V0LUM3's BIG-ASS INCURSION GUIDE

##V0LUM3's Big-Ass Incursion Guide

So, I've been wanting to do an in-depth guide to Incursion for a while. I notice there are a lot of principles that kind of get left out and some things that newer players (and more experienced players) may have missed.

While this can be helpful for newer players, it's not aimed exclusively at them, there's a lot of info here that you probably aren't seeing out of a lot of CR100 players, and I think there's probably some stuff in here that could help out most players on some level. Since it's currently the most played map, and widely regarded as the most competitive map, this is tailored directly for Overgrowth.

As always, I'm sure I've missed some important things, so feel free to send me any feedback or suggestions if you feel like I blew it somewhere!

So let's get started at the character select screen (or draft screen if you're lucky)

#TEAM COMPOSITION

Before you even get in a match, you can lose a game of incursion. Team composition is vital in this mode when you’re up against good enemies, so make sure you pay attention when putting yours together or you can quickly wind up on the receiving end of a lot of pain. There are going to be 5 main “positions” on your team to fill, so let’s quickly summarize them:

Wave Clear: Your main character dedicated to dropping the incoming enemy minion wave. This should be someone who can reliably and quickly clear the wave with as little additional effort needed as possible.

Front Line: Someone to disrupt the enemy team, soak up some damage, initiate fights, and help protect the squishier characters on the team.

Support: Supports help teammates by buffing them, weakening enemies, and they’ll help keep the team topped off and healthy with healing abilities.

Assassin: Your kill confirmers, and secondary initiators, they pack high damage, high mobility, and will be a main source of picking off out-of position enemies.

Flex: The last and final character will try to plug holes and weaknesses in the team comp, rounding out the team.

If you follow these core positions, you’ll find your teams comps coming out extremely effective, with the ability to deal with just about anything the enemy team throws at you, you can certainly succeed with other compositions, but you may find yourself with some very exploitable weaknesses if you do.

#WAVE CLEAR High damage, high range, low mobility, low defenses, with AOE damage

These are going to be characters with reliable ranged damage, and AOE (area of effect) abilities, specifically falling into this role would be Thorn, Oscar Mike, and Orendi. These three are ALWAYS the best wave-clear a team can have, with their AOE abilities they can toss a single ability at a wave and almost (if not completely) wipe it, which frees them and the rest of the team up to focus on other objectives, and the enemy team. Ernest is another good wave-clear option, but the issue with him is he’s heavily based off of his basic attacks, meaning you won’t be free to engage other targets while clearing like with an AOE based clear.

Other characters can clear wave as well, but those are the all-stars. If you’re trying to build a team without them then you’re going to want to look for someone with big AOE potential in other ways, characters like ISIC, Benedict, El Dragon, Mellka and Kleese help add a lot of wave-clear ability while not being a true “wave-clear” character, but if you’re not rolling with one of the big four, then you’re going to want at least two other characters who bring strong wave-clear elements in their kit somewhere in the comp.

Because of their role, they’re going to always be pulling reliable XP off of the wave, and they’ll typically level faster than “most” other characters. These are a great member of the team to “power level” by letting them secure most of the shards, and letting them get the bigger crack at buildables. As they get higher their AOEs and ultimates let them secure big kills during team fights (well, except for Ernest)

This is one of the busiest positions on the team, constantly making decisions between prioritizing enemy targets, or dumping damage on the minion wave to free up teammates. If you’re playing your wave clear, you need to do everything in your power to always have an AOE ready when the next wave arrives, and don’t stray too far from the lane because your team will suffer without you clearing wave. Typically you won’t stray for other objectives like Thralls, and if you do, then it needs to be immediately after clearing wave and relieving minion pressure.

Your general positioning is going to be just behind your front-liners, usually on the ground behind them, making yourself hard to kill and hard to take down, but also being where you can easily push up and fire your abilities and high damage to help out your front line. Always avoid being on the front lines as much as possible. You’re squishier, and usually won’t have a great escape tool. If you get caught out of position, you’ll be focused very quickly so always protect yourself from over-extending or being caught without a teammate to assist you. If you find yourself standing in front, without a teammate between you and the enemy team, you should probably retreat fairly quickly.

#THE FRONT LINE Low to medium damage, medium range, medium mobility, high defenses with some CC

My personal favorite role, front liners are the guys just beating up the enemy team, making it so they can’t do what they want, disrupting their plans, and bullying anyone they can get their hands on. Characters like Montana, Boldur, and Galilea fall in here, with a few other characters like Kelvin, Attikus and Shane and Aurox "kind of" being front liners... much like with wave-clear, if you don't have one of the big three, you're probably going to want more than one to beef up the line-up. You’ll notice front liners usually have a lot of health, some CC tools, and ways to reduce damage or negate it completely.

If you’re playing a front-liner then you want to be at the leading edge of your team as much as possible. Try to put yourself between your teammates and the bad guys, get in the way, block enemies from killing your friends, and bully everyone you can get your hands on. Because you’ll mostly be on the front line, and even when you’re back you’ll be sprinting back to the front as quickly as possible, you’ll typically miss out on a lot of map XP. To make up for it, I highly recommend getting as many assist hits as you can on every wave that comes out, and picking up a shard generator early can be a life-saver, letting you scavenge XP off of buildables whenever you can

Since you’ll be fighting on the front line, you’ll frequently have minions on your team pushing up behind you, always be mindful of them. If you can fight in front of the wave and “walk” them into sentry range by tanking up damage and disrupting the enemy team, you’ll be able to practically guarantee sentry damage for your team. To the same point though, you need to be mindful of your own minions behind you (WATCH THAT RADAR) just to make sure that they don’t body block you into a bad situation. Nothing is worse than trying to back out of a choke point, only to run into your own thralls breathing down your neck. Know where your minions are at all times.

If you don’t have a front liner in your team comp, you’ll know it quickly, no one will be able to engage the enemy team and even with sufficient wave-clear you’ll usually find yourself pushed back in Incursion.

#SUPPORT Medium range, medium damage, medium mobility, medium defenses with some heals

The support is the character that’s constantly running around the battlefield patching up their teammates and keeping everyone in the fight. Characters like Miko, Ambra, Alani and Reyna fall into this group, (sometimes Kleese) and while they all do their job in a little bit of a different way, you’re going to find yourself focusing on your teammates over everything else. Your position is typically going to be in the pocket behind your teammates, giving them a safe place to back up to, giving them health or shields when they’re in need, helping augment their damage on the enemy and just using whatever tools you have available to “help” your teammates.

As far as positioning, you may be in the back next to your sniper, or you may be right behind your tank dumping HP into them, but you’re going to always want to keep the focus off of you as much as possible so you can do your job. You should almost never be in the front, leave that to the tanks and assassins, let them take the brunt of the damage so you can patch them right back up, of course there are certainly times when it’s appropriate to sweep in in front of them and either use your abilities to relieve some pressure (Ambra’s great for this) or to just take a few shots so a wounded teammate can get away, but you generally want to avoid as much damage as possible.

If your team is lacking a support you’re going to notice very quickly, you’ll have to back for health (down on the d-pad) and you’ll frequently find yourself subjected to a counter push when you do gain ground for a while. While a support doesn’t bring a ton of DPS to the table, they frequently make up for it with survivability. You’ll usually have a LOT more assists than kills, but you shouldn’t have too many deaths either, so it’ll even out a bit. Remember that while you may get some chances to dump some damage on someone that your primary concern should always be to keep allies in the fight, and give disadvantages to the enemies they’re fighting. A Miko charging off to fight 1v1 may do alright getting a few kills, but a Miko dealing damage when appropriate and keeping all of their teammates in the fight can win a game.

#ASSASSIN High damage, short to medium range, high mobility, low defenses that kills things

These are going to be your kill confirm characters, someone that can reach out, pluck an enemy out of the chaos, and get them killed. Some of the best assassins out there are going to have really high damage output and will usually have some great CC tools to help secure those kills. Assassins don’t have to say “assassin” in their title, just think about any great single target killer in the game: Rath, El Dragon, Phoebe, Pendles, Deande, and Ghalt, anyone that can grab one poor sap and 100-0 them is what you’ll want in this role, now that said, you can be creative with every "role" in the comp, a Benedict, for instance, can be a great kill confirm, high single target damage, almost impossible to avoid, and he brings a lot of ranged pressure too. The key here is someone that can get a single person killed quickly.

If you take a look at their kits, a lot of the kill-confirm characters are going to have stuns and slows all over them, most of them have a stun, a slow, a knockup, or a mixture of the three spread throughout their kit. These are the guys that can jump on you, put you to sleep, and erase you from the map before you can do anything about it. A lot of them take a while to come online though, not fully realizing their damage numbers until around level 5 or higher, so these are the another character that can really benefit from being power leveled during the game.

Because of their low health, they’ll usually spend most of their time away from the main fight, looking for out of position enemies, securing objectives, leveling off of out of the way buildables, and gathering shards that may be too far out of the way for other teammates to go retrieve and they’re a good option to have pickup back thrall, for their XP as well as to help the front-line. Assassins should be all over your back shards, and your shocks by your first sentry, grabbing XP wherever they can. If you don’t have any other objective to hit, make sure to try to get a few hits in on the wave as much as you can, because you do NOT want to fall behind in levels. A good assassin will scavenge every piece of XP off of the map that they can find.

When it comes to engagements remember that you’ll usually have good utility with an escape, and an option that stuns or sets up your enemies for yourself and your teammates, use these tools. Engage people your teammates are already fighting to ensure your team gets that kill, and never forget your CC can be used to stop enemies from hurting your teammates just as much as it can be used offensively, so don’t be afraid to stun or slow aggressive enemies too.

#FLEX

whatever stats you want, filing in the gaps

This is one of the harder positions to nail down in a comp, but it’s still just as vital. Your last pick is always going to try to plug weaknesses in the team comp. It may be a second support if your team doesn’t have a strong one, it may be another ranged DPS, or it may be another CC character. The best option here is to look at what you’re packing and where your team is weak and find someone that can plug that weakness.

Characters that don’t fit into the traditional roles above can be great additions here, characters like Mellka, Marquis, Toby, Caldarius, Whiskey Foxtrot, and so on may not be stars at wave-clear or assassins, but their extra damage and flexibility let them shine in the flex spot.

A flex player is going to want to have a lot of characters under their belt, as they may be called upon to play tank one match, support the next, and round it out as a sniper. As you can imagine, with the wide breadth of characters in this role, it’s impossible to nail down where your position during a match should be, just play to the range and strengths of your character and work from there.

#GENERAL STRATEGY

So on the surface, Incursion can seem quite simple, one lane, two sentries, a few waves of minions and some Thrall, but there are a lot of nuances which you’ll want to pay attention to if you want to be victorious during a match.

Let’s change your viewpoint a bit, think of the map like a 5-zone capture the territory match. You have to push your enemies out of the zones in order to control them and “win” the match, ultimately you want to take all 5 zones (killing the second sentry) to win. The two sentries per side account for 4 of the controllable zones, while the middle shock turret area accounts for the fifth and final zone.

#MID ZONE

Center Turret: If you’re not aware, shock turrets are the best return on shards invested for XP gained, which means buying a shock turret is the best investment you can make with your shards, to help your character get leveled up. Because of this, the shock turret in the middle of the map on overgrowth is extremely valuable, especially early game, so the very first thing you will want to do is rush to middle and try to control the mid zone.

The start of the match: During the initial rush, your team wants to stack up on the closest door to mid (short run) and have four players all rush the mid zone as quickly as they can. Put your fastest character in front and have them pick up shards along the way to have the 300 for center turret when they get there and “hopefully” purchase the turret. Your fifth man will take the longer loop for shards (typically someone you can spare during the initial fight) they’ll get to mid a bit later, but the extra shards are worth potentially being down a man for a few seconds (and they can buy stage one on the side shock if they have a free shard generator)

Mid Thrall: Mid thrall currently are very weak. That said, if your team comp is good for pushing waves, and you can group them with your own thrall, fatbot, or wave, they can be quite effective. They deal immense amounts of damage to the sentry, but they will be next to useless without your team forcing them right down the enemy team’s throat. Most of the time they’re not worth getting, but if you think you can push them in, then go for it.

Mid Shards: Shards spawn at the 28 minute mark, whichever team has mid control at that point has a huge advantage in economy, but they have to leave mid to get them, the 28 minute mark is a very common time for a counter push from the defensive team. With one, two, or even three characters chasing shards, you can quickly flank and overrun your enemies. Be aware of this on offense and defense.

Leveling: Early game and the mid fight is all about leveling, whichever team can get leveled up the quickest will have a drastic advantage. During early game try as much as you can to not spend shards on gear, save them for buildables, there will be time for your 9% increases later, when you’re hitting much harder. Remember that shocks are the best buildable you can purchase, aside from the one in mid, you also have the back shock (which starts at level 2) by your back sentry, and the side shock along the long lane by your back-shard. These should essentially always be purchased before trying to level other buildables unless something else is needed for survivability (like thumper or your heal station) assassins will normally be the ones picking these up, or any character you choose to power level, but communicate with your team and make sure the XP these grant is capitalized upon very early. The back turret upgrade alone will take you from a flat level 1 to level 2 immediately, without any other XP sources.

Just remember, Your early game mission will be to control the mid zone, and primarily the mid shock turret. Buying it (even if it’s instantly destroyed) is always worth the shard investment, keeping it up makes your position hard to assault, and makes minions moving through the area very easy to clear. Try to establish early pressure here. Conversely, if you do not have mid control, and you need to take it from the enemy, don’t clear that shock until just before, or during a concentrated push from your team. You do NOT want to just instantly clear the shock every time it’s up, if you do you will literally be handing huge amounts of XP to the enemy team. When you clear shock, it should be for a push into the zone.

#THE FIRST SENTRY

Flanks: If you have mid controlled, then it’s time to move on to the second zone you’ll be taking over, your enemy’s first sentry. Always remember there are four points of attack on first sentry: Mid lane, sniper perch, the bunker (or tunnel) on the other side of lane, and the back ledge (or cheese spot). Some characters can also use the Benedict ledge (high wall beside your tunnel, where Benedict, ISIC, etc., can hop up and pour some damaged own) but the point is, there are a LOT of angles to attack from. Never try to just stand at the mid choke point funneling five players in. This will NOT work against a good team, they’ll just keep you pushed back.

Thumper: Before any good push can occur, the thumper behind sentry will need to go down. There are lots of ways to get it off the map, sniping it from tunnel, using your wave-clear from perch, using a character with a leap to hop up at back ledge and attack it down. But someone on your team needs to find a way to get it down, and you need to keep it down.

Pushing Minions: Minions do a TON of damage to a sentry. Once in position they switch weapons, plant themselves, and use a little beam, even one minion setup can drop a shield on a sentry extremely quickly. So, once that thumper is down, your next goal is going to be to get some minions pushed in. A great way to do this is to get them accompanied by a thrall and a fatbot from your back base. If you can time it and lead a fat-bot with a thrall right behind into the base then you can almost guarantee sentry damage.

A great way to do this is to lead your minions with your tank, using your support to back them up. Let your tank take the initial hits, keeping the wave alive, and have the rest of your team attacking from other angles as well at the same time. Draw out your enemy’s abilities, draw their fire, pull the aggro from the sentry, get them shooting you and not your minions as much as you can. Do NOT be afraid of the sentry, it can’t kill you all, and if it’s still early game, then your respawn timer is quite short. A concentrated push will very easily net you sentry damage time and time again, and as soon as your push starts to falter, just back off again, regroup, stay alive, and prepare for your next minion wave. You can siege a sentry down a little at a time the whole game if you have to, but a lot of the time, you won’t have to if you can get a good push going.

#SECOND SENTRY

The final sentry is one of the hardest objectives for most teams to take. You’ll regularly see them have little trouble with the first, but barely be able to touch the second. Don’t be that team.

Heal Station and Thumper:* this is a zone you need to control, and it’s the key to their first sentry zone so make sure to dedicate some effort into owning this spot. Don’t put too many people in the heal station room, but get that thumper up, control heal station, and use it as another point to harass the enemy team’s final sentry from. Another vital reason to control the zone is it gives your teammates in lane a place to retreat to, and keeps them from being flanked unexpectedly.

The Lane: Remember, you still need to push the wave. Entirely too many teams will break apart during this portion of an assault, you still need your core three (support, wave-clear, and tank) right on that wave.

The Turrets: The shock turrets along the minion path are going to be similar to the thumper from first sentry, the one on the side-lane is easy, but the one just underneath the heal station room can be tricky. Before trying to attack too hard, make sure you get these cleared so your minions stand a chance.

The Flanks: Similar to first sentry, there are four points of attack when sieging down the final sentry, the heal station stairs, the main lane, the back ledge (by enemy thrall/fatbot) and the flank path which goes back from the lane around behind sentry. You want to try to capitalize on as many of these (and mix it up) as your team composition allows.

The Siege: The final push is going to be similar to Sentry 1: Get grouped up, pick a wave to go in on (again, preferably with some thralls or fatbots assisting) and your whole team should push as a unit. Hit the sentry and team with everything you have, try to protect your minions, and whittle that last sentry down. Once again, if the fight starts to turn, back up. If you need to you can retreat all of the way to your first sentry, but preferably maintain control of their first sentry zone by using thumper and heal station to your advantage.

#DEFENSE No matter how good your team is, there’s going to be times when you’re pushed back onto defense and there are some things you’re going to want to keep in mind, whether you’re defending your first sentry, or your second.

Keep the Minions Out: Most people will keep the enemy players out of their base just fine, but they seem to forget about the minions. Just like when you’re on offense, the minions (even the little guys) deal monstrous damage, keep them OUT of your zone. Hold their minions at the choke-point, and prioritize them over battleborn every time. A minion standing there hitting your sentry not only does massive damage, but it also stops your sentry from firing on your enemies. Kill them quickly. And if you ever see one planted with it’s blue beam, melee that little bugger so he has to waddle back in order to deal damage. Do NOT let them plant and shoot the sentry.

Pay Attention: What are your enemies doing? Where are they? Where could they be going? Is someone back taking thrall? Is someone off to get shards? All of these things factor into what your team can and can’t do. Remember the importance of the shard timers, if you see them popping on the mini-map consider that a good time to counter-attack your enemies. If you see them capturing their thrall, you know someone isn’t around to help them in a fight. These little opportunities can swing a game, capitalize on them when you can.

Turrets: Just as they’re the first thing you’ll want to take down on offense, they’re the first thing you’ll want to try to keep up on defense, if thumper is up, any enemy that over-extends into your zone is going to be hit by a powerful slow, giving your team the chance to capitalize and pick them off, if your shocks are up, you can let it deal with minions while you and your team focus players.

Keep Farming: Get your back shards, buy your shocks, buy your buildables you have available, and save some shards for a mid-push, don’t just neglect this because you’re pushed back, you do not want to forget to farm.

Buy Bots and Take Shards: Fat bots and your thrall should be taken as frequently as possible, either to just help keep the pressure off from the enemy wave, or timed with your team pushing back in to control mid, just remember to use them.

Counter Push: Coordinate with your team, and always try to push mid together. Wait for a good moment, after a pick, while an enemy is missing, right after a wave is cleared, while your bots are pushing, whatever, just when it feels right, get it together and move all at once into the team fight in mid. The first thing you should absolutely do when pushing is drop the mid shock, and do NOT forget about it. Drop it, fight for it, and buy it. It’ll help you quickly turn the fight in mid and flip the zone.

Flank: Remember, just like when you’re sieging a sentry down on offense, there are a lot of entry points into the mid control zone. You can flank from the thrall drop down, through perch, mid, and the tunnel, and you can even hop over walls and rain down damage from above. Use these to your advantage when you have an opportunity and surprise your enemies.

The same applies to defending your second sentry, use the flank routes, they are a big key to playing incursion, letting you descend on enemies that thought they were safe when retreating from the front line, and letting you completely turn a fight if done at the right time.

#GENERAL TIPS:

Learn More Characters: This is hands down the best tip I can give any player. While, of course, the more characters you learn to play, the better you’ll fare, having the ability to switch to a character that helps your team out when your comp needs it is invaluable. At the very least you should take the time to learn at least one character from each role, and make sure you can play all of the characters in your chosen role.

Positioning and Decision Making: MOBAs, like Battleborn, are all about positioning and decision making. When do you move in, where are you at, and when do you run? Each character is going to be drastically different, and the tips I gave you up top are going to help you get a feel for where each player should be during their role. Try to spend as much time where your character should be as you possibly can, if you’re a tank, get up front and soak up the damage, if you’re a shooter, get behind that tank and get your damage in there, an assassin: Chase the wounded trying to flee the fight, or pull them in when they get too close, and if you’re a support stay out of harm’s way and keep the team in the fight.

The key thing to take away from this is that everything that happens to you during the game is a result of your positioning and decisions. If you got a kill, then you did something right... if you got killed, then there was a choice you made which led you there, so take a moment and think about what decision you made that led you to that moment. Did you lose track of your teammates and step into a vulnerable position? Next time, try to pay more attention to your positioning relative to your team. Did you lose track of your opponents and wind up in a 1v3? Did you overextend to try to get a kill and walk into a turret? Did you ignore the wave during a fight and let the enemy get a points lead? These are all small mistakes which can result in you being beaten or killed, and they can all be worked on.

The point is that somewhere along the way you made a decision, either intentionally or not, that led to whatever just happened, and while you may not always be able to do anything about the enemy defeating you at the end of the game or them being more skilled than you, you can always have a choice about how to let them do that. Maybe retreating off of the objective instead of dying is a better solution than giving up all lane presence due to a death, or maybe you should push harder and die, if it means saving your sentry. Always assess the decisions you made and think about how you can improve them the next time you're in that situation.

Always watch your radar: with as chaotic as this game can get, a quick check on the radar can find that enemy you just lost sight of quicker than gazing through an Ambra solar wind almost every time. Look at it, use it, it will save you more times than you’d expect.

Don’t be afraid to run: the time to kill in this game is very long, you can turn and leave a lot more often than in other shooters. If you see that you’re in a bad position, heavily outnumbered or out gunned, don’t be afraid to book it out of there using either your escapes or just sprinting for the hills. It’s a lot harder to catch a fleeing enemy than to take down one in your face, for some melee characters it can be downright impossible. So if you see that you’re in trouble, get OUT.

Don’t overextend for kills: this goes right along with running when you’re in trouble, an enemy backing up is a small victory all on its own. If the enemy tank has to retreat from the battle, suddenly their squishier characters are much more vulnerable. If their support has to go back to help him, that’s two people from their lines pushed back, this is your chance to push the wave and rush them back, letting you gain control of whichever zone you’re fighting for, but if you overextend, chasing that wounded person, you’re running into their territory… filled with teammates, turrets, slows, and bots. Not every low health enemy needs to die, assess the situation and try to stay ALIVE more than you focus on getting a kill.

Collect shards: Seriously, this is a big one. If you’re going to back to the base or respawning, pick up EVERY shard you can get your hands on along your path back. Always be grabbing available shards near you during a fight, and work with your teammates to make sure they’re always being collected. Shards are levels and gear, get them.

Spend your shards: And this goes hand in hand with the last tip. When you spend shards on anything other than gear, you get XP. XP gets you helix mods and extra stats. Spend your shards. It doesn’t matter if that turret you bought will be dead 10 seconds from now, that’s still a chunk off of your next level that will help you get an advantage, and buy the gunbot every chance you get, it adds a ton of pressure to your wave.

Capitalize on advantages: One enemy down? Push the wave. Two enemies down? You should be attacking that sentry. Pay attention to opportunities, an enemy damaged and having to retreat, an enemy or two down, and whenever you see this happen, take advantage, have someone position themselves to put pressure on your enemies somewhere else, don’t just sit and wait for the next wave of minions, GET something for your advantage, a small objective, a turret, a shard cluster, a few points of damage on the sentry, anything, but get something out of your advantage when you have it.

Levels matter: Pay attention to them, yours, your enemies’, your teammates’. If you’re under-leveled then you’re at a disadvantage and it just gets worse the more levels you’re behind. If you’re losing fights, then focus on not dying, it’ll stop the bleeding. If someone is over leveled on your team, then look to help them in their role, help them keep getting ahead, the levels make a big difference in abilities available and damage output in Battleborn so get them and use them.

So, that’s it. My Big-Ass Incursion Guide. Hopefully it’ll help you understand the mode a little better, and up your game.

If you have any recommendations or questions, please, just let me know.