Question about "Builds"

gjohnson146 · May 2020

I am finally about to reach level 50 (I'm slow I know) but I am confused on the build process. I see all of these YouTube videos on specific builds but do you really need a cookie cutter one?
I am currently a nightblade with a 50/50 balance between Magica and Stamina. It seems to work for me but I hear so much hype about an actual "build." Any help on this? Thank you so much!

P.S I have always only quested for the lore/story. I would like to start getting into trials soon now that I'm level 50

Vietfox · May 2020

For just questing you can run whatever you like, for trials or pvp you'll need to focus on either magicka or stamina, that means 64 points on one of those resources (unless you are a tank).

Everest_Lionheart · May 2020

Eventually you’ll be pairing sets that boost your skills. There is no hybrid set that does it all but you do have certain 5 piece sets that provide major boosts, sustain, damage or extra procs to either you or in some cases the entire group. You are essentially wasting some equipment boosts/buffs by going balanced. Equipment is just one piece of the build, the skills and morphs you use need to match that equipment, the enchants, food and potions you use also play a factor.

Now by going all in stam or all in magicka you can use pretty much the same enchants on your equipment to enhance your damage or sustain instead of a mixed bag trying to keep both resource pulls available for casting skills. Yes the idea of balancing is to use one pool when the other runs low. I used to play like that and when I switched to all in stam I noticed a significant increase in my hitting power more at the expense of survivability, but there are other skills and morphs you can do to offset that. I had a similar experience going all in or magicka. My mag Templar hits like a truck and cleans up trash mobs with ease. He’s squishy too but has morphs to return health and heals that also damage enemies. It’s made to play solo though if I was going into trails I would use different morphs to boost damage even more.

I mentioned buff food and potions above also. By going all in stam or magicka you will save a ton of mats or gold because you can use more basic food and potions. Bi stat food/potions are way cheaper and easier to craft yourself. You can also buy them if you want but the two skill lines are easy to max out. Now if you are all in stam or magicka you would use a bi stay food to boost your health and your stam/magicka. Potion wise you will use a bi stat also to boost your damage plus sustain in trials or vet dungeons. Tri stat potion recipes are extremely rare and the mats to make some of them even more rare. For regular content you can use trash potions which are the ones you pick up while questing or running around delves and what not. You can even use those for the trash mobs in the harde content and swap to your bistat for boss fights.

In other words simplifying your stats to one type or the other is way more efficient even if it does require to use of food and potions during battle. Additionally those “cookie cutter” builds do have some flexibility. Think of them as a baseline to build your own character. Feel free to experiment with other morphs if you like or other skills and equipment. Just make sure all of the moving parts of the build fit with one another.

Nestor · May 2020

All In on Stamina or Magic is not Cookie Cutter, it is how the game works.

However, after that, as long as you have sets that compliment the way you play, or you play to compliment the sets you have, you can do pretty much what you want.

ZeroXFF · May 2020

You have a lot of flexibility when it comes to builds, and while there is a definite meta, there are a lot of non-meta builds that work well. I'm sure you could even find some hybrid builds that work better than whatever it is most people do in pugs. But the goal behind every "build" is to make it effective at the chosen playstyle. And to make it effective, you have to take into consideration a lot of nuances. In some cases it even matters whether you put a certain skill on the front or back bar, because you might want to have some passive active on both bars, and things like that. Competent build creators take all these nuances into account.

But as I said previously, there are a lot of builds that are very close to the meta, but function completely differently, and the ability to experiment and find these gems is part of the fun in this game.

Mindcr0w · May 2020

Do you need an optimized build to play the game?

No.

Will you be making certain content either needlessly difficult or even impossible if you don't aim for a certain minimum level of optimization?

Yes.

JayKwellen · May 2020

Do you need to run a cookie cutter build? No, not technically. Particularly if you only ever plan to do overland type stuff then don't even worry about it, go crazy man. Nothing overland outside of a world boss won't fall over at the mere sight of you.

However if you ever want to do higher level PvE like trials as you've said, or if you ever want to do PvP, you're going to want to have a build that more closely approximates those meta builds. That includes putting all 64 of those attributes into either magicka or stamina. There are always exceptions to this of course, but until you get that far into your own build theorycrafting don't even worry about it, just go straight mag or stam.

Now, I'll admit to not knowing much about PvE as I only really PvP, but I will say this about those "cookie-cutter" builds -- Even if you don't want to use one exactly as presented, try out one that works for you anyway and use it to learn "why" certain things are being used. Meta builds are meta for a reason, and that's because they're just objectively good at whatever it is they're supposed to do. There are folks who spend countless hours testing these things and parsing out the numbers, so they're not just picking things out randomly. As you look at builds, figure out why they're built the way they are so you can better learn what separates a well-performing one from a poorly-performing one.

I don't know about how customizable PvE trial builds are, but I know that in PvP at least you definitely don't have to use a meta build exactly as written, and nor should you. Even if you look at various streamers and YT'ers builds you'll notice they're all kind of similar in some respects, but also uniquely different and tailored to each persons play style and preferences, and some are just completely unique. Even still, they usually follow a certain set of foundational rules, and are built uniquely up from that point.

Don't stress is that much though. You literally just hit level 50, you've still got a bit to go before you're ready for vet-DLC's and Trials and/or PvP if you choose to venture into it. Use this time to experiment with your character more, learn about different builds and play styles, watch some good youtube videos (Isth3reno1else and t3hasiangod are always good), start researching gear you might want once you hit CP160, and just have fun with it.