How do you plan your builds?

Curious to see how people plan their build.

(those of you who just wing it or copy a cookie-cutter may leave the room)

I have done it three different ways, (but always using an offline skillplanner):

1) Base a build around a specific piece of equipment (in my case this was http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Blood_Dance)

2) Pick a skill or two and build around them.

3) Look at the tree and pick the best possible nodes.


Obviously after your first conceptual process (gear, skill, or passive oriented) you may start tempering the build to include some of the other elements.

My most recent build was to:
- use the offline planner to select all dagger nodes, crit nods, evasion/ES nodes, and life nodes.
- Then whittle that down and add some additional super useful nodes.
- Then look up which skills work best with daggers
- Then modify the skill tree to take in account those skills
- Then made the decision to go with a shield rather than dual
- Modified tree to select some shield and block nodes
- Looked to see what shield skills were available
- Modified the tree to account for those skills

I guess i never even considered which gear to use, since i just figured a rare would be BIS.

How do you guys plan it?

(let's see if this can go three posts before QQ or flame war, we're all waiting for the patch to finish downloading, so may as well have some fun)

I let my cat play with my keyboard and mouse, then i get a summary of the build from a random site and if it has over 200% hp i just try it. If not i hit the cat with my sandals until she thinks of a better build.

Usually I start with some sort of overall concept, figure out which keystones would be helpful for it, then choose a class. From the starting point, I then look for a notable node that will be useful, work my way towards it, then pick the next one, all while heading in the general direction of the keystones I initially chose. And of course along the way, if I find anything significant the build is lacking like attribute points needed for a certain skill or piece of equipment, then I try to get those as well.

I watch Kripp of course.

Most the time it is either one of the three points in the OP.
I love planning builds and playing alts.

I am a lost altoholic.

Currently testing how far I fare with a bow-using witch supplemented with minions.
I planned on trying piercing mechanics. The new unique bow released is ideal for that purpose.

Sort of #2. I play six characters at the same time. I want them to be as complementary as possible. Three use melee, three ranged/spells. One melee is s&b, one dw, and the third 2h. All characters have to be in the same five level range, and I play strictly solo HC.

Currently I've got 44-50-50-55-55-55 as I'm working up my marauder who died last Saturday.

I think of a skill.
I build around that skill explicitely.
I build the build as it would be at level 100, and then remove the 20 points I need least for the stats it should have at level 80.

If It doesn't look like I'll survive I hit myself with a sandal and tell myself to come up with a better build.

I usually pick an item that I want to try out and build something that would use that item.

Plan my builds?? What's dat? LOL! I just pick witch, go "hmmm... she needs a bow and some undead friends" then pick all the appropriate fun stuff from the passive tree; no fuss no muss...

Even from CB, never "planned" anything out. Just made something that looked like fun to do and then pick the most appropriate passives that go with what i'm doing. And if i don't like it, i just kill it and make another.

depends if you start from 0 or if you have currency and gear from other characters you can use.

personally i hate starting from 0, using a summoner with top tier gear and then just because i feel like playing a meele character will make it so ineficient weak and slow.
I prefer thinking what builds i could do with the items i already have.

And i hate mainstream builds, i hated sparker totems, FP, EK, LA. The reason for hating this is not because they are not fun to play, its because they where OP at some point and they will eventually get nerfed.

I have an Incinerate Mage on last stage of incinerate on close targets thanks to the shotgun effect he was doing 64k dps, then the incinerate buff came and he is doing 80k dps now.

If you use a non popular build, there is very very little chances they nerf it.

Oh and never copy a kripp build, he had a LA marauder, they instantly nerfed LA, he had a FP they nerfed a FP, but this could had all being coincidence, well he made a summoner and used the bear who degenerate life of targets with aoe chaos dmg, ... nerfed to.