I created this forum to help myself as well as others in creating good build.
having gone through many of the forums, i get the feeling that while its good to experiment, some builds (like my Apostate) are seen as not likely to survive till the final stages of the game.
Hence it is humbly requested to the veterans of this marvelous game to help the absolute noobs, so that we dont fall off the edge and end up building a character that cannot survive without Co-Op
The good news is any class combo can be made defensive enough to survive all (all-ish) the trials of Cairn. As far as general tips go, make sure you specialize in a single damage type. Mixing lots of damage types tends to become counterproductive by elite. Also make sure you know where your resist reductions to said damage types are coming from.
For defenses resists (aim to get 50ish in normal, cap in mid to late elite, 30 overcap in ultimate) and health are the biggest with enough DA to avoid crits 2.6k is enough for any non-gladiator crucible purposes.
For specific help go to grimtools.com, go to build calculator, upload your character as it is right now and post a link to it.
Yea cant really do that right now, I just joined the forum so its says i need a post score of 3 to post URLs
Wait, ill just post my build and you can see it then
There’s not much feedback to give you since you’re new to the genre and are only currently lvl 23.
I don’t know what’s your goal in this game as a beginner. If you really want to try hard and complete the game in the hardest difficulty (there are 3 difficulties, each with harder but same content, i.e. you need to go through the same content 3 times), then I’d recommend you to just play the game and search wiki on every single mechanic that you have question with. Once you have learnt enough (probably finish the game at least once in Veteran), then grab a meta build guide that interest you, watch videos and follow it. By following an in-depth build guide, you will understand much more how to approach build planning, itemization and tactics.
If you’re just trying to have fun with one play through, just do whatever you find fun because Normal/Veteran is intended to be a cakewalk with anything.
From Steam stat, only 9.3% of players completed Elite (2nd difficulty) and 4.1% completed Ultimate (highest difficulty). To be able to complete Ultimate starting from zero ARPG experience, I’d say it would take at least several hundred hours of playtime and learning.
As for your Apostate, simply focus on Vitality + some Aether damage and guns (dual wield pistols or 2h range) will get you through Normal/Veteran easily. I would suggest unlearn runes and pets for now since they divert your skill point investments.
One advice though, do NOT expect you can get through Ultimate with your first ever ARPG character. Ultimate is absolutely brutal even for ARPG veterans.
gl hf
Thank you very much indeed
I have no intention of upping the difficulty, i was killed twice by Warden 
so that should tell you the level of mastery i have
i however only intend to have fun
i made this thread, as i said, to get to know for sure that i wont hit a dead end cuz of my Apostle build.
i will however replay the the game 2-3 times and play with everything different.
Id suggest you do 2 things at current…
1 - Get a few more points into the mastery bar(s) for extra stats. And the extra health is super useful.
2 - Choose a few skills to focus on. Right now i see weapon pool skills, and raise skeleton, and rune of hagaraad, and drain life all in one build… that is too many cooks in the kitchen as it were and will start holding you back fairly soon. I suggest choose no more than 2 attacks to focus on for now. Or even use only defensive abilities + weapon pool skills.
Any build can survive. The biggest issue you will run into is your points for skills allocation. Decide whether you want to max both mastery bars on both classes or not. There are pros and cons to doing so and not all builds will require both bars maxed on your two classes. Some classes have a key skill at the end of their mastery bar. You have several choices with your two masteries in terms of key skills but you can only have one key skill active at a time. You seem to like reaping strike a lot. If that is the case build around what maximises that skill to its fullest potential. If that is your end game goal I’d have suggested soldier and necro with a dual wield shooting build to maximise how often you proc that ability and you get some really nice tanky skills with the soldier. I can say that you might not enjoy your run through if your build is squishy or doesn’t maximise damage.
I’ve played a heck of a lot of builds and it took me a long time to understand the depth of the game. Your first build if you don’t follow a guide is probably going to suck. Almost guaranteed it will suck. That is not a bad thing though, it is a learning experience. I did make it through ultimate on my very first build without following a guide but I played a lot of builds in between which taught me a lot about the mechanics. My advice is until you hit the end of elite don’t worry too much. Decide how many points you need in your mastery bars before you hit level 50 as it is easier to get them where you want them while you are getting three points per level rather than two.
Veteran and elite are not too scary but ultimate is a build and gear check as you’d expect. The nice thing is that apart from the mastery bars nothing is really locked anymore. There are ways to change your devotion points and your attribute points later on so don’t stress too much about it. Physique is absolutely your friend though. I would not suggest a pure cunning build for example on your first play through. At level 23 not much I can really suggest. Decide on the damage type or types you want to do but except in rare circumstances you don’t want to focus on more than one or two. Avoid complicated conversion items where you can but basic x% physical to [insert damage type] are pretty easy to get your head around. The constellation map is daunting at first but it’s not too hard to understand not nearly as bad as some games I could mention.
Mostly have fun. You will probably die a lot. You’ll probably get one shot a number of times or have deaths you didn’t understand how it happened but persevere and try to learn from them. It will take many hours playing before you understand some of the deeper mechanics. This is the deepest ARPG I’ve ever played and I’ve been playing them for decades now. My first character has 110 deaths on her card and all of it was learning experiences.
Thanks alot
Normally whenever i play rpgs or similar games, i create a sniper/infiltrator type character, low health, low defence, but super high damage, stealth and crticals. So i assumed a high cunning would lead to that.
I preferred a long ranged character, hence why i chose the Inquisitor (that picture on the mastery selection was pretty awesome) and ur right, i focus a lot of leeching of enemies, which is why no healings were used and Necromancer was chosen. the skeletons though were merely distractions, to buy me space to snd a barrage of bullets from a far. if the distance becomes too short, i would use runes and bone spike to buy time and respawn the skeletons while moving away from the hot zone
but the problem came with Hero villans, they closed the gap too fast, running over the runes and shrugging off Bone spikes, plus they would rush right at me, ignoring the 3 skeletons. So i got on the forum to seek help
and now im here. i guess ill recreate my character
Yeah, there are no true ranged characters in GD, you can´t play your gunslinger like the Demonhunter in Diablo 3. There will always be mobs that just run up to you and start hacking your face of. Plus the auras (Inquisitor etc.) have limited range, so you kinda have to get closer anyway.
Going full glass cannon will probably be zero fun for you in Ultimate, to pull that off, you´d have to have a good build and really good gear.
Better to invest in defense stuff, so you can survive a few hits.
If you have no intention of leaving Norm/Vet then rest easy because your fears are entirely unfounded. There is literally no build that can hit a dead end at this point except for extreme violation of common sense in character building. Everything else comes with experience of playing the game and actually being able to learn from that experience.
Don’t let your Warden deaths deter you. Most noobs will die to him the first times. It’s a given. Then you learn his mechanics and there is no looking back. Its been years now since the Warden was capable of killing me, no matter what build I put before him.
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thats a shame. an exclusive long range would be pretty cool. but there is still so much to do.
So i deleted my last character, and re started the game. this time as a shaman, focusing purely on the 2 handed lighting, and arcing skills. and one skill point in devouring swarm (i think that was the name), the one with bugs shot at a lane of enemies. its already pretty strong. and leeches life much faster than my Necro did
There are ways around the charging enemies. You could do a two handed ranged based shaman class basis with inquisitor to add supporting skills. Ranged lightning build is amazing and you can use grasping vines to hold in place most enemies and bleed them out while you are shooting them with crazy lightning skills. It won’t entirely work on boss enemies but I seem to have worked out how to glitch the AI of even some bosses on my shaman based melee build 
You can focus both bleed and lightning. The nice thing about shaman base is that he has some really nice skills to allow you to tank damage while dealing it out. Grasping vines can be cast at a decent distance. What I would advise for any shooty build is having your left click with the move to option and your right click with your shooting attack. I’d probably suggest to start with a focus on grasping vines and its secondary skill because when you get them maxed they clear trash so fast. Bleed is a really good option when combined with lightning because there are skills that boost both lightning and bleed in the shaman tree. If you go shooty lightning/bleed you can also utilise wendigo totem as more an extra source of bleeding damage than trying to stand in the aura and face tank (not move around but stand in one place and take the hits and damage. When you move and attack and draw enemies into better position it is called kiting.)
I hope this helps and isn’t too long winded
I already restarted the game with a fresh character. a Druid this time around, with heavy hitting 2h melee weapons, and a support from pets (a rift scrouge, and that thorny monster a shaman summons) as well as heaving damage from primal strike and Sky Shards and Elemental exchange.
I know you just restarted, but if you end up starting a new character (either after this one or before), for a strong caster character with a detailed build guide, check out the expanded guide to Nightmare’s Vitality Cabalist I just posted. Guaranteed items purchasable from faction Quartermasters and something I’ve personally used (without using any legendaries) to complete all campaign content through Ultimate.
This is what i have ended up with. i can deal fairly quick heavy damage, and recover health as well quick enough. im acutally gonna start adding points to flash freeze to slow down bosses. but normally, i can one hit KO most non-hero enemies. hell, i can get to wave 25 of the Crucible without using any tribute points or potions…
i JUST discovered item transfer from smugglers, so i have created a new character as well. just started with an occulist. going to add a inquistor or necro to it later.