I’m relatively new to PoE. A common theme I see going through build guides is something like: “this build is cheap and effective for a new player and does not require much in the way of items”. Other build guides make no mention of this, others say they are highly item reliant.
Being new, I don’t see the difference in these builds. My question is this: what separates a noob friendly build from a high end meta build? What sorts of specific things make high end builds prohibitive to new players? The more detail people can provide on these things, such as when to know you’re ready to transition to more advanced builds, or what sorts of things to do to work toward a specific build would be great to hear.
My uninformed impression on this subject is this: noob builds are playable simply with the gems required for their featured skills: to a point. I should use a cheap noob build to farm items in order to collect things toward a build I’m interested in. I should only expect a cheapo build to take me so far in end game, at which point, if my goal is to progress further in end game, I should look to farm to buy into a more item-restricted build.
Some builds only work because of a specific unique item and the interaction it has with either the class or other unique items. These are called “Build enabling uniques.” These basically state the if you do not have this, the build simply will not work. Build enabling uniques can be expensive initially with a new league. Not because the item is rare, but in high demand for the surge of new builds. As the league progresses, the price will decline. Some build enabling uniques are expensive because they are exceedingly rare throughout the league.
Using a website such as Poe ninja will allow you to see the fluctuation in price throughout the league for all uniques. You can see if there are patterns in price initially and throughout the league. Other builds could be cheap initially, but scale well with better items. Many builds will work and work fine with even modest rare items but will continue to improve and get stronger with better items. Do you want to poe items for trade? If you do, you can visit U4GM to have more guides and methods about this.