Need help in making my own build/leveling.

This game has changed so much and I just don't know how to properly make my own build. There are some questions that need to be answered. Some are for leveling and others are just general build questions. Now don't get me wrong I enjoy playing other people's builds.

But I would like to one day make a build of my own. A build that can handle endgame maps. Doesn't have to be able to handle the strongest maps in existence. Doesn't have to have the fastest clear speed. I also want a build that can be good using just rare items. Sure uniques will always make any build stronger. But ones that require a lot of uniques can get expensive and hard to find.

With the above information how do I go about making my own build? I don't think that any of the older guides on making your own build are still useful. Are there any good guides that teach you how to make your own build that are up to date? How do you go about having good offensive and defensive power? Here I am saying I love making a build that hits hard but will not fall over if the monsters sneeze at me. A build that can not only take a licking but can also deal out a good amount of damage in return.

Also when leveling how often should you be upgrading your gear? This is asking how long can you keep your gear? Is it every 10 levels, 15, etc..? Can vendors help you get good gear that can be crafted to help you level? Is blue gear during leveling just as good as rare gear? How much currency do you sink into leveling gear? Here I am asking what limits do most players put on crafting leveling gear?

You basically just need to try it out and learn as you go. Make a build of your own, or follow a guide. It doesn't matter what you do it will suck either way. But you will learn from the experience and eventually your builds will get better and better over time.

General build creation idea is always the same:

which skill will you use? will you be caster/melee/ranger?

when you have answer for this, next question will come:

which class/ascendancy will benefit mine skill function most?

when you answer this question, next one will be:

should i be life based/CI/low-life? what will be best obtainable for mine build? what sort of additional defences will i use? (acrobatics, armor, hybrid armor/evasion or any other)

after that question big step incoming:

plannig your skill tree (always take as much life/ES as you can, look for proper damage mods on the tree and take that path - grab defence nodes along the way. in most cases during leveling prioritize defence nodes above damage).

always plan you tree up to max ~110 skill points. additional nodes cannot be essential for your build working.

Next question will be about supported skills:

which ones will benefit mine build and his defences the most? Always think about skills for movement, defence, utility and choose ones that will benefit your playstyle.


General idea for leveling: just progress without buying anything (vendor recipies, random blue vendors items and lucky finds will take you up to maps easily). Store currency during leveling for upgrades before maps (when you hit maps, you should have about 10 - 15c in equiv for sure, that will bring you nice starting gear for few chaoses each piece.

Before talking about making builds in general, just want to pick up on your point about uniques.

Uniques aren't strictly stronger than rares and all of the most expensive items in the game are rares (well maybe apart from some legacy corrupted uniques)

Some are just good or better versions of gear with set values, but mostly they offer unique bonuses. So most interesting builds take advantage of one or more of these. A pure rare build is unlikely to be doing much new - although there is still room for experimentation with interesting support gem choices, ascendancies etc.

For a lot of builds too, a unique is by far the cheapest option - yes some are expensive but a lot are very cheap and the prices get driven right down because of the sheer numbers available. Whereas you might not even be able to find the rare item you want.

Take prophecy league. Breath of the council for a 1h EQ build can only be beaten by a seriously good rare, that would probably be at least 5ex. But it costs a few chaos, and is farmable yourself.

At a higher level reach of the council might seem expensive, but equivalent rare bows in previous leagues would have been 5 times the cost.

And uniques are nearly always the best choice for levelling. Obviously not for first character in a league, but once you have a bit of currency (and you will probably have found a few yourself by then) they can make the process a lot more painless.

If you are playing self found then some of this doesn't really work, but you can still look at building around things that are farmable for - ones from divination cards, atziri drops, council drops etc.

General pointers around making builds (Some of this has already been mentioned)

Also a wall of text, so sorry!

- Firstly, what skill(s) do you want to use? You can only really use one, maybe 2 main attacks if you want/need a dedicated single target skill. If you aren't sure you can try a few different skills in the same 'family' e.g reave/lacerate/cleave or arc/spark etc but you need to decide before you put too many points in the tree or get gear.

- Then what is your defense going to be? Firstly, life or energy shield? If ES you probably want to level with life anyway. Then, are you going to use armour/evasion/block? How are you going to get it, and how much are you aiming for?

- Then you can think about how you are scaling your damage. First big question, are you going to go crit or non crit? If non crit, and attacks rather than spell caster, are you going to use resolute technique? If so, how are you going to get there? If crit, how much crit? Are you going to try and cap crit, or just get a decent amount?

- Important one a lot of new players don't think about. How are you going to sustain your skills? Mana or blood magic? Are you going to leech? How are you going to do it? Are you going to rely on regen? Will you have enough? Are flasks going to be enough. The same applies to health too.

- How much mana are you going to reserve? Will you have enough left to sustain your skills? What aura's, blasphemy curses etc do you need? Do you need to get reservation nodes/gear for this?

- Gear, do I need any specific uniques for any of this? What am I looking for in rare gear? Does it sound expensive? If so, can I afford it or do I think I can farm that much for when I need it?


Class/ascendancy wise, you can either go through the thoughts above, and then decide which suits the build best, or pick your class first (for role play purposes or because you haven't played it before/for a while) and then think about synergies.


I tend to start with a single idea, either from a new skill or an interesting bit of gear or ascendancy bonus and start from there.

For example, here is a rough breakdown of my thought process around a recent build (Which turned out to not be great once it hit tier 10+ maps)

- Fated version of Blackgleam (signal fire) gives up to 35% damage as extra fire damage as well as converting 50% to fire. That's pretty good - it's a 35% more multiplier on phys and almost a free added fire gem.

- It's a quiver, so need to use a bow. Could just get a high phys bow, but that's not that interesting. Let's think of spells.

- Needs to be phys, so bladefall, blade vortex or ethereal knives. Likely to be looking at projectile synergies, so EK is best bet.

- What Bows could I use? Quill rain gives a lot of proj speed. But how about Roth's reach for free chain and bit of proj speed. Yes, let's use that.

- While we are converting a chunk to fire damage, why not go full conversion and do pure fire? Then we can grab fire pen for full effectiveness.

- Marauder makes more sense for fire and is near the fire bonuses on the tree. So Chieftain or Berserker.

- EK is expensive, can't sustain easily off mana. So Blood magic, or totems. Why not both?

- Which settles the ascendancy argument - chieftain gets the totem bonuses. Also gets endurance charge bonuses. So let's grab some of those, and use 1 or 2 Kaom's Way rings for insane life regen.

- Regen solves my 'sustain' question. Plus get bit of leech on top.

-How do I curse? Can't use blasphemy on blood magic. Ah, I'm using a bow with free chain. split arrow + curse on hit + flammability + enfeeble works pretty well.

- Kaom's heart is obviously best choice, more life and bit of fire damage. But means I need a 6l roth's. Can I afford both those things? Maybe if doesn't cost too much to link the bow (None for sale at the time)

And hence the hipster Pure fire roth's EK totem cheiftain was born.
Eventually switched to self cast for more dps - the life regen was still enough to sustain constant EK casting.
Still didn't work out for late end game, but was a fun process working out the problems. Probably still viable if I switched to berserker and maybe dropped blood magic for some auras.

You can check out existing build guides or high level ladder player profiles to get a feel for benchmarks for survivability and offensive power.

You need to build around some sort of synergy for your build idea to be successful - synergy in your offense, defense, or between unique items and your skills. The most successful builds have a lot of strong synergies. But for you to be able to clear mid-tier maps, a very generic build idea will do just fine.

Upgrading gear while leveling is only really important in HC, where you need to be careful with your life pool and resistances to not fall behind the curve. Spellcasters can level to Merciless Dried Lake with a Lifesprig, while attack based characters work much better with some weapon upgrades every 10 levels or so.

Thanks for all of the replies, just discussing this has given me a lot of good ideas on how to improve a build that I have been working on. It is my own version of a fireball carpet bomber witch. One that should have enough defensive strength coupled with enough offensive power to take care of just about anything that comes her way.

You see that build was originally made by someone else a long time ago. It was made when snap shooting still existed to the point where you could hit one target with all fireballs at once. Also EB was different, ES didn't just protect your mana it was added to your mana. Thus giving you a much higher mana recovery.