Thinking about SSF league playstyle

So if you are playing SSF league, do you not choose a build? Like you just wait on an item to drop and build around items? That sounds cool and all, especially since I think there will be a lot more emphasis on crafting, which I think is an area of the game that's over looked all the way until you get to ilvl80+.

But does anyone have any advice on how to go about playing SSF? Sounds like a dumb question, but if you think about it, really think about it, it's not.

Also, any advice on versatile builds to begin with?

Choose a build that you can get to mapping without any particular item dropping... be happy with what you find. Run a few maps for a day or two until you find an item worthy of building a character for. Build that character.

The starter builds that work really well for this are summoners and totems. They really need no specific items to function in mapping Tier 1-5 stuff. You don't need to have all the best gear to get it to work. Your gear is primarily defensive.

There are plenty of other good choices as well, but stay away from builds that need a good weapon to function, or a specific unique. The goal isn't to make a kickass character... it's to find an item or two for your next one.

so basically flame totems or fire storm.

I'm actually staying away from totems, since my last two characters relied on them. Personal choice. Not too keen on going zombie/specter either, but will likely go that route. Really doesn't matter too much. You're not committing to that playstyle. Just a week or so of it to build a basis for a character to be selected later.

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ivqancorp wrote:

But does anyone have any advice on how to go about playing SSF? Sounds like a dumb question, but if you think about it, really think about it, it's not.

The best advice ever: remember that most people here think they are far better than they really are, and most of their advice is worth as much as the size of what's in their head.

People will tell you to focus on one or two builds. Tell them to screw themselves and play whatever you want. If you get lucky and find the perfect item for your chosen build, great; if not, deal with it until you can make the perfect item for your chosen build.

Obviously, you have to plan on not finding specific uniques for your build. That means that your start is pretty limited. You also don't have access to a quick 5 link. So you need to find something that functions pretty well off a 4 link.

You'll be engaging more in the crafting system to try and get solid pieces to get further in merciless/mapping. I save all my currency until I get to mapping, and just get by with whatever I get... even if an item is off colored or base isn't related to my build. Then when I start mapping, I look for base items that my build works with.

You will probably want to avoid crit at the start, since you don't have free access to accuracy and crit/crit multi to make it work very well. You also can't really pump out great jewels for this as well. So spell casters are pretty nice, anything resolute technique is pretty nice, if your pure right side of the tree... you probably have enough dex and acc % nodes to get you into mapping.

Other then that, you pretty much plan a basic league starter but you may find yourself making a new character fairly quickly. If you happen to find a unique or 2... or find a really nice rare weapon, or find a 5-6l piece of gear. Drop can dictate what you start playing in SSF. You may even want to plan out 3 different characters so that you can take good drops you find and move them to characters that can use them. If you stick to just 1 character, you might be hard pressed once you reach red maps, that you don't have enough life/es, damage, etc.

You can choose any build actually, provided that it does not depend on specific unique items. 2H builds are easy to gear up, bow is easy, casters / traps / totems are easy... 1H physical / crit builds are the hardest, imo. But you will find good enough rares for any build, eventually. Just not GG items.

Mid-maps is completely doable as SF in temp leagues, for any build that can be played with rares only. Then, as you go, you loot some specific good items and reroll another char around them. That is how SSF is played, more or less.

Well in the many years I've played this game I've never traded or partied with others. My advice as someone who always flies solo is to just take any class your good with on your first run and collect gear and gems you like. Then re-roll with the stuff you've collected and make your build from that. I know its not the ideal way to make a build. Other then that you can try searching for cheap builds from starting gems. Once again it won't be the best, but it should get you far enough to open up more options.

There are actually a lot of forgotten middle-tier builds from the old days using much more common uniques. If you have that kind of experience then you can probably roll something flexible that has a lot of combinations of these builds it can fall into.

You choose a builds that relies on the passive tree only, or items that can be easily farmed from cards/bosses. Then go from there.

Starting with a ranged spell based build can't really go wrong. SRS, Flameblast, Bladefall etc.