What You Need to Know About the PoE Incursion League for Patch 3.3
The new Path of Exile incursion is finally coming out! Here we’ll cover the short version of most of the major changes coming along with Incursion and 3.3. We’ll cover the PoE Incursion League, skill balance, skill mechanics, and other small tidbits. Enjoy!
Table of Contents
Incursion Mechanic
With every new league, Path of Exile releases an entirely new mechanic. The most recent league had the Bestiary and the Menagerie. This new league will have Vaal temples. Every single map will feature Alva Valai, a new NPC who will allow you to travel back in time to enter the Vaal Temples from history. Once there you can shape the temple to your will, as well as defeat numerous enemies. You will be on a time limit, but don’t worry about picking up loot, it will all appear once you re-enter the present.
You have eleven attempts to ‘shape’ the Vaal Temple as you see fit, then you run it in the present. In the present, there are no time limits and loot drops normally. Your temple will be based on the temple you created during your eleven entrances into the past. Each room will have its own gimmick, which will be stronger depending on how many times you upgraded it, up to a maximum of three tiers. For example, there’s a room dedicated to the Breach mechanic. At tier one, it has a chest with some Breach splinters in it. Tier two will have a single Breach inside it. But if you manage to get it to tier three, you will be rewarded with THREE Breaches.
Since Alva will be on every single map you run, you will have many chances to enter the Vaal Temple and figure out which rooms you like and dislike. Play around with them, I’m sure it’ll take a while before anyone figures out the most optimal rooms to upgrade!
Skill Changes
3.3 is the big ‘Skill Rework’ patch. There are a ton of skills changing, and if you want a full list you’re much better off going to the patch notes, found here. The biggest changes, in my opinion, are the ones to Arc, Rain of Arrows, Traps in general, and Ignite in general.
Arc got a massive buff in terms of both damage and functionality. Now Arc chains up to seven times, and each of its chains also have a single offshoot Arc that does not chain further. This is a big boost to clear speed, but Arc never really needed too much of a boost there. The true buff is that now Arc does 15% more damage for each remaining chain. So if you have a chain gem as well as the seven base, you can have ten chains remaining, for a 150% multiplier. And that’s a more multiplier, so it scales everything. This is extremely powerful.
Rain of Arrows underwent an entire rework. Now it targets a much larger area, does a lot more damage with each hit, and half the arrows target enemies, while the other half are random. It also looks a hell of a lot cooler. This should make it a very effective clearing skill, it is yet to be seen how effective it will be on bosses. Since half the arrows do target, it could prove to be extremely strong, especially on large bosses who get hit by many of the other half of arrows as well.
Traps had their cooldown removed! There are also a bunch of new traps added! Honestly, this was too important not to mention, but it’s way to long to discuss, check the patch notes if you want more information on your favorite traps.
Ignite got massive buffs as well. Several places on the skill tree got Ignite bonuses, making it much more viable to run any generic Ignite build. Ignite itself got a buff, now doing 50% of the initial hit’s damage, up from 40%. The individual skills that can Ignite also got considerable buffs. Incinerate got a full rework and some huge number increases, along with a guaranteed Ignite. Elemental Hit’s chance to Ignite went from 10% to 30%. Fireball got a new massive more multiplier to Ignite damage. Etcetra. I’m quite sure that Ignite will begin to be encompassed in builds once more, I personally am quite excited to try out a Fireball build!
Vaal Skills
The VaalSkill changes are probably the biggest changes to the game, long-term. Up until now, Vaal Skills were charged up by killing enemies, then you used them and expended all the souls. They could charge themselves, so occasionally you would be able to simply chain Vaal Skills, which lead to some interesting builds. However, for the most part, they simply weren’t worth socketing, since you had to support them in order for them to be good. Not a lot of builds willing to use a two six links, one entirely dedicated to a Vaal Skill. But now that’s all changed!
Now, your Vaal Skill gems will also give you access to the non-Vaal variant of the skill! That’s right, now you only need one skill gem in order to have access to both skills. This alone is an absolutely massive change, allowing for a six-link skill and Vaal Skill in the same setup. Suddenly there’s no reason NOT to use Vaal Skills, instead of having to justify them. They also buffed quite a few of the Vaal Skills to make them more appealing to use in the first place.
The only negative (if you can call it that) change is that now there is a cooldown to when Vaal Skills can intake souls after their use. This means that Vaal Skills can no longer be chained. This is obviously a nerf, but it also means that a lot more powerful Vaal Skills can exist. In addition, you now gain souls off of doing damage to rare and unique enemies. Obviously, this means that you can now use your Vaal Skills on bosses without being forced to save it throughout the map. Or even use it multiple times! Between the skill changes and the Vaal Skill changes, I know I’m excited about Incursion!
For more, check this out: Consuming Those PoE Map Mods for Rewards
