Trials needs work

I know GGG is aware trials are a pain point for a lot of people, and I'm glad that's the case, but I'm here to keep banging the drum 1) because they are that frustrating to me, and 2) I think there's something inherently wrong with the concept of them beyond just tweaking damage to honor and that sort of thing.

If it wasn't for the rest of the game being incredibly fun, the trials would make me quit this game. Trial of Sekhema is a completely slog, especially trying to get through a trap room. The buffs do barely anything to help you make it through, the only thing that really matters is collecting honor resistance relics. Half the time you're choosing between which debuff sounds the most palatable, and then to make it even worse the Trial of Chaos literally is that.

Nearly all of your choices in Chaos are absurdly punishing, like 300% crit damage for enemies, or they add hazards that will often be impossible to avoid at times with the number of enemies they throw at you onscreen. At one point, I went with a strategy to avoid hazards and the most punishing debuffs, and ended up with something like a 75% slowdown on life and mana regen instead (which also seemed to reduce the amount of life/mana recovered too, not sure if that's a bug). I somehow managed to make it to the boss and engaged in an incredibly boring game of hide-and-go seek as I quickly ran out of flasks and was forced to use ranged attacks to poke at him, run away for 5 minutes to regen mana, then poke again until I drained away about 80% of its health, until I finally died to a rogue flame that burned me to death. This whole process took 5x longer than a normal boss, but I was willing to put up with it in the hopes that I wouldn't have to go through it one more time.

There is literally nothing fun in the base concept of the trials. If you're going into each area being forced to decide how you want to make the game harder on yourself without a commensurate reward (not just loot, I'm talking things like buffs or debuff removals), how does that amount to anything other than a torture sim? I know I'm not the only one who feels this way, Woolie on Twitch/Youtube is a longtime PoE player and went on a rant about trials in one of his recent videos, and everyone in chat agreed with him. I had just completed the Trial of Sekhema at the time and was glad to see I wasn't the only one who felt this way.

I think one of the main problems with the trials is that the risk-reward balance is completely off. Your options for benefits are either extremely limited (Sekhema) or nonexistent (Chaos). A good roguelike lets you undo decisions, take gambles for rewards, choose between safety or rewards, take on a debuff to get a buff for something else, etc. These are what make roguelikes fun, not getting through a difficult experience only to get the privilege of choosing how to make it even harder over and over. Sekhema is at least sort of on the right track, but Chaos has nothing redeeming in concept.

I'm all for challenge, some of these boss fights took me multiple tries but it never frustrated me. They feel fair so learning each boss is an engaging experience. But being beaten down by RNG or overly punishing mechanics just isn't. Not to mention, these modes take a very long time to work through, and can completely kill the momentum of a playthrough. This makes failing a trial feel downright agonizing knowing that you have to go through it all again for a very long time. If you're reading this GGG, I hope you'll consider a more complete overhaul of trials, and at least giving us checkpoints or making them shorter in the meantime.