Basics for making a build.

This guide is meant to introduce you to the basic thinking behind making a build. It applies mainly to building for competitive PvP, but applies somewhat to build making in general. It's not a definitive, ultimate guide to all build-making ever, so following it will not guarantee you a good build, nor will not following guarantee you a bad one. It's a guide, that's all. The rest is up to you.

Decide where is the build being used.

Is it GvG? Tomb? Maybe Arena? Or even PvE? This is the first decision you must make, as it will determine what kind of role you will be needing, and will also greatly impact your skill choices and such. Keep in mind, when you design a build for one type of gameplay, it's going to be useful in that type, and possibly not anywhere else.

Choose the main role of your build.

Main role is things like damage, shutdown, healing, protection, anything important enough to warrant a build dedicated to it. Of course, there's many different sub-categories to these, so you'd have to be way more specific. Do you want a bow using interrupter, or a spell using interrupter, or maybe energy denial? They are all shutdown. That's the type of choices you need to make. You'd want to pick a main role and stick to it, it will define your build.

There are setups that lend themselves well to hybrids, some because they are design to work that way (Hammer Warriors knock down while doing damage, inherent shutdown/damage) or because the roles are fairly similar and thus easy to combine (healing/protection hybrids, since healing and protection roles are pretty similar).

On the other side of the spectrum, there's setups that are awful hybrids, because they try to merge two conflicting roles. Especially those that combine offense and defense (like a healer that also casts Flare).

Pick your primary in line with your main role as a character.

In most cases, the role you're focusing on should make the choice of primary easy, it's the profession that has the most options for what your main role is. Warrior primary for melee damage, Ranger for bow interruption, Monk for healer etc. This because you get access to runes, and the primary attribute of the profession is often well suited to the role.

Notable exception is Necromancer skills that are often best put on a secondary, since Soul Reaping is generally not worth taking Necromancer primary for.

Select your secondary to enhance your main role and your primary.

Your secondary should either give you options that boost your main role, that your primary does not have access to, like Enchantment removal for a Ranger, or energy drains for a Monk, or give you things you can stack with your primary's inherent boosts, like say, Strength of Honor on a Warrior along with Frenzy and attack skills, to boost damage.

Find the skills that let you accomplish/enhance your main role.

This is probably the hardest part, as it can be hard to know what skills work well or are worth running. But you can always do trial and error, or post the build on strategy forums.

Just remember to make stick to your main role, and make sensible choices. If you're trying to kill a single target, you wouldn't want to use a big area effect nuke like Meteor Shower, for example, as the cost for it is wasted on one guy. Or if you're a healer, don't bring along Sever Artery or something like that.

Add in things that make you more versatile without conflicting with primary role.

I'll go through a list of utility you can add, and explain why to use it on certain characters. I hope you'll follow my reasoning and get an understanding for the principle behind it.

Interrupts:
Well, to start off, interrupts can't really be wasted. Unlike healing or damage, which can be inefficient and thus wasted, and interrupted skill is an interrupted skill. You can't half-interrupt. So, really, anyone can do it, and you can never have too much interruption, unless it starts eating into your main role. Of course, everyone shouldn't use interrupts. They belong on characters who most of the time are targeting enemies, like damage dealers, shutdown characters, and such, and most of these kinds of builds want some sort of interrupt. Keep in mind when choosing an interrupt to pick one that has is the most suitable to your role. Melee damage dealers and bow users should get an interrupt attack skill, casters a spell. If you rely on energy heavily, use Power Drain, and so on.

Defensive targeting characters like Healers, or what have you, should not run interrupts.

Enchantment Removal:
Like interrupts, Enchantment removal can't be wasted either, nor can you have too much of it unless it interfers with your main role. Again, they on characters who most of the time are targeting enemies. Especially damage dealers, since removing enchantments often helps you do more damage. Again, choose an appropriate removal. For example, if you need energy a lot, take Drain Enchantment.

There's a reason to run Enchantment removal on a healer or protector, or rather run Drain Enchantment specifically, but this is done purely as energy management and not as offensive removal, and the nearest target of opportunity with an enchantment on will be the one to drain.

Hex Removal:
I guess you can use the same reasoning as with enchantments, that removal isn't really wasted and so, however, sometimes you want to run your main removal on a Mesmer (Inspired Hex/Shatter Hex) or Smiter (Smite Hex) for the secondary benefit of those skills. This doesn't mean noone else should bring Hex removal though, since it's good to have backups. Other than the mentioned character types, Hex removal fits nicely on a defensive character since it's in line with their usual role. Healers and protectors are both good candidates to put Hex removal on.

Condition Removal:
Now, this one is even more a matter of efficiency than other removals. This due to the added healing from removing conditions, both from the spell itself, and the Divine Favor bonus granted for Monks. This makes your main condition removal ideal on a Protection-heavy Monk, and backup removals on healers. Martyr can however be used on any caster, as neither attributes nor Divine Favor matters for it. Martyr on a Warrior or Ranger is not advisable, since conditions affect these two to a greater extent.

Snares:
Any on-target character is a good candidate for a snare. Snares are great to have, and especially benefit damage dealers so they can keep doing their job without the target getting away or dodging/kiting. This doesn't mean a damage dealer has to run the actual snare, an on target support character can too. Off-target characters that require a snare should bring their own, as it's hard to coordinate with an off-target character.

Some snares like Ward Against Foes can be used defensively, on teams with good kiting. Those can be put on a defensive character, and used not on the target, but on melee characters who threaten your team.

Energy Denial:
If you're using a bow, grab Debilitating Shot. You won't lose that much in terms of damage output and energy cycling that in now and then, it's unlinked, and taking energy away from Monks will help you in the long run. Casters can use energy steals on the enemy, denying them of their energy, while replenishing their own, helping them do their main job with that extra energy.

Damage dealers will want to drain their defense, mainly healers/protectors, to help damage ouput while reducing enemy healing, while healers/protectors will want to drain enemy damage dealers, to help healing while reducing enemy damage output. All in line with their main role on the team.

To bring up a non-example, "Fear Me!" is a skill you probably want to build around instead of throwing on your bar casually, as it requires attribute investment and puts a tax on your adrenaline pool.

Resurrects:
This is the black sheep of utility. It doesn't belong on any character really. Regardless of what your role, it does take away from it to go res, but someone has to, and there is no point to run a dedicated res character (barring odd suicide builds). You have to put it on someone. So, who do you dump it on? Well, not the Monks. If people are dropping, you're having a problem staying alive already. You do not want one of the characters keeping the team alive to stop doing his job, and spend 8.75 seconds ressing someone, while the rest of your team gets killed because your defense is even worse for it. So, you want it on an offensive or support character, and most often you want a Resurrection Signet. It's also common to have a Mesmer, Fast Casting and all, taking Monk secondary and bringing a resurrection skill.

In a pure PvE aspect, everyone should have a resurrection skill, including Monks. A single resurrection skill can redeem a whole team, and mean the difference between winning and losing.

Assign attributes according to importance.

Are you a (non-Ranger) damage dealer? Then you most likely want 16 in your main damage line, just to maximize your damage output. Rangers, however, want 13+ Expertise, and the rest divided along the same principles as the other professions, simply because Expertise is the best primary attribute, and it's so good it's worth the sacrifice.

Healers want to pump healing highest, protectors Protection (Superiors optional - if you die, your team gets killed easier), with the expection being Divine Boon users, who want to use that to the fullest, and thus run 16 Divine Favor.

Also, make good use of your elite, invest decently high into its attribute. If for example running Energy Drain, it's common to pump Inspiration to 8.

Why specialize?

Well, in a team game such as this, you want to specialize and do things more efficiently. Healers heal much more efficiently because they're specialized for it. Damage dealers are built to do damage, lots of it and well. If everyone tries to do everything noone will do anything.

A team's resource pool is their combined energy and ability to perform tasks. When someone performs a task less efficiently, or at higher cost, you're wasting resources. Time, energy, and also attribute points, go to waste.

As an example, let's bring up self-healing, as some like to indulge in.
Self-cast Orison on a Monk secondary, with 10 in Healing: 53 heal for 5 energy.
Orison cast by a healer with 14 Healing & 13 Divine Favor: ~109 heal for 5 energy.

Is it worth self-casting Orison? No, it wastes resources.

Stop wasting, start playing as a team player. Specialize, optimize!

word!
well unless they are doing solo

This applies mainly to organized PvP. Which you don't solo.

Unless you try! No one ever said you had to be successful now did you?

Only thing that I'll take issue with is secondary class choice, and I think you touched on it a bit when mentioning resurrects. Basically, besides the big main roles, there are a bunch of little things that a team wants to be able to do as well, particularly:

- Resurrection type spells to get fallen allies back into the battle quickly
- Rend Enchantments or other power enchantment removal to punch through on key targets
- Diversified hex removal to keep your Monks up and running

As well as useful tools like spot enchantment removal, Warrior train hate, and the like.

If everyone is using their secondary simply to augment their primary role, then you'll have a team with none of the above tools at its disposal, and you'll end up having trouble with the randomest builds. To that end, good secondary usage isn't just to directly augment your primary job - it also allows you to cover important strategy points without sacrificing your main job.

Peace,
-CxE

I brought up Ressurect as an exception.

Enchantment removal I'd consider enchancing your main role. If you're part of the damage train, enchantment removal helps you do damage, does it not? Thus, it's a boost to your main role.

Hex removal, well, I'd put overlapping removal on Monks atleast. You can have a Mesmer with Inspired Hex and eat their hexes for energy and so but generally I don't like things that force you to switch targets.

Quote:

Right, you want to cover secondary roles in ways that compliment your build - running Rend on an offensive character to punch through and the like. It's just important to think of your secondary in terms of these other purposes, otherwise you end up with a bunch of Warrior/Elementalists and Ranger/Elementalists, with no res, no enchantment removal, no hex removal, and a whole lot of nothing.

Mesmers and Necromancers (on the off chance that you run one) are good places to stash things like hex removal because those classes switch targets often. Warriors and Rangers generally want to stay on target so having to switch off to use a skill is a bigger deal.

Peace,
-CxE

Yeah, you want extras. But I'd say that's included in these:
- Pick your secondary to enhance your main role and your primary.
- Possibly add in things that make you more versatile without conflicting with primary role.

I guess it's good we discussed this so it's a bit clarified, though. Indeed it's important to have the extras, but they have to fit with the build. Putting Rend on a Monk is totally dumb, for example. This crosses over with team building, however, and not single builds, in a team build you must cover all the bases, but a single build can't do it all.

So an E/Mo protector is useless in PvP? I beg to differ.

Sub level 16 Protction is weak.

Most protection spells are weak with all the natures renewals that are out and about at the moment.

However, they do have their place.

Tsunamii Starshine

E/Mo protection has to be played differently to be effective. We're trying out a guy soon who uses and E/Mo protector with Ether Prodigy and spams Protective Spirit.

Bump for general awesomeness and a big update, it's about 4 times as much content now compared to old version.

Very nicely written. W/N curses Rend Enchantments. The UBAR... A warrior that conditions and interrupts the crap outta you... My old and all time fave UBAR...

Res sig... Well. I personally do NOT like bringing it into 8v8 in any atmosphere. I bring it when I have to, but I figured if there's 8 of us and more than 3 of us need res sigs, well, I guess we're destined to die in any case... If half the team has res sigs, and you NEED to use them all, obviously, something's wrong with your team. I prefer being in the half that doesn't need them. [the 3 monks and myself lol] Being a warrior, I'm the first one to butt heads with my foes and the first targeted [I say everyone shouldn't follow that warriors are targeted last bullshit because a team WILL nail you with every anti-warrior hex and condition in the book JUST because you're there and because they can...]

Also, good teams are unpredictable and will NEVAR follow any 'direct' generalization. Good teams 'always' do this? Last I remember, the Korean War Machine guild was almost all warriors and they ripped people in half in articles I've read from a while ago. They don't use any voice-chat program. The fact that they're Korean is a moot point. Race has nothing to do with it. They're just naturally smarter than us...

I would like to add though that it's true that everyone who wants an effective build should build around their main skill... [usually, the Elite skill is what people build around. Eviscerate = many dmg attacks, Energy Drain = many anti-energy attacks, Victory is Mine! = condition extravaganza (my fav), Virulence = Fragility or AoE DoT (They call it a Fragility build but Virulence can be used without fragility effectively. Fragility on the other hand does not), Incediary Arrows = Fragility or possible other anti-caster skills...] Not all the time will elites be used though. I did say "usually". Signet of Midnight comes to mind (it's a crappy elite in my opnion but there's crappy anything in this game...) Fear Me! is a nice build I have yet to tap into effectively...

So yeah, build a good battle system based around 1 - 2 skills and find/join the team that needs you (which should be everyone if u do it right). Everything has a counter so you shouldn't worry about your build's weakness. Just know what it is and have Faith in your monks.

This is a good post. I was just looking for this. I also, unfortunately, need the current skill descriptions from the latest skill balancing. I have a few ideas I'd like to try, but I will admit that I know next to nothing about others' roles in pvp. I tend to play monk or ele since those are "home" to me. Time to go hunt up those skill 'scripts too.