The fundamental issue with Trial of the Sekhema

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Darny_Nashon#1779 wrote:

Here's the kicker.

It's not fun. In fact in my opinion it's Lame. In poe1 the 2 leagues mechanics that i disabled right away were Ultimation and Sanctum

You can’t disable sanctum …

They drop as items

I've been playing trials of Sekhema a bit in the last days, doing runs for learning & fun. I never played Sanctum - not the league, not the mechanic - completely ignored it.

I will agree with OP that some afflictions are really bad and should be balanced more, but a run is not necessarily immediately over even if you get the really bad stuff - because there are ways to mitigate with boons & pledges. With the amount of boons you can buy from the merchant, it's quite rare you'll completely wreck your run.

In any case you are not supposed to win 100% of the time, right? Not in this content, not in other parts of the game. And ascension is completely trivialized by buying carries in trade leagues anyway.

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But I completely disagree with OP on the points of honor, relics & progression;

* Honor is the mechanic that this content revolves around. If removed, mobs would need to be buffed immensely and it would play exactly as Ultimatum or anything else in the game. Honor is what keeps Sekhema relatively easy. But I will say that armor / life chars should get additional benefits to honor & honor resistance.

* Progression & relics; I think this is the best part. You start with nothing, but every run you loot relics that will improve your next runs. The first trial is piss easy and I've never failed to ascend on any character. You collect relics and eventually defeat the next boss, then the next.. unlock more slots and you grow in power.

There's also tactics involved; do you only stack max honor & resistance? Or maybe you buff your water collection & merchant to get more boons? Etc. I'm currently buffing relic acquisition & trying to farm the best combos for future runs.

The last boss is also quite easy; it only has a ton of HP, so the fight can drag on.

I like the risk / reward aspect also. Do you cash in keys, or save them for the last room? Do you buff your own defenses or do you buff rewards?

Removing all of this would make the content just another "unga bunga smash button" content, which the game already has a lot of.

They will get rid of them or lose a ton of players.
Their choice.

I have already decided im not leveling any more characters.
If its in the game at release im not playing.

I hate the trials, I don't want to play mario.
I don't bang my head against random content.
I don't buy to win.

They are such crap that i have started to dislike the company.
Sounds petty and yet 100% true. The trials have actually degraded my opinion of the company, once again sounds hyperbolic yet 100% true, i like the company less for making this sludge.

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C4Guy#0918 wrote:

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Darny_Nashon#1779 wrote:

Here's the kicker.

It's not fun. In fact in my opinion it's Lame. In poe1 the 2 leagues mechanics that i disabled right away were Ultimation and Sanctum

But it could be fun, if they'd do it right. Get rid of the honour system, but make the mobs more difficult in return and have more room variety.

the whole point of the honor system is to present an alternative way to play contrasting to the rest of the game.

They just need to improve the honor system. And make it more interesting and less punishing for specific classes.

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TheFriggenBest#6781 wrote:

You can buy every relic you need for less then 5ex total that's for the very last trial the first three are so easy the boons rarely matter. Plus sekhemas has some of the best loot in the entire game right now.

Nobody would mind if this part of the game would be optional for farming.

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TheFriggenBest#6781 wrote:

I never fail 4 floor sekhemas, doesn't matter what path I get I never fail it unless I afk in the middle of a pack of mobs.

Where's the rng in that? You'd think if it was so rng based I'd be failing a lot more.

Then you probably have a build that trivializes the content for some reason and/or you're crazy talented, idk. But that doesn't change the fact that there's a lot of RNG involved and some builds simply don't do well with no defenses or if they're slowed down with -MS. Try to look further than the end of your own nose...

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TheFriggenBest#6781 wrote:

But that's not the case it's the easiest trial imo, I fail chaos all the time.

ToC is arguably worse and even more RNG dependent, but again, why do any of the trials have to be such RNG fests? Why can't we simply have trials that test the build for game progression capability and be done with it? Why do we need extra RNG, special mechanics not found anywhere else in the game and special items we have to collect/buy that also aren't useful for anything else?

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fr0st2k#1732 wrote:

the whole point of the honor system is to present an alternative way to play contrasting to the rest of the game.

Then they can offer the trials as additional content, but it shouldn't be a requirement to progress in the game as it heavily favours some builds over others and also nullifies regeneration as a major defensive layer practically all builds have.

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fr0st2k#1732 wrote:

They just need to improve the honor system. And make it more interesting and less punishing for specific classes.

Or they could simply remove it and increase the difficulty so the players need to use all their defensive and offensive capabilities like they normally do. Showing that you can also dodge attacks can be tested in other ways, you don't need a whole new system built on that.

the whole concept just needs to thrown out. in my opinion its the worst mechanic in poe2. pure condensed frustration.

but the thing that starting to piss me off the most is they arent taking this feedback seriously.

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Jitter912#4278 wrote:

They are such crap that i have started to dislike the company.
Sounds petty and yet 100% true. The trials have actually degraded my opinion of the company, once again sounds hyperbolic yet 100% true, i like the company less for making this sludge.

Based on your avatar you're going to like Act 4 Trial, its most likely going to be ToTa-League trial. The game is going to have 3 Trials to choose from so you only have to do the easiest Sekhema trial once. Also most likely first 6 points can be earned during Campaign because GGG wants to give the incentive for you to try out each League mechanic.

So in the future you don't have to try and beat 4th Sekhema trial at all, you can just build an army of giant turtles in Totem Auto-Battler mode instead.

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C4Guy#0918 wrote:

No, it's the other way around. It's hard, but it's easy for you because you're a good player (and probably run a favourable build for ToS). Low-selling yourself isn't helping your point. You got several 40/40s, you don't get to that unless you're a very good player (and have a lot of time on your hands).
That being said, I also haven't failed a trial in some time, but that's because I was relatively fortunate in my runs, bought a bunch of relics and currently play builds that do well with that type of trial..

Snip: only because i read all that so no worries but i won't fracture that all even more. And your remarks are in some context valid, but with one fixture that is also the main difference from sanctum to sekehma, the vendor after the boss:
This guy makes the whole shit so trivial. there is literally a winning strategy that everyone can execute.
Already posted but: take all the water on the first floor, have relic with more vendor choices -> win. This will always work, even with dry runs due to bad rng.

Its not about the character build at all (lets be frank, there are lightning sorcs and invoker monks, LA rangers, stacker gemlings and some lone warrr dudes, all ranged multiclear pewpwew builds anyway)

And this is only for people who want to play sekhema. The first run at 22 doesn't need relics at all, even as a melee. after trying about 10 times, there were alwaas at least 2 honor shrines on the map and at most 4 afflictions on any path. Its a minor inconvinience you never will see again if you don't want to. about the same as lab :) the critque was almost the same. unreasonable traprooms and random izaro modifiers that could kill you in the levleing phase....

Yeah well you can do your ascendancy at 30 and just oneshot the first boss ;)

But if you, or anyone really wants to see some example run, i will stream an hour or so: https://www.twitch.tv/plsanakan

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C4Guy#0918 wrote:

Then they can offer the trials as additional content, but it shouldn't be a requirement to progress

It's not a requirement. You can run chaos/ultimatum instead, and later you can run the third unannounced method as well.