4th ascendancy trial is ridiculous

I know third and fourth are placeholders for unreleased content, but goddamn.

I just finished 10 waves ultimatum on lvl 80, that was supposed to give ascendancy point. All that I got is a fragment of victorious, 1 out of 3 fragments you need to unlock the door.

Where trialmaster resides. So, not only I need to farm ultimatum keys, then to complete a dozen of those trials to get all the parts, then to open the door to a boss that is probably much harder than previous content that can one shot you, and you have only one frigging chance at killing him and learning all the mechanincs. Or rinse and repeat again.


On another hand you have sekhmesis trials, which take at the least around 30 minuters to get to the final boss, who is suprsisingly much stronger than all of the existing content in trials. The trials are not only long they are convoluted and rnged. A lot depends on your luck getting certain boons or avoiding certain debuffs, as well as some random bs that can just ruin the run.

Yup.. it's bullshit

Let me upvote a hundred times :D

Did the 4th ascendancy via Sanctum earlier. Died the first run to the last boss as I didn't know the 1 major mechanic, went back in and proceeded to crush it with ease.

Anyone saying Sanctum is difficult clearly aren't using relics for honor resistance. Which is the major problem, in that most people and especially new players don't realize how important that is to acquire, whether you farm it yourself or buy some off trade.


Now do I think you can get RNG screwed? Absolutely. But on the whole it's not as brutal as everyone is clamoring on about.

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Seanprice798#2395 wrote:

Did the 4th ascendancy via Sanctum earlier. Died the first run to the last boss as I didn't know the 1 major mechanic, went back in and proceeded to crush it with ease.

Anyone saying Sanctum is difficult clearly aren't using relics for honor resistance. Which is the major problem, in that most people and especially new players don't realize how important that is to acquire, whether you farm it yourself or buy some off trade.


Now do I think you can get RNG screwed? Absolutely. But on the whole it's not as brutal as everyone is clamoring on about.

But it is a niche game mechanic, not everybody, especially former poe1 players that know it already and hate it, want to interact with it. And the alternative, Ultimatum, is so overtuned, it is not even funny. Just plain bad game design, a real shame.

Sekhema is not bad game design, i am aware that there are sanctum fans out there, good for you that you are able to get your ascendancy. But Ultimatum fans, yuk ,those were unkillable afk builds in poe1, not a single player likes overtuned Ultimatum, it is plain garbage...So you are stuck with sanctum even though you hate it, thats how i feel and this jsut doesn't seem right.

Lab haters just hated it because it was inconvinient, not because they couldn't get their ascendency

Trials need to be removed for ascending, you sanctum fans can get your giga loot from it, i am fine with that.

I'm not too happy with the fact that you need to farm the fragments to get 1 try at the trialmaster fight to get your final ascendancy either. A potential solution would be to make the first fragments that your character receives drop as quest-items which won't be consumed when attempting the trialmaster.

That way you'd still need to farm your 3 fragments in the Trial of Chaos and pass 10 waves to attempt the trialmaster but at least you don't need to spend an absurd amount of either time or currency on the fragments.

Also, the difficulty spike from wave 10 to the trialmaster is ridiculous. While obliterating every boss encounter during the waves I merely tickle the trialmaster and then get 1-shot because I'm old and slow I guess lol.

And yeah, definitely skill issue on my end, ngl. But if GGG wants PoE 2 to be hard and punishing and souls-like please let me attempt the fights back-to-back or at least semi-back-to-back by having to complete 10 waves each try.

As a comparison: It's not like you can't retry bosses in Dark Souls either, where it's very likely you'll die on your first attempts as well. Depending on which game you may have an annoying walk back to the boss-room but you don't have the RNG on finding the correct keys in lenghty grinding sessions first to get another try at the boss.

Tl;dr: Make the first set of fragments your character receives be re-usable quest items so you can attempt the trial-master indefinitely (either after completing 10 waves or right after failing). After you've found the first complete set of 3 fragments the ones that drop afterwards will be non-quest-items just the way they are now.

You may want to check in your PoE 1 priviledge at the door.

I was disappointed too, when I only got a 1-of-3 key after my run. But I've come to terms with the fact that the 4th ascendancy is a reward for endgame grind, not a "guaranteed" thing like it was in PoE 1.

I think what's more egregious is that the third ascendancy is gated by lvl 60+ Sekhemas but lvl 75+ Chaos. I don't understand why this disparity exists.

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Seanprice798#2395 wrote:

Did the 4th ascendancy via Sanctum earlier. Died the first run to the last boss as I didn't know the 1 major mechanic, went back in and proceeded to crush it with ease.

Anyone saying Sanctum is difficult clearly aren't using relics for honor resistance. Which is the major problem, in that most people and especially new players don't realize how important that is to acquire, whether you farm it yourself or buy some off trade.


Now do I think you can get RNG screwed? Absolutely. But on the whole it's not as brutal as everyone is clamoring on about.

RNG should play not be playing a factor in your ascension trial. I shouldn’t need to pray that the boss doesn’t spawn the orbs too far apart for my movement speed.

Trialmaster fight was at least fairly deterministic except for the terrible grind to unlock his fight.

Used to be a long and challenging thing in PoE1 as well.

Its the last big power boost for your character its supposed to be challenging and take some time...

You can buy fragments or completion from other players if you really don't want to do it.

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Ankh_13#4218 wrote:

You may want to check in your PoE 1 priviledge at the door.

I was disappointed too, when I only got a 1-of-3 key after my run. But I've come to terms with the fact that the 4th ascendancy is a reward for endgame grind, not a "guaranteed" thing like it was in PoE 1.

I think what's more egregious is that the third ascendancy is gated by lvl 60+ Sekhemas but lvl 75+ Chaos. I don't understand why this disparity exists.

Fine with that explanation. However Trialmaster felt way too overtuned for me comparing to 8/8 expedition boss and Xoph. I only farmed fragments for one try though and got oneshotted. There is no endgamecontent to come besides citadel but I only saw one anyways. So now, being lvl 94, I don't see any reason to motivate me into Ultimatum again. So even if it would be an endgame thing it should not be harder to achieve than the mentioned first version of the fights.