Trial of Sekhema 4th floor boss.

Overall, the boss mechanic is really interesting and good. The fight was very fun for me and it reminds me on how I fight Shaper, Uber Elder, Sirus, when they released (pre-nerfed). However, there are alot of glaring issues for this boss that needs to be addressed.

A) This boss is not at all friendly to build that has low or close to no mobility, has only dps but not burst damage, and need to deliver the damage by itself and in melee. All the boss mechanic heavily favors build that can do damage from either melee or range, or build that can do damage without having to keep pressing its skill a.k.a minion / dot build.

The flying balls, the aoe slowly moving balls, the flying chakram, are all fine and make senses. They easy to see, they easy to understand and to learn how to deal with it

However, the moving 4 pillars that traps you, the rotating laser with traps on ground, the one-shot mechanic (collecting hourglass) HAVE TO BE readjusted.

-The 4 pillars either need to be reduced to be 2 or make them despawn faster.

-The rotating laser speed needs to be slowed down abit or make the traps spawn less.

-And the one-shot mechanic needs either the debuff ramp-up speed to be slowed down or make the hourglass spawn to be way nearer with player's location and nearer with each other.

B) Build that can't afford to have alot of movespeed, or reserving another spirit for blink skill without sacrificing damage or defensive, will almost certain to fail this run. It will be almost near impossible with build that still have "mid-game" gear-state without playing range, no aim spell caster, or minion build.

See; Deadeye Lightning Rod Magnetic Salvo. That build can destroy this boss without sweat. And honestly that build is way way overturned to be able to burst and melt down the supposed to be "Pinnacle boss" in just what, less than a week.

And having to deal with boons and affliction does not help at all with this ascendancy progression. We already have to deal with floor 1 to 4, with all the clipping monster skills through elevation, with monster's projectile fired from Alaska, on-death rare monster effect, proximity shield / temporal bubble rare monster, etc. It become RNG run, hoping no bricking affliction before floor 4 boss and getting all beneficial boons.

This leave the last 2 ascendancy points in weird position if the state of 4 floors Trial of Sekhema left as is. The progression path of ascendancy power suddenly meet a tall and thick wall, in which range / spell / minion build can climb with ladder, but melee and rest need to climb by hands.

I did level 76 Trials of Sekhema with my level 83 Invoker in SSF. I do maps and kill bosses in tier 11 Atlas without sweat, I'm confident I have decent enough gears and dps. But it seems like its not enough because I'm not range / spell / minion / deadeye lightning rod magnetic salvor. The run does not motivate me to grind further for gear or try the trials again, it just simply make me refuse to do it again until I switched to play in standard.

The crafting system in Poe 2 doesn't help at all, considering its way way way worse than PoE 1. I crafted my gears by simply pulling casino lever and hoping to hit jackpot, its literal casino where you don't have any control of it. So when I already tried my best to gear up, I have decent dps, like 38k Ice Strike Toolip and way way more dps with my Tempest Bell, but I get blocked simply because I play the wrong build, I think this is bad game design.

Also, Ultimatum is not better than Trials of Sekhema at all. It even more RNG focused than trials, and can brick your run completely without even have the chance to see the last boss.

C) So with that said, its not that Trial of Sekhema need massive nerf, it needs alot of adjustment especially for the 4 floors Trial of Sekhema. Either adjust the overall monster and boss hp and damage to be more reasonable for non-deadeye / non-spark arc cast anywhere sorc / non-minion build , or redesign on how we get ascendancy power. The 4 Floor Trial of Sekhema difficulty is make much much more sense if its meant for to farm powerful items like chase unique gears, certain currency item, etc. But at the current state, if leaving as is, it will give quite bad taste at least in my mouth.

Some of it are actually quite BS about ranger on Zarokh.
Im lvl 86, and my bow is 370dps. All gear worth more than divines.

If you don't get damage enhancement boons, i can barely damage the boss. Yes im a magnetic salvo ranger. Salvo rangers have a very hard time keeping the mana up on ST.

Got him 30% down before i ran out of flasks + mana.
The skill costs so much, it has downsides. Not many tho.

I beat this yesterday on my lvl 78 ranger. I only use one ability. Stormcaller Arrow (and voltaic mark during boss fights). I get an additional arrow from my bow and ascendency spec. It was a long fight, but if you get your build sustain without flasks, and get a little rng with avoiding the wrong afflictions, it was actually really easy outside of my crazy damage taking forever to tick away the hp bar. My gear is worth 10 exalts per piece tops outside of my bow which was listed for a divine and I got discounted for 20 exalts.

I'd like to second point B here, I think a boss that requires you to go through four floors of a mechanic that takes quite a lot of time investment simply should not have a one shot mechanic.

But, if they are going to have a one shot mechanic it needs to be incredibly clear and telegraphed what the player needs to do to avoid being one-shot. Not only was I absolutely uncertain of what to do when the phase began (and I've played thousands of hours of roguelites/likes and ARPGs) but my confusion was then turned against me. The slowing effect on the player can make it absolutely impossible to reach all of the hourglasses, and if it is not immediately understood that reaching all of them is your goal, without ridiculous movespeed or reduced slow effect, you WILL NOT reach them all.

This mechanic is highly analogous to Eater of Worlds phase where you need to charge the orbs before he blows up the arena, but with some key differences. A) You only have one life instead of six portals B) The Boss is not on the screen obviously telegraphing an attack C) There is no NPC yelling at you to "charge the orbs" or "pickup the hourglasses" D) The slowing mechanic is not localized to an avoidable mechanic such as a drowning orb, but a global scaling effect.

I think addressing any one of these differences in the fight would make a world of difference in the design of this. I love Hades and Hades 2 and I love the idea of a Kronos style boss, but the difference in telegraphing between Kronos and Zarokh is night and day.

I had a truly incredible Trial run up to this point, I was excited to try the boss and was really enjoying the other mechanics, but my 5k maximum honor meant absolutely nothing because of 15 seconds of confusion. I do not think this is a healthy place to leave this boss.

With peace and love, change this one please.

Got a free kill on him my first time reaching him with my Invoker (thank you Merchant and your immune to damage for the next room boon, playing the Sacred Water game is definitely the best way to do Sekhema). I was quite surprised how long it took my guy who melts basically every boss he comes across took several minutes to kill him. I'm not sure how much his constant volley of attacks would have drained my honour through resists, but I imagine even facing him with my full honour might have been a struggle with how many orbs were always flying about.

He did have ~15% extra action speed thanks to me having the affliction and boons, but I'm getting the impression you're definitely meant to have 'bosses/monsters take extra damage' relics running to take him down. The step from third to forth floor still feels like one hell of a step up in difficulty regardless.

agreed

but i will go as far to say the entire ascendency for this game is utter BS

while there were issues with POE1s ascendency....poe2s is soooooo much worse


they took the least favorite league mechanic and forced it down your throat


while i understand you can choose ultimatum, but even that is stupidly punishing with constant debuffs that go on forever

ascendency is ruining the game for me and i might just quit until they figure their sh*t out

The main problem with this boss, in my opinion, is the phase where you have to beat the clock. This phase is extremely punishing for players who don't already know what to do. From my whole time playing POE 2, the lesson I've learned is don't ever step on anything if you don't know what it is. I still have gamer-PTSD from before they nerfed the purple globules. Then suddenly, I am expected to be able to overcome this ingrained habit in a matter of seconds or die.

The problem isn't the phase itself, but the fact that the boss can instantly kill you if you fail. After attempting the trials multiple times and finally making it through to the final boss, then chipping away at his ludicrous health pool for fifteen minutes straight, he just straight up one shot me because it wasn't clear at first what I was supposed to do. It's ridiculous that this mechanic exists at all. It seems like the only reason it exists is to punish players by making them redo the whole thing. It is an arbitrary form of difficulty that doesn't add any challenge or fun to the game.

The worst part about this, for me, is that it cultivates a sense that if you want to get anywhere in POE 2, you are better off just looking up a guide on what to do before you even do it. This seriously takes the fun out of the game.


Still can't stop playing it though....

"

Diversity_Hire#6898 wrote:

The main problem with this boss, in my opinion, is the phase where you have to beat the clock. This phase is extremely punishing for players who don't already know what to do. From my whole time playing POE 2, the lesson I've learned is don't ever step on anything if you don't know what it is. I still have gamer-PTSD from before they nerfed the purple globules. Then suddenly, I am expected to be able to overcome this ingrained habit in a matter of seconds or die.

The problem isn't the phase itself, but the fact that the boss can instantly kill you if you fail. After attempting the trials multiple times and finally making it through to the final boss, then chipping away at his ludicrous health pool for fifteen minutes straight, he just straight up one shot me because it wasn't clear at first what I was supposed to do. It's ridiculous that this mechanic exists at all. It seems like the only reason it exists is to punish players by making them redo the whole thing. It is an arbitrary form of difficulty that doesn't add any challenge or fun to the game.

The worst part about this, for me, is that it cultivates a sense that if you want to get anywhere in POE 2, you are better off just looking up a guide on what to do before you even do it. This seriously takes the fun out of the game.


Still can't stop playing it though....

I died to this after an hour of running the trial and made me close the game.

This boss has already made me sick with all the afflictions that come to you half dead and it's mechanically incomprehensible or infeasible if you didn't have the 40% movement speed plus 30 on your boots it's absurd, ultimately I got my 4th point on the chaos test... And there too it wasn't a cakewalk but at least when we arrive in front of the boss there are no more afflictions and no history of honor and there too I got them after the 3rd or 4th try...

The devs and testers must have been half asleep while tuning this. The fight itself is cool, but to not make the area smaller, where the hourglasses spawn, is inexcuseable. This is main content, its not really optional, you gotta do this to unlock your character. It would make sense if it was some small side content thing, if it wasnt perfectly tuned, but when you add a oneshot mechanic to a boss with one attempt and about 30min to an hour of introduction to it, you just gotta do better. They are just making people run a stupid high mobility build or bet on getting the boon for 40% speed which i bet most of the people had, who said "it wasnt that bad". But i guess they just want people to go and buy a boost... Simply stupid