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.

I agree, trials is NOT fun at all and most people will agree. Probably not trolls that just disagree for the sake of being a contrarian and getting under people's skin, acting as if their complaints aren't valid and the people complaining are dumb and weak. GGG is doing nothing about these trolls either so yeah i apparently have nothing in common with the mostly toxic community and I dont think im coming back to this game because i feel like were giving good feedback but we keep having to suffer these these absolute assholes!
Frustration with the game shouldnt be made worse by some fucking nerds that feel miserable and want to get a rise out of people just to make themselves feel better.
Fuck them, fuck this, im out.

Yeh i dont enjoy them either it feels almost like the people who came up with ideas want you to suffer.

While on my way to 4th and final boss in the trial of the sekhamas on my warrior/titan i found the final set of rooms to be just a bunch of narrow corridors packed with ranged mobs who shoot from quite a long way away. (off my screen)

I cant run into them or i get shot
I cant leap into them or i get shot in mid air
i cant charge into them or i get shot
i cant out range them with sunder its too slow they shoot me before i fire, besides im melee i dont want to shoot things to death.

I want to see a ggg dev play warrior/titan and go through that set of rooms without using some sort of ranged attack they shoot from a melee weapon.

I want to see them suffer too lol. Literally sit them there and force them to do it until they make it through. Maybe then they remove all the absurd delays on everything warrior does and fix the trial of the sekhamas.

Trial of chaos is exactly as you say the choices are way over the top. They completely break the way your character works and the area denial stuff can make it so there is nowhere you can move in a boss arena especially when there is a guy in there who fires a giant tornado onto your head with almost no telegraph which covers a thrid of the areans on its own..

If you do get through it all turns out you have to farm it until you get 3 keys to unlock a f'ing door at the end.. which are not a guaranteed drop and somtimes you might end up with multiple of the same one instead of one of each. What about SSF players ggg? wtf you thinking with that kind of thing. You want me to farm this miserable sht repeatedly?

nope.

Agreed, i just lost over an hour just because of that stupid honour system, why even have this on boss room? Especially on last one?

Its not a "challenge", its simply an annoyance that would make me not to do this second time or ever.

They should copy D4 infernal hordes concept to get those ascendendy points, where you need to beat multiple waves with level increase and bonus/debuff option and some specific mechanics for some waves, with a boss per wave and a final boss to end.

This will much represent your power and your ability to get those points threw build and skills instead of being punished by time and scaling Honor.

I did 2 set of points, and to be honest it's not fun, and not interesting to do, it's boring and not fun.

I paid Ex to get my full ascendency, and i think i will do this for every characters every season? Because it is faster and easier to get Ex and get your full ascendency in 30mn? Instead of hours.

Definitively a huge design mistakes here as ascendency can block your progression.