Hot (?) Take. Trials of Sekhema is one of the best parts of the game.

I kinda agree. Initially I thought it was worse than sanctum but the more I play it the more it becomes my favorite part of the game.

I have completely given up mapping and I only run trials now.

It can be a fun game mode for getting rewards and such, but if you are targeting ascension and you do a few floors and lose an hour of progress...that is an absolute no-no.

If you want to generate the same satisfaction as dark souls, you let people do the trial with the ability to check-point on each floor, you can even keep the honor system to make it more rewarding. So if you fail a floor, you are given the option to restart from that floor with all your honor.

Dark souls refills your health and lets you attempt bosses over and over again. You get back to the content you actually failed to try again with what you've learned.

The trials slap you across the face, laugh at your lost hour of progress, and put you back at the beginning to have to slog through the same stuff you've already slogged through many times instead of letting you tackle the specific challenge you failed.

They should have a quest line that goes through trials level 28,30,32,34,36,38 so on before letting you do your 3rd ascension. Because if you have used like 2 more djinns to open trials before your 3rd ascension trial you likely have close to BiS relics. And at that state, the luck with buffs and debuffs merely makes the difficulty wobble abit instead determining your whole fate.

Just ran it again. Easily one of the worst pieces of video game design that I've ever encountered. It feels like it was intentionally designed to be as annoying as possible. Just baffling that it was ever even considered for inclusion. I can pretty much guarantee that the Trial of the Sekhema is currently the #1 factor that's making people quit the game. It's the reason I decided to finish the entire campaign on my melee merc without ascending, which wasn't even hard. The Trial of Chaos is actually rewarding, and performance is based on the actual strength of your character and how good you are at playing the actual game, not how much time you decide to dedicate to minigames that are unrelated to the rest of the game. Release the Trials of the Sekhema as the standalone mobile game it desperately wants to be and let the rest of us play Path of Exile 2 please.

I think the mode is fine, provided a few more tweaks are made to various RNG elements and/or what is or is not a minor/major boon/drawback (I believe no ES is a minor... wonder if the same designer who came up with Archmage's numbers is responsible for that decision as well) and even more is done to make it melee viable, like letting melee hits in melee range (none of this not really melee monk stuff, including the bell) generate honour.

But I don't think ascendancy points, beyond having to do it once to pick your ascendancy, should be tied to the trials. That's what leads to 95% of the backlash against it... people being forced to do content they don't like, that is against any type of tanking build, and the best advice people have for those people is to run the mode they don't like more. Free points 3-8 from the trials, though...

Sekhemas is really good for farming as well in ssf

It breaks up mapping too as it can get pretty boring

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MadSheo#0280 wrote:

Every run feels quite different depending on your boons/afflictions and map choices. Bosses actually feel like bosses and its hard to beat them. Puzzles, combat, random things.

The randomization is its best aspect, and I also find it fun (I like roguelikes/lites). This is not the problem. The problem is the trial is not balanced across different builds (it favors build that don't get hit, or can play extremely safe), and it is required content, or you never get your subclass points.

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MadSheo#0280 wrote:

You are not guaranteed to get your subclass, it is an achievement.

I hate this mindset with a fire that burns like a thousand suns. Subclass are, usually, build-defining, and a core aspect of your character. They should NOT, by ANY means, EEEEEEEEVER, be gated by achievement levels of difficulty. The game should ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS be scaled so that EVERY character can get all 8 points. This is as simple as adding special conditions to the first time you run a tier of trial for points to make them easier to access (or just lowering the overall difficulty), like say honour not being a thing when you're going for your ascendancy (My first character was an armor mace character and they could NOT do it, because it's a build that just sucks for Sanctum-style content).

TL;DR: There is nothing in the games, even the bad RNG of endgame, as bad as ascendancy points being gated behind trials that disfavour certain builds.

I wouldn't mind if they keep it in the game for all of those who enjoy it, but it was a particularly bad choice as ascendancy trial and should either be replaced by something else or modified so that it's no longer RNG or build-dependent if you are able to pass it.

Whoever invented this Bullshit and put necessary Skillpoints behind it, should be fired asap.

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ImpureHero#5990 wrote:

I kinda agree. Initially I thought it was worse than sanctum but the more I play it the more it becomes my favorite part of the game.

I have completely given up mapping and I only run trials now.

Where are you getting the infinite djinns from?