If you are following a build...

Stop.

I was just taking a moment to reflect on how incredibly well designed this game is. It struck me that anyone out there who is following a build is completely missing the game.

The game is not clearing areas and killing bosses and collecting loot. That is just a stress test. The game is understanding the deep system that GGG has built. I can't help but wonder what kinds of minds put this together. These are systems guys and gals. The game is systems thinking. Devising a configuration that will pass the stress test. Many games are, but GGG has taken this to a level of depth that i haven't seen in a game in a long time, if ever.

I have spent almost six months exploring the witch elementalist, and i'm still thinking my way through it. On Tier 8 Maps. The witch can survive magic T8 maps but not rare maps very easily. I can't even conceive of how a melee character could survive this game. The game is so well designed that it feels like the challenges of the game are designed to meet the abilities and constraints the witch. The stress tests that i encounter are all witch shaped, and its a deep puzzle with RNG constraints on the possible solutions. And I am sure that every character has it's own depth, and the game feels equally designed around them.

And that is huge achievement. The people at GGG outdid themselves with this game.

And like i said, if you are following a build you are missing it. You are locking yourself in to someone's else errors, and into their optimization failures, and you are relying on a reproduction of their luck. You are just watching them play the game.

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ScottSteven8295#4411 wrote:

Stop.

No

Its only ever worth it to play this game without following a guide your very first time. After that if you don't follow a build you're just intentionally making the experience bad and unfun for yourself lol

Like why would I waste my time just to get stuck in like tier 8 maps or something, and then have to level through the campaign again on a new character because we don't have a skip in the current year lmao

Playing this game without a guide is just hard and unfun, at least for me. Played for the first time without any guide and made a Juggernaut that hit a wall at t2 maps. Later mada another character, RF chieftain, following a build guide and made it to t16 which allowed me to learn the game better. About 1000hrs in and I still use guides or other players finished character as a template.

This game is just way too complex for me to bother making my own builds from start if I'm just going to get stuck at early maps. I like customizing builds I play but why reinvent the wheel

Following a build can be learning experience. Why should one drop it?

Some players already struggle to follow a build guide and still brick their characters and end up complaining about the game, so obviously they would not do much better without one.

That being said, following a guide for your first few leagues is good to learn and understand the basics. After that playing without guides can be a better learning experience and make the game a lot more fun since you are no longer limited to the smaller pool of builds that actually have useful guides.

Build guides are like the floaties that kids wear when they're first learning how to swim. There's no harm in using them when you are completely new to the experience, but if you don't learn to stay afloat without them you'll literally never get good no matter how much time you spend.

And I know we're talking about a game, why is "getting good" even the goal here? Because that's genuinely the best aspect of this genre, and it's the thing that PoE1 does better then everything else: you take a skill or an item that "eVeRyOnE kNoWs" is bad and you use it to crush pinnacle content with a build literally nobody else is playing.

I would have moved on from PoE years ago if it wasn't for this "solving the puzzle" aspect of character creation, and I feel genuinely sorry for anyone who just can't overcome their fear of failure and experience it for themselves.

I dont just "follow a build" I also alter it and improve it based on my personal choices. I never simply copy something and leave it at that. I am also learning how the mechanic of such a build works so I can copy it in ssf probably and try to make it better.

This is such a L take.

I started the game doing my own build, actually made it to end game.
I started following builds, did so much better.
Now I am to the point where I pick a build, use one as a guide and alter it myself as necessary.

Builds are necessary to fully grasp the complexity PoE has to offer, especially to newer players. They give guidance and show what nodes do, without people having to sit and study each individual one which would take forever for someone who doesn't have the knowledge.

Guides don't have to be followed to a T, but they are there for you to utilize. Not all streamer/content creator builds are perfect either. I ran into that with HROC, and ended up discovering some problems that the creator did not but without that base knowledge, you wouldn't know.

Just because you experience a game a different way, doesn't make it a right or wrong way. It makes it your way.

If gear necessary to tackle uber bosses is expensive, there is no reason for you to try and make your own from scratch without guides. The cost of buying gear then regret-selling them at a reduced price is way too steep to be worth doing.

This is why I will continue using build guides.