Mage/Dark Wizard Help builds meaning and info

im just really confused about what different builds mean. i am abit early game but im just really confused about how to create and actual build and not just pick abilities that dont go together or dont go with my armor and items

 

My advice to you would be to try and see what you like class wise and even just briefly going through the skill tree and seeing what looks fun. You really can't go wrong when picking a class/build, it is all up to the choice of playstyle. If you want to let me know the class you are interested in and maybe the play style (Defensive, Healing, Damage, etc...) I would be able to help you further :)
Best of luck on your Wynncraft journey.

 

you dont really have to make a cohesive build till around lvl 70 in my experience, since you level out of them pretty quick, but heres some general info for understanding whats happening:
Note that this info is about how people talk about builds in general, not what you should do to make one.

Element Abbreviations
the 5 elements in wynn all have a skill point associated with them, and when a build focuses on some of these over others, you refer to it by the first letters of the elements it focuses on. usually you have 3 elements, but 4 and 5 do also exist.
Each of the elements has specific stats in their items that are fairly consistent.
Earth: base ability increases raw damage, big melee damage, poison, slower attack speed, slower movement
Thunder: base ability increases crit chance, spell damage, melee damage, mana steal, life steal, faster attack speed, faster movement speed, lower health, lower health regen
Water: base ability reduces spell cost, spell damage, lower spell costs, mana regen, reflection(thorns for projectiles), healing efficiency, lower melee damage, lower life steal?(not confident on that)
Fire: base ability reduces damage taken, higher health, more health regen, thorns, exploding, lower damage
Air: base ability gives chance to dodge(take half dmg) movement speed, reflection, fast attack speed, sprint, jump height, lower health, lower health regen
Rainbow(using all 5 elements):jack of all trades, usually more defensive than aggressive tho

for example, a super high damage build could be ETW, with no regard for defence or agility its going to be super glassy but do high damage(this is not recommended). another example is TWA, which usually alternates between spells and melee hits to refill mana using mana steal while having good spell and melee damage. there's a lot of archetypes, and this isnt exact; specific items have different pros and cons.

Playstyles
There's a lot of diversity in playstyles, but heres the main ones:
spellspam: always using the watextremely popular right now, spell spam focuses on high mana regen and spell damage to cast lots of spells while ignoring melee completely
spellsteal: mentioned earlier, spellsteal weaves melee hits inbetween spell casts to keep their mana up and do more damage. Much harder to play and a bit glassier than spellspam. slower attack speed spellsteal is pretty doable but fast spellsteal is rough
heavy melee: a playstyle focused on getting tons of attack damage on a weapon with really low attack speed
tierstack (light melee): taking a heavy weapon and adding +attack speed tiers to make it super fast
poison: put as much poison as possible on your attacks. signifigantly stronger on classes with piercing melee(mage and shaman)
heavy spell: a theoretical playstyle with super high spell damage and low mana sustain/high mana costs. been getting more viable over time but still kinda sucks

specific types for party content: these next ones are only really viable with other people
hypertank: a build(usually WFA) that is absurdly defensive and almost impossible to kill. focuses on pulling aggro of enemies or doing dangerous raid activities that others might be hesitant to do, like holding dangerous platforms. hypertank does low damage due to all the tankiness, and is much worse in 2.1 raids due to bosses having a time limit now
healer: a build that focuses on healing output to the rest of the team. typically lightbender mage but shaman can also do this pretty well. low damage due to focusing on defense and healing stats, but usually has at least some damage output to prevent you from being useless on your own.
pure glass cannon: can be any of the common archetypes, but with so little health they cant function on their own. an extreme example of this is the rage abuse 1hp grandmother build, which uses the mythic grandmother, draining their health to 1 with -health regen and using the earth armor powders to increase damage at lower hp. dont play this

there's a lot more that exist, but those are usually niche and very item specific or gimmicky

Actually Answering Your Original Question
Skill tree abilities and your gear build do not need to synergize perfectly
even at endgame you don't need to play with items corresponding to the element of each archetype; any will work. The ability tree is a lot of "what cool options do you want your spells to have!" rather than being very strict. I encourage you to test out different skill tree things in detlas on the training dummies and see which ones are the most fun to you! keep in mind that you can edit your skill tree freely once you reset it as long as you stay in a town.
In terms of builds, I would focus on using the best legendary weapon you can use and putting other items on from there based on what it's strengths are. As mage usually your stuff focuses on spell damage based builds, which encourages use of intel and water. you dont really have to worry about having a great build until around level 60-70 when you start running into the really tough bosses and your leveling speed slows down enough to the point where its worth investing in good builds. If you do get stuck, keep in mind that you can always come back later and that there's other quests you can do as well. or since your playing mage sometimes you can go pure lightbender and outheal things but pshhh thats boring

well thats the end of my rant tl;dr do whatever makes you happy and generally stick to an element or three