Builds & the build browser
A build isn't a shopping list you buy top-to-bottom — it's a plan for the game, and the in-client browser (press B, then Browse Builds) lets you grab a good one, favourite it, and bend it to the matchup on the fly.
A build is a hero's whole plan in one place: its role, ability order, which items to buy and roughly when, where your Imbues go and which picks you swap by matchup. The build browser is the in-game tool to find, favourite, create and publish those plans, and the build you select feeds the suggested items right inside the shop.
What a build actually is
A build is five decisions bundled together, not just a pile of items. First, the role and lane plan — is this hero a carry that wants farm and tempo, or a support that buys utility for the team (that's the Hero roles & tags card). Second, the ability order: which of your four skills you level first and how you spend points as you hit soul thresholds (the Ability progression card owns the rules). Third, the items, split across the three columns the whole game uses — Weapon (orange), Vitality (green) and Spirit (purple) — and grouped into phases because items come in four tiers that cost 800, 1,600, 3,200 and 6,400 souls, so a sensible build front-loads cheap laning items and back-loads the 6,400 finishers. Fourth, your Imbue targets: which ability each upgrade item should attach to (the Imbues card covers how that works). Fifth, the matchup swaps — the situational defensive and counter items you only buy against certain enemy comps. The base build is 12 slots (4 / 4 / 4), and your team earns up to 4 more flex slots off objectives for a 16-item ceiling, so a complete build plans for both the early 12-slot shape and the full 16-slot finish.
The build browser, end to end
Open the shop with B, then hit Browse Builds in the top-right. The left side gives you tabs per hero — your own builds, Favourites, and Public, which lists the most-used community builds for that hero (the popular ones float to the top). Click the heart on any build to drop it into Favourites so it's one tap away in your next game. To roll your own, hit Create New Build, give it a unique name, then use Add Category to make sections like Early Game, Core and Situational, flip between the Weapon / Vitality / Spirit tabs and drag items into those categories — order matters, because the shop reads the list top-down. Use Edit Ability Point Order to lock in your skill sequence. When you select a build, the in-shop suggested-items panel highlights its next picks for you, so you're never hunting the menu mid-fight. There's no copy-paste code or share link: you share a build by hitting Publish (it needs a unique name) so friends can search it by name in the Public tab, and you borrow someone else's with Copy and Edit, which forks it into your own list to tweak.
How to play it
Pick and favourite a build before you queue, not on the loading screen — a meta build from a high-rank author is a fine starting point, especially on a hero you don't know. But treat the order as a default, not a law: the categories are sorted by what's useful most often, so when the game goes sideways you reorder in your head. Buy out of the Situational group on demand — bullet resist (Vitality, green) against a gun-heavy enemy, spirit resist against ability burst (read the matchup off the damage colours), an escape active if you keep getting jumped. If you're snowballing, skip straight to your spike items; if you're starved, stay in the cheap early tier longer. Don't blindly buy top-to-bottom against a build's plan when the enemy hard-counters it. Once a game ends and you've spotted what was missing, Copy and Edit a public build, slot your fix into the right category, and Publish your own version — that loop, plus favouriting two or three plans per hero (a standard one and a tankier or burstier variant), is how good players always have the right answer ready when they open the shop.
Update history13
- Added the ability to right click on the header of a build category to add all items in that category to your Quickbuy queue.
- You can now create ability builds by clicking on the ability icons in the skill build area (which is the only way you can do it on the dashboard) in addition to skilling them up in sandbox mode (where both work).
- Adding logic to make default build categories double height when they go over 9 items in one category.
- Added a new setting option: "Additional Build Search Language", which lets you select a language to search for when requesting builds in addition to the current display language of the client.
- There is now a Change Hero button in the Build Browser which brings up the hero picker to choose a different hero in both Sandbox and in the Dashboard
- Added a visual indicator when browsing builds that shows which item types are most present in the build (Weapon, Vitality, Spirit).
- You can now drag and drop build categories to move them around
- Now displaying a unique ID for builds in the description section of the build browser. You can click on it to copy the Build ID to the clipboard to share specific builds with friends.
- If you enter a Build ID in the search box of the build browser, it will show all of the builds for the current hero by the author of that build.
- Overflow: Upon full build-up, grants +35% Fire Rate
Raw dataidentity & API
identity
- id
- mechanic_builds_and_recommendations
- slug
- builds-and-recommendations
- category
- items
- flowStage
- shopping
- aliases
- build, item build, skill build, guide, recommendations, what to buy, build browser, browse builds, public builds, favorites, favourite build, share build, create build, import build, copy and edit, билд, гайд, браузер билдов, публичные билды
- sourcePath
- manual:mechanics/builds-and-recommendations
- updatedAt
- 2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z