SSF player. I feel like I'm running out of builds to play

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jsuslak313 wrote:

I thought THAT^ was the entire point of playing SSF...not limitation for limitation's sake, but opening up the world to the discovery of new builds based on your rng drops. If you approach SSF with a build you KNOW is SSF friendly with no intention of changing it later...what's the point?

To...play that build? What a strange question.

I don't understand why SSF would mean not planning characters; they're two completely independent factors.

I don't enjoy trade. So I play SSF. I do enjoy planning characters. So I plan characters. It's not complicated.

^perhaps I misspoke....I didn't mean you don't have to plan your character. I meant that you don't have to LIMIT yourself to your planned character simply because it is SSF.

Of course when you go in you should have a plan...and I'm pretty sure I said that too (re: starting build). But the excitement gets ramped up when you get that LUCKY drop and then say "ooh what can I do with this shiny new toy!". Not..."great another useless drop that has nothing to do with my current build, bye!".

If it's just to play a specific build and not interact with trade...you don't really need SSF to do that, do you? To me (i guess not you...), the whole point of playing SSF is to bring the excitement back into lucky drops since that is your ONLY way to get items.

Yep it's true, they need to adjust the numbers.


Even if they want to change the skill. The game needs to be in the best state it can be right now, in the meantime.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

^perhaps I misspoke....I didn't mean you don't have to plan your character. I meant that you don't have to LIMIT yourself to your planned character simply because it is SSF.

Sure, of course, you don't have to, that's fine.

(For me personally, I made that character because I wanted to see how that plan would work out. If I decide later that I also want to try something new because an item opened up a new possibility, I'll make a new character. Respecs larger than cleaning up a travel node or two lessen my enjoyment of the game by undermining character identity.)

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jsuslak313 wrote:

If it's just to play a specific build and not interact with trade...you don't really need SSF to do that, do you? To me (i guess not you...), the whole point of playing SSF is to bring the excitement back into lucky drops since that is your ONLY way to get items.

You don't need SSF to do either of these, because they're the same thing: not trading, by choice. If you decide you're not going to trade, then drops are the only way to get items.

SSF clearly doesn't exist because it's 'needed' in order to not trade; I and I'm sure many others always played SSF in trade leagues before it was a separate option. Now I play it just in order to be easily counted in GGG's internal understanding of people who specifically don't care about trading.

as SSF you can now basically get cap resists so easily as chieftain and slap on pretty much any skill. Yes the damage might not be as huge but for SSF it is more than fine for the activities you listed.

That's a few hundred builds to play with right there xdd

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GusTheCrocodile wrote:

You don't need SSF to do either of these, because they're the same thing: not trading, by choice. If you decide you're not going to trade, then drops are the only way to get items.

SSF clearly doesn't exist because it's 'needed' in order to not trade; I and I'm sure many others always played SSF in trade leagues before it was a separate option. Now I play it just in order to be easily counted in GGG's internal understanding of people who specifically don't care about trading.

You are right and I guess that part of my initial post was misguided in how I put it out there.

But going back to OP's initial complaint: I still think that it's not the SSF mode that is affecting his build diversity...but rather his approach to the game itself. My point was that SSF isn't as drastic a limitation to build diversity as what was stated in the OP. And that if you go into the game with self-imposed limitations from the start, it might be you who is the limiting factor and not the game.

None of this is to say that there are plenty of builds out there that will basically be "unavailable" to SSF seasonal players. There most certainly are, but there are also hundreds of builds available to you, even if they might not be SSF "starting" builds.

Growing up with D2...these types of games for me are all ABOUT starting a brand new character based on what items may or may not have dropped for you. If I was playing a Barb and I gathered all pieces of Tal Rasha set...I would "respec" into a Sorceress. I have almost no attachment to my initial build, ESPECIALLY if I'm playing SSF and know that min/maxing is likely impossible. That process was far more tedious in D2 than it is in PoE: you don't need to re-level a new character. It can also be somewhat more limiting: you are limited by your class on who you can readily respec into.

But "rare" items DO drop in SSF. You can't plan for them to drop, but once they do you can take advantage of them. And the sky is the limit with build diversity...

I'd also like to mention OP's baseline for a "successful" build involves both boss-killing AND clearing ability: essence = boss, expedition = clear. That in itself is a huge self-imposed restriction on build diversity. In that case, I sure hope they are at least considering gem swapping between content. Or even a full secondary weapon/shield swap for various content differences.

I feel that SSF is likely different things to different people. I was trade league all the way until a couple of leagues ago when I decided to try SSF on a whim. And really enjoyed it. Trade was quite honestly getting too easy and I really started to see why Chris is so hesitant to make trade easier to do. I've been enjoying SSF since and while I might dip back to trade in the future, I don't know if I necessarily will.

I don't consider myself highly skilled as a player but I feel I've gathered a lot of game knowledge in making builds and in crafting gear. SSF is the perfect battleground to test those skills in. For me, I don't strive to achieve much less in SSF vs. trade--I strive to achieve as close as I possibly can. That means while I won't have things like Forbidden jewels and strong Watcher's Eyes, I do try to get to the point where the rest of my gear isn't that much weaker than my trade gear.

I set the bar super high for myself--I still strive to kill Ubers and complete 40 challenges, of course with my own builds. The difficulty that SSF imposes on those things is far greater than I initially thought but such difficulty has made the game interesting again.

I've seen people go to SSF w/ no game knowledge or crafting knowledge and then get frustrated with the game. They plead for better drops in that mode to make it more doable. While I'm not here to judge how someone decides to have fun, I do think these folks have the wrong idea about what SSF really is.

But I do agree with the "start one character and see what you find" approach. I have a character that needs very little gear to knock out 2 stones (4L plus some common uniques) and whatever I find from that point determines what characters I try to build. I become a packrat with fractures because you never know if enough pieces will drop to create a certain character with said fracture.

The problem with this thread is that the OP says hes a SSF player...but he really isn't by his own admission based on his post and responses.

He only plays short bursts, and ONLY plays builds that can handle difficult content with minimal investment.

In short...he's more like a meta copy/paster. Someone offers him a suggestion of a new build and he immediately asks for a PoB. He is not someone that wants to explore, not someone that wants to take his time and craft or save, not someone that wants to make things himself. He shouldn't really even be giving himself this limitation in the first place. I think OP would have an infinitely happier time in trade league, especially if he's only playing in short bursts as he says.

If I were only playing SSF, had a very small amount of time, and mostly work off of copy/pasting PoBs...I would run out of builds quickly too. Choosing to play a mode that severely punishes your lack of TIME is just a fundamental mistake.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

My point was that SSF isn't as drastic a limitation to build diversity as what was stated in the OP.

Oh I agree.

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jsuslak313 wrote:

The problem with this thread is that the OP says hes a SSF player...but he really isn't by his own admission based on his post and responses.

Why are you straight back to the weird essentialist gatekeeping though?

An SSF player is someone who plays SSF. That's it. It's just a game mode, not some Harry Potter house for people of a particular attitude. There's no need to mythologise it like this.

^I am 'gatekeeping' because of the title of the thread, the main complaint, and the lack of connection between all of it.

I am not "mythologizing" anything: I am pointing out the fallacies of the post. Because...I'm responding to a post: I'm not going off on SSF as a whole. You are willfully ignoring the initial post...which I find odd because we had agreed on the very first page of this thread! Your own first post in this thread was questioning the validity of the entire mentality of the OP. I was literally doing the same thing, except pointing to specifics about SSF.

The OP equates SSF with his difficulties in build diversity. But its neither the SSF nor the build diversity that is the problem here: it is HIS insistence to play SSF, when the method of his playstyle is implicitly incompatible with the SSF design.

It is simply FACT that SSF takes longer to achieve certain goals. No mythology, no exaggeration. It is the DESIGN of the mode and the game as a whole.