It is not true that every class can be everything.

Why does everyone keep saying that? I just want a male mage and it is borderline impossible.

If I choose Templar, the Witch passives are so far away in the tree that I have to take garbage passives until I get there. Besides, the wiki says that Templar is a combination of strength and intelligence. However, I don't want a melee mage, I want a mage exactly like the witch.

I don't want totems. I don't want strength. I just want to cast fireballs or frost or whatever.

Is it even possible to have a male mage without copying builds from the forum? I don't have a problem with complexity but this game takes it too far.

Gender lock is the biggest downside in this game.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. "Normal" mage builds are not very popular these days, but when they were, they were mostly Templars and Shadows, not Witches. The last stereotypical mage build I made was a Shadow, and off the top of my head if I were to make any mage build you can name, most of them would still be Templars and Shadows. If anything, Witch is the niche class for spellcasters.

So, what exactly are you trying to make and why are you finding it difficult? I can help work out your build.

Thank you for your reply. So witch (the only pure spellcaster per definition) is not used as that?

I am a complete beginner, once played a Marauder to level 63 but that's it.

I just want to make a mage with ranged attacks and without totems. And I want the mage to be male, so I can't pick the witch.

How can I do this without copying builds? Is it really impossible to make a good build as a beginner without copying existing meta builds?

I don't even know yet what skill exactly I want to play with - simply because I don't know the spellcaster skills.

Pretty sure inquisitor is a good 'mage' for whatever that means. Pretty much all spells work with him.

It's true that it's hard to make your own build the first time round. The game is super complicated and doesn't let you fix mistakes for free. But let's work on it. To learn the skills, just try a bunch! The NPC vendors in each town sell gems, so you can try out all the ones you can access and see what you like the look of. You can swap between skills fairly easily and keep trying them out until you get access to the last lot of skills at level 28.

For your tree, if you're a Templar you pretty much can't go wrong doing something like this for your first 20 levels. No matter what spells you end up with, that's a good skeleton to build on.

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Magezi wrote:

How can I do this without copying builds? Is it really impossible to make a good build as a beginner without copying existing meta builds?

It's possible to make a build by yourself, but you need a good idea of how to work the skill tree. You need to know how much HP you need and what nodes give you the most damage. So you aren't wasting your time and ruining your character.

I'd suggest getting familiar with Path of Building which is a program that let's you plan out your skill tree so you can screw up your build in a simulation, before you start leveling up a new character. You can download it here.

Pretty much a viable end-game build requires you to have 200k+ DPS in your main skill/spell and roughly 5k+ HP. Once, you fulfill both requirements on your skill tree. You have a good chance of finishing most content in the game as long as you are skilled enough.

You can build more defense or offense based on your playstyle.

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I don't even know yet what skill exactly I want to play with - simply because I don't know the spellcaster skills.

You can find a list of spells here on the official poe wiki

Thank you guys. That helped a lot. It shouldn't be that bad if I ruin my build because the new league starts in 1 month and all standard league characters get a skill reset then, right?

Right.

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Magezi wrote:

Thank you guys. That helped a lot. It shouldn't be that bad if I ruin my build because the new league starts in 1 month and all standard league characters get a skill reset then, right?

Ahem, standard league characters, don't get a skill reset unless a new patch significantly changes the skill tree in some way. You might have to wait a few months for a balance patch to appear for a full reset.

But otherwise, yeah, go play to your heart's content.

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RPGlitch wrote:

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Magezi wrote:

Thank you guys. That helped a lot. It shouldn't be that bad if I ruin my build because the new league starts in 1 month and all standard league characters get a skill reset then, right?

Ahem, standard league characters, don't get a skill reset unless a new patch significantly changes the skill tree in some way. You might have to wait a few months for a balance patch to appear for a full reset.

That is not true. Standard characters get a free reset every major patch.