[PoE 3.24] Necropolis SSF League Retrospective (38/40 probably done with league for now)

I had fun this league! But, some things in the game definitely need to be fixed imo...
Oops, I also forgot to talk about general loot nerfs this league. On average you get less loot from mechanics this league (ritual, legion, rare drop explosions, stacked decks, etc). :(
0:00 Intro
1:27 T17s/Ubers
9:20 Balance
16:48 Crafting
23:01 Mapping/T16s
26:48 3.25 hopium
/ smokie_777

[@POJ92]

One change I want for the new atlas 3 tree system is when you use an orb of unmaking, it gives you a respec point for all 3 trees

[@smokie_777]

Trueee

[@itsame_th2283]

Just wanted to say thank you for this, I ran the tree for a couple of hours and got a few build enabling uniques, nothing crazy but yeah it's amazing for ssf! Subbed

[@dangerk547]

I would like a guide geared to farming uniques for SSF, like Kitava's Thirst. There aren't enough SSF guides.

[@casualsinner]

i contributed my share of whining at league start, but i gotta admit i ended up having a ton of fun with the league. but that aside, strongly agree about the overall state of the game, especially in SSF. biggest points on my wishlist are more viable melee skills (maybe new vaal skills, like vaal lightning strike to elevate existing skills, and not meme skills like wild strike of extremes) and holy fuck do i want melee totems to be gone and be replaced with buffs or skills similar to blood rage (makes no sense even thematically that my raider has to summon totems to be viable damage wise).

[@antonego9581]

they need to just remove the stupid totems and fold those bonuses into the baseline melee skills. after playing BS Jugg last league i loved it but i don't want to use those totems. they are annoying to put down and kind of ruin my class fantasy. i dont want to be a shaman i want to smash things with a club.

[@casualsinner]

@@antonego9581 it's even more ridiculous on something like a flicker strike character

[@jgartrell1091]

ambush gives a nice amount of t17 with the map dupe node and carto scarabs

[@Cohanxvx]

Yea you make a lot of good points in the video, I have roughly 10k hours I have played HCSSF on and off for the last two years, I enjoy the t17 maps but I do think that having ubers hard locked behind them is insane, even on HC trade which is deadage when there is not a ton of streamers playing it getting a lot of boss fragments takes time. I got my friend to start playing PoE two leagues ago in a SC duo found private league and he has been enjoying it but the new change addition of t17 adds like an odd progression path because you farm on average harder content to then do the easier uber boss. I enjoy that they split the loot because it gives you a reason to farm either one, but it seems almost like it should be like one Uber fight per map or two but no bias from one uber to the next. I get that the game is not balanced around SSF but it can be set up more clearly to get ubers and especially since t17 is a new endgame it feels bad to have most of the average builds be now effectively stonewalled into buying the fragments for ubers or struggle bus to clear one t17 map at a time, but its a new system so I have some hopium that things will get fixed upon 3.25b.

[@happysappy7851]

Haven't got a single t17 map in over 500 t16 maps. Went on standard and got one in about a hour. Either something is bugged or the drop rate on Necro is crazy.

[@ScorpioNick]

I keep finding veiled scarabs in Delve, so they've definitely thought of stacked scarabs.

[@eldoctoroso]

I got to maps, played like 10 maps and went back to standard to continue farming uniques to fill my tab

[@crazycdn8327]

I know this was two weeks ago, so things might have changed in more recent patches. But I was watching Ventura's SSF (all I'm interested in) run and he managed to farm a number of uber bosses. I wonder if things got easier?

[@smokie_777]

Ha, after making this video I did the same :p I don’t know if things got easier, but I ended up just magic finding for like 3 days straight and dropped like 50 t17s. Kinda sad but I think in this meta magic finding is legitimately a core endgame strat in ssf

[@crazycdn8327]

@@smokie_777 Yes, it's sad you HAVE to do it. I don't mind it, but I prefer to have the choice in the matter. Not be forced to do it.

[@johnnyp6202]

Good review. GGG is under the impression that people play SSF as a challenge or hard mode which might be true for a small portion but not for the vast majority. And so the game is especially penal against SSF players. Killing prophecies and metamorph and bring back Ultimatum of all things hammers that point home. Also GGG wants the top content to really only be done by streamers and a very select few. Sad thing is that could make some elements far simpler like getting rid of the nested color/#/linked system for jewels and really have no impact on high end content but make the game much more fun. They are doing some of that in POE2. Also having to rely on web content to even understand the content is a bad mistake IMO. GGG seem to confound obscurity and unwieldiness with depth all the time. I still love the game but it could be so much more for SSF without affecting anyone else's experience or trivializing content. What makes matters worse is that their preferred league of trade DOES trivialize content. I needed to run literally hundreds of maps to get the unique moon temple and 115/115. Yet a trade player can spend 6C buy the map and be done in 5 mins.

[@naj7969]

the issue is the GGG team is watching the high rollers like empy and jung etc blast through content and no lifing trade league. That is less than 1% of players and theyre trying to give THOSE

[@Gusthaivo]

I don't know. It seems that the more they change the game, the worse they get. Not just for those who play alone (SSF), but damn. The league is broken, in general. Economics, mechanics, logic, theory and practice. It seems like they don't care as the second game is knocking on the door. But bro, what the fuck? Not everyone wants to play trade league Not everyone wants to deal with shitty mechanics that unnecessarily add more complexity to the game. I have something around 8k hours and this is the worst moment for me. Ever. And yes, I play ssf since 3.15.

[@joshgeorgianna5415]

i expected them to add better crafting option by now too man. like the league in itself is so weird. im convinced its some type of technical test for a system for 2. idk how else to rationalize it right.

[@Ph4r40h]

This league was a cobbled together test for some Last Epoch style itemization of affixes. They foresee us killing specific bosses or running specific content to chase rare affixes, some finding affixes to craft treasure maps, farming for affixes to make uber maps or gg gear, etc.

[@bd9045]

Agree 100%. I played coc inq. One of the most fun and tanky and strong builds I’ve played in a long time. Crafted my weapon with the league mechanic even made a few to sell for profit. But I stopped playing at almost level 99 out of shear boredom. Path has been my main since 2013 and I’m actually having more fun playing Diablo 3 lately. I’m still playing this most recent season of d3 lol. I’m concerned about the future of path and I’m not really looking forward to poe2. I love souls games and bloodborne and Eldenring but I don’t play arpgs for the difficulty or slow gameplay. Wonder what your thoughts are for poe2…

[@lukemajewski4823]

I get the feeling this difficulty spike is intended to ease people into poe 2 which is supposed to be super hard. By the time it comes out it won't feel as big of a jump between the two. Tin foil hat take, i know.

[@wolvewick4414]

i started playing poe on afflition league and had fun, this league just insane hard with low reward. this league i had fun in league of legends :( .

[@thepersonwho2166]

Classic pipeline for new players, here's hoping ggg's cookin up something good with the new league

[@RickReasonnz]

Had WAY more fun this league than Affliction. Really hated that one. Still didn't 'love' this tho.

[@TrickZ_Retz]

Affliction was not Path of Exile. Sentinel was also not Path of Exile. They where currency printing simulators. Those 2 Leagues have been absolutely overtuned in terms of rewards and new players comments like that one highlight the issue.

[@FelipeDeLeo]

Wow! I just got my 2nd Voidstone! Smokie is a machine! The best SSF player in the world!

[@commanderkallavan6803]

I played this league for 2 weeks. Got to 95, got bored and quit. I didn't find the mechanic to be good at all for SSF.

[@crazycdn8327]

The crafting is absolutely insane for SSF, it will be sadly missed when it's gone :(

[@wowitsfrostygames155]

im still having fun, but compared to other leagues i have to say this one is whack af. i got bored of the div per hour rat race in trade league so i decided to do ssf and of course the first time i want to try SSF they nerf crafting. idk hopefully i make it work but i legit have no idea how im going to get the gear i want.

[@wagbrea]

Agree with everything you said. SSF is not fun right now.

[@Ryl0o]

me and a friend of mine are both thinking of trying ssf nxt league cuz trade league is getting boring, is there any specific tips or knowledge you have, i have around 1200 hours in poe but im super casual never made it to shaper or elder, usually a melee person

[@smokie_777]

I have a video with some general ssf advice and Strats if you wanna check that out. Most of it should still be relevant. Other than that I guess just play a strong league starter, and then everything else will fall into place!

[@vincentiusiseus]

It's only punishing to play SSF. It's not even special like Ruthless 'mode' where you can't migrate to 'normal leagues'. You can migrate whenever you want. What's the difference between playing the trade league as if you are playing SSF in trade? I think this is stopping GGG from buffing SSF leagues. If you can't migrate from SSF to trade league, nerfs that only affect the 'economy' of the trade leagues could not have been applied to SSF; it broke the economy not the game. Introducing multiple atlas tree pages just recently also shows how punishing it is to play SSF; were the orb of remaking drop rates higher in SSF? No! In trade league, you could just buy orb of remaking but in SSF, you can't. Because you can migrate whenever you want, trade league IS more fun because there are more things you can poke around like the economy, causing nerfs on certain farming strategies. Then you could find the next OP Gazilion DIVS PER HOUR strategy for GGG to nerf. There's just more interaction going in the trade league. Economy is the result of interaction among players. The nerfs and buffs can be considered interaction between trade league players and GGG. GGG really needs to and separate SSF and trade league COMPLETELY, so that separating ‘breaking the game’ vs ‘breaking the economy’ is possible. And fixing “breaking the economy” should only apply to the trade league. That fix would be proven ‘breaking the game’ only if SSF players were able to abuse it too. I really think they abandoned SSF. I hope GGG just collapses and some brave sould releases the game source code on GitHub, and people could play it like a console game lol.

[@RickReasonnz]

I really don't know why you'd do an SSF league. Is it just for showboating, hey look guys, I legit did it without traaaading! Instead of, you know, just not trading. I would think that an SSF league should be rewarding to play any mechanic, rather than in trade where you really need to specialize. But as you said, it's just uphill for an SSF player.

[@DrDanQ92]

@@RickReasonnz Yes it's for the own sense of accomplishment. Sure you can play trade league and limit yourself to only trading specific uniques or fragments for example but it's just not the same as accomplishing these things on your own. In SSF there is a ladder, there is global text whenever someone enters an area for the first time so there is that extra competitiveness too. I'd argue this is the same for HC and HCSSF too.

[@ShadowoftheDarkgod]

Droppes the league after the last patch. I shan't be playing anymore.

[@sergei5879]

The most non-fun thing is - less than a month you already asking question what "was" fun... I havnt even touched t17 yet. And that makes me think - on one side Im totally with you on not happy with league mechanics, decreasing crafting options and for overall issue with "hardness of the game. Yet its less than month and you are at 38/40. Personally I probably wouldnt even be there by the end of the league. So if the game will be less challenging, It might get us to that situation where youll be posting "league done" vids on week 2.

[@joshgeorgianna5415]

Honestly think poe 1 is kinda backburner now. gotta say i hope they allow ssf option for poe 2. idk if theyve touched it in any interviews, but i still just hate playing trade anymore. and i believe 2 wont b changing that view right. its just become so toxic lol. league aint too gr8 but ur right the scarab and 3 trees are a win man. they r fun in themselfs. worst combo of league/ scarab rework tho tbh kinda weird lol. Love the content man :)