This end game grind is excruciating and I don't like it.

I don't want to play 80 hours a week. I don't want to pick one specific build from a small list of builds. I don't want to plan everything specifically to not get one shot. I don't want to deal with people manipulating prices of literally every item all the time.

I don't like having to buy boss carries from people because I didn't pick something broken, or I didn't get 2 mirrors from a week of 6 player grinding. I don't want to risk high amounts (days of farming) currency just to gamble at certain items that are core to completing the game.

I don't like sending requests to 50 people just to buy one thing. I don't like how the specific builds based around specific hyper-rare items invalidate the entire system. I don't like how specific builds based around low-cost are the only way to farm certain high valued items.

I don't like getting randomly oneshot on maps, losing large amounts of time due to the piss-poor slow exp gain at end-game. I don't like delving for 30 hours to get one level. I don't like farming the same map that doesn't drop items to get level. I don't like latching onto a 6 party breach or legion to get levels. I don't like dealing with specific specifics JUST TO GET EXP, when clearly level 85 is enough to oneshot the entire list of players NOT USING A BROKEN DEFENSIVE OR OVERPAID BUILD.

I am, at a loss for how excruciating this entire end-game experience has been. I quite frankly don't enjoy it anymore. It was fun at first, and now that I'm facing the more powerful bosses, I've found the entire experience tiresome and unrewarding just to get access to the final 2 voidstones. The first 2 were like 12 hours in, and I've spent weeks farming items to get the durability and damage to face the ubers, only to get softlocked by a DPS check once again because I don't run a meta low-cost or an overjuiced build.

I'm sure every single person will have an opinion based on something I listed here. This is just a simple list of annoyances that will likely never be addressed. If anything they'll make some of these worse and completely ignore the rest.

Grind was simply more fun when you had a baseline strong character to do it with. Now baseline characters suck and you gotta grind with these suck characters a whole fucking lot until they stop sucking. Grinding for unnecessary but still desirable extra power was fun but now that stage of the game is gated behind a whole lot of grinding while sucking to stop sucking. Apprently others do but I personally dont get off on coming back from work and sucking in what became an overly punishing and in turn time demanding game.

The biggest problem with current grinding i have is- long gaps between power increases (no smooth incrimental power increases). And ofc also all tedium of trading and figuring most efficient way to progress adds up.

I dont know,maybe there could be items which would level up their mods or smth.

"

Andrius319 wrote:

The biggest problem with current grinding i have is- long gaps between power increases (no smooth incrimental power increases). And ofc also all tedium of trading and figuring most efficient way to progress adds up.

I dont know,maybe there could be items which would level up their mods or smth.

There are items that level with you (The most prominent one probably being Poet's pen).

APart from that, would you be able to provide what long gaps you are talking about? Because your character does get progressively stronger naturally, even with "little" ammount of investment in multiple forms:

- Gem levels
- Transition from 5L to 6L
- Better weapons trough the aid of essences (As an example if you dont wanna trade)
- Player levels and allocating into damage mods
- Jewels

This is just to name a few that could be reasonablly expected from any and every player to, unless they're super lazy (Which, well, then you get what you deserve :D?)

But yeah, genuinely curious, so please, elaborate at what point you feel long gaps of power increase?

Its ussually somewhere at lvl 90, gem lvl 19-20, and at this point every further upgrade costs at least 5 exalts (which includes fusing to 6link). It feels worse with weaker builds, like not progressing.

I really dont feel like picking meta builds to "cheat" for victory, most of the time i look for whatever looks interesting rather than for power. Maybe this is the culprit.

I have friends who are not good at this game. They follow very well laid out guides and the struggle is real for every character they play.... and they've been playing for years at this point. Playing a build that is meta or following a guide isn't a free ride in this game and I often raise an eyebrow to those who want to play their own builds or talk down about following the meta state. I'd say the vast majority of 'meta followers' are just people looking for something new and fun to play. Being at the crest of that wave isn't boring or cheating and a lot of times it's people like the OP who has tried their own janky build but just couldn't get it there and now the game has patched to a state where you can finally have a good time with it (see: Spectral Shield Throw in Expedition League)

A lot of these complaints are rooted in one's (in)ability to leverage game knowledge. Unfortunately, there's not really an effective guide for that and it is something everyone learns at a different pace. This game doesn't really stop you from doing the wrong thing and it's not going to tell you what you're doing wrong.

Let's look specifically at the end-game progression being too hard for the approach you take to this game. Could you find a compromise? Would you consider playing a 'meta' build that is known to be successful at these goals for the sake of fully unlocking your atlas, favorite map slots, sextants, atlas passives, etc... and then build w/e you want and test your own limits?

Generally, I'd recommend playing casters over melee/bow builds. They are easier to scale damage. Right up front: Spell skill gems get more base damage per level than Attack skill gems. Casters are not subject to name-locking attacks and they often have more freedom in regards to positioning during hectic boss fights.

On the subject of avoiding 'meta' builds - It's fair to say that anything that can succeed as well as any build that is meta... is or has already been a meta build. So by specifically eliminating all the builds that work well, you're not giving yourself a good chance to succeed. And when I say "meta", I don't mean whatever build is popular in <current league>. It also includes all prior popular builds because even after GGG hits them with a balance patch, they're still very capable builds (unless a specific mechanic or enabler of the build no longer works).

The 'grind for currency' is another thing that is heavily dependent on game knowledge. I'd guess that maybe 5-8% of my wealth in a given league comes strictly in the form of exalted orb drops. A lot of it comes from buying under-priced items that can easily be crafted into multi-exalt items. And your ability to do this will also save you money because you'll be able to craft a lot of your own gear for less than the going market rate. So an example of this I'll mention is attribute stacking belts. Early this league, I was buying 13-15% Dex synth implicit belts for 20-40c. I would scour, bless to 15% (if needed), attribute quality to 20%, and then slam with a T1 dex essence (which were only ~2c due to everyone jamming essences on their passive tree). It would only take a few rolls to get decent life and/or res along with the T1 dex. So I had a belt with 18% dex implicit, ~64 Dex and life/res for a cost of 30-50c. I repeated this 5-6 times over the span of 2 days and I never sold a belt for less than an exalt. If I wanted, I could have been doing the same for the str and int stacking market - and this was during a period where there was no dex stacking meta.

Knowing what items are valuable to which build and the degree to which those items scale those builds; you can make a lot of money by crafting the right rares for the right builds... and an easy way to learn how to do that is to play those meta builds. If you've never played a summoner, you're not very likely going to understand what rare items those builds need and why because playing slayers, marauders, shadows or rangers won't really dip your toes into those pools.

the character I did the full atlas with and all the voidstones doesn't have 80 hrs total OP, it sounds to me like you need to be more relaxed about how you play but more efficient too.

There are major grind elements of the game for sure but most are gear or currency orientated, actually clearing all the content aside from the invitations can be fast if you want it to be.

Most of this comes from experience but you should have an idea of how your build will scale in stages, and those stages should come with a rough price tag that you can convert into how long it would take to gear them up

so for example shrapnel ballista totems as it was my league starter

probably 50c for comfortable clear of T16s and would probably squeeze the first 2 voidstones ~ 1mil dps

1 > 3mil dps mostly about hitting extra projectile requirements, 6l bow and getting a reasonable essence on one ~ 5ex give or take

decent regen, phys reduction, ailment handling, stun immunity and aura optimsiation ~ another 5ex

Now for me after i'd gone through those 3 i'd call it a day, I don't make mega expensive builds but plenty of SC players will iterate many times over to "complete" their gear and end up doing 50m dps etc.

If you don't have a good plan for how to do that 1-3mil damage phase for example this is when you can suffer from horrendous grind as you try to dig your way out of a hole with hours instead of braincells. This is a real problem in SSF but in trade league it shouldn't be, there are always cheap optimisations to be made to substantially empower your character even if its playing glass cannon a while just to make bosses easier.

Or just ask for help

My problem with grind is that when I do just something random, i get about 1-2c per map.

If I do something specific, where I am supposed to get about 10c per map according to guides and all, I get 1-2c per map :D

And if you rely on big drops, how fun it is getting 1 Exalted orb every 8-9 days.
Being on non-streamer loot seed is just a pure sadness.

While its true I think its awful suggestion to figure out what other plays, figure out what they want, how to crat stuff and whats the profit per hour. Gaining the power through being a merchant and abusing other's wish to just play the god damn game to gain their slowly picked currency.

The ratio of income/cost of crated items reflects how many people are into it.

Well, its my view, dont take it too seriously. The market ofc does need those crafters to fill items in, its just most people doesnt like being one and more so- doing the research.

"

Marxone wrote:

My problem with grind is that when I do just something random, i get about 1-2c per map.

If I do something specific, where I am supposed to get about 10c per map according to guides and all, I get 1-2c per map :D

And if you rely on big drops, how fun it is getting 1 Exalted orb every 8-9 days.
Being on non-streamer loot seed is just a pure sadness.

this is a knowledge problem. Either you are doing the strategies wrong, or you simply dont know whats valuable