Sanctum being mandatory...

Dear GGG,

as a guy who has roughly played poe1 for 10k hours since Perandus league, I must say that having Sanctum in the game as a mandatory mechanic to get ascendancy points is a heavy disappointment, if not the biggest one for me with poe2.

I have skipped Sanctum league after a few days, I have avoided Sanctum mechanic despite it being insanely profitable.

The game might be too hard, not too well balanced early, quite slow, has loot issues, backtracking is a nightmare, etc. - these are aspects I can adapt to, it is a new game after all. But I worry very much that Sanctum can not be easyly replaced by another game mechanic to get Ascendancy Points, if you will even ever have any intention of doing so.

Sanctum (Cruel) is very slow paced, very difficult, very boring and unrewarding in the process. Finally overcoming the early game and having a character that feels smooth, just to enter Sanctum and feel like shit again. Apart from Sanctum being Sanctum, it is completely overtuned at the moment with bullshit honor-drain.. The only good thing about Sanctum is: mapping feels ok-ish at the moment, but after 30 minutes in Sanctum for nothing - boy oh boy mapping feels amazing!
I'm playing a Grenadier and can't even imagine what builds that struggle a bit feel like in Sanctum and what hell I will go through with a weaker or melee character.

What was your plan here? Is there any statistic that indicated Sanctum (and Ultimatum in the same context) were so popular in poe1 that you had to make them mandatory to achieve maybe the most unique aspect of character progression in form of Ascendancy? Sanctum always was a very particular mechanic, that in my perception only a minority of the player base really enjoyed and played/abused for currency - it is mind-blowing that you made it a core part of character progression in poe2..

I can't see myself enjoying Sanctum in the future and I can't see myself playing the game on a regular and returning league basis, if I will never have a character that has more than 4 Ascendancy Points...

Please fix (:

I would say that if they just removed honour it would be okay, but the truth is that it wouldn't. The encounters in Sanctum are designed around it and it doesn't work for normal defenses. The boss in the first sanctum run is just pathetic and the only reason you'll ever lose is if you get tapped by some bs on the screen that puts you at 0 honour.

I suspect I'm not the target demographic for this game.

With boss Dodge-or-Die mechanics combined with Sanctum [Dodge-or-Die] mechanics as cornerstones of the design the game just isn't for me.

Sure I can get out of the way on some bosses no problem ... I can do some Sanctum rooms with no honor loss. If I get the wrong boss or wrong room though I'm not making it through without enough honor loss to brick the whole thing.

It's a shame as I was hoping that being ok in SSF Ruthless in PoE1 would be sufficient but the [over?] reliance on Dodge-or-Die isn't really my cup of tea.

YMMV

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

I would say that if they just removed honour it would be okay, but the truth is that it wouldn't. The encounters in Sanctum are designed around it and it doesn't work for normal defenses. The boss in the first sanctum run is just pathetic and the only reason you'll ever lose is if you get tapped by some bs on the screen that puts you at 0 honour.

This I would agree with. Remove honour from the whole thing makes it a trivial experience. Perhaps getting rid of honour at the end fight might be a thing but even then it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Seeing as how there are sort of [multiple mechanics] in play maybe letting players choose what type of test they want would work better??

I'd be happy enough to try a ToTA tournament, Utimatum [survive], a timed heist, or something else that would show I'm worthy of ascension ...

ToTA is by far the worst league ever I hope I never see it again

Can anyone tell me why removing honor and blocking potion use doesn't achieve the same thing?

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Haeleos#7806 wrote:

Can anyone tell me why removing honor and blocking potion use doesn't achieve the same thing?

Not that I like this system, I loathe it, but removing potions can be overcome by other game mechanics such as mana/life per second, leech, and increased pools of resources. Honor is independent of everything else in the game, so you cannot game the system beyond leveling to make killing things easier.

I never liked either Sanctum or Ultimatum in PoE1 so that makes acendacy quite annoying in PoE2, and the Ultimatum is even worse than Sanctuary cos you get stuck in a very limited Arena with lots of mobs, and basic mobs in PoE2 is bad enough when they come zerg you, and since mob hp is tuned so high, it will be hard to kite and kill stuff once you have some Ultimatum debuffs going.

I personally do not even understand it as you just negate a bunch of builds and or force a very specific type of gameplay.

I rather play against a harder bosses with buffs/debuffs vs. Worrying about dying due to lack of honor on a tank spec that can eat attacks at times.

Honor is just terrible. Never played poe1 with it. Super happy I missed it as it's garbage

Trial of coward need a rework. It's so ironic that you need to play like a coward to pass it instead of taking risk and challenge.

Why not have a fountain to refill every room with increase the base cost?
Why not add something like gain honor on armor break or stun as melee work around this?
Why not dmg honor on specific attack that design for this league specially, like those serpent attack, instead of random aoe and rng everywhere?
Why not reward player with honor when they choose to take afflict?
Why not ... I don't know ... think something else that it is fun to do for most build!?