How is one supposed to design their own builds as a semi-casual player?

Very nice post Mr_Cee

I wanted to add that i absolutely read up on basic mechanics and interactions (well, can't play at work, so need to haunt reddit / forums / wiki (during breaks obviously ^^)).
But that's something completely different from just following a fleshed out build guide imo.

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ScottyAye wrote:

The advice given to any new player is "Lookup a build online". Why would anybody want to do that? Simply look up a build and follow it mindlessly.

You shouldn't follow a build mindlessly, but if you don't have the knowledge it doesn't hurt to compare your build from time to time with a similar one. Then you can see what differences there are and you learn to understand more about the build in general.

- pick a spell of your choice
- make a skill tree with 200% increased life
- take damage nodes relevant to your spell on the way
- make sure you have maxed resistances (use gear and maybe skill tree)
- make sure you have a lot of life on your gear


you reach mid tier maps and level 90, easy peasy. with your own build

You can OP but it takes time and practice, i've not followed a guide for a character yet and i've been playing every league since nemesis I think. I had one particularly awesome character in tempest league but aside from that its been a fairly linear progression.

I get slightly better each league and certainly by this stage If i look at a skill tree a streamers following or a popular guide has it invariably looks very similar to my own but with a few tweaks around specific node bonuses.

doing red maps and guardians etc requires more but its more about knowing how to achieve high dps numbers than it is about getting the perfect passive tree. Also requires being rich ^^, or lucky (SSF) to get the appropriate gear to stack the damage high.

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ScottyAye wrote:

How is one supposed to design their own builds as a semi-casual player?

Find something you want to do whether that be using a particular skill, causing an effect, using a particular unique item or notable passive node, and go from there.
(If "what you want to do" is win at everything then yes, you'll be better off following someone else's build who's had more experience at facerolling)

Consider offence and defence and work towards both, using something like the passive skill tree from the main Path of Exile website or one of the downloadable builders such as Path of Building or PoESkillTree or whatever else is out there. Killing everything before it can kill you is an option.

After you've laid out the passive tree look it over for places where the pathing can be improved.
"Oh, I can go straight from Retribution to Mind over Matter and get 10 int and 10 dex instead of 20 int and that'll work better for the GMP gem."

Maybe post your build to the relevant forum for advice or, (and here's another part you might not like) look at other, similar builds and see how their pathing has been done and compare it to your own.
Don't be afraid if you're not following their build exactly, they might not have bothered with the Ash, Frost and Storm cluster but you think the reduced reflected elemental damage taken will be useful and you're also going dual-element where they're not.

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ScottyAye wrote:

The advice given to any new player is "Lookup a build online".

[Insert generic "not all of us" response]

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ScottyAye wrote:

The choice for new players ends up being either lose the creativity in your build and follow one online, or get screwed over in the later areas when you realize that you can't progress any further.

Or create a new character and use what you've learned from the first character.
I understand some people have difficulty letting go of a character and simply don't want to make a new character but they can just swap the gear into the stash, delete the old character and make a new one with the same name.

And if their problem is they don't want to re-do content then buddy, they're in the wrong genre.

Sidenote:
I started in hardcore and recommend it to new players who want to do their own thing and aren't afraid to die or restart.
I had a lot of ideas of things I wanted to do and use.
If I died, that was an opportunity to try one of the other ideas I had, but if I was really enjoying what I was doing and didn't want to stop, I'd continue in standard for a while.
For example my original skeleton summoner died in hardcore my first time fighting Dominus but I continued in standard just so I could prove to myself I could defeat them without dying.

Maybe you can make a compromise by following a build for a first experience and some knowledge about what is coming your way later on and what to be prepared for. Then you can start making your own builds with that in mind and won't have such a high chance of them failing.

The game also offers quite a few respec points from quests and maybe some regrets you picked up during your leveling experience. So you can always make small corrections to a build. (Regrets can also be traded up from Scourings which themselves can be traded up from Chance orbs).

You will get more proficient while leveling as well, as someone already mentioned. In the end it won't take you more then 2 or 3 evenings of play after work to reach maps again with a fresh character.


Also I find it a little narrow minded to say people who follow premade builds are mindless or uncreative. Everyone has different preferences what kind of game experience they want to have. I personally find efficient gameplay, high rewards etc. more desirable than spending my time creating a character.

You can, as long as you don't expect to be able to take on all red maps and very endgame stuff. My first character was made as I went along, and as long as you re sensible and pay attention, you can get a character that clears at least mid tier maps fairly consistently.

Now that character it retired, but I am going to revisit the idea shortly taking what I have learnt from the experience into account.

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Burgingham wrote:

Maybe you can make a compromise by following a build for a first experience and some knowledge about what is coming your way later on and what to be prepared for.

Or make it the other way around (escpecially if you want to make your very own experiences, and have the neccessary time and patience): first follow your own ideas and instinct, and when running into troubles, research what you may have overlooked, misinterpreted or not considered at all. I think, trying to work against the problems you found, is a better way to understand WHY a guide/build suggests its setup.

As said, this needs time (to fail and rebuild) - but so will any way to learn and understand.

You should definitely start using Path of Building and learn to theorycraft your build here up until you are satisfied. Here you can choose everything, see DPS and EHP. This will hopefully short-cut your process and save you a lot of time and gear.

Once you are satisfied with what you have theorycrafted then you just simply try it. If it's not good, back to step 1. Otherwise you push it up to where you can.

I have done this for 3.0 start of the league. Leveled like 5 chars in beta to pre-test them.
I have already arrived to lvl 81 in HC. Then died because of my stupidity, not because build is bad. :-)

Now I'm re leveling same build again on HC Harbinger - already lvl 59, act 9 start (took me 2 evenings to do). This way it can be done. And I'm playing something absolutely off-meta. :-) :-)

Honestly, with the release of 3.0 and acts 5-10, casual players with scrub gear will have a tough time. I know I may be the minority, but I feel that 5-10 are pretty tough and honestly just booted me out of hardcore forever. Or at least a long long long while until I fully grasp all of the fight mechanics and can dodge each one nearly every time because they are so rippy.