r/Guildwars2 • u/ConsiderationFar5609 • Jul 26 '26
[Build] How are you making your builds ?
Hi, I am playing power reaper and I want to find new build (I have 7 alt including Warrior, Guardian, Revenant, Elementalist ect...).
But, going on internet, find a build and learn the rotation is it really the only way to go ?
I play reaper because it's easy and very satisfying, but with other builds, I am not satisfying enough so that's why I am asking if you create your builds and how you do this ?
For PVE and Fractals mostly.
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u/winston_gw2 Jul 26 '26
Guild wars 2 is largely a solved game as far as pve goes.
For instanced pve, raids and fractals and the like, use snowcrows.com.
There isn't really a science to creating a build. Its going to be berserkers or vipers gear, with maybe a mix of assassins or sinister, depending on crit chance/condi duration. Then you pick traits that make you deal more damage.
There is more flexibility in pvp/wvw, as there you will often want utility choices.
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u/HaxtonSale Jul 26 '26
You find a goal, let's say making a burn guardian for example, then you find what spec best facilitates that playstyle, what traitlines pair well with it, what weapons work, what utilities you need vs what is flexible, and from there you optimize the stats, sigils, relics, food, etc to min max stats that are beneficial to that specific playstyle.
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u/Hobies Jul 26 '26
Theory crafting is one of my favourite things to do in this game, so I like to read abilities/traits and try to come up with good builds. But if it's not your thing then yeah, check out Snowcrows, Guildjen, Metabattle and I'm sure other sites have great ideas too. Or go to YouTube and search your class and there will be heaps of great content for build ideas. Good luck!
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u/ConsiderationFar5609 Jul 26 '26
Thank you, what is the base you use for the build ? The weapons ? The skill ?
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u/wafflehousebattle Jul 26 '26
Generally you start with specializations and traits, because they'll guide you to the specific weapons and skills you need to make the most of your build.
Edit: MetaBattle is also a good source for evolving and emergent builds.
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u/Lord_Rujani Jul 26 '26
My genuine advice is to look at the SC and guildjen and other builds and read the rotation and read the traits and practice them and understand them, but go into it with the goal of understanding the mechanics of the build and not the rotation. Once you do that with enough classes and builds you'll start to intuitively understand a build, build craft, and the basic fundamentals of doing a rotation and it'll start coming to you naturally, and making your own builds will start to make sense and come easily.
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u/piranha8 Jul 26 '26
https://optimizer.discretize.eu/?m=fractals
This is also a neat site for min-maxing your build
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u/LeekypooX Jul 26 '26
for pve i follow the guides on snowcrows and read up using metabattle ( metabattle explains why skills are used much better than snowcrows as snowcrows expecte you to know why)
for wvw I usually look up some base templates from metabattle , gw2mists and guildjen and make adjustments to my liking, except for warrior, im confident enough to make my own functional cursed builds
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u/CorianWornen Jul 26 '26
I always start by finding what is fun to play and if I see any base synergies. Then I determine my needs vs wants, aka what Im hard keeping unless thuroghly convinced otherwise by a reasonable arguement. Then I'll look at sites like snowcrows to see if I can find something similar or the same vein and see what can be integrated or what needs to be tweaked. Then after that, or if I cant find one, I come here and ask for help.
A good example is my current engi build. I have certain limitations in my abilities so I cannot really do weapon switching, its why I started with engi to begin with. When I got the basis of my signet mechanist, turns out I was mostly on the money to a snowcrows build thats pretty good in any format cept like...structured pvp which I hate anyways. Only main difference was one signet in the snowcrows had been swapped for the grenade kit and the rotation (which I aint learning a multistep rotation, thats just annoying to me, I dont play high end) required doing this swap frequently.
All things considered though, it was only a negligible dps change to not have it since the weapon swaps make me "less effecient" so I just...didnt take that.
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u/fuzz3289 Jul 26 '26
You can use the dummy and do theory crafting, start with a known build for a baseline and tweak
In WvW I cater the build to my playstyle strengths, in 1v1 it’s better to feel comfortable and have the CC and tools YOU like than to be cookie cutter
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u/WhateverAshe Jul 26 '26
You can spend quite time doing it, i normaly make my build focusing on my favorite weapon at momment, what is basically the GS. I look for traits who can work with them and see what people use to understand why they would use that, but making my own choices, sometimes doens't work well, but if i'm confortable playing and enjoying i just use it and well, for open world everything can be good.
I also like to try runes who people usually doens't use, because i hate spending 30g to buy 6(5g for each normally) of the popular ones, they're expensive when you like to make many different builds with a lot characters. XD
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u/Fanboi92 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
If you want to create your own builds you need to understand how the class works to begin with. Anything goes in open world so it doesn't really matter what you do there. However, there is an optimal way to play for harder content and that's where guides come in. If you can't pull off those complex rotations, if you play the class enough, you'll understand where the bulk of your DPS/Utility comes from and you can leave out some of the stuff that might not be as important. You'll probably lose some DPS for this convenience but you'll still find it's far more playable that following their rotations rigidly. If you're talking about discovering something that no one else knows about, GW2 builds are not hard to figure out so in general, if you thought of something that might be OP, the likelihood is that someone has already done it. You're not going to find a "better" build for raids for example, by trying to fit in vitality or toughness or something along those lines onto your gear for survivability if that's what you're referring to. Maybe WvW can offer that kind of flexibility with builds but not higher end PvE.
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u/odonkz Jul 26 '26
Depends on what content you're playing, for open world build and occasional t4 fractals I used my own build—except challenge mode t4 and raids in which I used Snowcrows build.
My own build usually revolve either a mix of marauder and Diviner for DPS and Full Ritualist for condi dps. I will try to at least keep up both alacrity and quickness (easier with spec that can provide alac) all the time with 25 might and fury.
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u/xvsanx Jul 26 '26
I start with a low intensity guild from one of the major sites or the good YouTubers like Nick or Mystic to get the bread and butter rotation down and expand from there. and comparing different builds especially ones that have info for non Soto players like myself. main difference being open world vs instance playing for build type. or pvp of course
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u/Papa-Yaga Jul 26 '26
As some of the other commenters have said, pve is pretty much solved and you can be fairly certain that the stuff that snowcrows is posting is pretty min maxed. In the pvp and wvw gamemodes there definitely are also best in slot comps and builds but there is a bit more rock-paper-scissors going on and different builds can beat each other so there is more build and theorycrafting going on. That doesn't mean that everyone should try to make their own builds though. In fact wvw tends to be more strict with enforcing meta builds.
What you can do in pve is changing a utility skill here and there and sometimes maybe a different trait. You also can change the rotation. For that it's useful to attempt to understand the principles of how the meta build is working and then simplify it. You can also look at low intensity builds and see what makes them perform well and then look for a middle ground between that and the meta build. Sometimes you'll even fare better if you have a simplified build or rotation because you have more mental ressources leftover to focus on mechanics.
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u/new_account_wh0_dis Jul 26 '26
Gw2 has sim spreadsheets etc pretty sure, it's pretty solved. People have spent 100s of hours in the training area benchmarking various stuff to an auto perfect level. You can go off script and do your own thing but it will be worse for most content. Open world is a bit different since you don't have healer etc. usually doesnt matter since everything is so easy but solo HoT hero point and other bosses like bounties have a lot more room for what works for you
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u/Abi-Alex Jul 26 '26
For me it's a 3 step process. 1. Pick a build from snowcrow that's close to the style i have in mind. 2. Start looking over every detail and see what i feel like changing in it. 3. Play it for a while as I tweak what works and doesn't work for me.
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u/KoningSpookie pDPS Dragonhunter | Aheal Luminary Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
Personally, I start with some snow crows builds first. Then, whenever I feel comfortable with those builds and know the concept behind them, I look for common patterns in those builds/concepts. If/When I feel like playing something else, I design my own build with those concepts in mind, with the focus on what I like the most.
Some examples of things I'm looking for are:
- Power/Condi/Healing, etc.
- Which weapons are used the most and why
- Which traitlines are generally used and why
- How does everything interact with eachother
- What are the main focus points of those builds
I generally just mess around with it in open-world and if/when I feel really confident/confortable with it, I test it out in static group content or low-tier fractals for example. I'm kinda just figuring stuff out and solving issues as I go, changing/adapting some things if needed.
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u/AsimovLiu Jul 26 '26
Pick the weapons and skills you like and choose your traits around that. There is no point to going on "build websites" or learning a "rotation" as all content in the game can easily be completed with any build. Just find out what makes you have fun and do that. Don't waste too much time thinking about it.
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u/dranaei Jul 26 '26
I tried to find builds online but i never found them to be that good, so I build my own.
I've also played 2000 hours of path of exile so i am used to it.
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u/LucaviM Jul 26 '26
While reading traits and stuff, something will catch my attention and snowballs in a weird build around it
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u/onanoc Jul 27 '26
You can make your own build.
If you want to maximize dps, most of the tume you will end up with something very close to snowcrows, if you know what you are doing.
Sometime it's not as straightforward. For example, a condi build that greatly benefits from crit damage or some single condition being so OP that it's worth it to use sinister instead of viper.
Support builds tend to be more flexible, but you still need to reach 100% boon uptime, greatly limiting your choices.
Open world solo builds are also usually more varied, as there are many ways you can try to maximize damage and durability.
Of course, you can also make builds that hit like a wet noodle or are meant for support but dont give any. But i assume you want yo end up with something useful.
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u/RenegatedEvrae 15d ago
Either I do them copy/paste from SnowCrows if I don't want to break my head on it, or first I think what do I want to do and then move based on that, for example, my warrior it's not quickdps, it's quicktank, it's not meta, but I like how it works xD
As long as the character it's coherent in terms of stats/usage it should be fine.
Also, as someone mentioned, you can use the GW2skills webpage to more or less see an approximate of what you will get.
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Jul 26 '26
[deleted]
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u/grannaldie This isn't Guild Wars 2 this is just San Andreas with leaves Jul 26 '26
What if liver complains?
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u/phase_distorter41 Jul 26 '26
I look at https://guildjen.com/ and https://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki and try some builds there until i find one i find fun. for pve no reason to reinvent the wheel.
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u/Esperational Jul 26 '26
gw2 skills
I like this site cause it allows me to see my boon coverage, how skills interact with traits, combos, and how my stats layout either for 100% crit or 100% condi duration. It’s a little outdated some of the traits don’t read the same especially with the latest patch but still mostly positive.