I'm 100% DONE with the stupid Trials.

I play the worst ascendancy in the game so that the trials are irrelevant.
I don't do them past 2.

They are total shit.
It gets fixed with a delete key.
Not a modification
Not an alteration
Not a reworking of rooms
Not an adjustment of ..

DELETE

I dot udnerstand how people have problems with the trials. I never had any issue. Seems to be a common point tho.

It's insane to me that something has such unanimous hatred by most people ever since the early access release, yet the devs stubbornly refuse to do anything about this trash. If a mechanic or game mode is fun, people will run it just to run it, but both the ascendancy trials are so bad that the devs have to force people to engage with them otherwise these modes would almost certainly never be run at all due to how unfun they are.

Yup, playing a ranged character is not as bad, but trying to do the third trail as a melee toon is almost impossible. I hate it.

For me, trials are far from being the game's main problem. It's true that they're very annoying the first few times you do them, and GGG needs to work on that maybe, but once you get the hang of it, it's relatively simple. It's probably one of the only things in the game that doesn't drive you crazy when you know how to do it.

Here's a list of important things to know :

- Try to get relics with honour resistance (not really necessary for the first trial, but after 2-3 days of league play, they're really cheap). (And it's like elemental resistance, 75% max by default)

- your Honour is based on your life + energy shield. So for the second affix on your relic, try to get max honor, global defense, or life, depending on your build. This will increase your maximum honor, and you'll be able to take a few more hits here and there.

Bosses take X increased damage
Water found, can help also

A relic like this, for example:
15% increased maximum life + 16% to honor Resistance (2 slots)
It's 1 exalt at the time of writing.

(Obviously, armor reduces damage taken, and therefore honor lost as well, and evasion allows you to avoid hits, so that works too.)

- Avoid afflictions as much as possible (except, of course, those that have no effect on you; for example, zero evasion on a build that doesn't have evasion is just a free affliction).

- try to take the path offers the most options at the end. This prevents you from ending up between two horrible afflictions.

- Try to get as many boons as possible. So, if you have enought water, try going through the merchant rooms. There's also a merchant after defeating each boss who sells boons in the chest room.

- If you see a room with Fickle's Blessing of the Wind, this removes a random affliction and gives you a random boon. It's a win-win situation. (GGG should indicate what this room does, at least one clue..)

bonus :
worst affliction:
-you can see one fewer room ahead
-you do not always travel to the room you pick
-random affliction
And I'm probably forgetting one, but anyway, avoid afflictions, especially when you don't know what they do. I know that sometimes you can't avoid them, but the rule I mentioned earlier regarding the number of possible paths helps prevent that.

best affliction to absolutely take if you can
- you can see one more room ahead

I absolutely hate the new trial system. It's extremely long, boring and too much gambling involved with often highly unfair and/or annoying results. Just bring back Labyrinth or make something new that's better.

After the first two runs in story it just takes way too long and I rather go without the 2nd half of my Ascendancy than subject myself to it. Last league I didn't bother either after I got hit by unavoidable blindness, stripped of all armor and then got entire honor bar 1shotted at very end upon exiting a cleared room and a random critter bursted out of the ground and hit me for a trillion impossible to avoid or predict honor damage.

If I built my character to be a tanky melee lad then why do I even need to avoid damage anyways? It destroys a whole entire category of stat building.

The only thing I really disliked about Labyrinth was that having to click my way through traps was annoying and awkward. PoE2 fixes this issue by adding WASD movement but then doesn't add Labyrinth. Extremely ironic.

I also intentionally blocked and avoided Sanctum and Ultimatum far above anything else in Path of Exile 1 because I considered it the worst content in whole game's lifetime. So it's also extremely ironic you choose that to replace Lab.

I think a major issue with both trials is that they failed to see why people love roguelike games. These trials take too long to do and you lose all rewards at the end too. In all the good roguelike games it starts out difficult and through the run you try to collect random buffs that make you broken and powerful.

In both trials it just feel like every rogue element rarely buffs you, and just makes things worse and worse or outright impossible, like there's no salvaging a run if you get unlucky, you are just straight up made to lose and most of the boons are worthless and weak. It's like the developers genuinely are TERRIFIED of letting the players have any fun or enjoyment.

They just take too long.
I want to play maps, not Sanctum and Ultimatum. Mostly maps with Rituals and Essences which are the only mechanics I like so far. If I'm forced to play for too long something I don't like to get something that's almost crucial for my character then I just can't care about the game in general. And I've done all 4 trials last league, btw.