Ascendancy trials need to change.

I have spoken to many people across many different platforms and the overwhelming opinion of ascendancy trials has been negative. The problem is very simple. The ascendancy trials, both the sekhemas and tower of chaos are completely unrelated to the rest of the game. The things that are viable in the trials are completely separate from the things that are good in the actual game. Its like the type of thing you would find in other games as a silly little optional gamemode that you can play for fun, but for some reason they are fundamental to the path of exile 2 experience.

For example, the honor mechanic in the trials of sekhemas favors safe playstyles that rarely take damage in the first place, such as full ranged or minion builds. On the other side of the coin, it punishes builds that are meant to mitigate damage rather than avoid it. In every other area of the game, both of these playstyles are fun and viable, but in the trial, one is massively favored over the other.

The trial of chaos is just as bad, forcing you to deal with things that are non existent in the rest of the game. The heart locking you out of mobility skills that may be necessary to your build such as rake, leap slam, and flicker strike, petrifying statues, the stalking shade that inflicts ruin, corrupted blood pyramid, nerfing your aoe by 50%, preventing you from gaining flask charges from kills, buffs expiring faster, you get the idea.

Point is you don't have to deal with any of that stuff anywhere else in the game and it makes a lot of builds a lot more painful to play. Imagine trying to do the trial of sekhemas as a leap slam build in act 2. You would rightly assume that it would be harder than doing it as a raging spirits build capable of casting flame wall around a corner with very little risk of taking damage. Its a massive oversight and needs to be corrected to make it more relevant to the rest of the game.

i miss izaro :'(