Tips For Making A Build

Designing your own character build is a large part of the appeal of action RPGs like Path of Exile. The title’s sheer variety of mechanical choices helps account for its popularity among fans of the genre. At its best, its character creation system can enable you to develop builds that uniquely fit your preferred playstyle or lets you complete previously unattainable challenges. Those with a more mathematical mindset can have hours of fun experimenting endlessly with hundreds of granular variables.

However, this same complexity can be very off-putting to new players. Even if they are not overwhelmed by the stats early on, the gameplay does not forgive mistakes at higher levels.  It is all too easy for an initially successful build to fail miserably against later bosses or run into other frustrating problems. Such experiences can drive people away from the game entirely or forcing them to rely on others’ designs. Yet there are a few things you can do to improve your chances of building a fun and viable build on your own so that you don’t have to miss out on this important aspect of the game.

Work Out Your Priorities

First things first, you should decide what you want to do in the game. After all, a build is a tool that must suit its intended functions. There is several expansions’ worth of content available at this point, including a rich assortment of activities and opponents. All of them require different approaches for best results, and you would make it much easier on yourself if you plan your build with that in mind from the start. For example, if you want to take on Rituals, you will wish to focus on improving your wave-clearing abilities as you will be facing a lot of monsters. On the other hand, hunting powerful bosses such as Sirus on the Awakened Atlas means you’ll have to shore up the appropriate elemental defenses and single-target damage.

You may also want to set intermediary goals based on your personal priorities. If it’s important to you to powerlevel early on as quickly as possible, you should prioritize movement and attack speed boosts. Farming gear and currencies efficiently may be done with an area-of-effect ranged approach, though there are alternatives. One of them would be to make a summon-heavy build, allowing you to outsource much of the busywork to minions while you can relax or focus on studying mechanics.

One common mistake you should try to avoid is planning around a high level. While you can progress your character to level 100, that would take a lot of time and is not strictly necessary for most of the activities that you may wish to pursue. For the most part, getting to level 85 is already enough to explore the endgame and farm watchstones in the Atlas of Worlds. Many character-building options, such as equipment and more advanced passive skills, only become available at certain levels. At the very least, you should ask yourself how your intended build would hold up until you get to that point.

Basic Build Decisions

Once you know what sort of experience you’re aiming for, the next step is determining the main parameters of your build. There are two main questions that you should ask yourself at this stage:

1. How will you deal with the damage? There are five broad answers to that question: melee, ranged, spellcasting, summoning minions or totems, and placing mines or traps. For a beginner, spellcasting may actually be the simplest choice as it does not depend on gear or advanced mechanics as much. All of those methods are served by an array of different active skills. You should pick out one or two active skills you wish to focus on within your chosen approach, and then research the best support and passive skills to reinforce them by augmenting their effects or relevant stats;
2. How will you survive attacks? Here you can choose between prioritizing life (basic hit points) or energy shield (secondary hit point pool) – or else striking a balance between the two. Focusing on life is a straightforward approach that may suit a new player. However, the energy shield can regenerate on its own and is easier to enhance, making such builds stronger in the endgame as you climb towards full Atlas completion. The hybrid approach can be very versatile but requires striking a careful balance.

Note that your class does not restrict skill use. Skills are determined by skill gems and their requirements. The basic class determines your starting attributes and combat stats, which does influence which offensive and defensive methods will be easier to use. However, there is nothing stopping a Marauder from acting as a summoner – it might be trickier than a conventional melee role, but there are certainly some special synergies available to such a hybrid class.

Starting classes also affect the selection of Ascendancy classes available to you after the initial victory over the Labyrinth of the Lord. Every class can choose between three options (other than Scion, which only has one path). Each Ascendancy provides a special skill tree that you can fill out with subsequent Labyrinth runs and provides powerful bonuses to many combat abilities and stats. Those bonuses are wide-ranging and central to most builds past level 35, so it would be a good idea to include them in your planning from the start. For instance, if you plan to focus on inflicting elemental damage, it would be a good idea to make a Witch that will grow into an Elementalist.

There are also several secondary mechanics that you should consider when rounding out your build:

• Life and Mana sustain. In other words, whether your build would enable you to recover from serious damage and fuel your skills efficiently. As well as gear, passive skills and auras can help in that regard, as well as with the other secondary mechanics in this list;
• Protective layers. Unless you’re going all-in on energy shields, you will want to maximize the amount of life nodes you have. You will also want to raise the three elemental resistances to at least 75% for late-game boss battles and other challenging content. Many builds will also require the more exotic Chaos resistance;
• Charges and other situational buffs like the Elemental Overload passive skill. While they can offer considerable benefits for both defense and offense, you should not base your build on them unless you are confident you will be able to sustain their use;
• Keystones. Those passive skill nodes grant groundbreaking bonuses that can completely change the way you play the game, for example removing Mana and allowing you to spend Life instead, or lowering Life to 1 and providing complete immunity to Chaos damage. You should decide in advance whether you intend to use them at all, and if so, which ones.

Plan Your Gear Carefully

Leveling in Path of Exile is practically inseparable from gearing. After all, both active and support skill gems must be slotted into item sockets, which interact with each other based on placement and color. Different items offer variable socket numbers and connections, defining your ability to utilize certain skill combos. Apart from making sure you have the slots for the intended skills, there are several other considerations with regards to gear:

• Don’t base your entire build on hard-to-get items. If it’s something that will probably require a lot of farming to get, ask yourself how your character will hold up until then. Likewise, don’t assume you will get lucky when using Exalted Orbs to add random modifiers to your rare items;
• In general, don’t use advanced crafting techniques unless you are sure that you know what you’re doing (or playing Solo Self-Found, which disables trade). Under most circumstances, new players will be better off hoarding Chaos Orbs and other currencies to exchange them for ready gear from other players instead of gambling with them directly;
• Be careful with your use of Unique items. The special bonuses they offer may be valuable, but they come at the price of more conventional advantages. For example, Tabula Rasa comes with linked six sockets but offers no protection, sacrificing any defensive ability in your chest armor slot. If you use such items, try to balance them with powerful rare items elsewhere;
• Track down and upgrade jewels. Since they have their own sockets on the passive skill tree and may be removed at will, they do not cost you any flexibility in your build. Meanwhile, their effects can offer major stat or effect bonuses and round out your build;
• Don’t overlook flasks. They are usually the best tool available for managing life and mana sustain. Other flasks can offer a variety of buffs and powerful effects, all of which may make an otherwise shaky build viable.

Use Community Resources

While all of those factors may still seem overwhelming, there are quite a few resources you can use to aid you in preparing a build. The official community-maintained wiki is very detailed and up-to-date, making it perfect for researching particular mechanics, items, and skills. Even if you don’t use them yourself, existing build guides can be used for examples and inspirations. Programs like PoE Planner and Path of Building can all help you visualize your build in detail and catch any errors that might otherwise slip by you. Finally, there is no shortage of veteran players out there who can offer you coaching. Overall, the community is one of the title’s strongest sides as it is a great source of insights and information for all players.

Conclusion

Making your own builds in Path of Exile is challenging, but highly rewarding. While there is no shame in using existing guides, there are many dimensions of gameplay that only reveal themselves fully to those willing to tinker with class and skill setups. Also, there is no better way to prepare for taking on specific goals or raise your ceiling as a player. Give it a try the next time you decide to play, and you may just find a whole new way to enjoy the game.