SSF feedback from a new player. Build type: chaos contagion dot lich

This is to be clear my 4th character after having started playing poe2 in early access so I have a bit of familiarity. I have not played Poe 1 though. I’ve followed many build guides as well and played other characters in trade league before so it’s not like what I’m doing on my chaos contagion Lich is just flat out ”bad.” That isn’t to say that perhaps most of my frustrations couldn’t be solved with a new skill or some number tweaks or support gems. Since I have no experience with Poe 1 I can’t rule out that this is true but, I can talk about my experience so far. And I am a bit of a rambler so I apologize but I do feel like a lot of my sentiments are well stated and worthwhile if you’re willing to read.

To say ssf is complete feels wrong. Listen, I painstakingly picked up almost every piece of gear that could have been used for my character. I blue orb’d everything for my class and when I saw my chances on items I very carefully decided what was worth exalt slaming items since the campaign. Now I’m 70-80 maps into end game and I find myself struggling very hard with motivation to keep playing for a few reasons:

#1 this build has game freezing issue. I made a separate post about it and got a response. Not a clue how legit it is but he was saying that it’s my internet service provider related… regardless feels very disheartening if it’s not a fixable bug but that I would need to troubleshoot and maybe even change my isp just to be able to play without game freezes which cause deaths or worse full map crashes and losses.

#2 gearing vs difficulty. Like I said I played slower than normal so as to not miss a single piece of even “bad” base type loot for my class. I would say at this point it has mostly paid off except the problem is I’m dying a lot in t15’s now but had almost no issues through waystone 1-12. I think this is a huge room for improvement because like the individual levels of waystones felt so meaningless until the very high numbers. Which felt very unlike the uber bosses on my other characters. Each level of the uber boss felt much more meaningfully different and if one struggled on the previous level it could be very likely that on the next you will just lose. I think the waystones should represent a uber boss level scaling much more than they currently do I wish and in exchange scale loot up like them too. Like I’ve got the special unique that gives extra 10%dr when paired with the ascendancy on the lich on ssf which I hunted it with chance shards and my chest has 600 es my resistances are super over capped. Like I’ve even got almost 80% rarity as well. Getting new gear feels impossible at this stage because I simply can’t drop exalts plenty enough to roll them and high tiered level(tier 5 items) loot for my class is just flat out rare. Recombinator and essences just don’t give me any better shots because they can’t make finding those 4-6 affix’s any amount not rng. I can’t imagine when new items are released for full release how much longer I should expect to wait for my next gear upgrades to come in and idk I feel like 25% damage reduction 7000 energy shield with less than 2.2 sec recharge 75% all resis including chaos and having almost 2000 life should be enough for tier 15’s but alas my damage sucks because my spread radius is so hard to improve on contagion and the one thing I haven’t found is a single plus 4 spell wand for chaos spells. As you add more bases and everything I expect it to feel much worse to find specific items that I need not to mention that with the current system I can’t even go back down waystone levels easily. Since I’m dying, I want too but doriyani doesn’t sell me any anymore

#3 Atlas power specific for ssf.
Here is my tree https://maxroll.gg/poe2/atlas-tree/1z2ly053

I have 34 of 40 atlas points and full specd into random events on my maps because they cost no exalts to have “happen”. I am trying to play 3-4 revive maps only (aka alchemy with mostly prefix’s) so as to allow for my shitty aoe damage to be compensated for by multiple lives instead. The problem is even by making there be less monsters and aka less rares and more essences, strongboxes and azmeri wisps to the moon… it feels like somehow they scale so badly. Like I’ve even got the “terrible“ node that reduces monsters for 40% more random map effects… and it really feels like it doesn’t matter in the slightest. Ok so it does matter obviously. I see an essence, a strongbox and at least a wisp in almost every map but in exchange I miss out on 6-7 rares a map and what from trade league was 30 quantity and 200% map item rarity. It feels like and the loot of those rares is just not worth enough to miss out on. The socket options from the wisps are too discreet to be useful. The chance for essence to be greater is still so low even when spam vaal(which btw I stopped doing that’s why the tree doesn’t have the vaal node). And the researchers strongboxes even after buffed with the patch still only drop an exalt or so inside of them. The character can hardly boss effectively because the totem doesn’t deal enough dps to make up for the fact that essence drain just doesn’t hit hard enough so I can’t fall back on them for more “rare” monster loot. It feels like this sort of tree should in essence be good for ssf because as I said random events don’t cost you exalts or perfect tablets to use on maps and towers to power up your maps. The difference is on trade I can giga juice my character drop some divine and hit a bunch of upgrades or buy better maps and tablets. The problem is in practice I can’t reach rogue exiles and strong boxes and essences and the super node for events without all the difficult to find atlas’s points from the unique maps and not to mention it means I have to path through bad nodes as well. The difference between magic monster packs and rare monsters is just too HUGE. The node that removes monsters doesn’t have enough effect to make it feel great as I still often only find 1 wisp on my map before I kill all the rares or I still often only get 1 essence and 1 or 2 strongboxes. The same as I did without it. Even with it I’ve still only ever seen 1 rogue exile in all my maps ever. I would rather it read for each extra map event that spawns double(or perhaps guarantee +1 of it if double is too good) it somewhere else in the map lose some percent of monsters spawned or something. 40% feels too low to turn maps into random chance heavens which I feel like giving up your monsters for is exactly what would make it cool and unique. Even though it’s 1 of each in every map it’s just like I would get the same exalts from just kill rares but would at least be able to also scale map rarity and quantity and use 32 other points elsewhere. Like take the 25% node more prefix node into consideration for a second. If I play trade get perfect tablets and towers and waystones then apply 25% to that the effect is literally huge. It’s like getting into situations where you turn 300% map rarity and 70% more rares and 45 item quantity % 25% stronger… that’s not even considering like experience gained or maps boss item scaling… the use cases are just more widespread and much more effective at getting what one wants from a map. the node for events vs that is just not a comparison at all. Rares are still GREAT for my ssf character and I CAN’T spec into making more of them and get all the events at the same time. I have to “waste” points into the wisp mechanic and the magic monsters all because the top of the tree costs extra to traverse through and I don’t have enough to spare. Like for what I’ve tried, which on paper should be good for finding items in ssf while saving exalts and alchemy’s in practice just feels weak and listen I know I can respec but I wanted to live in the fantasy…

#4 Item affix slots 4-6. I can’t stress enough that I really like essences for ssf. They let me(with smart use(especially greater essence)) get good affix starting bases for exalt slamming but the problem is options to get anything good on slots 4-6 on an item are non-existent and because my gear is already ok getting those slots is just so important ortant and so difficult to meet. Omens in ssf are just not good enough or consistent enough to find. I have no clue how one even gets an annulment orb and fracturing orbs plus chaosing spamming in ssf is only a dream. There’s no payout from divines either because you can’t convert them and getting a unique worth divining is already hard enough. That just leaves exalts when I do find a good magic item exalts or very specific greater essences. It just feels like there isn’t anything definitive worth chasing when it comes to rare gear upgrades expect lucky rng in ssf and in a game where loot feels a lot more rng than some other arpgs it’s like why not play something else. Idk it feels like there has to be so many options that could be cool in this space as someone who hasn’t really played poe 1 but played a good amount of d4. d4 is definitely not perfect either you max out too soon and the endgame content is so LAME gameplay wise pie is definitely a big up from that but the loot in diablo did feel better ngl. A late game but high quantity currency that lets you slam a second prefix or suffix onto magic items instead of 1 of each. Could let me try to choose bases better for those really rare greater essence slams. Could make double defense like armour% amour flat or double resis magic bases greater essence-able. Any sort of specialized crafting for specifically the first exalt on a rare item. I understand that full determination is out of the picture but there is nothing for slots 4-6 anyways. Be that an omen or anything. The recombinator bench is already good at making 2 affix bases but struggles really hard when it comes to 3-4 affix recombining. From my own experience it should never be no matter how rare the affix’s are that a 2 affix recombine is harder than a 3 but when I crafted my focus that’s what I found. Spell levels and chaos resis was lower success odds than double energy shield prefixes and the same spell levels. Even if I got the chaos resis and spell levels base without crafting items for slots 4-6 it’s still full rng if the item turns out good afterwards… why should any 3 affix’s of choice be better odds therefore. Regardless the end game requires you have better gear than that and exalts even with lots of researchers boxes are just so rare… Perhaps an item to make it so the rarer rolls on your slams happen more often. Like think about how rare chaos resis is compared to regular resis would be cool if there was something to make my exalts give these rare to roll naturally stats more often. Like in my opinion that’s what omens could have been but instead they like what double your rolls with an exalt like that is somewhat useful I guess…at least the common omens are like that. Finally fracturing orbs feel so idk useless like how do I even use these. Locking a stat in is useless unless I’m super rich anyways and have powerful omen and or many chaos and not to mention with how rare they are have a item worth trying to stat lock… and to get super rich I need to be strong but that means my gear is godlike already right so. For ssf what I wish a fracture orb did was this. Take an example 100%spell damage 100% chaos damage 140 Flat mana and plus 1 level chaos spells wand. I found one of these and believe it or not level of spells is so broken this wand SUCKED. Man if only there was a one time currency like a fracture that just took the lowest level and rolled it again within the same affix. Aka just sometimes it upgrades the level of that affix and sometimes it stays the same. Rare to drop like a fracture puts a mark on the affix just like it and boom can’t fracture or use this or any more of these mark type currency on it anymore. Like I would find so many more use cases for an item like this and even though it just rerolls and doesn’t always make it better when I find a wand like this it makes me hate the system a lot for having spell levels be so god damn rare and instead of being like ok time to grind to find this item so I can salvage it 🙏.

#5 Finally ssf lack of exalts. Listen I’m not proclaiming that my setup is the best ssf atlas tree and that taking the rare spaces isn’t better for exalts the point is it’s the only way to touch all the events and imo events should be great for ssf at saving precious exalts. The problem is exalts are what one uses for waystones to juice them up. On trade I can spam 5-6 affix maps go full into scaling rarity and quantity make the most out of the affixes with all the passive nodes because a chaos means I get 10 more exalts and a divine is 300 more exalts. This skews the perspective of loot balance significantly. Chaos and divines plain and simple are much less useful on a character that doesn’t have divinable gear uniques or such a surplus of chaos that one can reroll items forever after they are fractured well. In ssf we need exalts for maps because and I haven’t mentioned how cringe this is waystones drop as magic sometimes and a magic waystone can only have 1 benefit and also conveniently cannot be alchemed and what’s worse is at level 15 with my atlas tree I don’t drop very many so I have to waste tons of gold to get more options if my waystones are bricking. Would be awesome when I do hit a good alchemy to be able to exalt that waystone. And then I need exalts for gear at the same time. Since I can only expect to find high tiered loot items for my class like at best once an hour and that doesn’t even remotely mean its good exalting good magic items is the best way to get loot finds… the problem becomes that I can’t simply afford to exalt items and maps at the same time not to mention maps have the downside of becoming very very brickable with certain affix’s especially on ssf. Even YouTubers I’ve watched that are heavy into ssf endgame and have many divine are out of nothing currency wise except exalts. The biggest issue is the formula from Poe 1 must not account for the fact that the only real way to hit good gear in poe2 is currently to slam exalts into affix slots 4-6… This places each and every exalt into a very weighted spot and its this constant balance is what lead me to the underwhelming atlas tree decisions because I want to preserve exalts to hope to hit a character saving wand. Maybe I should use more gold on wands but anytime I spend gold on something not the ventors gamble box or amulets and rings feels like such a waste because of how rare those items just are in general…

#6 I will say sockets are great. I think very much we are still in beta phase for these and that’s a huge part of why the wisps sucked because all the socket stuff from them is just way too specific but yeah socket system is one huge upside for ssf the way it is. Rewritable resist changing and bonus energy shield and damage etc… love to see more options here and likely will make ssf more playable in general. Honestly want to see more socket slots more often. Like idk how they would do this but yeah more sockets is awesome and more runes and socketables would be great.

Conclusion
All this to say ssf presents a completely different experience and maybe I’m just not made for it. In trade league because a divine is so worthwhile to the endgamers there is always this achievable god tier loot from all gameplay but in ssf this just doesn’t exist. The mid endgame chase especially if your like me and get stuck is just so gruelling as is. Ssf was a truly fun campaign and early maps challenge experience. My character is very powerful at those early maps until like tier 13 it was “free”. My atlas points just felt too underwhelming towards how many exalts I make. Sure the first 10 meant I get about 1-2 from each researchers I find and getting essences by 25th point meant that I can sometimes get a greater and make a 3 affix perfect exalt hope this hits level item it’s like yeah what now. The recombiner while mostly a bad gamble service did make my current focus with good energy shield and the coveted +2 levels. The problems are big. Fractured orbs suck in ssf. Chaos orbs are not tradable for exalts and very very rare anyways. Divine whilst are useful it’s usually not often there are useful. And there is just not a single option for affix slots 4-6 on items. Whilst I know alchemy orbs are great for maps and I use them on the maps when I can truth be told I don’t have maps to spare when an alchemy goes bad or exalts when a magic map drops instead. Doriyani only sells tier 14’s now and playing alchemy tier 14-15’s is just not something I’ve been good with on my chaos contagion build at this point and I can’t down level easily. not to mention it felt like there was no forewarning of this experience coming when I was playing waystone 10’s vs 1’s. I’ve got great item options for other characters but getting them to the level of the endgame is a daunting task. Full of many hours of work. The big thing is I want to salvage THIS character but meaningful options just aren’t existing for me and I’ve not got a good purpose for continuing through all the freezing and deaths. Levels don’t really come anymore. Uber bossing is FAR away still. Items are full rng now. My atlas feels like it needs to be fully rewritten and yet I can’t just go get lower level maps again easily. Maybe it’s just some pieces are missing when it comes to skills and supports but man it’s tough…Wish to see maybe like some ssf specific drop buffs either for class pertaining loot to your character or specific exalt drop rate buffs. Listen I get that right now you can swap back to trade and maybe I should but I would rather have a funnier experience within the challenge gamemode and NOT be allowed to cop out than be given that option at all. I get if someone drops a mirror or giga uber unique that they will have a bad experience if they can’t bring it to the market but like also that’s part of the domain in playing ssf… I think if it meant the experience for it was better than I would trade losing out on moving a drop over. Here’s how I look at it for each 1 person who dropped a mirror or whatever in ssf and had it locked to ssf so they quit. There are probably 25 who quit early because they got stuck like I have with a high level atlas but well before earning god uniques or getting enough fragments to start uber bossing. Maybe those numbers aren’t quite right but the sentiment is there.

This needs a TLDR or some bullet points. I shouldn't have to hear the Star Wars theme song when I scroll through this book you wrote.

ChatGPT got you fam

TL;DR – Your PoE2 SSF Experience as a Chaos Contagion Lich
You've played multiple characters in PoE2 early access, including in Trade League, but this is your first major SSF (Solo Self-Found) attempt. Your Chaos Contagion Lich build is well-thought-out, but the SSF endgame experience has become demotivating due to a combination of technical issues, loot scaling, and gear progression barriers. Key pain points:

🔧 Technical & Build Issues
Game freezing and crashes – Possibly tied to your ISP, but it causes lost maps and deaths, making play frustrating and inconsistent.

Contagion radius scaling is hard to improve, making clear and damage feel bad in late maps (T15+), especially since you haven’t found key upgrades like a +4 chaos wand.

🛡️ Gearing Problems in SSF
Gearing feels increasingly hopeless in late maps:

Despite smart exalt usage and careful crafting, progress slows to a crawl.

Rare loot base items are too uncommon, and there’s no meaningful deterministic way to progress slot 4–6 affixes.

Recombinators, essences, omens, fractures, and exalt slams all feel like RNG slot machines with low reward, especially without trade.

🗺️ Atlas Progression & Design Issues
Atlas tree spec feels like a trap in SSF:

Focused on map events to avoid expensive map juicing (good in theory), but event scaling is underwhelming in practice.

Trade players get huge benefit from map mods and item rarity scaling; SSF players don’t get enough in return.

Atlas progression feels locked out due to missing lower-tier maps and being forced into high-tier content you're not ready for.

💰 Currency Pain in SSF
Severe exalt shortage:

Exalts are needed for both maps (waystones) and gear upgrades, creating a hard choke point.

Unlike trade league, there’s no way to convert chaos/divines efficiently into exalts.

Exalts feel 10x more important than in PoE1 or trade league, but much harder to consistently acquire.

🔩 Crafting System Frustrations
Crafting lacks mid/late game agency:

No tools exist to reliably target or improve 4–6 affix slots.

Suggestions include adding SSF-specific crafting tools (e.g., deterministic affix upgrades, exalt-slam aids, fracture rerollers).

Items like fracture orbs and omens feel nearly useless unless you’re already rich.

🌱 What Works
Socket system is a highlight – offers flexibility and power in SSF that’s refreshing.

Early game and campaign feel solid and rewarding.

🚧 Conclusion
SSF is rewarding early but becomes discouraging in late game due to:

Poor loot targeting

Weak crafting systems for 4–6 affixes

Lack of exalt income

Limited meaningful progression in Atlas or gear without trade

No clear salvage path for a stuck, high-investment character

You’re not looking to switch to trade—you want SSF to be better, more rewarding, and have meaningful progression options. Otherwise, the late-game feels like RNG hell rather than earned advancement.

Let me know if you'd like this reworded more formally, or turned into feedback for a forum/reddit post

much better!

Honestly pretty funny reply. It missed some of my points due to misinterpretation but overall a good summary.

A lot of good feedback here. I am very similar in progression to where you are in SSF but am Infernalist with minions. 88th level, same number of atlas points as you but also some extra into expedition and bossing.

You said that saying SSF is complete feels wrong, well, SSF was born in PoE1 where they just slapped it on as a requested mode and have always said they weren't balancing the game around it. So I assume that holds true for PoE2. Just view it as a challenge mode/alternate mode like HC.

Through the campaign almost all my gear was from vendors, but all that was before the loot buff happened. I have the opposite experience with exalts that you do, I'm hoarding over 70 right now because I have no use for them. I pick up all the blues I can use and every single rare. The only time I ever used an exalt on a map was when I needed a 4th mod for a corrupted nexus. I don't care about running maps rare/6-mod, if anything I dislike it because it makes the map too rippy or adds too much time to already long maps. So, all my maps are ran at least 2-mod blue, or however they drop if rare.

The reason I have so many exalts stockpiled is because I have to have a rare with 3 mods that would be equal to or an upgrade to what I already have before I begin gambling (because that's all the crafting is). I don't know what they can do to fix "crafting", but it feels bad as is. I don't care about essences at all because there are none for minions.

Which brings me to my atlas tree, I went exiles/strongboxes/precursor tablets and like you, I took Ecological Shift. I suspect that may be what's causing me to only get a T15 waystone like 75% of the time now. Exiles are fun but overall have been useless, and even without taking Cataclysm Survivors they drop corrupted items and that is annoying. I agree with you that atlas progression doesn't feel meaningful. And I hate that I'm going to have to bop Olroth over and over just to get expedition points, I hate bossing but expedition is my favourite mechanic that's in right now. How many logbooks will it take just to find him that many times? Every last thing in this game feels so overdone on the randomness.

Anyway, just adding some of my own SSF feedback. SSF is very random. PoE2 is very random.

Did not know that about the creation of the gamemode. Disappointing to hear that individualized support would likely not be coming to it. Challenges are fun for sure but I think the real problem just stems from “nothing” to look forward to when exp levels halt and items become too low RNG to overpower your current gear. Suffice to say my character is NOT maxed at all but because of how rare plus levels is on gear it’s so fucking annoying hard to find stuff now that needs plus levels and few ways to guarantee them. No essences for minions must suck I never even considered that there would be build types that CANT use them that should definitely be revised. Thanks for another opinion at least I can rest easy without expecting this challenge mode to get individual support likely. Just like idk why ssf exist’s then can’t someone just decide to do this for themself whilst just on trade. I suppose it’s leaderboards then but I guess you need to force the mode but then why not extra balance to make it more fun at that point right and lock people in. Seems like such a smart thing to do.

I only play SSF. I haven't done enough of it in PoE2 to have much advice, but in PoE1 I created characters that specialized in different areas. Like a tank that only did Heist. He could pick up the treasure and literally walk toward the exit and be ok. But he was terrible at clearing maps.

I think Poe2 is still too empty for a strategy like that to be justified. But if you want to play lots of endgame anyway, theorycraft a "party" of different characters that beat different types of content.

Yeah but without a real massive amount of time on my hands making a whole party of characters just to character hop in end game is like such a weird solution to something like this. You definitely could do something like that but that seems like a solution I personally would like to stay away from. Giving all builds more tools to deal with all sorts of content seems way awesomer. Especially with the atlas tree events having their own mini trees and an overall shared atlas tree between all characters would rather just have each character build be able to manage all content.

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BadAtMid#0454 が発言:

Yeah but without a real massive amount of time on my hands making a whole party of characters just to character hop in end game is like such a weird solution to something like this. You definitely could do something like that but that seems like a solution I personally would like to stay away from. Giving all builds more tools to deal with all sorts of content seems way awesomer. Especially with the atlas tree events having their own mini trees and an overall shared atlas tree between all characters would rather just have each character build be able to manage all content.

In PoE1, if you stick with one character in SSF, it can take forever for the right things to drop. A lot of my character choice was due to which rares and uniques dropped. I would build a character around a great piece of gear, to do a particular job.

I don't think PoE2 is deep enough for this yet. But I don't understand why you expect the gameloop to be easy if you're playing on hard difficulty.