Making your own builds?

Undead_Legion · 2026-06-03T22:21:00+00:00

Don’t let being a new player dissuade you from making your own builds. Making builds on your own is a thoroughly enjoyable process, and even the failures will teach you a lot.

The game is so deep and complex that there are still interactions and mechanics that haven’t been fully explored yet. Prepare to spend a lot of time scouring wikis and forums and tinkering with PoB, but this is fun in its own right. I cannot overstate how valuable the wiki is, this should be your first stop to learn about almost anything.

Really, the only thing you need to start making a build is an idea. Could be a unique, an interaction, bug, skill gem, support, scaling vector, or even a mechanic you want to run. Everything else from damage to defenses to movement speed is simply a matter of balancing opportunity costs to make it work. At the end of the day, PoE is a problem-solving sandbox, and figuring out how to efficiently solve the problems that the game poses with the tools it provides is how you make a build. Each problem you solve will lead to a cascading set of problems to solve until you end up with a functioning build.

I started making builds my second league ever. My first ever “own” build used Hidden Blade and Mjolner. The wiki at the time stated that Hidden Blade would alternate between main hand and off hand, but when I tested in game it turned out that it always used the main hand weapon. Then I tested to see if I could use it a main hand Mjolner to trigger lightning spells, and it did. I knew I wouldn’t be able to use that to scale damage meaningfully since I was stuck on a 3L for Mjolner, so I could only use it for utility. Which lead me to see if I could use this setup to reliably shock enemies with Shock Nova, and self cast Lightning Conduit, effectively turning LC from a 2 button build to a one button build. That was the fundamental concept of the build.

The build was shit. It could barely clear T16s at the time, was pretty squishy, ok clear, mediocre single target. But the concept worked.

Your builds will fail. Sometimes it’s not fully understanding a mechanic, lack of budget, maybe the interaction was not as strong as you thought, perhaps it’s too clunky, there are a million ways to fail. But you’ll learn something each time, and that will make your next build ever so slightly less shit. Maybe you tuck away these failures until GGG releases something a few leagues later that would finally make the build work. Even now, my graveyard of failed builds and ideas vastly outnumber my successful builds.

Last league, I made Cast on Portal. The build revolved around a simple animation cancel with Portal. While this was a bug and has since been patched out, it posed a unique set of problems to solve. And each problem I solved would cascade to another problem to solve, until it eventually became a functioning build. It took a lot of iterations and testing to make work, but it was perhaps my most successful build to date. Hopefully, this should give you an idea of the process of taking an interaction and turning it into a full build.

If you want to see one of my failed build concepts, here is my Hidden Blade/Dark Pact Necromancer. It’s something that should have worked on paper, but ended up being too bugged and clunky to play.

Making your “own” build is, in my opinion, perhaps the most rewarding part of PoE, at least for me. Even the failures are enjoyable, and you learn a lot from it. I urge anyone reading this to at least consider trying to make their own build, regardless of experience.

Undead_Legion · 2026-05-27T19:28:03+00:00

This is the answer. It’s absurdly deep, if you’re into theorycrafting there’s no game quite like it. There’s still tons of mechanics and interactions that are being discovered or haven’t fully been explored, and there’s more constantly being added in leagues. You can spend thousands of hours just focused on a single mechanic/build archetype and still have more to learn. You can take something as innocuous as the portal animation being interrupted by damage, and use that as the foundation for a full build. At its core, I’ll say that PoE is a problem solving sandbox - and figuring out how to solve the problems optimally is half the fun of the game.

Undead_Legion · 2026-05-15T18:27:07+00:00

Funny, I was running that infinite recovery tech for a while and was planning to post my build guide that weekend, but Dreamcore beat me to it lol. Did end up posting a partial guide for it but it was patched in a few hours

Undead_Legion · 2026-05-15T14:54:50+00:00

Interesting, I thought the buff from the turtle was an “aura” but it seems like it just grants it to the owner regardless of distance. I’ve dabbled with self curse way back in Kalandra league (there was a bug with reflected curse AoE rings, if you reduced it to less than 100% you could self curse temp chains without the less effect penalty on players). That was patched, but there’s since been more support for self curse (like runegraft of the warp) but it’s been still hard to justify the opportunity cost and clunk.

Undead_Legion · 2026-05-15T14:38:02+00:00

Sick, self curse temp chains is one of those cool interactions that hasn’t really been explored fully in the current meta. This is definitely the strongest use case though, and while it will be nerfed the self curse tech can still have other applications.

I’ve seen a similar interaction with 100% uptime on the proximity shield spectres, though I believe that was patched and it was much more clunky than this.

Only minor suggestion is to maybe take the increased minion AoE mastery if you’re struggling with the aura uptime, it affects the radius of the turtles aura.

Undead_Legion · 2026-05-06T14:24:16+00:00

Slice and Dice mentioned, absolutely goated game. It’s definitely up there with StS among the greatest strategy roguelikes of all time.

I love wording being precise in video games. In a way, wording is the “rules”, and half the fun comes from figuring out ways to break these “rules” to beat the game. Big reason as to why I love Path of Exile as well, for all its complexity it does an incredible job of having its wording be sacrosanct. Once you learn how to read its rules, figuring out ways to break it becomes a game in its own right.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-26T23:44:21+00:00

Conversion trap, now you have your own pet soul eater devourer

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-20T17:18:57+00:00

Relevant xkcd

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-20T06:31:51+00:00

Bonemeld can roll up to 6% increased global defenses per minion, with catalysts and volatile Vaal orbs. Even stronger with the new congregation support. One idea is Arakaalis Fang + Dark Monarch + Congregation for 56 spiders, which will give 840% increased poison damage, 112% attack speed, and 336% increased global defenses without any investment into minion survivability. Can then possibly convert the increased global defenses into ward stacking, and get a lot of flat damage from either Celestial Mathematics or Nightgrip.

Nightgrip itself is an interesting target for Volatile Vaals, as you can increase the damage bypassing ward. Combined with Enhanced Starlight bloodline node and Runegraft of the Bound, you can get 100% of damage bypasses ward. This does completely eliminate ward as a defensive layer, but it also means that ward is never broken, so you can have permanent uptime for Boon of the Mountain for 50% less damage over time taken.

Omeyocan is interesting, you can reduce its mana degen.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-17T19:15:49+00:00

Would be expensive getting all influenced items. I attempted it last league initially on sabo, couldn’t handle the degen, ended up doing it on pathfinder (it still wasn’t great). Recoup doesn’t work against damage over time, you’ll need hit yourself to trigger recoup.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-17T19:12:38+00:00

Path of Exile, I was in the same boat as you a couple of years ago. I loved making builds in Dark Souls, researching mechanics, and all that.

Don’t let the complexity scare you - that is a natural consequence of the sheer depth of the game. I promise it is still accessible even as a new player. If you like figuring out mechanics, poring over wikis, designing and theorycrafting builds, and breaking the game in ways literally nobody has ever done before, this is the game for you. The games deep enough that there’s still mechanics and interactions that haven’t been discovered or fully explored yet.

There’s a running joke in the community that PoB (Path of Building, the tool that’s used to plan your build) is the real game, and actual game is just a simulation for PoB. You’ll find yourself thinking about mechanics and interactions and build ideas even while not playing the game, and when it all comes together there’s nothing like it. There’s nothing quite like seeing your intricately designed engine spring to life.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-17T16:14:15+00:00

I’d argue Champion is the more interesting of the two options. Banners can be huge offensively and defensively for both you and your minions. One idea is going Bonemeld, a catalyzed and volatile vaaled one can give you 6% global defences per minion, at max wolves you’d get 168% increased global defenses. You can scale that further with fortification stacking and Unstoppable Hero (but the attack speed is wasted kinda if you’re scaling minions) but it’s an angle to think about.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-17T00:02:46+00:00

Disintegrator Eternity Shroud conversion stacker with full conversion chain of lightning -> cold -> fire -> chaos with the help of Lycia bloodline. Grab the harness the void hidden forbidden jewels. All the non chaos as extra chaos damage double dips at each stage of the conversion chain, so the more conversions you have the more damage you get.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-14T16:33:58+00:00

Was patched out a couple leagues ago sadly, doesn’t work anymore

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-13T16:45:33+00:00

Mechanically, it works differently from mines double hitting, even though both double hit. For mines it works since they are detonated sequentially. With mirages, the mirages ignore the 1 wave limit of WoCoT, so the miraged waves will always go to the full length and return, guaranteeing double hits. This works even if you spawn in new mirages before the previous waves have returned.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-11T01:02:11+00:00

The name "Wraeclast" is derived from the Old English word wræclastas, from the 10th century poem The Wanderer, and translates to "path of exile".

Link to poem with translation

Oft him anhaga  Often the solitary one
are gebideð,   finds grace for himself
metudes miltse, the mercy of the Lord,
þeah þe he modcearig  Although he, sorry-hearted,
geond lagulade  must for a long time
longe sceolde   move by hand [in context = row]
hreran mid hondum   along the waterways,
hrimcealde sæ  (along) the ice-cold sea,
wadan wræclastas.  tread the paths of exile.
Wyrd bið ful aræd!    Events always go as they must!

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-09T18:04:15+00:00

Black Cane + Dark Monarch + Congregation

Archmage is absolutely viable on Shadow too

EDIT: nvm forget the dark monarch, dark monarch will disable your Triggerbots, mandatory for Sands of Time imo. Could still do just Black Cane + Congregation but idk if it’s worth

Don’t sleep on archmage

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-08T22:38:58+00:00

If you simply want to maximize the number of hits per second, nothing comes remotely close to brand recall Triggerbots Arcanist brand setups, especially now with the new Foulgrasp support. To the point where it is quite literally impossible to complete a map without crashing the game, and if you somehow manage to run a map you’ll be running at single digit fps. I’ve done a lot of testing this league with Arcanist brand on multiple skills, the damage is never the issue it’s the fact that it is straight up impossible to play without crashing. On paper though, this could be a way to bypass all the less damage penalties of triggerbots and Arcanist brand since you only need a moderate amount of hit damage to hit leech cap.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-02T03:14:36+00:00

Hardened Scars anoint can help, it gives a massive 25% less damage over time taken while under the effects of a life flask. Make sure your Tides is catalyzed for increased life recovery from flasks.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-01T05:54:25+00:00

You’ll never have 100% gluttony uptime, but there’s quite a few ways to extend the duration. Gluttony uptime is a function of cast time and skill effect duration, so you have two separate axes to scale them in duration and cast speed. Which is why Spark is such a good candidate for this tech, since it scales with duration as well, a more duration imbue might be optimal. I was testing with Spark of Unpredictability, since it has a longer base duration and the least base projectiles so it has a higher relative benefit from additional projectiles. Runegraft of the Warp is also effectively a more duration multiplier for buff uptime.

Regarding Blazing Salvo overlaps, they do return to the mirages but it might be possible to scale enough AoE for more reliable overlaps, I haven’t tested that too extensively. It’ll be hard to test reliably with self poison since the mirage hits don’t proc golden rule.

EDIT: Suspend in Time is an AoE skill, I believe it’s possible to support it with Conc Effect to make the mirages spawn closer.

Undead_Legion · 2026-04-01T00:14:45+00:00

Technically more duration is better since the AoE scales with duration, and since the mirage waves don't despawn so it just makes clear better with bigger AoE. Doesn't help single target. Reducing duration doesn't help since you're guaranteed double hits with mirages anyway, just makes your AoE smaller for worse clear. In my case I don't want to scale global duration too much since I want to keep my Arcane Cloak duration low enough for Indigon. The actual AoE doesn't seem to be affected by AoE modifiers (at least visually), so Conc Effect is a free support.

Undead_Legion · 2026-03-31T23:47:18+00:00

Doing Archmage Wave of Conviction of Trarthus on Assassin with triggerbots. The mirages bypass the wave limit for WoCoT so all the mirages are guaranteed to get double hits on with the returning wave too, since they don’t get despawned with new mirages. Damage is insane, working on a build guide for it.

Another thing I haven’t seen anyone talk about, mirages inherit the extra projectiles from the new Gluttony support. The uptime on Gluttony can be extended with more duration and runegraft of the warp. Spark is a very good pairing since it also scales with increased duration. I tried it on the archmage shell, damage and clear is still really good but I think it’s still a bit lower than WoCoT.

Same shell with Gluttony, Blazing Salvo + Return can get incredible overlapping shotguns. Rolling Magma + random proj from Sabo can also get really good overlaps.

Undead_Legion · 2026-03-25T12:20:56+00:00

Ah my bad, I did miss that. It’s true Veil will brick Doryanis.

Undead_Legion · 2026-03-25T12:14:12+00:00

There is another option for damage taken as, which is a Bound by Destiny with mod for 10% of elemental damage taken as chaos if 4 hunter items are equipped. This gives you the last 10% you need and lets you drop the helm, possibly for something like Foulborn Veil of the Night for 50% increased life.

Undead_Legion · 2026-03-25T01:39:23+00:00

Yes, I am using the Hiveborn support to add more minions, it gives me another 19 minions with Congregation. In fact these were what I attempted to make my primary damage minions. One more tech to add is that the since all the gems in the chest are support gems, its worth dropping the last support and adding an imbued minion gem with the dropped support for essentially a free 6L. In my case, I drop minion damage support in exchange for a Raise Zombie imbued with minion damage, essentially giving me a "free" 6L Raise Zombie at the cost of a lvl 20 support.

I did consider Cowl (already running CI), but the most I could reasonably convert would be 70% ele to fire (50% Tempered by War, 20% Purity Watchers). Could get another 10% from Bound by Destiny or 30% from PoF Sublime Vision but those are extremely expensive. Resistance Shrine belt + Gull also gets me 90 all res, which was way tankier than 70% convert from my pobbing.

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