Ascendancy is not fun.

I don't understand the thinking and reasoning behind punishing all the players that do not like Sanctum or Ultimatum to Ascend. While I think Sanctum and Ultimatum are fine mechanics on their own, I think it is not fun to lock Ascendancy behind league mechanics. I'd rather run the Lab again than do this to ascend.

Locking players out of ascendancy because they can only get hit a certain amount of times is stupid. Way to punish players.

The idea of getting ascendancy through such punishing mechanics is truly frustrating.

On top of that, the drop rate for the ascendancy item in Act 2 is extremely low! I’m already at the end of Act 3, and I still haven’t been able to go back to Act 2 to complete the quest there.

agreed, i don't understand the reasoning behind this other then they asked themselves how to make the game as slow as tedious as possible and just did all the things to push the game that direction. From ruthless pitiful amounts of loot and large tedious maps, all the way to ascendency. And why have to click the well to get your potions filled when you used to be fine just going back to the town. it's all these little things put everywhere to make the game feel extremely tedious and slow. To think we will have to do this all over again with leagues. Already losing interest fast, pushing through cause EA and hope that maps are better but im being told their just as bad.

I gotta say i really think there are a lot of fun things in PoE2 and I can even enjoy scarcity. And on replaying the campaign right now even the percieved difficulty of bosses and mobs really was a skill issue.

However. Both these ascendency options right now are absolutely unfair.

By unfair I mean:

RNG based bricked runs
Trials of the Sekhema (Sanctum) can be "ok" and "planned ahead" especially if you get a relic that lets you see further. However without a relic, chances are that you just run into a downside you can't deal with.
Trials of Chaos (Ultimatum) has you chose between "regular" difficulty modifiers and those god-awful special ones that remind me of T17 mods I never roll (hurrr durr petrification statues). And depending on your build some mods aren't even a choice.

Out of context mechanics
Both these mechanics (Sanctum+Ultimatum) were designed in an entirely different environment in PoE1 and the way they were ported to PoE2 has some inherit design flaws that make them unfair.
Sanctum is rogue-lite inspired and you are kinda meant to fail and get relics to get through. Also the new monsters that were chucked in there sometimes just completly multi-hit you from 100-0 honour.
Ultimatum was meant to be a risk vs reward choice where you see the mods and you stop when it becomes too much, taking what you had. Additionally the boss (Trialmaster) was rare and pretty much only done by specialized characters for a reason (some mods like %max hp as ES just make a unique boss sudo-unkillable)

lastly
League mechanic VS Ascension
The slight difference between these two is that one requires a specialized and fully working build to "properly" attempt it, while the other one is supposed to be a part of providing exactly that.
Additionally some builds or archetypes just aren't really good at either of them *cough* melee *cough* (at least not without actually having a "build" online)



So everything about the current state just feels really bad and I'm not even taking a bunch of other issues into account (scarcity of entry tokens, delaying your ascension to get another "option" etc.)

I really really really hope the last option GGG is cooking up is my good ol lab. A bunch of people didn't like it in PoE 1, but at least it always felt fair. You go in, you don't stand in traps, you don't touch freezing strongboxes and you hug Izaros butt until he gives up.

Sorry for the long rant, but hey I hope its at least somewhat productive in highlighting the actual issue at hand and why just nerfing these trials won't really do too much.

PS: Love you GGG, love PoE 2 and love the fishing minigame in Act3.

My character feels awesome in the rest of the game, but high health and regen is totally useless in the trial of sekhemas. That's a huge part of the build. A rare enemy that slows and poisons is a non-issue in the actual game because I can easily just smash and outheal it. In the trial it's a run ender. Feels like a totally different game that I don't want to play. Without honour, the trials would be so easy and boring you could do them with your eyes closed. With honour they're arbitrarily infuriating. Blows my mind that such terrible design was allowed in a game that's otherwise so good. It almost feels like intentional sabotage.

these are easy though.. what the.. i hated both of these in poe 1 and i found them fine to do. pick all the shrine ones for sanctum and you'll always have full honor lol

It's literally the worst idea that GGG has ever had.

Unreal how this was allowed.

On paper it sounds neat, but in reality I'd rather just get a root canal.

Sanctum and Ultimatum literally the 3 worst mechanics in poe that i avoided like the plague, I would have liked to see an actual lab 2.0 but this is just different i guess, have to get gud

Agree with all of the above. In addition it’s so weird how they made the progression like you don’t really know how to get your second, third and fourth points. You need to do the increased difficulty trials but barely anyone knows how, when or where you get the keys for those.

+1

I honestly would've enjoyed a lab 2.0 instead of Sanctum.

At a minimum they should just get rid of the honour health bar once you make it to the final boss and say "okay you dodged your brains out for 10 rooms, now just don't die to the boss."