Your Favorite Game Build - Any Game

happyninja42

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May 13, 2010
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So we all play games, and the games sometimes give us a lot of flexibility in our playstyle. From multiple team members allowing tons of combinations, to skill trees, to gear, etc. Plenty of Let's Plays out there showcase various specific combinations just for the fun of it, and gamers love to debate the efficacy of one build over another until the sun rises and they crawl back into their caves, hissing.

So what's yours? What's your weirdest, craziest, most overpowered, or just plain goofy combination that you ever did?

Mine was in the original Dragon Age: Origins.

I made a team build I called The Wolf Pack.

I made my character be a rogue, and filled my other party slots with the rogue npc's I had join my group. The last slot in my 4 man team was for my beloved Mabari Hound, Anklebiter. I would spec them all as Ranger, at least enough to get "Summon Wolf". Then I would build there attack protocols to focus fire on some target of my choosing.

But here was the fun part xD

I found out that when you summon a pet, there is a very brief period of a few seconds, where the "You have learned new protocols" icon would appear in the corner. If you clicked on it during this window, it would open up the protocols for your summoned wolf. Normally, if you opened up your summoned pet's protocols, you would be limited to I think 3 lines of protocol to assign. Buuuut, if you clicked quickly enough, it would actually provide you with the full protocol of actions page for the summoned pet. So you could set up their actions in combat as detailed as you could a full party member.

Which was awesome xD Because they had the Charge attack, and the slam attack, and basically all the combat tricks your Mabari Hound had. So I set them all up to follow Anklebiter's lead, and dogpile the enemy. I always set up Anklebiter to attack any casters first, with a charging rush attack, followed by maul. The other wolves would do the same thing, and it resulted in completely shutting down all casters in combat. They didn't live long enough to toss any spells at me. It was quite funny to watch actually. You would see the robed caster in the background, waving their arms, building up energy for a powerful spell....and then the pack would dogpile them, and they would fall to the ground in a mass of canine flesh, and be dead in seconds. I always added a "meep!" voice track in my head when they would get knocked to the ground. It was most amusing.

Then the dogs would just move to the next targets and maul them to death in seconds. It got to the point where I wouldn't even bother using my actual party members, and just let the dogs win all my fights for me, as they were that crazy good at it. xD

It was one of the few times where I actually tried to "break the game", and it was most amusing to experience, especially considering how effective it was.

So what's your experience?
 

Trinket to Ride

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I'm one of those people where, when I feel like coming back to an old game I haven't played in a while, I start a new save instead of picking up the old one. Because of that, I have at least two dozen characters in New Vegas.

My favorite runs are the ones where I dump all my points/perks into one thing, like unarmed-only or maximum luck and crit chance.

I also really like my Ninjask build I use whenever I can (single-player only, I don't do competitive.) He naturally has Speed Boost, and I couple that with Swords Dance, Double Team, and Baton Pass. I send him out first, crank up all the stats, and baton pass to someone else. Strike first, strike hard, don't get hit!
 

Hero in a half shell

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I remember min/maxing my Revan from Star Wars The Old Republic (the original one).

I meticulously worked out all the best strength upgrades for each piece of gear, and exactly how much credits I needed at each stage to buy them (and exploited the infinite money Pazaak bug in Tatooine to fund it)

In the end I could brute force Malak with my duel lightsabers and spamming master flurry, so that he ran out of men to siphon life from before I ran out of my health. It was awesome.

Also my 3 intelligence bruiser from the original Fallout. His name was Lug, and he beat his way through all his problems with a sledgehammer.
 

Mr Fixit

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I stumbled upon a wonderful combo playing Final Fantasy Tactics years ago. I started by mastering the White Mage job & then went into the Oracle job, with a few bits from the Chemist, Dragon Knight & Samurai jobs, which gave me a status effect slinging master that could hold his own in almost any fight because he would auto heal & the Two Hand ability used with those Stick weapons meant he was dealing almost as much damage as a Knight. And of course using Holy whenever something absolutely, positively had to die.

I have heard of people using the Mathematician job to great effect, but I never messed with it much. Damn I need to play that game again.
 

Username Redacted

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I always appreciated the Arcane Warrior (aka overpowered to the point of potentially crashing the game)/Blood Mage build in Dragon Age. The awesome power of being an nigh unhittable tank combined with one of the most damaging AoE spells in the game.

My preferred Fallout3/New Vegas approach is the point and click approach where the only puzzle is use gun on man (/stolen ZP joke). This is especially amusing in New Vegas where have EDE as a companion allows you to snipe many enemies from outside their perceptive range. My reasoning for this is thus: most FPS RPS don't have stellar collision detection (or at the very least it isn't consistent) which makes anything that puts me into melee range a real risk as there are likely a number of enemies greater than the number of me (i.e. one). I would love a game with a combat system that's a mashup of Batman: Arkham Asylum and Soul Calibur with traditional FPS elements. As far as I'm aware that game does not exist.
 

Rayce Archer

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Pure poison/dex/charisma dark elf in sacred, just spraying hundreds of poison traps everywhere! Fire dwarf from the same game was rocking too.

In Front Mission 1 I had good luck outfitting my whole team with artillery and melee weapons- basically turning it into mini Gundam.

Fave though is the iron maiden/blood golem necromancer combo from Diablo 2. It got new life when synergies hit, as you could use other golem skills to buff your minion to near-player levels.
 

Yostbeef

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Yuna from FF X can be come an absolute monster. She can learn black magic,healing,white magic and Aeons. Then you can get double cast,an ability that makes spells cost 1 mp and one that breaks the 9999 damage limit. At that point she can single handily steam roll anything. I never felt like I controlled a more powerful character then my Yuna from FF X.
 

Plasmadamage

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When I played Fable 2, back in the day, I stumbled on an exploit that made me literally invincible so long as I could still attack. Combining a master forged katana with the Ghoul and Lucky Charm augments, I produced a sword which as far as I could tell, completely refilled my health with every strike, whilst leeching the enemy,boosting my damage and minimising theirs.

In effect, i could stand perfectly still in the middle of a group of enemies, regardless of numbers, wait until I was almost dead, and then instantly scythe through the group and regain all my health, normally killing everything at the same time. This meant that from about the half way point the game required even less effort than Fable games normally do. Needless to say, I never died again.

I realise its pretty pathetic now, but I was pleased with myself at the time
 

Fishyash

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Dec 27, 2010
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Been playing a Hammerdin recently on Diablo 2.

It uses the spell Blessed Hammer (hence the name) that's capable of doing insane damage. You repeatedly cast the spell, and it summons hammers that spiral around you. Very few monsters can resist it, combined with its amazing damage makes it an incredible build in both PvM and PvP, suitable for almost any situation. You can pretty much sit in the middle of a mob of demons and tear through them like they were paper, no problem.

You need the gear for it though. The damage scale is expotential, so it is only better than other builds when you have amazing gear for it. Overall you need lots of gear that boosts your paladin skills alongside the important stats like faster hit recovery, defense, faster cast rate and resistances, and that's just in classic, in LoD you can take it even further with ridiculous runewords like Enigma, that lets you teleport, or giving your mercenary Insight, which removes all mana issues.

The build's incredibly popular on battle.net, and almost every paladin you see there (at least at a higher level) is going to be a hammerdin. I found out the skill is also in Diablo 3 on the Crusader class, although I don't know if it has the same power or popularity as it did in D2.
 

The Wykydtron

"Emotions are very important!"
Sep 23, 2010
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Min/Max Fallout: New Vegas characters, the one 10 Luck character was broken OP. If you set Luck to really low it cripples you no matter what else you max to compensate by the way. That character was abandoned quick.

Also I kind of like how Blue Ezreal is making a comeback in League now. I guess since several other carries have him beat in the straight up damage and kite department (which if you look back seems ridiculous, nobody used to outkite Ezreal, thanks Rito) people are building Blue to make him the jumpiest, most annoying thing to lock down and kill ever since he's hard pressed to conventionally outduel other carries now even with the old Trinity Force build.

I still love how Riot nerfed Iceborn Gauntlet ages ago for the sole reason of Blue Ezreal winning 1v5s with the insane slow spam from 1050 range.

I like the Ghostblade rush on Lucien too, though which AD doesn't build Ghostblade now? Even if it's not super amazing on them they buy it anyway >.>. Anyway I use it for the single reason that it makes Lucien's ult good. Number of shots scales on attack speed and activating Ghostblade gives a pretty significant boost to it.
 

Rayce Archer

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Fishyash said:
Been playing a Hammerdin recently on Diablo 2.

It uses the spell Blessed Hammer (hence the name) that's capable of doing insane damage. You repeatedly cast the spell, and it summons hammers that spiral around you. Very few monsters can resist it, combined with its amazing damage makes it an incredible build in both PvM and PvP, suitable for almost any situation. You can pretty much sit in the middle of a mob of demons and tear through them like they were paper, no problem.

You need the gear for it though. The damage scale is expotential, so it is only better than other builds when you have amazing gear for it. Overall you need lots of gear that boosts your paladin skills alongside the important stats like faster hit recovery, defense, faster cast rate and resistances, and that's just in classic, in LoD you can take it even further with ridiculous runewords like Enigma, that lets you teleport, or giving your mercenary Insight, which removes all mana issues.

The build's incredibly popular on battle.net, and almost every paladin you see there (at least at a higher level) is going to be a hammerdin. I found out the skill is also in Diablo 3 on the Crusader class, although I don't know if it has the same power or popularity as it did in D2.
Hammersader is viable into mid-torments. Possibly all the way to six in a team. You just can't quite jack the hammers to the godlike damage they had in 2, so at some point you need to run or have backup.

I hear tell it's a good alt skill for holy shotgun builds though, since you need to achieve ridonkulous resource conservation for Wrath of the Heavens, compared to which a couple hammers are nothing.
 

JaceArveduin

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League back in the day when Sunfire Capes stacked.

Champ: Any (bonus points if you play an aoe-fuck champ)
Role: Any
Items: Sunfire Cape x5, Mercury Treads

And old-school Singed, god I miss that... And old Shaco that instagibbed everything, and 26 second Lux Lazers, and Leona hasn't changed so yey.
 

Schadrach

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Hero in a half shell said:
I remember min/maxing my Revan from Star Wars The Old Republic (the original one).

I meticulously worked out all the best strength upgrades for each piece of gear, and exactly how much credits I needed at each stage to buy them (and exploited the infinite money Pazaak bug in Tatooine to fund it)

In the end I could brute force Malak with my duel lightsabers and spamming master flurry, so that he ran out of men to siphon life from before I ran out of my health. It was awesome.

Also my 3 intelligence bruiser from the original Fallout. His name was Lug, and he beat his way through all his problems with a sledgehammer.
I remember my first KOTOR character. I knew you eventually unlocked the ability to go jedi, so I never actually took a level aside from the one time you had to in the tutorial and looked up what stats were relevant to force use in Star Wars d20 so I could min/max for them. That last big battle before you were allowed to take levels in jedi classes was painful (since I was pathetically bad at actual physical combat and hadn't actually taken the last half-dozen levels), but once they were available I immediately had something like 7 levels of consular, and became an unstoppable force of infinite destruction. By end game I was 2 whatever it was/18 consular, dark side. My solution to every problem was either intimidation or lightning, lots of lightning.
 

x EvilErmine x

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Apr 5, 2010
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Well, for RPG's any build that lets me use stupid powerful magic, got to love destroying things with elemental fury.

I've been playing a lot of SupCom lately and I gotta say chain nuking the enemy bases is awesome. I've found the best base build to do this with is the turtle, the hard part is getting set up initially as you have to deal with the AI harassing your mass extractors and power generators, but if you survive that the it's game over man. As it takes so long to build nukes then inevitably the AI will have a few anti missile defences so first you have to take them out. My preferred method is either artillery bombardment or strategic air strikes (air is the hard way to take out the enemy AMS though....damn you T3 Anti-Air :eek:/). Once that's done though it's time to sit back and let the nukes fly.

Also my Mech builds:

Cougar with x2 Clan ER Large Lasers, and x2 Clan LRM 10's, max reactor upgrade and very little armour. Was an amazing 'runner' for CTF games.

Mad Cat, x6 Clan ER Large Lasers, x2 Clan LRM 20's, x2 Clan LRM 10's, Enhanced optics and no heat sinks. I called it the Apocalypse Mod and yeah she ran hot and you couldn't alph strike her without sending the core critical and exploding but if you could mange the heat the she could strip an Atlas before it got close enough to get off a shot.
 

bliebblob

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When I still played guild wars 2 I loved my dual dagger elementalist build.

Some background info for those not in the know: the elementalist in guild wars is their take on the glass cannon cloth armor elemental magic nuker. The twists they added is that you're not limited to one element (usually ice or fire) but switch between air, fire, water and earth on the fly in combat. Each comes with a completely different set of attacks with an overarching focus: mobility and single targets for air, area of effect for fire etc. On top of that your skillsets are also determined by your equipped weapon type. For example, the two handed staff makes the elementalist the glassiest of glass canons with slow, flashy attacks like meteor showers and earthquakes. The other end of the elementalist arsenal spectrum are the daggers which are all about quick, short range nukes (just out of melee range) and mobility.

I loved the whole switching on the fly thing so much I refused to spec into any one element and instead got all the perks that work well with switching elements often. And I got exactly what I wanted: A high risk, high reward short range nuker that relied on mobility and reflexes to survive and on cross-element combos for huge damage. It even worked well in groups since the mere act of switching elements gave me buffs and shields, which were shared with the party thanks to some perks. So basically: a magic ninja.

What was even better is that I eventually found out that that exact (more or less) build I came up with was considered one of the better meta-builds. That's a big deal to me because in every other mmo I ever played I start out building my guy in whatever way I think is neat, only to eventually find out there's way better cooky cutter builds. Thus leaving me with the awkward choice of conforming for power or stay a special little snowflake and suffer for it. With my elementalist? None of that, because the build I wanted to play was smack on the money all along!

What's also pretty neat about guild wars 2 is there's no real tanks or healers (everyone gets self-heals) and no mana. So where in every other mmo the cloth armor mage feels more like a sniper, hiding behind his (hopefully) faithful tank, my elementalist was just zipping around all over everything and everyone. Just generally being awesome at everything.
 

DataSnake

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Mass Effect 3: Soldier with an M-7 Lancer and M-77 Paladin,both with ultralight materials and extended magazines, and armor-piercing ammo as a bonus power. With the 200% power recharge bonus from having such a lightweight loadout, I could practically leave adrenaline rush on the whole game. Armor-piercing ammo meant I didn't have to worry about riot shields, the extended mag allowed me to kill pretty much anything in front of me without any overheating, and the Paladin handles anything I need to drop in a hurry.
 

happyninja42

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Yostbeef said:
Yuna from FF X can be come an absolute monster. She can learn black magic,healing,white magic and Aeons. Then you can get double cast,an ability that makes spells cost 1 mp and one that breaks the 9999 damage limit. At that point she can single handily steam roll anything. I never felt like I controlled a more powerful character then my Yuna from FF X.
Oh I know! She was actually really powerful, and was the inspiration for a D 20 Epic level summoner type wizard character one time. Sadly the rules of D20 summoning didn't let me summon badass stuff, just lots and lots of semi-badass stuff. But still it was a fun thing!

In keeping with FFX though, I made Kimahri be a 1 Cat Powerhouse. I ran him through ALL of the physical combat guys trees, using the spheres that let you jump around the grid. So after running around getting everyone their ultimate weapons, he had fully learned the sphere's for Tidus, Auran, Wakka, and Kimahri. He was an absolute beast by the time I fought the final boss, he One-shotted every layer of the final boss, it was sick. xD And incredibly fun.

Actually now that I think about it, he was the inspiration for an Arcana Unearthed character once. I forget the class name, but it was basically a Beastmaster type, where they had a psychic connection to an animal type, and took on traits of them as they leveled. He was the cat race in that game setting, and I gave him a Halberd. He was actually pretty sick too, because a halberd gave him reach. He just stood there and Opportunity Attacked all the mook monsters that would charge him, and instakill them with a trip attack, followed up by a feat that let him attack someone he just tripped. He single handedly wiped out an entire encounter of mooks the GM threw at us. xD Most enjoyable.
 

Ihateregistering1

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I made a great Berserker in "Torchlight 2" who focused on using the Hunter skill tree (melee) along with Tundra skill tree (basically ice magic). By the end of the game, I had some insane cold damage bonus, like 300%. I named him "Sub-Zero" :)

My 'Baldur's Gate 2' team was pure tactical genius. 3 heavy duty front line fighters to hold the enemy at bay, 2 magic users who would use that time to cast powerful spells, and one Cleric to focus on keeping everyone alive/a little more melee oomph. Good times.

Now I'm playing 'Grim Dawn' and having a blast with the various builds. I've got a pure Nightblade who does insane amounts of bleeding and poison damage. I can pretty much run in, strike, and then run out and watch them collapse while they pursue me. Then I've got a Witchblade 2-hander build who does crazy amounts of chaos and vitality damage.
 

Tiamattt

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Rayce Archer said:
I hear tell it's a good alt skill for holy shotgun builds though, since you need to achieve ridonkulous resource conservation for Wrath of the Heavens, compared to which a couple hammers are nothing.
No offense, but that's not really a great idea. Even though it's cheap hammers is still using wrath which could be used for more shotgun shots, and in times where you're low on wrath you would be much better off using something to gain more wrath rather than spending it. Especially in higher T's/Grifts where hammers in a undedicated build won't be dealing much damage at all. A good shotgun build doesn't need a wrath spending alternate, at worst I've seen some resort to using a primary to help recharge wrath but a different spender just eats up a slot that can be better used elsewhere
 

SmallHatLogan

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Dark Souls: pure strength. People usually combine strength with something else, and with good reason: dumping lots of points into strength is a really inefficient way of getting stronger. But being able to wield Smough's Hammer with one hand was very nice. It was heavy though so I had to go naked with that giant hammer. Swag Souls.

The Wykydtron said:
Min/Max Fallout: New Vegas characters, the one 10 Luck character was broken OP. If you set Luck to really low it cripples you no matter what else you max to compensate by the way. That character was abandoned quick.
Regardless of my character build I always roll with 10 luck in New Vegas. It's the only way to go.