Trial of the Sekhemas? More like Trial of the Suck My Ass

It's the same problem as overall game balance. It's balanced around you already being quite strong. Once you've got a blaster, with tons of good relics, it actually feels pretty good. Until then, it feels very overtuned.

Some tips to get through the ascendancies at least:

• Good relics make a huge difference here. Cap honor resist. Spend some exalts for better relics if you can't do it with what you've found so far. Merchant choice relics are still by far the best, even after nerfing the max roll from 3 to 1.
• Get energy shield on your build and run defence relics to scale your effective HP and honour by silly amounts. 1k ES easily turns into 3k in the run with boons and relics.
• Room selection is all about avoiding bad afflictions, not picking good boons.
• When you have a choice between otherwise equal paths, prioritize shops and sacred water unless you picked up an affliction you desperately want gone, in which case prioritize the "modify trial parameters" and "fickle blessings of the wind" rooms to try to remove it.
• Never take the following afflictions: Get another affliction when you get an affliction, afflictions are not known on the trial map, not always taken to the room you select, merchant only offers one choice, monsters remove 5% of health/es/honour on hit. I don't care how much you hate the alternatives, there is no payoff big enough to take one of these afflictions.
  • Monsters remove 5% health/ES/honour on hit is fine to take if you aren't going for the 4th ascendancy/farming Zarokh. It's almost impossible to die on that fight with a reasonable build unless you take this affliction.

Edit: Actually thinking about it, "not always taken to the room you select" seems to have been severely nerfed this patch. I do a lot of trial farming so I get forced into the "never take" afflictions pretty regularly, and have been stuck with that one twice in 0.2. I think it only procced once each time? In 0.1 it was something like a 25% chance, you could be very sure the run was bricked if you got it, but now it does very little and might be fine to take?

whoever made that decision need to be fired and made sure of to have never a job in the games industry again god how i hate these trials

It was a controversial mechanic in PoE1, never should've been made so prominent in 2.

1. There's a lot you can do to mostly trivialize these runs. (Max honor resist, merchant stuff, smart pathing, not sucking, etc)

2. Trial of Chaos offers an alternative to ascension via Sekhemas, so you don't have to do it if you don't want to

3. GGG has already stated that they also want a third system for ascension by release, so there's another alternative in the works

I finish the campaign, run trial 3 times to get the relic and cap my honour res, then I run a serious run and unlock all 8 points in one go. Then sell the relics. Just run a few times for relics first.

Trial of suckma’s

Did it yesterday. Mostly because I got a good run and got the 40% MS boon. Made it easy.

Reverse rogue-like is the perfect definition, ggg and their "pick your poison" mentality

I'd much rather choose things that makes me stronger, with the monsters being balanced to counter that

Not a fan of the trials

Can’t get my last ascendency because I’m a thorns build. So stupid

First play through with Poe 2, when i got to the first ascendency challenge and saw it was it, I just dropped the game, was the last straw for me.

It shows a lot about where they want to get the game and how much they care about their player base preferences.

Nobody liked the game mode in POE, and somehow they thought it was a good idea to make it mandatory for Poe 2 ?

Vision my ass.

honor is cancer. i don’t get it why GGGB is mot adding fun gameplay in this game.

Grim Dawn had the best rogue like dungeons. They had unique (extremely powerful) gear that could drop from certain mobs in them or in certain death rooms.

I don't understand people that say that the trial is not like a rogue like, in every single rogue like ever it gets harder as you progress, it's the same thing here

i'm really hoping the trial of the ancestors ascension won't be complete cancer, i did actually enjoy that league.

SEKHEMA BALLS!

I've learned to run a couple of the 4 trial tokens up to the 4th trial, then sell for 100ex or so just to either get a few better relics or a better piece of gear. Pretty easy to get a few exalts to make the runs easier.

I’m really confused why they don’t give the player more strength in these and then boost the monster strength accordingly.

For example, a node you could pick could have “increase your elemental damage by 25%. Spawn 15% more rare monsters.”

It’s similar to how MMO devs found out that people hated the “exhausted” state that gimped their exp rate. So just tweak some numbers, call it “rested exp,” and everyone loved it.

They can keep the same difficulty level while letting players feel cool about getting buffs.

I hate those trials so goddamn much, you just gave me PTSD..

Trial of suckymas for sure

Respectfully, Its a skill issue. Once you figure out the Sekhemas it becomes a breeze. Chaos on the other hand is more rng dependent but can be made easier if you know what to pick.

I hope some less annoying contents replace for ascendancy.

Both trials are too frustrating for me

How original

Honor system is so dumb and not fun

On my third ascension, I was able to still hit the boss when he got stuck in the doorway. He just sat there comatose, while I killed him

IMO trial of chaos is even worse. You can get 3 options that just brick your run.

It's so arbitrary. It's like, the options are either, A. You die. or B. a friendly cloud of butterflies hits you for 1 damage.

Just ran trial of chaos on hcssf and had to pick the one that does the expanding circle that covers almost the entire screen during the bird boss fight. Beat it, but goddamn it was some bullshit.