Feedback on Trial of Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos

Had a run going pretty good, then a random rare had burning ground under him, I stood around quite a while waiting for an opening, I'm melee...but in the end I just had to lose half my honor because there is no way to not get on the burning ground.

i like the honour system. you do know you can pause the game now right?

but i will agree, if you just want to go in and get your ascendancy points, it really is no fun.

one suggestion a forummer made is that for "first timers" players should be able to complete the entire trial as long as they dont die. the difference is on such runs, if they have no honour, they cant gain chest rewards. this is only for the purpose of getting the ascendancy points.

i would also highlight one thing i dont like about the trial.

the jump from floor 1-3 to 4 is super steep. i practically 1 shot all the floor bosses but on the last one it took me 3-4 minutes?

thats a HUGE difference

Got it on my fourth try. Got 40% movement speed boon and that carried me to my third set of ascendancy points. Definitely all about RNG if you arent rolling a broken build.

💯 Trials have a TON of potential, but I don't think they're in a state of enjoyment for the average player.

Potential Fix:
Default experience allows users to revive __ amount of times. Players have the option to remove __ revives and as revives are removed, rewards are increased. This adds an additional benefit to hardcore endgame players while also making the experiences more casual friendly.

Come in every day looking for a variety of this post. Completely agree, will keep supporting reform until it's no longer feasible. There is still time.

I hope GGG are reading the feedback. I just had a frustrating experience doing my 4th ascendency.

Early in the 1st or 2nd trials on I got a affliction that threatened a minor random affliction every time I venerate a shrine. It's too risky to gamble a pledge shrine in the hope of being able to remove it- so I completed all trials up to Zarokh without any shrine use and therefore without honour restoration or boons- just a laundry list of room afflictions that couldn't be avoided.

Took about 1k honour damage in total. EXCEPT for 2 rooms in the 4th trials which were death crystal runs with freeze mages and goliath rares spawning all over the walkways mid traverse. In 2 incidences I got body blocked and done for 17k honour; entering the final boss room with 57 honour left lol.

Pretty frustrating. Almost as frustrating as getting unavoidably terrible affliction choices. Trials drag on so long that the risk of your run ending b/c of some cheap trick is very high. If nothing else just halving maximum honour and halving the number of trial rooms between each boss would make trials far more palatable without making any difference to player skill.

Oh yeah and farming atlas to get a barya is silly. Just let people attempt it without the RNG access. I'm confident I can beat these trials my build is pimped and crushing maps; I'm just not confident I can get a run with favourable choices before my patience wears out waiting for baryas to drop..

Just wait until you see 3rd trial in a new act... ahhaha

Adding my +1

I'm a 56 year old gamer so I have played a lot of games. Only a few times have I felt the need to swear at my tv. (I'm on console) but the trials make me furious.

The thing is, they are not the same kind of frustratingly hard that something like elden ring is. The frustration in a souls game comes from that feeling that I need to get better and then, when I do and beat a hard boss, I feel elation.

The trials are both mind-numbing slogs that usually end with failure. I have managed to get 6/8 ascendancy points but these last two, at least on my warrior, are a chore that I don't think I can bother facing. They are an utterly joyless experience as you repeat the same content over and over again. It's easy for the most part, mind-numbingly so, but it is long and dull and slowly chips away at you so by the time you get to the content you have come for, you are usually completely demoralised - bored and exhausted and angry at the time you are being forced to waist in order to "complete" your character.

I almost took down the 3rd boss on the trial of chaos tonight but kind of fluffed it under pressure. So, with all my tickets spent, I logged off for the evening and thought I'd see if youtube had any tips. That's where I learnt that I need to complete this trial 4 times to get my points. Thank god I lost to that boss in room 10, otherwise my controller and tv would have been in big trouble.

Don't even get me started on tornadoes bird. Someone one needs to remove a 0 from his damage chart for that barely telegraphed tornado move.

Other than that, the game is great. Why else would I be here giving my what-for unless I really liked it.

F trials, and the 3 forum warriors that like them.

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TheFriggenBest#6781 schrieb:

I find sekhemas to be way easier then the chaos trials, I guess to each their own, It only took me like 3 or 4 low levels trial runs to get enough relics for max honour resist after that it was pretty smooth sailing.

I still fail chaos all the time I hate the rooms in that one they all seem so long or just slow.

After getting used to sekhemas there's only like 2 different gauntlet trials per floor and the fourth floor only has 1 and it's all the same every time. Sekhemas imo also drops way better more consistent loot but I could be wrong here haven't farmed chaos enough too know just my opinion.

There aren't as many bad afflictions as people make out imo list of ones that are pretty much meaningless go on and on especially after getting 75% honour resist

-traps are faster(traps tickle and 90% of them can be dodge rolled through)
-monsters deal 5% of everything on hit( besides fourth floor lightning which can be 100% avoided by standing in the corner,or those red vase mobs which are pretty easy to focus as they don't activate until your closer too them. Nothing else matters with this one)
-no Armour( I have my doubts this matters even on armor builds)
-cant see rewards
-can't see room types
-if you have scrying crystal see one less room ahead
-take damage on room completion
-gain a random boon when you venerate a shrine(you shouldnt need shrines after 75% honor resist)
-no evasion(again even on ev based builds I doubt this matters, although it helps it isn't necessary to auto dodge all the attacks nothing in the trials is so dangerous that you can't simply dodge roll away, i use a ev build myself)
-death toll(easily the best affliction)
-monsters gain life
-monsters gain damage
-monsters can't be slowed/gain action speed
-less max honour
-cursed with enfeeble ( I have 2 bosses take more damage relics)
-you cannot restore honour until after the next boss
-increased damage taken on low life
-reduced light radius/minimap is hidden
-reduced honour restored
-lose water on room completion ( amount you lose is negligible at best)
-losing sacred water on hit (this one is more dangerous but post 3rd boss sacred water doesn't matter and if you are half decent at dodging it's not a big deal)
-you and minions deal less damage isn't so bad if you get the one that makes you deal more.

I take every single on of these afflictions everytime, there's maybe 5 more afflictions total besides these that are the truly bad ones. Everything in the list above is manageable and I'd even venture to add all the merchant choices/increased price afflictions post third floor. So again even less.

Boons on the other hand silver tongue is king. If you get it you should be buying 3+ full merchant shops worth of boons, even without extra merchant choices this is gonna net you 10 boons or more. Even without it you can still get 5 extra boons just from the merchant alone at minimum. Just from ending rooms.

Sacred water should be focused early and reduced sacred water boons are more detrimental early however there are 3 guaranteed merchants at the end of the floors so I would suggest avoiding the merchant in the middle of the floors unless your overstocked on sacred water just save for the merchant after the boss.

At this point 9 out of 10 of my runs end with every single permanent minor boon, and maybe 5 or 6 afflictions. Every single time I run it no RNG Involved it's so consistent I have a hard time failing it on purpose(which I've had to do sometimes when a trade comes in and I just started a gauntlet floor and can't port out)

Ok, I've been farming quite a lot of Sekhemas, and here are my thoughts:
1. I have an issue with the current iteration of the trial, mainly because it feels like you have no choice sometimes. My main point of criticism here is the room selection. I have no idea where the arrows go and why. Quite often I feel stuck with only bad options to choose from. The thing is, if you see the whole floor it's usually fine, but you don't most of the time (without special relics). I think people have issues with the fact, that they HAVE to choose from a bunch of very bad options when the room next to it is fine, but the arrow just won't let you there...
2. I generally like the affliction mechanic, BUT the 3 ones that completely invalidate defenses are not acceptable. I don't think that there should be "run-stopping" afflictions. Generally, it might be OK, but if you ran the 4th floor and your invasion is gone on EV-based character you're basically done. Change those to "have N% less of the defense" instead. Feels much better this way. Maybe 25% less for minor affliction AND add a major one with 50% (can have both combined).
3. I have an issue with the current balance.
3.1. Long-term progression. I agree, that once you have beaten all of the 4 floors, and have a bunch of relics to choose from, the activity is ACTUALLY FUN. But the thing is, an average player won't have any of the relics, like, ever. The "skill floor" is too high to pass for a simple guy. What I think should be done is some sort of "increasing difficulty and reward" modifiers somewhere AND reducing baseline difficulty. Not sure about placing it into relics, but you can make your trials harder and make them more rewarding. I mean, you can use Unique relics for special "gauntlets", but that's not really it. Not sure how to implement it, though.
3.2. I have an issue specifically with the honor system affecting health-based build. If you compare 3 defenses: ES, EV, and Health+Armor, you'll notice that evasion is basically the best option by design for the trial. ES is fine because it can be stacked A LOT, so you have a ton of Honor by default. But the health, though... It has nothing going on there. As I can see, health should be different from ES because it has much less max value, but there are easy ways to restore it. So, I don't really get, why health regeneration does not restore Honor between the rooms. Armor should give Honor resist by itself, without needing relics. Basically, you'll use those relics on ES and EV characters, because it makes sense. Those defenses are by design fit much better than health and armor in the trial.
4. Long-long term progression. I have an issue with the diversity of current relics in the deep endgame. There are not enough "interesting" modifiers. The only actual one I can think of is "You see more rooms". I'd like to have much more unique relics for various purposes. Remove affliction after killing a boss. Or gain a major boon. Let me pick one of the goods from a merchant for free (once per merchant) and so on. I generally have issues with the current uniques design in PoE2, because you have only one good modifier and the rest just can't keep up over the course of the game. So, for the love of god, please add an additional random modifier to those unique relics. By the way, the current "Tetris" game is fun (putting relics before entering the trial). I'd like to have options to move those ever-existing squares on a "board". Or having the ability to change my relics after completing the floor. Or give me the ability to change a room type/reward/affliction once per floor. Maybe adding a "passive skill tree" for a Sekhema in the Atlas Skill Tree might be a good idea to solve long-long term issues. You have a specific skill tree for killing Arbiter of Ash. However, more unique relics might do as well.
5. I'm not a new player by any means, BUT I completely agree, that there is not enough info about the Sekima trial. I'd like to have some useful info on bosses BEFORE fighting them for the first time. Give Djin some monologue BEFORE fighting the boss, explaining what you should be aware of. Or let me reed a "note" (there is a shrine on the fourth-floor entrance, but it has no info whatsoever, so add other ones in the boss rooms please, explaining to a new player what to do and what to fear). Additionally, give more info about relics and long-term progression for the Sekhema. There is currently no introduction and a new player is just lost. Like, when I first entered the trial there was a "relic stash" and it was empty and I had no relics and so forth. Let's make it so that Balbala gives you the first relic, and tells you to put it in the trial UI screen. Moreover, rename some of the chests. Like, WTF is "Mysterious"? Make it "Random", come on. Timeless? WTF is timeless? Make it "Timeless Jewel", please. Or maybe let me click on those names with Alt (as I can do in passive skills because there can be no combat in those places) to see what type of item it will drop.

6. Some additional minor things/not something I personally experienced:
6.1. Add a portal to Sekhema to the endgame UI.
6.2. Add a "summary UI" thing, where I can find all the bonuses from the relics currently stored. I mean, I like math, but it's just tedious.
6.3. Maybe adding more room types is a good idea. Like, when I enter, I don't even care what room this is. Running and clicking on crystals? Sure, why not? Traps might be a little annoying, but I think it has more to do with the layouts of those maps. There are not enough different room layouts on the 3rd and 4th floors, so it's kinda easily noticeable.
6.4. People also complain about one-shots from outside of the screen, but I haven't noticed those at least in my builds. Maybe changing mob's "agro" and "attack" radius might help.
6.5. I haven't played melee yet, but I understand that the 2nd floor boss might be too punishing for the melee characters. It needs to be fixed. IMO, give a boss 2 forms (ice AND fire, changing from time to time OR on certain HP thresholds), not 2 bosses at once. It might become annoying to use dodge roll over and over again because 2 bosses can attack one right after another. Dealing damage is fun, so let Melee have some fun, please. If you want to preserve 2 bosses specifically, make only one deal damage. Another should tank or support the other in some form, so you have to dodge only from attacks of one of those.