POE2 Trial of the Sekhemas: 3 floors is still way too much for 3rd ascendancy

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Axl5kRoses#0968 เขียน:

The Trial of the Sekhema's mechanic is really rough for getting third ascendancy. The individual rooms of the trials are fine in terms of difficulty, however having 3 levels of the trial gives the player too many opportunities to accrue a collection of horrible afflictions.

Due to the layouts of the trial maps, in my experience, the entire run relies on avoiding lanes that give build disabling afflictions. This can be fine on some runs, but many extremely long, nearly perfect runs have been ended by having to choose between two modifiers that make the trial essentially impossible.


For clarity, I tend to go into the trials overleveled by a minimum of 10 levels with strong gear, and have played many leagues of both poe1 and 2. While many would call it a skill issue, I feel it can be a luck issue too often. A luck issue is usually no problem in POE, but the time investment into individual runs is where the disappointment and dissatisfaction come in. Dying in a map sucks, but you haven't invested over an hour into that map. I have yet to be able to complete a 3 floor sekhema trial in under an hour, and it consistently becomes the most frustrating part of building a character.


Labyrinth could be frustrating for the same reasons, but failure in a lab was solely a skill issue every time. Trial of Chaos being the alternative doesn't necessarily solve the issue because you run into the same issues, however the time investment is substantially different.


I wouldn't mind running chaos trials over and over hoping for good luck, but on my current character, I have yet to drop any chaos trials eligible for ascendancy points. I am hoping that the final option of for ascendancy does not rely on luck as a significant variable in whether or not you can get your ascension, a vital part of the character building process.


I don't want to be too negative, I am enjoying many of the changes in 0.2.0., however there is one other glaring issue. We go through all this trouble do acquire ascendancy points that can be a little underwhelming if I'm being honest. The current set of points feel more like notables that are specific to a class. I am optimistic that there will be a solution to this friction eventually, but this is the number one thing driving a wedge between me and my love for POE. If the trials stay the way they are, I'm worried I may not be as interested in POE2 in the long run and I think many people feel the same way.



(EDIT): As well as pointing out what I think is a flaw I should also make a suggestion for improvement. I think the issues I've listed above would be solved by adding some additional rooms to each floor and making the 3rd point require 2 levels for completion. If the floors were all longer by 2-3 rooms, the 4th ascendancy point could be acquired after 3 floors. Considering dev time has gone into the 4th floor, the appropriate fragments could be made a rarer drop, and 4th floor completion would then offer more rewarding drops to make it worth doing for advanced players. Also broke this into paragraph for easier reading.