Honor System

The honor system for relics just does not feel good. Especially on a melee style character. You get severely punished for making a close up build since there is no way to really replenish honor. And thats before being in Co-op. I was trying to help my buddy get his ascension and maybe halfway through the second or third run we realized that any hit I took was also being dealt to him as the host. So not only does it punish a melee build, but it also punishes wanting to play in co-op. These direly need fixed, especially since it is needed to do ascension. If there was a way to recover honor after so many kills or by killing uncommon and rare enemies, it might not feel as bad for that. And as for the co-op, it should at minimum separate the two pools of honor for characters. Another way to do it could be a shared pool, but an average of the amount. It just makes it way more difficult than it needs to be.

For some info, I had 900 honor and my buddy had 700ish(kept fluctuating between runs for some reason), while I have around 70% armor and he was evasion/energy shield. I'm running a Titan while he has a Monk.

100% agree. its the worst mechanic and its the only think stoping me to progress ACT 2 , its just annoing to deal with esplecialy on mele

The honor system needs to go or it needs a rework. It's absolutely infuriating. If GGG wants to keep the honor system, give us a way to regain it when fighting enemies, not just from certain room rewards. Room rewards should be focused on actual rewards, not compensating for a bad mechanic. If getting hit causes me to lose honor, then hitting enemies should cause me to gain honor. The way it is now is way too unfair for melee and anyone not investing heavily in evasion.

There are multiple ways to replenish honor within Sekhemas.


If you are playing Co-op then you are taking on extra difficulty. Zones designed for one person, scaling can only be so lenient before it becomes unfair to have multiple people in a zone.


Get your honor resistance up and youll be fine.

Doesn't the fact that honor can be trivialized with honor resist and max honor, also indicate how bad the design is?

I would rather that honor doesn't make you fail, and it can't be trivialized in anyway, but it gives you very good rewards afterward.

I feel that's a much better design as a gameplay mechanic, as entertainment, as opposed to the current design where it only serves to annoy and frustrate initially then becomes irrelevant.

An mandatory honor ascension is a very weird decision. What if you do a thorn build of health Regen tank build ? They force you into some meta builds and in a way, destroy the essence of experimenting that was fun in Poe 1.

I want to voice my frustration of the honor system. I just want to have a good time. This doesn't provide a good time... I wonder how many more attempts of ascension 3 before I just say F it...

my advice for that is, do some runs, keep relics with honor res and max honor, and u'll see that it'll start to become easier and easier

I got so irritated by the Sanctum Trial, I made a ranged character and progressed it to almost lvl 50, simply so I could have a character who could solo that Trial even WITH having others in group. That way, whenever my friends want to create a new character, or try the game, I can walk them through that first Trial with basically zero chance of failure.

It's ridiculously dumb that they chose Sanctum (and even Ultimatum) as Trials for Ascendancy. It isn't that I don't understand it, or 'skill issue/git gud': I aced it with my ranged character first try, with ZERO relics. I think I even finished with 90%+ honour. (and, why, on a GGG site, is 'honour' red-underline??)

I, not only understand but... I know Sanctum so well, that I know exactly what kinds of builds do BEST at it, and know which ones SUCK at it. That's how I knew what to make so as to so easily walk my friends through it. I know THEY might not want to play a Sanctum-Build... and, I can't fault them for that. The character I'm maining isn't technically Sanctum-Friendly. However, it is currently a meta-build and, honestly, deserving of being nerfed lol

So, IT made it through with almost zero issues, using honour-resistance relics.

Problem: If this is your first time through, or even 2nd or 3rd... you probably don't have a healthy collection of relics, and the ones you do probably don't have honour-resistance. Even WITH the change to honour for melees, it's not enough. Melee builds are designed to be able to take hits, it's just the way they ARE. They have various methods of recoup for life built in. Recoup, Regen, Leech, etc.

But, there's no way to do that with honour! Reducing honour penalties for being hit has very little effect honestly.

Personally, I think they should play around with limited forms of regaining honour based on life-regain methods. Like, maybe start testing with 50%. So, if you use a life flask, 50% effectiveness for honour. If you leech 6% of damage, you only leech 3% for honour? Etc.

If that turns out to be too much, then tone it down. Eventually find a nice balance. But, play INTO the way melees work instead of trying to slap a band-aid on it with reduced honour LOSS. It isn't LOSING honour, so much as NOT BEING ABLE TO REGAIN.

Melee builds don't build off of reducing loss of life alone (which already applies in Sanctum, as defenses are already applied for mitigation)... they work off of 'regaining lost life' after that mitigation. Cutting THAT out is what kills melee builds in Sanctum.

So, figure out the proper balance for that.

What gets me is you have honor and HP and can die from HP death while at full honor.