



Consider this a work in progress.



In Path of Exile, Theorycrafting is often considered synonymous with build design.



Some consider it to go further and refer specifically to optimization, and perhaps going so far as to find unique interactions that will set your build apart from others, but you can't get there without first understanding the principles that go into creating your own build.



For now, this is a very basic introduction into my process that goes into working on a build from scratch.



Without further ado, let's get into it.



You've followed a few builds now and want to get going on creating your own build and growing as a player.



The best way is to start exploring the reasoning behind why successful builds on the forum work and why the decisions guide-writers make are, or aren't, optimal, so that you can learn from them and begin to optimize your own build.



To begin, you need to understand how to go about creating your own build first, and Path of Exile is an extremely complex game where some mechanics for skills and interactions may not seem quite as obvious. But this is the basic principle you want to follow in getting started with the first stage: build design.



* Check out the gem tags. How can you scale that off the tree?

* What gems are going to be most beneficial for that particular skill, given the type of skill it is?

* Do we want to go crit, or non crit? Is low-life an option? Can I afford low-life? Are the other potential playstyle options to go for? (CI, Iron Will, etc.).

* What kind of gear affixes, or uniques, are available that might help scale this skill? (In the Fireball example, if we went crit-based, Infernal Mantle is one of the obvious choices... + gem level, 100% global crit chance).

* What bandit choices make the most sense for this particular spec and skill? Again, if we went crit, we'd take the power charge in Merciless bandits, most probably.

* What auras would be beneficial? Can you fit them? Use https://poe.mikelat.com/ -- this aura calculator to help you out.



The best way to illustrate this first stage is to run through an example.



Let's say I want to work with Fireball.



Stage One - Designing The Build's Core Fireball - "Unleashes a ball of fire towards a target which explodes, damaging nearby foes."



Alright, so it appears we have two stages to this skill: the initial impact of the hit, and then the explosive damage.



Stands to reason that if we increase the initial impact damage, we also increase the explosive damage. Alright, so what will help us with that?



By looking at the tags on the gem we can see it has "Fire, Projectile, Spell, AoE" - we've already just determined that the AoE is secondary and will scale off the initial hit damage, so let's ignore AoE and focus on the other three tags: Fire, Projectile, Spell.



Here's where a slight complication comes in, but it's fairly intuitive: fire damage is elemental damage. So we can add a "ghost" tag that we can work with! Elemental damage modifiers.



Alright, so a preliminary analysis indicates that we want Fire, Spell, Elemental and Projectile damage to help scale Fireball.



Okay, so, so a quick scan of the tree immediately eliminates Duelist and Marauder as options. Ranger initially seems like it might be okay, but there's a lot of bow-based projectile nodes there, and not a lot in the way of spell or fire damage. So we can eliminate that.



That leaves us with Scion, Witch, Templar and Shadow. Taking a closer look at Shadow, we see it has elemental damage and fire damage at the start, but spell damage is kind of a long ways off. But there's a lot of global critical strike and spell critical strike nodes nearby.



Hmmmm. So, now we need to decide: do we want to go crit, or non-crit fireball?



For the sake of simplicity for this "intro into theorycrafting," let's keep it simple and avoid critical strikes. That leaves us with Scion, Witch and Templar as seemingly good starting positions.



Alright, so non-crit fireball possibly with some reasonable access to AoE nodes. We could go Scion, but those AoE nodes don't really go anywhere... and maybe we want to spec into crit later if we don't like regular fireball? The spell damage from witch leads easily into some crit nodes so.. let's go with that, to give ourselves the option to test some stuff out.



For argument's sake let's say based on my last build I thought maybe it had a bit too low of a life total for me to be comfortable. So this time, we're going to go for 170%.



Following our logic so far and having chosen Witch, we can see we don't really want to go for the ES nodes off the start, so our obvious choice is to follow down the left branch where we have immediate access to some spell damage. And there's some fire damage right behind it, so let's follow that.



So we have some points in damage but eww, we haven't taken life yet. Good thing there's some life nodes right nearby.



Seems like we could scale more damage heading directly north, but there's this "Explosive Impact" notable that gives us some AoE and Fire Damage and it's also right next to some more life. And we're starting to have mana problems, but there's "Quick Recovery" right there which should help. Okay, let's grab those



We're doing okay on life now but... the damage is starting to feel a bit funky again. We could head to those fire damage nodes next but... them mana issues are probably going to crop up again as well. Tough call. Well, we have some mana regeneration right next to our first life branch, but maybe we can grab that a bit later. Templar has some mana regeneration we could grab as well in a pinch, and it has that Celestial Judgment thing with some penetrative damage and more life... so let's head down there first, because we can also grab some cast speed / spell damage notables all in one go.



Alright, now our mana kind of sucks, but we can fix that real quick back near our first life node and our life is poo too... Scion has a lot of life, and some mana regeneration and a jewel node on the way... so let's take that and afterwards go back to scaling our damage with Heart of Flame.



Crap, nothing else is really that close by for fire or spell damage... seems like the best option is to head over to shadow, grab a jewel node on the way, and boost our mana pool while retaining access to some life nodes like Written in Blood... sounds good. Ahh, now we're right next to more fire nodes, more life, elemental damage nodes, and even some projectile damage nodes so we'll grab those while we're here.



So where are we at now with life? Thanks to PoEBuilder, we can quickly see we have 178% increased life with 108 points. We have access to 8 points in each difficulty, but we've taken Oak in normal so that's 7+8+8 = 23 points from quests. 108-23 = 85 points that come from levels, and the first level doesn't count, so we know this is a level 86 build. Pretty achievable.



Well that's all well and fine, but now what about gems, gear, jewels? We go back to our gem tags: Fire, Spell, Projectile, AoE and our ghost tag of Elemental damage. So we go take a look at our list of available support gems and see what can benefit us.



Spell Echo seems obvious, two casts at once? Deal. Fire Penetration seems to make a lot of sense too as that's going to effectively lower the resistance of mobs when we hit them with our spell. And we probably want to try do a lot of that at once, so Faster Casting makes sense. There's our 4L. Fireball doesn't seem to have a damage effectiveness modifier on it, so any flat damage we get is going to be greatly beneficial. Added chaos might be an option, but we did pick up a bit of projectile speed on the tree and we can add some of that on jewels as well, so maybe getting some multiplicative damage with something like Slower Projectiles makes sense. And then, speaking to that damage effectiveness, we know we can get flat fire damage on wands, so we can get our flat damage there instead of on a gem slot, and that will benefit from Fire Penetration, too. Alright, so let's use Slower Projectiles and give this a whirl, maybe using Anger and Clarity for our auras so we can keep casting and add even more fire damage. - "Unleashes a ball of fire towards a target which explodes, damaging nearby foes."Alright, so it appears we have two stages to this skill: the initial impact of the hit, and then the explosive damage.Stands to reason that if we increase the initial impact damage, we also increase the explosive damage. Alright, so what will help us with that?By looking at the tags on the gem we can see it has "Fire, Projectile, Spell, AoE" - we've already just determined that the AoE is secondary and will scale off the initial hit damage, so let's ignore AoE and focus on the other three tags: Fire, Projectile, Spell.Here's where a slight complication comes in, but it's fairly intuitive: fire damage is elemental damage. So we can add a "ghost" tag that we can work with! Elemental damage modifiers.Alright, so a preliminary analysis indicates that we want Fire, Spell, Elemental and Projectile damage to help scale Fireball.Okay, so, so a quick scan of the tree immediately eliminates Duelist and Marauder as options. Ranger initially seems like it might be okay, but there's a lot of bow-based projectile nodes there, and not a lot in the way of spell or fire damage. So we can eliminate that.That leaves us with Scion, Witch, Templar and Shadow. Taking a closer look at Shadow, we see it has elemental damage and fire damage at the start, but spell damage is kind of a long ways off. But there's a lot of global critical strike and spell critical strike nodes nearby.Hmmmm. So, now we need to decide: do we want to go crit, or non-crit fireball?For the sake of simplicity for this "intro into theorycrafting," let's keep it simple and avoid critical strikes. That leaves us with Scion, Witch and Templar as seemingly good starting positions.Alright, so non-crit fireball possibly with some reasonable access to AoE nodes. We could go Scion, but those AoE nodes don't really go anywhere... and maybe we want to spec into crit later if we don't like regular fireball? The spell damage from witch leads easily into some crit nodes so.. let's go with that, to give ourselves the option to test some stuff out.For argument's sake let's say based on my last build I thought maybe it had a bit too low of a life total for me to be comfortable. So this time, we're going to go for 170%.Following our logic so far and having chosen Witch, we can see we don't really want to go for the ES nodes off the start, so our obvious choice is to follow down the left branch where we have immediate access to some spell damage. And there's some fire damage right behind it, soSo we have some points in damage but eww, we haven't taken life yet. Good thingright nearby.Seems like we could scale more damage heading directly north, but there's this "Explosive Impact" notable that gives us some AoE and Fire Damage and it's also right next to some more life. And we're starting to have mana problems, but there's "Quick Recovery" right there which should help. Okay,We're doing okay on life now but... the damage is starting to feel a bit funky again. We could head to those fire damage nodes next but... them mana issues are probably going to crop up again as well. Tough call. Well, we have some mana regeneration right next to our first life branch, but maybe we can grab that a bit later. Templar has some mana regeneration we could grab as well in a pinch, and it has that Celestial Judgment thing with some penetrative damage and more life... sofirst, because we can also grab some cast speed / spell damage notables all in one go.Alright, now our mana kind of sucks, but we can fix that real quick back near our first life node and our life is poo too... Scion has a lot of life, and some mana regeneration and a jewel node on the way...and afterwards go back towith Heart of Flame.Crap, nothing else is really that close by for fire or spell damage... seems like the best option is to head over to shadow, grab a jewel node on the way, and boost our mana pool while retaining access to some life nodes like Written in Blood.... Ahh, now we're right next toso we'll grab those while we're here.So where are we at now with life? Thanks to PoEBuilder, we can quickly see we have 178% increased life with 108 points. We have access to 8 points in each difficulty, but we've taken Oak in normal so that's 7+8+8 = 23 points from quests. 108-23 = 85 points that come from levels, and the first level doesn't count, so we know this is a level 86 build. Pretty achievable.Well that's all well and fine, but now what about gems, gear, jewels? We go back to our gem tags: Fire, Spell, Projectile, AoE and our ghost tag of Elemental damage. So we go take a look at our list ofand see what can benefit us.Spell Echo seems obvious, two casts at once? Deal. Fire Penetration seems to make a lot of sense too as that's going to effectively lower the resistance of mobs when we hit them with our spell. And we probably want to try do a lot of that at once, so Faster Casting makes sense. There's our 4L. Fireball doesn't seem to have a damage effectiveness modifier on it, so any flat damage we get is going to be greatly beneficial. Added chaos might be an option, but we did pick up a bit of projectile speed on the tree and we can add some of that on jewels as well, so maybe getting some multiplicative damage with something like Slower Projectiles makes sense. And then, speaking to that damage effectiveness, we know we can get flat fire damage on wands, so we can get our flat damage there instead of on a gem slot, and that will benefit from Fire Penetration, too. Alright, so let's use Slower Projectiles and give this a whirl, maybe using Anger and Clarity for our auras so we can keep casting and add even more fire damage.



Over time, this guide will grow into discussing optimization of your chosen build.



Ultimately the best way to get a grasp on theorycrafting is to start analysing some of the builds you've been working from and asking yourself why they make a particular decision for a gem, or a node, or a piece of gear, and why does that selection work for that particular setup instead of another? In the above example, Rat's Nest would be a waste of a helmet slot since we aren't scaling enough critical strike chance to begin with to worry about adding more on gear. In other words, Rat's Nest is not an optimal choice for how this build is currently designed.



Later, we'll get into the discussion of optimization and the inclusion of particular options that will change the build, and why those decisions are made.



For now, hopefully this helps you get a start on constructing your own builds.







Best of luck. So after a redditor asked about how to get started Theorycrafting, I replied with this and at the request of another redditor (blaugray), decided to post it here and start a Beginner's Guide: Getting Started with Theorycrafting.Consider this a work in progress.In Path of Exile, Theorycrafting is often considered synonymous with build design.Some consider it to go further and refer specifically to optimization, and perhaps going so far as to find unique interactions that will set your build apart from others, but you can't get there without first understanding the principles that go into creating your own build.For now, this is abasic introduction into my process that goes into working on a build from scratch.Without further ado, let's get into it.You've followed a few builds now and want to get going on creating your own build and growing as a player.The best way is to start exploring the reasoning behind why successful builds on the forum work and why the decisions guide-writers make are, or aren't, optimal, so that you can learn from them and begin to optimize your own build.To begin, you need to understand how to go about creating your own build first, and Path of Exile is an extremely complex game where some mechanics for skills and interactions may not seem quite as obvious. But this is the basic principle you want to follow in getting started with the first stage:* Check out the gem tags. How can you scale that off the tree?* What gems are going to be most beneficial for that particular skill, given the type of skill it is?* Do we want to go crit, or non crit? Is low-life an option? Can I afford low-life? Are the other potential playstyle options to go for? (CI, Iron Will, etc.).* What kind of gear affixes, or uniques, are available that might help scale this skill? (In the Fireball example, if we went crit-based, Infernal Mantle is one of the obvious choices... + gem level, 100% global crit chance).* What bandit choices make the most sense for this particular spec and skill? Again, if we went crit, we'd take the power charge in Merciless bandits, most probably.* What auras would be beneficial? Can you fit them? Use-- this aura calculator to help you out.The best way to illustrate this first stage is to run through an example.Let's say I want to work with Fireball.Over time, this guide will grow into discussing optimization of your chosen build.Ultimately the best way to get a grasp on theorycrafting is to start analysing some of the builds you've been working from and asking yourself why they make a particular decision for a gem, or a node, or a piece of gear, and why does that selection work for that particular setup instead of another? In the above example, Rat's Nest would be a waste of a helmet slot since we aren't scaling enough critical strike chance to begin with to worry about adding more on gear. In other words, Rat's Nest is not anfor how this build is currently designed.Later, we'll get into the discussion of optimization and the inclusion of particular options that will change the build, and why those decisions are made.For now, hopefully this helps you get a start on constructing your own builds. The PoE Offline Skill Planner and/or https://poebuilder.com/ are your friends to begin planning your trees and seeing how much of any particular enhancement you're getting (crit chance, spell damage, life, etc.).Best of luck. Jul 27, 2011 - Sept 30, 2018. Last edited by Serleth on Dec 4, 2015, 10:38:26 PM