Are you satisfied with the new patch's response to Trials?

No. They barely addressed issues with it. It's still too RNG heavy, too long for 3rd /4th trial and punishes too many builds.

Honor should be removed from boss rooms at the minimum for me.

Will see when I get to play it.

No its does not help. Not even close.
I just lost 2k honor in one of those timed rooms. With all the effects from spells and abilities it is impossible to see all ground effects and avoid them in such a tiny area.
If honor is not removed from ascending, ill probably stick with POE

For starters because it is not implemented yet.

Frankly i have yet to encounter anyone praising the trials as a good experience , it is really a chore to get through them .

The problem trials get is not related to unbalance or bugs because the rest of the game got those and remains enjoyable overall . It is also not because trials are not fleshed out , the content is there . My take is the foundations on which they build those trials is just wrong :

1) making a side-game that is even more punitive than the regular content , i do think the regular content is punitive enough already and the difficulty tweaks to the trials are not enough so honor system got to go

2) the trials pretends to be a mini rogue system but the rewards for failing the system are miserable ( relics ) and the efforts to get back on after a failure are not there ( farming for RNG generated keys that open the trials and may not even gets you Ascension in the end ) so relics power level got to be buffed big time to make further attempts easier while having to farm random tokens for starting the trials should be completely removed

3) as for rewards for winning , well once you got your ascension points i see nobody wants to go through those trials again for loot ( which is not a good point for such a game ) so either treasure room rewards have to be much more substantial or much less RNG based ( having to farm keys through a RNG tree in the event you reach RNG chests is just bad design )

4) finally the trials are completely disconnected of the main story , that may appears as a non-issue for most people but i think it add to the players sentiment of "i'll just skip this lame part of the game" which is not a good move from the devs so i think trials should be more connected to the main story once 1) difficulty fall back in line 2) rewards for failing got way up 3) replayability is improved by a lot

ascension should be part of the campaign and not side content that can be missed, skipped or just straight up not engage with. a lot of builds are complaining of being underpowered and its mostly being in endgame with only the first two ascendancies. the literal build identity should come from beating the already difficult bosses. just pick a few that offer nothing cuz there are plenty of side bosses that have no purpose

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cynic1984#0395 wrote:

ascension should be part of the campaign and not side content that can be missed, skipped or just straight up not engage with. a lot of builds are complaining of being underpowered and its mostly being in endgame with only the first two ascendancies. the literal build identity should come from beating the already difficult bosses. just pick a few that offer nothing cuz there are plenty of side bosses that have no purpose

Yep that's my point as well , putting as a " side content " when it rewards much needed perks to beat the main campaign is detrimental to the gaming experience ; break immersion from the flow of the main campaign by having to farm said " side content " and the fact it was built as not being part of the main plot was one of the reason why difficulty was tuned so high in the first place .

Either it is part of the main story and have to be integrated and tuned down drastically , either it is not part of the story both plot wise and perk wise and then it should be relegated to endgame content .

The damage over time thing was huge. I lost my 3k honor bar to a single poison cloud in floor 3 boss room.

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ascension should be part of the campaign and not side content that can be missed, skipped or just straight up not engage with. a lot of builds are complaining of being underpowered and its mostly being in endgame with only the first two ascendancies. the literal build identity should come from beating the already difficult bosses. just pick a few that offer nothing cuz there are plenty of side bosses that have no purpose

This +1

If you wanted to split the difference, make each act boss give 1 ascendancy point, and make the trials give 2 points as normal.

With 6 acts, you get 6 points, enough to get started with...then maybe you risk the first tier of Ultimatum or Sanctum to get a total of 8.

I'm not satisfied with the changes to Trial of the Sekhema.

Adding a 35% damage reduction to honour damage taken is a band-aid fix at best, and doesn't address the core issue which is that the tying defensive layers to honour (regardless of how much armour, evasion, es, or life factors into that) undermines the premise of an ARPG which is build expression, and player creativity.

You can't go in there with a thorns build, life leech doesn't matter, life regen doesn't matter. It's an entirely negating mechanic for so many different ways to play the game.