In Path of Exile league, if you really want to take shaper down, but you don’t know which budget build could do that and doesn’t make you hate the playstyle. If sunder is also not your favourite option as melee skill. What should you do?
In fact, it is depends on your definition of “budget”.
Molten Strike Inquis with Ele Claw/Foil using Frost Blades to clear. Once you have decent gear and are level 90+ you start to really feel the dps. Requires a few ex to do all content, but is really satisfying to play and cheap to start (5 – link MS comfortably kills Red map bosses). Also good for Uber Atziri if you have a bit better gear.
Scorching Ray Trickster works well for everything. Tanky, good damage, decent clearspeed. Gear requirement is pretty low since SR has good base damage.
Spectre Summoner is really cheap and just dumpsters all bosses.
Low Life RF is really tanky. After a certain point you can basically afk kill Shaper. Requires quite a bit of currency to comfortably do Endgame content tho.
LA/Barrage build using the Tempest can be really good aswell. Abyss jewels are a bit more expensive this league, so you might have to invest a bit more currency to do Shaper, but the build clears fast and farming currency with it is really easy.
Ancestral Warchief was cheap as hell but can also scale with money. Makes it fun to make it a sole character as it is constantly getting stronger.
Starts off working great with just Meginords and Facebreaker, Great Old One’s Ward shield, cheap cheap. Get steel rings, flat phys ammy, abyssus if you want, Vulnerability\Temp chains on hit corruption on gloves, Tukohama’s etc.
If you are new to the game, follow some build guide from U4GM. Another option is to just mess around yourself and see how things work but sometimes it can get frustrating if you cannot kill monsters/progress further, so be careful with it.