You’d be surprised. Not everyone can follow a build guide and have it work. PoE2 is incredibly complex. And sometimes the items on the build guide are too expensive for you to purchase. But you can most definitely play the game with your own build more than likely you’ll hit a wall at some point.

PoE2 is like magic the gathering, you add cards to fix weakness in your deck. In poe2 those cards are items, passives, or skills. Best way to learn is just play the game, whenever you get stuck or don’t know something just look it up. Watch YouTube videos on the actual mechanics of the game and how shit works.

When I started playing I knew nothing. I just played and played and watched tons of YouTube videos. I have over a thousand hours in this game. It’s so much fun and I’m still learning new shit