Build Recommendations

I would recommend him to try what looks fun. You recommended the three strongest ascendancies in the game, which is fine, but also it’s kind of a cliche and boring suggestion to me. No offense. There’s so much more to the game than just playing the builds with the highest damage numbers.

If your friend just wants a strong build and doesn’t actually care what the playstyle is, then your three suggestions are great. But if your friend has any actual idea of what they want to do, then tell them to lean in to it. There’s builds on mobalytics for just about any skill. Do they want to play melee? Caster? Ranger? Ice build? Fire? Chaos? Lightning? Physical?

Personally I can’t stand builds like CoC comet because there’s too much screen clutter, but maybe your friend loves the screen clutter. There’s just not really enough information for the community to recommend a good build for your friend.

If you’re just generally looking for random build recommendations, then my top three favorite builds in the game would be Ice Strike monk, Sparks sorceress, and ED/Contagion witch.

CoC Comet BM can kind of work on a budget and has effectively infinite scaling. That being said, it is pretty difficult for a beginner I would argue. The damage is pretty low on bosses until you get it rolling.

Oracle rend and oil barrage is pretty good and simple at low investment and then oracle offers versatility for other builds later on 

Great leaguestart build I know I will be playing next league is a gardener/plant build druid oracle. I did it on bm, but that's because I wanted to swap to spark/COC but the plants are insanely good league start.

BM is not that good with little currency, like that's the biggest reason BM is so unpopular at the start of every season.

I'd highly recommend an Oracle which is way more friendly for a low budget build and still go scale like BM, plants, spark, wyvern rend, I think even worf are all good builds to start, and then you can transition into whatever stronger build you want, like you can go easily from plants/spark to EW Doedre CoC.

im doing my first serious playthrough right now and invoker coc feels like cheating lol, especially at endgame

Infernal legion infernal/lich. Only downside is you shouldn't swap until you get the bogfelled commoner in act 3. That spectre can be found first area act 3 off a boss, he summons them.

BM can get expensive defensive wise imo, I would reccomend Varashta for easy defensive on budget

Spark stormweaver is easy and straight forward. With chaos inoculation you only stack energy shield. No life leach or conversion to mana. Just simple spells and simple defenses. The most interesting build? Hardly not, but it's still nice and I main it every season.