Ascendancy is beyond cancer now

When people complained about not wanting to do trials of ascendancies, what in your brains broke to make you think that meant to put them behind an even more cancerous and difficult mechanic? Sanctum is BY FAR the worst league mechanic you have EVER made. The "honor" completely stupid, it completely removes major layers of defense that players use, like recovery, leech, armor and a massive health pool in general. The game is already INSANELY hard, the mobs are ridiculously tanky, and gear is scarce. And then you add in the most difficult mechanic and make it MANDATORY on top of that? And Ultimatum is right there with it. I have over 6000 hours in POE 1 and I am thinking about uninstalling POE 2 right now JUST because of this.

Fix sanctum by removing that STUPID honor mechanic. It would be that easy. In addition, whoever made sanctum, don't EVER use another idea of theirs. EVER.

The honor-bar is obviously designed to make a difficult ascendancy that can be done in hardcore, so you don't die when you don't complete it... otherwise it's very hard to make it difficult but usable in hardcore.

I agree with Op completely,Sanctum is BY FAR the worst league mechanic you have EVER made.Followed closely by Ultimatum!.
I avoided those mechanics like a plague in POE1 and now I'm forced to do it!.
Its even worse as a melee build, I'm level 30 attempting to get my ascendancy.
It should be easier to get it now I'm 8 levels higher then zone level,
I've failed at least 20 times now.
The honor system sucks! It has always sucked!.
Even on my best run I'm barely making it to the boss room with 150 honor.
Its enough to make me want to rage quit!.
Please for the love of god GGG change the Trails!.
And before any one says to GET GOOD, I'm an average player I'll never be good.
If GGG want to keep new average players the Trials NEED to change!.

Honestly, after a few tries I learned to appreciate it more.

It's still very anti-melee, but otherwise it's not as bad as it seems.

1) Your max hp determine your max honor, so this part of your build is in fact counted.

2) Your resistances/armor reduce the damage to honor you're getting, so this part of your build is counted too.

3) The only part that's decidely NOT counted is your regen/life leech. This could be added: let the player regen just a little honor (in very low amounts) on dealing damage to mobs (excluding portal mobs) based on his combined regen stats -how much life leech and passive life regen he has.

That's to say, sanctum trials are already cheesable by portal mobs, you can farm sacred water off those endlessly. This honestly should be patched out.

Sanctum is fun in POE1 when you're a zoomy hexblaster. Every sanctum runner buying tomes is a trickster or occultist, maybe the occasional hiero penance brand.

In POE2, these mechanics make no sense for basic ascendancy points. You should feel like you earn your player power but this is torture for melee enjoyers.

So many "FU" moments like haha, thanks for clearing the trap and coming this way, but wrong direction bro do the trap all over again. Or, tsck tsck tsck, you didn't reveal the minimap properly like a good boy, now run backtrack and find the death crystal in 10 secs or die.

I will never go back there again, even for 3rd or 4th points.

Honour as some sort of bonus feature would make a lot of sense, like if the end gave out rewards but yea every defensive point on your tree is a wasted point when honour exists.

I got to the end of the path taking no damage to my life through the entire trail and my honour was on half when i got to the boss, which makes no sense, why am I penalised for using my energy shield???????

An actual fitting mechanic would be not getting charges for potions, the whole "this desert is cursed without water" theme would fit, do you make it to the boss with all your potions, cool you probably are fine....or do you end up using them just to reach it.

There defensive builds suddenly have a huge advantage and there's a limited resource mechanic that puts pressure on the player to play optimally while fitting with the theme of the zone.

Also what's honourable about fleeing from all damage and avoiding danger as much as possible?

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KuroSF#6521 wrote:

The honor-bar is obviously designed to make a difficult ascendancy that can be done in hardcore, so you don't die when you don't complete it... otherwise it's very hard to make it difficult but usable in hardcore.

Someone hasn't been in the Trial of Chaos yet...

At release there will be *three* options for ascending... and you can pick and choose which one you want to do... so nobody is being forced to do Sanctum.

I found the Sekhemas trial took about three tries to learn and then it was pretty easy... The hardest part (especially for melee) is not being hit by the boss circle AOE.

I think most melee players who are struggling don't understand how to use (abuse) the boss stagger mechanics..

Watch this video below about a Monk/Freeze build for where he fights a boss. I know this player is later in the game, but you can do something pretty similar to this earlier as well. This video almost looks like POE1 gameplay, people just need to understand they are not building well. WOrk harder on the build or wait for guides.

This Build Goes SUPER FAST And FREEZES EVERYTHING!! - Ice Strike Invoker Build Update - YouTube

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KuroSF#6521 wrote:

At release there will be *three* options for ascending... and you can pick and choose which one you want to do... so nobody is being forced to do Sanctum.

I found the Sekhemas trial took about three tries to learn and then it was pretty easy... The hardest part (especially for melee) is not being hit by the boss circle AOE.

I think most melee players who are struggling don't understand how to use (abuse) the boss stagger mechanics..

This Build Goes SUPER FAST And FREEZES EVERYTHING!! - Ice Strike Invoker Build Update - YouTube

Sekhemas is pretty easy once you've seen the trials once.
I'm playing a minion witch, and all I need to do vs the boss is walk in circles, the minions will melt the boss in no time.

This is my build if you're curious, written guide as a pinned comment:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl5SyQgLtRk

Just ascendancy?

The whole new game you mean?