Tota is easily best League mechanic of all time and it's not even close.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

You may disagree or have other favourite in mind, but it doesn't change the fact that not a single League so far had so much going for it..

Bold of you to assume everything you said isn't an opinion either. Basically everything you said could be changed to (insert league) and be true for someone else. I think it's mediocre, you think it's the best, leave it at that.

If they remove the arrow tattoo, sure, it can go core.

"

roundishcap wrote:

I disagree on almost every point,
Unbalanced as hell and pushes normal builds out with no derank option.

Gameplay is very repetitive

Allied units do practically nothing some if not most of the time. They really don't matter.

But I am glad you enjoyed it.

lol aliied units don't matter and do nothing? you have not played much tota and it shows if you had played more than a few tournaments you would notice how much of a difference the good units make

My opinion of the mech is that it's bad. The positive that I'll say is it's not synthesis and doesn't require the posting of layouts for pipes in harvest league. On the whole I found it unrewarding, complicated and it took forever. I did watch a video, but how many do I need to watch? I know I'm going to need to come back for challenges, not looking forward to it.

I enjoy POE for maps, even if it is a fight I'm desperately losing like with Maven or some of the maven invitations. I didn't come to play Pyre. I hope we get league mechs that actually take place on the map.

"

Slicer9875 wrote:

I enjoy POE for maps, even if it is a fight I'm desperately losing like with Maven or some of the maven invitations. I didn't come to play Pyre. I hope we get league mechs that actually take place on the map.

There are loads of mechanics that takes place in maps already. If there was nothing else to do besides mapping lots of people would get bored, I know I would.

I enjoy POE for the diverse content.

"

Piquet75 wrote:

I agree. This is by far my favourite league so far and I’ve played for about 10 years. Think I’ve spent more time on the mechanic than I have mapping.

Yeah, I was living in Tota for weeks. I never had so much fun with PoE before.

"

sumfight wrote:

TotA is really good. I thought it looked meh when I saw the trailer during the Exilecon stream, but I was wrong.

I don't think it is my personal favorite, but I do agree with a lot of your reasons why it would be considered the best.

For reference I took my main mapper to 1700 rank, and then I made a cheese build(new character) and took it to 2000 rank, so I've played a ton of TotA.

TotA may be my favorite league of all time. It's always been Synthesis before, but this league I really played a long time after hitting 40/40, and most of that time was spent on the TotA mechanic.

Living in Halls of the Dead is the way.

"

roundishcap wrote:

I disagree on almost every point,
Unbalanced as hell and pushes normal builds out with no derank option.

Lore is interesting but not enough of it.

Gameplay is very repetitive

Allied units do practically nothing some if not most of the time. They really don't matter.

Rewards are ok, but depend on luck/ completion. I generally think when rewards are pushed off towards the end is just bad design. It makes partial victories worthless. I think the chieftan totem should have loot for example.

Silver coins are whatever. Not offensive at least.

Tattoos feel very underwhelming with like 2/3 notable exceptions.


But I am glad you enjoyed it.

I agree - option to choose rank would be welcomed.

What do you mean by unbalanced? Do you mean monster life / damage output? Something you missed is that Tota is not balanced around conventional monster slaying. You are not supposed to fight them conventionally - their life is their totem.

Allied units do matter - they are key component fo victory. Even on Void Sphere they do matter, because some are better and they serve different purposes.

Gameplay is repetitive? You need to make a lot decisions during a match and before. Battlefield changes on a whim. Gameplay is engaging even in Void Sphere build. Also how is mapping or any other activity not repetitive? You are just slaying monsters.

Rewards are not pushed towards the end. You will routinely see stacks of Divines, Enlighten, etc. etc. at earlier rounds, even as round 1 Reward. After Hinekora's Lock and other lucky drops they actually contribute they most.

Tattoos feel very underwhelming? Huh? It's more like the opposite - some builds just don't benefit from them as much as other. Even something like spell suppress or % life or reduced damage from crits is meaningful.

Somehow you even complain about lore? In the most lore-heavy League in history? :o

Your comment shows deep lack of understanding as you got many things backwards.

"

Draegnarrr wrote:

it isn't a deep mechanic but the rest is pretty sound tbh, though I disagree about it being easily the best league mechanic.

Its an interesting one to be sure though I'd love them to develop it further but its a bit weird to expect that so I don't really lol

How is mechanic not deep when we still didn't cracked it? When people still argue over optimal units? And something like Equipment is completely unexplored. It is deep.

I would like if they added new Tribes / rotated them, but that would be dream.

"

Pizzarugi wrote:

Fun is subjective, and I don't find fun in a league where I have to abandon the idea of fighting enemies to win once I reach rank 400-500+, because they're too tanky to kill and can 1shot me easily. When your gameplay gets reduced to you running around and distracting the enemy team so your allies can sneak in and swipe totems, I think that's unintuitive and just not enjoyable. Having to play a build optimized for the content that literally can't function outside of it is also unintuitive and not fun.

That said, I still wouldn't want Trials removed from the game. I like the tattoos they added.

I am not sure what you mean. Even at rank t1-2 units still have hp low enough most builds can kill them (and t3 units are manageable at least) so you can continue fighting monsters conventionally when you need. Let alone solid build you invested into you are supposed to have at this point. Also overkilling monsters is not what you are supposed to do - although it was fun as heck for me. xD

"

deothor wrote:

Strong disagree.

Take away the rewards, which definitely will be nerfed IF mechanic goes core and you'll end up having a mess that suddenly isn't "The best league mechanic of all time" (ballsy statement btw).

This stuff is already unrewarding, unbalanced, repetitive, BUGGY and your strategy options are just an illusion. You don't strategize beyond killing kuhu first. Anything beyond that tiny aspect is you riding the waves of RNG tribute rewards, always playing the underdog.

Your builds that utilize "underrated mechanics" were already nerfed by GGG and in the end you can't even really play "normal" builds, cause this stuff is so unbalanced with oneshots.

Community is in its worst state i had ever seen it. Since week 3 nobody replies to your trade offers. This is tragic. People spend more time spamming PMs than actually playing. I've seen "cummunity vibing" so. much. more. With a week-long-events at the end of the league, than this.

IF and that's Moon-sized "IF":

- GGG fixed all the bugs (especially AI)
- actually bothered to add proper scallings for proper difficulty rampup (this means no more oneshots "because xD")
- added actual strategy, instead of "kill kuhu first, while trying to get tribute for best 2-3 units that MIGHT be available after next 2-3 matches"
- maybe rebalance rewards (cause they are either huge hit, or long streak of nothing). This mechanic is simply unrewarding for time spent. If you think it is rewarding it means you were either very lucky, or you never done any actual farming.

Then i'd be interested.

I want this league to be good, but calling it "The best league mechanic of all time" is just... No.

Taking away rewards will make any mechanic way worse. What kind of argument is that? Rewards are one of the most important aspect of any League mechanics. Though Tota would still have tattoos and other exclusive drops though so likely would still be rewarding.

I will not adress everything, just some of your most outrageous claims:

- Rewards...do I even need to adress it? Rewards are one of a few things people who don't like Tota and who do can agree on.

- Strategy. My friend, even choosing your opponent depends on at least 4 factors - favour, current reward, possible final reward and who opponent is. Then you get ton of units doing different things and items that complicate things even further. Mechanic is so deep we still didn't figured out optimal units except Sunset Sage.

- Proper scaling? Tota is not balanced around fighting monsters conventionally. It scales like it is supposed to. You can already do rank 2000 on basically any character, let alone well geared character or OP character or cheese build. And you want it to be even easier? What?

- Except visual bug when you teleport out of tournament screen there are no bugs in Tota I am aware of. What bugs you are talking about?

Basically you are just saying "No" to every point I raised, but the difference is that I got 2 characters to rank 2000 (neither of them were cheesing it with Void Sphere memes), I understand Tota, I know how it works, I know how it is and you simply not. Your comment show deep lack of understanding. Understanding something before talking about it is important. It's like trying to chop wood with a hammer...you are not gonna have good experience if you are doing something wrong.

Actually perhaps there could be argument made about introducing more hand holding to make it easier for people to understand League mechanics? Maybe more agressive guidance? But it would just say things obvious to a lot of people. Wouldn't it come out offensive? Like GGG underesteamates player's intelligence? GGG regards us playrers very highly. Maybe they shouldn't?

Tota is balanced around GGG respecting our intelligence. That's why damage of monsters scales so high. That's why our units are not always doing optimal things. It's because we - players are the most broken overpowered unit on the board.

"

AdRonZh3Ro wrote:

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

You may disagree or have other favourite in mind, but it doesn't change the fact that not a single League so far had so much going for it..

Bold of you to assume everything you said isn't an opinion either. Basically everything you said could be changed to (insert league) and be true for someone else. I think it's mediocre, you think it's the best, leave it at that.

If they remove the arrow tattoo, sure, it can go core.

No, you can't, because most things I mentioned are describing facts such as League mechanic not requiring any maintenance or how rewarding it is. And those are positive traits. Your opinion of facts don't change them. Sure you can challenge fun factor, but that's pretty much it. But then again I can challenge even that with slot machine factor and other counter points.

None other League has so much going for it. Also Tota doesn't have any major downsides unlike all the contenders.

May I ask how far you got in Tota?

I am not sure how I feel about Arrow tattoo. It's very strong, on the other hand it's completely fine that it is. Actually, add similar Tattoo for AOE builds. :p

"

Piquet75 wrote:

"

Slicer9875 wrote:

I enjoy POE for maps, even if it is a fight I'm desperately losing like with Maven or some of the maven invitations. I didn't come to play Pyre. I hope we get league mechs that actually take place on the map.

There are loads of mechanics that takes place in maps already. If there was nothing else to do besides mapping lots of people would get bored, I know I would.

I enjoy POE for the diverse content.

I like in-map mechanics, but I don't mind something different like Sanctum or Tota.

"

SunL4D2 wrote:

How is mechanic not deep when we still didn't cracked it? When people still argue over optimal units? And something like Equipment is completely unexplored. It is deep.

[Removed by Support] the mechanic was solved on day 1-2 the rest of the argument is players can't accept that thrown together AI in an autobattler will produce chaotic results fairly regularly.

PoE players especially the masses argue about everything that isn't a sign of depth - the players that explored the mechanic organically will all arrive at roughly the same conclusions.

The stats are also very heavily skewed by players that don't understand the mechanic, vs players that built so they don't have to play the mechanic.

The truth is "acceptable" units work basically anywhere and you can win regardless by just plonking them down as long as you have some flankers. I don't have to big brain my way to think of a winning strat the only thing that matters is how many one shot units do they have, if its 0 its a free win, if its 10 goliaths probably not.

Note i'm not saying its a bad league here either, expecting them to create and tune an autobattler in 3 months is a ludicrous objective what they came up with is really quite strong for the time frame. It is however not deep, its flawed which makes it appear deep because things fall into holes all the time.

Also silver coins is the best implementation.

TotA is not my favorite league mechanic - it's honestly not even in my top 5 - but it's still very good and this patch overall is one of my all-time favorites.

My biggest praises and gripes about the Trials system:

1 - Something different. Far too many PoE league mechanics don't actually change the way you play the game, so I'm always happy to see mechanics which are this much of a radical departure from everything else. Even systems I don't personally enjoy and block on my Atlas, Blight being a prime example, are things I want more of in the game because it keeps the endgame from being homogenous.

2 - Cool new build-enabling loot. Tattoos are a big win, creating entire builds which didn't exist before and giving fun tweaks on older ones. The loyalty tattoos are especially clever, because almost every build has at least one they can incorporate. I also really like most of the tribal unique items, and have a few I'm looking forward to building around in the future.

3 - Delayable, optional, tradeable content. As a rule, anything I can stockpile and run when I want is something I automatically like more than the alternative. I like that I can stockpile Heist contracts and later spend an entire Sunday afternoon running them all, I like that I can find Sulphite on my level 99 Slayer and use it a month later to powerlevel my new level 70 Champion. I would probably hate this mechanic if you found Hinekora in every zone and you had to play a single round right then and there or miss out on your chance.

4 - By far my biggest complaint about this mechanic is that it takes FAR too long to gain and lose reputation, and the amount you gain/lose doesn't reflect your actual performance in the league. Winning a tournament is always +12, losing is always... honestly, someone would have to tell me. And this rubs me the wrong way because there's a BIG difference in a narrow skin of your teeth win in the final round which could go either way and a tournament you win without losing a single totem in ANY of the rounds. The reputation gained should reflect that, and likewise you should lose double - or even far more, like quadruple - the TotA ranking if you're eliminated in the first 2 rounds compared to finishing the tournament in second place. The current system means there's a certain point in each round where you know you've won and you're no longer fully invested, because it has become mathematically impossible to lose. It also means there's very little reason to do the mechanic at all on anything except one main character of the league; I've started more than one build since getting my first 2k rating and I just can't justify playing the Trials with them. Not being able to powerlevel my ranking by crushing every single match means it's a complete waste of time.

5 - This one isn't so much a gripe as a missed opportunity, but it's still something I'd like to see changed: the player has zero ability to influence the outcomes of TotA matches you are not in. Target farming specific Makanga tattoos is annoying, because if you need Toph's curse effect (just as an example) and she keeps losing her opening round there's basically nothing you can do to get her in the finals. What I'd like is some means of donating my units to chieftains of my choosing, increasing their chances of victory. It would add another layer of strategy and risk/reward to the mechanic, both of which I see as pure upside.

Nothing will ever top legacy league in my mind. Beast was pretty great too.

But, I do have to admit, this was a pretty excellent league.

remind me to visit this thread again when they remove all possible cheesy interactions after tota goes core.