POE 2 SSF Starter Build Tier List: The Day 9 SC SSF Meta. Path of Exile 2

[@nightplaymc]

As someone who has been playing chronomancer ssf. It is the most fun thing I've ever done.

[@sirgog]

And that makes it S tier for you.

[@LittleRedRubberDuck]

Thats awesome, what skills are u using on it?

[@holmes1352]

I think there has been major lack of testing mainly due to the gate keeping on the ascendancy's. I was level 83 by the time I got my 3rd went into the sanc 3rd boss with 3k+ honor, got hit once and was down to less then 400. I don't think we'll see the outliner builds until the gatekeeping is unlocked. At this point creativity will start coming out.

[@xGNEPx]

You take 4x damage to honor without honor resistance relics

[@melfsonnichsen8223]

Just become better, lernen through your mistakes. I am a very bad player (mechanically). But knowledge and experience helping alot

[@cr6458]

honour resistance and movement speed on relics. Should solve most issues

[@gu244]

​@@xGNEPxyep, I had to farm relics until I had 60% honour res to be able to complete the third floor as a warrior.

[@Louiminator]

@@melfsonnichsen8223 that's true for bosses but loosing a sanctum run after an hour because you get hit by some random ability is just annoying

[@etzool]

I _really_ hope they revamp Acolyte of Chayula but keep the lean-in-hard lore theme. It's SO freaking cool conceptually, and it's absolutely the kind of "this is based on in-universe stuff in a meaningful way" archetype that has the potential to make the game way, way more compelling than just "oh, yeah, this time I wanna play minions."

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

Revamp? Why? Because people don't play it or didn't find a way to break it doesn't mean it's bad lol. Also the ascendancy itself is perfect, only thing that could get changed is darkness mechanic or flame spawning.

[@ranielyfire]

⁠@@GE_Photon_Lordso…. A revamp on darkness or the flames? lol

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@@ranielyfire That's not called revamp. What they do is perfect. What needs to change is the flame spawn speed and location. That's just an adjustment. For darkness give it more darkness. It's too little of a shield to absorb damage.

[@ranielyfire]

@ see i think that’s semantics. to me change is a change and we agree a change is needed to the ascendancy

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@@ranielyfire I was never against changes to the ascendancy. But he said he wants it revamped, which implies a complete change, not just adjustments.

[@scire105]

Great video! Love the meta analysis So i started witch hunter and i'm still playing, a few things about the numbers in the ladder: -Deadeye is choking the ascendancy. Deadeye is in a place in the tree in which it can do basically the same things that witch hunter does, and it's better at it. Mostly beacuse 30% movespeed is insane in the game right now. A lot of people that wanted to play crossbow or grenades rerolled into deadeye -Sorcery ward is stronger than it was expected but... -It really is your 3 or fourth ascendancy since you want explosions first, unless you are getting god tier weapons from another character you really want culling too before sorcery ward, so with the state of ascension, that means most people don't get to use it. Also the fact that it effectively is a fourth pointer make it feel bad for grabbing it before you can invest the four points. -Witch hunter's sorcery ward scales a lot with good gear, we are not at a point where that is common. Wearing a cloak of flames and getting high armour/evasion makes you very tanky.And the ward does help with sustain quite a bit. Overall my point is that deadeye right now does everything witch hunter does but better. Then regarding chronomancer. I think is mostly lack of gems and support for now, the ascendancy is strong, the recoup nodes are very powerful, and the thing that is keeping the ascendancy down is lack of powerful cooldowns to reset. On thing that annoyed me a lot about chronomancer is that for some reason the minion's command skill can't be reset, so they killed that archetype before it could be born, and the idea was cool.

[@darkehartplays]

I think one aspect of Pathfinder (which is what I'm playing) that downgrades how it performs on the ladder is that, aside from a very specific thing (poison) it doesn't add much to your offense. The various Concoctions are neat, but you will run your mana flask dry in a split second if you try to rely on them for damage, and possibly even just for Exposure under many circumstances. There are just better ways to get Exposure, as well (Oil Grenade comes to mind since that's what I use to get Fire Exposure). I picked it for the defensive nodes (movement speed being the games strongest defence after all) myself, but it's taking a while to really start coming together. I've run into a wall in the form of a complete lack of Greater Jeweller's Orbs (SSF BTW). I'm also running into a problem sustaining waystones unless I juice the crap out of lower tier than I'm capable of running since I haven't finished enough maps to get far enough into the Atlas Passives. Both of these are solvable with some more time investment, which I am keen to put in, so we'll see where I end up. =^.^= (I am aware of Vaal Orb shenanigans, I just haven't gotten quite that desperate. Again, SSF BTW.)

[@ICXCify]

Thanks for sharing. Are you a full evasion character?

[@darkehartplays]

@@ICXCify I prefer the hybrid armour/evasion bases since I'm over in the mercenary part of the tree and it has a lot of armour+evasion combo nodes. Luck has determined that I am mostly wearing full evasion pieces right now, however. Wind Dancer also stacks more evasion (I have it linked to magnified effect, blind, and maim so it gets me out of a tight spot almost by itself whenever I goof up and get cornered, which is often 'cause I'm bad lol). So I get hit a little more than a pure evasion character, but I don't die when I do get hit, generally. You also need strength for the crossbow skills, and I've been stacking as much of that as I can get for more health (which will also scale the juicy life regeneration nodes in the Merc area). Most of my deaths since maps are either very clearly my fault or that fucking network lag eating my flask button presses. Last night when I put it down it ate three in a row and I died to poison. xD

[@ICXCify]

@ thanks for the advice, the wind dancer idea is helpful.

[@Valdorian-u5x]

Thank you, very useful information.

[@trijondee]

There is quite a few things I would have liked to hear considered in this SSF meta overview, or just hear further reflection upon Reflection upon if SSF at high level consists of POE1 players? And how much the expectation was carried by the same group. Some of the hype for gemlin was around it as a support character, and a lot of people saw it as a second class option, and some expected it to be the other minion class. Things that should impact the numbers playing the class in ssf at high level. Was ssf impacted by the nerf hammer to trigger spells? Properly not. How ascendancy point dependent are classes at high level ? does it impact certain classes and not others in ssf? just to name what popped up here.

[@slinslin83]

I am level 93 almost on Chayula but on trade, but yeah the flames need mechanical changes because they spawn way too far outside/behind you and out of sight also the gem should scale with duration/area/cooldown

[@knaz7468]

I loved this analysis.

[@franciscofracaro3648]

I got a pay to cheat ad for poe2 by opening this video. I don't know if you can do anything about it but I thought it was right to let you know.

[@sirgog]

Thanks for the headsup. I don't believe there's anything I can do beyond messing with them by marking their direct emails as spam, and telling people not to patronize the sites

[@rubikmonat6589]

​@@sirgogif you had the spare time, waste as much of their time as possible, and gather information on their operations. There'd be plenty of hacktivists who can use that info.

[@harhatoxic8271]

Can you go over what happend with div price last few days? See alot new players frustrated over it.

[@Zenbubbles]

I'm playing caster Invoker, cold and lightning mixed together, energy shield + evasion. Only downside is relying on flame wall + spark for ranged clear in early levels, but it is quite doable until comet, ball lightning, eye of winter. Really smooth.

[@Obi2606]

Infernalist in HC is SSS tier, the class offer everything you need for HC

[@chidori0117]

It would be interesting to see once we get builds for example for the infernalist I think its only A tier because of Minions. I think barely anybody is building Demon Form and being successfull with it. Feels like only half the ascendancy is good and the other half is pretty bad.

[@fishergabe]

so melee armour based pathfinder might not be a good idea?

[@TheNuclearGamerr]

Ssf is basically all of console atm cause there’s still a bug stoping us from getting notifications. Ie no party invites and in turn not able to trade with people 😅. I do hope it gets fixed but haven’t even seen that ggg even knows bout it.

[@theinfernity1799]

Ye some stuff is bugged here and there. But I guess that they drop one bigger Bugfix patch before Christmas holiday and then the next bigger Bugfix will be mid January. Prob with some balancing. But it got me good that notifications were turned off for everything in the settings when I went online on my steamdeck but on my pc I had some checks active (but not the same I activated on my steamdeck 😅)

[@TheNuclearGamerr]

@ huh so maybe it’s just not registering that they are marked on in the settings. That’s actually an interesting insight :)

[@theinfernity1799]

@@TheNuclearGamerr You can check for yourself the next time you are online. Go to settings and there to the tab notifications. If they are checked and you don't receive anything, it is obviously a bug. If there are no checkmarks, it is a non-user friendly approach from GGG and they should fix it. Can happen. Maybe they didn't test it on real consoles. Some consoles only provide a virtual dev environment which can be different from the real console of course :) Anyway, good luck exile and enjoy the game :D

[@brendondaniel2198]

@@TheNuclearGamerr I’ve been trading on console but the interface is terrible to accept invites

[@TheNuclearGamerr]

@@brendondaniel2198 how’s it bad?

[@spencers1485]

You think you could do a video on interesting uniques etc? I don't think there is really good resources for them and don't want to search every one on trade lol.

[@HellsingRuler]

Bit sad to hear about the gemling legionaire not living up to the hype, but i think it is just that it needs a lot of gear

[@YouTookMyAccountName]

"energy shield is outperforming life by so much" * cries in Blood Mage *

[@chedder9999]

i rerolled bloodmage it was bad once skills cost so much life....

[@PrematureGoat]

Can you make a hardcore ssf one

[@ADVGuiltyParty]

Chaos fits Acolyte of Chayula thematically but chaos skills are in a bad place plus the ascendancy is weak. Changing some numbers can make this class much stronger

[@geptimbo]

I'm playing a Blood Mage and hope that my Ignite-Bleed-EA (or insert something other here)-Fantasy will become reality in the future.

[@peterheath7960]

I am enjoying taking a very slow-roll approach for this game, focusing on exploration.

[@franciscomellocastro654]

I am not sure GGG will fix energy shield, as they just fixed chaos damage in late game, which I will go out on a limb and say is the reason people are migrating to CI. I

[@BWallin]

Gemling legionare going for a vine arrow build is 10+m dps end game and pre end game 2m+

[@Kevin-sg8jq]

whats the interaction of vine arrow thats dealing so much damage?

[@Jcd5596]

Gem level scaling. It's getting nerfed

[@GOON-MAXX]

harcore tier list: infernalist S, everything else unranked because nobody is playing anything else

[@charlespanache7047]

That's one of the problems with PoE. The game being ruthless difficulty, it's not about what's fun it's about what is fastest and strongest. Glad to see PoE2 making the same mistakes as PoE1. But i'm sure they'll implement FoMO and just nerf w/e is strong and then wait for the next meta. Just like PoE1, refuse to touch the most unused skills, but implement a new game every single league that is by far 2x stronger than most other gems.

[@divinityai]

@@charlespanache7047 you never have played ruthless. PoE2 only have no bench and less movement skills like ruthless but everything else isn't ruthless. You have no supports, no drops etc in ruthless.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

@@charlespanache7047Yup. GGG’s *revolving door of forced META* is among the many weird hills GGG _loves_ to die on. I can’t wait till the all new players discover their builds are completely bricked over the upcoming months and years and posts about it on reddit. All the PoE1 players will go: _First time?_ 😂

[@oORoOFLOo]

I think people rerolled merc because the ascendancies are boring and the grenade playstyle wears off, I don't think it is because merc is weak

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

Yeah exactly

[@n8doggy733]

man we need a patch, and not to nerf another build, but to fix all these bugs and intersctions with uniques that dont work! ❤

[@ExiledVessel]

The biggest problem with SSF is gear acquisition. Currently it feels like I must pick up 5000 bases and gamble them with aug/regal/alch/recomb to get 1 usuable piece of gear, or just randomly drop 50 really good mana items and reroll mana builds lol.

[@DreamskyDance]

Oh that explains why i cant even find build guides for chronomancer. I looked up the other day just to get some sense of direction i should go to with my build, but nothing. Oh well...ill think of something. Still the concept of resetting my mana with "backwards movement skill" ( that and escaping one-shot attacks from bosses is a life saver at least ) and resetting my cooldowns ( when i get more ascendancy points ) seems interesting.

[@sirgog]

Resetting mana and then dumping with Archmage does seem the best approach. We may just be one big mana spender away from the ascnedancy finding a home though.

[@michaelscott2093]

Watching a video about a group setup using a chromomancer support showed me how disgusting this ascendency. The player got of 8 freezes in a row. I didn’t look into his character I was more interested in how he was block capping his entire party but the amount freezes was nuts haha

[@ErinRinArt]

ssf blood mage here at level 70+ , going leech on ascendancy is a wasted ascendancy point rn BCS I have basically no damage :p

[@ErinRinArt]

sorry i have no info, so im using alot of mana before life nodes, eldritch battery, EOW for single target, frost bolt and wall as clear for freeze as honestly my main defence against physical BCS I'm ngl I'm absolutely cooked against small hits, also archmage BCS I'm slightly mana stacking

[@ErinRinArt]

ah also EOW has inspiration linked, and archmage doesn't lower my hp when I use it, so its basically the best way to hit die from self damage :p

[@LittleRedRubberDuck]

From what I hear crit seems bad overall, alongside leech. Seems like blood mage is in dire need of some love 😅

[@yeahlol8926]

god help me on the acolyte. you're right.

[@divinityai]

if they nerf es everyone who nolifed and grouped will be more rich and other people that didn't get to invest in their chars yet will be nerfed. So rich get richer basically, someone had easy mod, let's nerf it. Nerfing damage is one thing, but defences... I feel they need to buff armor instead tbh

[@Xanthus-5c]

Still no build list, class list seems pretty pointless! You could probably have asked around and gotten the builds

[@MattDavie]

If only ascendancy was a blight mission.

[@sethjones6572]

As far as blood mage goes, the blood orb mechanic is a direct rip from d3 necro and anyone that played it knows it is a bad mechanic.

[@blackomega34]

There's a huge difference between all characters having it, and one character being forced to get it; much more balance room to make it strong.

[@sethjones6572]

@ necro had mechanics that boosted character power by collecting them and abilities to spawn them more frequently. I’m referring directly to that. Conditional power that you have to go out of the way to collect

[@akn3207]

I think you need to up your game, dslily’s weather report was hilarious

[@aberwood]

Simp

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

Why is acolyte terrible and invoker insane? I still dont get it. Also no one broke acolyte yet. Its pretty much old chaos trickster, it was very good with fast hitting skills. Invoker literally only has crit hits ignore res,the rest is very fluff. Gain 10% dmg as cold is very low just to get warden skill. That skill is inconsistent. Protect me from harm is also overkill. Chayula gets so much dmg as extra chaos and damage from flames,its pretty absurd. The only argument we can make is that the flames spawn weird, but yknow, even if you get half of them with 2 ascendancy points its still insane dmg and also recovery.

[@sirgog]

If flames are working as well as you mention - it's entirely possible the playerbase is just underestimating the ascendancy. Wouldn't be the first time, in POE1's Sanctum league the whole English language playerbase slept on Hexblast Mines for ~6 weeks while the Korean speaking playerbase tore the game up with it. Invoker's ailment spread effects are a big pull toward it, as is the spirit/evasion area.

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@sirgog I can build the same invoker with ailment spread on acolyte tho. This is the part I'm not understanding from the community. Invoker gets a bit more cold/lightning,but he can freeze and shock without those points already. Acolyte gives more dmg but in the form of chaos. Invoker has burst through warden ability. Also I'm not really sure how flames spawn, I only saw gameplay from others,but I assumed the worst (I think max flames that you can get is 10, if you get half of those and enhanced ,it's the same thing as getting 10 of them. So that's already a lot of dmg. Now if we manage ( or ggg changes spawning) to get all 10 of them,with double effect it's 20. It's so strong imo. Plus reality rending as well on top ( but this is a bit tricky you need a fast hitting skill) I leveled infernalist from the start, but now I'm rerolling into acolyte. I plan on making him a spellcaster with freeze/some lightning. Or I could go crit hexblast and level with Ed contagion, saw a pretty good vid.

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@sirgog Overall, to me it does seem like a hexblast situation where it's underlooked. We most likely missing the synergy. Maybe people think that monk is supposed to use quarterstaff skills only to do dmg, but maybe spellcaster is the way. I just think the dmg bonus is incredible, the only conundrum is that it's chaos type, so you have to use despair and withering presence,etc.

[@chidori0117]

@@GE_Photon_Lord Most of these top players are POE1 veterans so the fact that they have to walk around and collect flames even a little bit is a huge negative for them. They want to play fast, explode the screen and dont stop for anything etc. There is probably a large bias for that reason which has caused less "effort" to be put into solving this class and therefore the class also doesnt get shown off in videos etc. much. That and many big voices in the community have been calling the class bad without actually having played it based on their own POE1 experience but thats just how it is.

[@GE_Photon_Lord]

@@chidori0117 I'm a poe1 veteran as well...poe2 is supposed to be a slower game,this is not a negative anymore. Not to mention you could probably dash into the flames or dodge roll, or again maybe playing spellcaster and tap skill move tap skill move. Also I forgot to mention that this class can finally play breach rings which is kinda crazy. Ppl will cook soon. Oh yeah,I get what ur saying. That's exactly what I'm thinking as well , it's not shown on yt yet because we have that poe1 mentality. In poe1 I main cold dot so I'm used to 5-6 buttons. Jung for example will find a way to make all builds 1 button automated lol.

[@ejun251]

The fall off at around lvl 89 is very obviously because of ES/life imbalance. It's almost impossible to level past 89 on a life build because everything one shots you. I have life gear worth hundreds of exalts and still get one shot constantly by effects that spawn on my character without delay. With how much exp and maps you lose when you die, it's clear why life builds don't go over lvl 90. I can decide if I should reroll a CI MOM archmage or stick to my deadeye and hope they nerf damage, especially near-instant chaos on-death effects.

[@Krezvy]

Runes from expedition - my pain. Just explode me within less than second after appearing. Also, corpse explosions.. Deadeye is fun, but full of pain. 2 k+ life is rediculous, whale therre is 7+ ES

[@gu244]

Out of curiosity what other defences do you have? I have felt tanky in t11 maps as a titan with 3k life, 12k armour and 62% block chance. Just wondering if it will continue to feel tanky as I get closer to t16s.

[@justjay3750]

the fact that they chose 2 of the most hated mechanics as ascendencys just shows ggg is catering to a new crowd. OG poe players are not what they care about.

[@MichaelPohoreski]

PoE2 = *Ruthless Souls lite* was the first clue they don’t care about the majority of PoE1 players.

[@justcallmebot903]

Love your content bls get new mic

[@chrisditmi7119]

interesting

[@scary370]

Sick background

[@zikjegaming6652]

Hmm, i kinds struggled with titan. Monk feels better already..

[@GTFOIMAO]

And playing the game finding stuff out for yourself. That is what SHOULD be the meta.

[@JezzyHsu]

They really should have made respec free during EA, so normal people can experiment. I think no one reasonable would respec to be free in final release, as long as they state their plan.

[@gu244]

Yeah I have been having a blast specifically because I haven't been looking at anyone else's build and am just figuring it out myself, I love that that is possible in poe2, I always tried in poe1, but never was able to make anything that was that good.

[@i.n.2899]

2nd

[@Karashote]

ai generated art smh

[@RFlairPC]

Ok Reddit

[@EmAndM1219]

What exactly is the problem? Do you know how expensive it is to live in Australia? Do you expect him to buy art for every video? Have you seen his view count and subscriber count? Doesn't seem high enough to be able to afford buying art. So, if he can only afford free art (no artist is getting paid for it either way), and he isn't an artist himself, what's wrong with him using AI to create something at least somewhat different and original from what we've all seen before?

[@hellsbolt]

First

[@postertown]

More terrible AI art .. please stop

[@notputtingmynamehere]

Why

[@cr6458]

@@notputtingmynamehere because AI art is bad, lazy, stolen, and cooking the planet

[@GTFOIMAO]

To be honest. Looking for information like this will ruin the game for you. Aswell as for everybody else. Im glad they stopped showing secrets as its like everyone else is just backseating on the players who actually find shit out and have a brain to think with. Im not gonna watch poe content this time around. Sadly if the game is the same as poe 1. Then its already spoiled and pointless to play. My advice to you. Stop cheating by looking at every one elses homework and start playing for yourself. Will be a way more fun stream aswell.

[@sirgog]

Some people's reaction to spending 50 hours levelling an Acolyte of Chayula then learning they have a massively weaker character than any other class is to say "whelp, reroll time". Those people won't watch this video. Other people's reaction is to quit the game. This video is for THOSE people, to stop them from making mistakes that might ruin the game for them.

[@JordaanM]

Some people find enjoyment in theory crafting a build and exploring options. Some people find enjoyment in executing and refining on a pre-existing build. One is not more or less valid than the other.

[@rbroccoli_]

​@@sirgogonly took me 40 hours to maps. Acolyte for life... Kill me please. 🤢

[@Valdorian-u5x]

If this is the way you have fun playing, go for it. Other people enjoy that kind of content and like to know what's strong and weak.

[@MartinVetorri]

Hello, pennywise.

[@MartinVetorri]

The ai generated art is fucking WEIRD bro