Farming for Transfigured Gem on Leaguestart/SSF is VERY tedious

Takes on average about 6 hours to farm a desired version of transfigured gem on SSF league start merc lab. Farming for hours for a build enabling gem (Ice Nova for example, which was unlocked by default previously) is acceptable I guess... but then you could also get the wrong version from "Transform a non-Transfigured Skill Gem to be a random Transfigured version" Divine Font craft and that feels VERY, VERY BAD after 6 hours of farming.

Many people including myself in Merc league farmed all the way up to almost lvl 80 for the wanted version of the gem. At that point it's about 50 merc lab runs, and 8 hours + of time sank. It took the fun out of the league entirely.

Suggestion A: make the "Transform a non-Transfigured Skill Gem to be a random Transfigured version" similar to baseline craft where you can choose the version. This problem will only get worse the more transfigured gems you introduce down the line (blue gems is much worse in this regard right now due to the sheer amount of them). Shouldn't be such a complex change and still have time to make it in to save next league.

Suggestion B: Or - make the "Transform a non-Transfigured Skill Gem to be a random Transfigured version" more frequent <= merc lab. Right now it's sitting at 6% per run and combined with many variants of the gem makes the farm too unattainable. Increase its appearance <=merc lab can help with that while maintaining the status quo economy for farming higher tier labs, which is what people actually farm for profit.

Farming to unlock baseline builds that were previously available right away limits many league start options. POE1 doesn't have build diversity problem in endgame but early game, the randomness and unavailability of many essential TGems make it even worse. The suggested changes won't impact the profitability/fun of farming labs and will make early league build diversity much better.

Perhaps, just perhaps, SSF isn’t quite the right mode for you in this situation. Unfortunately, this mode will likely never achieve perfect balance, as most adjustments are made with Trade League and an active economy in mind. What you’re experiencing may feel like a problem, but in reality, it’s simply a sign that SSF might not align with your preferred style of play.

If spending a couple hours farming for a transfigured gem (which predicates your entire build) is this painful for you, you're going to have a really hard time in SSF.

I still remember farming for Helmet enchants back in the day and OP is complaining about 6 hours for the right gem. Damn.

Most builds don't even need a certain transfigured gem until way later. Just use a generic leveling build until u can farm uber lab if it's too much of a hassle.