SSF? wtf?

apparently i was misinformed about what is ssf.

its basically only one guy/char doing good with what he gets, NO TWEANKING(or however you spell it).
NO use of other saved chars or stuff you found from OTHER chars! at least that was how i was corrected...

so my question is... wtf dude? how on earth you expect to get anything close to BiS?

does that mean the real SSF'ers(unlike me) do farm runs with just the same guy all over again and again. and that's even assuming they can through hell allright. which is also very doubtful in my book???

anyone knows these people, and can testify that they actually get to BiS level???

The idea with SSF is that it's a challenge. It's not necessarily about getting BiS items for yourself, it's about completing goals like defeating Hell

Baal, Dclone,

Uber Tristram, etc, or a grail (finding at least one of each item). You will slowly but surely find upgrades, etc, and I suppose, eventually you'll have BiS items if you keep playing long enough. But I think most SSF runs have a well defined goal and getting BiS items is not necessarily said goal (but might help completing whatever goal you have).

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

does that mean the real SSF'ers(unlike me) do farm runs with just the same guy all over again and again. and that's even assuming they can through hell allright. which is also very doubtful in my book???

Also, it's definitely possible to complete Hell on an SSF run. Speedrunners do it all the time. If you're not speedrunning you can take your time - if all you care about is getting there, being methodical and careful is much more important than being fast, focus on defensive stats over being a glass cannon, etc. Some builds/classes are naturally easier to do an SSF run with.

Yes, SSF stands for "Solo Self Found" or whatever you find yourself you can use on that character.
There are ppl that are very enthusiastic and just love to farm (I'm definitely quite far away from that). People just tend to play with 1 character and do thousands of runs (Pit, Sanctuary,

Baal, LK, Trav, etc.) until they find satisfactory gear to proceed. This doesn't mean only on Hell but on Nightmare as well. However some builds theoretically (and realistically) can finish the whole game {almost} naked (without any/special gear).

That is just not my cup of tea. For me, D2 gets extremely boring when I get around couple of 'farming runs', even so much that I need to rest from the game for months after. But hey, to each their own (after all if people don't farm then total amount of items for trade would be reasonably sparse).

Ok. I get that fun aspect of it. It’s similar to season playing basically. But without the sharing part.

I guess the hdin or javizon. But still I’m like you guys. To miss all those items which takes years to accumulate.
Even with shared stash and dozens of mules, I still very much far from the holy grail.

And yes, after a long run of 3 difficulties I need to rest for months from the game.

Insane that they are not bored.

Farming, although boring, has its ups. I remember a week of farming gaining me a

Lo..

Well, SSF does not need to be a full grail. It depends on what your goal is. I'm personally working on a hardcore SSF playthrough right now. It's SSF but the goal is only to defeat Hell

Baal, no grail stuff.

I played single player on PS4 as my main gaming project for over a year when the D2R dropped, which necessarily made my experience a pseudo-ssf. With shared stashes I was able to twink later characters and leapfrog characters into new content. I.e. my Orb/Wall sorc farmed NM Meph until she had good enough gear to get to hell Meph, after which point I farmed hell Meph for gear to get a hammerdin through Hell, and once I started him on Chaos farming, he was followed by another dozen or so characters.

It's very difficult to acquire BiS gear, but you do get the occasional lucky drop, given that you play long enough. Honestly, meaningful drops are not all that rare as long as you are playing in Hell. For example, my single player profile has a

Jah, a

Ber, and a near-perfect

Archon Plate base (510+ defense, iirc) just sitting around, so I could make myself a pretty solid Enigma; it's just a question of whether I'm willing to commit those resources to that project. I also have a 45 All Res 35 FRC

Kurast Shield Spirit on my Hammerdin, an upped 299%

Ribcracker for a Fury druid, multiple

Eth Titan's, a +6 BO CTA, more GG rares/crafted items than I know what to do with, and plenty of other noteworthy acquisitions.

A big part of it is just using the resources you have rather than pining for the resources you don't. For example, I - to this day - do not have a

Shako on single player. I have a dozen circlets that make

Shako look fairly tame by comparison, but I never got a HQ specifically. C'est la vie. I also have TONS of skillers. Those usually aren't a priority until a build is nearing completion, but they do make a difference, so you might as well keep rerolling those Flayer Dungeon GCs until you get them. After all, what else would you going to use all those perfect diamonds/topazes for?

Basically, you end up with lots of characters that are well-geared, but not in the way that you would prioritize gearing them if you had access to trading. It's not like you aren't acquiring "Wealth" at a rate comparable to online play. You just have no control over what form the Wealth takes.

Of course, a true ssf is a bit different, but the principles are the same. It just happens on a longer timescale, since you prohibit yourself from leapfrogging in the way I described.

Did you say twink? Cause that’s not ssf

That’s how I play the game in sp

Which I consider awesome btw

I guess I was also misinformed. Or I made an assumption as to was SSF meant and never verified. I thought it was singleplayer-self-found. But in hindsight, I guess singleplayer implies self-found

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

Did you say twink? Cause that’s not ssf

That’s how I play the game in sp

Which I consider awesome btw

Yeah, SP is a fun project.

I also play single player and use the found items on other characters.

I started with a Zealer and with the found items until level 80ish I made a

Hydra Sorc that is farming way better.

With newer items I raised the Zealer to almost BiS.

But even with improved clear speed, the "big" drops are quite rare. In almost 8 months I found one

Cham, one

Jah and 3

Ber (the other runes were more often).

I made Enigma, two Fortitude, Call To Arms and Infinity.

To play the real SSF (use only what you find with that exactly character) on every character I found it almost impossible.
You have to find all items and runes multiple times.
But playing Single Player and not trading any item, when you find a good one, is very rewarding.

Florian_G wrote: 3 weeks ago

But even with improved clear speed, the "big" drops are quite rare. In almost 8 months I found one

Cham, one

Jah and 3

Ber (the other runes were more often).

I made Enigma, two Fortitude, Call To Arms and Infinity.

To play the real SSF (use only what you find with that exactly character) on every character I found it almost impossible.

lol, this is so WAY better than me. but i was trying harder builds...

my highest was

Lo

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

Florian_G wrote: 3 weeks ago

But even with improved clear speed, the "big" drops are quite rare. In almost 8 months I found one
one

Cham
one

Jah
3

Ber (the other runes were more often).

I made Enigma, two Fortitude, Call To Arms and Infinity.

To play the real SSF (use only what you find with that exactly character) on every character I found it almost impossible.

lol, this is so WAY better than me. but i was trying harder builds...

my highest was

Lo

I play offline, single player on P8. Definitely that helps a lot on drops.

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

so my question is... wtf dude? how on earth you expect to get anything close to BiS?
does that mean the real SSF'ers(unlike me) do farm runs with just the same guy all over again and again. and that's even assuming they can through hell allright. which is also very doubtful in my book???

First time playing Diablo?

BiS items, like OP 1.10 RWs, are truly endgame gear, supposed to be a reward available only for those who have spent an unhealthy amount of time farming, or were extremely lucky or( well, excluding botters, RMT traders and other cheaters...). This is how the games were designed when they were still challenging. If you could obtain BiS gear in an hour, like in D3, do you think we'd still play D2 after 20 years?

But you don't need such BiS items. Most builds can complete Hell in self-found gear, especially after Patch 2.4 buffs. By the time you've found your

Tyrael's Might, you should have completed the game long ago.

Trang Oul wrote: 3 weeks ago

Most builds can complete Hell in self-found gear

most GOOD builds, not most builds. you can of course play naked and run around like nuts in an old shooet-em-up arcade game and spend hours on a single monster.. if you manage to stay alive. but in reality, there A FEW builds who can make you traverse hell fairly OK. not even GREAT. because immunes. my javazon for example, even with titans, still needs to swap for the nice little cutsey

Wand of

Lower Resist, and spend all ammo and then go back TP, and refill PAY LOADS - BOTH for the

Wand AND the titans...

no, i completely disagree with you.

Trang Oul wrote: 3 weeks ago

First time playing Diablo?

not trying to

Bash here, but my experience from d2, and d2r is completely different in hell. completely different as in OPPOSITE than yours it seems.

and yes i did have cheesy builds from icy veins.

Florian_G wrote: 3 weeks ago

I play offline, single player on P8. Definitely that helps a lot on drops.

same. forgot to mention that too. unless its a crappy build and then i lower it to 5 or somehting.
guess you were either more lucky or you played way more hours than me.. which is understandable.

SSF, as so many things, is really up to what you make of it.

At its core, it is merely the concept of solo/self-found (or singleplayer/self-found, depending on who you ask), meaning you work by yourself and with what you get yourself, excluding the possibility of gifts from or trading with others as well as getting carried by others.

It does not inherently mean that you can't spread your work across multiple of your own characters. That'd be an added level of challenge that you could but certainly don't have to add. As such, twinking isn't inherently in disagreement with SSF, so long as you found that twink gear yourself, rather than traded for it.

Setting further goals beyond that, such as SSF single character grail and whatnot is of course also perfectly viable but equally not a hard component of SSF.

I would agree though that most builds can certainly make it through hell with only what they themselves find along the way. At least so long as we're talking about softcore. Hardcore would likely disqualify a fair few (or rather make it so annoying that the annoyance of it disqualifies them). Some (few) builds go a step further and can just plow through the entire game solo and naked, without picking up anything along the way, but that's most certainly not applicable to the majority.

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

my javazon for example, even with titans, still needs to swap for the nice little cutsey

Wand of

Lower Resist, and spend all ammo and then go back TP, and refill PAY LOADS - BOTH for the

Wand AND the titans...

If you're going to solo "SSF" Hell as a Javazon, you might want to consider playing dual element with both lightning and poison skills. I've done it back in LoD. Granted, I twinked myself with items farmed by a Sorceress but I didn't really have any BiS rune words (I played offline back then and had very few high runes). I can try to find my old save file and put it up on maxroll if you're interested in having a look. The point is if that if you're SSF (twinked or not) without BiS gear you should definitely consider having a dual damage type setup. You can go full lightning later. Most classes have ways to deal damage of multiple types.

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

same. forgot to mention that too. unless its a crappy build and then i lower it to 5 or somehting.
guess you were either more lucky or you played way more hours than me.. which is understandable.

I think this could be a problem. In my opinion, even p5 could be way too high for most SSF builds.
You will only make your life difficult and in the end you will probably not benefit from p5/p7 if your killspeed is comparatively slow.

I did a SSF playthrough on Hardcore with a single element Javazon. I wasn't lucky enough to find a Titans or anything you would call BiS. Was still doable, but i played mostly on p3/p1.

As already mentioned, there are different types of SSF and everyone can decide for themselves what their exact goal is. My goal was just to finish the game on hardcore without trading or switching items between different chars.

Arachnid wrote: 3 weeks ago

I think this could be a problem.

I think "problem" is undefined. cause this guy:

Florian_G wrote: 3 weeks ago

I play offline, single player on P8. Definitely that helps a lot on drops.

he found much better runes than i did. of course it is luck. but also drop rate :/

rikus wrote: 3 weeks ago

Arachnid wrote: 3 weeks ago

I think this could be a problem.

I think "problem" is undefined. cause this guy:

Florian_G wrote: 3 weeks ago

I play offline, single player on P8. Definitely that helps a lot on drops.

he found much better runes than i did. of course it is luck. but also drop rate :/

Yeah, of course. I know what you mean.
But if i remember correctly, Florians Sorc is already lvl 99 which is a loooong grind where you find pretty much stuff. If it’s helpful for your class or not is on another sheet.
I was talking about more of an casual SSF Playthrough compared to a lvl 99 grind.