.

One thing that I don't see among the advice is this one:

N) Be extremely careful whether the build mentions any required uniques/skill gems - most builds cannot be played from low levels, and you will use some leveling skill and only switch to your build once you have those uniques/gems.

N + 1) At every build, make sure you understand where the damage comes from and how it scales - this can be extremely obscure at times, and you won't really be able to play the build at any incomplete stage without understanding that. Also, there's a huge red flag if the build's damage comes purely from the weapon's DPS - it's cute that the build can erase end game content with a 550 pdps foil, but you will be happy to have 300 pdps one in the league's early days/weeks, which won't be enough for juicier yellow map bosses/tougher rares.

"

Mabuz wrote:

Spoiler

This is so frustrating.

I did a search on YouTube, Google, and even on these forums. Since I have NO idea what to look for, I just tried "PoE 3.15 Cyclone build".

Many popped up, so I went with one from the forums that had a bunch of pages to it like suggested.
There was no "level with X gem until Y level then swap to Z skill" ect ect. A breakdown on HOW to level until you can use the skill. I suppose that comes with experience in the game? Which I don't have.. which IS Why I am looking for a guide.

Whatever, I winged it. The skill tree didn't have a breakdown so I just winged that as well. I finally got to lv28 to use Cyclone and it felt HORRIBLE. So bad. I would be hitting a random mob for 5-8 seconds. Not a blue, nor a boss. A plain ol mob. I worked my way up to 30. I was mid way through act 4 and I just called it quits.

Unequiped my uniques and deleted the character. Less then 3 hours played but it just felt so bad I couldn't even consider going any further.

And that was just a test! I was trying to get an idea how to find a build and level it for 3.16...

It is just so.. frustrating. I understand veterens love the skill tree but it is such a deterrent for newer people that I don't know up from down. To the point I need to find Guides for it.. and even finding the guides are a pain in the balls.

That website I mentioned earlier, that someone said not to use because of real money trading. It is still the best formatted guides I can find and I REALLY don't want to use that site because I don't think the builds are all accurately represented..

I am just venting. I am bored, it is my day off of work. Trying not to look at pawn.. and I have nothing to play. Just.. frustrated how complicated a game is to play.

For new players looking for a guide I would always recommend Enki's builds, as they've literally been designed and written for new players and have stood the test of time (literally years of constant updates!) - https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3147914

And if you're looking for a guide to understand this games' mechanics, Engineering Eternity's Beginner's Guide series is still quite good even though it's a few years old (only the endgame Atlas section ought to be ignored, but the rest is still mostly correct) - https://youtu.be/lEZtq6FSebE

Imho, if you are aiming for efficient league start

First, don't listen to folks talking about choosing by yourself, playstyles and fun - on a low budget or league start it generally equals to endless pain

Second, wait for patchnotes, don't bother with choosing build before they are released

Third, wait 12-16 hours after patchnote release and begin the investigation. Look for suggested starters, pay maximum attentition not to biggest youtobers, but to guys who know how good money are made of(like PathofMatth)

Fourth, try to figure out 2-3 builds which are suggested by MULTIPLE youtobers.

Fiveth, watch guides carefully, decide which build you wanna play for your farming plan


In the end you'll most likely end up with boring meta build, but you will be able to farm some currency, instead of torturing on yellow maps lul

I have a very different perspective on this ... its called BALANCE!

I watch videos and read build guides - to the extent I enjoy them. This means I usually spend 1-4 hours reading notes and watching overall builds per league ... some of that time (like 15-60 minutes) BEFORE I start my first character in the league ... the rest, during the league ... to help me tune, or pick a second character (IF I'm not enjoying my current one).

I play a build through acts/league start to ALSO have fun while doing so (I don't have 10-20 hours to invest in a game just to "get to the fun part" ... the game has to be fun nearly the whole time) ...

Playstyle IS everything. PERIOD. You have to try a playstyle to know if you like it ... and you have to give it at least a few hours to build some basic muscle memory around it ... and even within that, there are the subtle things (super zombies, crazy skeletons, and other minions builds play different than each other ... but they really do still mostly feel "related" ... so if you hate minion builds, you'll hate most of them, but just because you didn't like your last one, doesn't mean you won't like the one you see on a new video ... I was SUPER bored with the traditional meta specter builds a few years ago, then found a fun fast phys dmg skeleton build and enjoyed it for many weeks).

Of all the "playstyles" you could want, well over half of them are completely viable into the late late end-game. Are you planning to fully finish the atlas and beat all uber bosses ... if so, a build guide is in your future (no hand crafted build is likely to do that if this is only your second league) ...

however, if you just want to "make it to red maps" ... a build that can beat T14 content is actually really reasonable to achieve with any playstyle ...

Its all about how you define fun for yourself. So many people posting on here have already made the switch from "child" to "adult" in all the wrong ways ... focusing on the goals instead of the experience. Almost no adults enjoy learning a musical instrument (if they haven't before) ... because the pace of growth is too low, and the "goal" too out of reach. More than a third of all children however do enjoy it, not because the progress much faster, but because they enjoy the various stages of that progress for their own sake.

Beating Merveil the first time was progress. Beating Dominus the first time was REALLY progress. Learning to beat act 1 in under 1 hour took work (in the old days things we a lot slower). Trying to beat the various act bosses with 0 deaths (personal goal) took a LOT of work (for some of them). Learning to make a minion build that could boss (without a build guide) took FOREVER (for me) ... each of these things WAS THE FUN ... it WAS THE GAME ... there is no magical game waiting at the end that suddenly gets fun.

And there is no reward for achieving anything at all in this game, except in your own memories and if you can share it with friends.

Just like Chess, find someone at a roughly similar level of interest as you, and play the game with them .. for fun.

Here's a final clue: Take ANY of your existing character that is already past Act 6 (or at least Act 3) ... and go buy new sets of skill gems you haven't tried yet (I do this in standard league ... in fact its the only thing I do in standard league ... cause all my currency ends up in standard league after each challenge league ends ... so its just using useless resources ... try the skill(s) ... rinse and repeat until you find one you think you like the "feel" of. Then do a quick search for a build guide (even from 3.11+ ... who cares if the meta changed, there will be SOME viable build guide released by next weekend using the skill (or there won't) ... and worse case you play a build you like for 3-4 weeks, then hit a wall ... so what ...

ALL builds hit a wall SOMEWHERE in the hands of a non-master player. We are NOT ZiggyD, we are NOT TyTyKiller ... stop trying to play football like Jim Brown and enjoy the game!

P.S. Realize that just CRAFTING your gear correctly to follow an uber end-game build takes dozens of hours of investment ... that you don't have to make if you don't want to (I don't and I've played the game for over 5 years, playing in roughly 2-3 leagues a year, and having TONS of fun in many of them - not all). I've never beaten the uber endgame bosses, and I don't care ... one reason why, I have a dozen friends who've never even made it half as far as me, because they were scared away by the complexity and the investment ... instead I enjoy what's there without too much concern for a possible outcome (getting stuck) ...

If it’s good now, and it’s not forbidden rite totems or aura bot/stacking, it will be good in 3.16.

"

Mabuz wrote:

With the new season coming out here shortly, I do not wish to make the same mistake I did this time. I started to play PoE once more after a long hiatus. I found a random YouTube video that looked good, said the damage and survability was 9/10 and 8/10 respectively. So, I shrugged and went with it.

Now, anytime I mention I am playing Crackling Lance, I am told that - that skill is bad. I am getting to the point were I agree, only took me to "end game" to realize. It is too stationary, and the charge up time makes it dumb to use on bosses.. and the clear speed is annoyingly slow because I am always standing still.

Rant aside - How can I NOT make this mistake again in 3.16?
I was told to just YouTube it, google it, and even poe.ninja it. However, I have no idea what I should be looking for. In poe.ninja's case, sure it shows how much damage a build does... but I have 0 idea how much EX needs to be invested to make it viable, or how tanky it is. YouTube is the wild west. Anyone can post anything and I have no idea if it is good. Case and point, now. I don't even log on to play anymore and it is the end of the season so no point in leveling new. It just isn't fun to play imho.

With all the useless information said.

How can I find and know if a build is "Good" to play in 3.16 while not knowing what to look for, all the attacks, ect ect.

Thank you.

Copy a streamers build. Depends on what you want to do though. But if you want to have a good leaguestarter, just copy a build from someone like Grimro, Pathofmatth or Ghazzytv.

Their builds usually fall of when you get deep into the lategame and are extremely squishy to make sure they can do all relevant content efficiently. When you have accumilated some money, transition into a proper scaling endgame build. If you want to pick one build from the start and stick to it, watch what some respected buildcreators say.

As an example, Ghazzy keeps talking about how his Darkpact build will be extremely broken in the current patch. Low budget did like 12 million sDPS in 3.15 and high budget could reach 100 million. He already considered it a extremely strong build during expedition.

In 3.16. Dark Pact has been buffed in every single aspect meaning, Damage, survivability, mobility and QoL has been buffed.
Maybe worth checking out.

In poeninja you look how popular the skill is, not whats its damage. Just pick one of most popular skill during the league and you will most likely have a good time.

Hi, I have a couple of things to tell

First of all sorry about my caveman english.

a) It takes a couple of leagues to know wich playstyle adjusts perfectly to you. You said fast ones with survival, but that's not what defines your playstyle. For example fire flicker strike build had a lot dmg and is really fast so you barely get hitted, but to reach that final build depends of a tons of currency.
So you have to search a build that can do a lot of things with the less investment.
Maybe with luck you got a super op drop (an expensive jewel, rare unique), or get a usefull corruption (Facebreakers with a nice corrupted mod), or 6 link a cool armor (Shavrone f.e.) or a great lab enchant in a helmet. And then go for it to start a serious build.

b) Defenses are important as you can see, you died a lot, so there you have something to explore. It took time to realize how many and wich layers of defences you need. You can't read the patch league and pretend to understand when you don't know what that skill/node/mod did previously.
In my case I don't know in deep the how it worked dodge/evasion together so probably, to follow a bow build is not my thing.

Shield builds had some cool things: block caps normaly at 75% (you can break that barrier with some mods in items), also you have keystones/notables in your skill tree that gives you things per each 1 or 2 % block chances you have (or your shield have).
You also have a mod in shields that gives you x amount of life everytime you block an attack (synergizes).
Another option is using the "Glancing blows" wich doubles your chance to block (you dont need to get the 75% cap to get a defensive layer) but you take 65% of the damage block instead of the total, in other words you mitigate some damage.
You can boost dmg with the notable "Command of steel" too, another sinergy
In my playstyle block it's easy to get and it works great for some builds.

c) Based in my experience, the fastest builds with tons of dmg are the commonly known as "glass cannon". That means that generally they sacrifice some defensive layers gaining dmg boosts, wich makes faster the clear speed / boss killing but at the cost you have to invest a lot of currency and time to reach that point.


So, look for defensive mechanics first if you don't want to die repeatedly, then look for a dmg skill you like to play (in your case I suggest cyclone for constant movement and block possibilities, bow skills with Deadeye ascendancy for a long range good dmg and fast movement (but hard to build and glass canon'ish), minions for a relax and just move playstyle haha, maybe essence drain for a cast run cast run playstyle which clears very fast and very cheap to be a starter (suffers when you have to kill a boss cause of the damage over time mechanic, you can't burst them).

And the last recomendation:
Always check why the creator of the build uses each mod in the items or skill points in the skill tree before starting to build it, so you learn and notice what things are repeated in different builds, which gives you a clue of how useful they are in certain cases.

Observation: This is what I know, take it as something to consider but not as the words of a pro player. The 99% of the players are better than me :)

Stay safe!

.

I just saw the Chaos Mastery post. I don't think anyone has to worry about a build being "good". They trippled down on powercreep in this patch.