Ascendancy Trials Feedback: Understanding Player Concerns

If doing Sanctum ever again is required to get my ascendancy points, then I will never play this game again.

+1, exactly what I have been saying for... well, since the reveal when they said Sanctum was going to be one of the trials. Of course, at that time, we were all under certain assumptions, though.

1- That, as they said, it would be 100% optional for which trial we chose, when it really isn't. At least for the first trial, because it happens midway through Act 2. I really wish I were better (enough) to test this, but a lot of this game involves red barriers keeping you from going places until you do specific things. Example: You can kill the boss in the tutorial area, and the town will even open up for you - BUT, if you have not spent your passive point you got for hitting 2nd level? Red Barrier.

I want to know if anyone has skipped the first trial in Act 2, and just tried to continue into Act 3. Or, will it prevent progression until you have succeeded at it? And, at what point do they prevent further progression? Anyone wanna test that? Even if not, there is a severe difference in difficulty in Act 2, as it spikes HARD towards the end. So, you really need those 2 points, otherwise the game is going to be a major pain. I say this because I have gotten past the Trial with my caster monk, but not my melee monk.

The caster is now 35 and not finishing that last bit on Jamanra. My melee monk is 31, having severe issues getting through Deshal (or whatever it's called)- keeps dying about midway, and has gained levels stubbornly trying over and over. So, there's a spike, and the Ascendancy definitely helps. I think they designed it to be that way because they expected players to get through the trial.

2- Assumption that these would be much more similar, or maybe designed for the different builds. Ultimatum would be favored over Sanctum for half the builds, Sanctum better for the other half. But, again, not really that way.

The result of this is build diversity suffers. Worse, it isn't even reflective of the game as a whole. The mechanics in Sanctum aren't remotely the rest of the game, not even in a small way.

To me, this would be like having a racing game that is all about working on your cars, tinkering to make them handle the best while getting awesome top-speeds, and the rest. So, you work out exactly how much downforce you need, what tires will allow for drifting, lowering your car as much as you can without bottoming out, even cambering, etc...

Then, being told that before you can get to the next tier of racecars, you need to get top rank at the local competition that measures how much weight you can pull... in the mud.

Almost every player is going to be upset with this approach to advancement.

I did the new trial over and over and over, for days on end... bashing my head, figuratively, into the immovable brick wall. And, on various builds, but I always stuck to melee (because melee is really good in POE2). I actually got to the point where, after I FINALLY beat it, I tried going through the rest of Act 2... and was LITERALLY jumping and freaking out inside when I got hit even just once! The trial has me trying to play the actual GAME that way (which is NOT a good thing).

I was blowing through the game at breakneck speed, just obliterating everything I came across, boldly! Now, I'm dancing around in the back, dodge-rolling even when I don't actually need to... wasting tons of time, and actually dying WAY more, because instead of confidently rolling in and taking care of business...

I'm a friggin anxiety-ridden bunny afraid of getting hit even that tiny bit. I'm coming back from it, slowly... but, the trial that SHOULD be a way of proving mastery over the content in some way, instead has players trying to show how well they can adapt & master arbitrary mechanics that don't exist anywhere else in the game (like Honor).

Lab wasn't amazing, and got pretty old after doing it hundreds of times...

But, it was pretty fair to 90+% of builds. AND, better yet: if you had a 'late bloomer' build that came together in your 50s or even 70s, couldn't beat Labs? Get a friend to carry you through the first ones if you really needed to. I helped a ton of people that way in POE (some were kids of my friends, who just wanted to play the game their parents were playing, and not especially great at the game).

Can't do that now. If you can't get through the first one... oh well, guess your build sucks... even though you can run through the game like a runaway freight train.

Good post.

Trial and ultimatum are embarrassingly bad as core mechanics, and pointing out that they were controversial (read: almost universally despised) in poe1 is important.

Whoever it is on your team that is the 'sanctum guy' (at this point we all know its just one stubborn dude who wants it), needs to get a grip.

Sanctum is really good for drops and treasure finding, but like as a core progression mechanic? Hell no, don't force people to do this. For lowbie sanctum remove honor entirely, it feels HORRIBLE to do it the first few times with no honor resist and no idea what is happening. Total anxiety and stress.

Here have been my experiences with both trials so far.

Trial of Chaos
I'm playing a monk and was in a party with a warrior for the quest version of this trial. If it wasn't for the warriors ability to take damage and regen it without flasks then getting the boss down would of been outside my expertise at that time since I spent most of it running around avoiding mechanics and casting Glacial Cascade at range since anything melee looked like certain doom.

Now I'm in endgame, doing maps, and a patch was released letting us know if a token would give points or not. I took a look at the coins I had amassed and found a trial of chaos for 7 trials that said I would get points for completing it. I proceeded to beat the last boss by the skin of my teeth, dropping down to 9 health moments before the boss died, but low and behold I did not get my points to ascend with. I did not have another token to double check if I read the text wrong or not. The last time I did chaos was the quest to complete 4 floors for my 2nd set of points, was more difficult than Sekhema and had more floors than my last attempt so why wouldn't it of given me my next set.



Trial of Sekhema
My first attempt at the quest was not successful (it's been to long and too many attempts at this trail to remember why) but decided to go again, this time with 2 others. Never saw the boss doing it with us 3 and decided to just get back to doing the campaign and try again latter. (was on a witch trying out minions but no SRS)

Went back to try Sekhema again on a monk since I wasn't having that much fun on my witch. Got to the boss but lost since I didn't know all his mechanics yet. Tried again and got closer to no avail. Decided to try again with the warrior (same one previously) and proceeded to not even get to the boss before i lost all honor while the warrior was still struggling to survive. Retried right away without the warrior thinking I might be able to get done sooner than the warrior since I'm by myself. Took me 2 more attempts to clear the final boss while the warrior was doing it again solo twice more to no avail.


By the time of clearing Trial of Chaos for the first time, finding out he still hasn't cleared Sekhema and we're like level 37ish I urged him to go back and do it thinking that he's destroying campaign right now, doing quite a lot of damage and not taking anything that he should be able to clear it EASY. Guess I was really underestimating what Sekhema is capable of cause even that high of a level warriors struggle because honor was his Achilles heel. After another attempt at it as a duo and failing we went back in with him basically staying at the entrance while I cleared everything and eventually succeeding.

Now back to just after I head cleared the boss of trial 7 for Chaos and not receiving the points I swear the coin said I would I went into Sekhema to try to clear floor 3. After 7 attempts and about 8 hours of attempting and getting better gear I'm no closer to my 3rd set of points than I was 8 hours ago. Only one of those failed attempts was do to a boss and that was the 1st time i encountered the 2nd floor boss and me thinking that I had just enough time to kill it before it finished it's mechanic.

I went from about 2.2k honor to 3.8k honor, using honor inc and resistance relics and getting no farther than room 4 of the 3rd level so I never got a shot at seeing the final boss and what they are capable of. It was not the bosses doing damage to me either since they only stayed alive for like 20 seconds before being defeated. It was random mobs doing 600+ honor in one shot.

Trial of Chaos notes

Since I've only went into this place twice the only thing that stood out to me was when you had to go gather up the 3 val crystals and insert them into the slots in the middle of the map. Once you start putting them in you cannot stop. Trying to use skills or dodge rolling away do not work and so it's easy to get surrounded and killed if you don't have flasks available or your mitigation/regen isn't up to snuff.

Trial of Sekhema notes

I think the biggest thing that stood out to me was the minor afflictions. Yes your playing a build that is evasion so when you run into the affliction that says no armor, it's a free choice, but then you run into a node that says no evasion and now it's a huge deal and just about an ban completely IF you can choose something else, let alone if your doing an ES build and you have to take no ES. Not only are you losing survivability, you also lose that much or more Honor since it's based off your total hp+es*modifiers. Just about every "Minor" Affliction is more major, build breaking, instant loss than a minor. I dread to see what a major affliction looks like.

Maybe reduce the % to a more reasonable amount that don't instantly kill a character chances. Say floor one is like 10-15% damage loss or max health inc on enemies while floor 2 can be 15%-25% etc.. Maybe have all but Major afflictions be removed on killing a boss so you don't end up with 30% damage reduction + 40% damage reduction for you and minions + 50% health increase for enemies. Now your just not killing anything in any floor and bosses take 30min to kill since your still trying to do a hitless run and not taking damage on purpose just to get a few more licks in before letting your natural regen kick in.

Maybe have only damage done to Life actually effect honor so that damage to ES (especially chaos since that is double damage) wont hurt builds that rely on dodging a bunch (so when they do get hit it hurts) or stacking a bunch of ES don't feel bad to play while build that rely on a lot of armor to mitigate damage also get a honor reduction based on the % of mitigation they do.

I think that the regular white monsters seem to do more damage than bosses at times. I've seen at least up to 900 honor hit from a white mob. That was a good 1/4th of my total honor. Yet you're lucky to see honor restoration every 3rd room you just hope that when you do the pathway to get there don't have bad afflictions that will make getting 200-500 honor worth the cost of losing EVERYTHING you have left, or do you go the "safer" path that wont take you to a shrine just to avoid bad afflictions.

Maybe more ways to get boons to go with those afflictions or every other pathway is a boon than affliction and then they get removed after boss is defeated other than Major ones. More ways to restore honor during floors like kill 3+ rares during the hourglass trial, defeat 30 enemies while touching all the death crystals (possibly before the timer stops or maybe you get more if you do it during the timer and less if u wait till after), open all chests or don't get hit once by traps during gauntlet. More ways to reward us for interacting with every kind of mechanic instead of doing the most minimal thing cause it's extremely scary to get touched by any enemy less you take a massive loss to honor.

In one of the interviews done with Jonathan he mentioned that in Sekhema mobs will telegraph their attacks so it's easier to avoid honor loss. So far not every mob is like that. Their are worms that jump out of the ground to fly through the air to go back into the ground. Don't see their 2 little antenna's sticking up, rip 400+ honor. You don't even see when they will pop up from the ground. Then you have those 3 snake ladies. 2 of them will go underground but both don't pop up together all the times. Don't realize that only one popped up as your focusing on every other threat on the screen and BAM, there goes another 400+ honor.

If we are meant to pay more attention to getting hit less and not allowing our natural sustain to work like in every other part of the game then allow mobs outside of boss fights do small damage to our honor while bosses are the bigger threats that need to dodge all mechanics and if we do get hit by them then we might still have a threshold of honor taken instead of feeling like "Oh the last 3 floors have taken half my total honor. Well i mise well quit now cause one hit from anything else will kill me and I don't have any way to recover before boss." Maybe a way to recover honor upon killing mobs (+3 for melee and +1 for ranged for each mob or every other mob killed - more if it's a magic or rare mob) and keep the current ways to recover honor the same.


Just some things to spitball at the wall to hopefully see some changes since I do feel defeated after spending all that time to see no progress, that I'm taking a break from a game I was so hyped to play.

+1 I really hope they change this system

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Cheezed#1551 wrote:

+1 I really hope they change this system

Well if not - they will lose 3/4 of the playerbase.

It was me, Bumpo!!

Since we are using old leagues as ascendancy trials can we get a chill blight trial to do, that might actually be kind of fun. Or if they want to be mean/lose more players lets have Syndicate as a trial mechanic and you ascendancy drops at the same rate as veiled orbs.

I totally agree with this.
+ for specific class/ascendency quest OR some sort of boss rush/challenge. For me - bosses almost only thing that keeps me playing PoE2 right now.

Okay, I finally made it to the final boss of floor 4.

Wow, what unrealistic expectations you guys set for players. You expect us to kill a PINNACLE LEVEL BOSS for our last 2 ascendancy points?! The difficulty spike from the first 3 bosses to that is unreasonable beyond belief. There was absolutely no expectation set to prepare you for that level of boss. Are we supposed to get our last ascendancy points at level 100? Give me a break dude.

I will not continue attempting these. The fact you guys actually expect players to go through 4 floors to fight a pinnacle level boss is unbelievably out of touch and actually cruel. I wasted the entire day improving to finish the floors, finally get through it learning to work around the RNG as best as possible, only to get completely walled by the boss. I am actually baffled at this design decision. The time investment alone is not worth attempting the boss fight. The first 3 floors are reasonable for an ascendancy trial. The 4th is a lot harder and more frantic but still achievable. The 4th floor boss though? Unless you're a meta build with best gear and prepared for a pinnacle fight, good luck. I'm so disappointed.