Honor mechanic for the ascension trial is... kind of really hateful.

It is legit actually just punishing melee players for existing, I felt the exact same way, like they actually hate the player, especially since this is mandatory to get your ascension class. Paired with the giant boss collision boxes, player/effect hit boxes causing you to get hit by attacks you're not standing in, it's just really really bad.

They went for dark souls gameplay and then it's like they forgot that requires extremely precise hit and collision boxes, and it's downright sloppy work right now.

Sanctum was the only mechanic in PoE 1 that made me quit a league before reaching maps because I took note very quickly that it wanted me to play a very specific build to do well in it, and I wasn't willing to do so. From what I've noticed from PoE 1, people usually either loved Sanctum or hated its guts and there wasn't much inbetween. Idk why they would take such a polarizing mechanic that hates builds with low range that tank hits and use that as the first ascension mechanic you're introduced to. The dodge roll helps, but it hardly fixes the issue. The honor/resolve mechanic is flaming garbage.

I sincerely hope that when the 3rd option is introduced I never have to play Sanctum/ToS again.

The honour mechanic, might have worked had it been a room curse for trap intense rooms, not something for kill x mobs rooms or the entire damn place.

Playing melee and safe to say, just engaging the first pack of enemy put my honour at half.

I very much hope GGG takes this into consideration. I love your ideas about defining what honour is to your character to essentially create a still challenging but fair trial. This trial is just really, really nasty in its current form.

Honour is a shockingly terrible mechanic. Why not just make the trials actually difficult using the existing game mechanics that are already fun? The boss fight isn't even remotely difficult as a fight, but if you get hit three times you lose all your honour. Why would I want to do that? The real boss fights in the game are great.

Best way to handle them is to do them when youre 3-6 levels over the area. It's just too risky doing at the same level.

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just_dont#6539 wrote:

The trial is indeed extremely anti-melee.
You might have enough staying power to facetank the boss, and in fact it's quite easy to reach that threshold. Yet the honor system means you can at most take 1-2 big hits or a few small ones.

As a warrior, I had to outlevel the boss by quite a lot before the fight was reasonably manageable. My initial tries ended up with the boss slowly chipping away honor meter here and there, and while I didn't take any big hits, still the meter drained away a lot faster than his hp (which he has quite a lot of).

I would understand if the boss would be some "highly technical" one with clear hit zones and big damages, but no, its main source of damage (to the honor meter) is the fissure spam and falling rocks spam.

And the fissures take FOREVER to disappear and the warning that rocks will start to fall is very hard to see. If the fissures were damageable and you could destroy them, I would understand, but when they last forever, accumulate and you have no way to remove them.
Those rock falling warnings also need to be a lot clearer. At least as clear as the Act 1 boss cold lasers.

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Nkeyo#1276 wrote:

Sanctum was the only mechanic in PoE 1 that made me quit a league before reaching maps because I took note very quickly that it wanted me to play a very specific build to do well in it, and I wasn't willing to do so. From what I've noticed from PoE 1, people usually either loved Sanctum or hated its guts and there wasn't much inbetween. Idk why they would take such a polarizing mechanic that hates builds with low range that tank hits and use that as the first ascension mechanic you're introduced to. The dodge roll helps, but it hardly fixes the issue. The honor/resolve mechanic is flaming garbage.

I sincerely hope that when the 3rd option is introduced I never have to play Sanctum/ToS again.

I can see why some people could like this and kind of what devs were going for, which is why my suggestion focused more on what could be changed instead of just complaining to remove it. I just think their execution makes it very hateful, specially for tank builds.

I believe just being allowed to choose like that, where people who like sanctum can just pick that as their honor option, would be fair and actually fun.

They could even add an option for no way to gain honor in exchange for an increased reward at the end.

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mrfox123#7595 wrote:

The honour mechanic, might have worked had it been a room curse for trap intense rooms, not something for kill x mobs rooms or the entire damn place.

Playing melee and safe to say, just engaging the first pack of enemy put my honour at half.

I wholely agree to that.
If it was a room challenge or a curse, it would make a LOT more sense.

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River_C#4529 wrote:

I very much hope GGG takes this into consideration. I love your ideas about defining what honour is to your character to essentially create a still challenging but fair trial. This trial is just really, really nasty in its current form.

Your comment legitimately made me smile. Thank you.
Funny enough. This whole idea started when I was thinking of that one Mulan scene after losing to the boss when I got him to half health, having arrived with around 90 honor because a rock I didn't see fell on my head after very little chipping from the vulcanos.


It got me thinking "this is not even what I would consider "honor" and thinking how I would even begin to do this trial with my full tank warrior with a health regen build. Then I started it from there.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention this here, but I also made this same discussion on Reddit if any of you would prefer to discuss this over there.

Since I linked the conversation there over here, it is only fair that I also link the conversation here over there, since there are a few more comments over there as well.

I don't mind the honour mechanic. Disclaimer, I was a POE1 sanctum enjoyer
That said, some of the rare monsters projectile abilities need to be toned down slightly and the honour drain amount tuned for some of those rapid multi-hitting abilities (e.g. lightning storm).

Ascendancies as implemented today is incredibly poorly designed.
The fact that it rewards certain builds massively and punishes other just as much is horrible.
Add a huge level of luck and randomness, and you've to the worst implementation I've seen.
It's abysmal.

They need to completely overhaul this.
They can't do ascendancies in game mode which massively profits running specialized builds for them! It literally discourages build diversity.

My suggestion?
Stop these trials and award ascendency points as you progress in the campaign for now.
2 in act 2, 2 in act 3, 2 in act 4 and the last 2 in act 5 or 6.

Until they solve things, make it easily accessible for everyone -after all they want to test as many builds in EA as possible. If so, stop bottlenecking it.