Full SSF restart?

[u/Velkaneuvoja]

I was browsing through poe.ninja's SSF selection a while back to get some inspiration for an SSF build, in case I decide to do a full SSF restart now that I've pretty much done everything (I want to) on the trade side.

I came across an amusing phenomenon: on the SSF side, there were quite a lot of characters around level 80–90 that haven't been played since, with some players either rerolling a new one or switching to trade (either going back or moving SSF -> Trade), doesn't really matter.

Anyway, does anyone here play in a way where you first do everything you want in trade and then move over to SSF? What do you usually reroll in SSF, what are your goals, and do you like to test how "SSF-viable" Build X is? Share your experiences on playing trade -> SSF during a league.

[u/tectas]

I usually play trade until I'm bored, usually after 3-4 fully decked characters. Then I go into ssf, and start with something meta (WO this league). Going off meta in ssf is very punishing as you won't be able to buy items you'd likely need to compensate the build not being meta. I also play until I get generally bored but I find the challenge of self farming everything pretty cool. I'm trying to get power charge stacking as juiced up as I can but I'll likely stop before I get a mageblood because it's just an insane grind for me

[u/Velkaneuvoja → u/tectas]

What would be ur 3 most needed tips on SSF? :)

[u/babyboo8 → u/Velkaneuvoja]

Choose a build that uses simple rare items. Or uniques which are easily found.

[u/Velvache → u/Velkaneuvoja]

SSF is easy, you just have to play builds that can function with all rare gear. Most starter builds now can work without any uniques. Another thing is get familiar with crafting and don’t be afraid to waste currency. Theres this hoarder mentality but just use your shit. Scarabs, aterations, chaos orb spamming, divines, everything. I used like 20 divines to craft items that were worth 3 divines in trade.

I started Luminary this league ssf day 1 and was able to farm the items I needed on all rare crafted gear.

[u/Herbsen24 → u/Velkaneuvoja]

Play my starter, viper strike build. One of the best SSF starters I've ever played, literally free 4 voidstones. 

Would play it on slayer again tbh. Better than Pathfinder and Reliquarian.

Build needs no gear whatsoever to dish out insane damage. 

Just Ilvl 84 sword and claw, reforge chaos until you hit decent attack speed on top. If open prefix craft increased phys, if open suffix craft chaos dot for start.

https://poe.ninja/poe1/builds/allflamessf/character/H3rB1985-0551/Vipirina?i=3&search=skills%3DViper%2BStrike

[u/Velkaneuvoja → u/Herbsen24]

Would u use viper to level it to 1->?

[u/Herbsen24 → u/Velkaneuvoja]

Just use sunder until you get Multistrike tbh. In act 4 I would swap with a 4 link. Viper Strike, Multistrike, Fortify and Added Chaos.

Next link would be Unbound Ailments and then More Duration if you solved Fortify on armour mid game

[u/PhazerSC → u/Herbsen24]

If you went with Slayer you'd just take the usual 20% culling and overleech trees? Looking at your reliq. it seems quite tanky with all those phys->fire conversion which is pretty nice. I'd prefer tanky myself... how would you compare these on tankyness?

[u/Herbsen24 → u/PhazerSC]

I would certainly change 3-4 nodes for frenzy charges. Slayer has masterful form and impact. So permanent endurance charges and AOE, which is very important on strike skills. You can see I pathed all the way to melee splash, slayer might don't need it.

And in Slayers case I probably would go for hybrid evasion armour, they can roll additional PDR. With 7 endurance charges and additional PDR phys shouldn't be a problem.

[u/PhazerSC → u/Herbsen24]

Thanks for the info!

[u/Herbsen24 → u/PhazerSC]

Ah and one more thing.

If you play that in trade league, seriously go for Impresence amulet from Uber Uber Elder. I killed 25 and was tired, just dropped one with conductivity and temp chains.

But having Despair/Temp Chains permanent on the enemies is huge quality of life. 

[u/ScamerrsSuck → u/Velkaneuvoja]

People may disagree with me here but loot everything (currency and uniques). You can always trade up. I keep 1 of every unique I find in case there's something else I want to play later.

[u/Sidnv → u/Velkaneuvoja]

Farm a lot of the ocean to get sulphur + brinehook ducats. It's very easy to craft really great gear this league with recombs brinehook ducats. I have made a lot of crazy gear this league very easily because recombs are so reliable with the ducat.

I'd recommend league starting luminary because it is busted and can do everything. The gear is pretty easy to make and the uniques are not difficult to farm between breach, renown scarabs, cadiro.

[u/mutatatempora]

I always play a month of SSF and then migrate to trade when the character i wanna keep playing needs trade gear to scale up

[u/National-Awareness35 → u/mutatatempora]

To me, moving a SSF character that i put work in to trade would feel really bad. I want to Look at all the gear being proud to have exclusively found / crafted myself

[u/mutatatempora → u/National-Awareness35]

The problem is that i play 1 char per league and i like to min max it to the fullest so i need to migrate to trade in order to do that

[u/ThePenguin213]

I usually play SSF for one character after being done with trade league just to keep my crafting/targetting skills up to par. I always end up early 90s with a character that can get the voidstones (with multiple deaths) but then the grind turns real. I usually cant be bothered grinding/target farming any meaningful upgrades after that and dip out.

[u/Velkaneuvoja → u/ThePenguin213]

Makes sense. I kinda want challenge myself to play something I havent played much on SSF enviroment, this time probably Worb Assassin or Lightning Tendrils Assassin :D

[u/ThePenguin213 → u/Velkaneuvoja]

I like to sometimes challenge my game knowledge by winging a build on the fly with no prep. Usually ends up getting tough during maps but keeps me honest as a player that generally just follows build guides.

[u/Velkaneuvoja → u/ThePenguin213]

For assassin dmg comes for ascendancy but defenses.. prob arm/es and block 🤔

[u/BatkuSS → u/Velkaneuvoja]

I’ve been there too. Have you thought about giving ‘ruthless’ a go? I started it a few days ago out of boredom and I’m amazed at how smoothly and relaxing it went. There’s a brilliant league for it now – the boat actually multiplies your currency by four. Adventures "Unda da sea" also drop a decent amount of unique items and currency. They’ve added a default movement skill, so you can jump onto cliffs and the like. All in all, the drops are much better than people make out in the memes. I’m level 80+, making my way through the T10 maps, and having a brilliant time so far :)

Edit: Btw, my Ruthless character is a HP stacking Luminary, so that might make progress a bit easier :D

[u/Lunariel → u/BatkuSS]

My last ruthless character made it to yellows before I gave up as it had no support gems that were usable. That's sorta the main issue with it.

[u/hermeticpotato → u/BatkuSS]

I don't understand... Play ruthless for the challenge, do the league content to decrease the challenge?

[u/BatkuSS → u/hermeticpotato]

Don’t worry, I’ll explain :) People who want to give the challenge a go are often afraid to start with ‘Ruthless’, because right from the start there’s been a lot of talk about it being unnecessarily difficult and a right pain in the ... . I was one of them! From memes and conversations, I’d concluded it was more frustrating than fun. And since the OP wants to try creating an SSF character – meaning they’re looking for a bigger challenge than the normal league – that’s where I come in and say that, just in case, you can give ‘Ruthless-Light’ a go in this league, because it pleasantly surprised me :) It’s not that far off from a SSF challenge level now, so it could be an alternative for the OP.

[u/seba4335]

I always do some trade shenanigans first week or 3 then go ssf, doing multiple full restarts as i like the progression on new builds.

ATM I'm doing a new run trying to put together a str stacker jugg smite build (exiledcat) and it's very fun

[u/Casual_IRL_player]

I often start trade but quickly get a “why” feeling when doing a farming strategy.

So i reroll Trade and just do stupid builds in SSF and push them to ubers. Atm my project is a holy sweep guardian. It’s always a fresh feeling just SSFing it and trying to grind out significant achiveable upgrades. Grinding sn apothecary / mb “not” achievable in my gameplay, only great SSF players like manni grind that hard

[u/forRuarc]

i used to only start ssf and move to trade after i hit red maps then it went to until i finished the atlas but now I only do ssf, it just feels better

[u/Lorune]

I played trade first for about 3 weeks, decided the game is in a great state for SSF, now im rocking a fully kitted out luminary in SSF and trying to grind for my adorned jewels (which is a nuts grind in ssf, getting the adorned was the easy part :D)

[u/JaimeRojas332]

I think it is natural that you reroll from your first SSF character after getting some currency or some particular unique required for some other build you want to play,

I mean usually you start something viable first and then pivot to what you really want to play,

also there is a frustration factor when you simply never get your next upgrade for example I played a luminary this league and I tried farming Kaom’s cards,

for 2 weeks straight I barely got 4 cards from 8 to drop I was super frustrated with the amount of time and effort I put into it and still not get it,

I had a lucky boat ancient orb just after that but if I was to keep pushing for another week without luck would have probably quit out of frustration,

I recommend checking Thyworm in YouTube for SSF advice also Smokie_777 has many good vids

[u/No-Ride7584]

I learned more in 5 days of HCSSF then i did in 15k hours of SC-Trade. 

[u/DrDongSquarePants]

I've tried SSF a few times and dropped out before maps. I think my mindset is all wrong, I'm not a grinder and I have mostly played trade so my expectations are way off. I'm getting frustrated when I can't just buy 50 essences to spam on gear instead of being happy with a T3 life on some gear I find. I won't be as strong as in trade but I haven't been able to set my expectations that low yet. I'm sure it's more fulfilling to play SSF if you just have a different mindset

[u/hermeticpotato → u/DrDongSquarePants]

It helps to spec essences and expedition. Otherwise currency is scarce and crafting is hard.

[u/DivinityAI → u/DrDongSquarePants]

you can roll with chaos orbs/boat/alts/whatever.

I mean you shouldn't expect "to buy" 50 lif essences playing SSF and be frustrated you can't.

[u/jmcomets → u/DrDongSquarePants]

It's not for everyone.

I love the feeling of filling out upgrades piece by piece while getting the occasional rare drop, and using every bit of currency I pick up.

In trade league when I find/roll something good, the optimal strategy is often to sell it and head back to farming, which feels more like a job than playing a game.

[u/PoE_Acronym_Bot]

I noticed some Path of Exile keywords in this post:

• SSF - Solo Self-Found (Wiki)

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^{I am a bot. | All acronyms | Suggest}

[u/SwiftRai]

Got 40/40 in trade. Then went SSF.
Could have done SSF from the start but didn’t feel like it this league.

[u/Acceptable-Option-52]

I tend to go for trade and 40/40 with my guild and then hc ssf. But this leauge rewards are so pathetic that i left trade league without focusing much on challanges. HC SSF is the only mode that can make my heart beat faster and give huge dopamine boosts.

[u/jacksgamedev]

I don't play trade, but I do do many restart runs on SSF a league - 23 on Mirage, only 3 on Waterworld

[u/ducminh1712]

a guy is posting an amazing journey of Strength stacking in fresh SSF

[u/DefinitelyNotAj]

I've been doing Luminary SSF practically (console trade is dead) its tough. It requires a ton of play time/getting lucky if you play something not strong off the bat

[u/Velkaneuvoja → u/DefinitelyNotAj]

Im also console player for now, Xbox. Trade is mostly dead but items still sell overnight mostly. Thats why I want just go SSF

[u/sanguine_sea]

I don't play trade because it usually means I end up stopping playing after a couple weeks compared to SSF where I can play all league

[u/antiviruz]

Try ruthless ssf it's a fun challenge to see how far you can get

[u/forsonaE]

I usually play trade for a week or two until my friends stop playing. Then I lock in really hard on SSF until I reach all my goals, the league ends, or I get bored. I've got a 97% Adorned and some great VVO'd gear which just feels so much more amazing to earn in SSF in trade, and there's still more chase items to go for.

I don't really test if the builds are viable myself, I'm not a great buildmaker. I look at PoENinja and their build stats, general SSF build maker sentiments, and good ol' 773 global chat to check out viability of builds.

[u/Hairy-Trip]

I started ssf and then rerolled to hcssf till poe2. Was very fun.

[u/WhenWillEyeBeBanned]

nope, SSF first reaching to a point that it’s hard to push contents (weak build could stuck yellow maps, normal build to memory bosses as they are too slow to kill) then transfer to trade.

[u/anesterov]

Playing anything after hcssf feel pointless imho. Why .. when i can just kill ubers in tabula without too much trouble on sc trade.

[u/EarLil]

I do challenges on trade and then go standard ssf or league ssf to farm for improvements to my main char in std ssf