Trial of the Sekhemas needs further balancing for Warrior

A few things for context:

* I am familiar with the dungeon and its mechanics. I farmed 4 floor runs in SSF last league as melee.
* While this pertains to the Trial as a whole, it becomes particularly egregious in 4 Floor runs.
* In addition to Honour Resistance cap, I'm running with 79% fire, 76% cold, 76% lightning, and 34% chaos res, with about 5,500 armour and 73% block.
* Regarding skill setup, it's a fairly standard mace warrior build, using Perfect Strike, Hammer of the Gods, Boneshatter, Rolling Slam, Shield Charge, Seismic/Infernal Cry, Time of Need, and Scavenged Plating.

Here are some examples of why it's fundamentally unfair to this class:

* Due to how slow the playstyle is, it's all but impossible to land a Perfect Strike without getting hit at all in many scenarios. These include rares with mods that go off, even when they're stunned, Temporal Bubble, the second boss (one's basically always slamming), and Hourglass Trials, where trash mobs continuously spawn. In the case of Hourglass, gameplay basically devolves into running away from unhittable rares until the timer expires.
* This serious problem is exacerbated when you consider the two primary sources of single target damage are HotG and Perfect Strike. The former requires Glory now, and the latter is virtually useless in myriad scenarios. It's either hard or impossible to use HotG at all, unless you walk into a bad encounter with one in the chamber.
* At a core level, the warrior is built around being slow, but tanky enough to utilize its hard-hitting abilities. The Honour mechanic as a whole is antithetical to this fantasy. I should not be hard-walled on Floor 4 when I'm capable of clearing T15s, solely due to the Honour mechanic.
* Some monsters, particularly the guys who drop fire pots, are, quite frankly, complete cancer to fight as melee. They constantly run away or use a flamethrower or lob fireballs from their pot. Make one of these a rare with a bad affix (Temp Bubble, Volatile anything, Lightning Storm, etc), and you're losing hundreds of Honour, pretty much guaranteed.

In summary, a 4 Floor Sekhemas is basically impossible for a warrior unless you SIGNIFICANTLY out-gear it, and I mean by an absurd amount, and/or the stars align and you get unrealistically good RNG for Boons/Afflictions and can make it to Zarokh with full Honour.

It's been so excruciating attempting to get my final 2 Ascendancy points that I'm contemplating doing several things instead of play the game anymore this league, including doing my taxes.

Yes, doing my taxes by myself is more fun than Trial of the Sekhemas as a warrior with the current "balance."

Agreed
The ascendency trial system is not compatible with the warrior class. Completing the trial by way of honour points is a lazy concept. I think they should go back to the drawing board on that one takes away from the experience if I can clear a map no problem with a build and have to change my entire play style I think that’s evidence of a bad design

Also, the crumbly fountains are so stupid. Making things random is a poor choice for increasing difficulty.

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_Scythe_#4907 wrote:

Agreed
The ascendency trial system is not compatible with the warrior class. Completing the trial by way of honour points is a lazy concept. I think they should go back to the drawing board on that one takes away from the experience if I can clear a map no problem with a build and have to change my entire play style I think that’s evidence of a bad design

Also, the crumbly fountains are so stupid. Making things random is a poor choice for increasing difficulty.

heard the same crying about this last season , I played titan and didn't have a problem. With honour resist , increased honour and defences its so easy its basically trivial.

Sekhemas is hell for melee, especially warrior.

- Your attacks are slow and you get hit a lot
- Every hit you lose honor
- Bosses? Try e.g. the second boss as melee without getting his.

It's just awful. AWFUL.

I dunno you might need to change your setup the final boss is so nerfed compared to .1 it kind irritates me now how easy it is. You get like 2 time games at most. If you are giga geared it happens once and the boss is dead.


If you're using giants blood (like pretty much everyone does) then I really dont have sympathy. Especially if it involves HOTG then its just a hard no on this thread.

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Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

I dunno you might need to change your setup the final boss is so nerfed compared to .1 it kind irritates me now how easy it is. You get like 2 time games at most. If you are giga geared it happens once and the boss is dead.


If you're using giants blood (like pretty much everyone does) then I really dont have sympathy. Especially if it involves HOTG then its just a hard no on this thread.

My post has zero to do with the final boss. It primarily pertains to virtually unavoidable "chip damage" slow classes such as warriors sustain. If you bothered to read my post in full, you'd understand that I know how to construct a relic setup and am familiar with the entire dungeon, as I did a bit of 4 Floor farming in 0.1 in SSF (meaning I didn't have absurdly yolked out gear).

Your HotG statement leads me to believe you didn't even bother reading my OP, or have no idea HotG requires Glory to cast, and Glory will decay after 30 seconds of not heavy stunning something. You cannot just walk up to a pinnacle boss, open with HotG, and collect your loot.

The issue is rather multi-faceted, but is rooted in how horrible the Honour mechanic is for warriors in general due to how it fundamentally conflicts with the class's design (meaning, playing maces).

I couldn't even reach Zarokh at all until I returned at level 90, with a 6L level 19 Sunder that replaced Perfect Strike, because that skill is almost impossible to use in Sekhemas. Even still, I barely reached Zarokh, and the key to victory was using the Glowing Orb + Lifetap combo near the end to restore a bunch of Honour. I easily obliterated him on the one run where I did reach him.

One of the major reasons I made it to Zarokh at all was because I was using Sunder like a ranged skill quite frequently, avoiding tons of otherwise inevitable Honour loss if I were still playing Perfect Strike. Yup, a major key to beating 4 Floor Sekhemas as a melee warrior is to play it more like a ranged class. Perfect Strike is just way too cancer to use. The only reason I escaped the second boss with minimal Honour loss was due to wearing them down with Sunder at max range, until I finally got a heavy stun off so I could kill them with HotG. The third boss almost ended my run because I could barely even get a Sunder off without taking damage because I had the 25% monster action speed Affliction (the alternative choices were somehow even worse).

Some further problems include:

* With Honour being a mechanic, you cannot use most hard-hitting skills at all without being hit, unless you chip away at packs until there's only one big mob left. Hourglass Trials are just running away for 90 seconds, because good luck hitting rares without losing a ton of Honour.
* Enemies in the 4th Floor drain an absurdly unfair amount of Honour. Little hits remove hundreds at a time, and this is with solid defences.
* Too many Afflictions brick you. 25% monster action speed? Good luck. I was offered to remove that Affliction in exchange for Hare Foot (+40% move speed). I took it, and it was a major reason Zarokh was a joke. Yes, base move speed on a SSF warrior with only 25% MS on boots was better than that +40% move speed but 25% monster action speed.
* To further this, it leads way too easily to scenarios where you've got a wall of bricking Afflictions and are forced to make a bad choice. This happened to me on Floor 1 of every single run. Can't take reduced Honour/Honour restored due to points above. Negative choices pertaining to the Merchant are generically bad, because leveraging the Merchant for crazy Boon stacks is a major key to victory. Ones that lower your DPS are also massively bad until you outgear it by an absurd amount. Longer fights = more chip damage = more Honour drain. More monster damage? Forget about it. It won't kill a warrior, but it'll drain his Honour fast. The number of bricking Afflictions also means ones such as Black Smoke are even more deadly, because it's harder to play around them.

And for anyone who read my OP, I did in fact file and pay my taxes before playing Sekhemas again. I ended up being more pissed off during my Sekhema runs than I did manually filing my taxes, despite needing to manually input all of my T5 slips.

ToS is NOT melee friendly. There is a specific reason that most rogue-like games feature ranged characters. Chip damage, DoT, and monster affix effects to name a few.

However, a tank will have a pretty good time in Temple of Chaos. You may not get your ascendancy as early, but there is a viable alternative.

PS.
My last warrior run was ended by the scorpion popping out from under my feet, instantly killing me. Yay. That thing needs some warning zones.

Played 1000 hours with warrior before 0.2.0 and I had a fully geared up strong warrior, have a mid geared huntress now and I would clear it 100x easier now than I would with the geared up warrior. I fully agree with your post.

Yeah the trail isn't the best for warriors.