Help with making my own builds

Hello guys,

I have been playing POE1 for years now and I have always just followed a build guides but I am tired of playing the same builds over and over again and I want to play skill gems that I actually like but I have no clue how to make a build that is somewhat tanky and deals between 5-10 million DPS.

I have played most of the leagues but now I have less time to spare on this game so I have decided that I will play only standard league. I have most of the unique items in game accept unique jewels.

Also I want to know if I have to follow those patch notes and look for nerfs and if GGG nerf a certain skill gems it means that you cannot build around those skill gems at all? I am using Path of Building but I have no idea how to scale DPS and how to make leveling experience to be smooth.

I have tried to make Scion Molten strike armor stacker but I have fallen flat on my face at level 40. I wasnt dealing any damage. Also I have never played Scion before so that might also be the problem.

Please can you guys tell me what resources there are on the internet in order to learn how to make good builds? I dont have time for this trial and error without knowing what support gems are going to be good and what other skill gems I need in build in order to make it work and also there is just insane amount of unique items and I have no idea which unique items should I use for builds.

I want to make molten strike build but I think that I will go with Jugg because I have really good high phys. two handed axe on one of my characters but I have to rebuild that character because it used to be slam build. The problem is I have no idea how to rebuild that character and which gems do I want to use and if I want to use unique items and if so what unique items? I am lost.

At the risk of saying The Wrong Thing™, I think most people find it much easier to gradually transition from following a build guide religiously to rolling their own builds. In particular - if you're not willing to invest time into "trial and error", going 'cold turkey' on build guides is doomed to failure. There's no single resource we can provide to you that guarantees success of every build - essentially nobody ever achieves that, to say nothing of achieving it from their very first attempt.

It does come across as you not quite being sure of what exactly you want - you certainly seem to be demanding the guaranteed nature of established build guides, and for just about any person playing the game (including content creators), a proportion of ideas won't pan out.

Reading patch notes - at least those for the launch of a challenge league - will absolutely be required. We can't answer your question about whether skills remain viable after a nerf - sometimes they have, and sometimes they haven't. Anyone saying "yes" or "no" to this is lying to you.

You might be best served by finding a build guide that's similar to what you're aiming to do, but not exactly. Perhaps it's a different class, and maybe you want to scale things differently. You could use it as a 'known good' jumping off point which you can tweak in Path of Building to create your own flavour of what someone else had originally envisioned. But even in this case - there will be a chance your changes won't work out, even if GGG don't make balance changes in the interim.

Creating your own builds will always be a matter of trial and error, and will always come with a chance of 'whiffing' and needing to either re-imagine the character or starting again from scratch. You need to come to terms with that and decide what your priorities are.

Nobody's going to be able to give you what you are currently asking for.

If you want to make your own builds, PoE streamers sometimes have videos about that. I remember Zizaran did a series on the case. You'll also want to use craftofexile for crafting simulations and, in general, you'll need to dedicate either time or serious effort.

I agree with Sarno here.

Starting to make ur own builds will take alot of time and u will probably fail a few times before it "clicks".
U will have to invest time into learning the basics of scaling and some mechanics first.

Imo the best way to start that is either like Zagzuatl recommended, search YT for useful beginner videos (Ziz made some a while ago) or try to reverse engineer the build guides u were using before.

What I mean by that is, try to build the exact same build in PoB, same class/ascendency and main skill gem, and do ur own tree + items without looking up the guide. Maybe change some of it, to not fall into the habit of doing stuff from memory. When u're done u can compare it to the guide and u will most certainly see differences.

U will start to run into issues and questions of "why did the creator of the guide use this node" or "why doesn't he use this item/gem instead" and that's where u have to research and try to understand the reasoning. If it was a good build guide, the choices that guy made are 100% better than what u've came up with, so try to understand why.

/edit: Btw. if u want the easy road, just look up Molten Strike builds on poe.ninja. I'm sure u'll find some Jugg using Molten Strike with an Axe. Or maybe a Chieftain and u can just respec to that. U can combine that with the reverse engineering I talked about earlier aswell. PoE.ninja builds are not as sophisticated as finished build guides.

It's not as complicated as you might think. Just grab good passive points put on good gear and it all kind of works out with a little effort. Just don't over think it or try to work in too much into the build. Also have an idea of what your build will be able to farm before you start spending on it.

Lots of the people making really good builds are well funded and have some help if your solo and poor it's a bit harder but still completely possible.

Thank you all for good sugestions and advice. I will watch the Zizaran videos and try to learn as much as I can but and I have to accept that I will fail a lot of builds. I think that I have decent understanding of defense and how to make tanky build but my problem is in damage. There are so many ways how to scale DPS and I simple have no idea about them. I have more than 2.6K hours and I feel like it is time for me to make my own build instead of waiting for some content creater to make some build that I would be interested in.

Those armour stacking build have a large amount of synergy getting the armour values that high. I'm playing a Smite Jugg in SSF HCC with a replica dreamfeather I found. I have less the 100k armour and less than 100k dps, it's still doing pretty well in early redmaps.

To get upto those numbers, they are getting over 2 million armour, there's is a lots or variable that multiple and the numbers get exponentially bigger.

https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/keepers?sort=armour&columns=character%2Clevel%2Clife%2Cenergyshield%2Cehp%2Carmour%2Cdps%2Ckeystoneskill

Poe ninja is great for looking at builds and getting ideas, without using a full build guide, but there are also some things it wont indicate, such as if the build is used for levelling, or you need something else to level with. I don't know for sure with armour stacker, but I would assume many of them are not optimal for levelling, relative to some other options. Often you should level with something else, before you can equip your gear. Some builds are able to level fine without needing to do that.

POBing is a good place to start, that will save time in some cases, knowing if it will be likely to be a viable build for you or not. You can get the POB links of those build on POE ninja. If you make the build putting in the items you are likely to have, you will see if it is going to be relatively similar to those players, or if there will be a big difference with missing or less optimized items. With these exponential stacking builds the numbers will drop pretty quickly when things are removed, because of all the synergy stacking up.

Probably a good thing to look at for starting off, would be the kind of league start build people are making. They will not require high end items, so you will see how those build are able to be getting good offense and defense levels, without huge investments. There are other factors to remember as well. For example, does the build have good recovery, is it easy to play mechanically, what content is it going to be good at, etc.

Not sure how familiar you are with POB, but it can sort support gems by DPS. Sometimes there are other things to consider beyond that. For example Elemental focus might give you high dps, but you are loosing ability to have elemental ailments. That's a pretty obvious one, but often if you look down the list, many at the top may have something that makes them conditionally not as good, as something with slightly less dps. Some other examples are mana cost, socket colours, damage type, more/less hits, etc. You can also do a similar thing with unique items, it will search what might be good for your build on a range of numerical categories. I believe it is also possible to do with searching items on trade, though I haven't worked out how to do that myself. Some things are a bit more complex but there are other functionalities as well, like with timeless jewels and watchers eye, which are often important on a lot of build. You can copy/paste items from in game and trade site to POB as well, which you are probably aware of, but can be useful for see if the item will improve your build or not. You can also manually edit items, in the drop down menu while doing that, will indicate which mods from the pool results in the biggest dps increase.

You can also look up support gems on POE ninja, that others using similar builds are using. If you enter the skill gem, then scroll down, there is a section for most used support gems in the main link set up, and also another section of most used skill across the build as a whole. If you're using the search bar to enter any condition, make sure to clear it afterwards, or it will hide these things. Here's an example for molten strike, you see on the left, multistrike 96%, GMP 91%, Volatility 84%, etc. Sometimes you will need to refine your search fields a bit, for example, if you narrow it to just ascendant, those numbers will alter. If you go further down, you'll see other options, such as Ancestral call, 13%. It's not being heavily used, but might have some reason to use it. Maybe those players are wanting more clear, maybe some don't have other source of extra strikes, maybe they have something else on there build that makes that a better option for them.

https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/keepers?skills=Molten+Strike&sort=armour&columns=character%2Clevel%2Clife%2Cenergyshield%2Cehp%2Carmour%2Cdps%2Ckeystoneskill

Sometimes you get information in the meta data that can be misleading as well, so you need to have some understanding of it without blindly following, or it may lead to problems. For example some things, like aura bots, will not work in SSF or without a dps. Often players will remove items or replace their items with other items, when not playing or finished playing a character at that time. There can often be builds that have an aspect that completely enables the build as well. It might seem like you have most of the pieces, but there is something that is being overlooked, and without that thing, the build will not function, even if you have everything else.

Patch notes are good to read before the league if you are interested in making something with the new changes, or have a build in mind that you are going to make, and want to make sure it hasn't had anything drastically nerfed. It's a step beyond starting to make builds, but somewhat related. There is useful information in there, you might see something you think will be powerful or fun, but you would need some basic understanding of mechanics, otherwise it might be an overload of information.

Making your own builds always comes down to trial and error to a good extent. I've been making my own stuff for years but i still end up having to go with Trial and error for new aspects on a regular basis. Every build is different and even seemingly minor stuff can make big differences especially when it comes to defense. If you don't have the time and motivation you should just keep following guides. There is no video you can watch or guide to read that will make you into a build maker.

Also stacker builds of all kinds are endgame builds you use on a finished character. None of them will work on level 40. They aren't for league starting.