Ascendancy Trials.

Just wanted to chime in on the Ascendancy Trials,

Having 3000+ hours in PoE. I have to say running labs (which I never enjoyed, but hey it was okay) are way more attractive to me then the current situation to earn your ascendancy in PoE2.

In PoE I enjoyed almost every single mechanic that exists, except for you guessed it sanctum & ultimatum. I'm a heavy delver, sim farmer & mapper and I hated sanctum with all my existence, but I never was forced to run it. (ultimatum was somewhat okay, but guess what, optional content)

Now I HAVE to choose between Sanctum and Ultimatum.

Ultimatum being an RNG trial, with debuffs that will soft-brick your build.
I'm not Ben or jungroan, but I'd say I'm somewhat of a capable player. I've done the first 2 ascendancy trials, both in the trial of chaos and I managed to do them but now I'm headbutting myself on the 3rd one. 10 waves of crazy debuffs only to get rekt on the last wave by either a huge ass tornado that I can't outrun (30% movespeed boots btw) whilst having to dodge all the other "fun" introduced Ultimatum mechanics.

Note: I'm a level 82 blood mage with 4k life, 4k es, capped resistances. And STRUGGLING in 78-79 trial of chaos. I just don't get why it has to be THIS punishing. Choosing between bricked defenses, corrupted blood or monster skill speed is just atrocious. Literally any UBER boss in PoE 1 is easier for me then the 3rd Trial of Chaos.. Crazy.

What frustrates me most is the time investment, die on wave 10? Rip 30-40 minutes.

What I also wonder is, how must this experience be for newer players who don't have 100s if not 1000s of hours of experience? It would be near impossible for them to complete.

Sekhemas I will not even touch upon as I just personally don't like the type of content/mechanics, only thing I will note is: What are melees supposed to do here xD

Anyway long-story short: Ascendancy Trials, to me, are just not fun at all. I absolutely HATE both choices. Bring back IZARO.

On a positive note: almost everything else I am really enjoying. So I hope GGG will take a closer look at ascendancy trials.

~ mox

I agree. What the heck with this? It is difficult and is ANNOING!
I understand if you can get 5-10 extra points for Passive Tree but just two of them for Ascendancy Trials is a JOKE! At least remove Honor point and add more difficulty....

Trials of Sekhema is not hard. I did my third ascendacy in lvl 75 zone with lvl 80 warrior in second attempt. Just learn how to dodge stuff and use honour resistance relics. Much easier than Trial of Chaos.

OP, I just got my 5&6 ascendancy points last night from the Trial of Sehkemahs (lv 78 Acolyte of Chayula). My advice would be to farm maps in the 1-5 range for Baryas in lower levels that can still grant access to the third floor.

Stack Honor resistance and Maximum Honor relics. When you can, kill everything in each room. Scrounge for sacred waters and then pray the djinn merchanct shows up in your maps. With a little luck, you can outweigh the afflictions by purchasing a buttload of boons.

they said last night that they would not change this sooooooooooooo

I just wish they'd allow the Trial of Chaos key's to drop at the same level as the Trial of Sekhemas. It doesn't make sense why they are separated by 10 levels for the 3rd set of points. I can get a Djinn as a level 65 drop, but not a Ultimanium for 10 more levels at 75.

I'm in a similar boat. I have a thousand less hours than OP, and also hate heist and breach, but other than that I'm in agreement. I happily walked right past ultimatum and sanctum content in PoE 1, and am angry and offended I have to choose one of those to ascend.

The worst part about the new ascension is that the invites are dropped at your current level so that makes it really hard to over level yourself for these challenges. At least in PoE 1, you can outlevel the Lab and eventually complete it.

They are horrible and the devs should feel bad about them. I hope they come to their senses on this issue, we'll see how it develops...

I love TOTA, hope thats the third one.

Regardless of my enjoyment tho, why are these mechanics for acension? Like I can do trial of sekhemas. Doesnt mean I enjoy it (least its doable compared to trial of chaos)

I'm in the same boat. It's sad that the ascendancy points are tied behind these 2 mechanics. Sanctum is the worst for me, never played it in PoE1. But now I'm forced to do it. With thousands of PoE1 hours played, I still can't do Sanctum. At the point now, that I'd just rather not play the game entirely than try to do another Sanctum run.