Making a new build

It’s honestly just a lot of trial and error, making your own build takes time to figure out what’s going to work. I always start with deciding what pathing I’m going to take for survivability and then work in the offensive passives along the way. Basically pick a defensive stat or two and run with that, then pick a damage type or two to fill in along the way. Then play with skill gems until you find a combination that works. You’ll eventually figure out which gear works best by the time you hit end game.

Lots of reading the wiki, and experimenting, also some planning done in Path of Building.  

(Expect to still "feel new" with much more experience than this.)

POENinja is my rough source outline when I’m starting to tinker

There’s always someone, in this game especially, who’s reading more than you, analyzing more than you, etc. and crowdsourcing on that website is (usually) helpful at least in medium to large sample sizes

I’ll use it for popular tree nodes, highly correlated skill combinations, and maybe support gems but that’s usually about it for me I feel I “understand” this game enough to build what I want based on just starting with a preferred weapon/skill/class