I don't understand.

Everything here is so absurdly expensive, and/or requires Harvest crafting.

If you have 300+ Exalts, do you really need to follow a guide? I don't see the purpose of guides made for filthy rich players. The people who should be looking for guides are poor newbies that have less than 1 Ex.

If this game's end content isn't doable on that kind of budget, isn't it just... kind of a bad video game?

There are 300 Ex builds that STILL DIE to the endgame content, even.



Is it really just expected that players have those kinds of funds? BUT can't figure out how to "stack all the strong items" themselves???

This entire place blows my mind.

If you can afford ANY of these guides, HOW is it you actually NEED the guides to be able to build things like this???

It's almost like just throwing on all the strong items isn't enough to trivialize endgame content... That's a good thing about the game, btw.

No, you can't just blindly do it, but it's not hard to figure out that you don't want 200% cold resist and -60% fire resist, either.



It's not hard to figure out anything at all. It's not hard to figure out what perfect items would improve your build, etc etc. The hard part is getting 300 Exalts to do so.



I can't imagine having 300 Exalts and needing a guide to tell me how to make a GG char. If you do, then I'm glad it works for you.

"

The hard part is getting 300 Exalts to do so.

You see, there are "starter" builds for new players that let them do easy content for a price of exalt or two. You play those builds to earn some currency, then you are able to buy expensive items for better builds with stronger endgame. Getting 300 exalts isn't "easy" nor "hard", it's more about commitment and knowledge of the game. For example, using specific item filters, running specific maps to drop exactly what you want. Knowing when to kill and when to skip bosses, what map mods to run and what mods to reroll. Of course you will not get 300 exalts in a week if you are relatively new to the game and spend on it an hour a day. Just play more and think more of a way you play the game.
Furthermore, why do we need builds for 300 exalts on forum? This game is really vast. I mean, you have seen the tree, you know how many skills and unique items, how many mods there are. I have played it for over 3k hours now and I can't say I "know" this game. I played A LOT of builds, ran a lot of maps, but game changes every patch a little. If I made a build year ago and tried running it now it probably wouldn't work well. I'm a fan of selfcast mages so making a build that is selfcast mage, able to run t16s is not a problem for me, killing Sirus with it and all that - I can do it. But if I wanted to play bow or melee I'd have to look for a proper guide despite having money for all those items, because I have no idea how those mechanics used by such builds work.
Do you really think there are players here who know exactly every gem and every unique item there is? Please, open PoE wiki and try to read whole thing, I mean read without even remembering all the content, just read it. I promise you, it won't be possible. This is why we need high-end guides. Because even the best players don't know everything about the game.

Also by reading lots of builds you can see what they have in common and what they leave out.