Ascendancy is not the right place for Trial of the Sekhemas

Labs was already unpopular and stressful for a lot of players who only like "softcore" playstyle. If this trial is to remain in the game it should have another purpose. Failing for one death in something that is required for build progress does not fit with the difficulty level of the rest of the game. I already felt that way about labs, but labs was comparatively endurable, although stressful.

I consider myself a casual and low skill player (although I have played MMOs and raided at the highest tier of difficulty, because I am capable of improving with enough knowledge and practice). I would usually get burned out in red maps of PoE1. If I have to do Trial of the Sekhemas for ascendancy 3 and 4 I simply won't play PoE 2. It's that much of a barrier and an outlier in the kind of content and difficulty that I can choose to engage with. Trial of the Sekhemas is far more punishing and dangerous than labs, and any other content I can do right now on my current character. I am level 75 and have only had 1 extra chance drop to get my third ascendancy. Obviously I failed both tries, but I am thinking about the future of having to win this twice for every character. I am assuming Trial of Chaos is worse, but it hasn't dropped yet so.. maybe I am wrong, but 10 negative modifiers for a boss fight could even be impossible for some builds.

So in the end what is the point from a design perspective? Because if it's not to cull a lot of less "serious" players it's failing at accomplishing anything constructive as such a huge difficulty spike and build progress blocker.

Yeah I agree about Sekhemas. It's way way way too long and the need to start from the beginning if you fail is just... terrible. I hate it and never do it.

Trial of chaos on the other hand is okayish. One run is ~15mn, maximum 20mn for 5th and 6th points.
You need the 3 fragments to fight the boss, but at least you can farm each of them in 3 differents runs, so you don't have this pressure of "1 fail = 45mn lost" like in sekhemas. And you can even buy the fragments which at the end lets you have your 7th and 8th points in ~20mn.
Overall even with the negative modifiers it's not that hard IMO, unless a very bad RNG on the modifiers - which may happen.

Disagree. Sekhemas is some of the best content this game currently has. It does suck that you have to have a coin to do it. But it rewards skill and practice. Unlike the Trial of chaos, which is basically just luck and gear.