How to design your own great build

Path of Exile

Designing your own builds

So, I feel like one of the most fun things to do in a game like Path of Exile is designing your own builds. Nothing quite beats the feeling when you finally find one that just destroys the game so badly that they do a massive nerf because of you. It's very rewarding.

With that in mind, you may be wondering what people do to make builds like those. Well, this guide will tell you how you should be approaching your personal builds.

Defense is best:

No matter how good you are, you need something to account for survivability. Sometimes you can do this by exploiting a mechanic, but most of the time you are going to be gaining a certain amount of resist, defense and HP.

Step 1: The OP skill builds

Look for every skill that is related to defense. After you find them all analyze each one for what conditions it would take to make you immortal with that particular skill. If possible, try them. In most cases game developers are smart enough to not to have skills like that, but in some cases you can find two skills that work together in combination by searching this way. In the original GW I discovered a build that made me immortal except for the one second I waited for a CD to finish by looking like this.

Step 2: The OP lifesteal builds

Can't find any skills that work like that? In that case you want to try lifesteal. Most OP builds in videogames revolve around the lifesteal mechanic. If you take only 100 damage but lifesteal that same 100, you are effectively immortal. The key with these builds is to figure out the largest damage you will be taking from the creeps you intend to farm. Afterward figure out how much of what resist you would need to farm to bring them down to negligible damage and how much lifesteal you would need to completely offset it.

Go Big or Go Home:

Offense orientated builds tend to be very effective once most defensive builds have been nerfed. Normally these builds require players to do a massive burst of damage before ending up on a long CD. These builds tend to be high risk high reward builds that result in either the player dying in 1 hit, or the player killing the enemy in one hit.

Step 1: The OP skill builds

Much like defensive skills making you immortal, these types of builds revolve around you writing down the highest damage skills in a game that you can have access to simultaneously and figuring out if there's a way for them to do more. In most cases you will be looking for one pure type of skill to make builds like this work. You then try to stack damage boosts to work completely with this skill.

Step 2: The AoE skill builds

The key with finding AoE builds is bunching. In order for builds revolving around AoE to be effective you have to have some sort of skill that allows creeps to bunch. You can pick every AoE available but if you're not able to get enemies to group up, it won't work. So, generally you want have a heavy AoE CC that can allow you to run away, group enemies, and then nuke their asses. Then you build around increasing the damage of the AoEs that are damage dealer. Examples of builds like these in MMOs are normally a little ICE CC, then massive FIRE AoE. Try to either be fast as hell, or have a solid escape for builds like this.

Step 3: Summoner Builds

Necromancers in MMOs are always one of the most popular classes for the ability to get creeps to fight for you. The key with these builds is always to A) Get as many summons as you can, while B) Ensuring that they can live long enough to do their job and damage. In Path of Exile as an example, giving them fire attributes works awesome for dealing damage. But summoner builds are normally the most straight forward because players generally don't need a lot of defense to make them effective.

All Builds:

The key with all builds is to pick a couple skills then build the rest of your guy around them. The more skills you use, the harder it is to make an effective build for them. The only builds that EVER end up OP, are builds built around 2-3 skills.