Path of Exile, Why Making and Copying Builds is HARD.

If you've ever tried to copy a build and failed you could have fallen prey to hidden cost.

0:00 - Netdecking in PoE is hard
1:11 - Examples
5:02 - Best Practices

#PoE #Pathofexile #poeninja

[garhong]

These lost details can be in more than just gear. I've been playing since Legion (skipped blight and metamorph). In Heist league, I made my own build for the first time and this also happened to be my first L100 character (I did an aura stacker ascendant who used cyclone (no CoC, just cyclone)). I remember someone pinged me and said my build looked interesting, asked if I minded if he copied it. I said go for it. A couple weeks later he let me know that it wasn't working for him and he kept dying (my build was REALLY hard to kill off, hence I was able to hit L100). It turns out, when he got to Determination, I was using Anomalous (with my aura effect, I was able to scale the quality up to 100% stun avoidance) while most aura stackers used Divergent for the extra armour. This one super tiny detail that most people not familiar with the build would write off as insignificant actually was the difference between the build working and not working (straight up cyclone pretty much needs stun immunity ever since they took it away from the skill or you will keep getting randomly stunned and then killed).

[TauBuuVuong]

You are a very hard working and helpful content creator. I really like your videos a lot, hope you will explode in views in the near future because you deserve it!

[SomeRandomDude]

One thing i have every now and then when i copy a build:

I can't replicate the exact gear of someone due to various reasons and every item seems like its "just a tiny bit different", but then i realize that my numbers (DPS, EHP, ...) are worse by a lot compared to the original creator.
Thats when i use the "Calcs" tab in PoB. Open 2 instances of PoB and compare the original build and your own build with your own gear.
You can exactly see where for example all sources of damage come from. Just mouse-over a number and it gives you a list of all sources for that kind of damage.

I had it so many times that i spotted that the original creator just had one affix on the gear + a different stat on a cluster jewel but they made a huge difference over all in the end.
Sometimes you can easily shift around a few stats on your gear and get the missing stats - et voila - the numbers you were not happy with are now fixed.
In some builds it's not even the gear or passive tree that made the difference, but just gem leves or a mix between those things.

But besides from "fixing" your build with that method there is a point to it which is way more important:
You actually learn how things/mechanics interact with each other in the game.
Play around in PoB by adding different affixes on your gear, use the "node power" function and see where different beneficial passives in the tree are and how they can change your damage. Make adjustments and compare/analyze everything in the "calcs" tab again.

Discovering - or to be more specific - actually USING the Calcs-Tab was literally a game changer for me :D

[chemicals]

Another hidden cost that I've seen a few creators pull is featuring an Eleron mana cost reduction ring or 2 to get some really low mana costs. If you didn't realize they were using these, you would run into some serious mana issues and likely it would force you out of an aura or a utility flask for mana flask. That could end up being a huge hit to your damage or survivability. I haven't seen this one as much since the "oops, all nerfs!" patch also increased most mana multipliers on supports, making it harder to use Eleron rings to get 0 mana costs.

[MadcapMoody]

This is something a lot of content creators don't talk about (the hidden costs). In Heist league I played a golem necro aurastacker and I somehow managed to make all the things work in the build by managing res and attributes on jewels, rings and gloves which allowed me to switch out my belt for bossing and mapping and not sacrifice unique gear and cluster jewels since those were essential to the build. I think its important for the build creator to at least tell what could be the hidden costs of the build since not every one looks at a build one time and understands everything.

Mostly when I pick/copy a build I open it in pob and remove couple of things to see if its really achievable for me since I'm fairly good at the game. I disable watcher's eye, any jewel/gear with an expensive corruption like asenaths with corrupted implicit or double corrupted farruls etc. and replace it with an uncorrupted one or a rare to see if I can work with it until I get the one needed for the build. Then check if the configs are correct like sirus selected, no extra exposure added and similar things (no pob warrior BS). If its a melee league start build I always check what would the damage be if I had a 350pdps weapon instead of 400+ etc. Things like this allows me to see how will I be able to upgrade every piece of gear so I don't hit a brick wall and wait for big amounts of currency to be able to progress.
Often times I completely disable stuff that costs more than 10ex if its a budget build since saying mid budget an having 200ex worth of gear is not budget at all. In short I simulate the build in pob, unless its something like int stacking wander, and see how it would look like at league start then start adding stuff worth 2 ex and below to see if that will get me to red maps and then make the big upgrades. Usually works for me so I don't know if this is a good way to look at build since I fucked up this league by panic picking GC zerker and didn't have a good time with the build. I just copied the build and started playing :)

[chemicals]

A few leagues ago, my most successful build was a glacial hammer raider. There is also a glacial hammer jewel that makes the cold damage splash, so the clear wasn't even as bad as you'd think for a strike skill. Also it used a 1h mace plus shield, so the defense was great with high evasion, shield blocking, and it freezing everything. The damage was kind of low, but that doesn't matter when you can perma-freeze bosses. I ended up running into trouble once I hit red maps, because its damage wasn't quite enough to freeze-lock bosses there. I was playing SSF that league and never got a 6L (setup was GH-Ruthless-Ice Bite-Cold Pen-Ele attacks), plus I wasn't that great and ended up wasting some reserved mana on a blasphemy-frostbite curse instead on putting it on an on-hit effect like I should have. Still was pretty fun for its impressive ability to faceroll most of the content with SSF budget, though, and I hit my record of level 92 with it.

[zakaluka]

Great video. After I stumbled over a build back in Ritual because of gear, one thing I’ve started doing is taking the POB and creating an “empty” gear set which has at most a weapon (if needed for Full DPS calculations). I then compare that to the original gear to understand easily what the gear does - resistance, DPS, life, etc. Then I start adding in key pieces on “vanilla” form (without corruptions, scourge, etc.) until I get to a happy balance of DPS and survivability. This approach has saved me from some builds which were being wholly carried by certain gear pieces that I knew I had no chance of getting, so I was able to move on early to another build/version of that build.

[marcusttlam]

I once found a cool build on ninja during 3.14, exsanguinate assassin with gem level scaling. I made some changes to the build and made it CoC. And I was surprised by how much dps I got with just basic gear and cold iron points. That was the most successful build modification I had yet

[jankral]

Love this vid. I was doing this for so long time but not many ppl follow this tought process

[fasd]

The thing I've really learned to look out for is attribute requirements. So many builds seem to kinda take for granted that you'll be able to get 150+ on an attribute from 2-3 slots) in order to actually level up your skillgems or use an item.

I usually play SSF so after many attempts at recreating these items I just give up and need to relevel some other build that's much easier on that part... where you get your attributes through tree or at least have the possibility to spend a few extra skill points for the +30 nodes.

[rogoni]

A friend of mine tried to get to work a CWDT auto cast bomb, and it was his first character of the season. After the campaign he got hit hard after seem all resists bellow 0 and not being able to do maps tier 3.
I got in a similar situation on a armour stacking build where I didn't notice the body armour of the POE Ninja build I was copying had "Iron Reflexes" corruption (all evasion turns into armour), and had to reallocate like 15 or so points to make the build work a bit.

[max]

As a casual with 2h to play every now and then to have guides and builds to work towards which are fun is mandatory for me and i am very thankfull ti all of you content creators since without you i wont be playing this Pog game at all

[Bacon-egg-cheese]

Yeah I think its really important to fiddle with things on PoB as there are lots of build guides out there that despite being made by very good players still manage to miss things that would make for nice improvements. This was my 2nd league actually pushing end game content and I made by far my most expensive build copying a strength stacking build guide and while shopping around I managed to find things the original guide was missing that was leaving millions of dps on the table while also being cheaper since everyone was looking for the stuff in the guides.

Like the original guide I was following was using a very expensive divergent gem with a cluster jewel that wasn't super important and had ok notables. I swapped the gem to the awakened version which was over 10x cheaper and then swapped the cluster jewels to give me double what the divergent gem was giving. So I got more of everything for a fraction of the price.

I managed to fiddle with some things in PoB while shopping and found other options that netted me millions of dps over what the content creator was using for a fraction of the price since most people follow the guide verbatim and drive up prices for those specific things.

Even when it comes to simple things like corrupted blood or mana reservation just swappng what gems its on can dramatically lower the price since people seem to think it NEEDS to be on that specific gem that the guide has it on.

[schnoodles]

I play mostly SSF. I very rarely play the same build twice. For the first two years or so of playing PoE, I used build guides to learn the mechanics of the game. Level 85 was the goal. It was not unusual for me to level 6-8 characters a league. Some builds were more successfully copied than others due to SFF.

Now, I will download a PoB, remove all the gear and replace it with generic default gear. The tree and skill selection needs to stand on its own. My goal nowadays is to comfortably beat T16 map bosses and Guardians. Uniques that drop along the way might be the catalyst for the next build.

[Baja]

I completely agree on "the source doesn't matter, the effect does" for gear, not passives. Although, I wish this was the case as circumnavigating your skill tree seems more difficult than trading/ picking up gear.

[christopherw]

Found the same problem, tried to make a budget version of Kay's HoP bosser-build with only 5 exes to learn about end-game bosses. In the complete build, she mentions that her build is a glass cannon, but the insane amount of DPS and experience in certain bosses can compensate that problem. I didn't realize the defensive aspect in my build and tried to compromise in both DPS and defense. Thus, results in an epic-fail bosser-character that neither kills the boss nor survives the encounter. I managed to fix my build into a working bosser by compromising the DPS and making the character be able to tank 1-hit from the boss. These simple things are usually never mentioned by anyone except yourself when you find the problem.

[presentedbyconormctappersp]

Not necessarily for me, but I remember a couple leagues back when a bigger streamer/youtuber/content creator in BigDucks made his Inquisitor Bladefall+BladeBlast guide for the start of a league, a lot of people including myself were compelled to follow his guide almost verbatim since it seemed like it was budget and had really solid DPS. Shortly after, the honeymoon period ended faster than expected and a lot of people were completely upset BigDucks wasted their time with false promises. I went with another build entirely, but I was close to running that as my starter.
Just the mention of his name in PoE Builds subreddit can generate quite a lot of downvotes to this day.
My favorite build that I found great success in was quite awhile back, I think it was synthesis league or so but I ran a Eternity Shroud Winter Orb Trickster and got my first uber elder kill with it. Died a lot, but farmed a lot too since it was fun running around and watching the orb destroy everything. Got to level 96 with it and highest I ever got a single character in any league in all of my time in PoE.

[TrasheAshe]

Literally had this happen last night. This is my first league.
My friend was trying to copy a Dominating blow build that used CI. The problem he was having was he couldn't get good enough stats to live with CI.
I took it into PoB and after an hour was able to morph it, get rid of CI and enough life and regen to mitigate chaos damage.

End result, my friend went from a 500k dps Righteous fire build to 3mil dps dominating blow with 8k ehp, max ele and chaos res, with 40k armor for less than 2 exalts of crafted rares.

[mreilly]

If you're using ninja the heat map is another great tool. If all of a certain build pick these nodes, usually there's a reason.

[erickerr]

My most successful build copy was Perrythepig's Exsanguinate Trickster in Ultimatum. I watched a decent amount of his progress on stream so I had a good idea of why he was making the decisions that he was making and of course he eventually put that together in a written guide. Between that an being able to ask him some questions about the build in his stream I made it to level 99 for the first time every and did most of the end game content outside of Uber Atziri and Uber Elder, including taking down Maven.


The build was not immortal but had a respectable combination clear, damage, defenses AND perhaps more importantly I found Exsanguinate satisfying to use, which incline me to try and get over the hurdles I encountered. (Another takeaway for me might be that I might like skills that chain. :-)



One of the lesser discussed aspects I think outside of your concept of hidden cost (which is very imporant!) is an understanding of what you get from the content you engage with that can be lost if you only buy your gear already made.


Need good body armour? How am I going to get that.


Spell Totem build? You are probably looking to get a Soul Mantle. So where can you get that? How about Heist Demolition or Brute Force contracts?



Trickster? Sadist Garb would be ideal. Time to queue up a bunch of Temples to see if you can drop one or something remotely useable with Guatelitzi's mod.



Is it prefect for the build? No, but it can certainly beef up your survivability as you move from low tier maps to mid/high tier maps.


Then you can farm Syndicate to get it to 30% quality via Hillock to up your odds of 6L it or find the crafting recipe to guarantee a 6L



Then you can start looking for a Redeemer chest piece that you can roll for Chance to Gain a Frenzy Charge on Hit (and if you get silly lucky also % of Phys Damage from Hits Taken as Cold).



So how to look at the content PoE offers you in a holistic way to help you round out or smooth out the needs of your build as you are playing it is a thought process that would help out a lot of players since they can work towards upgrades while playing without necessarily spending any currency.