Trial of Ascendancy & Honor

There are a few suggestions I would make for the first trial of ascendancy specifically.

One: Access to personal stash box at the end of each or every other stage. In PoE1, we have access to the stash just before each encounter with the boss fight in the trial; and I think this would be a good QOL addition that was somehow missed in PoE2.

Two: Not a fan of the honor system being added to the trials, however I do see the reasoning for its addition for the mechanics. However, when playing a melee class or otherwise low damage build (or lack thereof since we have no really solid builds yet this early), feels quite bad if discouraging to continue on, when finally making it to the end and having to fight a full on boss with what honor might be left. My suggestion would be, perhaps make the honor only apply to all the other parts of the trial, and be removed for when fighting the already difficult boss with its many mechanics. Primarily the multitude of volcanic eruptions that if they hit you, will drain honor... and if you can't do enough damage to melt the boss- you're screwed until you "get good" to say the least. Too many times I've been close to killing the boss, only to fail due to being unable to step anywhere without loosing honor, but still having full health and mana. This is incredibly frustrating to no end-

I thought about the honor System, and I had a much more complex solution: keep the honor System as is but Implement something like honor defense that scales with Health, Energy Shield, evasion, and armor.

For it to work best I feel that this defense should only be effective against the monsters in the trial and not the trial traps I think that should be full honor damage.

This system would allow for the same challenge as the honor System allows without disadvantaging more defensive / melee builds as these builds would have more of their natural defenses built in allowing them to complete the trial without substantially changing their build around.

Frankly they should just do away with honor entirely.

I think it isnt fun to deal with. It doesnt feel like its a fair challenge it feels like its simply just far too unfair to expect players to not get hit at all in a game with so much AOE and other kinds of things going on all at once.

No one I have talked to has enjoyed it. Everyone hates it and its making some of my friends question playing the game in the first place.

It also horribly counters melee classes since they have to be close to monsters and therefore take even more hits.

In my opinion honor should be restored on kills instead of based on RNG rewards if not removed entirely.

It simply is not a good mechanic and I really hope GGG listens to players about this because I think it severely impacts the game in a negative way.

Totally agree. Honor system is very bad, penalizing some classes\build more than others. I've a tanky warrior with regeneratior but is basically unusefull in trials.

The best solution for me is make the trial harder, but remove the honor system. It's not fun and adds nothing to the game.

But, if can't be removed, i've a suggestion for a total rework of honor system:

Honor scales with your life and armor. You become without honor. Killing enemies and completing tasks give you honor points, while taking damage will remove your honor points. At the end of the trial, if you end with positive honor, you'll gain a buff and if you have no honor you'll gain a debuff; OR you can choose some path only if you ended the previous one with enough honor.

From what I have experienced of the honor system so far, disrupting for only some characters. If it pertained only to trap damage, that would be far more appropriate as a Trial mechanic than it is now.

Currently, it just punishes melee for being melee and allows ranged characters to continue as normal.

I'd much rather see a mechanic that prevents people from ignoring or disregarding traps that "don't do that much damage".