Just some quick points to make:

• These are just builds that took us far that we enjoyed
  
• We stopped at 170 with each character because we wanted to get the appearances
  
• We will try to add new characters when they are released
  
• These are just what we found during our testing.

TAKE THE "WEAPON EXPERT" RUNE ALWAYS

Banning Passives:
We found that most builds work best when based around an element. We did do some testing with Ammunition, Aptitude, Dazed, and Disoriented but didn't have much luck in getting quick kills or surviving a long time. While these attributes are fun and work in their own ways, they just didn't fit into many of these builds.

Weapon Choices:
We tested every weapon and tried to put together a "build" for each weapon for each character... key word "tried". We found that all weapons worked well, but in this guide we're pointing out the ones that we felt worked the best.

"Testing" Runs:
All of our runs were performed by using the red portal and seeing how far we could go. In most of these builds we could make it to red portal 5, some made it to red portal 6, and very few could make it to red portal 7. One build in this list almost made it to red portal 9...

Curse Intensity:
We ran all of our runs at curse intensity 51 because we wanted to push ourselves and these builds. This still allowed us to get the max bonuses with every run and we didn't have to deal with the Pillars of Protection (because they are annoying).

The Barbarian can be an absolute tank while also dealing massive bleed damage. The weapon you will want to take is Bloodgod's Legacy for the two additional bleed skills. The Barbarian only has access to 5 skills which apply bleed by default, so for the 6th skill we will take "Bladestorm".

You can play with the runes a bit on the build but the main damage dealing skill is "Bladestorm". "Bladestorm" attacks every 0.1 second and each hit will apply bleed after you take passives. This means bleed is constantly stacked and hits everything on the screen, and even off the screen when it gets big enough.

Through all of the builds that we tested, this was one of the only builds we were able to make it through Red Portal 6 with. Constant healing and application of bleed damage makes it a slow, but satisfyingly fun build.

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Make sure to ban any elemental passives that would apply Fire, Poison, and Doom as we want to focus on getting as many Bleed passives as possible.

Skills:

• Bladestorm
  
• Flurry
  
• Bloody Saw
  
• Heavy Strike
  
• On Guard
  
• Ground Slam

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Glass Cannon
  
• Decapitator
  
• Pulse of Agony

Example of a Run:
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If you are looking for a build that lets you set the world on fire, The Pyromancer is the perfect character for you. We attempted running with the Damnatus, Spire of Shadows but felt like it wasn't consistent or direct with damage. Then we decided to switch to the Pyromancer's Firestarter and realized that doing a fire build would be perfect.
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Make sure to ban any elemental passives that would apply bleed, poison, and doom as we want to focus on getting as many fire passives as possible.

Skills:

• Fire Slash
  
• Meteor Shower
  
• Conflagrate
  
• Flamethrower
  
• Combustion
  
• Fire Bolt

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• Elemental Flow
  
• Searing Intensity

Example of a Run:
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The Hound Master is a bit of a sour spot for us because we had major hopes for an Aptitude build using the Dragonfire Scattergun, but we couldn't seem to get something good going. We ended up trying the Toxic Cannon and realized the insane power of the "Pestilence" skill and just what happens when you flood the screen with constant poison.

Suggestion: Try swapping out "Poison Cloud" for "Poison Bolt" as we realized from later testing that "Poison Bolt" may perform better.
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Make sure to ban any elemental passives that would apply bleed, fire, and doom as we want to focus on getting as many poison passives as possible.

Skills:

• Pestilence
  
• AcidRain
  
• Pesticide Burst
  
• Poison Puddle
  
• Threshing Blast
  
• Poison Cloud

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Elemental Flow
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• Decapitator

Example of a Run:
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The Spellblade is the an what you would get if you combined The Barbarian and The Pyromancer into one character. Take the Scorching Edge as your starting weapon. You will be taking all fire skills with the exception of "Bladestorm" which will expand and apply stacks of burn to enemies off screen.
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Ban the Poison, Bleed, and Doom passives the first time they come up. If you find the passive that applies Slow when you apply Burn you will want to take this. Taking this allows you to start getting "Apply Slow on hit" passives and I found these to be nice later in the room.

Skills:

• Bladestorm
  
• Fiery Blades
  
• Firestorm
  
• Flamethrower
  
• Fire Bolt
  
• Flame Wave

Runes:

• Searing Intensity
  
• Elemental Flow
  
• Executioner
  
• Misfortune's Embrace

Example of a Run:
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The Arcane Weaver gave us the impression that right away that you could do a fire build... which you can, but he's called the ARCANE Weaver for a reason. This build uses the Arcane Staff and focuses on taking all arcane skills to build up Brittle and Radiance while applying Doom, Burn, Poison, and Bleed.
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Unlike other builds, we want to take as many Doom, Bleed, Poison, and Burn skills as possible (in that order). While your skills apply Brittle, you will start to apply stacks of debuffs and the enemy will suddenly die from all of the stacks.

Skills:

• Arcane Orb
  
• Arcane Missiles
  
• Arcane Beam
  
• Arcane Sparks
  
• Arcane Disc
  
• Magic Missile

Runes:

• Searing Intensity
  
• Decapitator
  
• Executioner
  
• Misfortune's Embrace

Example of a Run:
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We found the Sentinel to be fun character to run. Once we got the Noxious Longbow we focused on running all poison skills. Take the Noxious Longbow because you are going to be poisoning everything that spawns on the screen. Most of your damage will come from "Pestilence" as it does more damage based on the stacks of Poison each enemy has on them.
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Make sure to ban any elemental passives that would apply bleed, fire, and doom as we want to focus on getting as many poison passives as possible.

Skills:

• Noxious Shot
  
• AcidRain
  
• Venomous Volley
  
• Pestilence
  
• Poison Cloud
  
• Poison Puddle

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• Synergetic
  
• Elemental Flow

Example of a Run:
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The Paladin, or should I say The Barbarian 2.0, is one of the strongest characters we had the pleasure to play. The Paladin plays a lot like The Barbarian did except we have a couple of secret weapons this time. We will focus on using Bleed and the effects we are working with are as follows:

• Prowess - Damage Modifier
  
• Resilience - Reduces Damage Taken
  
• Fragility - Extra Damage
  
• Exposed - Extra Damage
  
• Brittle - Increase ALL Damage Taken

We will start by taking the Dawnbreaker's Mace weapon to gain the Prowess and Resilience effects from the starting skills. Three skills we take will each add the extra damage in the form of direct frontal damage. The last skill we take will be "Bladestorm" to apply bleed to every enemy from a distance. When we see a boss, we will aim our cursor at the boss and simply watch them melt to nothing.

Important Note: The Paladin really lacks in Critical Chance and Movement Speed. Make sure to prioritize getting these bonuses up sooner rather than later.
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When taking Passive Skills you will want to banish Poison, Fire, and Doom so that you aren't wasting time by taking them. Our runes are picked to maximize the damage we get from Bleed and making every enemy weaker.

Skills:

• Fissure Strike
  
• Staggering Blow
  
• Magic Missiles
  
• Bladestorm
  
• Light Beam
  
• Arcane Beam

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Elemental Flow
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• Pulse of Agony

Example of a Run:
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The Chaoswalker turned out to be one of the favorites we played because we could use a unique build we didn't see with other characters. This build focuses on the character skill "Manifestations of Chaos" because the skill deals damage based on stacks of Disarray. We then take skills that cause Disarray and Chaotic (Chaotic giving a chance to cast another skill).

Something that needs to be explained about this build quick, the use of the Chaotic trait. Chaotic reads "Whenever this skill is used, you have a % chance of casting one of your other skills..." This means that whenever one of your Chaotic skills fires off, you have a chance of firing another skill. While Chaotic cannot trigger Chaotic on another skill, our main focus is to apply as many stacks of Disarray as possible.

Take the Skull of Draxiz as your starting weapon because we will need the skills it provides to spread the most debuffs. Be warned that by taking Chaos Golem you will be more likely to die as the enemies and bosses will start to huddle the golems at later rounds.
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Unlike other characters, we want to focus on grabbing as many elemental passive skills as possible. If you see a passive skill which reads "apply *element* when you apply *element*" you want to take it right away. The more debuffs, the better.

Skills:

• Chaotic Missile
  
• Chromatic Bolt
  
• Chaos Golem
  
• Manifestations of Chaos
  
• Unchained Chaos
  
• Chaotic Explosion

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Executioner
  
• Misforune's Embrace
  
• Synergetic

Example of a Run:
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The Beastmaster is our first character where we put focus into the summoned units mechanic of the game. We found running Widow's Embrace set a good foundation for doing a Bleed build. You should take the "Harmony" rune because this will increase our damage for every summoned unit you have. This also means we will want as many summoned units as possible.

The summoned units will take most of the attention from the enemies allowing you time to focus on dodging attacks. As you take bleed passives, all of your summoned units will apply bleed with their attacks. The skills "Bladestorm" and "Shrapnel Bomb" are going to deal the most damage. "Bladestorm" will hit everything on screen to apply Bleed with your summoned units and "Shrapnel Bomb" will deal major damage to bosses.
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Just remember that any passive skills you take will also apply to your summoned units. When you take Bleed passives, such as "Dismemberment", all of your units will also benefit from it. Make sure to banish passives focused around Fire, Poison, and Doom.

Skills:

• Spider Cocoon
  
• Spider Queen
  
• War Tiger
  
• Bladestorm
  
• Shrapnel Bomb
  
• Battle Moose

Runes:

• Harmony
  
• Pulse of Agony
  
• Executioner
  
• Elemental Flow

Example of a Run:
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The Assassin is a unique build because we get to utilize the Doom and Ambush mechanics. Ambush activates a unique ability per skill, because of this we will take the Edge of Doom weapon because the skill we care about is "Reap".

Every time you hit with "Reap" while meeting Ambush requirements, you will instantly apply all stacks of Doom. We also take the "Smoke Bomb" skill which causes all damage done within the "Smoke Bomb" to be considered an Ambush. These two skills together deal an incredible amount of damage and only get stronger when you partner them with other Doom applying skills.

Suggestion: While we took 6 Doom based skills for our runs, we believe swapping one of them for "Bladestorm" may not be a bad idea.
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Passives and Skill Reminders

Skills:

• Shadow Stab
  
• Reap
  
• Shadow Orb
  
• Death Vortex
  
• Shadow Bolt
  
• Smoke Bomb

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Vulnerable Exploit
  
• Vulnerable Target
  
• Extended Reach

Example of a Run:
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The Elementalist is unique from other characters because he has access to pick up elemental orbs regardless of what element you're running. This means that you will always find passives for Doom, Poison, Bleed, and Fire even when you don't have any skills of that type. The problem we ran into is that when trying to run an "all elements" or a Fire specific run... we didn't get great results.

The best option we found for The Elementalist is to run Scepter of Nature and focus on doing a Poison build. Unlike other Poison builds, Scepter of Nature gives us access to a skill called "Contaminated Cut" which causes all stacks of Poison to deal their damage instantly, while also allowing more Poison to be stacked.
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The Scepter of Nature gives a negative bonus to critical hit chance, so you will want to focus on getting that up early on. The Elementalist also gets passives for all damage types, this means you will want to focus using your banishes to remove them from your passive skill pool.

Skills:

• Contaminated Cut
  
• Pestilence
  
• Acid Rain
  
• Outbreak
  
• Poison Bolt
  
• Poison Cloud

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Executioner
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• Decapitator

Example of a Run:
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The Legionnaire build is almost identical to The Elementalist but it plays quite a bit differently. Take the Fang of Vipernus weapon to start your run as we will be using Poison as our main source of damage.

It's possible to run a Fire build with The Legionnaire as we tested, but we decided to put this one down on paper. There may be a really interesting Form build to do, but sadly we haven't had time to test this.
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Remember to ban any passives based on Doom, Fire, and Bleed as we are focusing on Poison based Passives,

Skills:

• Purging Slam
  
• Pestilence
  
• Acid Rain
  
• Corrosive Spear
  
• Poison Bolt
  
• Poison Cloud

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Decapitator
  
• Overwhelming Chaos
  
• Controlled Chaos

Example of a Run:
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Welcome to the strongest build we found.

The Necromancer is a lot like The Chaoswalker except this time we have summoned units to help! This build is going to focus on a multi casting skills and dealing massive physical damage through traits that weaken enemies. Start by taking Grimtalon's Scourge as your weapon so you can get the "Murder of Crows" skill.

"Magic Missile" and "Arcane Beam" will apply the Fragility, Brittle, and Disarray while being cast multiple times and more often (thanks to Chaotic). This means we want to focus on taking physical damage passive skills for higher damage and better crit chance/damage. We are taking the "Extended Reach" rune to make these two attacks reach farther. We are also taking the "Overwhelming Chaos" and "Controlled Chaos" to get consistently higher damage rolls.

Something that needs to be explained about this build quick, the use of the Chaotic trait. Chaotic reads "Whenever this skill is used, you have a % chance of casting one of your other skills..." This means that whenever one of your Chaotic skills fires off, you have a chance of firing another skill. This is perfect because our goal will be to cast "Magic Missiles" and "Arcane Beam" as much as possible.
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When taking passives be sure to get your Crit Chance % over 100% as well as getting Crit Damage and Physical Damage as high as possible as they will directly affect "Magic Missile" and "Arcane Beam"

We want to ban Poison, Bleed, Fire, and Doom passives as we are going for a physical damage based build.

Skills:

• Murder of Crows
  
• Frenzied Bunnies
  
• Chaos Golem
  
• Arcane Beam
  
• Magic Missiles
  
• Skeletal Archers

Runes:

• Harmony
  
• Overwhelming Chaos
  
• Controlled Chaos
  
• Extended Reach

Example of a Run:
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The Death Knight has a skill set that could work for either a Doom or Poison build. For this build we've chosen Poison because Doom doesn't give us the ability to apply the Weakness trait. The Death Knight does not have the ability to use dashes, so put a big focus on getting movement speed passives.

For this build, start by taking the Greatsword of Corruption for access to the poison skills. Be sure to upgrade this weapon up as much as possible because we gain an increased movement speed modifier, this will be very helpful. We have chosen to not take "Pestilence" because we have access to a character unique skill called "Contagion" which works as a better "Pestilence" to output damage.
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Banish any modifiers that would apply Bleed, Fire, or Doom as we are focused on Physical and Poison. Also don't forget to grab movement speed passives whenever you have a chance (we stopped around 250%).

Skills:

• Festering Strike
  
• Lethal Blade
  
• Path of Decay
  
• Contagion
  
• Acid Rain
  
• Poison Bolt

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Overwhelming Chaos
  
• Controlled Chaos
  
• Synchrony

Example of a Run:
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The Monkey King has a set of unique skills that no other character has, so for this build you can be we are going to use them. Start by taking the Trickster's Boomstick for as we will want the "Gunpowder Strike" skill to apply Weakness and Bleed.

We are going to take skills that will apply the debuffs: Exposed, Brittle, Shattered, and Weakness. This will help weaken all of the enemies and bosses so that "Shrapnel Bomb" can finish them off.

Suggestion: We didn't get much DPS out of "Trickster Decoy" so it might not be a bad idea to swap it out for "Armor Shatter".
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Block any passives based around Poison, Fire, and Doom. Because we are using both Physical and Bleed you will want to focus on passives around both.

Skills:

• Gunpowder Strike
  
• Trickster Decoy
  
• Whirling Defense
  
• Shrapnel Bomb
  
• Earthquake
  
• Light Beam

Runes:

• Elemental Flow
  
• Executioner
  
• Pulse of Agony
  
• Decapitator

Example of a Run:
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The Engineer is a fun character that we found fun to play using every weapon. Our favorite ended up being the Bomb Launcher. Shrapnel Bomb is your main source of damage as it deals more damage based on stacks of bleed. Overall it's really fun to be running around with a big gun and just be shooting everything.
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We would keep the QT Bombbuddy 1000 for a while, but would trade it out for something to inflict more bleed damage once we had 4 other skills. Focus on taking skills that inflict more bleed and you'll do fine.

Skills:

• Shrapnel Bomb
  
• Bomb Barrage
  
• Heavy Artillery
  
• Shrapnel Shot
  
• Explosive Trap
  
• QT Land Surprise

Runes:

• Executioner
  
• Pulse of Agony
  
• Misfortune's Embrace
  
• War Tank

Example of a Run:
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The Myrmidon quickly joined The Necromancer as being insanely strong and fun to play. Right away we found our favorite weapon to be Song Of The Sirens because it gives us access to Glacial Trident. Normally we wouldn't want to be taking passives that cause Slow, but because we can get the Hypothermia passive (Slow has a chance to cause Disarray). We will want to focus on our attacks applying Slow, because this will quickly build stacks of Disarray and will melt bosses.
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We take Light Beam, Magic Missiles, and Arcane Beam to stack up the extra damage on top of the Disarray stacks. We tried taking Earthquake in place of Arcane Sparks, it just felt like Arcane Sparks did a better job at cleaning up the small enemies. Lastly we take Might to get another big boost to our damage.

Trust me when I say this build gets crazy strong and is the farthest we have gone with any character. Even with The Myrmidon at level 0 with no weapon upgrades you can make it to Red Portal +6. The best run we have so far is 1 boss away from Red Portal +9.

Skills:

• Light Beam
  
• Magic Missiles
  
• Arcane Beam
  
• Glacial Trident
  
• Arcane Sparks
  
• Might

Runes:

• Overwhelming Chaos
  
• Controlled Chaos
  
• Extended Reach
  
• Divine Legacy

Example of a Run:
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I want to give a special thanks to my good friends Cswitz and Wolfie as they assisted in testing builds, brainstorming, and finding fun ways to play the game while putting this guide together. Couldn't have done it without you guys!