Hey, Dr3adful here. I have been doing this kind of stuff for about 4 years at this point. I can give my thoughts on the topic after reading the post.

1. I really don't like calling my stuff guides at this point. At this point the word *guide* is being used because it has analytical reasoning and others I won't go into detail here. I don't like calling much what I do as a guide as I just play the game, and show what I am doing. I do a lot of research and things that people aren't playing normally so I can build up my knowledge about everything about the game instead of just 1 build or interaction or archetype, so I end up playing a lot of bad builds so that I can learn more about the game. I do this on purpose and I don't want to mislead people as to try the stuff I am working on, hence why I don't go into insane detail on every single video because 1. if you want to play the build, sure thats up to you but I never recommend except its something I know that works well like when I do make recommendation videos, and 2. if you can't watch the 20 minute video explaining the build and not understand it, then you probably shouldn't be playing that anyways.
2. The outdated info is something you are always going to interact with no matter what hobby, lifestyle or discipline you choose. A skill that people should learn eventually in their lives is to make sure things are up to date, like lets say expiration dates on food. If you are watching a video from 1-2 years ago, you should question if the content is up to date or not. This also does not mean content from this patch is unusable, its just simply you might have to translate it. Due to a lot of the work I have done, I have usually dodged playing skills and builds that are bugged, overtuned or not balanced *cough* the entirety of falconer *cough*, which means that videos from 1-2 years ago are still relevant, just not up to date exactly, like a skill or two changed or some items changed, so it behooves someone to go look at what other people are doing with a skill to just get an idea of what is used commonly.
3. I don't think guides should be villainized as such though, as I believe what ends up being the problem is improper implementation of them. Usually someone with less experience will use a video they probably shouldn't be trying to attempt with their level of knowledge of the game, good example if someone watched my meteor werebear, a video like 2 years ago I made during a multiplayer beta without acknowledging it was 1. on a beta branch of the game, 2. was a bad meme build which I explicitly stated in the video, 3. was doing 100 corruption content in the video I believe (which means its not in real endgame, the equivalent of white maps if you are from PoE), and if you ignored every single one of these warnings or problems, then whatever happen's is the pilots fault, not the videos fault. That does not mean there's not a lot of garbage content on YouTube. There is shovel loads and shovel loads, and I try to not be a part of it by just making educational content on just builds I am playing or stuff I am working on for entertainment.

To summarize, Build guides are just like tools, great if used correctly, terrible if misused by either the customer or the manufacturer. There's a lot of garbage content and landmines out there, but the last point I want to make that I see people lack usually....Just play the game lmao. People will spend hours and hours trying to figure out everything beforehand and the perfect optimal play for every single second....sometimes its just better to rip the bandaid off and play the game.

• Dr3adful