In the past few months, I have been slowly trying to make my first effective build (aka not following someone else's build), and that got me wondering where do most people get their builds from and why?

Trial and error, see which weapons or skills work with the class to find what feels most fluid. Highest damage is not my goal, its how comfortable it feels playing each character. I also like to keep a good balance between weapons so out of 6 stamina characters 2 1h-shield, 4 two-handed, 2 dual-wield, and 4 bows. The 1h-shield are Templar and Dragon Knight using class skills, 2 of the bows are AOE burst while the other 2 are single target Dotters. I'm weird.

I generally do my own builds, but two places that I like to refer to, and refer people to, are Xynode and Alcast

Xynode has some fun builds, Hack has some great solo/one bar builds, Alcast is pretty much cookie cutter builds for end game and folks with perfect LA weaving skills. I have spent quite a bit of time learning how to make a good build and Hack & Xynode do a really good job of explaining their reasons for making the choices they did, and offer alternatives for tweaking as well, which were very informative. I find a lot of folks feel slapping on a couple sets of armour and grabbing some skills they enjoy using or look cool is a "build", and I suppose technically it is. But a real build takes a ton of work to come up with and everything works together to reach the end result you are looking for. What skills on a bar for passives to kick in, which skills may activate other skills or sets, which CP to eek the most out of it and in what order do you cast those skills in a rotation to get the most from it. Then of course, does it do its job, can you solo, can you hit top DPS (the easiest builds IMHO), can you live through the encounter, can you sustain? In the end, I generally start with a build that looks fun, make sure I fully understand the impact of every choice made in its creation, then tweak it to better suit my style of play, while keeping the parts of the build that attracted me to it and allow it to function, intact. Most would probably be surprised how many times just swapping one skill out or moving it to the other bar can literally wreck an entire build, or not being able to LA Weave with 90%+ accuracy will render that build close to useless.

Maintenance for the week of December 15:
· [COMPLETE] PC/Mac: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – December 15, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
· [COMPLETE] Xbox: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – December 15, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)
· [COMPLETE] PlayStation®: NA and EU megaservers for maintenance – December 15, 4:00AM EST (9:00 UTC) - 12:00PM EST (17:00 UTC)

Where is your favorite source of builds and why?