A concise newbie's guide to build making.

[Nabbut.7480]

• Choose between useless, nerfed to uselessness, and at least doing something picks.
• Have a variety of responses to every situation: stunbreak, condi cleanse, bar breaker interrupt.
• Better have mediocre damage with high survivability than to be a glass cannon: dead heroes do no damage.
• Customize with what you find most useful after testing everything in PvP lobby: if you can easily defeat NPC heroes there the build is okay.

[Linken.6345]

what is npc heroes equal to regular, veteran, elite or champions?

[jason.1083]

Why don't you just say to make builds with good synergy between stats/traits/skills instead. 

Everything else is kind of self explanatory, obviously a build is better off being able to respond to CC, conditions as well as damage bursts. 

What's of real importance is to know what your skills do and what trait/rune/sigil effects they trigger.

Edited August 17, 2023 by jason.1083

[evilcat.6817]

Some thoughts, mostly about build when leveling open world, so very basic:

• Double healing is nice, we have a healing skill, but what about second healing? Not dyng is best dps buff. Healing comes in form of utility skill, or specialization trigger, and sometimes weapon, there are also water combo fields, and food. Also sigils, but that is less for leveling.
• Condition cleanse. Conditions can kill you. So stay clean. Sometimes healing skills have cleansing, otherwise it can be from specialization synergy. 
• Generally going for some synery, like getting a lot of might buff from different sources, and then doing things with that might, like healing each time, is good way.
• Stun braker, sometimes it is useless, sometimes it helps a lot. It could be on skill which does something else useful (condition cleanse). Stuns could be stuns, daze, fear and taunts.
• Melee stability. As melee getting stability to execute our combo and enemy is good. We need decent uptime of that stability or at least at start of our combo.
• Melee gap closer. Of course we want to jump on enemy as melee. Other way is to get ranged weapon, and pewpew while closing in.
• Toughness, Vitality are not stupid when leveling, since there are missing parts of build and staying alive can help.
• Food, getting food on, and armour buff is easy way to improve, and also utility consumables. You can get it from zone 1. Also more xp.

Edited October 5, 2023 by evilcat.6817

[Buran.3796]

  Ok, I'll bite:

  *  The easiest profession to level, in order, from 1 to 80 just completing open world maps are: Mesmer, Warrior, Guardian, then Ranger/Necro, Ele, finally Revenant, Engineer, Thief.

  *  You only need to renew your gear buying it once each 20 levels at most. That means around 3 changes from 1 to 80.  You can survive with the rewards you get leveling and your loot.

  *  Thoughness, Precission, Ferocity, Concentration and Expertise are utter useless before level 80. Your crit chance, base ferocity and condition/boon duration will be so low when you're leveling that equiping gear with anything but power, vitality or condition damage before level 80 is a waste. Also, don't bother buying runes or sigils before level 80.

  *  For most of professions the best starting gear once you get access to two stats (circa level 31 I think) will be condition damage, but sadly at low levels is usually paired with precission, which is a waste. For brittle builds vigorous stats (power + vitality) is the obvious choice. The best is usually to mix vigorous + ravaging gear until you get access to carrion (condition + power + vitality) around level 61.

  *  The easy thing would be to say "your leveling build would need at least one stunbreak, at least one ranged weapon, at least one or two strong cc skills..." but the truth is that instead I would say "if you're running this class I would run this build for this reasons".  Because the different professions have different ways to deal with the obstacles. For example: with a mesmer I can level playing at range all the time since I would run staff + greatsword and use my clones as bodyguards, and I'll poke at range and use cc to prevent damage. With a Warrior, I'll use hammer + long bow and some physical skills because it will allow me to perma-cc most of foes and burn them to ashes with very little risk. And so on...