Isn't it possible to just play and enjoy the game without refering to a build guide ?

Hi,

Everywhere I look for advice for new player they keep refering to build guild and the absolute necessity to follow one.

Can't it be possible to just play the game and make our own build on the fly ?

Of course, it's evident the character will never reach T17 and uber endgame but will it necessirally be dead in the water ? Especially if the casual/beginner player is somewhat well versed into computer and strategy game ?

Is there some nodes that are absolute must have (can't do without) ? wich ones ?

Thanks for advices.

Ignore them.....its not only possible, its MUCH better for you in the long term to do things yourself. Even if you should fail later on and need to create a new build or change things drastically.

People online like to cry doom and gloom if your first build can't tackle EVERYTHING the game has to offer, and so they say you must follow a build guide. It's not true and does new players a great disservice.

If you REALLY get stuck at some point, then you can check a video or post here, or figure it out.

Learning organically will let you learn faster if you are willing to iterate and read through mechanics but its pretty stodgy going if you don't enjoy that kind of thing.

The best advice for new players is to follow a guide. The game is overwhelming already in terms of mechanics, itemisation, endgame progression, farming strategies, the wealth of bosses now present etc and any of these that can safely be removed to allow new players to focus on whats left is going to reduce the chances they quit due to be overwhelmed.

That being said it isn't wrong to make your own build, you'll learn lots, but you'll also dead end your character early and if you do it when your poor you've made the league much harder for yourself.

I realise it all sounds a bit staid but i'll put it like this, an overwhelming majority of players follow a build guide to some degree, not just the new players. They might only pinch the passives or only pinch key items from someone else but fundamentally they still reduce their legwork.

Out of my fairly wide group of friends that play the game i'm the only one that makes their own builds (and usually theirs too when they bring me hipster shit they want to work) but I have so much experience by now its hard to think about a new player facing that and coming out with a better experience than playing some established builds first then coming back to (probably) fail at their own.

Edit: There are major advantages to self made builds, primarily that most players are meta slaves and that makes gear extremely expensive, you can experiment off meta for very little in PoE especially in SC where gear supply is immense and anything not at the very highest of demand will be worthless shortly after league start.

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

That being said it isn't wrong to make your own build, you'll learn lots, but you'll also dead end your character early and if you do it when your poor you've made the league much harder for yourself.

Disagreed. You'll get plenty of the game before you dead end your first time, even with the least efficient build. There are VERY few actual complete traps (such as chance to flee support). And dead ending is a GOOD thing. Create a new character, change things. Operating WITHOUT dead ends via a build guide means stunted learning and a false sense of what you should be doing within the game. Matching tags alone is enough to get you into maps and possibly even through white maps.

This is the very statement that gets me so irritated with "veteran players" telling people they need to follow a build guide. The game is not nearly as hard as they tell others it is. You just need to have realistic expectations of not completing everything and eventually hitting a grind wall.

Following a build guide is the "fast" way to success. If you do that properly, even as a beginner, you can get really far. However, this game is so complex that people regularly fail to do even that. They pick a build guide, don't follow it properly and fail horribly. So it's not like following a guide guarantees success but it is the easier and faster version.

If you avoid guides and just go with trial and error then it's likely going to take you a few years before you are good enough at making your own builds to do ubers and t17 but it's really just a matter of time.

All the nonsense people are spouting about being forced to play meta and most skills being unplayable is just laughable and usually comes from the people who only ever followed guides.
They think that because streamers tend to focus on certain skills for their guides that nothing else works and since they have zero build making skills they can't make their own builds for skills that don't have guides.

Long story short, if you really want to learn the game, then trial and error is actually the better option. 90% of the guide followers never actually learn the game.

Also......most of the "bloat" in this game is endgame content related and NOT build creation related. Discovering and learning all the playable content is definitely confusing and overwhelming, but that's the point of playing a new game is it not? Discovering what the game has? Not being "told" that THIS is what you should be doing at every second of your play or else you are WRONG.

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Baharoth15#0429 wrote:

Long story short, if you really want to learn the game, then trial and error is actually the better option. 90% of the guide followers never actually learn the game.

And.....the BEST build creators in the game are the ones that DID learn it themselves, and improve through trial and error. These are usually the guides that EXPLAIN every choice they made, and offer alternatives.

It is usually obvious when a "build creator" is a guide follower themselves, because there tends to be a ton of inefficiencies and outright mistakes in their guides. Also, lots and lots of missing "explanation" information that a build guide SHOULD have.

Yeah, that's another issue with this game. Most of the "guides" you'll find on the net are build showcases rather than build guides. Hardly any of them have any depth.
Then there is the matter of people making crap builds with tons of currency and selling them as "good". POE Ninja also can't be trusted since most of the builds there are just designed to show off rather than to actually work. So it's easy to say "follow a guide" but doing that is far more difficult than one would think.

Thanks for your answers.

It's better to learn the game on your own. Back in the day, we would get to somewhere in maps and it would be nearly impossible to respec a build so we would completely reroll and try again. This gives vets huge advantages in making their own builds.

TLDR at bottom

That being said, since Tota, there has been a significant power creep.

Tota had a second ascendency in the league. This gave everyone so much more power. In exchange, they balanced the game around that power. Prior to Tota (Ancestor), you would be able to do the average rare, t16 map at about 3 to 5 mil dps and if you knew some mechanics (i.e. you're good enough to dodge certain rare mods that were dangerous, you could do a lot less dps and sort of rush passed the hard rares and still get some maps done. Now, it was so easy to hit 5mil dps+ in Tota (Ancestor) that GGG did not revert some of the power increases for monsters for the league after (affliction). When affliction came out, to handle 2k wisps on a map, you had to do at least 8mil dps on a basic rare T16. This changed everything. AFfliction was the first league nearly EVERYONE was stooped. I even remember watching Mathil have some frustration managing wisps and making strong builds for T16 mapping. Because of this, people copied builds to make their lives easier. This includes some vets. This led to a problem. Top 1% of players were making Top 1% builds and 50%+ of the player base copied those builds. This foced GGG to balance the rest of the game around that level of player capability, hence the crazy T17's we have to deal with now as one example

Since then, meta-slaving has become the norm b/c there are A) too many defence base types that are useless at 8 mod, juiced T16+ content. B) And too many useless Unique gimicks that don't work as well as they used to.

As an example, it was pretty common for people to use Iron Fortress and str stack for very cheap but strong league starters. Now, it's very hard to keep up even with league starters if you're not trying to find the better builds. In addition, tankiness is less effective now by a large margin without unique/keystone/ascendency gimmicks so it's created a glass cannon community above all else. You'll see a firestorm build in my profile that uses Iron Fortress with Rathpiths globe and, at one point, used Abveraths hooves (to stay cheap). Pre Affliction, it would have been a very powerful build but now, it falls off on mapping pretty hard as some rares are far more challenging than map bosses themselves. This has pushed away casuals, at least in my circle on discord (mostly grandpas (xd) that don't care for the forums). Forcing even more players to seem like they are using top tier builds and thus GGG hasn't reverted the Ancestor power spike of enemies.

Vets have enough game knowledge to work through this but, if you're newer, you not only have to gain the game knoweldge from scratch...you'll find gimmicks that should work that just don't anymore. They aren't strong enough and GGG hasn't balanced it.

I think, vets would tell you to learn on your own. Build guides are quite bad mostly because content creators are lazy. Most didn't want real jobs and never were mentored on how to be mentors themselves. They just pop some nonsense together and call it a guide. They never studied game design theory or level design theory at all and a number of them just have significant institutional, game knowledge that allows them to play off the dome and they do a terribly poor job of passing it down.

I tend to believe in frameworks. For example, inquisitor (w/Battlemage) + Energy Blade + Spellblade + any lightning spell can yield some serious damage output. Chieftan with Iron Fortress + Rathpiths + Abberaths Hooves + Any Fire Spell with iron will and/or Iron Grip can yeild a pretty good output...it's just a matter of the rares and having a decent passive tree. You can do Champion with lightning coil + perseverance and splitting steel or a lot of attack skills depending on the strength of your passive tree. Ele SRS + massive minion flat ele abyss jewels + lot sof %minion damage with Necro or Sion Ascendency can yield another great league starter. The list goes on but it all starts with framworks. I found that has helped me keep up with some of the power creep enough to be successful.

The point i'm making is, you're going to have a steeper learning curve than you would have had 3 years ago and it's kind of a matter of your dedication at this point vs whether it's worth. I think it's worth it because it allows you to play without feeling whatever this FOMO nonsense others experience is.

TLDR: Power creep has made it far harder to make your own builds be successful without legacy game knowledge. Game guides are quite bad. Frameworks for league starters are a good start to learning builds. Mathil is a good example of learning gimmicks for new and interesting builds.