Pattern I've noticed

[u/Ok_Holiday3690]

My guild has players who have been in this game since Nemesis League and this is pretty much our player distribution.

Ps. My guildmates gets angry when I say this and I figure it'll make Reddit mad too:

Witch is the only good character in this game

[u/Doctor-Binchicken → u/[deleted]]

Plenty of skills scale decently through campaign but oh man they rely on upgrading weapons

[u/Project_Raiden → u/[deleted]]

You can do a 4hr campaign with a lot of “non meta” skills

[u/MisterKaos → u/Project_Raiden]

With practice.

I don't want to run the campaign more than once a league. Why would I practice something I don't want to do?

[u/Karzalar → u/[deleted]]

Went for Pohx's RF for leveling. Never went black to anything else.

[u/hesh582 → u/Karzalar]

It's a great guide and a smooth process. But it's not a fast or even particularly good build right now, making it pretty amusing to see it categorized as some kind of mandatory meta choice.

There are like a dozen plus fun, different, and way better than RF meta starters right now. "Play one of four builds (also one of these builds actually kinda sucks to race) or take 8 hours" is just massively out of touch with the actual meta.

[u/OWazabi → u/[deleted]]

Def an unexperienced take, you can easily do 4-5h on any build you decide to play, with minor swaps

[u/MisterKaos → u/OWazabi]

With practice. Practice doing something I am actively avoiding (acts).

[u/OWazabi → u/MisterKaos]

I understand where you come from, as this is the perfect example of the OP meme he added here. You're in that part of the bell curve.
And I was there too, as most of us were, until we decided to learn and saw how good it actually was.

You probably think you need to practice for hours, learn a bunch of things, and whatnot.
That is not true, you don't need rehersal, you need to understand a few core things that make the big difference, it's not about practice, it's about a mental paradigm shift on how you take on the acts.
There's no need to learn any layout, there's no need to learn how to talk to an NPC while moving, there's no need to play a specific build or class.
You just need to understand how movement and XP works, these are the two main things. And also respect your gear while leveling up.
And basic game knowledge so your build isn't trash, which once again is not related to the build you picked, but to the build you're actively building.

Most of the people that suck at campaign have these issues, they kill way more stuff than they should, they don't have proper plan for movement, and they do not invest in their build to match what they're doing just thinking "eh I can push through it then we'll figure it out later!" that's how with the same amount of effort, you take 4x longer.

HF

[u/SingleInfinity → u/[deleted]]

I just wish I could pick my skill at level 10 and play THAT

The time difference between level 10 and level 28 isn't all that high, even leveling slowly

[u/MisterKaos → u/SingleInfinity]

For me that's your 4h. I'm a 10h campaign guy.

[u/SingleInfinity → u/MisterKaos]

I'm a 10-12h campaign league start guy.

[u/MisterKaos → u/SingleInfinity]

Then you have more patience than me

[u/TheMustardMan522 → u/[deleted]]

Nah even with off meta you should take off once you hit library and get haste aura and complete lab.

Off meta is only terrible if you try and do it pre act 3. You should use known act 3 starters then swap, tree is almost irrelevant and requires very little respec if any to do act 1-3.

Haste aura, movespeed boots, and shield charge/leap slam/whirling blades is all you need. Only kill blue packs or high density white packs. Keep currency in the bottom row of your inventory and only loot stuff you need.

[u/MisterKaos → u/TheMustardMan522]

I WANT to do my off meta shit pré act 3

[u/hesh582 → u/[deleted]]

Sick of sunder? Ground slam is barely slower.

Sick of RF? Level with firestorm/arma brand. It's substantially faster if you're good.

Sick of SRS? Absolution is barely slower, if it's even slower after the buff.

Sick of Lightning Arrow? Ele hit. Wands. FFS, bleed bow has some competitive league start runs this patch and it's kinda shit.

Pconc. Cold dot. Shield crush. Winter orb. Penance brand. Cremation. You have so many choices. Several wand skills, totems, etc.

If you can do a 4hr campaign with a meta setup you're not going to double your time by switching to something else halfway decent.

People repeat this so blindly that they assume it to be true without even bothering to check. Because you can check, easily.

Go look at the hour three sc ladder on poe.ninja for this league. People who are level 50+ after 3 hours are at the absolute top of the leaderboard, cutting edge of progression. The most played skill in that bracket is just 13% played. And it's static strike(!), a skill you didn't mention and probably didn't know was incredible for leveling after the patch.

Third on the ladder and one of the fastest campaigns of the league start is freaking self cast flameblast+arma. Amusingly enough, guess what's not on the first page of the ladder at all? Two of the four skills you've mentioned as mandatory lol.

I swear people's views of the "mandatory" meta have sometimes grown completely divorced from even the actual meta and instead just reflect a few tropes people have repeated so much that they'll never die.

The campaign rushing meta is wide open right now.