When "fun" requires rare unique items

Love the game. Locked in more than a hundred hours so far. Here is my BIGGEST concern about the game and often makes me quit halfway through seasons :

Context : When I reach endgame, I start looking for build online and all the most fun build requires unique items to enable them. Until you find that item, you are stuck in a build you dont want to play.

Solution :

1- First solution would be to make way more persistant gems (the ones that cost spirit) to allow a character to have unique item effects without needed to farm that unique, at the cost of spirit in exchange.

2- Second solution would be to have a way to easily fish for specific build enabling uniques, like pay X gold to send out and expedition that will return with specific items of different rarities. Like send an expedition for rings, amulets, etc.

For instance, here are the builds I was looking forward to play in season 2, but ended up giving up on the season after playing about 40 hours without finding either of the uniques I needed :


a) I wanted to play a lightning spear deadeye generating many frenzy charges. I never found the gloves that helps my lightning damage electrocute or the boots that let me pin enemies to help generate the frenzy charges through combat frenzy. Thus, the build still feel incomplete.

b) I wanted to play a crit infernalist with the unique ignite charm ... never found it.

I do not want to use the sloppy trading system even if that would make things 100 times easier. The game should be require it. I play SSF, please give me a way to play the build I want to play in SSF.

Thank you.

I get what you’re saying around not wanting to trade. But they’ve said before while they added SSF as an option for the people that wanted it, they do not intend to balance the game around it. Trade is largely the answer to the problem you’re having.

There’s a whole separate discussion to be had on drop rates, crafting, etc. and that those things need to be adjusted so players can benefit more from the gear they find themselves, that makes sense.

But you’re talking about targeting specific uniques, where unique drops are rare and there are literally hundreds you could get. The answer to that is trade.

But lets take both my example for instance. How easy would it be to create a level 3 persistant spirit gem that cost 30-60-100 spirit with the only effect :

- All lightning damage contribute to electrocute

- If your character is ignited, send a wave centered on your character that ignite enemies for 500% hp.

Those effect are build defining. While getting the unique items should be the "end game min-maxing" way to play the build, that same build should still be available to play without the uniques.

Make those build more accessible with a price (spirit cost gems) so we dont have to "work" douzen of hours before the build becomes possible.

That would invalidate uniques then though, right? They’d be pointless if they could be 100% replaced with a single spirit gem, some +spirit affix, and an unset ring.

SSF is a challenge mode, that means some thing (i.e. finding specific uniques) will be much much harder in the challenge mode. That’s why it’s called a challenge mode.

If you’re rolling the character deadset on making a single specific build, SSF probably isn’t the way you should go. SSF is about being able to adjust your character and build based on what’s dropping for you, that’s the challenge part of it.

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EvilainExile#4428 wrote:

Solution :

1. Stop copying all of your builds from people with ultra expensive uniques

Like that's really all there is to it. You just need to try and get over this hang-up you have that's making you feel like "all the most fun builds" require these items. Maybe that's how you feel right now, but I would wager that has more to do with what you're doing when you "look up builds" than the actual design of the game.

Just go to poe2.ninja and use their item-filtering capabilities to look for builds that are using the abilities you're interested in but don't have a bunch of impossibly expensive uniques. Model your build on one of those.

If you happen to get lucky with a bunch of currency or a specific unique, then go ahead and re-tool your build around the item but you should really figure out how to enjoy the game without them because the nature of these items means that an average player is absolutely no guaranteed to get the one they "need" in any particular league.

you dont even need electrocute buildup for that build, just set up a cast on crit with snipers mark. And most of the builds dont use Kitoko's Current except for leveling.
https://poe2.ninja/builds/dawn?class=Deadeye&items=Tangletongue,!Sacred+Flame,!Kitoko%27s+Current

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EvilainExile#4428 wrote:

I do not want to use the sloppy trading system even if that would make things 100 times easier. The game should be require it. I play SSF, please give me a way to play the build I want to play in SSF.

Well there you go, that is the problem. You gimp yourself but refuse to admit it to yourself that you gimp yourself. The game clearly still like PoE 1, balanced around trading and itemization.

Also GGG refuse to implement something like Circle of Fortune in CoF because not only that 1) The game is clearly meant to be played in trading environment , 2) They think that by making SSF a better experience than trade will kill retention and revenue from MTX / support pack purchases.