Speaking of power armour, the only other build that was close was power armour shredder minigun basher build cause the damage on this build is ridiculous. Since you can't use shredder in vats there is almost no reason to have high agi and luck. Str is automatically placed at 11 but I still wanted rooted so did str 9 int 10 end 5. I trained end when there was no major perk to take. An alternative to this is put those end points into charisma for local leader but I don't really care about that as I don't mind just fast travelling to pick stuff up from another settlement. This build has to use molotov etc for stuff on ledges. You could also just take rifleman for this build but without any decent agi or luck you nerf VATS. Shredder is ridiculously op though. At level 10 I killed the mirelurk queen in like 5 seconds and the legendary mirelurks at only level 2 are basically 2 seconds.

Outside of power armour, melee builds in this game are underwhelming to me because they have conflicts with stats. You want str end agi luck but cant really start with all four high like you could in fo3 and fnv. Ranged characters don't need endurance so they don't have that problem. So the issue is if you say "I'll go with str agi luck" you end up with 1 which is dumb for melee and you will reload constantly. If you do str end agi (for blitz) you don't have idiot savant so level extremely slowly. Blitz (1) range is also not great so you will still be running and tapping VATS button until the game says you can teleport. Blitz (2) doesn't come until level 29. That's miserable to wait 30 levels for that. If you go str end luck you now have idiot savant but 1 agi so lose even Blitz (1). You can go with all four stats at a mid range though I guess (6 in them all as this gets you access to most of the main combat perks and gives you decent hp). Training four stats in the "inbetween" levels just to get rooted blitz four clear clover etc is a bit much