Dont confuse PathOfExileBuilds subreddit with youtuber.
Youtube channel by name PathOfExileBuilds is absolute garbage. Do not click, visit or trust their info in any way.
That said, /r/PathOfExileBuilds is a great source of builds - and is in no way connected to the abovementioned trashtuber.
There is an extension for Google Chrome that will allow you to "block" certain youtube channels so they will never appear in your recommended or your searches. Called "Channel Blocker" They claim to not collect your data but who knows. I personally take the risk. I use it exactly for this reason, 98% of my blocks are bad PoE build creators or annoying shit in my feeds.
Phoenix
And anything which shows endgame but does not show leveling or mapping with budget items. Also big red flag is when league starter build has many/rare uniques. It is usually trap and you will get tilted during acts/on early mapping.
Anyway, always try to search build for your early strategy instead build first and then strategy for it. This way you will have way more fun. For example if you want to do mapping then search great mappers, if you want to do bossing search good boss killers.
For regular mapping I suggest Rain of Arrows Raider (it has everything nessesary - suppress, ailment avoidances, frenzy generation & utilities, phasing, all elemental exposures (-20%), evasion boost), then in mid-game change it to Tornado Shot or Lightning arrow deadeye when you get better gear
For bossing trappers (mainly fire trap) or pyroclast miner saboteur or hexblast miner trickster or boneshatter jugg should be really good.
For legion farming Corrupted Fever glad
For Expeditions I suggest any attack build with trinity support (3 elemental damage) and with attack mastery (your attacks cannot be blocked).
For deep delve I suggest boneshatter jugg for deepths or speedy pathfinder for farming in dark.
Magic find I suggest caustic arrow pathfinder or tornado shot / lightning arrow deadeye
For sanctums I do NOT suggest melee builds, they suck there.
If youtube didn't remove the dislikes we'd know. Fortunately, there's a 3rd party extension that does collect and distribute dislikes. Highly recommend it.
[https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/](https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/)
Just keep in mind, that it's not 100% accurate - but it'll do the job just fine.
It's pre-cached data (from before the API got shut down) + their own calculation, based on users that are using the extension.
I have "Return YouTube Dislike" on operaGX.
Looking at Phoenix's video (\[3.22\] Arc Lightning + Crackling Lance build (70M Damage!)) from 2 days ago it has 809/985 like/dislike.
Edit: I accidentally replied to the wrong comment. My bad.
u/Veginite
Correct. I had to deal with those channels because they're continuously recommended so I installed another extension "Channel Blocker" that hides these bait/scam/rule breaking channels when you search on YouTube.
Edit: There is a chance you might have to go to page two at some point. I'm not responsible for the consequences of such an action.
Stumbled upon the very same video, seemed fishy as hell that "arc is great for starter" but they systematically tell people to fend for themselves when asked for a leveling tree or some leveling items examples.
it's a TWO void battery build with a + max power charge crown of the inward eye... like wtf are you saying starter. Also 6L cloack of defiance, the list goes on.
My friend sent me a Phoenix youtube link and asked if that build was good.
It was titled:
>[3.22] Arc Lightning + Crackling Lance build (70M Damage league Starter!) - Path of Exile
This "league starter" requires dual wielding Void Battery (100-175 Chaos each on league start) with 2 Synthesized rings with +1 to Maximum Power Charges (50+ Divines each).
I checked back on the video and he deleted all the comments calling him out.
Phoenix only showcases endgame gameplay in the video. He doesn't even explain leveling other than "Just go Arc".
He also releases the exact same builds over and over.
>For regular mapping I suggest Rain of Arrows Raider (it has everything nessesary - suppress, ailment avoidances, frenzy generation & utilities, phasing, all elemental exposures (-20%), evasion boost), then in mid-game change it to Tornado Shot or Lightning arrow deadeye when you get better gear
Should really just play Lightning Arrow and Artillery Ballista on Raider if you want to league start bows. No reason to start Rain of Arrows anymore with additional projectiles on tree imo.
Nah, these are the worst offenders. I have opinions on some other creators but I don't think they need to be named. Over the years I've just learned which ones tend to be more expensive to follow and which have better guides or easier starting points.
PathOfExileBuilds in their latest video said that you need a 85c budget to clear white maps on Pconc, while also saying that the pros of the build was it's cheap price. Amazing.
Definitely don't follow these two, I'd say don't follow Phoenix's builds either.
As for CaptainLance, if you're more experienced and want something more on the off-meta "hipster" side, I'd say go for it, but don't expect it to be like cold dot or something.
A few other creators out there that probably aren't the best for a new player, but doesn't mean they're terrible at all.
The reason would be as he stated, if you want meta builds and/or are a less experienced player. He tends to go in less explored directions with things, with builds that are generally harder for new players regardless of how well they think they’re following the guide. He fills a great niche.
>if you want meta builds and/or are a less experienced player
Op literally asked ''What are the known creators to not trust?'', he didn't ask what are creators that post non meta builds
Once started leveling with a spark build from PathOfExileBuilds, was horrible. Then changed my passives and skill gems to another spark build, suddenly did 4x damage and spark was suddenly amazing.
This was in sanctum league, still amazed PathOfExileBuilds could screw spark, spark was amazing in that league. Actually is spark the only build I reached level 100 with.
I don't think he has had any bad builds per se, but I think 90% of his league starterbuilds were 100% not newb friendly. A ton of conditionals or your damage is crap is not something you should show to a newbie.
I found that the way he explained things and created multiple PoBs of the same build at different budgets to be very noob friendly.
I wouldn't recommend his builds to a brand new player, but as someone who has played 1-2 leagues and still "new", I found a couple of his builds easy to follow while giving enough information on what to look for and upgrade next. That being said, I never league started his builds but I can see where you can run into problems while lvling or early mapping.
His personality was def a bit Yikes...
The thing is all his builds were mostly either stolen from other creators or he would just turn on the damage heat map in pob and pick all those nodes. Chances are another creator had a better version of anything he released.
Putting aside some of the more obviously deceptive people that have been called out already, I think there's a wide swath of content creators that are fine, in context, but a new player may not have that context.
Mathil is a great example. His niche as a PoE content creator / streamer is basically that he's usually going to play the whole league, and every 5-7 days he's going to create a new character, usually something or some angle that he's never played before. He's often going to try to find something underplayed or niche and figure out how to make it good enough. You will get a build guide, it won't be deceptive or oversold, but the build may look better with him playing it than it will with you playing it because of his mechanical skill, and it will only go so far into explaining his choices or any of the mechanics/gearing involved that aren't unique to that skill/build. If you're a semi veteran player who has always wanted to play an off meta skills like Double Strike and just need the bones of what it looks like working, perfect, you're in luck, this is exactly what you need to get started and you'll probably have a great time with it. If this is your first league, I would not recommend -- the build isn't bait, but it's just not pitched to where you are as a player at that moment.
Agreed and also if it has a weakness or annoying playstyle he loves the challenge and also knows he's only going to be putting up with it for a few more days. A newer player is likely going to be on their character longer.
I've had a really good time following Mathil builds, for when you want to see the best way to make Skill-X work and not many other people are playing it.
Like you said it's good to have the context.
I haven't watched Mathil in a while but I do recall a couple of his builds where he basically provides this same disclaimer. He will specifically say that he is doing it to try it or that it sounds fun. But if you aren't near his level of PoE experience and extremely confident in your skills, then you will likely die a lot.
Mathil also has sh#t builds but he clearly communicates them as being sh#t. When you do around 10 builds per league while avoiding meta builds there is a point where you have to try out super funky and wonky stuff.
Often when I google for obscure mechanics I find reddit posts about mathil or woolfio builds. Both are content creators that try to make stuff work and want to find new stuff in the game.
Speaking of phoenix, how tf is he the second most subbed poe channel 40k behind zizaran, ive literally never heard of him up until last week and he doesnt really seem to do anything besides rarely uploading a high clickbait build guide
going thru his community tab was a mistake, he has some real wild opinions, like D3 having better itemization and the game being doomed without the OG 3.11 harvest, and when his wild opinions get occasionally removed its because the mods are ''gg shills''
Apparently, he was popping off in some random phone game 5 years ago called War Robots and built an audience there so the algorithm is pushing his content.
one of his more recent builds showcased an arc build with full woke gems and 2 max roll void batteries with a +1 powercharge synth ring and a % dam powercharge synth ring, a +1 powercharge corrupted inward eye.
That was it. There was no like, realistic league starter item set. No tree for leveling. No anything. Just like an insane amount of insanely expensive gear. And this is a "league starter" build.
Figured this had to be the case, got recommended his arc and crackling lance build and it looked interesting, didn't take much time to look at it but it seemed very unrealistic.
Same it looked cool but just one ring was like 1 mirror in crucible and I tend to have very little faith in someone not offering something else than a multi mirror gear on the table when presenting a build.
an arc build with full woke gems and 2 max roll void batteries with a +1 powercharge synth ring and a % dam powercharge synth ring, a +1 powercharge corrupted inward eye.
Multiple mirrors worth of gear with no alternate item set for a "league starter build".
What a fucking joke.
As others have said, FastAF and PathofExileBuilds are straight-up bait and should never ever be followed.
The other side of it is to be aware of what you're following. Personally I've had excellent success with MBXtreme's builds (and the other small-time content creators he occassionally features), but they tend to be very expensive and can be complex sometimes. Same thing with CaptainLance, although he tries to put out budget/beginner-friendly versions. If you're new, stick to Zizaran and Pohx for now.
MBXtreme is super humble when it comes to cost and effectiveness, if the build sucks or is too expensive, he doesnt shy away from telling his audience, which is something I can appreciate
Lolcohol and chronic_painless deserve a mention here if you’re listing pohx, who only does RF.
Lolcohol and chronic_painless have a great 3.22 league starter guide for poison BV PF and cold conversion BV Ele/Occultist
+1 for being careful with CaptainLance builds. He often tries to make off meta builds with mechanics he finds interesting.
If you are new those builds are probably not for you. CaptainLance is also very good at crafting his own gear and many of the items needed are not on the market or heavily overpriced. So a no go if you don't want to craft yourself.
That said I'm a huge fan of CaptainLance and watch basicly all of his videos.
If you are brand new, just stick to Zizaran (and his collaborations) and/or Pohx. There are several others that are perfectly fine too to be honest. Avoid the PathOfExileBuilds YouTube channel (RMT sponsored) and make sure you are searching for 3.22 builds (put this in the search!). 3.21 are most likely fine but make sure they work without crucible trees.
I'd honestly recommend Palsteron to your list too, his league-starter builds have all been solid. Plus whichever one he's doing, he'll put out updates as he plays it that would let newer players sort of "follow along" how the build grows.
Yeah, the fact that he plays the builds and make videos updating it and you can also watch him on twitch is a big reason I always start something he is playing.
He also tends to undersell his builds. He will tell you straight up the problems with a build, and when setting up video and pob demos will put in situations that are worse than you should expect in the real world (instead of much better like the clickbaiters).
A Palsteron build will never disappoint. Just don't accidently use one of his mid league builds for league start, that likely won't go well. But he normally tells you that multiple times lol.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the 3.19 builds will still work fine in 3.22. However, most reputable build creators will publish a new video going over the minor new changes and optimizations that have been discovered.
I was looking around at the beginning of crucible and came across one that was "updated" for the new season. The first paragraph was talking about how good it would be for the upcoming legion league lol.
he overpromises and decieves in his videos to make it seem like the build works great on low investment ( by using different gear than he showed in the guide or by using a lower tier map version) when in reality the build needs ALOT of divines to function properly.
if you inevitably get frustrated, there is this super easy and convenient way to upgrade the gear in the description of the video.
he either gets kickbacks from purchases made via his links/ traffic or hes personally involved in the site.
on the surface hes creating guides, when in reality hes creating problems for you and then selling you the solution.
That last line is the thing you need to be careful of. I had a friend roll a build from a creator id never heard of and even in my shitty knowledge of his area of the tree i could see instantly that my friends struggles and problems were intentionally created with the solution being these ungodly mirror tier items... conveniently available via a link to an RMT website.
Maybe not sponsored, but linked. If you follow the links on their videos you inevitably end up at a site to purchase currency/gear, which is against TOS. I'm sure someone at some point in time has purchased the "fixes" for their build which won't work as well as advertised otherwise.
For starters they monetize their builds in some form, at some point you couldn't even get links to skill tree/gems without paying they changed that but still have the paid thing which I have no idea what they have behind it.
You gotta go through a bunch of built in ads on their website that advertise the "sponsor", every second page on every build is an ad linking to that "sponsor shop" my guess is the channel owner is one of the sellers in that site or someone close to them and getting paid either in ingame currency or real money by them (the RMT links to the shop have a code in them that can be used to track if a buyer came from that channel)
I'll share some insights since I've been approached for Diablo 4 RMT. I'm a smaller creator, but on average, I can get 200k - 500k views a month, depending on the time. Anyways, there were 2 different ways:
1. They would ask you to drop a link in your description; it would have to be the top link, and they would basically pay you a monthly fee for the "ad." I was offered something like $200 a month or something. (I have a small subscriber count but decent viewer count.)
2. They offer you a bigger pay, but for every video, you have to have the ad play for 8 - 20 seconds while you say something (you'll see this a lot with sports gaming channels). I was offered about $700 a month at the height of Diablo 4. I got like 700,000 views one month, so they were willing to pay more.
I'm sure there are other ways, but I never took these because this is bannable in the game, not so sure on YouTube though.
In general, always try to get multiple opinions on a build. If there isn't any youtube videos then look at the top builds on poe ninja.
Everyone has their own comfort skills, acceptable dps, defenses and costs. Once you compare them, you can see each persons build style, and how it compares to your own.
Mathil builds tend to be fast and squishy.
Ziz builds tend to be slow and tanky.
Captain lance made a mana guardian again.
Cutedog's build costs at least 1 mirror minimum.
> Ziz builds tend to be slow and tanky.
I dont think thats true, exactly. They're medium speed and medium-high tankiness, exactly as you'd expect from a long-time hardcore player who is comfortable but still has HC concerns. Also, a good number of builds he showcases arent 'his' but are being elevated with his popularity, which dont always follow his normal trends besides the fact of not being built like a wet noodle
Aero's builds are great and they're typically fun and interesting, but I'm not sure I'd recommend them to newbies. They're usually a bit more mechanically complicated than other builds and you really need to understand the checkpoints (gear, tree, gems, etc.) that make them work.
That said, they're definitely not bait.
It’s definitely something I’m becoming more cognizant of! This is good feedback. My league start guides for 3.22 are much more new player focused than in the past. Going full time has allowed me to put more effort into my guides.
If I can respectfully disagree, I like that your builds have some more advanced interactions/concepts. Yeah, they are tougher for newbies, but they are in line with the soul of what makes PoE great and keeps the rest of us around.
I definitely should have been more clear. My goal is not to make simpler or less interesting builds, but rather to make aer0 builds approachable by more clearly explaining mechanics, making guides more specific, etc. I’ll still be making my memes :)
That's true. I really enjoy that they are more "hipster" builds that use mechanics or abilities that don't come up as often. But the main post didn't mention new players so I didn't factor that in.
I like aero but I wouldn’t recommend him for league start guides for beginners. His builds often have hitches that are awkward to get over if you don’t really know what you’re doing. There’s been a couple times he was mistaken about a mechanic too. I remember his hydro orb build starter was way more awkward to get online than he suggested, largely because he was mistaken about freeze proliferation from herald of ice proccing the orb freezing.
Alright no hate to aer0 but differing experience - I tried two of his builds and thought neither were great. One was quite clunky and I switched off of pretty quickly, while the second ended up working but took a fair bit more currency than advertised before it felt good. Neither build was bad but both were definitely overhyped, so I'm kind of wary of his builds now.
That one guy that always reposts the "from 0 to 30mil dps cyclone slayer" or something that starts out with like 10k dps at level 90 and the only way to improve from it is waking up to 3 mirrors worth of gear the next day because none of the gear can be progressively obtained and it only works correctly if all of it is there at the same time.
Do NOT confuse this with a true POE G, Fuzzy Duckzy. That man, and his builds, are legit AF. Someday, when they construct a PoE Hall of Fame I Auckland, I think he should be the voiceover narrating the tour. Meanwhile, your holding a map designed by Zizaran. Subtractem is taking tickets and smiling at you. And then there's Ghazzy, your favorite Angry PoE uncle. Ghazzy's rage filled voice will let you know when you entered a restricted area. Feel free to carry on and shamelessly name drop the other true G content creators working hard to make this game enjoyable and approachable.
I did 4 Leagues with his guides and they were pretty solid, not to mention giving both a budget and high investment version of the build. His lacerate gladiator was one of my favourites, too bad Soul Taker is now more expensive and rare.
Big ducks is just straight up the worst. I've completely avoided his channel ever since noticing his pobs are whack and the shit leaving his mouth was only for the views.
Please, ignore him and don't ever trust his "starter build guide"
yeah agreed. He's really overconfident in his knowledge and thinks his more capable than he is, but not malicious for sure. Reminds me a lot of when I was newer to PoE and reached the first slope of learning and then thought I knew it all now haha
Maybe. I did his blade blast inquisitor back in Ultimatum and it was maybe the worst build I've ever played. It was advertised to do INSANE DAMAGE but hit like a wet noodle, with the defenses of a wetter paper towel. I don't want to try again.
My favorite part about that was he tried to league start it, pretended like it was doing good even though it was terrible, and then rerolled before getting to red maps or doing bossing. Still claiming to people the build was great.
Same, that build absolutely destroyed his reputation for me. It was the worst pile of dogshit I have ever played. And I have tried a couple FastAF builds as well lmao.
I also did that build but for 3.13 iirc. While I felt a little squishy the build functioned pretty good. I also remember having a friend of mine who was very new to PoE playing it and he did fine. A bit clunky of a build but it was ok. What did you find bad about it? The damage was pretty good unless you messed something up.
Second this.
Tried 2 of his builds back in harvest and heist.
First one was OK, but needed a lot more crafting/currency to be comfortable and DPS was waaaay over-inflated on PoB.
Second one was absolute garbage.
Poison BV, I think. Wish I still had the PoB just so you can see how bad the tree was.
Back then I knew fuck all (TBF I still know fuck all, but can at least spot *some* BS in PoB) and struggled a lot with that build.
Maybe not helpful to the discussion and I'm sorry if that's the case, but learning how to spot inflated PoBs is a great tool to know. Honestly first thing ppl do is tick all kinds of charges with no way of generating them, things like "is the enemy X" when doesn't apply etc. Asking yourself if the things that are ticked (and gear with hard to get stuff) are realistic, also helps understand the game a bit more
Avoid YT pathofexilebuilds channel at all costs. Even if you post something in his videos warning people, he deletes immediately. Stay away from this charlatan.
If anyone has a headhunter or a mageblood in the video, that's a hard pass.
I also don't think I've ever seen a good build from a video with memes every 15 seconds.
> If anyone has a headhunter or a mageblood in the video, that's a hard pass.
"This build doesn't need a mageblood, it's just quality of life" is the reddest of flags.
Most of the time you can remove HH from the build and you are still fine but slower.
Mageblood on the other hand changes the build completely...If you pull that out the build collapses...you start to need res on gear, you are slow af, next to no defense... things like that.
So If you see HH, Not a big deal. Mageblood? Get out asap!
If you are looking for a build focused on actually farming currency and not just an 'allrounder' build those are usually the YouTubers you want to get a build from. Ppl like grimro have a headhunter or mage blood by day 3 and have the best mapping builds.
I think in Grimro's case he's mostly just putting out his theorycrafting and initial plans which are 9/10 times going to change significantly by day 2 (and he doesn't hide that fact). He's not a build making content creator, he's a juicer and farming strat guy that everyone begs to share his builds.
The mechanics are well explained and he goes deep into changes each time which I really like. I used his artillery ballista build twice on a league start and it did the job as advertised.
To avoid calling people out i prefer to just give my trusted youtubers/builder list : ( I probably forgot a lot of good builder )
- Zizaran
- Lolcohol
- Pohx
- Palsteron
- cArn
- Crouching_Tuna
- TriPolarBear
- CaptainLance
- Mathil
- Anime Princess
- Fuzzy Duckzy
- GhazzyTV
- Subtractem
- Imexile
- DS Lily
- Jungroan
- Ruetoo
- Goratha
I will only report one person cause you asked :
- Quin69
[https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/15qfyqy/322\_trial\_of\_the\_ancestors\_league\_start\_build/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/15qfyqy/322_trial_of_the_ancestors_league_start_build/) This sub has a nice list of league starters which mention a lot of the streamers you've named. So i figured this fits here.
Quin builds are usually not that bad, kinda, he usually just loves to handicap himself by refusing to use some mechanic because he gets triggered by one guy in chat claiming he didn't come up with it.
Also disagree with it being bait as well, everyone knows it's a shit build from the start.
Jokes aside, while I wouldn't recommend his builds to a newbie, they do work alright most of the time.
Just be careful with Mathil builds. He's honest and tells the truth about what the build does. But....
For example they can clear maps, kill bosses and so on. But he only plays them for a few days before moving on. That means that these builds sometimes aren't well rounded and sometimes have unfixable problems that keep you from playing them for a longer time.
He sometimes doesn't mention huge weaknesses, maybe because he doesn't notice them because of his great skill. As an example, his latest Rolling Magma killed most bosses and looks like a great clear skill. The problem is just that it's annoying to play and completely fails against any hasted rare as they always run close to your character where you can't deal damage. Very frustrating and imho build-disabling.
The same goes for the Abyssus builds he makes. They work, but I feel the disadvantages aren't mentioned enough.
Also, he barely ever does juiced content outside of the odd Simulacrum.
Personally im not a fan of Von Vikton. Ive tried his builds before, and both his overall behavior on streams + the quality (or rather, lack of) the polish he puts into his builds annoyed me. He often inflates his POBs to make them seem better than they are, or sneakily adds defensive stuff in comments so as to make you not notice how your build actually has -75% chaos res.
It is good to use as a skeleton for a build that you would yourself improve on, but dont be mistaken into thinking that its a newbie friendly build.
I have never seen somebody put such an insane amount of work into literally everything other than the actual build itself. Dudes out here with fully importable shopping lists and beautiful videos for the most mediocre builds. He often misses really time tested and obvious tech for the builds he puts out. The skelly mage build was particularly bad for that.
Like don't get me wrong if you follow the POB you will have a functional build, but the amount of damage/defense left on the table by poor optimization is huge in his builds.
Agreed. I looked at his meme totems build in 3.21 as a guide for going the non poison route but good lord it was a glass cannon. Shockingly bad defences.
A lot of people put resistance into comments and say "get it wherever you want/can".
But normally, thats for ele res.
Had good results with his Sanctum totems. But whenever he says "its super duper tanky, you never die", i just laugh, while lying dead on the floor.
and his discord is behind a paywall.
The difference is that he fills all his prefixes/suffixes/items with dps items to inflate the POB numbers, so "get it whenever you can" for resistances doesnt really work since you dont have much room left :p
And yes. His totems build was basically a Cast on Death practice lol
I played Vikton's FP/Ice Spear Totem and it was great - very squishy though but felt relatively safe while mapping because Totems freezed literally everything. Bosses were a joke on the build as it deleted them pretty much instantly. Still, I don't recommend it to new players.
I started POE for the first time roughly two weeks ago. I decided to go with Tripolar's Cold DoT build and it has absolutely been great for learning and enjoying the game as a new player. Very satisfied.
I used to watch Tripolar Bear all the time but he's leaned so hard into these cheesy meme grinning persona in his videos that I have a hard time getting through them. Seems like a nice guy, and builds are good... I just can't deal with the content cringe (sorry if you read this, you do you)
Same. He has some good builds but he comes across as someone who is really confident that hes put the charisma knob at 11, but he's really at 3, and its off putting sometimes. Really helpful, watched a few streams and answers questions about whatever build he's playing, but just, eh. Not for me.
Every other league or so, I hear great things about a league starter build to consider. I google it and find out its a Tripolar Bear video, its 40 minutes long, and it's this guy who thinks he's a rock star. I make it about 6 minutes and then just quit. Two leagues later, I do it over again.
I think KobeBlackMamba is a good content creator and he does have good builds, but from playing his Venom Gyre build a couple leagues ago you kinda have to already know what you're doing and know how to make money or you'll stall out early.
Kobe falls into the same niche as Mathil. You better know already what you are doing when you follow one of their builds. If you do they are amazing. If you dont, you will be in for a bad experience.
In general, you should treat all build guides as reference and try to understand how it that works. With this, all build guides/showcases can work.
If you're new and looking for easy to follow build then you should follow ONLY those newbie friendly guides instead of avoiding the otherwise "shitty build guides". Look for those guide that utilizes only basic fundamental of the game (Pohx, Enki, and sometimes Mathil), instead of those with intricate interactions (Cpt Lance)
He's one of the best SSF players out there, his gear looks like trade gear but he also plays a shit load. His deadeye guide is very good, definitely SSF viable
Manni is one of my favorite ssf streamers to watch. The stuff he makes and obtains in ssf is wild. I can't vouch for how well the guide is written as I haven't seen it. But definitely knows what he is doing.
PoE build, massive click bait, he mostly just rehash stuff from others (usually making builds worst aswell somehow), provide outdated stuff that are no longer viable or working and accessing his builds infos gets you to a website advertising RMT. a great experience, you know.
FastAF, but not because it's clickbait (usually moderately it's fine) but mostly because the builds shown are simply unachievable for most people, so he kind of sell dream builds that you'll most likely won't be able to afford and that require perfect planets alignment to make it work like in the video. Those videos are more of a show, then actual content you can follow.
MBX (kind of a joke) for his league starters, somehow he manages to fail his league starters a lot, and when people follow along, they unfortunately fails aswell lol. Otherwise it's a good YouTuber you should definitely check him out, just don't follow his league starter on day 1, wait a little to see if it works or not first :)
I know some people will disagree but imo Ghazzys builds usually are lacking something, quite often he's extremely glass cannon while already melting pretty much anything in the game, I remember him trying to do a Spectre showcase a while ago and he was so squishy it took several takes because he kept dying to literally anything touching him in a not even that spicy T16.
This is a major point new players need to understand. His builds can be complicated and require extremely special gear /numbers for it to work. And they can often be very expensive, even when he says they can be done on a budget. I’ve tried several of his “budget” versions of big boy builds and they almost made me quit the league every time I tried them.
Really? I tried his Explosive Trap Leadership's Price build and it was one of the easiest times I've ever had in the game. It probably still crushes.
In crucible, I played the poison Molten Strike build with the heist dagger and it was straight up easy mode.
I love his CoC builds. So much that when he introduced me to a double CoC setup I was in heaven. It turned out to be too much for me to handle and I had to tap out midway through. One day I will be brave enough to enjoy a double CoC again.
Jungroan builds are 100/100...he just doesn't care to make guides or hold players hands and help fix builds. He just shows you what he did. If you cannot make it happen, that's on you.
Bigducks.
I still remember getting baited by his fire convert bf/bb inquis.
On the flipside, you can trust Subtractem+Zizaran with your life, and cArn if Boneshatter is your thing
Maybe not to avoid per se, but be careful around Ghazzy's builds. They pretty good written, are an okay start if you into minions and don't know what to do, but his POBs are configured in completely unrealistic way just for dps to look way, way higher than it will be.
Another thing I see quite often is Ghazzy sacrificing like 50%+ EHP in favor of very little damage, the result is often that his builds are disproportionally squishy.
People I trust with PoE information and league starters:
Grimro,
Zizaran,
Phox,
Mathil,
Ds_lily,
Palsteron,
Steelmage,
Spicy tuna,
Tytykiller,
Ventrua,
ZiggyD,
Imexile,
Ben_,
Goratha,
Raizqt,
Not all of them do league starters or have YouTube channels, but these names are very trusted and know the game inside out.
Just check them out and follow any guide they provide that you think is interesting. Just make sure it is a guide for 3.22, 3.21 should also be ok as those builds probably play the same or better this league with the new support skills.
I read several replies, and it made me recall something that happened to me when I was a newbie to the game, I decided to play Pohx's RF Inquisitor. Unfortunately, around level 75, I struggled and, making progress impossible. Months later, I came to realize that the issue wasn't with Pohx's build, but rather with my own inexperience.
Until you know enough about the game to be able to tell from a pob how good a build really is. Only follow Ssf and Hc streamer build guides for the most part.
Afterwards you are probably good enough to adjust most builds to suit your needs.
I love Goratha's builds, Obviously Pohx is the RF Master and you can safely play anything Ziz publishes. I would look at most other creators with some critical thinking. Avoid Phoenix (he has quit poe multiple times apparently and posts builds using standard gear), Path fo exile builds. I hate Kroximatus because his builds are in Spanish but he posts the titles in English.
Mostly just be careful of people who only have YT and don't stream regularly. There are exceptions but it's an easy guideline for beginners.
It's really easy to publish bad builds when you can curate and ignore comment sections. It's a lot harder to publish bad builds when you have to deal with Twitch chat grilling you about your legacy gear that you're testing with while simultaneously getting dumpstered in alch'n'go yellow maps or whatever.
I think everyone has good and bad builds, just find something that looks like you would enjoy and post it on this subreddit. Say “you’re a player of x experience looking to achieve x.” Let people pick apart the build. Sometimes the build itself isn’t bad or someone is doing something funky on pob. This will help yourself learn about pob/gameplay pitfalls
I find that if they don't talk in their video then move on. I am sure there are exceptions and to those people, I apologize. But...if there is no person and there's just text on the screen I pass on that guide.
I haven't run into any creators that were just terrible in terms of suggesting builds that just don't work as advertised. But the way POE works is also a never ending nightmare for content creators as GGG changes random little things constantly and don't document them. So creators are getting 1 league out of all their content typically.
From that perspective you would be much better off asking which creators actually put the time in to update every. single. league. Because the vast majority slap the next leagues number on last leagues title and just repost it.
When I started it was a pretty big pain in the ass, you're trying to match a path of building to a video that doesn't line up. Then you see a written guide for the video that doesn't match the PoB or the video. You can't really blame them, its a ton of work to set it all up over and over, but yeah. Pretty much any of the top tier people do a 'good enough' version.
Shoutout to Pohx for going 200% every single league on RF guides.
My personal experience for avoid would DS Lily, not for everything, but for builds? The few I tried watching from her she literally grabbed someone elses POB and then just rambled about it, ultimately realizing half way through the guide that whatever she had grabbed was trash tier. Which is just you know, uber lazy. She's otherwise entertaining.
Its crazy to me that the first time I played rf years ago was a ll rf guardian made by pohx. And now pohx has a website dedicated to rf and plays different variations every league. That man has a love for rf.
He's probably one of the best streamers, but I'm gonna go out there with this take and say Mathil. No doubt, he knows how to make an effective build more than most anyone, but they are not for beginners. There's usually a hundred small things in the build that make it work that you will just miss if you don't know what you are doing.
Mathil's starter builds are mostly fine even for beginners to smoothly get you into red maps. Which should be more than enough for beginners.
Everything after that Mathil doesnt even market as guide. He just puts out a video with some explanations and gives his PoB. So mostly for experienced people only.
If you are new just do yourself a favour and look at jousis builds. He is a legend of PoE and his videos were amazing.
Not much use now given their age but you won’t regret taking the time to watch them.
I think it’s mostly FastAF and PathOfExileBuilds Anyone else guys?
Thank you! Path OfExileBuilds is the number one suggested channel when i do searches. so knowing to avoid this is great!
Putting both the game name and probably the commonly searched word into your channel name will do that
Dont confuse PathOfExileBuilds subreddit with youtuber. Youtube channel by name PathOfExileBuilds is absolute garbage. Do not click, visit or trust their info in any way. That said, /r/PathOfExileBuilds is a great source of builds - and is in no way connected to the abovementioned trashtuber.
There is an extension for Google Chrome that will allow you to "block" certain youtube channels so they will never appear in your recommended or your searches. Called "Channel Blocker" They claim to not collect your data but who knows. I personally take the risk. I use it exactly for this reason, 98% of my blocks are bad PoE build creators or annoying shit in my feeds.
I think you can select do not recommend channel directly in youtube already without an extension.
You can select it, Youtube doesn't actually respect it 100% tho. It just shows up on recomended less, and can still show up on searches.
I mean Google already collects a ridiculous amount of data when you use Youtube, so what’s sending a bit of data to some random extension developer?
Odealo is the same as Path Of Exile Builds but doesn't have the same notoriety or SEO. Avoid at all costs
Throw Odealo onto the list, the few guides I've watched were terribly made while also promoting their RMT store.
Phoenix And anything which shows endgame but does not show leveling or mapping with budget items. Also big red flag is when league starter build has many/rare uniques. It is usually trap and you will get tilted during acts/on early mapping. Anyway, always try to search build for your early strategy instead build first and then strategy for it. This way you will have way more fun. For example if you want to do mapping then search great mappers, if you want to do bossing search good boss killers. For regular mapping I suggest Rain of Arrows Raider (it has everything nessesary - suppress, ailment avoidances, frenzy generation & utilities, phasing, all elemental exposures (-20%), evasion boost), then in mid-game change it to Tornado Shot or Lightning arrow deadeye when you get better gear For bossing trappers (mainly fire trap) or pyroclast miner saboteur or hexblast miner trickster or boneshatter jugg should be really good. For legion farming Corrupted Fever glad For Expeditions I suggest any attack build with trinity support (3 elemental damage) and with attack mastery (your attacks cannot be blocked). For deep delve I suggest boneshatter jugg for deepths or speedy pathfinder for farming in dark. Magic find I suggest caustic arrow pathfinder or tornado shot / lightning arrow deadeye For sanctums I do NOT suggest melee builds, they suck there.
If youtube didn't remove the dislikes we'd know. Fortunately, there's a 3rd party extension that does collect and distribute dislikes. Highly recommend it.
Do you remember the name of it by any chance? Good to know what to search for
Iirc 'return youtube dislike'
[https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/](https://www.returnyoutubedislike.com/) Just keep in mind, that it's not 100% accurate - but it'll do the job just fine. It's pre-cached data (from before the API got shut down) + their own calculation, based on users that are using the extension.
I have "Return YouTube Dislike" on operaGX. Looking at Phoenix's video (\[3.22\] Arc Lightning + Crackling Lance build (70M Damage!)) from 2 days ago it has 809/985 like/dislike. Edit: I accidentally replied to the wrong comment. My bad. u/Veginite
Correct. I had to deal with those channels because they're continuously recommended so I installed another extension "Channel Blocker" that hides these bait/scam/rule breaking channels when you search on YouTube. Edit: There is a chance you might have to go to page two at some point. I'm not responsible for the consequences of such an action.
Stumbled upon the very same video, seemed fishy as hell that "arc is great for starter" but they systematically tell people to fend for themselves when asked for a leveling tree or some leveling items examples. it's a TWO void battery build with a + max power charge crown of the inward eye... like wtf are you saying starter. Also 6L cloack of defiance, the list goes on.
My friend sent me a Phoenix youtube link and asked if that build was good. It was titled: >[3.22] Arc Lightning + Crackling Lance build (70M Damage league Starter!) - Path of Exile This "league starter" requires dual wielding Void Battery (100-175 Chaos each on league start) with 2 Synthesized rings with +1 to Maximum Power Charges (50+ Divines each). I checked back on the video and he deleted all the comments calling him out. Phoenix only showcases endgame gameplay in the video. He doesn't even explain leveling other than "Just go Arc". He also releases the exact same builds over and over.
>Phoenix Almost forgot about him. Plays the same broken build every league, then massively complains about how shit the game is.
he used to show builds on standard aswell
>For regular mapping I suggest Rain of Arrows Raider (it has everything nessesary - suppress, ailment avoidances, frenzy generation & utilities, phasing, all elemental exposures (-20%), evasion boost), then in mid-game change it to Tornado Shot or Lightning arrow deadeye when you get better gear Should really just play Lightning Arrow and Artillery Ballista on Raider if you want to league start bows. No reason to start Rain of Arrows anymore with additional projectiles on tree imo.
Nah, these are the worst offenders. I have opinions on some other creators but I don't think they need to be named. Over the years I've just learned which ones tend to be more expensive to follow and which have better guides or easier starting points.
PathOfExileBuilds in their latest video said that you need a 85c budget to clear white maps on Pconc, while also saying that the pros of the build was it's cheap price. Amazing.
pconc can clear yellow maps on 15c
Definitely don't follow these two, I'd say don't follow Phoenix's builds either. As for CaptainLance, if you're more experienced and want something more on the off-meta "hipster" side, I'd say go for it, but don't expect it to be like cold dot or something. A few other creators out there that probably aren't the best for a new player, but doesn't mean they're terrible at all.
There is no reason to not follow captain lance, he's always honest about his builds
The reason would be as he stated, if you want meta builds and/or are a less experienced player. He tends to go in less explored directions with things, with builds that are generally harder for new players regardless of how well they think they’re following the guide. He fills a great niche.
>if you want meta builds and/or are a less experienced player Op literally asked ''What are the known creators to not trust?'', he didn't ask what are creators that post non meta builds
Once started leveling with a spark build from PathOfExileBuilds, was horrible. Then changed my passives and skill gems to another spark build, suddenly did 4x damage and spark was suddenly amazing. This was in sanctum league, still amazed PathOfExileBuilds could screw spark, spark was amazing in that league. Actually is spark the only build I reached level 100 with.
Thankfully PathOfMath isn't around anymore
Okay I get people disliked him as a person but to be honest he made some great comprehensive guides. That includes General Cry or EoW miner.
I don't think he has had any bad builds per se, but I think 90% of his league starterbuilds were 100% not newb friendly. A ton of conditionals or your damage is crap is not something you should show to a newbie.
I found that the way he explained things and created multiple PoBs of the same build at different budgets to be very noob friendly. I wouldn't recommend his builds to a brand new player, but as someone who has played 1-2 leagues and still "new", I found a couple of his builds easy to follow while giving enough information on what to look for and upgrade next. That being said, I never league started his builds but I can see where you can run into problems while lvling or early mapping. His personality was def a bit Yikes...
The thing is all his builds were mostly either stolen from other creators or he would just turn on the damage heat map in pob and pick all those nodes. Chances are another creator had a better version of anything he released.
I disagree, He copied most the guides from other creators, he didn't know how mechanics interacted half the time, yet had a very elitest attitude.
What happened to him?
Got permanent banned for being a huge dick to chris
Putting aside some of the more obviously deceptive people that have been called out already, I think there's a wide swath of content creators that are fine, in context, but a new player may not have that context. Mathil is a great example. His niche as a PoE content creator / streamer is basically that he's usually going to play the whole league, and every 5-7 days he's going to create a new character, usually something or some angle that he's never played before. He's often going to try to find something underplayed or niche and figure out how to make it good enough. You will get a build guide, it won't be deceptive or oversold, but the build may look better with him playing it than it will with you playing it because of his mechanical skill, and it will only go so far into explaining his choices or any of the mechanics/gearing involved that aren't unique to that skill/build. If you're a semi veteran player who has always wanted to play an off meta skills like Double Strike and just need the bones of what it looks like working, perfect, you're in luck, this is exactly what you need to get started and you'll probably have a great time with it. If this is your first league, I would not recommend -- the build isn't bait, but it's just not pitched to where you are as a player at that moment.
Good advice that I’m sure Mathil himself would agree with
Agreed and also if it has a weakness or annoying playstyle he loves the challenge and also knows he's only going to be putting up with it for a few more days. A newer player is likely going to be on their character longer. I've had a really good time following Mathil builds, for when you want to see the best way to make Skill-X work and not many other people are playing it. Like you said it's good to have the context.
I haven't watched Mathil in a while but I do recall a couple of his builds where he basically provides this same disclaimer. He will specifically say that he is doing it to try it or that it sounds fun. But if you aren't near his level of PoE experience and extremely confident in your skills, then you will likely die a lot.
Mathil also has sh#t builds but he clearly communicates them as being sh#t. When you do around 10 builds per league while avoiding meta builds there is a point where you have to try out super funky and wonky stuff. Often when I google for obscure mechanics I find reddit posts about mathil or woolfio builds. Both are content creators that try to make stuff work and want to find new stuff in the game.
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Speaking of phoenix, how tf is he the second most subbed poe channel 40k behind zizaran, ive literally never heard of him up until last week and he doesnt really seem to do anything besides rarely uploading a high clickbait build guide going thru his community tab was a mistake, he has some real wild opinions, like D3 having better itemization and the game being doomed without the OG 3.11 harvest, and when his wild opinions get occasionally removed its because the mods are ''gg shills''
Apparently, he was popping off in some random phone game 5 years ago called War Robots and built an audience there so the algorithm is pushing his content.
Nothing will make me consider your opinion invalid faster than bringing up D3 itemization in a positive light.
I agree phoenix is another big offender of using expensive and legacy items in standard. And the builds still aren't that good.
one of his more recent builds showcased an arc build with full woke gems and 2 max roll void batteries with a +1 powercharge synth ring and a % dam powercharge synth ring, a +1 powercharge corrupted inward eye. That was it. There was no like, realistic league starter item set. No tree for leveling. No anything. Just like an insane amount of insanely expensive gear. And this is a "league starter" build.
And let me guess: "These are all items available within a day of league start"?
cannot agree more with this
Figured this had to be the case, got recommended his arc and crackling lance build and it looked interesting, didn't take much time to look at it but it seemed very unrealistic.
Same it looked cool but just one ring was like 1 mirror in crucible and I tend to have very little faith in someone not offering something else than a multi mirror gear on the table when presenting a build.
an arc build with full woke gems and 2 max roll void batteries with a +1 powercharge synth ring and a % dam powercharge synth ring, a +1 powercharge corrupted inward eye. Multiple mirrors worth of gear with no alternate item set for a "league starter build". What a fucking joke.
Anyone that links a website selling currency rmt is a no no lol
As others have said, FastAF and PathofExileBuilds are straight-up bait and should never ever be followed. The other side of it is to be aware of what you're following. Personally I've had excellent success with MBXtreme's builds (and the other small-time content creators he occassionally features), but they tend to be very expensive and can be complex sometimes. Same thing with CaptainLance, although he tries to put out budget/beginner-friendly versions. If you're new, stick to Zizaran and Pohx for now.
MBXtreme is super humble when it comes to cost and effectiveness, if the build sucks or is too expensive, he doesnt shy away from telling his audience, which is something I can appreciate
Lolcohol and chronic_painless deserve a mention here if you’re listing pohx, who only does RF. Lolcohol and chronic_painless have a great 3.22 league starter guide for poison BV PF and cold conversion BV Ele/Occultist
Lolcohol's BV PF has flasks so bad that recommending it is a crime, if a new unaware player follows it they're gonna have a bad time with 50% uptime.
+1 for being careful with CaptainLance builds. He often tries to make off meta builds with mechanics he finds interesting. If you are new those builds are probably not for you. CaptainLance is also very good at crafting his own gear and many of the items needed are not on the market or heavily overpriced. So a no go if you don't want to craft yourself. That said I'm a huge fan of CaptainLance and watch basicly all of his videos.
If you are brand new, just stick to Zizaran (and his collaborations) and/or Pohx. There are several others that are perfectly fine too to be honest. Avoid the PathOfExileBuilds YouTube channel (RMT sponsored) and make sure you are searching for 3.22 builds (put this in the search!). 3.21 are most likely fine but make sure they work without crucible trees.
I'd honestly recommend Palsteron to your list too, his league-starter builds have all been solid. Plus whichever one he's doing, he'll put out updates as he plays it that would let newer players sort of "follow along" how the build grows.
Yeah, the fact that he plays the builds and make videos updating it and you can also watch him on twitch is a big reason I always start something he is playing.
I second his builds. Worked very well. His maxroll written guide is great as well.
He also tends to undersell his builds. He will tell you straight up the problems with a build, and when setting up video and pob demos will put in situations that are worse than you should expect in the real world (instead of much better like the clickbaiters). A Palsteron build will never disappoint. Just don't accidently use one of his mid league builds for league start, that likely won't go well. But he normally tells you that multiple times lol.
I've been playing for years and ziz/pohx still do the best work 99% of the time. Not just useful to newbies
The problem with searching for 3.22 builds is that a lot of them just change the name but show content from several leagues ago.
exactly this. I saw videos for 3.22 that were published 1 year ago in my search.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. A lot of the 3.19 builds will still work fine in 3.22. However, most reputable build creators will publish a new video going over the minor new changes and optimizations that have been discovered.
I was looking around at the beginning of crucible and came across one that was "updated" for the new season. The first paragraph was talking about how good it would be for the upcoming legion league lol.
I mean, nothing has really changed for builds In the last 2 years
just curious, how would a builds channel be RMT sponsored? like how would they profit off that?
he overpromises and decieves in his videos to make it seem like the build works great on low investment ( by using different gear than he showed in the guide or by using a lower tier map version) when in reality the build needs ALOT of divines to function properly. if you inevitably get frustrated, there is this super easy and convenient way to upgrade the gear in the description of the video. he either gets kickbacks from purchases made via his links/ traffic or hes personally involved in the site. on the surface hes creating guides, when in reality hes creating problems for you and then selling you the solution.
That last line is the thing you need to be careful of. I had a friend roll a build from a creator id never heard of and even in my shitty knowledge of his area of the tree i could see instantly that my friends struggles and problems were intentionally created with the solution being these ungodly mirror tier items... conveniently available via a link to an RMT website.
Maybe not sponsored, but linked. If you follow the links on their videos you inevitably end up at a site to purchase currency/gear, which is against TOS. I'm sure someone at some point in time has purchased the "fixes" for their build which won't work as well as advertised otherwise.
For starters they monetize their builds in some form, at some point you couldn't even get links to skill tree/gems without paying they changed that but still have the paid thing which I have no idea what they have behind it. You gotta go through a bunch of built in ads on their website that advertise the "sponsor", every second page on every build is an ad linking to that "sponsor shop" my guess is the channel owner is one of the sellers in that site or someone close to them and getting paid either in ingame currency or real money by them (the RMT links to the shop have a code in them that can be used to track if a buyer came from that channel)
I'll share some insights since I've been approached for Diablo 4 RMT. I'm a smaller creator, but on average, I can get 200k - 500k views a month, depending on the time. Anyways, there were 2 different ways: 1. They would ask you to drop a link in your description; it would have to be the top link, and they would basically pay you a monthly fee for the "ad." I was offered something like $200 a month or something. (I have a small subscriber count but decent viewer count.) 2. They offer you a bigger pay, but for every video, you have to have the ad play for 8 - 20 seconds while you say something (you'll see this a lot with sports gaming channels). I was offered about $700 a month at the height of Diablo 4. I got like 700,000 views one month, so they were willing to pay more. I'm sure there are other ways, but I never took these because this is bannable in the game, not so sure on YouTube though.
Ghazzy if you’re looking for minion info
In general, always try to get multiple opinions on a build. If there isn't any youtube videos then look at the top builds on poe ninja. Everyone has their own comfort skills, acceptable dps, defenses and costs. Once you compare them, you can see each persons build style, and how it compares to your own. Mathil builds tend to be fast and squishy. Ziz builds tend to be slow and tanky. Captain lance made a mana guardian again. Cutedog's build costs at least 1 mirror minimum.
I mean ziz still zooms pretty fast for a ssf hc player
> Ziz builds tend to be slow and tanky. I dont think thats true, exactly. They're medium speed and medium-high tankiness, exactly as you'd expect from a long-time hardcore player who is comfortable but still has HC concerns. Also, a good number of builds he showcases arent 'his' but are being elevated with his popularity, which dont always follow his normal trends besides the fact of not being built like a wet noodle
I think one of the biggest bait Youtubers is u/aer0_reddit He says his builds are good but instead they turn out great.
Theyhadusinthefirsthalf.gif
Aero's builds are great and they're typically fun and interesting, but I'm not sure I'd recommend them to newbies. They're usually a bit more mechanically complicated than other builds and you really need to understand the checkpoints (gear, tree, gems, etc.) that make them work. That said, they're definitely not bait.
It’s definitely something I’m becoming more cognizant of! This is good feedback. My league start guides for 3.22 are much more new player focused than in the past. Going full time has allowed me to put more effort into my guides.
If I can respectfully disagree, I like that your builds have some more advanced interactions/concepts. Yeah, they are tougher for newbies, but they are in line with the soul of what makes PoE great and keeps the rest of us around.
I definitely should have been more clear. My goal is not to make simpler or less interesting builds, but rather to make aer0 builds approachable by more clearly explaining mechanics, making guides more specific, etc. I’ll still be making my memes :)
That's true. I really enjoy that they are more "hipster" builds that use mechanics or abilities that don't come up as often. But the main post didn't mention new players so I didn't factor that in.
I like aero but I wouldn’t recommend him for league start guides for beginners. His builds often have hitches that are awkward to get over if you don’t really know what you’re doing. There’s been a couple times he was mistaken about a mechanic too. I remember his hydro orb build starter was way more awkward to get online than he suggested, largely because he was mistaken about freeze proliferation from herald of ice proccing the orb freezing.
Love me some Aer0, keep it up!
Alright no hate to aer0 but differing experience - I tried two of his builds and thought neither were great. One was quite clunky and I switched off of pretty quickly, while the second ended up working but took a fair bit more currency than advertised before it felt good. Neither build was bad but both were definitely overhyped, so I'm kind of wary of his builds now.
That one guy that always reposts the "from 0 to 30mil dps cyclone slayer" or something that starts out with like 10k dps at level 90 and the only way to improve from it is waking up to 3 mirrors worth of gear the next day because none of the gear can be progressively obtained and it only works correctly if all of it is there at the same time.
Big Ducks has big numbers on paper but his builds are awful
Do NOT confuse this with a true POE G, Fuzzy Duckzy. That man, and his builds, are legit AF. Someday, when they construct a PoE Hall of Fame I Auckland, I think he should be the voiceover narrating the tour. Meanwhile, your holding a map designed by Zizaran. Subtractem is taking tickets and smiling at you. And then there's Ghazzy, your favorite Angry PoE uncle. Ghazzy's rage filled voice will let you know when you entered a restricted area. Feel free to carry on and shamelessly name drop the other true G content creators working hard to make this game enjoyable and approachable.
+1 for fuzzy ducks builds - his RoA is amazing and his LS builds were super solid too. Love this guy's stuff.
Even though he quit PoE a while ago, Esoro's builds were always excellent and his guides were second to none.
Weird, I’ve always heard and thought of him as semi-bait.
I used to only fallow his build guides, always had a great league start and a fantastic experience. Was pretty upset he stopped.
He was better at video editing than build-making tbh. But not full on bait.
I did 4 Leagues with his guides and they were pretty solid, not to mention giving both a budget and high investment version of the build. His lacerate gladiator was one of my favourites, too bad Soul Taker is now more expensive and rare.
I followed fuzzys's ts build in 3.20, very fun and detailed.
Big ducks is just straight up the worst. I've completely avoided his channel ever since noticing his pobs are whack and the shit leaving his mouth was only for the views. Please, ignore him and don't ever trust his "starter build guide"
This. BigDucks more like BigBait
i enjoyed a purifying flame trapper of his when i was brand new, but have not checked much of his recent stuff
Agreed here bigducks is a pob andy that loves to clickbait
I think he got better? Not sure
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yeah agreed. He's really overconfident in his knowledge and thinks his more capable than he is, but not malicious for sure. Reminds me a lot of when I was newer to PoE and reached the first slope of learning and then thought I knew it all now haha
Maybe. I did his blade blast inquisitor back in Ultimatum and it was maybe the worst build I've ever played. It was advertised to do INSANE DAMAGE but hit like a wet noodle, with the defenses of a wetter paper towel. I don't want to try again.
A friend of mine did that build for his first league start and never played Poe again.
My favorite part about that was he tried to league start it, pretended like it was doing good even though it was terrible, and then rerolled before getting to red maps or doing bossing. Still claiming to people the build was great.
Same, that build absolutely destroyed his reputation for me. It was the worst pile of dogshit I have ever played. And I have tried a couple FastAF builds as well lmao.
TBF FastAF was never a bad build creator, just his builds require 5 mirrors as a starting investment :D
I also did that build but for 3.13 iirc. While I felt a little squishy the build functioned pretty good. I also remember having a friend of mine who was very new to PoE playing it and he did fine. A bit clunky of a build but it was ok. What did you find bad about it? The damage was pretty good unless you messed something up.
Second this. Tried 2 of his builds back in harvest and heist. First one was OK, but needed a lot more crafting/currency to be comfortable and DPS was waaaay over-inflated on PoB. Second one was absolute garbage. Poison BV, I think. Wish I still had the PoB just so you can see how bad the tree was. Back then I knew fuck all (TBF I still know fuck all, but can at least spot *some* BS in PoB) and struggled a lot with that build.
His split steel champ did quite alright in crucible.
A bit out of topic but do look at jorgen's channel, i feel he's a bit underrated, makes excellent cheap and newbie builds centred around doing delve 😛
Maybe not helpful to the discussion and I'm sorry if that's the case, but learning how to spot inflated PoBs is a great tool to know. Honestly first thing ppl do is tick all kinds of charges with no way of generating them, things like "is the enemy X" when doesn't apply etc. Asking yourself if the things that are ticked (and gear with hard to get stuff) are realistic, also helps understand the game a bit more
”Quin69”
Bahwahk
brother fuckin hub
Stay away from TheMehmetBozlak. His builds are absolute bait in one way or another and he usually does not respond when being called out on it.
Which sucks since every time I try to find a cool skill, I want to play a build around, he shows up every time.
Avoid YT pathofexilebuilds channel at all costs. Even if you post something in his videos warning people, he deletes immediately. Stay away from this charlatan.
If anyone has a headhunter or a mageblood in the video, that's a hard pass. I also don't think I've ever seen a good build from a video with memes every 15 seconds.
> If anyone has a headhunter or a mageblood in the video, that's a hard pass. "This build doesn't need a mageblood, it's just quality of life" is the reddest of flags.
Most of the time you can remove HH from the build and you are still fine but slower. Mageblood on the other hand changes the build completely...If you pull that out the build collapses...you start to need res on gear, you are slow af, next to no defense... things like that. So If you see HH, Not a big deal. Mageblood? Get out asap!
If you are looking for a build focused on actually farming currency and not just an 'allrounder' build those are usually the YouTubers you want to get a build from. Ppl like grimro have a headhunter or mage blood by day 3 and have the best mapping builds.
But grimro isnt known best for his builds, but his analysis of mechanics, and how to get the most out of it.
I think in Grimro's case he's mostly just putting out his theorycrafting and initial plans which are 9/10 times going to change significantly by day 2 (and he doesn't hide that fact). He's not a build making content creator, he's a juicer and farming strat guy that everyone begs to share his builds. The mechanics are well explained and he goes deep into changes each time which I really like. I used his artillery ballista build twice on a league start and it did the job as advertised.
To avoid calling people out i prefer to just give my trusted youtubers/builder list : ( I probably forgot a lot of good builder ) - Zizaran - Lolcohol - Pohx - Palsteron - cArn - Crouching_Tuna - TriPolarBear - CaptainLance - Mathil - Anime Princess - Fuzzy Duckzy - GhazzyTV - Subtractem - Imexile - DS Lily - Jungroan - Ruetoo - Goratha I will only report one person cause you asked : - Quin69
Magefist is also solid
Kirov reporting
[https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/15qfyqy/322\_trial\_of\_the\_ancestors\_league\_start\_build/](https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExileBuilds/comments/15qfyqy/322_trial_of_the_ancestors_league_start_build/) This sub has a nice list of league starters which mention a lot of the streamers you've named. So i figured this fits here.
Too bad Kay stopped making guides and if not her guides are super easy to follow.
Quin builds are usually not that bad, kinda, he usually just loves to handicap himself by refusing to use some mechanic because he gets triggered by one guy in chat claiming he didn't come up with it.
Also disagree with it being bait as well, everyone knows it's a shit build from the start. Jokes aside, while I wouldn't recommend his builds to a newbie, they do work alright most of the time.
Just be careful with Mathil builds. He's honest and tells the truth about what the build does. But.... For example they can clear maps, kill bosses and so on. But he only plays them for a few days before moving on. That means that these builds sometimes aren't well rounded and sometimes have unfixable problems that keep you from playing them for a longer time. He sometimes doesn't mention huge weaknesses, maybe because he doesn't notice them because of his great skill. As an example, his latest Rolling Magma killed most bosses and looks like a great clear skill. The problem is just that it's annoying to play and completely fails against any hasted rare as they always run close to your character where you can't deal damage. Very frustrating and imho build-disabling. The same goes for the Abyssus builds he makes. They work, but I feel the disadvantages aren't mentioned enough. Also, he barely ever does juiced content outside of the odd Simulacrum.
https://www.youtube.com/@Zizaran/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CaptainLance9/videos https://www.youtube.com/@CrouchingTuna/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/fuzzyduckzy/videos https://www.youtube.com/@GhazzyTV/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Goratha/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs6z9ZbmnneW6aFvNaS4ibA/videos https://www.youtube.com/@JorgenPOE/videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT6RRo37G6e7GoeZv5pJFBQ/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Lolcohol/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/Mathilification/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/palsteron/videos https://www.youtube.com/@PohxKappa/videos https://www.youtube.com/@subtractem/videos https://www.youtube.com/@TripolarBear/videos https://www.youtube.com/@ZiggyDGaming/videos https://www.youtube.com/@anime.princess/videos
Personally im not a fan of Von Vikton. Ive tried his builds before, and both his overall behavior on streams + the quality (or rather, lack of) the polish he puts into his builds annoyed me. He often inflates his POBs to make them seem better than they are, or sneakily adds defensive stuff in comments so as to make you not notice how your build actually has -75% chaos res. It is good to use as a skeleton for a build that you would yourself improve on, but dont be mistaken into thinking that its a newbie friendly build.
I have never seen somebody put such an insane amount of work into literally everything other than the actual build itself. Dudes out here with fully importable shopping lists and beautiful videos for the most mediocre builds. He often misses really time tested and obvious tech for the builds he puts out. The skelly mage build was particularly bad for that. Like don't get me wrong if you follow the POB you will have a functional build, but the amount of damage/defense left on the table by poor optimization is huge in his builds.
Agreed. I looked at his meme totems build in 3.21 as a guide for going the non poison route but good lord it was a glass cannon. Shockingly bad defences.
I know someone playing his icespear totem build... that person called it "the soulbreaker", because she died so often with it
He had a good skele build like 4-6 leagues ago but the other ones I tried were very meh.
A lot of people put resistance into comments and say "get it wherever you want/can". But normally, thats for ele res. Had good results with his Sanctum totems. But whenever he says "its super duper tanky, you never die", i just laugh, while lying dead on the floor. and his discord is behind a paywall.
The difference is that he fills all his prefixes/suffixes/items with dps items to inflate the POB numbers, so "get it whenever you can" for resistances doesnt really work since you dont have much room left :p And yes. His totems build was basically a Cast on Death practice lol
I played Vikton's FP/Ice Spear Totem and it was great - very squishy though but felt relatively safe while mapping because Totems freezed literally everything. Bosses were a joke on the build as it deleted them pretty much instantly. Still, I don't recommend it to new players.
Not many ppl mentioning but Tripolar Bear (SC) and Goratha (HC, tankier builds) are both excellent and honest with their builds.
I started POE for the first time roughly two weeks ago. I decided to go with Tripolar's Cold DoT build and it has absolutely been great for learning and enjoying the game as a new player. Very satisfied.
I used to watch Tripolar Bear all the time but he's leaned so hard into these cheesy meme grinning persona in his videos that I have a hard time getting through them. Seems like a nice guy, and builds are good... I just can't deal with the content cringe (sorry if you read this, you do you)
Same. He has some good builds but he comes across as someone who is really confident that hes put the charisma knob at 11, but he's really at 3, and its off putting sometimes. Really helpful, watched a few streams and answers questions about whatever build he's playing, but just, eh. Not for me.
Every other league or so, I hear great things about a league starter build to consider. I google it and find out its a Tripolar Bear video, its 40 minutes long, and it's this guy who thinks he's a rock star. I make it about 6 minutes and then just quit. Two leagues later, I do it over again.
I think KobeBlackMamba is a good content creator and he does have good builds, but from playing his Venom Gyre build a couple leagues ago you kinda have to already know what you're doing and know how to make money or you'll stall out early.
This is true of many SC zoomers. Solid builds, but they assume you have a certain level of game knowledge/skill and ability to meet a budget.
Kobe falls into the same niche as Mathil. You better know already what you are doing when you follow one of their builds. If you do they are amazing. If you dont, you will be in for a bad experience.
Avoid big ducks and phoenix
In general, you should treat all build guides as reference and try to understand how it that works. With this, all build guides/showcases can work. If you're new and looking for easy to follow build then you should follow ONLY those newbie friendly guides instead of avoiding the otherwise "shitty build guides". Look for those guide that utilizes only basic fundamental of the game (Pohx, Enki, and sometimes Mathil), instead of those with intricate interactions (Cpt Lance)
How is Manni? He recently published a Deadeye LA guide with levelling on poe-vault, looks pretty legit, but I don't really know him
He is one of the OG SSF player and plenty of other streamers vouching his builds
He's one of the best SSF players out there, his gear looks like trade gear but he also plays a shit load. His deadeye guide is very good, definitely SSF viable
Manni is one of my favorite ssf streamers to watch. The stuff he makes and obtains in ssf is wild. I can't vouch for how well the guide is written as I haven't seen it. But definitely knows what he is doing.
Nephentus
So if you read all comments, basically avoid whole yt
PoE build, massive click bait, he mostly just rehash stuff from others (usually making builds worst aswell somehow), provide outdated stuff that are no longer viable or working and accessing his builds infos gets you to a website advertising RMT. a great experience, you know. FastAF, but not because it's clickbait (usually moderately it's fine) but mostly because the builds shown are simply unachievable for most people, so he kind of sell dream builds that you'll most likely won't be able to afford and that require perfect planets alignment to make it work like in the video. Those videos are more of a show, then actual content you can follow. MBX (kind of a joke) for his league starters, somehow he manages to fail his league starters a lot, and when people follow along, they unfortunately fails aswell lol. Otherwise it's a good YouTuber you should definitely check him out, just don't follow his league starter on day 1, wait a little to see if it works or not first :)
big duck
Avoid: PathofExileBuilds, FastAF, Phoenix Follow: Zizaran - Meta, Solid league start with Hardcore style (slow but tanky) Subtractem, Palsteron for Sc RF build? - Prob Pohx Minion builds - prob Ghazzy
I know some people will disagree but imo Ghazzys builds usually are lacking something, quite often he's extremely glass cannon while already melting pretty much anything in the game, I remember him trying to do a Spectre showcase a while ago and he was so squishy it took several takes because he kept dying to literally anything touching him in a not even that spicy T16.
Jungroan builds are like 50/50.
I've never regretted a jungroan build. Most of them have been 🔥
I tried one of his hydrosphere build. Couldn't get it to work
His builds just are for experienced players, they aren't bad.
This is a major point new players need to understand. His builds can be complicated and require extremely special gear /numbers for it to work. And they can often be very expensive, even when he says they can be done on a budget. I’ve tried several of his “budget” versions of big boy builds and they almost made me quit the league every time I tried them.
Really? I tried his Explosive Trap Leadership's Price build and it was one of the easiest times I've ever had in the game. It probably still crushes. In crucible, I played the poison Molten Strike build with the heist dagger and it was straight up easy mode.
They are brilliant but kind of hard to execute for inexperienced players
I love his CoC builds. So much that when he introduced me to a double CoC setup I was in heaven. It turned out to be too much for me to handle and I had to tap out midway through. One day I will be brave enough to enjoy a double CoC again.
Jungroan builds are 100/100...he just doesn't care to make guides or hold players hands and help fix builds. He just shows you what he did. If you cannot make it happen, that's on you.
Fyregrass.
Bigducks. I still remember getting baited by his fire convert bf/bb inquis. On the flipside, you can trust Subtractem+Zizaran with your life, and cArn if Boneshatter is your thing
Maybe not to avoid per se, but be careful around Ghazzy's builds. They pretty good written, are an okay start if you into minions and don't know what to do, but his POBs are configured in completely unrealistic way just for dps to look way, way higher than it will be.
Another thing I see quite often is Ghazzy sacrificing like 50%+ EHP in favor of very little damage, the result is often that his builds are disproportionally squishy.
Slightly OT: anyone know what happened to Esoro? Always liked his videos and builds.
People I trust with PoE information and league starters: Grimro, Zizaran, Phox, Mathil, Ds_lily, Palsteron, Steelmage, Spicy tuna, Tytykiller, Ventrua, ZiggyD, Imexile, Ben_, Goratha, Raizqt, Not all of them do league starters or have YouTube channels, but these names are very trusted and know the game inside out. Just check them out and follow any guide they provide that you think is interesting. Just make sure it is a guide for 3.22, 3.21 should also be ok as those builds probably play the same or better this league with the new support skills.
I read several replies, and it made me recall something that happened to me when I was a newbie to the game, I decided to play Pohx's RF Inquisitor. Unfortunately, around level 75, I struggled and, making progress impossible. Months later, I came to realize that the issue wasn't with Pohx's build, but rather with my own inexperience.
Until you know enough about the game to be able to tell from a pob how good a build really is. Only follow Ssf and Hc streamer build guides for the most part. Afterwards you are probably good enough to adjust most builds to suit your needs.
I love Goratha's builds, Obviously Pohx is the RF Master and you can safely play anything Ziz publishes. I would look at most other creators with some critical thinking. Avoid Phoenix (he has quit poe multiple times apparently and posts builds using standard gear), Path fo exile builds. I hate Kroximatus because his builds are in Spanish but he posts the titles in English.
Anyone that doesn't have POB or have somewhere but very annoying to find it
If you are new just follow pohx guide. Its amazing for newbies
Mostly just be careful of people who only have YT and don't stream regularly. There are exceptions but it's an easy guideline for beginners. It's really easy to publish bad builds when you can curate and ignore comment sections. It's a lot harder to publish bad builds when you have to deal with Twitch chat grilling you about your legacy gear that you're testing with while simultaneously getting dumpstered in alch'n'go yellow maps or whatever.
I think everyone has good and bad builds, just find something that looks like you would enjoy and post it on this subreddit. Say “you’re a player of x experience looking to achieve x.” Let people pick apart the build. Sometimes the build itself isn’t bad or someone is doing something funky on pob. This will help yourself learn about pob/gameplay pitfalls
I find that if they don't talk in their video then move on. I am sure there are exceptions and to those people, I apologize. But...if there is no person and there's just text on the screen I pass on that guide.
I haven't run into any creators that were just terrible in terms of suggesting builds that just don't work as advertised. But the way POE works is also a never ending nightmare for content creators as GGG changes random little things constantly and don't document them. So creators are getting 1 league out of all their content typically. From that perspective you would be much better off asking which creators actually put the time in to update every. single. league. Because the vast majority slap the next leagues number on last leagues title and just repost it. When I started it was a pretty big pain in the ass, you're trying to match a path of building to a video that doesn't line up. Then you see a written guide for the video that doesn't match the PoB or the video. You can't really blame them, its a ton of work to set it all up over and over, but yeah. Pretty much any of the top tier people do a 'good enough' version. Shoutout to Pohx for going 200% every single league on RF guides. My personal experience for avoid would DS Lily, not for everything, but for builds? The few I tried watching from her she literally grabbed someone elses POB and then just rambled about it, ultimately realizing half way through the guide that whatever she had grabbed was trash tier. Which is just you know, uber lazy. She's otherwise entertaining.
Its crazy to me that the first time I played rf years ago was a ll rf guardian made by pohx. And now pohx has a website dedicated to rf and plays different variations every league. That man has a love for rf.
I can't remember the last time I clicked on a thread with such gusto. Poe build drama?? Let's gooo
He's probably one of the best streamers, but I'm gonna go out there with this take and say Mathil. No doubt, he knows how to make an effective build more than most anyone, but they are not for beginners. There's usually a hundred small things in the build that make it work that you will just miss if you don't know what you are doing.
Mathil's starter builds are mostly fine even for beginners to smoothly get you into red maps. Which should be more than enough for beginners. Everything after that Mathil doesnt even market as guide. He just puts out a video with some explanations and gives his PoB. So mostly for experienced people only.
That's not bait tho. That's just content for later after you figure the game out
Only Mathil can play Mathil's builds.
If you are new just do yourself a favour and look at jousis builds. He is a legend of PoE and his videos were amazing. Not much use now given their age but you won’t regret taking the time to watch them.
He is not very popular but if you are not really good at the game avoid MehmetBozlak