For a long time now, the skill calculator has been up. A lot of people are pushing out builds/specs screaming out 'final version!' and what not.
My question to everyone here: "What do you need to look out for when creating a build?"
I understand the basic concepts of survivability to damage output, but what are specific things your favourite class needs to watch out for?
Feel free to post your build and explain yourselves.
Personally, what I look out for is synergies and specializations. I plan out my characters around a specific couple of skills and will focus the entire build around it. I am not a believer of "Jack of all trades".
For Example, my Barbarian is going to be focused on Whirl Wind as a skill. Focusing on having Fury generating to keep Whirl Wind going at all times. (I think the gold rune isn't complete for whirlwind, it will have some reduced cost, but how much yet I think is still unknown.)
I think it is important to figure out what it is you are aiming to do, and then focus your build towards it. After that you can focus your gear towards that class also.
It's all really based on how you would like to play: I like doing lots of damage over time and avoiding attacks. So in my Witch Doctor build, I focused on lots of heavy damage and mana cost DoT's, then one fairly spammable spell with a golden (usually mana-regen) rune.
So I have lots of cooldowns and huge mana drains, but then I have a pretty good off-attack to regen my mana.
I think it is important to figure out what it is you are aiming to do, and then focus your build towards it.
Like what BombayMD said, pick some sort of specialization or goal, and then start building synergies and picking runes around those one or two skills.
When i create my Builds, I examine all the skills, familiarize myself with what they do, since i do not have the beta yet i look over youtube videos that are related to the skills and how they are executed, how much mana/spirit is spent, how long it takes to regain mana to spend on that skills and compare it with other skills. I find the most essential skills, and begin to specialize in what kind of character i would like to be. whether it be a dmg barb, a dodge monk or archon wizard etc. I find what skills combined with the passives compliment each other.
Anytime I've tried to make a D3 build I've looked over all the abilities for a class to find the one I want to focus around due to it being powerful or fun (hopefully both). Since this game is fully built around having a resource builder and finisher I then pick out whatever move compliments what I already chose. Since I personally will be running solo mostly I then look for 1 or 2 options that would help my survivability the best. Fill in a resource dump somewhere, then I have that one last spot open for whatever works best with that build. Don't forget to review your passive abilities as well cause you can do builds completely based on those as well.
I think overall one of the most important things people seem to lack is survivibilty. Most of the builds I've seen are these really glass cannons one. Finding a good balance between both offense and defense is going to be your best bet. I would say having at least 1 - 2 defense CDs, and or a defensive passive as well.
I really think we are going to see a lot of evoultion of the abillites like we did in diablo 2. People start off making every build under the sun, and then they find out which ones work best for specific jobs. There will be specific build/charricter combos that will work best for soloing, there will be ones that work best for being in a group (and having differnt jobs) and there will be ones for PvP, which at this point looks like a very secondary feature of the game, as there is no reward system for it as of yet.
The fastest way to do anything in D2 and in D1 was to do it in a group. It helped to have a tank that enemies could beat on, with a lot of high damage AoE mages blasting away enemies. Since we have no information at all what the rest of the game will look like, its impossible to say that any of these builds will be viable for an endgame charricter. Right now, people are only able to beat part of act 1, and have no idea what kind of challanges they will face later. This can lead to a lot of false strong builds. For example, in D2, I remember a necromancer was great in act 1 if you put lots of points into skellitions. You could summon a large amount of them, they (as a small army) would do pretty well, and you could have a curse or buff to help you finish off enemies. However, when starting act 2, such a build was completely useless as skellitions, no matter how strong they got, could just not hold up against the tougher enemies. I was able to beat the game with a sorc, barb, amazon, pally, but never a necromancer. I just found that there was not any specific great build for him, and just lost intrest in playing.
You have to keep all this in mind, and really be open minded about how hidden combos can work together, and finding new synergy between things could work.
One of the things that the Dev team said is that they want the players to be able to try various diferent and exotic builds, and they made it so that we will be able to make exotic builds viable. So for me, i think ill change my mind a lot when playing, exotic builds tend to be a lot of fun, and i like experimenting with diferent builds. I think everyone, at some point, will tend to try strange builds, and this will be something really interesting to look for in the foruns.
I say it depends on which playstyle you're looking for, playing up in front or hiding in the back and shooting from afar (Since I'm playing as a Demon Hunter, both are easily possible). It also depends on if you want to put out mass amounts of damage to 1 monster, or mobs, or split it evenly. Also, to think about resource management, I think you should have at least one skill that helps out your resource regeneration so that constant battle doesn't wear you down very easily. I am going with a very...interesting build, focusing on traps and discipline, and since that's not meant to be easily worked out because of discipline's slow regeneration, there needs to be a good way to manage the discipline with skills and synergies that lower the resource cost, or even regenerate your resource. Resource management, Damage output, and practicality are all very good things to look out for.
When setting up my melee Wizard build, I looked for a couple things:
1) Survivability was my top priority. As such, I decided Energy Shield and Diamond Skin would be mandatory.
2) Arcane power regen was another high priority; yellow runed Spectral Blade fills this role nicely.
3) AoE damage: I decided to take black runed Energy Twister and either Blizzard or Meteor. Blizzard for CC or Meteor for more damage.
As for the second question, I'll play this build through the easy difficulties so that I can get used to how it plays and it's strengths/weaknesses in different situations.
Well for my class, Wizard, there were a couple things I looked for.
1. Screw survivability; Max DPS output. This is because I figured you are dead anyways if you have to worry about survivablity; so I focused more on killing the enemy before it got to me.
2. Like the above poster Arcane Power Regen. You can't DPS if you don't have energy amirite?
first of all, there is the co-op game play and solo game play - secondly 1 of the best things bliz said we will do is situational build which means through 1 act u might make about 2-3 builds according the mobs u need to pass and the envirment( my speculations , but not sure), as for i didn't play the game yet i can't know for sure which build i want to aim at. my choice of builds will be according to my experince in diablo2(which might not be relievnt cuz d3 is considered diffrent from d2). ofcourse i will adjust my build according to the needs of the party i play with.
so my current build will have some skills that help the grp but it's mostly for solo play style. as much as 6 buttons r not much i don't want to spam all of them all the time so i will look for some long duratiuon spells with passive buffs/dmg.
secondly i think a pet is always useful to split the dmg or even "tank" for u abit so i will try always to have some kind of ally spell or familiar.
ofc i will try to have some kind of heal rathier it will be "life steal", side affect heal or direct heal. if we r talking about resource genertaing skills like the monk barb and DH,
i will suggest a generter skill with the obvois spender skill and not count on items that gives resource regan or some kind of side affect of the skill spender- as a main resource regan skill.
and an obvious dmg dealer spell in 1 way or the other - most of the time u will fight a grp of mobs, so i suggest a first priorty is an aoe dmg dealer and second 1 as single target massive dmg (for bosses and stuff) - and also have atleast 2 different kind of dmg(for example: fire and lighting dmg...and so on...), for mobs which might have resistance for certain type of dmg(i understand there won't be mobs with immunity to some type of dmg like in d2, but still )
lastly according to the kind of class/build u want to have a utility skill like knockback skill for ranged or dmg mitigation/def skill for melee.
as for the second question u asked - firstly i will try all the skills and see how i feel about them , tho u need to remember that runes might not drop so often so u might get limited skill tests for a while, other than that i personly prefer to get used to the build i thought of and start with that(most likely i will change the build from my pre release 1 cuz of the simple fact that i don't know how the game will go and if i will enjoy the build).
those r my thoughts about my choice of build - hopefully i mange to help u abit, nevertheless u should do what u feel the most suited build that u enjoy the most,
P.S: sry for all the missspelling and grammer - english isn't my native language
Hey there ^.^
What i look for in a build is a strong solo-aoe dmg one.
Why?
1. Champions and rares has high drop chance for unique items, and they are usually in big cave dungeons with loads of horde packs.
Fast aoe = clear faster.
2. Solo = you get all loot, and doesn't have to argue with friends or fight for it.
3. Even if you went with friends, if you both has strong aoe = clear faster.
This is not for pvp at all, since im a pve player ^.^
That's exactly what I do. I love dot classes so WD ticked all the boxes for me. As an added bonus, if I encounter anything really tough I'm well set up for kiting and the plague spreading design of the WD aoes means they should do respectable single target damage as well.
Has loads of room for rune customization, more damage, going mana neutral, health leech, pet tanks, you name it.
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For a long time now, the skill calculator has been up. A lot of people are pushing out builds/specs screaming out 'final version!' and what not.
My question to everyone here: "What do you need to look out for when creating a build?"
I understand the basic concepts of survivability to damage output, but what are specific things your favourite class needs to watch out for?
Feel free to post your build and explain yourselves.
Much regard,
Mecca
For Example, my Barbarian is going to be focused on Whirl Wind as a skill. Focusing on having Fury generating to keep Whirl Wind going at all times. (I think the gold rune isn't complete for whirlwind, it will have some reduced cost, but how much yet I think is still unknown.)
I think it is important to figure out what it is you are aiming to do, and then focus your build towards it. After that you can focus your gear towards that class also.
Cheers,
So I have lots of cooldowns and huge mana drains, but then I have a pretty good off-attack to regen my mana.
Like what BombayMD said, pick some sort of specialization or goal, and then start building synergies and picking runes around those one or two skills.
The fastest way to do anything in D2 and in D1 was to do it in a group. It helped to have a tank that enemies could beat on, with a lot of high damage AoE mages blasting away enemies. Since we have no information at all what the rest of the game will look like, its impossible to say that any of these builds will be viable for an endgame charricter. Right now, people are only able to beat part of act 1, and have no idea what kind of challanges they will face later. This can lead to a lot of false strong builds. For example, in D2, I remember a necromancer was great in act 1 if you put lots of points into skellitions. You could summon a large amount of them, they (as a small army) would do pretty well, and you could have a curse or buff to help you finish off enemies. However, when starting act 2, such a build was completely useless as skellitions, no matter how strong they got, could just not hold up against the tougher enemies. I was able to beat the game with a sorc, barb, amazon, pally, but never a necromancer. I just found that there was not any specific great build for him, and just lost intrest in playing.
You have to keep all this in mind, and really be open minded about how hidden combos can work together, and finding new synergy between things could work.
Will you start-out on the lower difficulties with a high damage brainfart build or a safer build with more surv.?
1) Survivability was my top priority. As such, I decided Energy Shield and Diamond Skin would be mandatory.
2) Arcane power regen was another high priority; yellow runed Spectral Blade fills this role nicely.
3) AoE damage: I decided to take black runed Energy Twister and either Blizzard or Meteor. Blizzard for CC or Meteor for more damage.
As for the second question, I'll play this build through the easy difficulties so that I can get used to how it plays and it's strengths/weaknesses in different situations.
1. Screw survivability; Max DPS output. This is because I figured you are dead anyways if you have to worry about survivablity; so I focused more on killing the enemy before it got to me.
2. Like the above poster Arcane Power Regen. You can't DPS if you don't have energy amirite?
first of all, there is the co-op game play and solo game play - secondly 1 of the best things bliz said we will do is situational build which means through 1 act u might make about 2-3 builds according the mobs u need to pass and the envirment( my speculations , but not sure), as for i didn't play the game yet i can't know for sure which build i want to aim at. my choice of builds will be according to my experince in diablo2(which might not be relievnt cuz d3 is considered diffrent from d2). ofcourse i will adjust my build according to the needs of the party i play with.
so my current build will have some skills that help the grp but it's mostly for solo play style. as much as 6 buttons r not much i don't want to spam all of them all the time so i will look for some long duratiuon spells with passive buffs/dmg.
secondly i think a pet is always useful to split the dmg or even "tank" for u abit so i will try always to have some kind of ally spell or familiar.
ofc i will try to have some kind of heal rathier it will be "life steal", side affect heal or direct heal. if we r talking about resource genertaing skills like the monk barb and DH,
i will suggest a generter skill with the obvois spender skill and not count on items that gives resource regan or some kind of side affect of the skill spender- as a main resource regan skill.
and an obvious dmg dealer spell in 1 way or the other - most of the time u will fight a grp of mobs, so i suggest a first priorty is an aoe dmg dealer and second 1 as single target massive dmg (for bosses and stuff) - and also have atleast 2 different kind of dmg(for example: fire and lighting dmg...and so on...), for mobs which might have resistance for certain type of dmg(i understand there won't be mobs with immunity to some type of dmg like in d2, but still )
lastly according to the kind of class/build u want to have a utility skill like knockback skill for ranged or dmg mitigation/def skill for melee.
as for the second question u asked - firstly i will try all the skills and see how i feel about them , tho u need to remember that runes might not drop so often so u might get limited skill tests for a while, other than that i personly prefer to get used to the build i thought of and start with that(most likely i will change the build from my pre release 1 cuz of the simple fact that i don't know how the game will go and if i will enjoy the build).
those r my thoughts about my choice of build - hopefully i mange to help u abit, nevertheless u should do what u feel the most suited build that u enjoy the most,
P.S: sry for all the missspelling and grammer - english isn't my native language
best regards and take care,
Arrok
That's exactly what I do. I love dot classes so WD ticked all the boxes for me. As an added bonus, if I encounter anything really tough I'm well set up for kiting and the plague spreading design of the WD aoes means they should do respectable single target damage as well.
Has loads of room for rune customization, more damage, going mana neutral, health leech, pet tanks, you name it.