Trial of the Sekhemas Discussion and Feedback

Wanted to encourage people to provide feedback on Trial of the Sekhemas. I am currently a level 76 stormweaver around 75+ hours played. I have over 400+ hours on POE 1.

My current experience on the trial of the sekhemas has been negative. I've run around 4 trials for my 3rd ascendency at this point. Failed three times on the second floor bosses, over leveled returned beat them and then failed my last run on the 3rd boss. I have only lost by losing all Honour.

1 Life:
I have no issue with having 1 life in the trial. Just like with lab in POE 1
having only one life was challenging and rewarding when you overcame it. After a few labs you can run them pretty quick with some challenge, it felt a little like a chore but not too bad.

Honour:

Simply put Honour feels terrible to me. Below are my 3 biggest issues with the trial.

1. Honour feels like it is punishing strictly for not dodging properly. There are so many defensive options in POE 2, Honour feels like it devalues the thought and planning for my build. My build can be set up to tank, block, evade, or even take damage to deal damage (thorns). The only way to ensure I don't lose Honour is to dodge roll all attacks.

2. Honour is not a fun mechanic to play around. I don't I have any choice or control over how defenses in the trial. Relics add some layer to it, but I only get relics by running and then failing trials when I get hit and lose all my Honour. This is frustrating and not rewarding content as I cant use these relics for anything other then the trial.

3. Boons, Afflictions, and RNG
The boons and afflictions system feels very RNG heavy. I had a run where I got a +50% damage bonus which felt great but then all other runs I got lots of afflictions with non impactful boons. This system does not feel fun to play, it's just punishing when even with 50% damage increase I still lose to losing all Honour.

Critical feedback and possible improvements:

1. Step one remove the Honour system as a pass or fail. Instead incentives honour by adding more rewards for the more honour you have at the end of the trial. For example, more hounour = increased rarity/drops or unlocking additional keys or chests at the end of the run. Could even add in an Honour enchanting alter that requires Honour to enchant items. Alternately Honour and Sacred Water could be used to Juice rooms/bosses.

2. Bosses, bosses, and more bosses. GGG does such a fantastic job with the boss fights. I think focusing more on the boss fights as a way to prepare players for end game bosses through this system would be great. The bosses I have fought so far are great, I would like to be able to fight them when they are a challenge rather than be over leveled and over geared so I can blast them down to avoid losing my honour when i miss a dodge that then takes most of my honour.

3. Some explanation regarding chests at the end of each floor. Can I open them and continue on with the trial? After i open the doors it says i can't open the chests. If it is confusing to me its going to be very confusing to new players.

Please share your experiences and feedback on my points. I know GGG take feedback seriously if they see it.

In poe this mechanic was loved by the players, and I believe, this is why they made it the ascendency mechanic. Players who loved this mechanic, made a character to play this content and this is the reason why it does not work here.
This mandatory content is not made for all builds. To take an extreme exemple, you cannot pass it with a thorn build.
The hounour system as a mandatory mechanic is flawed.

They should make you choose between librairy or ultimatum, or remove hounour completly in my opinion

When honor reaches zero you can't ascend.. I hate it :) Doing it once was a pain enough then if you fail you're stuck on this. Character is gimped without it.

Please remove honor or at least not fail to it for ppl who just want to proceed.

I think the solution would be to be able to pay another person to run them for you.

But for that we need an escrow system.

What I am suggesting is an escrow system where you can pay the price in exalted orbs at the start, so they are held in escrow until the trials are completed and then the person running them for you gets paid.

The Sekhemas’ trial is a horror. I've never seen it so frustrating, losing minutes or even hours of play in rooms only to fail because you have more honor or something. I take the 3rd ascendant as an example, in total taking into account the bosses, you have to pass 24 rooms so if you fail you have to redo everything or go to the farm to find a Barya.

In the end, what's the point of doing Early Access if it's to be limited to 2 or 3 ascendant out of 4.

F trials.

Honour completely nullifies a major defensive layer every build has (life/ES regeneration) and instead replaces it with the necessity to farm additional items (relics) to mitigate. Honour is an issue no build has anywhere else in the game, so it has absolutely no reason to be a requirement for ascendancies. It has to go, completely. If they want to keep the trials as they are, make them optional.

The RNG with the afflictions is a similar problem which is bad in Sekhemas and even worse in the Chaos trials. Apart from the fact that the trial difficulty can differ vastly (between impossible and a cakewalk) depending on the afflictions and the character level you do the trial, it is again something you don't experience in the rest of the game.
In acts, you don't have any modifiers and in maps you always have the choice what modifiers you put on a map via the waystones and almost none of them are as bad as the ones you can get in the trials.

Again, they can keep that system if they want, but both trial variants were an exceptionally bad choice for ascendancies.

they should add rooms with levers and you need to do math while getting attacked and if you pull the wrong one , you just instant die .

also please add a mod to the monster mod pool that makes them invisible until they hit you .

also a slot machine before each boss where if you pull the lever , you can get double dmg or lose the trial instantly .

and why are we getting our special classes from one run, we should be forced to grind trials rep for weeks to unlock the classes , and the rep is lost on death ofc.

add more fun afflictions like one can spawn chaos orbs that chase you at all times , to keep you on your toes .

remove the relics it makes the game too easy .

add a room to trials where we need to run away from a giant boulder but the twist is its bugged and the hitbox gets you anyway.

add a timer to the trial , like 20 minutes , and you auto fail . people are taking it easy right now , special classes are special.

time trial rooms that you need to click all the altars before the timer expires , add a puzzle to each altar and also spawn a random rare while doing the puzzle.

add a MINOR affliction where you cant move anymore just dodge roll , to slow down zoomer classes .

last boss should be a big deal if you fail to touch all the time orbs on him, on top of losing the trial you should also lose a level since he set you back in time , it fits the theme.

add the little mine bots from vaal factory to the trials , and put them in the safe rooms , where they are hard to see.

add a major boon that gives you 50 flat damage for each boss you kill.

add a special room , that is trap room but all your abilities and attacks are disabled and you have to lead the mobs into traps to win.

and so on...

For me, my only gripe is that if you fail, you have to drop another coin to try it again.

I wouldn't find it so bothersome if it works like the first 2 points

My major gripe is the hourglass phase of the 4th boss, I got globes tucked into the far corners and it made it impossible. There needs to be some maximum travel distance coded into those globes

also some afflictions, especially those that remove entire defensive layers like they ain't no thing, I got stuck choosing between "lose 5% life on hit" and "no evasion", that was an instant quit