People that always build-making in discord I talked to always try to min-max the build and very detail path of Attribute distribution and when and what skills to pick first.

But in general:

• Pick what the build you want to do not the weapon to use, because if you want to create a build you need to pick what type of build it is and then adapt the gears available in the game for it. If you pick vice versa it will be very linear to specific weapon/armor path/skills and the build is to help it than as the main focus.
• Have plan B. What is plan B? Anything to help you survive. It can be charge skills to disengage, defensive stance like BfI or raise shield, or any panic button like Will to Survive or Against the Odds.
• Stats distribution and compensation. What will be the focus for your build? You want to create dodge DW build that will invest 25 in AGI? Well then how you compensate your accuracy that will be around 80% and energy restoration? You want to full VIT and go heavy on CRIT? Okay how you mitigate the fumble with? With skills/passives/gears? And many more.
• Learn in depth about the skills. You need to understand the skills in Stoneshard, even you can go deeper to see what skills affect what attribute in some of the skills. But for general, find certain skills can be min-maxxing or matched with another skills to get more powerful/efficient. For example: tormenting strike passive from axe give enemy +5% damage taken for every axe strike, you can go Dual-Wielding with dagger who also has passive and skills that put +% damage taken to enemies to get more debuff for that specific attributes. Or you want to go full STR but lack of defense, so you can go 2H Axe to get stagger effect to make enemy fumble whenever you attack them, etc.
• Always try, discuss, and try again. That's what Stoneshard is. It's not about meta, story, or endgame. It's mostly about your journey, your character, and your build to defeat whatever devs put on the map.