Change the Ascendancy acquisition method.

First i wanna start off to say that i realy love Path of Exile 2 as a whole and i played the first game since early beta/alpha. Trough the entire history of the first game there has been two game mechanics that where so frustrating i never wanted to do them.

The least annoying of the two is Ultimatum and if that was the only place you locked accendancy behind in the second game i could still accept it. After all it still boils down to kill and outlast oponents that are manageble even dou the rng of the trap's/downsides you have to pick is complete rng garbage.

What realy puts a needle in my eye dou is Sanctum. Not only is it 1000 times more difficult for annything that relies on mele/short range skills and armour over evasion and long range. The whole consept of not taking hit's in an arpg troughout an far longer labirynth than the original while stil having to dodge trapps like in the "Trial of Ascension" is completely moronic when you use it to unlock ascendancy points (thinking mostly of when you want to get trough 3 floors to get the second sett of ascendancy points).

I know that it's entierly possible to complete these trial's, and as in the first game some builds also had a harder time compleeting the original "Trial of Ascension". What i wanted to point out here is not that it's a problem to have these mechanics in the game but rather that it's not the best idea to lock Ascendancy behind something that is even more brutal for even more build versions than in the first game. One of the thing's i love most about PoE is the fact that the game allow you to chose how you want to play the game (making a mapper/bosskiller/delver etc) but this choise of Ascendancy trial takes alot of this freedom away.

Then as the last part of my rant i want to point out that while it was a good idea to at least give you unlimited tries the frist time you unlock these new "Trials of Ascension". The fact that this is not a thing when you get to the Cruel version of these is making it all even worse to a point that im questioning if i even want to play the game annymore if i have to do this every single new season.

Sincerely from an avid Poe player

+1, it's almost 2025 and core build elements shouldn't be locked behind trials at all, much less overtuned ones. The treadmill of ARPGs is and always should be gear.

I'm okay with the Ritual part of the ascendancy trials, I just can't do ultimatums, and I agree wholeheartedly with your post.

Every build is not created equal, every person's reflexes and skills is not equal, that is why PoE1 Lab is so good, because it gave you an actual place to test stuff without a lot of time being wasted (if you fail, at most you'll lose 5-10 mins of zooming).

If they can change the aqcuisition method to something else that is not Ritual and Ultimatum only, that would be the best solution.

However, I doubt they will do anything about this any time soon.