Trade dependency

Hi folks, quick question:
Is trading still necessary to progress the game or is SSF finally a (time respecting) alternative for people who dont want to play a flea market simulator?

SSF is a challenge league, where you really need to know a good bit about the game to do well in. It's not a paradise that people who do not like trade should come to if they aren't fit for the challenge. My 96 character in SSF if transferred to trade with a couple div could easily be 2x stronger.

If you hit a brick wall in trade, even if you DESPISE trading, you can use it just to get past that wall and ignore it again. In SSF if you hit a wall, you... have to just grind and eat shit till random drops fixes it. And if you don't know what you are doing, you are going to hit these walls a lot, you are going to waste the limited resources you have access to, and you are probably not going to understand how to make a league start build that is good with bad gear in SSF, for instance playing any weapon damage scaling builds in SSF as your first build is a recipe for disaster without extreme luck compared to level scaling builds like totems, spells, pconc etc.

You have to engage with every mechanic the game has to offer, you cant ignore vendors early on, you have to craft, and you have to know how to craft which basically boils down to knowing what mods are good, can the item be turned good with orbs, and if the gamble is worth using your limited resources on. When you are dying constantly and have bad resists, or terrible damage it isn't a simple 10 minute detour to the trade site and few exalts to fix.


SSF is a lot of fun, when you understand the game in and out, and want the extra challenge. But I think anyone recommending it for new players that are dissatisfied with trade are doing them a pretty massive disservice. SSF does NOT have any special modifiers that make it any easier than playing self imposed SSF in trade.

You can if you want, but be prepared to spend a lot more time learning things, and do you self a favor and pick a build that scales on gem levels as your starter. I would recommend staying in trade, playing SSF, and having the safety net of being able to trade if you absolutely have to. There is no advantages to drops, crafting, loot whatever in SSF its a direct 1:1 port of trade league with the exception you cannot trade or play with others. So if you are having a bad time in trade league right now, its not going to magically get better in SSF, only your sense of achievement will be better if you care about that at all.

Thank you very much for your clarification. Guess I better start trade league then ;) What I dislike about trading is the constant FOMO about loot which might sell good but I just dont know - feeling pressured to browse every meta build to know what items are wanted. Another point is that I feel playing inefficiently by playing the game instead of trading all time.

A lot of the stuff you are reading is completely overblown, even if you are bad at trading or don't know what you are doing its going to help a lot. You dont even need to interact with it much, just sell a few things that look good here and there, maybe when you start feeling weak sit down for 30 minutes and buy some gear.

You dont need to do insane trading strategies vets are doing with multiple buyout tab shuffling and having 50 active searches up all the time looking for upgrades.

There are plenty of builds that work perfectly fine on low budgets, that wont require you to sell anything, and can easily just buy the gear you need with drops you find playing the game.

You can also like I said play self imposed SSF in trade league, see how it is, and if you do hit a wall, resort to trading then and only then. Even just doing maybe 1-2 hours worth of trading across a character you spend 100's of hours on will make it significantly easier on yourself, there is no need to constantly interact and worry about the trade system in the game.

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BossOfThisGym#2062 wrote:

You can also like I said play self imposed SSF in trade league, see how it is, and if you do hit a wall, resort to trading then and only then. Even just doing maybe 1-2 hours worth of trading across a character you spend 100's of hours on will make it significantly easier on yourself, there is no need to constantly interact and worry about the trade system in the game.

That sounds promising. You just sold me the game <3

Ya just make sure the build you are playing is going to be budget friendly, if you play something like a stat stacking monk you will absolutely have to take advantage of trading a lot, but something like poisonus concoction pathfinder is great because not only is it scaling on gem level but you dont even need to find jewelers orbs.

A lot of build creators like to post videos about whatever insane stuff they are doing late game because that is what people click on, but there are some good videos out there for budget/starter builds. You don't have to follow them to the T, but they will help you get a good idea of what works and you can go from there.

Im lvl 96 on my warrior right now, and I still look at videos/guides from time to time just to see what people are doing and always find cool interactions and things they do and try to incorporate that into my build. For instance this came out 3 days ago https://youtu.be/G6CUmlVimls?t=1865 and my build is quite different, but I really liked how he set up 2 different versions of ancestral totems for clear and single target and thats been working really well. So you can still do your own thing, but get ideas from other builds.

How doable is building an own build without having knowledge about meta gems/classes/uniques etc? I always build my self builds for D4 hardcore and was pretty good at it. But in PoE and here I never tried because it felt so unforgiving.
How respec friendly is PoE? Does leveling take long or is farming gear the bigger time eater? Cause leveling up a new char with the old gear doesnt sound bad when leveling itself is not a too big time sink.

I play trade league but do very little trading, usually I buy a few pieces for my character once then nothing for a long time. And then sometimes list items that I think might be good for others. ( I have sold 1 item so far in PoE2 with about 200 hours played).

You don't need to trade at all but its nice to have the option there.

If you are new to PoE doing your own build might be challenging as there are many complicated systems one need to learn.

I think what most people do is make their own build but also look at what others do who are playing the same type of skill / character to maybe get ideas for things they could use in their build, for example there could be a item or some combination for that build you did not know about.

You will be able to respec everything about your character expect the class you choose to start with and the ascendancy you choose later on.

It takes about 8 hours I think to level a character to "endgame", maybe down to 6 if you are experienced. After getting your first character to endgame there are specific unique items / gear that could drop for you or you could buy from others that makes leveling a new character much easier.

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Aeryos#1456 wrote:

How doable is building an own build without having knowledge about meta gems/classes/uniques etc? I always build my self builds for D4 hardcore and was pretty good at it. But in PoE and here I never tried because it felt so unforgiving.
How respec friendly is PoE? Does leveling take long or is farming gear the bigger time eater? Cause leveling up a new char with the old gear doesnt sound bad when leveling itself is not a too big time sink.

Having a general idea of what skills are good is going to help a lot.

If you are a new player and play ranger, think lightning attacks are cool and just go from there you will probably do fine. But if you picked infernalist, wanting to play fire spells, or occultist phys spells... ya. Or if you think sorc looks cool and you play cold/lightning spells you will again be fine, if you pick warrior and go melee... again its not gonna be great.

Those builds CAN work, but you need to do so much more and take advantage of so many things, gear, probably a starter build to build currency that its just out of reach of new players.

You dont need to follow a build guide completely, but if you say have a general idea like "I want to play a spellcaster" and go look at what people are playing and try to make your own build around those skills it will be fine, but going in blind is going to be a coin toss if you picked something that is currently not great, and needs a lot to work.

SSF puts some more restrictions on builds, as in trade its incredibly easy to pick up decent weapons, however in SSF you are at the mercy of RNG and likely wont find anything near as good as what is for sale for 1-10ex on trade league currently. Having a starter build that works without good weapons is key, on warrior totems just need a single mod on the weapon and vastly less strength requirements. To play melee proper, you need way more str on gear, and instead of a single mod on a weapon you are looking for at minimum 3, all smashed into the prefix slot, or a very good pure phy + flat roll to make up for not having hybrid, and you probably want reduced attributes as well or you are going to have to farm ultimatum for a while and gimp your weapon with attribute conversion soulcores (something a new player has idea is even possible).

tl:dr if you look at what skills are popular right now, and just use that as a baseline and build everything yourself it should be fine. But if you pick something that isn't meta, and needs a lot of work, you probably don't have the game knowledge to make it work, because it goes beyond just experimenting with support gems, and intuitive passive tree choices. It probably requires certain uniques, certain weird stats you wouldn't think of like going ES on warrior or damage conversions for instance what people are doing with fire to cold, etc.

Thank you guys very much for the insights. With PoE2 I dont want to follow builds (I did in PoE1) - I want to build myself and with that learn it. Having a good starting point sounds good tho. I always liked Archers and think I'll go with one with lightning attacks like you suggested and see how it's going from there. Maybe I'll look at some builds for impressions like better gear/gem/passive picks once I hit a wall or the endgame.
Thanks for your time and effort.