The chain that decides everything
A build here is a chain of six decisions, and every link narrows the one after it. The class you play decides which weapon families you may hold. The weapon in your hands decides which skills you can slot. Your talent branches are attached to that same weapon, and the damage they add only counts while you are wielding it. Your gear supplies sockets, gems dropped into those sockets supply most of your affixes, and the brew you drink at the tavern before you queue adds the last few affixes for that run only.
That order matters because players usually assemble a build in the opposite direction. They find a strong gem, buy an expensive piece to hold it, then discover the affix helps a skill their weapon cannot slot, or a talent branch they never invested in. Nothing about the game warns you. The interface will happily let you socket a gem that supports blocking onto a character with no shield in either hand.
The practical version of this rule is short. Pick the weapon first, then the three or four actions you actually intend to spam with it, then spend talent points on the branch attached to that weapon, then buy gems whose affixes touch those actions, and only then worry about rarity. A loadout screen that holds the whole chain at once lets you check it before a run instead of after a death.
Your class picks the weapons, not the skills
Six classes ship, and each one is defined mostly by the weapon families it may carry. Mercenary holds Sword and Shield or Hammer. Sorcerer holds a Staff. Blackarrow holds a Bow. Shadowstrix holds Dagger or Dual Blades. Seer holds a Catalyst or a Mace. Withered Knight holds a Greatsword or Polearm and Shield. Two of those lists have a single entry: despite what the store copy suggests, Sorcerer and Blackarrow shipped with one weapon family each, and their second weapons are announced rather than playable.
The published level-one baselines are nearly identical across the roster — 100 Attack, 50 Defense, 618 Maximum Health, 120 Max Stagger. The genuine differences are narrow: Critical Damage sits at 40% for Sorcerer, 35% for Mercenary, Shadowstrix, Seer and Withered Knight, and 25% for Blackarrow, while Max Dodge is 350 for Mercenary, Shadowstrix, Withered Knight and a Blasphemer Seer against 250 for Sorcerer, Blackarrow and a Reverent Seer. A Seer does not display an energy bar at all.
So when someone asks which class is strongest, the honest answer is that the class is a small part of the number. What the class really hands you is a weapon list, and through it a skill list and a set of talent branches. Compare those on the class pages before you commit, because changing class later is a deliberate procedure in camp rather than a menu toggle.
Weapons own the skills
Every equippable skill belongs to a weapon family, not to a class. There are 79 of them across the ten families, and the spread is uneven: a Staff carries 22, a Catalyst 13, a Mace 9, a Bow 7, Polearm and Shield 6, Hammer, Dagger, Dual Blades and Greatsword 5 each, and Sword and Shield 4. Two skills, Poison Crow Mark and Crow Storm, are shared by Dagger and Dual Blades.
Separately from that list, seventeen named weapon techniques never occupy a skill slot at all — Impalement, Power Hammer, Punishing Hammer, Flurry Strike, Fang Rush, Psionic Orb, Sprinting Slash, Pursuit, Sneak, Elemental Affinity, Stardust Energy, Rune Summon, Stacked Slash and the rest. They are free capability that comes with the weapon, and they are the reason a weapon can feel complete before you have unlocked much. A few skills are charged rather than instant, including Crystal Icebolt, Windcraft, Eye of Insight, Shadow Step, Predator's Senses, Healing Rune, Healing Art, Psionic Shield and Death Ward, and a charged skill in a build with no way to survive the cast is a slot you are not really using.
Skills also unlock on a level ladder that differs per class, so a Sorcerer at level 3 simply does not have Stardust Torrent yet and cannot build around it. Check the ladders in the guide on how weapons decide your skills.
Eight talent points, and the weapon rule
Talents look enormous — 84 trees and 241 selectable nodes — and then you count your budget and find eight points. The character level cap is 12, and points arrive at levels 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11 and 12, with nothing at all at 1, 4, 7 and 10. Every node in the current trees is a single rank, so there is no stacking a favourite talent; you either take it or you do not.
The rule that resolves most of the confusion is the developers' own: increased damage from weapon-specific skills and talents only applies while you are holding the matching weapon. A Mercenary who spends four points in hammer talents and then opens a fight with the sword is fighting with half a build. Thirteen exclusive choices sit on top of that, including a three-way choice for the Withered Knight that settles whether you can run both of its weapons in one raid.
Because talents and skills can be rearranged freely between runs at no cost, the real skill is not memorising a tree but knowing which eight nodes serve the weapon you are taking today. Open the talent planner and read the full breakdown in talent points and weapon branches.
Affixes come from gems, not from luck
Gear carries a small number of built-in affixes. Everything else comes from gems you socket yourself, which is why two players in identical armour can perform very differently. Four gem families ship — Agate, Amethyst, Moonstone and Peridot — with 78 gems in each and 312 in total. A Tier I gem carries one affix; a Tier II gem carries two, and the Tier II sets cover every pair inside their family's twelve-affix pool.
Sockets are typed. There are four typed Tier I slots and four typed Tier II slots, one per family, plus two universal slots that take anything. A typed slot only accepts its own family, and the tier rule runs one way: a Tier I gem drops happily into a Tier II socket, but a Tier II gem never fits a Tier I socket. That single asymmetry explains most of the "why can't I put this in" frustration, and it is worth internalising before you spend on gems.
Forty-four affix effects exist in total, and each class ships with a published shortlist worth targeting — Unyielding, Stoic, Bulwark and Valor for a Mercenary, for instance, or Creation, Eloquence, Blessing and Tenacious for a Seer. Filter by affix and family in the gem browser; the socket rules get their own guide in affix gems and socket rules.
Rarity frames a build, it does not make one
Eight rarity names exist: Damaged, Common, Rare, Excellent, Epic, Legendary, Holy and Prismatic. No Prismatic equipment ships in this build, and Holy is unusual in that all thirteen Holy items are weapons. The catalogue holds 259 separate pieces, and the bulk of them sit in the middle, with 48 entries each at Rare, Excellent, Epic and Legendary.
There is no upgrade system for weapons or armour and no salvaging. A piece is what it is; you improve it by changing what is socketed into it or by replacing it outright. That is why the community line that a gemmed green beats an empty blue keeps getting repeated — it follows directly from where affixes live. The rarity tiers still matter for base attributes and for the socket versions a piece can roll, but they are the frame, not the picture.
Browse the catalogue on the equipment database, where a single piece such as the Veteran Helmet shows its plain version alongside its fixed-affix and socketed versions, and read gear rarity and what to upgrade for the buying order.
The brew is the last layer, and it expires
Victory Wine is drunk at the tavern before you enter a map and lasts for that run only. Four brews exist and each one is gated on your Tavern level: Mortal Tonic gives two affix slots and costs nothing, Hero's Ale gives four and needs Malt and Hops, Warblood gives six, and Gods' Brew gives eight. Mortal Tonic and Hero's Ale allow one of each affix; Warblood and Gods' Brew allow up to two of the same.
Treat those slots as part of the build rather than a bonus. They are the only piece of your affix layout you can change for one specific raid — a heavier defensive lean before a boss run, more utility on a fast loot loop. The scaling behind each brew has never been published, so plan around the slot counts and the affix limits, not around numbers you find quoted elsewhere.
The one habit worth forming is drinking something every single time. Even the free tier is free, and the players who skip it are usually the ones who forgot the tavern step rather than the ones who decided against it. The Victory Wine planner lists the brews, their unlock levels and their material costs.
Where a build usually goes wrong
The most common failure is a build that disagrees with itself. Talent points in one weapon branch, gems supporting a second weapon, skills chosen for a third playstyle, and a brew picked at random. Each decision looked reasonable alone. Together they produce a character with no strong action. Reading your own loadout back as a sentence — "I hold this weapon, I press these three skills, these talents and affixes make those three skills better" — catches it immediately.
The second failure is spending money before spending thought. Gems and Legendary pieces are expensive, and neither refunds you when the plan changes. Get the weapon, the skills and the eight talent points settled first; those cost nothing and can be redone between every run. Only then buy the gear that supports them, starting with the sockets you know you can fill.
Build the whole chain in one place with the loadout planner, then decide how much of it you are actually willing to lose in a raid — that risk question has its own guide in building a loadout you can lose.