Builds & the build browser

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.