8 Best SSF Builds in POE 2
09.02.2025 - 16:09:14
Game Guides , Path of Exile 2
Are you tired of having to wait for people to reply to you when trading items in Path of Exile 2? Are you frustrated about the rising prices when buying PoE 2 Currency? If your answer to these questions is yes, then it is probably time for you to play in SSF.
In today’s article, we will talk about what SSF means and why it’s worth considering if you don’t want to dabble in complex systems in the game. We will also provide you with the best SSF builds in Path of Exile 2 so if you do want to create a character in a contained environment, you already have options to choose from.
What is SSF?
The term SSF in Path of Exile 2 is short for Solo Self-Found. This is a separate environment where trading and grouping up with other people are disabled. The game mode is called as such because you are responsible for gearing up your character. You have to be diligent enough to farm for upgrades and currency because no one will be there to help you with that.
Why Play in SSF?
Now, you are probably wondering why people would even consider creating a character in the SSF League. Well, that is for a number of reasons.
First, the Solo Self-Found League was built for those who want the added challenge of not being able to find and purchase gear upgrades through trade. If you want to make your character better, you have to go back and farm areas you have previously visited in the campaign repeatedly to gain enough levels and currency.
Second, SSF is meant for those who do not want to dabble in Path of Exile 2 trading. The game’s trading system is designed to foster player interaction. However, that is actually not what happens.
You see, when you trade with other people, there is a usual script that’s being followed by both parties. If you’re the buyer, for example, you whisper someone off the trade website, wait for them to send you a party invite, and then head to their hideout to complete the transaction.
Oftentimes, when the deal is done, only one side says thank you while the other goes about their daily routine and that’s it. That, to us, is not good player interaction, which is why GGG has to reinvent the PoE 2 trading system in the future. If you want to understand how complex the system is, you can read our Path of Exile 2 trading guide.
Third, because you are unable to trade and party up with other people, every item you get that is better than the one you’re currently using feels more impactful. This is even more so when you get highly-coveted unique items yourself, such as the Morior Invictus, Hand of Wisdom and Action, and Ingenuity, to name a few.
Lastly, any currency item that you get along the way is used primarily for the purpose of improving your gear. When you get a PoE 2 Divine Orb, you don’t have to put it to stash for later use. You can utilize it immediately to get better numerical values on your gear.
Best SSF Builds in PoE 2
Before we begin, what constitutes a good build for SSF in Path of Exile 2? Well, it should work without specific unique items. This does not mean that you forgo unique items entirely. However, if you are going to use a unique item for an SSF build, it is only for the purpose of improving quality of life and is not, in any way, mandatory for the build to function.
Another crucial factor to consider is that a PoE 2 SSF build must have enough defenses to survive even with just self-found gear. You don’t need specific uniques or complex interactions just to not get one-shotted by a map boss, for example.
Most importantly, an SSF build should be fun to play. Playing in a Solo Self-Found environment is quite punishing already, so why would you make it much worse by playing a build that is not even enjoyable?
Now, it is important to keep in mind that our list is not arranged in chronological order. This means that any build is awesome to use in SSF. At the end of the day, it’s just a matter of preference.
Anyway, without further ado, here are the best SSF builds in Path of Exile 2:
Lightning Arrow Deadeye
Who would have thought that one of the best builds in Path of Exile 2 is also great in SSF? The Lightning Arrow Deadeye can be mistaken for a build that is only viable in the trade league simply because it requires a lot of expensive items to pull off. However, this build can actually perform admirably well even with gear that you can find during your leveling journey.
The combination of Lightning Rod and Lightning Arrow can decimate map bosses with ease. After you finish the campaign in Cruel Difficulty, you will have enough Spirit to activate Wind Dancer, Herald of Thunder, and Herald of Ice to greatly improve your map-clearing potential.
Although you only need 100 Spirit for this build to function as a map blaster, you can farm for body armor and an amulet that contains Spirit. Doing so enables you to activate Cast on Shock as well. This meta skill is then paired with Ball Lightning, which gets cast automatically every time you hit enemies with Lightning Rod and Lightning Arrow!
When it comes to gear, always pay close attention to the bow and quiver because the bulk of your damage comes from these two things. That said, farm a good Dualstring Bow with high physical damage, cold damage, and attack speed. If you do not have a bow with all three mods, settle with a combination of two until you find an upgrade later on.
For the quiver, you want one that has increased damage with bow skills, increased attack speed, and cold damage to attacks. If you’ve noticed, the flat cold damage is nice because you’ll have enough cold damage to activate Herald of Ice.
Now, treat those mods as potential upgrades in the future, especially if you don’t have all of them in those specific items. The good news is that those modifiers are not hard to come by, so if you have PoE 2 Regal Orbs lying around, you can upgrade your magic item into a rare item and possibly get the aforementioned mods by doing so!
The Lightning Arrow Deadeye is quite mana-intensive. This is even more so when you have the Cast on Shock setup enabled. One way you can address this is to use a Mana Flask with an increased amount recovered mod, as well as gain 0.20-0.25 flask charges per second.
You can take your chances and utilize an Orb of Chance on an Emerald Ring. This may result in a Thief’s Torment, which is a unique ring that is the only source of mana on hit that exists in Path of Exile 2 Early Access. Mana on hit modifiers might be added to rare rings in the future, but you have to settle with Thief’s Torment for now.
What we like about the Lightning Arrow Deadeye is that there are so many upgrades you can get that can improve its damage output. For instance, if you are strong enough to fight Xesht, you will have a chance of acquiring the Hand of Wisdom and Action. These unique gloves give more oomph to Lightning Arrow, especially if you have a ton of Dexterity and Intelligence.
Of course, these unique items are not necessary for the build to work, making Lightning Arrow Deadeye a solid choice for an SSF build.
Stampede HotG Titan
Playing in SSF is already challenging, but if you want to take it to the next level, play a melee build in Path of Exile 2! Kidding aside, a good melee build is one that has enough defensive capabilities to survive. This is true, especially because you're always in the thick of things.
Having said that, the Stampede HotG Titan is an incredible SSF build for those who want a methodical approach to combat. Methodical in the sense that you utilize several skills to maximize your damage output.
In this build, you utilize Stampede for mapping. There is a slight delay before you charge forward, but when you do, you slam the ground at the end of your movement for massive AoE. While the skill is somewhat slow, the good news is that you can Dodge Roll immediately after the slam so that you can cancel the recovery animation, allowing you to attack once again.
The Ancestral Warrior Totem, which is linked with Armor Breaker, is a nice addition to the build. Every time the totem hits an enemy, their armor is slowly chipped away in the process. When armor is fully broken, you can utilize Sunder for a guaranteed critical hit!
During boss fights, use Hammer of the Gods (HotG). Save this skill only for tough encounters because, although HotG deals huge amounts of damage, it also has a very long cooldown.
The passive nodes that you're going to get must improve physical damage, damage with maces, a chance to cause aftershocks, and aggravate bleeding. Some of the items you'll use, such as the two-handed mace, may have some added fire damage so you can use Herald of Ash to enhance your map-clear speed as well.
As for keystones, you will allocate Giant's Blood to grant the ability to wield a two-handed weapon in one hand and a shield in another. The shield is mainly used for defensive purposes, so farm one that has a good block chance and life.
Since you need a lot of STR to address the downside of Giant's Blood, the Stampede HotG Titan naturally has a very large health pool as a result. If you don't know, one point per STR grants two points of life. However, that is further amplified thanks to the Titan's Hulking Form ascendancy node, which is considered one of the most overpowered in all of Path of Exile 2!
If you don't mind that relatively slow attack speed, the Stampede HotG Titan can help you get off the ground without a problem.
Gas Grenades Witch Hunter
If you have the knack for blowing stuff up, then you'll love the Gas Grenades Witch Hunter! Gas Grenade is a grenade skill that leaves a poisonous cloud a couple of seconds after being fired. The thing about this skill is that it can be detonated to cause massive fire damage to nearby enemies in a relatively large area!
Now, Gas Grenade can be detonated in a number of ways. You can use Explosive Shot to reliably detonate it from afar. The Explosive Grenade can also do that, though it takes roughly two seconds before exploding.
To make the build more incredible, you must use an Advanced Bombard Crossbow at level 59 and the Expert Bombard Crossbow at level 79. This is the ideal crossbow base for this build because using it will cause your grenade skills to fire an additional grenade.
When you have the Expert Bombard Crossbow, upgrade it to become a rare item using a Regal Orb. If you don't have the "% Increased Physical Damage" modifier yet, continue farming it by defeating enemies until you get said modifier to improve the damage of your primary skill.
The Gas Grenade Witch Hunter uses pieces of gear that have both armor and evasion on them. This is because passive nodes that improve said defensive layers are readily accessible to the Mercenary since his position on the passive tree is smack dab in the middle-bottom area.
You need to enhance your armor and evasion because you will take advantage of the Witch Hunter's Sorcery Ward, which is brought to you by the Obsessive Rituals ascendancy node. Your last ascendancy node should be Ceremonial Ablution as it boosts the effect of Sorcery Ward by 50%.
Sorcery Ward is pretty good at making you almost unkillable against elemental damage. You are still prone to Detonate Dead and other on-kill effects, but for the most part, you should be able to survive with the right defensive modifiers on your gear.
The Gas Grenade Witch Hunter has a huge upside in the endgame compared to a Mercenary build that utilizes Galvanic Shards and Shockburst Rounds. That's because the grenade skills you're going to use have better damage scaling when you have the right weapons and passive skills.
When you come across a Lace Hood while leveling, save it for later. Once you get an Orb of Chance, use it on the Lace Hood for a chance to obtain the Radiant Grief. This unique helmet basically turns the Gas Grenade Witch Hunter into a one-button build, with only Gas Grenade as your primary damage dealer while mapping.
Skeletal Sniper Infernalist
In the early days of Path of Exile 2, many believed that the Skeletal Arsonists would become top-tier for a very long time. They are still amazing after Patch 0.1.1, but they have fallen off in popularity because they're outshined by another skeletal minion: the Skeletal Sniper!
The Skeletal Sniper Infernalist is a minion build that you can try out in SSF. All you need to pull this off are well-rolled sceptres, body armor, and an amulet. This is because these items can roll Spirit, which is a resource needed to summon the Skeletal Snipers. Check out our dedicated Path of Exile 2 Spirit Guide to learn more.
The Skeletal Sniper automatically fires a gas arrow at the enemy. The arrow interacts with Ignite or other detonator skills, causing it to explode upon impact. Although you don't have a detonator skill on this build, you will still use Flame Wall so that the arrows fired by your Skeletal Snipers are empowered with fire damage.
While you're still leveling, you can use Detonate Dead to improve your build's killing efficiency. Have your Skeletal Snipers kill a bunch of enemies so you can utilize those corpses and have them explode with Detonate Dead.
In the endgame, you will swap Detonate Dead for Eye of Winter. This spell allows you to inflict Critical Weakness on enemies hit by Eye of Winter's projectiles, allowing your Skeletal Snipers to deal significant damage to them.
Flame Wall not only adds fire damage to your Skeletal Snipers' arrows, but it summons Raging Spirits as well. Although the spirits are considered minions, they cannot be commanded like your other minion skills. Don't worry, they have an auto-targeting feature that automatically prompts them to seek targets without prior intervention.
When it comes to gear, prioritize your sceptre, body armor, and amulet. Ideally, you want your sceptre to have "% Increased Spirit" so that you have enough Spirit to summon multiple minions at once.
Your body armor has to have Spirit and a high-tier life mod. Having a large health pool is important because you want to get a ton of Spirit from the Infernalist's "Beidat's Will" ascendancy node. Life also gives you more energy shield thanks to Beidat's Hand.
For your amulet, you want a flat amount of Spirit, which will enable you to summon more Skeletal Snipers or add another minion of your choosing to join your army. Obtain as many amulets as possible and use Orbs of Transmutation, Augmentation, and Regal Orb on them until you get "+ to level of all minion skills." This modifier is meant for the endgame, though, so you are in no rush to get it.
The only downside of this build is that you're pretty much playing a support role to your minions. However, if that is what you prefer, then give the Skeletal Sniper Infernalist a whirl!
Cryoshock Telestomp Stormweaver
The ability to freeze enemies in Path of Exile 2 is desired because it helps you offensively and defensively. Frozen enemies don't have a chance to retaliate and freezing them will provide you with more avenues to deal significant amounts of damage. That is actually the core premise of this next SSF build—the Cryoshock Telestomp Stormweaver!
By utilizing Frostbolt to freeze monsters and Cold Snap to deal massive cold damage in an area, the Cryoshock Telestomp Stormweaver can handle early- and mid-game content with relative ease.
As you get more upgrades, you will focus on getting your energy shield and mana up as high as you can. This is because you will be taking advantage of Mind Over Matter and Eldritch Battery to help you survive. Only make the switch when you have a relatively high amount of mana.
Now, the reason why this build has "telestomp" on its name is because it utilizes Lightning Warp as well. Lightning Warp is a skill that lets you teleport in a jiffy and it also has the ability to "cull" monsters when their HP drops below a certain threshold. This is quite useful against map bosses because you only have to drop their HP to below 5% before finishing them off with Lightning Warp.
Once you are able to reliably freeze enemies, you can then go for a Cast on Freeze setup with Ball Lightning as the skill to be triggered. Ball Lightning can deplete the enemy's HP really fast, though it can also do the same for your mana. Hence, using the Inspiration support gem is mandatory to alleviate the heavy mana cost.
Interestingly, Lightning Warp also interacts with Ball Lightning. You see, Lightning Warp can only be used on enemies on the brink of death. The projectiles from Ball Lightning can be used as jumping points for your Lightning Warp, so you can essentially use them to teleport at will.
Your gear mostly consists of energy shield-based equipment to maximize the aforementioned keystone passives. Furthermore, get increased cast speed on your rings, amulet, wand, and caster focus to make things feel a lot smoother.
Additionally, you can Chance Orb a Rawhide Belt to potentially obtain the Midnight Braid. This is a unique item that allows you to recoup mana by taking damage. You can also take "Adverse Growth" on the passive tree to gain additional mana recoup, which is handy in the endgame when the build becomes so mana-intensive.
For a spellcaster, the Cryoshock Telestomp Stormweaver has enough defense to go head-to-head against pinnacle bosses. With a marriage of both incredible offense and defense, what's not to love about this PoE 2 build?
Ice Shot Deadeye
Admittedly, some builds in Path of Exile 2 are quite squishy, but the trade-off is that they can eliminate enemies before they have a chance to land a single hit. That is what the Ice Shot Deadeye is capable of, and then some!
To play this build, you will actually use Lightning Arrow and Lightning Rod initially because these skills are available right from the very beginning. Only change your primary skill to Ice Shot at level 35, where you can get a level 2 Support Gem to add Primal Armament as well.
Your bow must have at least one physical damage modifier and added lightning damage. The latter is needed to activate Herald of Thunder to greatly amplify your ability to clear maps efficiently.
If you are wondering why you need to use a physical bow for this build, that is because Lightning Arrow and Ice Shot deal damage based on a percentage of your physical damage. The higher your physical damage is, the deadlier these skills become.
Since you will use a bow, you also need to have an equally good quiver. Go for the Volant Quiver (Arrow Speed) or Primal Quiver (attack speed) as the base and then upgrade them with the usual PoE 2 currencies to get increased attack speed, increased damage with bow skills, and lightning/cold damage.
In the endgame, you can switch to a Visceral Quiver for its critical hit chance implicit. Save some upgrade currencies to potentially roll another critical hit mod as an explicit modifier.
Your armor pieces must be purely evasion-based so that you can enhance them with the right notable passive skills, such as Catlike Agility, Beastial Skin, and Enhanced Reflexes. The Acrobatics keystone passive is an option you can take. However, you have to make sure that your evasion rating is at least 16,000 to hedge Acrobatics' downside. If you cannot attain that number, don’t allocate Acrobatics just yet.
In addition, you will use a meta-skill on this build called Cast on Freeze. This is utilized to cast Ball Lightning automatically when you freeze enemies.
If you ask us which build we prefer, we love the Ice Shot Deadeye more than the Lightning Arrow Deadeye. Both of them are incredibly awesome offensively, but the Ice Shot Deadeye has more utility due to her ability to freeze enemies using her primary skill.
Ice Strike Invoker
Continuing on the theme of freezing enemies, you have the Ice Strike Invoker. Think of this as the melee version of the Ice Shot Deadeye with a few unique tricks up his sleeve. Let’s talk about the ascendancy nodes available to the Invoker, shall we?
I am the Blizzard, Sunder My Enemies, and I Shall Rage work incredibly well with Ice Strike, making it an incredibly potent skill that freezes enemies consistently because of its insane damage output with these nodes allocated.
Ice Strike is not the only skill in your repertoire because you will use the Tempest Bell as well. Treat the Tempest Bell as an enemy that you can hit multiple times, causing damaging shockwaves to deal with more than one monster at a time.
Among the quarterstaff skills available to the Monk by default, Ice Strike provides more energy for Elemental Invocation than Tempest Flurry or Falling Thunder. This means that the said meta-skill will trigger a socketed spell more frequently when using Ice Strike.
That said, although the identity of this build is a killer that leverages cold damage to defeat enemies, the spell that you link with Elemental Invocation is actually Ball Lightning. Yes, Ball Lightning is just incredible damage-wise because of how many projectiles it can create in a short amount of time. So why not take advantage of that?
When it comes to gear, you can settle with any quarterstaff early on. Ultimately, you want to get your hands on an Expert Slicing Quarterstaff because it is the best quarterstaff in the game due to its high attack speed and base critical hit chance. The Expert Long Quarterstaff comes at a close second, especially if you want the longer range.
For the body armor, you could opt for a pure-evasion base like the Expert Studded Vest or a hybrid evasion/energy shield body armor like the Expert Waxed Jacket. You don’t need Spirit on this piece of gear since you’ll be taking Lead Me Through Grace later on. Just make sure that it has a high enough evasion or energy shield to get the full potential of the said ascendancy node.
When you have a normal Sapphire Ring, you can use Orb of Chance to acquire Polcirkeln at random. This ensures that you shatter enemies even when they’re not frozen, so long as you deal cold damage (which you normally do with Ice Strike). This is not mandatory at all, though it certainly looks cool when you break monsters like glass.
All in all, the Ice Strike Invoker holds incredible power, particularly when you’re able to reach the endgame and obtain better gear.
Spark Stormweaver
The Stormweaver is one of the most popular ascendancy classes in Path of Exile 2 Early Access. We don’t know if it will be dethroned heading up to the full release, but what we know for certain is that the Stormweaver is a fantastic ascendancy class built for whatever content you wish to indulge in the game.
Having said that, the Spark Stormweaver just works. Whether you have tons of Divine Orbs to get the best possible gear or you’re playing in a contained environment like in SSF, the Spark Stormweaver will not disappoint!
There are a few key things that you have to keep in mind if you want to play this Path of Exile 2 build. First and foremost, you need to have tons of mana and energy shield. Energy shield is your main defensive layer, which will ultimately be converted to mana by taking the Eldritch Battery keystone.
Next, you need to have high amounts of mana regeneration because this build eats up mana like there’s no tomorrow! This is even more useful when you have converted your ES to mana because the latter will serve as your life pool as well. If your mana goes to zero, you’ll die!
In the early game, it’s best to use a staff because it can roll high tiers of spell damage, lightning damage, and cast speed. If you are lucky, you can even obtain “+6 to Level of All Lightning Spell Skills,” which can greatly boost the damage of Spark exponentially.
If you see other people playing the Spark Stormweaver using wands, you will transition to that weapon in the endgame, so don’t worry about that. Wands have generally high cast speed by default, making them better than the staff in this regard.
Another reason for the transition is that a wand is a one-handed weapon, so you can equip a caster focus in the off-hand, which can have defensive modifiers like increased energy shield and elemental resistance.
Your general skill rotation involves the use of Flame Wall to add fire damage to Spark’s projectiles and then cast Spark until the enemy is dead. Support Flame Wall with Spell Cascade so that you have three walls of flame for your projectiles to go through. If you have an extra Uncut Support Gem, you can also add Fortress to force the Flame Wall to form a circle instead of a straight line.
When you need an extra boost in the damage department, you can lay down the Orb of Storms that will apply Lightning Exposure to nearby enemies. This exposure debuff cuts the lightning resistance of monsters by a considerable amount, making your Spark projectiles hit harder. The Lightning Exposure is further amplified when you take Scouring Winds as one of the ascendancy nodes for the build.
In boss fights, use Mana Tempest to gain an insane boost in damage. Take note that you shouldn’t stay too long inside the Mana Tempest’s AoE because it will quickly drain your mana while you cast your spells. It takes time to get used to this, but you’ll get the hang of it.
What about upgrades? There are some unique items that work amazingly well for the Spark Stormweaver. The Everlasting Gaze greatly enhances your mana regeneration rate. But more importantly, this thing allows you to gain extra shield based on a portion of your maximum mana. If you’ve seen other Spark builds out there that have ES even when Eldritch Battery is allocated, this unique item is the reason for that.
Additionally, you can farm Ritual Altars until you get An Audience with the King. Insert this in your Map Device to challenge the King in the Mists. Defeating him gives you a chance to obtain the Ingenuity belt, which enhances the modifiers on your equipped rings by up to 80% (non-corrupted).
When some of your items contain increased critical hit chance or increased critical hit chance for spells, you can change some nodes on the passive tree to deal more damage, such as Deadly Force, Controlling Magic, and Desensitization.
Are you looking for a fun build to play that is easy to pull off and has plenty of upgrade options later down the line? Then the Spark Stormweaver should be in your top consideration!
SSF Tips
Playing in PoE 2 Solo Self-Found is difficult because you have to spend time farming better gear yourself. Fortunately, there are certain things you can do to make your SSF journey a lot more bearable. Here are some tips:
Collect Every Piece of Gear
If you are still starting out, make it a point to collect every piece of gear that is useful for your SSF build. For instance, if you are playing the Lightning Arrow Deadeye, you must loot every bow and quiver that you can find regardless of item rarity.
The reason for doing this is that you do not have other players to trade with for gear upgrades. Thus, you have to use the PoE 2 currency that you have on hand to potentially acquire better items than the ones you currently have equipped.
When you have a normal item, use the Orb of Transmutation and Orb of Augmentation to turn it into a magic item with a prefix and a suffix. You can add a third suffix by using the Regal Orb. A rare item in Path of Exile 2 can have a maximum of six modifiers, so if you want to upgrade your rare pieces of gear, you have to utilize Exalted Orbs for that.
Sell Useless Gear to the Vendors
On the surface, this advice may seem divisive. After all, you cannot get plenty of Transmutation Orbs without disenchanting gear early on. While there is no argument there, selling trash items to vendors is more practical because gold can be utilized in a number of ways.
First, gold allows you to buy upgrades from vendors. Sometimes, vendor NPCs will sell some pretty useful items, such as staves with “+ to the Level of All Spell Skills” or armor with triple elemental resists.
Second, gold can be used to gamble for items from Finn (Act 1), Risu (Act 2), and Alva (Act 3/Endgame). Gambling in Path of Exile 2 is another way to get unique items besides defeating monsters or using Chance Orbs.
If that is the case, when is it acceptable to disenchant items rather than sell them to the vendors? Sell most of your pieces of gear to the vendors until you reach Act 3 Normal Difficulty. At this point, you will get better base items for crafting, which means that you need more crafting materials than gold.
Check Vendors Periodically
Vendors in PoE 2 will refresh their stock every time your character levels up. You can also force them to do so if you buy some items from them, close the interaction, and then talk to them again immediately after. However, this only works if you have plenty of gold at your disposal. Otherwise, check vendor NPCs every two levels up or so.
Sort Out Your Defenses
If you have played the PoE 2 Standard League prior to SSF, then you already know about this. However, if you're still about to create your first character in the game, it should be said that your defenses must be in check in order to survive.
For one, your elemental resistance must be at 75% to ensure that a large portion of incoming elemental damage is mitigated effectively. Chaos resistance is more difficult to come by, though it is wise to attain 40% chaos res or more to improve survivability.
Aside from that, invest in gear that boosts evasion or energy shield. Do not settle for armor because it sucks in the current iteration of PoE 2 Early Access. Despite the 15% increase in damage mitigation brought by Patch 0.1.1, armor is still weak compared to the other main defensive layers in the game.
What should you do if you want to play an armor-based build like the Stampede HotG Titan? Well, make sure to get armor-boosting nodes on the passive tree if you have extra points. Aim for 80% armor or higher so that you can mitigate physical damage somewhat effectively.
Pick Up Every Currency Item You Can Find
This might seem like a no-brainer, but those who play in the Standard League often do not pick up PoE 2 currency anymore in the late game. Since you are playing in SSF and you don't know when your next upgrade is going to be, you want to make sure that you have enough currency just in case you get a suitable item base for crafting.
When you are happy with your gear and you have Divine Orbs in your stash, do not be afraid to spend them to ensure that you get the highest numerical values possible. You cannot use Divine Orbs since trading is disabled in SSF anyway, so why not use it for a much better cause?
Check for High-tier Modifiers
When you press and hold the Alt Key on a piece of gear, you will see the tier of mods that they have. The higher the tier, the better the values are. This is an important thing to note because things were different in PoE 1, where a Tier 1 mod is the best while those of a higher number are worse.
Having said that, when checking for items in the vendors for possible upgrades, make sure to look for high-tier modifiers that your build needs. For example, you play the Ice Strike Invoker and the quarterstaff you currently have has a measly 5% increased attack speed. If you are looking for an upgrade, check the quarterstaff that the vendor NPCs have on offer to see if they have an attack speed mod that is much higher than yours.
This is basically a huge part of your SSF journey in the endgame. When you have the necessary pieces for your PoE 2 build to function, all you have to do from that point onward is to upgrade them when better items become available.
Repurpose Bad Gear
So, you've used Transmutation Orbs, Augmentations, and Regals, but you're still unable to come up with a better piece of gear. What should you do with the duds? Assuming that you're in the endgame, do not sell them to vendors for gold because you are more likely swimming in the said currency already. Instead, you can utilize the Reforging Bench to try again.
Basically, the Reforging Bench lets you get the same piece of gear, provided that you reforge three items of the same name and type. For instance, if you got a badly rolled Expert Keth Raiment three times in a row, you can plug them into a Reforging Bench to get another Expert Keth Raiment. You will occasionally obtain a magic item this way. However, for the most part, they come out as items of normal rarity (denoted by white text and white border), which you can upgrade again using the same currencies as the previous ones.
Farm Trial of Chaos
The Trial of Chaos is one way you can ascend your character in Path of Exile 2. This is available in Act 3 when part of your mission tasks you to enter the Chimeral Wetlands.
Anyway, the Trial of Chaos puts you into a gamut of challenges, with each round gaining a new modifier to make things more interesting than the last. That said, successful completion of this Trial of Ascendancy rewards you with a random soul core, which you can socket into gear.
The best soul cores in the game include the following:
- Soul Core of Azcapa
- To gain more item rarity when socketed into armor pieces, such as the gloves, helmet, and boots
- Soul Core of Citaqualotl
- When inserted into armor, you gain 5% to all elemental resistances per piece of gear
- Soul Core of Tacati
- Getting your chaos resistance to acceptable levels is hard in Solo Self-Found. However, one way you can boost that is by socketing this particular soul core into armor
You don't have to finish the full 10-round Trial of Chaos. If you farm diligently in Act 3 Normal Difficulty, you will get Inscribed Ultimatums that only have you finish four rounds of ToC each. A 7-round Trial of Chaos is fine provided that you're geared enough to handle a few extra challenges.
Eject from SSF
If you have tried Path of Exile 2, but you found the Solo Self-Found environment to be too challenging, then you can always migrate your character into the Standard League. Keep in mind that this is a nuclear option that cannot be reversed, so only do this if you're absolutely sure that you're done with SSF.
Once you have finished the migration process, you can trade with other players, making gear upgrades a breeze. Speaking of which, if you are in the Standard League and you want to deck your character out with the best possible gear, then head to our PoE 2 store to see a wide selection of items!