Hey! Hey!
I was wondering if you, as ARPG players, make up your own builds or do you look for a guide right away?
As far as I can remember, I’ve always used someone else’s guides because I’ve never attempted any theoretical crafting myself. D2, D3, D4, POE (of course), Grim Dawn and now Last Epoch.
However, I’m wondering if I’m depriving myself of one of the most important aspects of ARPG games and if I should try to come up with my build(s), even if it means some of them will suck.
Thanks
I make it up as I go along and then use a guide to course correct if something doesn’t work properly.
Always crafting them myself as this is half the fun for me in those kind of games. If I’d use guides I’d immediately lose interest in the game. But I sometimes inspect other players’ builds for inspiration.
Engaging with the content and learning it step by step increases the time I play the game, since I have more to do. Exploring the game and its mechanics becomes part of the game - it generates many hours of extra content.
But it’s a subjective thing. Try it. If it frustrates you, revert to copying or taking inspiration from other builds. Or engage with the community, ask for small improvements and advice, discuss your ideas.
There are many ways to play the game - only one thing is important. How much fun you have along the way - without hurting other people 
i usually try both metods, but in the end the only PGs that take further are the one that i make myself, usually based on low usage class and mastery in the case of LE, just to not be influenced by the streamer and youtube build of that specific PG, for example i have done an Hammerdin Paladin almost copying a build, but dropped that PG at level 85, instead i brought a fireball sorcerer made completely by myself at level 100, and actually i’m pushing corruption around 400, and i’m enjoing it a lot more. I think that the main difference beetween these two type of playstyle is that in a own made build you come to know that PG a lot more, and this give you more room to change and improve without a predefined path, and so experiment more.
When I first start a game I look for a guide. After I learn the basic systems and how things interact I start experimenting with my builds.
I never ever used a guide in any ARPG before and will never do so.
(be it build guide or other forms of guides)
Discovering, tinkering, testing, failing, succeeding. All of this is just the core experience and fun part about these types of games.
Even if your build is objectively worse than some other build, it is way more satisfying and fun when it’s YOUR build.
Same goes for finding out how to optimize game systems and optimal strategies.
I highly encourage you and any player to do that.
Especially when people come here from other games and because of their experiences with other games deciding they need a build guide.
LE’s greatest strength is, that you can virtually everything work somewhat decently. Enough to get through Monolith.
If you do hit a brick wall and can t figure out how to. Proceed you can still look up guides, because it is impossible in LE to complete brick a character
I played this game for some hours and every time I thought I find something fun to share there were already build guides about it. So I simply play the game and only look into a guide if good ol’ silly me is to stupid to comprehend a skill interaction 
.
What is a “PG”?
Maybe a Player or Play Guide? Not sure
sorry, PG in italian is the abbreviation of “personaggio giocante”, so the character that you play, i forgot that it’s not an international abbreviation
I usually try things out myself. I might follow a guide to get a feel for things initially, but if I find that the game is forgiving in this regard (like LE is) making your own build is half the fun.
However, due to limited time lately, I’ve been following guides exclusively. Whenever I find some time to play, I just want to dive into the fun and not have to think too much on it.
I always play arpg without any guides first to get to know the game and feel the skills. As SSF (Solo self Found) so to say.
When I then switch to SAF (Solo self Found but with Shared Character Stash), I only get guides for the current character I’m playing and compare them with current guides and modify this and that if it fits and makes sense.
And another reason is why I don’t follow guides 100%. Many guides on the internet are created with offline characters and there modified with via editor and or third-party programs, with exactly the stats that the character needs and you need weeks and or months to get it just right. And trust the experience of people who really understand this, like the guys at Maxroll, with the exception of Dreadful, boardman21 and PerryThePig, who understand their work at LE. There are certainly other good CC who create good guides, but it’s really hard to find them.
But everyone plays as they see fit for their speed, with or without a guide, it shouldn’t matter as long as the fun doesn’t suffer.
Using guides for me is like watching walkthrough for linear game and then repeating it. Though I play arpgs purely solo and never think that my builds suck, progressing them is half of the fun along with finding loot. And I am ok with reading about mechanics (how damage works etc) so I am still standing on the shoulders of the giants.
I like it about LE that it feels like having a nice middle ground between other ARPGs I’ve played. I can come up with really stupid build ideas and play around with them without getting my throat stepped on, but it’s also not so brainless that I can just do literally anything and still blow up the entire world with it.
I start with a guide in games that have this level of complexity. There are important interactions between skills and I don’t want read the tooltips across three passive trees and umpteen skill trees to find them. I’m capable of it but I save those neurons for my actual job. There isn’t good info in-game either. The character sheet doesn’t show the effects of all the passives and skill points. Add in a bunch of unfamiliar uniques and sets to add even more layers of complexity and I just throw my hands up and load a guide.
Once I get used to how a build plays I’ll start changing up a few skill points to suit my playstyle but I don’t try to build from scratch.
A little of both…
Building myself.
If the game smacks you for not building perfectly and putting you in a position where you can’t play the game unless you follow specific builds, then that game sucks. Properly theorycrafted builds outperforming “random” builds is fine.
LE has been good because it doesn’t seem to have absurd scaling.
Figuring out your own build is way better than following any guide. What is the point of playing game as complex as PoE, when you skip all that complexity by following guides? Which is why I really like that I can make my own build in Last Epoch (or Grim Dawn) on my own. One of main reasons is that respec is not time consuming so you can experiment with your character.
I am using guides.