I think the powerlevel is fine, and the game is balanced for SSF

The more I play and have a comparison between (HC)SSF and Standard (currently I have 8 characters in the mid 80s in Standard, and a Witch and a Monk around lv 80 in HCSSF), the more I'm convinced that the game is balanced for SSF.

Carefully gearing up and doing Doryani quest with the intended map levels vs. skipping to t15s with high tier gear for 50 ex are just completely different games, and the zoom people are complaining about is not a problem in SSF either (at least for a very long time, unlike in Standard).

It literally comes from overgearing with trade.
The powerlevels and the gear progression is completely different.

For comparison, I'm currently running 1.4k max HP and 2.6k max ES (5.2k with Grim Feast) at lv 78, which are comparatively good stats for SSF for this stage of the game.
I have to play carefully, and yes I am one 500 ms spike away from death, but I'm fine, being careful with my map choices that is.

In Standard, I'd probably be zooming with triple the amount of ES at this stage, and likely double the amount of damage either, after buying all the +minion levels gear.
On the other hand, my +2 minion levels helmet and +3 minion levels sceptre from mid campaign are still the best gearpieces I have, and the dopamine rush I got for those rolls was definitely very different from clicking "Trade" as well.

However a couple more Exalts would be nice, so I can start working on the backlog in my "Things I want to slam and see if it's good" stash tab, that I am already gatekeeping rigorously by only letting stuff in that got *good* affixes from Transmutation, Alteration and Regal.


TLDR:
I think the game is balanced for SSF, not for Trade.
And the powerlevel in SSF is fine.

Yep in SSF you cant buy your way in to the big leagues , you have to be methodical in your progression . And a lot of the difficulty in PoE 2 is about two things :

- knowing the move set of the mobs / bosses
- out-DPS them

Once you know which attack does what , and how you can juice your DPS to the extreme ( without these 10 Div pieces of gear ) then the difficulty reduce dramatically . This game got a learning curve , that's good .

What is not good is the extent of OPness certain builds can reach in late game , and how poor & easily abusable certain mechanics are ( Trials / MF ) . All of that resulted into a crashed game economy in mere weeks and if GGG wants this game to have longevity they need to prevent this to happen again .

If the focus is on the economy and not the game play, then the game is already over. It is D3 all over again. I cant believe we are going through this all over again. Why is it hard to figure out that MOST players do not trade. GGG said this. Most players have zero intent on trading ever so making loot drops match a trade system they dont use is insane. Its disconnecting the play time and payout. Nobody is asking for the best of the best. They can barely get enough waystones to stay at the right tier, yet alone a drop at their level, the right type and decent rolls. Decent, not good, just decent. They are getting everything from gambling with gold else they get nothing and need to use meta builds just to progress but even if they progress, you can beat maps and beat bosses while receiving either no waystone or lower tiers so you get punished regardless. Number one way to kill the game off is punishing people for doing well but that is how GGG works I am told