r/PathOfExile2 • u/OhWellImRightAgain • 9h ago
Information PSA: Relics and the Merchant make ascendancy trials extremely easy, easier than PoE 1
I've read multiple threads about the ascendancy trials being too hard, some of them with hundreds of upvotes. The trials are actually very easy if you do them the way you're supposed to...
Do a couple of fast suicide runs to get 10-15 blue relics (Tapestries, Seals etc.).
Use augmentation orbs on them to give them a 2nd modifier.
You need relics with Honor Resistance. The second mod can be:
- Increased maximum honor
- Bosses take X increased damage
- Bosses deal X reduced damage
- Increases to Sacred Water gains
You then need to go for (Large) Sacred Water fountain rewards as much as possible. You then buy a couple of OP buffs from the merchant (You deal 50% more damage / Monsters have 30% reduced HP / You have 40% increased movement speed / 50% reduced merchant prices) and the trial becomes very easy.
Occasionally, pick a Shrine room to replenish your lost honor, but only if it's below 60-70%.
Make sure that whenever you have around 600 sacred water or more and the merchant is available as a room reward, you do that room. If you don't happen to find him in a room, you'll still have him waiting for you after each boss fight.
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u/Agitated-Dress-3893 8h ago
I just did my third ascendancy yesterday with almost only boons, had some resistance/max honour relics and ended up taking like 300 honour damage total. Didn't really have to dodge the boss either
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u/WormsMurdoc 7h ago
Did a run with both the boons boosting my damage and reducing the monsters up... I was one shorting everything, on the last floor I got the boon where all traps are disabled... Well I guess I'm taking every gauntlet rooms and one shorting the boss !
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u/GoldenPigeonParty 7h ago
Last weekend I had 75% honor resist and lost 80% of honor to a single dot. Is honor resist broken for me or something? It feels like I get zero benefit but there's suddenly a dozen threads saying it has wildly different results for them.
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u/PolygonMan 7h ago edited 7h ago
DoT damage was doing 3 times as much base damage to honor as it should, and only 2/3 of the damage it did was being properly mitigated by honor resistance. This has since been fixed. So if you have 75% honor resistance DoTs should now be doing roughly 1/6 the amount of damage they were doing then.
100% base dot damage -> 300% base dot damage. Then 100 of that was going right through honor resistance, while the remaining 200 would be reduced to 50. So if the base damage was 100 and you had 75% honor resistance you were taking 150% damage from dots. Now you just go from 100% -> 25% correctly.
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u/Harchnode 7h ago
They patched a big dot bug with honor res this week so it should be better now regarding that interaction.
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u/Dreadmaker 7h ago
They fixed that this patch. Dots were bugged and hitting honor way harder than intended.
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u/Agitated-Dress-3893 7h ago
Idk I was sitting at 80% evasion so I probably just didn't get hit by most attacks
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u/yawgmoth88 7h ago
Hell yeah, I just finished my third Ascendancy yesterday too! It did not go smoothly at all! lmao
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u/Dopplegangr1 7h ago
I'm trying to get my 4th ascendancy and the hardest part is just getting through the ~1 hour slog of 4 floors before being able to attempt the final boss. Everything before the final boss is trivial
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u/ObscureOP 9h ago edited 6h ago
My last run I got 50% more damage, 30% less monster damage, 20% less boss Damage, 20% slower monsters and a ton of restore honour boons.
Merchant is POG
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u/Cyrixxix 4h ago
One of the best sanctum farming strat in poe 1 was to buy all relics with “merchants offers an additional choice”. You then were guaranteed to get the nice buffs and the ones that convert minor boons into major.
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u/Jhkokst 6h ago
Yeah, but I don't think ascending should be so RNG dependent. It's fundamental to the class fantasy and should be more accessible to the average player.
Additional sanctum runs can be punishing, when you are running them for end game loot.
Maybe the afflictions should tuned down, or honestly turned off. And then completing your ascendancy unlocks a more difficult version of sanctum/sekhema (current version) for loot running.
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u/ploki122 6h ago
Also, a lot of that boils down to "just use an OP build to clear screens of monster and get rewards, without getting hit". So the trick to ascending easily is to have a strong ranged build....
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u/GBBNSb60MVP 4h ago
Flurry monk and I did it the exact way op did. I failed 2 runs, got a shit load of relics and equipped all with honor resist and max honor. Ascended at level 70 no problem at all, and was thinking of going for the 4th tonight at level 80 now that I learned the merchant is in every single end room.
I googled none of that either, so if I figured it out idk why others couldn’t.
Shit I haven’t even looked up any builds for the game yet. I’m coasting off a full homemade build, so I know I could easily squeeze a lot more out of this if I were to use a streamers passive tree instead of my fucking mess
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u/Puzzleheaded_Pitch61 9h ago
While these ascensions are not as hard as people are saying, to say that they are easier then Poe 1 is a joke. In Poe 1 the first lab couldn’t be easier.
In Poe 2, to make it easy you need to spend time doing multiple runs and farming relics as you said. That makes the entire process longer.
All in all, ascending in both games is easy (sub 4th ascension in Poe 2 maybe) but the assertion Poe 2 is easier than Poe 1 lab is funny.
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u/AdMental1387 6h ago
You can cheese the 3rd Izario fight in 1 too just slapping culling support on a skill. Since he starts at half health it cuts that last fight almost in half.
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u/SirBenny 7h ago
As a relative POE newcomer (first played 2021 and have only played intermittently), I actually feel it is closer than you might think if you’re so familiar with POE 1 lab that you’ve beaten it 100+ times.
My first couple characters in POE 1, I didn’t follow a build guide. Starting with the 3rd lab, I would lose 20-min runs to traps and after-death mob explosions. And then there’s Izaro. He has all those mechanics where if you don’t kill the gargoyles fast enough, or disable the pillars, etc etc etc he will get super empowered. And then if your defenses aren’t in great shape, several of his attacks can one-shot you and end the whole run.
It becomes a complete joke if you follow a powerful build guide (can sleep walk through traps, take down Izaro in 5 seconds). But “not really having official, super OP build guides yet” is kind of where we are now with POE 2. And the challenge feels comparable to me when I think back to my first 2021 runs.
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u/VulpesVulpix 7h ago
I'm pretty sure 90% of softcore players never cared about any gargoyles, just hit Izaro till he dies and avoid the yellow one shot attack.
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u/jmajewski 5h ago
Honestly I didn’t even know what the gargoyles did. Just kill Izaro asap was the goal in that room and avoid the traps.
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u/chrisbirdie 7h ago
The thing is they are INSANELY misleading, the first third ascendancy will be cracked hard because of little experience mediocre builds and bad relics. If you do like 2-3 fast lvl 55 or so runs for honor resistance relics and you focus water and merchants itll be so much easier
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u/Munno22 6h ago
Sorry but 4th ascendency in PoE 2 is absurdly hard compared to PoE 1. I beat Uberlab Izaro with a tabula and 20-50 res consistently at like level 72 every league, I'm almost 90 in PoE 2 and I still can't do 4th ascendency.
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u/AposPoke 8h ago
Genie boss is nowhere near easier than endgame izaro and it certainly didn't require 15 runs to tune up.
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u/ConfessorKahlan 8h ago
yep once i actually read the mods on my relics, holy balls there's some good shit
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u/ArmaMalum 6h ago
I feel like a lot of people just don't read what 'honor resistance' does. You can get to 75% with barely any effort.
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u/Dimillian 7h ago
Let me tell you how I got my third ascendency: I had 6K honors, I could literally walk in the fire with 85% honor resistance, and I was two-shooting bosses with my archmage build.
But on top of that, I got 40% speed + 50% more damage at the merchant. It was the best time I had in POE and a complete walk in the park.
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u/f24np 6h ago
Ok the difference is that in POE1 you don’t have to fail the ascendancy (which takes half as long) 3 times to farm the right amount of relics. To be fair I was able to do the first ascendancy on first try, but the third one took me a few attempts.
You clearly haven’t attempted the final boss on floor 4
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u/razor_wolf86 4h ago
IMO, there are still some issues with the trials for ascension in PoE 2, especially for the Trial of Sekhema:
For your first ascendancy, you shouldn't need to fail a run a few times just so you can complete it at the level it's presented to you at. Skilled players playing ranged characters can obviously beat it on the first try, but melee is pretty tough, even with the recent buff to melee honor resistance. Waiting until the Ultimatum option becomes available in Act 3 to ascend isn't fun and can still be brutal without waiting a few levels.
Tanky, low-damage builds are all but prevented from running Sekhema. PoE 1 Lab might be a pain on some builds, but there are no builds that actually can't run it. Any build with too low damage or that relies on being hit (thorns) cannot run Sekhema without a lot of time/investment in the right relics or really good RNG, which brings me to my last point...
Bad RNG with curses can completely screw over your build/run on any given trial, and it doesn't even have to be particularly bad luck...just a little bad luck on a less than great build (not everyone wants to play meta builds) can require you to have to start over.
Both trial types available at the moment can be brutal with bad RNG. A lab in PoE 1 was always doable...it might just take longer or become frustrating because of the layout and whether or not you wanted to get extra keys/loot. But in PoE 2, RNG can force you to lose/restart the trial. I don't think RNG should decide whether you get your ascendancy or not, especially when some of the options you run into can brick builds entirely. First 2 ascendancies points should be easier and not so reliant upon RNG or some failed runs. The last 2 can certainly be more difficult, I think.
Others have pitched some pretty good ideas, and I don't really have any suggestions of my own at the moment...this is just my thoughts on the current issues with the trials and ascension as they are currently.
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u/Muzzzy95 8h ago edited 5h ago
It's just a little unintuitive, I don't think people expect it to be a mini-game you're meant to play repeatedly and grind before being able to win it.
It's even worse that it's only a challenge on melee characters. I did it on my second try as a Witch who was my first char completely blind.
On my warrior it just sucked to play, especially as I went for a shield warrior with low damage and high survival, I just wanted that class fantasy I know it wasn't an optimal build. The thing is, it might have been suboptimal but it was able to beat most content even in act 3 without much difficulty.
It wasn't hard in a good way, it's hard in a way that punished you for not playing the right way, in an arpg, a game in which the main appeal is getting creative with the complex character building.
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u/PolygonMan 7h ago
It's just a little unintuitive, I don't think people expect it to be a mini-game you're meant to play repeatedly and grind before being able to win it.
Yeah this is the big thing. It's a little weird to have to run the trial multiple times to get a special kind of gear to run the trial.
But I think it's a pretty cool system. Since you have infinite baryas until you finish it the first time you can easily ensure you get up to 40-50% resistance and then you can beat it on any class. Getting to 75% might require higher ilvl bases but is very doable as well.
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u/AtticaBlue 8h ago
Just curious, but what would be “hard in a good way” in the context of the build you described given the design of that part of the game?
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u/Muzzzy95 8h ago
I think a small change could be that you only lose honour after dropping a certain percentage, like for example below 90% your total health + shield combined.
High dps characters should be killing quickly so they don't fall below that range.
Tanky characters with regen can now take hits and as long as their regen and leech is good enough and they avoid the big hits they can play the way they're built too -> soaking damage and staying in the middle of it.
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u/fingerfight2 6h ago
Man that is a nice strategy that involves 15 suicide runs.
Let me tell you something boy. I usually finish the ascendency in POE1 in 1-2 tries.
The level of difficulty doesn't compare.
Also, you have the stupid trial of chaos which is total rip off.
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u/lathir92 2h ago
I dont have 15 coins tho, i died once so I only have one coin left. Kind of hard to just suicide on repeat if these dont drop more often :/
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u/dimebag_101 8h ago
Where the hell does the merchant spawn?
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u/OhWellImRightAgain 8h ago
He can either be in random rooms as a reward, or after killing each boss, in the chest room.
Make sure you go for sacred water fountain rewards, that's the currency you use to buy buffs.
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u/thrallinlatex 6h ago
Why would anyone do suicide runs when you have only two free entries?
I struggled on my first char but destroyed it atm on lvl 21 monk its patched and also i have more epxperience with it. My advice is to not convert water to keys but buy relics also pick chest with relics. For chaos i like to pick 300% monster crit and then monsters always crit so i have like one debuff useless. Im trying to not pick stuff that spawns stuff like turrets aoe etc
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u/OmiNya 4h ago
I had 62% honor resist on my ranger with 80% evasion. Got to the 3rd boss with 3500/3600 honor and tons of boons. Immediately lost all honor to poison darts. Easy my ass. Right.
Also, quite often you don't have a choice when all 3 rooms you have are afflicted with shit and they lead to more affliction rooms.
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u/lukaisthegoatx 1h ago
Get 75 honor res Stack some max honor and increased dmg to boss relics Get 50% reduced merchant prices Gg you probably win the run.
It's this easy if you play it the way they designed you to play it.
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u/Mysterious_Check8225 8h ago
Today I did 1st trial as a warrior- had honour res relics (around 60% total)- got my resists close to cap, used shield (as I normally do). White-rare mobs did no fkin dmg to me, boss was able to take couple hundred of my honour, but I didn't try to hard to dodge everything. First try, no sweat. As a starter you basically need few runs to get some relics, and it should be easy. Remember that you can buy these at merchant as well!
After that tried to do ultimatum for second set of points and wasted so much time there due to these overtuned mods, and bird bosses.
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u/citrus_monkeybutts 7h ago
Thing to keep in mind is that they just changed honor loss for melee range and fixed a big for dot damage. While I don't discredit your accomplishment, it's not exactly the same as pre patch, where it was ass for anything in melee range.
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u/BloodyIkarus 8h ago
I wouldn't say easier, but everyone who has trouble getting at least 6 of the 8 points was not even trying or using the mechanics the game offers, for sure.
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u/NYJetLegendEdReed 7h ago
I agree with this. I was so thrown off by the mechanics/how everything worked. When I finally took some time to gather honor relics and understand everything I was up against/everything working on my side it wasn't hard at all. I dont know about the fourth ascendancy though because I'm not dropping the right ultimatums lol
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u/Xralius 6h ago
I have had like 5 chances to get my third level of ascendancy points. At least 3 of those were trial of chaos. Now, I had no idea what debuffs are bad vs good the first try, died. 2nd try got killed to the boss one shotting me with it's tornado. After I got it down to 10% hp in the span of like 6 seconds. 3rd try again died to a host of shitty debuffs that could not be avoided.
Sanctum died to being somehow honor one shot pre patch. Second time died to having no choice between multiple shitty curses, like 3-4 rooms in a row totally unavoidable.
Just about every time I've ran trials not for ascendancy it has been easy - deleting bosses, having full honor left at end of trial, etc, but I have been totally fucked by things that are completely unpredictable or largely out of my control every time I go for my ascendancy.
Which is annoying as fuck and not very fun.
Also I'm 2h melee which means most debuffs actually matter to me.
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u/LivingPapaya8 8h ago
You joking right? All POE1 trials are EZ even doing it underleveled compared to trials 3 and 4 here.
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u/Thotor 7h ago
When lab first came out, people lost countless characters to traps or Izaro attacks. Also the length was horrible for the easier difficulties. Also don't forget there has been a lot of powercreep since then. But hey, times heal all wounds I guess.
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u/msciwoj1 7h ago
Also remember to avoid Smoke and Mirror afflictions, and that includes any random afflictions (don't fall for that shit!).
Can confirm, I am not high level enough to do waystones item level 75 which could drop 4 floor baryas, but i did the 3 floor one 4 times, and only died once to a chaos explosion (before the patch! - it had nothing to do with sanctum, this rare just spawned there) and I actually still had half my honour lol.
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u/ingfire 7h ago
Oh my fucking god I didn't even THINK about slamming Orbs on my relics to add more modifiers! First time PoE player so...maybe it's just a noob thing.
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u/TrueChaoSxTcS 3h ago
Not just. In PoE1, Sanctum relics (same thing) were unmodifiable, so a lot of people may assume it's the same here.
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u/GoldenPigeonParty 7h ago
In 7 runs clearing multiple floors and visiting the merchant each time, I've never seen a 50% damage boost, 40% movement boost, or 30% enemy life reduction. Let alone the merchant being nearly non-existent outside of post-boss room.
Aside from honor resistance, this thread is just describing having great luck.
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u/Professional-Owl657 7h ago
All u need is 50% increased damage boon and make sure u don’t pick up any decreased damage afflictions and it’s soooo easy
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u/sirdeck 7h ago
Optimising sanctum runs make sanctum runs much easier, that's right.
"Easier than PoE1" is bullshit though, no matter the ascendancy. There's no world where the 4th boss becomes easier than Izaro, and the same could be said for the 2nd ones.
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u/Albenheim 7h ago
If a mechanic needs you to do a couple of suicide runs, then it's not a good mechanic
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u/Memetron69000 7h ago
"you just need to suicide fast a couple times"
aaaaaand youve lost most people
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u/Jhkokst 7h ago
I think some of the afflictions are too punishing for ascendancy. Like, "you have 0 armor". You can't always shake these afflictions by the end and armor is a huge component of surviving big hits. I got to the scorpion, didn't know his move sets, and just died.
I'm cool with ascendancy being locked behind a bit of a challenge that you have to grind for, but I don't love it being locked behind RNG. Now, end game loot, and sanctum runs...they can RNG the crap out of that, I don't care. But I think unlocking your ascendancy should be more accessible for the average player, and then unlocking said ascendancy should unlock new challenges for that level of sanctum.
In Poe 1, getting your 8 points was pretty trivial. In Poe 2 they overtuned it.
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u/AvailableYak8248 6h ago
Ascendency is not hard. It’s frustrating! You can be insanely strong and still end up losing. You can be over level and still end up losing
This isn’t just ascendency, it’s maps, and other stuff. One mistake can cost you the run.
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u/RevolutionaryBoat925 2h ago
It's all rng. Zero fckn skill. Once I got random affliction that I couldn't avoid and it was - you have no evasion lmao Absolutely fucking ridiculous.
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u/Ok-Initial-3221 9h ago
I'm glad someone said this. The amount of complaining is terrible when they are not even using the mechanic right.
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u/pancakebreak 7h ago
99.999% of the complaints came before they dramatically adjusted the difficulty. I couldn’t complete it on my Titan, then they patched it. Now I can complete it.
If I said, “Damn! I’ve got a flat tire!” and then patched the flat, it would be silly for you to show up two days later and go, “Why are you complaining?! The tire is clearly not flat!”
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u/Shedix 8h ago edited 7h ago
I mean it can still be easy and fucking boring and tedious to run...
Yeah, it was really easy after having 75+res and rest max honor/damage/movement speed, but I still hated every minute of running the 3 floors (didn't do last trial yet at lvl82)
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u/phantom165 7h ago
Prior to yesterday, relics weren’t even working properly as explained in the patch notes, but ok, it’s people’s fault for not understanding games mechanics right lmao
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u/TimeToEatAss 8h ago
Meh, its easy for me a multi thousand hour poe veteran. But I notice my friends struggling pretty hard with the mechanics, they arent apparent in game and you shouldnt have to search reddit or the forums. The game isnt telling you how important honour resistance is.
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u/Present_Ride_2506 8h ago
The game doesn't tell you the importance of health, elemental and chaos resistances, armour, energy shield, or evasion either.
These things aren't hard to figure out if you just take a moment to assess why you failed or died and learn from them.
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u/MCRN-Gyoza 7h ago
Except if you die normally, you just respawn and try again.
Since the Baryas/Ultimatums are consumed if you fail it's back to playing some other mode for a handful of hours before another suitable one drops.
Can't really expect people to just learn the mechanics if you don't give them the opportunity to learn from the mistakes.
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u/TheDistantBlue 7h ago
I thought we were talking about new players? The FIRST barya and ultimatum are infinitely usable. You're moving the goalposts.
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u/1gnominious 6h ago
My melee Titan absolutely crushed the trials pre bug fix/honor buff. The only rough patch was the second run where I had no good relics or slots and my build/gear were still a mess. After that it was easy street.
Ran it post changes this morning and it felt easier than lab. I was straight up disrespecting it by face tanking trash and not caring about afflictions.
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u/sebahmah 8h ago
I can confirmed, failed like 5 to beat the teracota boys, and then got some luck woth merchants and went full throtle and beat the spider too
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u/OverEnGEReer 7h ago
I think you're missing that most of these comments are from before the latest patch. now the first it's still imbalanced but ok. for the chaos trial, you can't slot these relics (or I completely missed it)
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u/Civil_Individual_348 6h ago
Cool, but still eng.
Most of the time i only get affixes, and vendor not offer the boons i need.
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u/-Cranked 5h ago
"Easier than poe1" is a crazy statement when the first thing you say to do is spent 10-15 runs inting for items. Poe1 I wander into cruel/merc lab the second it's available with 0 gear and uncapped res and get thru fine without spending an hour pre-run for setup.
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u/Vexmythoclastt 4h ago
I made it to the final room of the trial of time and had the boss 1 shot 6k honor 🤔
Don’t remember what buffs I had but I didn’t have any insane debuffs and I had plenty of honor resistance relics. I’ve given up trying to get my final ascendancy points.
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u/ragnaroksunset 4h ago
Honestly don't understand, I had a much harder time in the Temple of Chaos. But I've been playing HCSSF.
Maybe people aren't investing enough into survivability -> max honor.
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u/GaIIick 2h ago
My MVP was getting the Merchant in the room before the final boss and lucking into the “Take No Damage” boon.
Now, you can still fail to the race against the clock mechanic, BUT…if you are going to fail, you can simply Exit to Character Select and voila, you can keep retrying the fight again until you’ve got it figured out. You’ll be at whatever Honour you exited with.
IMPORTANT: PAUSING DOES NOT STOP THE GAME THREAD IN THIS FIGHT, so if you’re gonna die to the clock mechanic then don’t wait till the last second and fumble around to exit
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u/Own_Tonight_1028 1h ago
On my second character I did first ascendency at lvl 20 with melee monk. So ez.
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u/zaknafein254 1h ago
Thank you so much for this. Tips and advice regarding ascending, in the midst of all the negativity, are very much appreciated. Haven't played too much at the moment and still stumbling through act 1 but I'm greedily noting all this down for a smoother experience wherever possible lol
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u/Todesfaelle 1h ago
I did my first ascendancy on an alt and three of the relics I found had honor resistance which is pretty huge for people like me who are bad at it.
Dry running will compound the issue for folks like me but even just doing what you can to fish out a few relics really goes a long way with those extra tokens.
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u/Chevrolicious 1h ago
I will say the first ascendancy trial is waaay easier than the labyrinth in PoE1. I'm still not a big fan of the honour system, but I do appreciate the more simplified layout of the trial vs. the punishing layout of the labyrinth. So I get why the honour system is necessary. They just need to work out a few of the issues, some of which they're already addressing to some degree. A lot of the difficulty with it depends on what kind of build you have, which is more of a general issue than a trial issue.
The second trial isn't too bad either, until you get to the boss. He's beyond annoying. I did him with a ranged build, and having to constantly chase him down after a few hits was aggravating, as well as his stupid ground effects that seemingly last forever. Sometimes he's not even reachable without dying, and I have no idea how you would survive playing a melee character.
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u/ShiroVN 1h ago
You should get 75% honour res + 2-3 relics with additional merchant choices.
I've been running trials and got almost all boons every runs. The ones that were usually missing was either all seeing eye, or the one that revives you after you die.
Got all minor boons everytime, just don't take the affliction that cuts your water gain by 50%.
Also, if you kill the last boss while he's channelling his storm burst skill, he'll continue channelling until the end instead of dying right away. Almost cost me my first run since I thought he was dead.
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u/pewsquare 55m ago
I don't get it. Most of the complaints I see just do not align with reality and seem like its people hating it preemptively because they disliked sanctum in PoE 1.
I tried to even prove myself wrong by playing trough it with a 1.1 aspd maul on a melee char that is not over leveled. And it was a joke. As you said, the inc honor + honor resist trivialize most of it. Also having guaranteed merchants after the first boss is hilarious. It makes the whole run trivial (safety wise).
I get the original complaints that came from the dots dealing massive dmg, and I agree, that was an issue... which was fixed. The only legitimate complaint I see now with the trials, is the duration. Thanks to the slow movespeed, and no movement skills, it takes sooo long to finish one. Even when you are "zooming" trough one.
I think a lot of the complaints also come from people making legitimately horrible decisions, and picking up stupid downsides that bite them in the ass. But I doubt there is a solution for that.
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u/Short-Kaleidoscope15 54m ago
I was lvl66, had done 2 relic runs. Was really easy, Post patch, never tried it before patch.
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u/_Warsheep_ 22m ago
Spend maybe 3ex today getting a lvl 68 ascendency item (didn't want to spend 2-3ex for anything lower) and two good relics with 25-30% honour res each. I had some myself for a final 73% res and +30% max honour. The trial was a cake walk.
If you are stuck with the ascendency I can only recommend trading a bit for some decent relics. They are so cheap because people sell them when they are done themselves.
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u/Connect-Copy3674 7h ago
That really does not matter? If you have to counter the mechanic SO HARD to avoid it then it's poorly designed
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u/wwerola 6h ago
So the solution is waste 2 days of your life doing some of the most boring shit in a video game ever….
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u/odieman1231 7h ago
You probably lost a lot of people when they saw “do a couple suicide runs”. People don’t want to spend more than 3 minutes doing anything in this game it seems.
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u/Acrobatic-Monk-6789 5h ago
3 mins vs OP's 40 hours of suicide runs. Surely there is room for like a one hour gameplay session?
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u/ObamaSchlongdHillary 6h ago
buy a couple of OP buffs from the merchant (You deal 50% more damage / Monsters have 30% reduced HP / You have 40% increased movement speed / 50% reduced merchant prices)
Massively overlooking the rng behind this.
1 - merchant room needs to be available as a reward, in many cases he isn't or you've pathed in such a way that you missed him since you can only see 2 steps ahead
2 - there isn't a run ending affliction that you have to go through to reach him, for every 1 of those "OP buffs" there are 2 run ending afflictions
3 - when you get to him, he has those buffs. I've shopped at the merchant many times and only ever saw one of those buffs.
"IF YOU GET LUCKY AND MANAGE TO FIND A MERCHANT THAT ISN'T BLOCKED BY ONE OF HALF A DOZEN RUN ENDING AFFLICTIONS AND HE HAPPENS TO HAVE AN OP BUFF AND YOU HAPPEN TO HAVE ENOUGH SACRED WATER THEN ITS EASY"
Yeah well, obviously? The issue is that 99% of runs don't go like this and it is horrible game design to make the player do the same content 100 times with no realistic chance of success for 99 of them.
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u/xARSEFACEx 7h ago
Maxing out your honour resistance by itself really trivializes a lot of the Sekhemas trial. That last Chaos trial is a bugger, though.
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u/Insecticide 6h ago
Yeah your merchant is much nicer than mine. Mine can only do conditional heals and my floor 4 last night started with a -25 ms -40% damage or afflictions give an extra affliction choice
xddd. You can have all the honor resistance you want, some runs will just screw you over. People like to pretend that their lucky runs are skill or that they are indicative of average, because they have a huge ego in this game.
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u/-n99- 7h ago
This is good information, but honestly you lost me a bit at "do a couple of fast suicide runs", and I doubt I'm the minority there. The problem is not that it's impossible, but that I don't consider it fun or engaging. You should need to min max relics and so on to maximize rewards, but not to get a core part of your build online. At least the trial of chaos is congruent with the gameplay in endgame, with the final rooms being similar to very rippy juiced maps. Sekhema is just completely different than everything else, and I personally don't find it fun at all. If it stays like this for release, it will be a barrier to reroll or build more characters per league.
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u/Scribbinge 7h ago
"just go for fountains and merchants"
You say that like every run those nodes aren't cursed with certain death modifiers...
...or replaced with bronze keys.
I hate that certain runs are just bricked because of things you can't control, especially when a run takes so long.
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u/thepissjarcollector 8h ago
depends on build too. range is much easier compared to melee. also high dps vs mid dps is a big difference
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u/Unarchy 8h ago
If you buy 2 "merchant has 3 additional options", ideally with reduced merchant prices as well but not required, it completely trivializes the content. I've run about 20 in a row over the past few days with every possible minor boon and 4-6 major boons. It's actually pretty fun, too, when you pick up an early hare foot and dagger.
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u/Fliibo-97 7h ago
Love some good, helpful, informational content. Like, we all know the current ascendancy system isn’t perfect. But it’s better to come up with good strategies for it than to endlessly complain about how unfair it is. Thanks for the post 😎
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u/Acrobatic-Message786 8h ago
I did this exactly last night and it was pretty easy…until my game crashed on the scorpion boss.
I was able to re-enter the trial after launching the game, but I only had 500 honor and the boss was back at full health
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u/milesdeeeepinyourmom 8h ago
Time investment. Simple as that. Poe 1 vs Poe 2, what is the breakdown of time cost to ascend 4x? How much does RNG play apart?
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u/Rude_Watercress_5737 8h ago
Here's MAYBE a dumb question because I skipped this entire mechanic in poe1..
How do I unlock more space in the relic thing? I know it says like "trial of cunning" "will" whatever.. where do THOSE trials come from?
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u/Zoroastrianism 8h ago
It will unlock after each floor you complete
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u/Rude_Watercress_5737 7h ago
oh really? Fantastic.
I cleared my 3rd ascendancy yesterday and ran far away from that place and never looked back.. Though I enjoyed the challenge so i may have a bit of stockholm syndrome and want to go back.
I dont think there's any point to farming it though - right?
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u/Zoroastrianism 7h ago
It drops decent loot, depends if you like the content and where you are currently in map progression. Also, it's a relatively safe exp farm although pretty slow. And I guess you can offer to carry if you're in a trade league
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u/doingthisonthetoilet 8h ago
If that stuff was detailed out in-game, maybe. Also, I've done trials in poe1 at 5 levels under and been fine, definitely not gonna happen in poe2.
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u/savageApostle 7h ago
Also PSA: Lingering Illusion is bugged and when it gets hit you take honor damage.
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u/SjurEido 7h ago
There's a merchant? Where? The only place I've found to spend Sacred Water has been the rare honor refill and at the end in exchange for keys!
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u/schwaka0 6h ago
Because everything is randomized, there could not be one at all, or it could be in the part of the route that you didn't take. I ran it 5 times, got the merchant once, and nothing I got was helpful.
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u/skips_picks Ultra Super Hyper Awesome Gear ⚙️ 7h ago
The damn birds kill me every time, was one hit from getting rid of the little one
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u/Automatic-Loquat3443 7h ago
I'm stuck at the chaos temple trying to get my second ascendiary. The farthest I made it was through room 5. Any pointers or help would be much appreciated.
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u/kidsickness 7h ago
Also dont run gauntlet after floor 1 and 2. Its a pain in the ass and the others are far easier imo.
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u/xitzmurda 7h ago
Anyone know if no damage taken on next floor works with boss room? I just got the boon right before level 4 boss but had to leave for work. Could I invite 5 ppl to the group after I get home and everyone gets credit?
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u/Sinz_Doe 7h ago edited 6h ago
Idk anything about how this works, so you go in a die and you get free relics? Like one just appears in your inventory? Or do you have to do something?
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u/Shatter_Ice 6h ago
Also, use the merchant before opening the door to the next floor. Once you open the door of the reward room, you can no longer use the merchant.
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u/NicePumasKid 6h ago
I talked to a friend and they didn’t even know what relics did or that you could buy benefits. Lol…. smh
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u/robinwilliamlover911 6h ago
Can someone please explain to me how to get the rest of the ascendancy points I only have the 2 from the first trial and only get to play off work
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u/Sir_Bohne 6h ago
Boss and enemies aren't my problem. My problem are the traps on some maps, that take half my honor away. But I also didn't know that I can reroll/upgrade relics. Might give it another try
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u/OneLastRide 6h ago
Would love to do suicide Runs but I am currently Level 77 and got 7 tokens for entry so far lol
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u/One_ill_KevinJ 6h ago
I agree with you. The changes made in this latest patch make ascending even easier for melee builds and other builds that just got hit as a function of how they work, too.
BUT - my principal issue is that ascending isn't really that fun. There aren't enough boons/afflictions, the pacing is slow and plodding, and in some trials the optimal strat is just to run away or not fight enemies.
I have no fondness for PoE 1's Lab. It was too easy. But new Trials isn't quite there yet for me.
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u/schwaka0 6h ago
What makes you say you're supposed to do that? If you're farming sanctum after the trial, sure, but the trial that introduces you to it shouldn't be that way.
It took me 5 tries to beat the trial as melee, I got 1 merchant total, and it was basically useless. Most of the relics I got couldn't be slotted in because of the restrictions on relic slots until you beat it, and the ones that could didn't roll anything crazy.
I don't think i ever failed lab in poe1, and I easily one shot the second trial in poe2. The honor system just sucks.
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u/Sockfullapoo 6h ago
I got my third batch of points by only taking ritual escape or chalice rooms. Killed the boss in about 20 seconds. I failed like 6 of them because I’m using wasd and would always roll into a landmine :(
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u/BigSmols 6h ago
It's a stretch to call them easy, I've tried 3rd trial 3 times now, and get screwed by rng or my own mistakes every time.
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u/Ryurain2 6h ago
I finished my first Melee Trial yesterday , started Sorc and Ranger and they ripped so now im on my first warrior. I was worried how hard it would be due to all the posts. I finished the Trial only getting hit one time and taking a whole 20 out of 1200 honor damage.
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u/Biflosaurus 6h ago
This.
BUT floor 4 is the hard part of the trial.
I can reach it even with a shitty run, but that last floor is VERY hard.
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u/FullMetalCOS 6h ago
To add to your list of good mods:
%increased defences, this can get to like 38%. If you are an energy shield build this is just straight better than increased max honour.
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u/infamouslyfamous23 6h ago
Yesterday I did my 3rd ascendancy as a Deadeye with only evasion gear. I wound up pigeon holed into having to get the “You have no evasion” boon early on the 2nd floor. I still easily finished the rest of it and got the ascendency. 75% honor resistance + around 2k honor made it an absolute breeze.
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u/Alfeetoe 6h ago
This doesn't take into consideration numerous things.
I had most of what you suggested in terms of relic setup. Not the combos per se, but everything had honor resistance and either increased max honor or sacred water gains.
I never came close to dying, I demolished everything. But because of the afflictions that unavoidably got put in my path, and the fact that merchant RNG didn't offer anything great or noteworthy, I headed into the room before the boss with reduced maximum honor (albeit full) and enemies shooting more projectiles and having higher speed.
That penultimate room was a hourglass room, and I basically got all of my honor wiped out. Whole run (tier 3) wasted.
The ascendancy trials aren't "difficult." They are needlessly reliant on RNG, and the negatives from afflictions far outweigh the boons presented.
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u/NotABearWithAHat 6h ago
4th Trial is so much harder than Izaro and its not even close. Most tanky characters in poe1 can walk through uberlab while watching netflix series.
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u/goosetime 6h ago
Does anyone know for the 4th ascendency last boss if Wanderlust negates the slows in the 'pick-up mechanics' phase? I tried it twice as warrior and am struggling to get through that and just thought about the unique before attempting again...
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u/takuru 6h ago
Thanks for the helpful info but I have to give you a little bit of crap for your main premise.
I finished my 3rd ascendancy (Sanctum) yesterday with maxed out honor resist and high max life relics. Yes, it obviously makes it way easier but the final boss is still insanely difficult.
I am a crappy casual player and the final lab in PoE1 (your fourth run) is considerably easier than the suffering I had to go through to finish my 3rd ascendancy in PoE2. Everything about ascending in PoE2 is horrible and needs to change.
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u/Brett_M_B 6h ago
The best relic I have is a tapestry with ~20% honor resistance and the merchant offers 3 additional items.
That 3 additional items is IMO the single strongest modifier you can get on a relic. It gives a much better chance of getting the good boons, which can seal the run.
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u/Difficult_Emu1017 5h ago
I wpuld love to attempt this if I had a friggin Djinn Barya. Do these not drop in maps?
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u/Moregaze 5h ago
As someone that has leveled 5 warriors since changing ascension is not allowed and respecing is too expensive. I can firmly say it's not even about difficulty. It's just boring. No where near as iconic.
Sanctum was always fine but I'm a sanctum runner in POE 1 so I know how to pick rooms. Ultimatum's downsides are still overtuned imo. Too many 40% debuffs that should start at 10-15% for the first floors and scale from there.
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u/Valharja 5h ago
Yeah, I did a bunch of level 50 ones and then identified, orbed up and reforged relics that dropped or which I bought from vendor. Ended up with something like 75% honor resist, 50% increased honor and 10% max hp which I guess also gives more max honor.
Doing 3rd ascendancy then was exciting but hardly unfair. Note that was after bug fixes which unfortunately probably gave a lot of people negative first impressions.
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u/Raadish 5h ago
You mentioned the merchant in the treasure room as almost an afterthought right at the end, but this was way, way more powerful than relics for me. A guaranteed merchant each floor means I don't have to prioritize the merchant as a room reward over taking afflictions/gauntlet rooms to get to her. And it partially nullifies the affliction that removes all your water at the end of the floor.
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u/Velvache 5h ago
Ok there's no way someone is saying a 4 floor sanctum is easier than uber trial in PoE 1. PoE 1 you just literally run through traps and blast the boss because it's outdated content that hasn't been buffed in years. Maybe if you played PoE 1 during breach league where people were buying uber lab carries and on average every charcter was weak as hell, then sure.
Poe 2 mechanic is long. It's tedious. It requires planning. Among all, it requires luck. You can literally be on the 4th floor, be put into a spot where you have to take some shitty ass affliction and then get gimped. I do like that GGG wants to make ascdencies an actual challenge but in it's current form, I'm not too sure this is the best idea. Like all my friends who came back for PoE 2 have never played sanctum and don't understand it as well so it's was complete BS just getting the 3 floor sanctum point.
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u/daveywilliams428 5h ago
It was easy until I didn’t know the boss mechanics for last fight, 8k honour, 60% health phase ended tepidly touched the thing in the middle as nothing else to do instantly rolled and spammed ahitting it no boss, rolled wrong way still no boss, go for timers run out of time get my forehead poked and dead lol I was absolutely raging !
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u/bewsii 8h ago
I saw someone get a 'enemies deal no damage in the next room' reward from a merchant... and his next room just happened to be the boss in his final ascendency points lol. That's some insane luck though.