Trial of sekhema is really bad

They say its optional, but the option is to wait another 10 hours til you get to act three. So we're being punished for taking the "option" of not engaging with it. Zero stars.

Agree, to say it is "optional" is beside the point. The mechanics are just broken. The honor system needs to change. This is between an absolute tedium at best to just pure rage worst. Way too dependant on build / class / pure luck. So far I had a blast with the game, but this is simply no fun at all.

I play a melee monk, who has not suffered much in act 2. One shot most of the bosses with only some overturned content posing challenges (looking at you giant skeletons and evade/palm bugs that either don't get executed but do the animation or miss)

I second what others have said here. The trials are just terrible. Getting hit auto kills you cause of honor? Like your dmg has to then be insane as nothing can touch you even going potionless is meaningless. In some ways you just negated all builds minus glass cannon specs or rdps specs. Even if you ran a glass cannon mdps spec, then with the jankyness of the last boss hitbox and melee needing to be under him to slowly hack away at his giant health bar as he spams aoe attacks...you still probably dont win. Oops that big aoe clips you, minus 50 honor.like who tested this?

Can only second this.
Honor System is absolutly unfunny. Especially if you coop and both players lose the Trial because one of them got massive AOE honor damage from the Lavaboss. Also it punishes playing coop, as both players get honor damage if one gets hit. But it behaves really weird, as sometimes the players have different remaining honor. But ultimately all fail if the one with the lowest honor hits zero, sometimes because an other player with more remaining honor got hit.
For the sake of fun and playability just discard honour and make the trial again about staying alife so the game interacts with its core mechanics like life, armour and energy shield again.

Never played POE before. The early access for POE2 stream sold me on the game. It took me three tries for my ascendancy on mercenary. I beat the boss with 18 honor left. One of my favorite moments in gaming up there with beating Slave Night Gael in DS3. POE2 is not a solved game yet. This is the New World where so much in builds hasnt been discovered yet. I cant face roll after reading a wiki, just go with my gut. I love this feeling.

Just posting here to agree with the feedback above. The honor system is genuinely anti fun. It only rewards glass canon range builds and does not take in any defenses build. Just remove it and the content would be fine. The game (and especially the boss fights) are already slow, but having to doge every little thing is just exhausting and quite frankly rage inducing. I had fun with the challenge of the game so far but this is just unfair. Please make it fun to play.

Found it to not be quite as bad as I thought it would be initially. At least until I got to the boss. Feels like being melee you get punished. Had almost full honor the two times I got to it and managed to take it out on the second due to knowledge from the first fight. Even then though, while I was tanking the damage well enough, the honor draining sucks.

Funny thing is I explored well both runs and didn't find extra relics until the second run. Those things would be helpful if you're struggling with the rest of the trial.

Going to try to re-train myself to use a shield as a weapon swap to absorb some hits out right. I imagine shield blocks won't count towards honor lose but have to test to see. Not having issues with the rest of the game but may prove useful later on to get used to.

The only other issue I can think of at the moment is that Balba's callouts as the fight nears the end are distracting. The attack warnings could be useful at the beginning but, by that point you already know the wind-ups. May just be me.

I just can't wrap my head around how something as abominable as the "Trial of Sekhama" could even be conceived. I mean, okay, the "honor" system before the boss fight is tolerable, fine, but not being able to disable it during the boss fight? That’s just ridiculous. "Dying" to some random stuff falling from the sky is absolutely not fun. And respawning before the boss would’ve been bad enough, but making you redo everything? Seriously?

Ill add my voice to the rest. This doesnt feel fun/good at all. I loved the lab :c

The first trial was okay, but I doubt those saying it is okay, will continue saying that after trying to melee the duo boss from the second trial. It is impossible, I had +40% speed from boon, and still couldn't do it as warrior, the 2 bosses spamming skills like crazy I could barely hit it at all. If I didn't have the boon I would not be able to hit it at all.