Ascendancy Trials in POE2 make the game completely unbearable and unfun.

Easily the worst part of any game I have eve engaged with and that includes the entire Dark Souls series and all the old NES games.

I don't understand the logic or lack there of when designing these trials. Even the first ones are so bad and punishing to melee it's unbelievable. The RNG factor of it takes it from being "skilled based" where you could learn and master the challenge and just spits in your face.

Playing my 3rd character now on warrior I just died in a gauntlet room because I had to cross a spike gauntlet and halfway through (the entire screen of spikes) 3 random elite mobs come into the spikes and just start spamming poison/shocks at me. Blocking those type of attacks still resulted in honor loss and eventually they get to me and body block me so I can't even get around them. So I die on the 6th room with full honor but RNG decided to end the attempt. The mobs take no trap damage because reasons.

If they do not change how these trials function I will never play a single league and will actively advocate to every gamer I know not to play their game. Yes, the trials are bad enough to warrant that.

I played POE1 since the beta and POE2 since release. I love the challenge of learning POE2 and the boss mechanics made things exciting and fresh, but forcing Sanctum and Ultimatum is not it chief. There's a reason I avoided it in POE1. It was boring and just not the type of gameplay I enjoyed, but now I am being forced into it? Not only that, but I have to really invest way too much time into it. It's straight up boring and not something I look forward to after 8 hours of work. I don't want to feel like I have a second job because of how tedious it is.

I don't understand Why they decided to use end game content to force main character progression? It just doesn't seem right. I honestly hope it's just a placeholder until they add something different because this straight up makes me want to quit the game. Not because it's hard, but because I simply don't like the content and don't want to put any effort into it to progress my character.

My overall feedback: There's a reason POE1 was and still is so successful. POE1 had freedom of choice. Don't take that away by locking character progression behind horrible content that most players avoided in POE1.

i literally hate this sanctum stuff
i might not mind if they made 3rd ascendancy either sanctum or ultimatum. 2 floors sanctum and 7 trials ultimatum
then 4th ascendancy is 3 floors or 10 trials. choice is yours

but either way both mechanics are overtuned in their modifiers. stack them up so much and fast and it becomes unbearable.

nobody wants to "farm" sanctum, or try again over and over from failing, in order to farm up good relics which will make their runs easier. that sounds terrible. its also just an unfun mechanic.

i've given it plenty of chances trying to get my 3rd ascendancy. i have good relics, including a bunch of % honour resistance, and i just spent almost an hr and a half going carefully through to get to the final boss.
i had 2100 honour left, which i thought was decent. im a warrior built for essentially one tapping bosses. watched a youtube video of the fight, and still had no idea wtf was going on, but thats okay i'll play it safe.

ya boss immediately just slaps me, takes off 400 honour. i stun and bring it down to half hp. fight continues and i don't even know what happened but i got hit with something, poisoned, and my honour went from 1800 down to 69. stun the boss again, gotta finish it off now or i'll fail.
i failed.

hurray what a wonderful use of my time. i feel frustrated, aggrevated, stressed out, and pissed off.
not exactly what you want from playing a video game.

i will not be going into that sanctum thing again (with this character anyway) so i guess i'll have to live without my other points, which are pretty crucial to the build i want, and to the power boost i need to continue progressing through maps.

guess if i hit a wall, i'll put the game down as well

They have not even addressed the fact that so many people don't like the trials. They did nerf it slightly, but difficulty wasn't even the point. People do not enjoy them.

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Rafkin4#7914 wrote:

People do not enjoy them.

I do like the trial of chaos. It's way more fun than the other.

The trial of sekhemas's honor system as it stands is just awful. You don't base your whole trial's main resource recuperation on RNG, that's so stupid and unfair.

Once, I had a perfect run with honor shrines all along, while my girlfriend barely had one or two.

I had all the braindead click-the-crystal rooms, while she had all the lenghty find-the-levers-dodge-shit rooms.

As a result she struggled a lot while I breezed through the whole thing.

And if you fail and don't have the curreny, you can't retry anymore for maybe days???

That's just terrible.

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Rafkin4#7914 wrote:

They have not even addressed the fact that so many people don't like the trials. They did nerf it slightly, but difficulty wasn't even the point. People do not enjoy them.

I think sadly they will stubbornly keep it anyway, backing down on some tweaks here and there, to make it bit easier. But thats it.

I just completed my 3rd Ascendancy moments ago. But I have to say, I COMPLETELY agree with almost everything in the original post. The only reason I was able to beat it was because I got insanely lucky with the RNG and got the boon take no damage on the next room right before the second boss AND again right before the third boss.

I would never have finished it without that unbelievable luck.

The 3rd trial (even the first trial, second trial was fine) was unbelievably unbearable. It wasn't "oh this is challenging fun", no it was pulling my hair out actual stress inducing bs.

Like... I finished it... and I am still angry about it. I didn't even have a feeling of satisfaction by the end. All I had was just being angry and glad it was over. Why? Because I didn't even finish it with my own skill, I finished it due to pure luck.

And I think that is the biggest thing. If the player(s) can't even have a feeling of satisfaction by the end of it... then it is just a bad mechanic.

I've only two words for these trials: absolute trash! I tried for 3 hours today both, chaos and Sekhema. I tried hours the day before.I'm 10 levels over the Monster level, still no chance.

I die either at Ashar which is absolutely ridiculous or in Chaos too some dumb modifiers or the bird boss.

This is just absolute unfair, unfun bullshit! I loved Sanctum and Ultimatum in PoE 1, because they where voluntarily mechanics to engage with, with a build specifically made for it.

Forcing these mechanics for ascending is stupid shit. I cannot understand how GGG or anyone think this is fun.

In PoE1 I avoided sanctum like the plague because of how unfun it is, if this is how we are supposed to get our ascendancy class in PoE2 I am probably going to pass on playing the game alltogether.

No matter what they do, the honour system will never be fun. It punishes you for being tanky, the only way to do it is play as a glass cannon and avoid all damage because defenses mean nothing with the current honour system.

Even if we had infinite attempts I still wouldn't want to do it simply because of how long it takes, just let me fight a hard boss encounter with normal defenses and be done with it, I don't have time for these lame obstacle courses.

At this point I might as well give someone my entire stash value just to carry through the trial because I'm about to quit the game otherwise, each entry token costs a divine orb so I may not even be able to afford a carry unless I find another divine orb.

I just died to the barrage skill from urnwalkers in 4th room of the time trials, again. Impossible to dodge or out run even with %33 core movement speed+ %40 move speed from boon. I have almost full honor but that skill one shots me every time I spend an hour in those trials.

I'm 40 yo and I'm playing video games since I can walk and talk, this game starting from act 1 and later these trials have been the worst experience of my life in pc games. Its has such a magnitude that I don't just consider quitting poe2 but I'm thinking about quitting all gaming together. I'm fed up with all this bullshit going on in gaming industry lately.