Trial Of Sekhemas: unavoidable, build bricking afflictions should not appear randomly.

While attempting to get my third ascension in the Trial of the Sekhemas with a
CI character I ran in to the following issue on the first (!) floor:

- I could select from 2 nodes for my next room
- but both where leading to a room with the 'You have no Energy Shield' affliction.

As a CI character, with 1 life and no armor/evasion it essentially bricks the build/run completely (or turns it into a 'no hit run').

I still tried to do this run, by removing CI and find gear in my stash to gain some life, but I was still only left with ~750 life/honor with that affliction (down from ~7k ES/ 8.2k honor).
Finally failed the trial 2 rooms before the last boss on the 3rd floor.

While I admit, the Trials should be challenging and I am not a good enough player to do a 'no hit run', I don't think afflictions which can brick your build completely should be thrown around the floor layouts randomly.
And while I know that only the combination of ES/CI and the 'You have no Energy Shield' affliction is that severe all of them should be changed.

So either:

- Tone them down (only half of your defense/honor gets removed)
- Put some logic behind their placement (only put them on avoidable room nodes)
- replace them completely ( one can dream ....)

Yup. Trial Of Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos - is just awful, and just makes me want to not progress in the game at all.

I was in my 4th Trial, 3rd room, and 3 white bats, LOCKED ME DOWN and killed me in what seemed like 2 seconds.

Absolute INSANITY.

Path so you always have as many choices as possible.

The trials should not be the way players need to ascend. Both systems are heavily reliant on RNG for the core mechanics, and Sekhema's honor system is directly anathema to some melee builds. The path to ascension should be doable by all builds and playstyles. I had to put down my Slam Titan because I can't ascend. I've done both Trials (Sekhema more due to lack of Ultimatum tokens dropping at appropriate level) and all of them have been ended due to RNG stacking the disadvantages against me to an impossible degree. Those failed runs have left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that now, I don't even WANT to try ascending on the class. The ways in which I have lost have not left me with a feeling of "huh, yea I could have played that better" or "man i knew i should have pathed the other way". They've left me with the same feeling so many other people on these forums have: its bullshit and I don't want to engage with it because it is also not fun.

if you're gonna argue against what I'm saying, save your typing energy. you're objectively wrong and nothing you say will convince me or anyone else struggling with this bad design that its our fault.

"

Andalha#6923 wrote:

The trials should not be the way players need to ascend. Both systems are heavily reliant on RNG for the core mechanics, and Sekhema's honor system is directly anathema to some melee builds. The path to ascension should be doable by all builds and playstyles. I had to put down my Slam Titan because I can't ascend. I've done both Trials (Sekhema more due to lack of Ultimatum tokens dropping at appropriate level) and all of them have been ended due to RNG stacking the disadvantages against me to an impossible degree. Those failed runs have left me with such a bad taste in my mouth that now, I don't even WANT to try ascending on the class. The ways in which I have lost have not left me with a feeling of "huh, yea I could have played that better" or "man i knew i should have pathed the other way". They've left me with the same feeling so many other people on these forums have: its bullshit and I don't want to engage with it because it is also not fun.

if you're gonna argue against what I'm saying, save your typing energy. you're objectively wrong and nothing you say will convince me or anyone else struggling with this bad design that its our fault.

Sekhema is pretty light on how much RNG impacts, it is primarily skill and experience. It's in a good place right now, even for melee (went through it with a brand new titan with zero issues).

Chaos is a bit more influenced by RNG, but still not insanely much. I think the quest version could use some tweaks as it's a bit much at lvl 38 (and a bit later) but in endgame it's not that bad at all.

RNG is RNG.

Path/Plan with a better roll next time.

Not everything has to go your way 100% of the time.

I think both of you are insane and not playing the same game. Either way, your experience is yours, mine is mine. I will not play the mode again, and i will continue to advocate for its removal along with many other people. you're both completely wrong, objectively so, and too many other people are feeling the same way for either of you to have any ground to stand on. keep the modes as optional content with some sick loot at the end, but remove it as a requirement for ascension. it is bad. it requires entirely too much luck to get a viable run, it isn't fun enough to grind that many times to get the viable run, and that is final.

"

Andalha#6923 wrote:

I think both of you are insane and not playing the same game. Either way, your experience is yours, mine is mine. I will not play the mode again, and i will continue to advocate for its removal along with many other people. you're both completely wrong, objectively so, and too many other people are feeling the same way for either of you to have any ground to stand on. keep the modes as optional content with some sick loot at the end, but remove it as a requirement for ascension. it is bad. it requires entirely too much luck to get a viable run, it isn't fun enough to grind that many times to get the viable run, and that is final.

Advocating for removal never works in any feedback ever given for this game. There is usually a toned down or altered version, so starting there with feedback would probably be actually helpful.

Throwing your hands up in the air and giving up saying "oh it just requires luck to even be viable", is probably not going to be taken seriously either. The RNG on Sekhemas is ... insanely forgiving.

The ammount of ES builds that have a full ascendancy probably outnumbers warriors with a full ascendancy by about a factor of 8, and Sekhemas is now so easy on warrior as well. So you might want to ask the gameplay and help channel if Sekhemas is giving you trouble on that archetype based on a single affliction you ran yourself into.

Saying "many people are saying this" doesnt really mean anything either. Wanna count how many "remove the maven memory game" posts there are? I guarantee you it eclipses POE2 trials about 10x over.

Mass public whining doesnt mean you have "a ground to stand on".

Luckily for you there is Chaos trial, which I would agree can be tuned a bit down. And a third one on the way.

Sekhemas doesnt need to be touched any further. It's so braindead easy at this point.

As a pretty experienced but far from the fastest poe 1 sanctum runner which is similar to trial of sekhemas the best advice is never pick a room that eventually leads to having only one room to pick. Always make sure u pick the best room ur build can handle with the most exit options. That being said i really dont think mechanics like sanctum/sekhemas belong in ascendancy requirements since they favor specific build types which has a very ez time doing it while being nearly impossible for other build types. I do however recommend ultimatum/trial of chaos they seem to be a lot easier for builds that struggle with the sanctum mechanic

"

MrPedez#4934 wrote:

As a pretty experienced but far from the fastest poe 1 sanctum runner which is similar to trial of sekhemas the best advice is never pick a room that eventually leads to having only one room to pick. Always make sure u pick the best room ur build can handle with the most exit options. That being said i really dont think mechanics like sanctum/sekhemas belong in ascendancy requirements since they favor specific build types which has a very ez time doing it while being nearly impossible for other build types. I do however recommend ultimatum/trial of chaos they seem to be a lot easier for builds that struggle with the sanctum mechanic

I also ran quite a lot of Sanctum in POE1, because I really like it.
But I really never had any affliction bricking my build completely on the first floor of sanctum. Making it way harder yes, but turning it into a 'no hit run', never.

Trial of Chaos would be great, but while I have still 8 more Djinn Barya eligible for the 3rd ascension in Trial of Sekhemas, I have ZERO inscribed ultimatums which would allow me to ascend a third time (bad RNG I guess)