Builds

A (class) build is the collective of active gear (Weapon, Armour and Accessories) on a player's character. This article addresses technicalities of class building, mostly through community-coined terminology.

Vocabulary
This section focuses on the common terms used in the building community.


 * Attack
 * Melee: Basic attack
 * Spell: Spell attack
 * Raw: Raw version of HPR, Melee/Spell damage and spell cost IDs.
 * Tier: Attack speed bonus ID
 * Sustain: Form of recovery. MR/MS for mana, HPR/LS for health
 * MR: mana regen
 * MS: mana steal
 * Mixed mana: both MR and MS
 * LS: life steal
 * HPR: health point regen
 * EHP: Effective HP, your total bulk after considering defensive skillpoints.
 * Skill Points:
 * STR: Strength
 * DEX: Dexterity
 * INT: Intelligence
 * DEF: Defense
 * AGI: Agility
 * Reqs: requirements (used in "Skill point requirements")
 * WS: walk speed
 * SP: Either Skill Points or Soul Points, depending on context
 * SPR: soul point regen

Basic Types
Builds involve choices of armor, accessories, and a weapon that usually fit a certain theme. While any combination of equipment is technically a build, most endgame builds if not all focus on either 2 to 5 elements and some strategy.

Keep in mind the playstyles' tris below are not limited to the tris they commonly are used in.

There are several common playstyles and builds :


 * Spell Spam - Focuses on low spell costs and good spell damage, with high mana regen. It generally hits less damage then Spell Steal. Common elemental tris for this playstyle are TWA, EWF, and WFA.
 * Spell Steal - A similar build type to Spell Spam, but it relies on mana steal for mana sustain instead of mana regen. It generally gets more damage then Spell Spam. Unless you are going Hybrid, you'll want a Super Slow Speed as it is better for Life/Mana Steal, and Powder Specials as well. Common elemental tris for this playstyle are ETW, EWA, TWF, and TFA.
 * Mixed Mana - Utilizes both mana regen and mana steal. Usually Mixed Mana isn't built intentionally and the Mana Regen appears from the items used.
 * Heavy Melee - Focuses on stacking damage with melee hits. Armor that is utilized in this playstyle will generally have negative attack speed tier bonuses, but will bring high main attack damage. Heavy Melee is also generally very tanky. Spells are usually only for utility from time to time. A common elemental tri for this is ETF.
 * Tierstack - Relies on a super slow weapon while using armors and accessories with attack speed tier bonuses. TFA tierstack can be extremely tanky in builds sometimes. Common elemental tris for this are TFA, EFA, and ETA.
 * Cancelstack - Getting high main attack damage, negative attack speed tier armors and "cancelling" them with positive attack speed tier items. ETF and TFA are common tris for this.
 * Fast Hybrid - Aims for both high spell damage and melee damage. Common elemental tris with this are ETW, EWA, and TWF.
 * Heavy Hybrid - Is a Super Slow Speed, and still aims for melee and spell damage. There is no Tri that is designed to be focused toward it.
 * Rawstack - Uses a super fast weapon and stacking as much main attack damage bonus as possible. It is generally extremely tanky but with not so high damage. A common elemental tri for this is EFA.
 * Heavy Poison - Stacks as much poison as possible. It can achieve very high damage with Courage, Curse and Strength. A common elemental tri for this is ETF.

Elemental Combinations
Elements are also used in a building sense, and builders identify different build archetypes with element combinations. If you have ever seen letters like ETA or EWF, those are elemental Tris, or Tri-elemental combinations. Each letter stands for an element, so E is for (strength), T is for  (dexterity), W is for  (intelligence), F is for  (defense), and A is for  (agility). For help on some of the vocabulary used in this section, here's Saya's class building vocabulary guide. It is also notable that this is being written in 1.20, and that regardless of how something is "usually" built, a builder can almost always build it differently.

ETW - Earth, Thunder, Water
ETW is the glassiest tri-elemental combination in the game, as can be guessed from its lack of defensive skill points, though deals the highest damage among all the others.

ETW builds are mainly Spellsteal and Fast Hybrid.

ETF - Earth, Thunder, Fire
ETF is overrall a very solid tri, with both good damage and defensive abilities.

It is buildable in a large variety of build styles, including Heavy Melee, Cancelstack, Tierstack, and in Heavy Poison. Almost all Heavy Melee builds use the same armor, but the accessories can vary. The powder special, Quake, is responsible for a good amount of Heavy Melee's damage.

ETA - Earth, Thunder, Air
ETA is primarily the glass cannon version for melee.

It's used in Tierstack and sometimes Cancelstack, though it often has low health sustain. ETA in general has the highest +Attack Speed tier items available to it, giving it an advantage in these build styles. Rarely, the tri can even be used in spell builds, though it relies on -spell cost IDs to decrease costs.

EWF - Earth, Water, Fire
EWF is a spell-centered tri-elemental combination with decent damage, good health, and good health/mana sustain all around.

It mostly only has support for Spell spam, and it can be used fairly well in tank builds. EWF is a safe option to go with for basic spell builds.

EWA - Earth, Water, Air
EWA is a tri that typically has decent support for both spell and main attack damage. It's neither one of the glassiest or one of the tankiest tri-elemental combinations, and the same can be said for its damage.

It is generally used in Fast Hybrid and Spell Steal.

EFA - Earth, Fire, Air
EFA is the tankiest tri-element with its massive EHP and Walk Speed. It is generally used in Rawstack and Tierstack.

TWF - Thunder, Water, Fire
TWF is a powerful and reliable spell tri. It gets a pretty good amount of damage output and is not too glassy at all.

TWF tends towards spell steal, but can be built for spell spam and mixed mana.

TWA - Thunder, Water, Air
TWA can be thought of as a spell variant to ETA, being a glass cannon for spells.

It is usually focused on mana regen and has a high amount of damage, but is often a bit glassy and suspectible to oneshots. Spellspam and spellsteal are both usable build styles in the tri.

TFA - Thunder, Fire, Air
TFA is a tanky tri-element that is viable in both spell and melee. It has high Life Steal and hits decent damage.

It is normally Spellsteal, Cancelstack, Fast Hybrid, or Tierstack, and has a very good amount of tankiness. On Spellsteal, TFA relies on reducing spell costs with IDs, similar to any 0-Int spell (a spell build that has no Skill Points invested in Intelligence but instead uses gear with -Spell Costs). The tri can also be built in true Hybrid builds pretty effectively. TFA's advantage against other tris in stacking tiers is the fact that it can utilise all four accessory slots, and can get up to +3 Attack Speed tiers from them without any major setbacks.

WFA - Water, Fire, Air
WFA is a tankier type of spell tri with generally high mana sustain.

It is buildable in both Spellspam and Spellsteal (and mixed mana as well). Out of the tris, WFA is known for its high health sustain, mainly through health regen and Effective HP (HP counting defensive skill points).

Class Building Tips
If you have a spell build that is not Fast Hybrid (Hybrid with a Fast Attack speed), it is recommended you keep a Super Slow weapon speed to abuse powder specials to the fullest. You can cast more spells between melee hits and charge powders just as fast. You don't need a super slow weapon by itself, you can use items with -Attack Speed Tiers. At the same time, one should take note of the fact that even if your build is spell-centered, having negative life/mana steal when charging powder specials will be unbeneficial to you. On the other hand, if your weapon can't get a powder special since it doesn't have 2 or more slots, you shouldn't worry about negative life/mana steal at all on full spell builds.

It is also not recommended to measure things by boosted damage (Boosted as in totem damage boost, war scream, powder specials, vanish, and more) as boosted can mean different things to different people. Also when measuring aura damage for new players, you should measure it by the first wave. You should also measure spell damage by average, and remember to list elements in standard ETWFA order.

When making a build, people generally follow the following steps. They first identify the preferences they want for their build. Examples of this include, the Mana Sustain (factoring Spell Costs), HP sustain (as in Health Regen/Life Steal), damage, EHP (Effective HP, HP that considers defensive skillpoints), and playstyle. Then they select a weapon that can be used for that build. Once they know their preferences, they try to select the tri that corresponds to these preferences. For example. if you want a tanky spell spam build, you might make a WFA (Water Fire Air) build. They then make a build with damage pieces. If they need HP sustain and EHP (or both), they can use more defensive pieces. After that, you should try searching an item database like WynnAtlas or Wynndata for final revisions.

These steps are here purely as an example, and should not be taken as anything absolute.

Elemental Quads/Rainbow/Penta/Dual elements

 * Dual: Dual elemental builds tend to fall behind in effectiveness compared to tris, quads, and rainbow, but some dual elemental builds can be done to great effect (notably WA and WF).
 * Quad: A build that uses four elements.
 * Penta: A build that uses all five elements without any rainbow items.
 * Rainbow: Gear that has all five skill point requirements, weapons that do all five elements in damage, and builds that use them.