It’s not better or worse. If I understand your criteria correctly, both can be made strong and tanky. Both can do all content, period. What some people here are arguing about is unrelated to your gaming experience at all. You shouldn’t even pay attention aside from the notion that both your ritualist and cabalist can be played as walking simulators without needing to resummon your pets aside from a very small group of challenges which is less than 1% of content.
It’s just that some people here only focus on that 1%, that’s their baseline. Yeah, sure, if you are looking to venture into deep SR, hey, then 99% top builds might be useless and you are suddenly looking at an entirely different game plane with its own tricks, specific builds, etc.
And speaking of squishy skellies, I’ve just spent several hours refining my leveling approach, just to see if it’s possible to never lose a single skele during leveling from level 1 (technically 2 as soon as you can get them). It’s totally possible. Fun too. Bottom line, it all depends on the goals and whether you are interested in doing things your own way.
No, because:
We both know the outcome. Several years ago, I did let my ego run ahead. Sad day for several people who came back to me complaining about their fav build destroyed and unplayable anymore.
Now, this is not proof. And no, these still can’t tank Calla’s phase two, but you can still make them survive Calla with some “fun” kiting without losing one. They start getting two-shot by Ben’s bombs after SR40. I never claimed they were immortal in deep SR or facetanking celestials.
So is using merits, xp boosters, support gear farmed up using other characters. Some would argue that only SSF HC purist mode or SSF HC classless isn’t boring. I’ve done many of these runs. The 10 point devo boost is not too much of an advantage, but it can certainly help make your pets indestructible earlier. It also helps you minimize mat waste in Elite when you need to craft relics or advanced components, or spend shards to get your devotion points. It all depends on your run. When I do classless, I don’t touch cruci and it’s always a SSF HC run (save file deleted/backed up). Regular HC Veteran, if it’s not SSF, I might use merits, sometimes XP gear and pots and just speed run to 100 in a few hours. If it’s a build that shines in crucible, I might level to 100 just doing that.
So, yeah, you do you.
Roughly 14 runs of 10 waves. Each run takes about 2 min if using skellies or any effective skill like WoP, AAR, etc.
Roughly about half an hour if not wasting time on vendors. It’s not the most efficient way though, as you can just use merits and teleport around the map to grab all easy shrines from every act. That’s a LOT more “game breaking” as there are dozens of those, not to mention free loot.
Not exactly. Merits aren’t allowed in SSF runs. New players don’t have merits, xp gear. Delete your save file and you will find this method very useful
allowed? Like who controls that? It is just a self-imposed rule.
This guy thinks that SSF means that one has not traded with other players
How I do it then? Most of my chars are pure mega purist SSF, no crucbile, no shared blueprints NOTHING. But now and then I speedlevel chars, just getting to lvl 94 asap with high reputation. It is fun to mix things up, sometimes you just wanna do a fun endgame build. What I would really like to have as option in game is a “SSF” button for a certain char, instead of having to move files here and there…
New players probably just want to play the game as it is, crucible is also something that must be purchased. Exp gear = exp potion, rest is just icing on the cake.
Yeah, very similar approach. SSF button would be great. And we self impose this rule for a reason, it adds value to our progress, more rewarding in general. That’s why, after a classless run, I usually take a long break, cuz everything else, every other challenge feels kinda meh.
Merits allow you to teleport around the map, grabbing dozens of shrines. All you need is some basic gear to just dash through mobs (which conveniently scale to your level in many areas). And each shrine gives free loot. There are at least 20 shrines that can be obtained without much fighting, basically for free. Compared that to early crucible where you can basically get oneshot (example wave 7 warlocks) without resists. Crucible still requires grinding.
O.o isn’t that super boring? Both grinding cruci and then playing veteran with a big devo advantage???
When I use merits I use them to not have to go through veteran/normal difficulty, because it bores me to death with how easy it is together with leveling taking much longer. I much prefer to start on ultimate (or sometimes elite) to have a bit of a challenge early on.
Anyway, if you like grinding crucible that’s totally ok
If farming my own gear, mats, credits, levels and never once playing multiplayer is not SOLO SELF FOUND can you kindly enlighten my mind as to what in fact SSF is …?
SSF technically means that everything is farmed with a single character, aka one char = one world. Because boosting your alts via gear farmed up with another char is not always considered fair. For example, doing the badge of perseverance challenge (secret quest), is incomparably more difficult in SSF mode vs twinked or boosted. Twinked means using gear from other chars, which includes everything, mats, blueprints, etc.
I googled “what does ssf mean” and this is the reply from AI
“SSF” commonly refers to Solo Self-Found, a game mode in video games like Diablo 2 and Path of Exile where players play independently and cannot trade or group with others.
Which is more like you are using that term Dave.
Don’t you think “untwinked” is a better term? We have used in the the diablo community for decades.
