Find a new way to ascend

You need to come up with a better way to ascend, really.
Is it you intention that most people will need to be 15-20 level above monster level to complete the trial ?
Personally i have never liked sanctum, but i could always skip it, no big deal. Not so here.
Ultimatum you could always just step outside the circle or chose a reward if the combinations of bad choices became to absurd. Not so here.
I have not even attempted the third trial yet, and i am dreading it.
You take the joy out of playing with this. Its way way to punishing, and in comparison to how interesting it is, it does not come close to Izaros maze, not by a mile.
Please, pleeeeease come up with another way.

Agreed

I'd love a horde mode.

I personally don't like Lab in poe1, but... Make Izaro great again, PLEASE!

1000% this. Look at the poe1 ascendancy process and start there, don't change things that aren't broken. The first three are infinitely retriable easy activities completed during the campaign, and the fourth is a slightly harder check tuned for mid-ish maps. Not saying porting lab into poe2 is the answer, but it's clear something went wrong with the game from a fundamental design philosophy perspective for us to get to this point.

Honestly that advice applies to so much in poe2: don't recreate mistakes that poe1 solved years ago, learn from the last decade you spent making one of the best ARPGs out there and build off of it. To put it another way, "Allow your wisdom to be tempered by the flames of the past." - some dork with a ghost on his back, idk