Please bring back Trials of The Ancestors as an endgame mechanic for Path of Exile 1 in patch 3.27!

Petition for GGG to bring back Trials of the Ancestors as an end game mechanic. If they can bring back Ultimatum, they can surely do the same with TOTA!

I loved Trials of the Ancestors. There is just something about it that clicks with me and I can do it hours on end. Something about seeing my army smash the other army. All the various units and equipment they can wear. It's similar to the Sanctum folks that live there for half a league. Or the Blight guys inside their Blight-Ravaged maps. The lore is cool as heck with all the various Karui leaders, some whom we know very well, others not so much. Furthermore all their designs are super cool.

Some benefits to GGG and the players:

1. No longer need to reimplement Tattoos via new league mechanics - just keep it to TOTA. Can do the same with Omens too really, although it seems to have taken refuge in Ritual these days. Want it even spicier? Relegate Hinekora's Lock global drop to be back to TOTA only.

1a. - a 3.26 league edit: Maybe it's just me but having Tattoos being obtained from Kingsmarch shipping (to the Karui) and Omens being nerfed so that they only come from the Ritual mechanic reward window feels like a placeholder. Would make 3.27 as an excellent time to bring back TOTA and have it be the main source of Tattoos and Omens, in addition to Kingsmarch (tattoo) and Ritual (omen).

2. TOTA can exist as an out-of-map endgame mechanic, like Heist, Sanctum, and Simulacrum. More so Sanctum in terms of similarity with access via Silver Coin. 1 Silver Coin = 1 full tournament, just as 1 Sanctum forbidden tome = 1 full Sanctum run. I'm sure balancing will be required should it become core - this is to be expected. But another option for players to farm end game? Why not!

2a. An addition to the point above, I know some people were not fans of the "TOTA cheese" builds that were popular back during the TOTA league. These builds were essentially zhp all-in on CC effects to enable massive temporal chains / chill / knockback effects in addition to phasing and dodge to allow the player to zoom past enemy units and channel the totems right away. Part of me appreciates the build diversity that these sort of things have, another part also agrees it meant that every run was an auto-win because of how strong they were. With that said, I'll also point to other mechanics that have builds tailored specifically to them, such as Heist with its zdps 500% movement speed builds. Perhaps GGG can balance such that cheese builds are still possible but much harder to achieve.

3. As mentioned above, access is via Silver Coin, the same way it was back during the TOTA league. They can simply re-enable Silver Coin drops similar to the global drop of Forbidden Tomes for Sanctum.

4. Assets and mechanics are already there from the TOTA league back in 2023 so not as much work is required to re-integrate it to the core game.

5. Reintroduce TOTA and you can make a Tattoo stash tab I guess. GGG profits and players get TOTA back. Yay.

6. - Path of Exile 2 consideration: At the time of 3.26 launch, while we haven't seen anything concrete yet from GGG, there have been plenty of discussions among players that the third and last trial mechanic in Path of Exile 2 involves TOTA. Which would be cool and certainly make me want to play Path of Exile 2 even more than now. If this is the case, I do hope GGG will also bring it back to Path of Exile 1 so that players can fully experience the mechanic in both games. Just as we can with various mechanics that exist in both games such as Ritual and Expedition.

Now here's something interesting, an article in early June 2025 before the 3.26 reveal stream where the interviewer was talking to Mark Roberts:

"

Q. Are the Medium Talent or Keystone Tattoos from Trial of the Ancestors coming back?

Mark Roberts: Not yet, but I want to. There were some balance concerns, which are valid. I can't remember exactly. It's obviously been a while, but yes, I want to reinvigorate and extrapolate on that tattoo system back to kind of how it was, but like maybe with some of the outlying issues addressed. But yeah, 100% I want to, and I would say that's probably going to happen with almost certainty in the future.

"

Q. A small follow-up, is the League mechanic coming back ever? Because I think people kind of came up with like really cool, different build ideas in that sense. So, is there a chance of Trial of the Ancestors coming back?

Mark Roberts: It's certainly not zero. I mean, I think a lot of us want to do it. I can't say with certainty one way or the other. I know a lot of these are just like, "Look, maybe... maybe...". But if it were up to me and not an entirely resourcing problem, I would do it without question.

CERTAINLY NOT ZERO!! Please Mark, please GGG, bring back the mechanic in Path of Exile 1. And when you do, it would be the perfect time for a tattoo system revamp like Mark stated. It would just be perfect.

Interview source: https://www.sportskeeda.com/mmo/i-certainly-considering-it-mark-roberts-talks-path-exile-1-spectre-resummoning-old-leagues-keystone-tattoos-integrated-trade

"

If Trials of the Ancestors has million number of fans, I am one of them.
If Trials of the Ancestors has ten fans, I am one of them.
If Trials of the Ancestors has one fan, then that is me.
If Trials of the Ancestors has no fans, that means I am no more on Earth.
If the world is against Trials of the Ancestors, then I am against the world.
Amen.

"

Belief is the strongest metal of them all! - Izaro

TOTA is love, TOTA is life!!

+1

But only after GGG rebalances the content so you don't have to run a very specific niche build to farm it. That was my biggest gripe with TotA.

"

Mistletoes wrote:

I love Trials of the Ancestors. Don't even have to add it to the Atlas passive tree, just re-enable Silver Coin drops. Since GGG seems to keep implementing tattoos and omens in various ways since the TOTA league, might as well have a permanent source of them through the Trials again too.

TOTA gang, rise up!! If they brought back Ultimatum, they can bring back TOTA too.

TOTA was a lot of fun. I'd love to see it come back with some better loot balance. The drops were overtuned, but the mechanic itself was extremely fun, and had a flow of its own, very different from standard game play.

I'd love to see it return in a more polished format.

I don't see why? It was the same thing over and over again with the same gear and the same tactic. The only interesting thing is the rewards we can choose.

"

Johny_Snow wrote:

I don't see why? It was the same thing over and over again with the same gear and the same tactic. The only interesting thing is the rewards we can choose.

PoE is basically the same thing over and over. Enter map, blow everything up, repeat. The entire genre is very reputative by nature - and the game is made by Grinding Gear Games... I think you can see where I'm going here...

There was actually a lot of nuance in your team and gear selections - I found mass summoning skeletons with totems and using others types of crowd control to be extremely fun - you became more of a helper to your team - a coach if you will - rather than simply blowing the enemies up.

If you played multiplayer, it became UTTERLY manic, with 2-3 bosses to deal with... oh the dread... Arrows and Ice...

...had so much fun with that league.

If anything, I'd want more in depth itemization of your team and some more diverse stats for my teammates.

Maybe even some skill gems geared directly toward TotA.

I found the entire league delightful.

They already reused most of tota stuff in one or another way. So luckily we can expect that this terrible mechanic won't ever make it's way into the game.

Ugh, that's not what I meant. You can clear content in PoE with different builds. However, the best way to farm TOTA is to use exactly one build. You all know what I am talking about.

Utter garbage mechanic. Just put some good uniques behind this so I have more reasons to not to play.

Everything as replacement for tormented spirits is fine.