(AfroGamers.com) Builds is a big part of Diablo IV and other action RPGs and online games. There are builds for the Fallout and Elder Scrolls, games I’ve played for decades and never considered making specific builds in.
Hell, there are even retroactive builds where players make powerful builds for older games even if they didn’t have the greatest customization options.
What Are Builds, Exactly?
Without getting heavily into the specifics, a build is basically the entirety of your character’s attributes, stats, gear, and abilities. In games back in the 90s and 00s, all of these contributed to each other but it was much simpler to calculate and plan.
This is, in part, because of the aforementioned lack of customization options. Builds as they are now rely heavily on flexibility in customizing the actual capabilities and survivability of your character. And wouldn’t you know it: gaming allowed more customization options cosmetically and gameplay-wise.
With that said, builds existed in games that didn’t even offer actual customization options. With characters locked into class types, there was still the option to leave them equipped with a piece of gear that allowed for certain abilities or buffs. You could even apply attribute points that impact stats—-although, because the character was locked into a class type, it could be useless to allocate points to certain attributes.
A warrior having a lot of intelligence isn’t going to do much with the magic spells they can access, if any. In a few cases, developers have made it so that all attributes contribute to something in that build as it does in Diablo IV. Like D4, there are class types and at least of the attributes can be ignored for the most part.
The Important Parts to Your Builds in Diablo IV
I say “for the most part” because once get around your Paragon board at level 50, you’ll notice that you end up investing something into that ignorable attribute since a +5 boost to it might pop up while en route to a targeted node. Sometimes you’ll even notice that the path to that node is riddled with +5 to that fourth attribute that you ignored—especially when you need X amount of attribute points for a glyph’s bonus.
In that case, you really have to know the best place to attach the next board for what you’re trying to do. Again, these are level 50 and above problems. An important part for your character build while leveling up towards level 50 is your gear and attributes. Both of these factor heavily into your stats along with what you do with your Paragon board.
In gaming now, gear tends to come in different rarity and tiers and Diablo IV is no different. From the lowest to highest you have common, magic, rare, legendary, and unique as well as two upper tiers of sacred and ancient. What you want is ancient gear which drops at World Tier IV but you start to really work on your build with the sacred gear of World Tier III.
While you can craft in the lower tiers, the aspects on legendary gear really starts to pop with World Tier III since they can only be applied to rare and other legendary gear. If you’re new to Diablo, your stats are going to be something you’ll want to pay a lot of attention to because gear comes with all kinds of boosts to armor, attack power, your attributes, rank bonuses to abilities, and support boosts such as more elemental resistances as well as reduction to physical at different distances and in different situations and bonuses to your different attacks under the say conditions. Again, it’s a lot.
One last thing I feel is important: aspects. They can be found on legendary gear and stripped at an occultist in different towns. From there, the occultist can apply the aspect to your gear as mentioned before. These aspects can be support, movement-based, offensive and defensive in nature. They range from bumps in attack speed to extra buffs or actions in combat such as explosions harming surrounding enemies or instant kills at certain health levels.
Also note that certain aspects can be applied to certain pieces of gear. These same aspects can be gain by completing dungeons where that aspect is housed but in season three, I’ve been mainly stripping them off legendary gear.
The last thing—and personally, I find it negotiable but important on hardcore builds—is your Class Mechanic. Necromancers have the Book of the Dead, barbarians have the Arsenal, rogues have Specializations, sorcerers have Enchantments, and the druid have Spirit Boons. Each one offers each class that something extra in combat whether it be the type of undead warriors a necro utilizes or applying the damage type tied to a weapon type to another for a barb.
My Rogue Build
I tend to stick to the rivers and the lakes that I’m used to when building my rogue. I noticed the basic attack-core attack trend of Puncture and Twisting Blades—and I’ve tried it, played with a ranged build in season two, and I found that I prefer to play how I like.
Many build guides are done with maximum damage or high survivability in mind. They also tend to require that the player play a certain way. You’re relying on critical strike chances to go unlock certain combat tide-turners, going through abilities in a certain sequence—and I can see their effectiveness and it’s always awesome to see during World Bosses and Legion Events.
However, that’s not particularly fun for me. I fight in the middle of a bunch of enemies and utilize a Blade Shift-Furry combo while utilizing Poison Imbuement, Poison Trap, Smoke Grenade, and Death Trap. My Paragon board is based around Basic Attack, Core Attack, and Trap Skills, I invest most of points on dexterity, strength, and intelligence, and I might flip between the Victimize and Exposure Key Passives.
That’s the build I have fun with and build my gear and aspect around that—and that’s without getting all into what does what and why it’s there. Then again, when I play with my brother we’re usually leisurely doing nightmare vaults and dungeons and the Helltide. We might start off with a lair or two.
Anyway, what is your preferred build and class in Diablo IV? Let us know down below!
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.