How is one supposed to design their own builds as a semi-casual player?

It is possible to make your own build, even as a semi-casual (I consider myself one of those). Though it needs time and, even more important, experience.
I followed a few simple steps with my builds:
Create, fail, learn, improve, repeat.
In my opinion it is vital to make mistakes in this game. By making mistakes while creating a build you learn about problems you might encounter that you hadn't thought of.
My first builds were bad. Like... REALLY bad. But that's precisely where I learned the basics: take enough life, use other effects to boost your damage, movement speed is important to be able to dodge stuff.
With every character you create or even plan, you improve, and eventually at some point you'll notice that something with your builds is... different from how it was before. It's hard to describe, but you'll notice it.

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Nephalim wrote:

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Mythabril wrote:

You can get with your own builds to level 90 and low red maps, but that's where the casual experience ends.

I would be shocked if a random casual could make a build that would take him or her past 80. This game's end game is so unforgiving when it comes to exp progression.

I'm as casual as they get, and I can reach lvl 90 quite comfortably. I can't be bothered to try further, though.
But it's OK, I'm having fun.

when i started playing, i never used a guide.
I simply dove in and made tons of mistakes , thinking some things were good when they were not and dismissed things that were great as bad.

As you play and try out things you will begin to understand what is good. I do not recommend following or even looking at other players builds to follow until you have made several failures.

I strongly feel failing lets you gain knowledge faster. Joining a guild is also helpful for asking clarification on certain mechanics.

The only thing i look at builds for now , are some ideas of gem setups. Then i try to plan out most my tree in path of builder .

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ScottyAye wrote:

The problem is that any significant change to a build is (from what I've read) extremely expensive, and a massive time-sink, and is simply not feasible for players who want to create their own builds.

Completely untrue. How do you think we get new builds popping up all the time? Because people try out new things (new to the public community). And significant build change is not expensive at later levels when you compare it to the cost of end-game gear, but it depends on where you draw the line at "significant". As long as you're not changing your damage type or switching to a completely different side of the passives tree, you're probably fine. You'll have plenty of currency at end-game to make changes.

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ScottyAye wrote:

The choice for new players ends up being either lose the creativity in your build and follow one online, or get screwed over in the later areas when you realize that you can't progress any further.

The only progress you might gimp yourself on is doing specific bosses at end-game. Typically a little tweaking is all that's required, and by tweaking I mean changing up your strategy, a flask or two, a ring/ammy, and a skill gem. Most builds, even the popular & powerful ones, are not going to be ideal for every type of content. You will always need to have some flexibility in a few things to swap in and out.

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ScottyAye wrote:

I understand that GGG wants PoE to be more old-fashioned and hardcore

*sigh*... you don't understand GGG if you believe that. GGG is comprised of people who fell in love with ARPGs and the Diablo series back in its glory days. They want challenge and they want players to feel those "oh shit" moments, but they don't want to make a game that's frustrating or awkward to play. And they're anything but old fashioned. You play PoE any way you like. You don't have to defeat the Shaper with every single character. You don't need to grind end-game content if you don't want to. You can play solo or get help, or even go totally SSF.

For example, do you expect your life to yield 2.5 kids, a spouse, a large house with white picket fences, and new cars in the garage? You don't need to follow anyone else's build to have a good time in Wraeclast and reach end-game content. You just need to have time, patience, and above all else no artificial expectations imposed by the community as a whole.

build choice is an illusion, exile.

OP, you just gotta suck up the reality is that you will make some bad builds if you try to roll your own. Time + orbs of regret can fix anything.

Your best bet is to find a build that you find mechanically engaging (do you like to manually dodge, attack from close range or at a distance? do you want pets?, etc)
Then take that build and see how you can create variations of it and go from there.

The 3rd party program 'path of building' is pretty amazing in terms of teaching you what the value of passive tree nodes are for certain build ideas. You really dont even need to PLAY the game to find out if a build is going to suck or not if you use that program to theorycraft first and see if its going to have decent dps.

Just make sure you are playing something 'fun' to you, some of my most fun builds were terrible at topmost tier, but an absolute blast to play because they were flashy and fast as hell on low to mid tier maps.

I feel like a lot of the cleverness of buildmaking died in poe with the old cast on crit and cast on melee kill nerf, no more truly silly snowflake builds or weird interactions like frostwall+kb allowed.
Interesting interactions are now mostly gatekept through needing a unique item that explicitly allows a skillgem to do a thing because a game designer allowed it (e.g. Cospri's Malice )

GGG is strange in that they definitely want and need new players for their mtx buying (obviously) yet at the same time are always tweaking PoE with a bias toward the top of the pyramid players and what they are doing to race builds to 100. Example, 1 player makes a 25K ES build (games this game) and a few get 20K+ ES on a CI/VP/GR build and next thing you know GGG is pulling out their nerf sledgehammer and smashing ES into the ground. All the ES CI/VP builds < 15K are wrecked or seriously damaged.

As a casual player (someone coined the phrase "filthy casual" and it's apropos to how GGG privately views the casual player) it is extremely difficult to just "wing it" and create your own build from scratch without a lot of build theory knowledge and expect to have an endgame viable build (or even complete the main content without dying 100s of times). As others have posted Path of Building is your friend. It's gotten to be a standard part of playing PoE, just as important as using POE.TRADE for gear (unless playing SSF). The general rule here playing PoE is that "learning from the master players" is also pretty much an essential part of "filthy casual" playing of PoE to create a build that is endgame viable. The term "fun to play" is thrown around a lot in discussing builds and any build that just isn't cutting it (can't generate enough damage or is dying too many times) is no fun and unless you really delve into the semi-black art of PoE builds and theory crafting then there really is no way a very casual player can hope to create an endgame "fun to play" build. The two, "casual player" and "endgame viable" build from scratch without a very good understanding of the underlying game mechanics are mutually exclusive.

Chris stated several years ago that GGG doesn't want it to be easy to respec a build. That means they want you to always start over. You should know (I think everyone who isn't a raw newbie player does) that PoE is an arpg that is designed for the long term serious arpg player and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. The arpg gaming community needs an arpg that is played over a multi-year span of time and not be a one and done or short lived game. Hence the huge depth of build crafting and tons of information on it. Thus your expectations coming into PoE from other arpgs will require a mental reset or re-adjustment as PoE can never be won easily ("won" has a different meaning for all players) and especially if you are a very casual player (< 10 hrs/week). For GGG to set the bar very high to give the full time players a serious challenge is great for them but just don't expect GGG to change anything in PoE to make it easy for a casual player to jump in and create a build without following someone else's build guide and expect it to take you to maps easily. What I do with my old non-viable builds is keep them and wait until the passive tree changes enough so that GGG gives us a one time full respec. Then I can reallocate all passives as desired.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with using build guides as the basis for reworking an old build that gets a full respec. I did that after I got my SSF Legacy Champion to level 90 in late May and then after by using a build guide for a Whispering Ice/Fire CWC Scorching Ray Elementalist I took an old dead standard league witch and regeared with my Whispering Ice Vile Staff and respec'd into a very fun to play build that got her from level 72 to level 90.4 of casual playing before PoE 3.0 wrecked it. I never followed the guide 100% as I never acquired an Astramentas amulet but nonetheless I did create an extremely fun to play Elementalist (albeit squishy). Now there are build guides that use a life based Berserker for that build so I will be trying that out soon as all my old standard builds get a full respec again. If you are dead set against reading and using a proven build then the task of crafting a good endgame viable build is very daunting for most casual players (myself included).

As a very longtime "filthy casual" player (started in Dec. 2012 and have successfully kept my kiwi pet alive and healthy... as an endangered species it is my sworn duty to protect him) I have seen everything and with today's PoE it is in many ways easier to advance a build to 90 than ever before. Today's PoE playing is without the huge problems of PoE:The Desync Years (for most with a low latency link, but server lag is still a big problem) and from the start of Ascendancy sub-classes on forward power creep has made playing much easier to advance a build to 90. The 90 to 100 levels are brutally time consuming and boring (1000s of maps played) for any non-elite player without a near BiS top end gear build (read as very expensive).

So if you are expecting PoE to be a D3 or a TL2 or any other easier "casual friendly" arpg then you have come to the wrong game.

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Arrowneous wrote:

As a casual player (someone coined the phrase "filthy casual" and it's apropos to how GGG privately views the casual player)...

Are you a mind reader, do you know the thoughts of Chris et al? No.

It's how the community has viewed and treated casuals, not how GGG has done so. The new help system and tutorials within are a testament to GGG's wishes to make the game more friendly to casuals and new players. Even the XBox version is a huge push to mainstream casual player adoption.

If you've learned to play the game with scrub builds you've made up yourself, you'll do fine with scrub builds that you've made up yourself.

If you've learned to play by copying builds with no understanding of what you're doing, you'll fail at making up your scrub build.

If you've learned to play with scrub builds and switch to a well designed build, you'll be amazed at how powerful a character can become... and get bored with it and go back to playing fun scrub builds.

If you've always played with well designed builds... keep playing those types of builds or learn enough from doing it that you can create well designed builds on your own.

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cipher_nemo wrote:

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Arrowneous wrote:

As a casual player (someone coined the phrase "filthy casual" and it's apropos to how GGG privately views the casual player)...

Are you a mind reader, do you know the thoughts of Chris et al? No.

It's how the community has viewed and treated casuals, not how GGG has done so. The new help system and tutorials within are a testament to GGG's wishes to make the game more friendly to casuals and new players. Even the XBox version is a huge push to mainstream casual player adoption.

Of course not but we "filthy casuals" can read between the lines and put 2 and 2 together (and get 4 not 22) and know that GGG is coding PoE for the top players (the 1%) and mostly eskewing the rest of us and especially the low end casual players. PoE is designed from the beginning to be an old school hardcore arpg and GGG has mostly stayed with that thinking. I don't fault GGG at all for keeping PoE as hard as it is at the endgame (and some bosses) and that just makes it all the harder to be a casual player here. Yes the Xbox edition of PoE is a nod toward the casual arpg crowd and rightfully so because no serious hardcore arpg player will every be playing PoE without a keyboard and mouse.

well, seems like some folks dont realize that there is a middle ground to be found

I very often look at a few builds that are similar to what im theory crafting in my little head.

upon consulting said builds I then tune them to meet my wants, needs, and desires.