3rd ascendancy trial is a bad joke - RNG+horrid balance=waste of time

Is this a challenge? Is this fun? Id say its just a painful waste of time.
You can get one bad room and its over. Or get a mob that deals 2k honour dmg with a small orb that you cant see at all in the visual clutter.
Would be bad enough already even if you could reuse the entry item, but no, you cant. The fact that you lose the item and you had to redo the whole run with all levels for every single attempt is just not worth it.

Essentially its just a grind that isnt rewarding at all, as its not about gear, not about skill, its just rng. And every roll with the dice costs you hours of your time.

I have a well put together build at lv 76 with brutal dmg, decent amount of hp, high resistances and all, i can go through the whole thing with barely taking any dmg, and then 2 rooms before the 3rd boss one rare mob oneshots me with something that i didnt even see from the visual clutter of my own skills with the horrid performance drops that are even happening on a 4080Super 7800X3D build for some reason.

In another run my rng was so bad with all the afflictions, that it was basically undoable. My friend also ended up with 1HP - without his energy shield due to bad rng at the start of the 3rd level. FUN!

I know that we are literally testing the game now, thats why im giving my feedback. This cant stay as it is. If somewhat "hardcore" players with well put together builds are struggling with it and hating it that means something. Either make it a lot easier, or make it in a way that its enough to do one level once, you dont need to fully restart it. You can even make the bosses harder, that would be a challenge and fun, cause at this moment they are jokes. They could barely touch me even before, and in my last run i nuked the 2nd levels duo bosses in 15 seconds.
Make it in a way that there are checkpoints, you can retry an infinite amount of times, but all the things you got, boons and afflictions stay, so you cant just gamble with the rng, you need to overcome your personal challenge. Make them reset once a week or something. Or make it that you can reset it with a new entry item.

Before ive seen a lot of people complaining about the difficulty of the game everywhere on every level, i was sure its clearly a skill issue - and honestly it was in most cases, but well, everyone who complained about the 3rd and 4th ascendancies were right. Id rather do another naked bonk build run of dark souls or dark souls 3 than do this. Thats fun, this isnt. You cant "outskill it", maybe you can outgear it(?), but you mostly need to gamble your way through it. It could be changed to be fun. To be a memorable challenge that you will overcome with a sense of achievement. This way you will just feel relieved that its over.

Im not a poe veteran, maybe some of you guys like this, i dont know. The friends that im playing with all have played poe for many years and they hate it too, they struggle even more than i do.

Unfortunately, I don't think GGG cares about the hundreds of complaints towards the Trials.

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HwtChirino#2462 wrote:

Unfortunately, I don't think GGG cares about the hundreds of complaints towards the Trials.

Actually, I think they're in the process of responding. It's a big fix. Give them time.

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t0lkien#7048 wrote:

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HwtChirino#2462 wrote:

Unfortunately, I don't think GGG cares about the hundreds of complaints towards the Trials.

Actually, I think they're in the process of responding. It's a big fix. Give them time.

At this point they should just finish coding the third option to ascend and delete Ultimatum and Sanctum forever from the game

As a new player to POE I have to be honest that I don't even understand what I'm supposed to be doing.
I've ascended and have 4 skill points.
Some items in my inventory tell me to do trials and I get more points. I've done them and I don't.
Those same items change to say I don't get more points. Is this a bug? Have I out leveled that gem?
Then in the trial itself, I completely agree. It's random.
I can do all the content without taking a single honor loss until a point that BOOM something hits me and lost it all.
An hour down the drain plus time to get a new entrance gem. Plus the fact I don't even know if I will get points when I'm finished because it's not clear.

There are specific thresholds that give the extra points and it says so on the entry item.

For Sekhema it has to be a level 60 item with 3 levels. All items below that will not grant more ascendency points.

For Chaos it's level 70 and 10 trials.

They will respond with Adding 5th Floor of Sekhema and 5 more Ultimatum Trials probably.

I never did Sanctum before until Poe 2 release and make me do this garbage system of honor in this trials. Horrible system and punishing you with you must be past this for get 2 points of ascendancies... very bad idea from GGG

yeah 3rd, right.

I'm not even going to attempt or ever think about doing 4th ascendancy, and i've angrily completed the 3rd.

I'd be fine with Sanctum if this were an offline game (and maybe better character responsiveness). Alas, it is not, and thus it shall always be hated. If I can't 100% rely on my character to do what I want it to do, then I will not accept that this is a core mechanic needed for a central mechanic necessary for character development.