Best current builds to jump back in?

I haven't played in a very long time, sadly I've managed during my hiatus to (through my own idiocy) lose access to my old account. As a result I'm starting over from the beginning with no resources. I've gotten a Witch to 31 so far using the Necromancer build from the Witch class forum and it's been decent so far, though admittedly I'm far from really being into the real meat of it.

I'm curious what class and build recommendations current players might have for one just starting out. Melee, ranged, or magic; I'm not overly concerned about play style so any recommendations are welcomed and helpful. I made it to level 95 on my old account but that was so long ago (couple years at least) I feel what knowledge I can remember is badly out of date. I'd love some input on newbie friendly builds (for standard league) able to farm upper levels reliably, while being attainable to someone with no currency to trade for leveling items. I'm afraid I no longer have the free time to spend on trial and error, so putting in 40 hours only to find out my build isn't worth a damn just isn't practical or attractive to me anymore.

Related to this topic: I was also curious how the Witch's summoner build was doing these days. My old main was such (zombie/spectral) but I grew aggravated with how severely restricted I was in upgrading gear. The absolute necessity of having the correct number of linked sockets in the right colors on every piece of gear for the minions to be even remotely viable ended up grating. I recall it being so suffocating that I was stuck with the same staff and helm for 40+ levels entirely due to needing those socketed support gems but not finding upgrades worth spending dozens if not hundreds of orbs gambling for the correct layout.

Obviously this might be a question better suited to the Witch subforum but I figure since I'm primarily looking for generalized build suggestions for all classes, the overall post probably fits better in general.


Thoughts, advice, flames?

Summoners/casters/trappers are probably easiest to start as always since they aren't as gear dependent for getting damage(just links of course). Bladefall traps with poison are pretty low cost and popular atm. Poison is REALLY strong right now because trap and projectile nodes apply to both the source damage and the DoT separately(so their effects are quadratic on your damage instead of linear) and it will remain so for at least the next 6-7 weeks(many of us expect it to be nerfed when 2.4 is released in september).

If you do want to go into a weapon based char though, gear is also much cheaper. Remember when Lioneye's Glare cost like 10 exalts? Its stats are unchanged and it costs a chaos now. A marohi erqi is 1 chaos now(great for earthquake, a popular new "melee" skill). You can definitely build a playable weapon based character with very little investment, but it can be a pain to level them without twink gear(compared to casters).

I got 1 word for ya - Trapper.

Best build in the game, period.

I've done Trapper this league. All u need is Bino+Tabula+Doedre DAming+Southbound... that's like 30C worth of uniques. Character is lvl 93 atm, And let me tell u - I feel like GOD. U can check char page to look up links and tree, Zzerk is the name.

Facetank everything including Uber Izaro, no I don't dodge things with WB ever, no need to.

Defensively - Enfeeble+Temporal or Vulnerability + 50% eva + 40% dodge+ 45% spell dodge+Fort on WB+Free Stibnite from ascendancy+ vaal grace to get 75\75 if u feel like it for ~12 seconds, let's just say I don't die to pretty much nothing in the game ever while WB-ing into every pack like a madman.

Offensively - traps are stupid OP and not that slow to clear things cause Binos prolif makes 1 set of traps kill everything in the room, the better the mob density the faster u clear. Let me just say that double Kaom goes out faster on trapper then on CoC discharge, and by faster I mean he dies 2 seconds after traps trigger.

I've done all games content including uber Izaro\Atziri and Core in Tabula and maybe 30 chaos worth of gear, crazy!

Trapper actually ruined PoE for me, I dunno how can I play anything else.