How to make a good build

Unofficial Information Guides are almost always a work of personal opinions and thus results may differ. Information provided by this page are mostly filled with (usually) experienced player's opinions and can thus contain different kinds of biases and errors. Try to make your own picture of the ratings given to various mechanics.

Pretext

A good build is what every Ashes of Phoenix player strives for, yet no-one can do.

Before we begin talking about the more detailed factors of building a character, I need to say a few things right away.

First of all - unlike other projects, Stats and Perks on AoP are fairly balanced. There are almost never must-have perks, neither are there perks that are outright extremely bad. In general - if you like the sound of a perk and intend to use it - take it. Your character will not be that much worse, but you will get valuable insight in whether or not your choice was good. Remember, you get free rerolls from time to time, as well as have multiple build-slots to toy around with.

Second of all - builds are only good in what they try to achieve. That means, you will never be able to make a build that can withstand every risk. This begins with the simple fact that we have 4-5 different Critical Resistances stats, and you can not max out each and every one of them. Sooner or later you will run into the issue, that your build will need a weakness. You need to know that weakness and try to limit enemies potential abusing it - but you will never be able to remove it. Also - by tagging a weapon skill - you will automatically be less efficient with other weapons. A "Do all, be all" type of build is extremely unlikely, if not impossible.

Last but not least - As it stands right now, there are no meta-builds. At all. Even the very same class can have widely different builds attached to them. So always take someone's build with a grain of salt. It might work for them - but that doesn't mean it will work for you.

If you just want an overview of available "Meta-Builds" on the Server and get some tips for them, check out the Classes page which details currently used builds within the community.

In the following chapters, I will show you my way of creating a somewhat viable character, or at least the thought process behind it. There are most likely other ways of starting out thinking about a character build, but this should provide you a good base-line so you won't stand completely empty-handed before the character planner.

The Basics

First of all, most players use the Character Planner which will enable you to design the character without even having taken a step into the game.

1 - Classes & Weapons

First of all, I like to think about what class I like to play, with the second thing right after that is figuring out what weapons I will be using. It is important to also consider weapons at later tiers, if you intend to keep a character for a while. Those might have different strength requirements or somehow change the synergy of your perks and stats.

Classes should provide you with a good overview of what meta class you want to choose. While not set in stone, it should give you a good hint as to what you can and can't do. While we have the Weapons list, I personally check the weapons in the damage-calculator portion of the Online Planner (Scrolling further down)

Take 4-5 weapons from each tier you intend to play the character on. Then only choose 1-3 weapons out of each tier that you think will be the most fitting weapons on that tier. If you have 5 possible weapons that all have a strength requirement of 5, but one, which has 7, you might want to remove the 7 Strength weapon from the list of weapons you intend to use to have more Special points available for other things. Just as an example as to why we try to limit our character onto specific weapons. A Sniper is not a Sniper, neither is a Burster a Burster. There are different Snipers with different playstyles. Some go for the Snipers for the biggest possible range to have the range advantage and outplay your enemies that way. However, Snipers with less range usually shoot faster. It's always a trade-off in what you want to have or achieve.

2 - Armor

While not as important and technically interchangeable down the line, it can have some influence in your general build. If you know you will almost always wear Metal Armors, you will always have the Stonewall (Armor Trait) trait, allowing you to save a perk point on Critical Strength for example, or take it because then it would bring you to over 100% immunity.

TODO: Expand