Ascendancy Trials Feedback: Understanding Player Concerns

Sanctum would actually be fun without the Honour System.
It'd be an upgraded Lab. Which would have been awesome.

But WITH Honour?
One of the worst things GGG has ever done.

Some of my friends whom I really hard promoted and convinced to play the game (they are diablo II players) quit because of the new trials of ascendancy system. Honour system is really bad game design and it repel players. Even at level 80, most players couldn't get the 3rd ascendancy. The mechanic itself is just sheer frustration. Some mobs are frustrating there as well. Snakes teleporting under you for off-screen to cut 600 honour off of from you? No thanks.

The more you try to balance the honor in sanctum, the more you gonna sink yourself in it. The changes in the last patch notes just like sweeping the dirt under the rug. Playing ranged there is just frustrating as well. Just remove honour system, this would make one of the worst league mechanic "sanctum" more playable, but not enjoyable. It takes a lot of time to complete a very unenjoyable "sanctum" and getting 1 shotted by some bad mechanics is not "fun".

Last 4 sanctum tries took a lot of my time to obtaining "nothing but frustration". I think I'll take some time off as well just like my friends. Hope this will change.

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Hunderpanzer#1156 wrote:

I haven't gotten my first ascendancy yet, even with the new patch that "helps" melee, I've spent hours on attempting.

The system is bad. The design for melee is bad.

I had near perfect run just get ruined by a blue pack of those tail swiping snakes.

I've seen 20% of my honor drop by 1 crossbow skeleton archer because I'm not "in melee range", yet I'm fighting other monsters in melee range. Who came up with this system?

Even fighting rattlecage, I question the "fix". When he does his AOE burn 3-wave attack, if I am late to the telegraph I get hit by all 3 while running away. But then I question if it would have been better to stay close to him and facetank the fire since running away caused me to take over 30% more damage.

It's laughable.

Nobody wants to play around with honor. It's garbage.

Trying to help ... please don't shoot the concerned citizen:

For Rattlecage get the absolute best move speed boots && [if melee] the best weapon that you can get. If memory serves I was well into A3 [almost done?] before I circled back to get the first ascendancy [sekhema].


In general with Sanctum [Sekhema] if you practice some more you can hopefully (?) get some relic drops that can help out.

It likely sounds dumb but watching some vids for Sekhemas or even the older PoE1 Sanctum [basic guides / getting started] is a great way to go. That will teach you which afflictions to avoid, general strategy, and things of that nature.

The difficulty scaling from 2nd to 3rd ascendancy is wild.

+1
Playing trials of sekhemas as a melee oriented build feels like a nightmare. It feels as though the dev team only playtested this with rangers and witches. It truly is baffling why ascendancy points are locked behind this clearly anti-melee league mechanic.

The recent patch has not made things feel better.

Please bring Izaro back, thank you.

Couldn't agree more with everything said in the OP. In PoE1, I didn't engage with Sanctum or Ultimatum, because I enjoyed neither. Now I'm forced to do them both and I hate every minute of every failed attempt.
*Sigh

"

Lugonu#1626 wrote:

Sanctum would actually be fun without the Honour System.
It'd be an upgraded Lab. Which would have been awesome.

But WITH Honour?
One of the worst things GGG has ever done.

THIS


In both the Sanctum and Ultimatum leagues I completely ignored the league mechanics because I thought they were crap.
There's nothing fair about this crap. It's a damn game of chance that is absolutely no fun and just frustrating.

On my Stormweaver, I beat the 3rd floor trial on my fourth attempt. Losing sucked and pissed me off, but beating it felt amazing. It was not worth it. I beat it because the failure runs got me the urns and space to use them as well as abusing the Life+ES+Mana=Honor mechanic. I went in with 6k honor and I finished the run with 5500. I had to fail to learn the run and to equip myself to beat it. I get it, I overcame the obstacle and learned how to play, it won't ever be that hard again. I spent 6 hours failing and my victory run took 2 hours too. That's too long. Good players who clear these in a half hour are not relevant to me. I did it my way and it sucked. I do not look forward to learning the 4th trial. I would prefer to never run a sanctum again.

+1

This part of Path of Exile 2 harms the gaming experience because it imposes excessive difficulty without providing enough tools for players to progress in a balanced way, making some sanctums overly frustrating and discouraging. If nothing changes, it might be what eventually drives me to quit the game.