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The Building Blocks of Builds

The first part of this guide covered the four specific roles you can fulfill in combat, but roles are only one of many elements that can ultimately be associated with a given build. Before giving a complete breakdown of the other elements associated with builds, let’s go over some of the basics of what a build is, how they’re obtained and how they fit into the grand scheme of character customization within the game.

Much like roles, builds are unlocked through normal gameplay, only in this case new build slots become available depending on your level rather than through the completion of Perks. The first additional build becomes available at level 8, or roughly around the time you reach the tail end of the Canada or Desert crisis zones. As each new build slot opens up, a new tab will be added along the top of your main power tray. To switch between active builds simply click on one of these tabs, or alternately you can also press the associated keybind on your keyboard (mapped to the F4-F8 keys by default).

You open up the build screen by pressing the “B” key. Within this window you’ll see a number of elements that can be associated with each build as described below:

• Role – A dropdown menu allows you to select which of the roles you want to associate with a given build, as described above. Switching between these roles will also add a small graphical element to the left side of your power tray depending on whether you’re in an offensive, defensive or support role.


• Powers – Each build allows you to alter the layout of your powers on the power bar. To do so, open your power window by pressing “P” on your keyboard, and then simply drag and drop your powers in the order you’d like associated with a given build.


• Passive Powers – Unlike most powers, passive powers are associated with specific roles which will be indicated by a small icon on the bottom left of the main power listing. As the name implies, these are powers that grant some form of benefit simply by being slotted, though you can only have one of these active per build. Examples of passive powers include things like Regeneration, sorcery Auras or martial arts Focus powers.


• Blocking Powers – As with passive powers, you can also slot one block power per build. These greatly enhance the inherent benefits of blocking during combat, typically providing additional boosts to resistance of certain damage types. Block powers are easy to overlook when purchasing new powers, but they can really save your bacon when faced with overwhelming odds in both PvE and PvP situations.


• Travel Powers – While you’ll be using your primary travel power through most of the game, a second travel power becomes available at level 35 which can then be associated with your various builds.


• Upgrades and Devices – You can also select exactly which upgrades and devices you want to use with a given build, which can be handy if you want to shift the focus of your stats to better fit with the role you’ve selected. To do so, press the “I” key to open your inventory and then slot the items you want associated with your build as you normally would. This itemization layout will then be associated with your new build, but keep in mind that you’ll need to keep enough open inventory space for these items to land when switching between builds unless you use the same items for each build you create.


• Costume – As you open up additional costume slots, you can select which of them you want to associate with a given build as well. This opens up some pretty cool possibilities; for example you might have a defensive build focused on Unarmed skills but then decide you want to “Hulk-out” (or in this case I suppose that should be “Grond-out”) and switch to a Might-focused offensive build with a costume change that increases the overall size, skin tone or even full costume of your character. There’s loads of possibilities for how you can approach this, so be creative!


• Name – Now that you’ve selected what elements will define your new build, you can give it a name which can either be something descriptive, or simply something fun; it’s really up to you.

At first glance, putting new builds together might seem like a fairly complex system, but it also provides an immense amount of flexibility during combat. Since you can alter any of your previously created builds any time you like, don’t be afraid to try different approaches until you find what works best for your character. Altering your current build is a simple matter of opening the build screen to make whatever adjustments you’d like, and then the system will automatically update based on any alterations you make.

A main restriction to keep in mind is that there is a short cooldown associated with swapping between builds which ultimately helps retain a certain degree of balance within the system. Otherwise, the sky is the limit in terms of how you choose to construct each of your available builds. Whether you choose to create a build that focuses on buffing certain stats, resistances or damage types is entirely up to you.