Build Recommendations - Beginner Player Looking To Take The Next Step

Sounds like you're beyond what I am about to suggest, but just in case (and for other inexperienced players) :

Regardless of build, if you want to understand game mechanics better, the official Wiki, and later, Path of Building, are IMHO mandatory.

(PoB is probably also the best way to quickly check what Ascendancies do... something that really should have been in the game - but check that it's the right game version at the bottom of its Tree screen !)

I do use PoB but by no means do I fully grasp what is happening. At most right now I'm using it to follow passive trees and comparing item loadouts...and if I get crazy I'm adjusting awakening gem levels to see number go up/down. It is something I would like to better understand as I would like to create my own builds eventually.

Thank you for recommending the official Wiki that helps me to confirm that it is ok to use as a resource for accurate information.

For better understanding, it often helps to start using PoB from early character levels, when the amount of various modifiers isn't overwhelming yet.

Some functions that you can use on POB that you may not be using are: "Show power report". On the tree page, you need show power node check box selected for this option. It will run an analysis on your, tree based on the selected main skill, by a certain parameter. A lot of the parameters aren't particularly useful, but combined damage is often good to check. RF usually has pretty defined damage nodes, more for if your making your own build and want to check. On the items tab you can do a similar thing with unique items and also on the skill gems tab sorting skill by dps. There's it take a while to learn it all, if you have parameters set wrong it will give unusual information. Calculations tab is also very useful. As with the start of this thread, I was looking at the character panel on the left initially for basic values, but then for the deeper mechanics, everything we looked for is able to be seen on the calculations tab, just need to know where to look for it in that wall of numbers. Having configurations tab set correctly is important too if you are wanting to get accurate information. Some skill gems have conditional properties, so they wont show up in the combined damage ordering, its just a helpful tool in some cases to show things you might of overlooked.