The goal of this Shape of Dreams Builds Guide is to explain the thought process of creating a balanced and strong build, with memories and essences that complement each other.
Shape of Dreams Builds Guide – How to Make the Best Build
Overall Composition Theory
1: Main Damage Memory: The goal is to deal damage; often this Memory will be pure damage like Chain Lighting, a buff like Arrow Storm, or an Origin Memory.
2: Support Memory: A memory for supporting your main damage, can be a “main” damage memory but it is typically something with low cooldown and easy cast conditions (Ice Shield, Frostbite) to apply essences that buff the main ability, reduce cooldowns (Rewind), or other utility noted below.
3: Utility Memory: A memory that gives access to movement, healing, or shield.
4: Compliment Memory: A memory for any of the previous categories that are lacking.
The best memories & essences fit into multiple of these categories.
Pairing Essences
1: Application Condition: This pairs with the memory traits, for instance if your Main Damage memory is Ignite or Fleche, it will have multiple charges. Therefore, essences that activate On-Cast (Scorch) pair exceptionally well since it has 3 casts.
2: Balance & Utility: Support/buff essences prioritize helping the build, for an attack build it’s best to use Essence of Wind since it gives attack speed for 5 second when cast.
Essences can make up for a lacking category and/or combo together.
Maximizing Builds (Advanced)
1: Thresholds & Cooldowns: The idea is to have 100% uptime on all abilities/essences you want to use. This is often done by flat CDR (Momentum) or percent (Memory Haste, Flow). Support essences that have 5 sec uptime (Wind, Dusk) want a memory with =< 5 seconds to stay active.
2: Stat Association: Either AP or AD. If you have only essences/memories that scale off AD, taking it from Chaos is strong. Base stats also affect this category quite a bit.
3: Scaling: Often each set has some kind of % scaler to make it pop off later, for example Guidance for healing.
Nuances for Advanced Players
Buffs and channels (Umbral, Arrow Storm, Ice Shield, Beam of Light) tend to have an active time. These do not start the cooldown while being used, but can be discounted by external CDR such as essences to immediately recast.
There is also a consideration of things like Arrow Storm having 6 second duration. Since you can’t do anything to mitigate this timer, it’s often best to move over buff essences to a 2nd utility or damage memory with separate CDR to always have these active. For example, you don’t lose ~20% efficiency due to them only having 5 second uptime compared to the 6 second active time of the Arrow Storm buff even if Arrow Storm has 0 cooldown. This is very common with On-Hit builds.
These are all miniscule optimizations that can be mitigated by playstyle. In the 1-second downtime noted above you can play more passive, dodge, or use an ability with I-frames as needed. In most cases this efficiency loss isn’t detrimental, so running 3 damage buffs like Arrow, Arrow, Umbral can be preferred because of the types of essences they can proc on hit and still be paired with a % scaler.
Two Damage Memory Playstyle
I’ve seen many players run two Sets (memory & 3 essences) with a utility Set(s) that work with both or the more dependent of the two. The idea of this is that one Set is focused on doing a large amount of single target damage to kill bosses quickly and the second Set is a build for clearing the mob stages between bosses.
Niche Essence Swaps
You can quick swap off one-time use essences like Finality right after use against an enemy for a more-universal one like Shatter while you wait for cooldown. Very micro-intensive. You can hold onto an essence that is better for clearing mobs until the boss battle is over. I often keep Clemency and swap it in only after taking a large hit.
The Travel Time Effect
As the title says, there are also edge cases and optimizations where the distance and travel matters. Going back to a prior example of on-hit builds, we will consider the difference between arrow and umbral. Arrow sends projectiles which travel to their target then trigger the on-hit effects. The issue with this is if you tie other chains to it, they will not proc until the hit is confirmed. Rigidity is the first example that comes to mind. Rigidity won’t trigger until the arrow hits. If an enemy that you attacked dies before the arrow hits, this will cause no shield to be generated. Therefore, umbral, which hits layered with the auto-attack, would proc it instantly and should be where rigidity is run.
In another example, Chain Lighting (CL) takes time to bounce to enemies. In this downtime, flow will not discount and can cause you to have wait time before CL comes back up if you’re relying on the other hits of it for cdr. Same effect with Starfall, Celestial, Pure White, etc. A good way to offset this issue is by using rewind as a support memory, while using Virtue to give consistency.
As with much of this guide, it seems intuitive when written, but it is an important factor to consider when optimizing.