Diablo 3 Making a Build Guide

Diablo 3 Making a Build Guide by Rhaloz

HOW TO: Make a Character build

I think everybody understands that there is no single golden way to make a viable build for this game. It is the very core of the game that several builds can be used with different setups. Because of this I will ad only guidelines for general build making. Your personal goals and taste will be the deciding factors what to do.

1. FUN
The most important factor is fun. If you have no fun with the build that you create than you will feel like walking on razors all the time even if it is the best balanced and most powerful build ever. I my self for example made a very good dodge monk build… but it was no fun and I could not stand it. I scrapped the build and started over with a new build that made me happy even if it had some problems. So always choose something that turns you on.

2. Choose your STYLE
In most cases a build is made around a certain theme or attack. More than this you should think about your attack style and choose your skills to support it. If you for example go for a very close range build with rend and revenge you should support it with mobility to get close and defense to stand your ground. Adding something like weapon throw may give you the oppertunity to do some range damage but on the other hand you could close the gap and do some real pounding. Always check how a skill ads to your style.

3. Skill competition
All skills we have are potent and useful in certain situations. If you choose a skill just because it is good you will most likely end up with an subpar build. Because of the very limited skill slots you have to choose the skills in “survival of the fittest” way. Think about different application, resource cost and gain and how much it helps you in your overall gameplay. Always compare a skill to similar skills to choose the best for the job.

4. 2 and 4 or 3 and 3?
For the barb and many other classes the choice of skills can be narrowed down to two basic setups. Two primary damage dealer and 4 supports or 3 primary damage dealer and 3 supports. 1 and 5 or 4 and 2 are in nearly all casses worse. If you choose 3 main attacks you have accept that you will lose utility in your build. In this case you have to choose you attack skills to compensate this gap and allow you cope with all given situations. The other way around with only two attacks you will have to make sure that your utility skills boost your attack skills enough to be viable in all situations.

5. Balanced Setup
There a few core concepts your build must cover: Single target dps, Aoe dps, defense, mobility and healing. You need to make sure to be able to cover all these topics. Of course you can increase one aspect over all the others but if you stray to far from the middle path and neglect one aspect your build will suffer deeply. If you have no persistant aoe dps you will take ages with big mob grps even when you have extreme single target dps. If you have no mobility you will take longer to get to your targets and lose time by just walking lose health because ranged enemies will damage you while you approach. Always check your build to cover all aspects. Healing can be covered by equipment choices but puts a strain to your equipment affix pool and you need the corect items.

6. Itemization and Passive Skills
Are we not talking about builds? Yes we do but equipment and builds go hand in hand in diablo 3. You can not make a good build without understanding the itemization. Many more crazy builds need a tailored set of items to work. Crit builds become useless without crit on items and builds without heal will get demolished by mob grps without healing on equipment. If you plan your build you should also consider what part of your build can be supported by what item stat and what affix you need to search for to help you cope with your weaknesses.  The passive skills are in most cases just item boni you can ad to your setup without the need to search for it on an actual item. Choose and change them as your your item pool allows it.

A very good site to look at datamined affxes: http://diablonut.incgamers.com/

7. I N F E R N O
If you aim to beat Inferno you should prioritize defense over offense…a bit. Without already farmed high end inferno gear you will feel like fighting a horde of mini diablos all over the place. It is more sufficient to kill a bit slower and to live than to be  a bit faster and to die at every champion grp. Once you adjusted to the pain level in Inferno you can step by step reduce your defense and ad more bang to your build.

If you mind all the steps you will end up with an interesting and viable setup that will bring you hours of fun and allows you to overcome even the greatest hell spawn.