The joys of playing a Meta Build, and how badly Incursion can screw you without one

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Teolive wrote:

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allbusiness wrote:

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johnKeys wrote:

The Incursion Timer is a less-fair version of a Zana Mission timer.
you need to kill things, fast. very, very fast. one-shot whole packs if you can.

Arc Traps allow me to do that. I kill Architects, open doors, kill all monsters in the room for the achievement, get the temple layout I want.

But what about a normal build? some non-Mathil melee without Stat Sticks? some wacky build that doesn't have off-the-charts DPS?
yeah good luck with that, in this league. chances are you'll get a temple with only the entrance room...

This is a fun league no doubt, but it also took the barrier between the have and the have-not, and made it into a giant 50-foot wall.

I'm ignite flameblast with garbage cast spd and I still manage. Stop complaining.

You are literally one-shotting the entire screen...

For the rest of us plebs who are using some clunky slower not-meta build this league is basically hell.

I could literally pick any skill and make it work in Incursion. You just need to learn to play. For one, most people make bad decisions and go straight for the architect without actually planning their path.


The league purposely forces you to strategize what path you will take and to kill efficiently. There's an actual point to this; it's a way to get newer players to strategize and think about how they are going to approach a map. It's actually good game play, as it gets newer players to start to think in the mindset of how can I efficiently kill this room with my build.


That being said, most of you guys are more willing to complain then anything.

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raics wrote:

Meta-shmeta, you know what I'm seeing as a bit of a problem with this league? It's the long term goals, ok, probably closer to mid term than long but still, you had to put in a bit of work to summon rigwald or fight the breachlords and it usually wouldn't happen before getting well into maps, you can already have a shot at the pyramid boss while doing the first few acts.

Ambush? I mean you just had a bunch of boxes laying around. I find the idea of building a temple just to basically tear it back down interesting. And basically all but the timer is super enjoyable. But the problem isnt so much that you can do temples early on, but that doing so isnt actually good, because it makes it harder to get better temples later (if you do more than on in a day). You propably fail your first incursions, or atleast only either get the architect or the stone. And thats already under the assumption that you are using something like Shrapnel Shot or Freezing Pulse, not really meta skills too much, but leveling powerhouses.

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raics wrote:

Meta-shmeta, you know what I'm seeing as a bit of a problem with this league? It's the long term goals, ok, probably closer to mid term than long but still, you had to put in a bit of work to summon rigwald or fight the breachlords and it usually wouldn't happen before getting well into maps, you can already have a shot at the pyramid boss while doing the first few acts.

There's a couple map-only rooms, but they're not really anything to write home about, especially because the temple is FUCKING HARD in maps. I'm an abyssus kb deadeye and I can't clear it. The enhanced vaal dudes have so much HP and they do a gorillion damage. I really have no idea what kind of characters GGG was testing it on.
Actually I do: none.

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raics wrote:

Meta-shmeta, you know what I'm seeing as a bit of a problem with this league? It's the long term goals, ok, probably closer to mid term than long but still, you had to put in a bit of work to summon rigwald or fight the breachlords and it usually wouldn't happen before getting well into maps, you can already have a shot at the pyramid boss while doing the first few acts.

Effortless grinding is hardly work.
Imagine how the league would be if people could only access the temple at a Rigwald / Breachlord rate. The early access is for people to understand how the temple building words and according to the forum posts it's still not enough -lol.

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Bananaplasm wrote:

Effortless grinding is hardly work.
Imagine how the league would be if people could only access the temple at a Rigwald / Breachlord rate. The early access is for people to understand how the temple building words and according to the forum posts it's still not enough -lol.

You know what I'm getting at, with breachlords and talisman you had something to aim for, something you haven't seen right away, not every league had that but I liked it personally and consider it a good thing. Not saying that the temples don't have any replayability or they're, god forbid, boring, you can aim to upgrade different rooms and whatnot. Still, it's something you've seen before, they're going for a very short buildup cycle this time and I'm thinking it might not pan out optimally in long term.

For example, I'd stagger it out a bit, introducing rooms at a slower pace and spawn the apex monster only if you spare the architect that's supposed to build it, which would be introduced around map level and you'd get access to reliquary as the topmost room until then.

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allbusiness wrote:

I could literally pick any skill and make it work in Incursion. You just need to learn to play. For one, most people make bad decisions and go straight for the architect without actually planning their path.


The league purposely forces you to strategize what path you will take and to kill efficiently. There's an actual point to this; it's a way to get newer players to strategize and think about how they are going to approach a map. It's actually good game play, as it gets newer players to start to think in the mindset of how can I efficiently kill this room with my build.


That being said, most of you guys are more willing to complain then anything.

says the guy playing a meta clearspeed flameblast ignite lol...

Which is our entire complaint that this league is nothing about your so called "strategy" but rather just forcing people to play meta or else suffer.

We are not asking for much, just some measly extra time to allow us to play slower clunkier builds. It shouldn't make difference for a get gud elitist like yourself since you allegedly can clear it regardless.

Fully agree. This league is meta-or-bust more than ever.

I play a fast build with a meta skill (Arc, though self cast), and if it wasn't for the bomb rooms, I would not have had a single temple boss yet. And yes, I check each room before I enter it, plan a good path to the door I want, preferably past the architect I want and always let the golems draw in mobs during the grace period. I have cleared full encursions but still missed the timer. I think I would have quit the league by now if I played a slower build.

I love the league idea, setting up your very own alternative end game, with pretty good leveling items and a cool story. Why does GGG always fuck up such great ideas with poorly implemented details (just like they did with Bestiary)? I guess it's because they do not play-test at all.

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SisterBlister wrote:

I play a fast build with a meta skill (Arc, though self cast), and if it wasn't for the bomb rooms, I would not have had a single temple boss yet. And yes, I check each room before I enter it, plan a good path to the door I want, preferably past the architect I want and always let the golems draw in mobs during the grace period. I have cleared full encursions but still missed the timer. I think I would have quit the league by now if I played a slower build.

Well when you're level 58 with only normal lab done, having arc in a 3 link in a life sprig wand and almost entirely using your gear slots for defense and passive tree for life with a few lightning nodes here and there you are going to have problems with clearing the incursions. Arc would be doing more damage in a +1 to level lightning gems wand since you have it linked to lightning pen and added lightning support, it would also do better in one of your 4 link or in a 5 link if you got lucky enough to drop or make one.

From what I've seen the incursions get way harder during mapping which I haven't hit on any of the 3 character I've made thus far (highest being a lvl 50 cold snap/ frost bomb mentalist) so I'll not make any opinions on those but as far as the act 1-5 incursions I've done 6-8 total temples on my 3 guys and only missed the apex once which that one time was my fault entirely.

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SisterBlister wrote:

Fully agree. This league is meta-or-bust more than ever.

I play a fast build with a meta skill (Arc, though self cast), and if it wasn't for the bomb rooms, I would not have had a single temple boss yet. And yes, I check each room before I enter it, plan a good path to the door I want, preferably past the architect I want and always let the golems draw in mobs during the grace period. I have cleared full encursions but still missed the timer. I think I would have quit the league by now if I played a slower build.

I love the league idea, setting up your very own alternative end game, with pretty good leveling items and a cool story. Why does GGG always fuck up such great ideas with poorly implemented details (just like they did with Bestiary)? I guess it's because they do not play-test at all.

Spoiler

Hence Chris' suprise (on reddit) about how popular the bomb rooms are.
I have played 6 temples. During the incursions, I got 3 top level rooms (in 66 incursions!) which can connect to the apex, and did not manage to unlock their doors. I got bomb rooms in 5 of the temples and killed the boss in all 5. And all this before I'm even in act 7. Where the hell are the testers?! Just checking for crashes, not ever simpy playing? Make more use of your alpha testers then, they are bound to have mentioned this. Jeez, it's the exact same problem EVERY SINGLE LEAGUE. The test team either does not exist or consists of those people too bad to program and completely NAFI

I would argue that breach was more meta focussed than Incursion. Yes the timer is hefty, but it isnt too hard to kill at least one Architect and you sometimes just get lucky with stones and with explosion rooms you can often fix most of the issues up. And even more so you still get something out of the temple if you fail many incursions. My first temple started with a warehouse on lvl2 and the only incursion I managed to do was in Act1 was upgrading it to lvl3, which means you get a random collection of all the item rooms and I got too league specific uniques from it (nothing impressive, but it was a nice thing). In Breach you just died with a non-meta build because more and more mobs kept coming.

They should definitly adjust the incursions while leveling, exspecially the first ones. Having the first one in mud flats basically means you need to use freezing pulse because other abilities just dont get things done or get a good rare weapon from hillock. I played Groundslam and all I had was a blue mace with some attack speed and a minuscule amount of elemental damage and while I didnt die, half of the time was gone before I even walked to the first mob.

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IonDrako wrote:

...something completely beside the point...

Way to miss the point! My char is clearing nicely, none of the usual suspects have given her any trouble yet. Levelling is slow because I tend to clear areas and do all side quests and things. This means I'm usually overlevelled (which helps with not having trouble, I guess). My point was that even a pretty fast clearer only manages to link the temple with luck. To manage it with skill alone you have to choose a super strong skill. Imagine trying an incursion with true melee, not some huge AoE ranged "melee". Forget it.

Now I'm fine with a lower clear speed for non-BrokenBuildOfTheLeague builds, but with incursions such builds will be excluded completely, not just remain poor because of their slow clearing ability.

And that sucks, POE used to have more viable alternatives.