Honor system for first ascendancy.

[BaconCommander]

I'm aware the sanctum mechanic in POE was popular, as a fun niche mechanic. However, I hope it can be understood that forcing it as a players first method of ascendancy, when it specifically punishes several play-styles, is understandably perceived as a poor design choice, at the current difficulty level. High difficulty problems are great, but I would say that for a first helping of getting your ascendancy, a 30 min time sink that ends in a boss fight you lose just trying to figure out mechanics is overly frustrating.

Changing it outright is likely impossible: however, if the first run through could be changed into more of a 'tutorial' difficulty, I think it would go over better.

[Happy]

Monk>Reached 4th trials with max honor and crazy boons>first room, some mob spawns after I pass a room and melts 5k honor in 2 seconds from another realm with a barrage skill>fail.

Waiting a week for the patch, 8 hours of respec, 20+ divine orbs, an hour spent in the trials for nothing.

[RedFaster]

Izaro's Labyrinths were infinitely cooler than this

[Artemis]

Lol sanctum was never popular, but we know how to do it. lol.

[Kamil]

Originally posted by Koelkaststekker:

Originally posted by Drake:

I think the issue is just early access. As they said, there will be 3 types of trials for ascendancy and you can choose which one you want to do. So we can imagine some will favor builds.

One the whole system is in place, people will just choose the trail that correspond to their build. They would have to do sanctum with melee char.

The best way to fix the honor system is to remove it completely.

This.. I have hp, i have resistances, i have armor, I have evasion, I have life leech, flasks, for a reason!

[Todokoro]

the first and second trial is fine, nothing really difficult if you're playing a ranged class. but its still batsh*t insane if you're melee. then there's the third trial that requires 3 trials back to back, (with each trial being their own set of rooms that you have to traverse) and nonstop and if you fail you have to start off from the very beginning. which doesn't sound like much looking from the outside. But its an hour of jumping through a million hoops just to feel like you're getting somewhere.

If you don't have a trial specific setup that helps you dps a lot, run fast, and makes your character tanky then you're going to be in for a world of hurt. and if you don't have the ritual pieces/relics/whatever they're called - that nerf the damage to your "honor" then you're REALLY going to be hurting.

and if you don't have the Djinn Barya to get in, then you're going to be looking for one, which requires roughly 5 to 10 hours of grinding (The Djinn Barya you need for the 3rd ascendancy is different from the one you get in normal and can drop from anywhere in any act that's in cruel including endgame), and use one for the trial then you don't get that key back. You have to go find another one to get back in and try again.

[Taddy Mason]

i don't think it should be tied to ascendancy. i dislike it enough to have no interest in engaging with it again on the same character for another time or with another character. i'll probably just see how far i can get in the game without engaging with the system at all if they're going to insist we deal with it to ascend. the simplest solution is to not ascend at all. i hope they change the mechanic, but if not, i imagine the game with be playable and beatable without engaging with the ascendancy system at all.

[Todokoro]

Originally posted by Todokoro:

the first and second trial is fine, nothing really difficult if you're playing a ranged class. but its still batsh*t insane if you're melee. then there's the third trial that requires 3 trials back to back, (with each trial being their own set of rooms that you have to traverse) and nonstop and if you fail you have to start off from the very beginning. which doesn't sound like much looking from the outside. But its an hour of jumping through a million hoops just to feel like you're getting somewhere.

If you don't have a trial specific setup that helps you dps a lot, run fast, and makes your character tanky then you're going to be in for a world of hurt. and if you don't have the ritual pieces/relics/whatever they're called - that nerf the damage to your "honor" then you're REALLY going to be hurting.

and if you don't have the Djinn Barya to get in, then you're going to be looking for one, which requires roughly 5 to 10 hours of grinding (The Djinn Barya you need for the 3rd ascendancy is different from the one you get in normal and can drop from anywhere in any act that's in cruel including endgame), and use one for the trial then you don't get that key back. You have to go find another one to get back in and try again.

To add to that, You have to finish these in order otherwise you won't be able to ascend. meaning you can't go try the 4th ascendancy before doing the third, people have tried and finished the 4th but never got their ascendancy points.

[RawMeatDiet]

First ascendancy should be fine. If you struggle then your build needs to be improved as you are doing something wrong.

[Scawteee]

Honor should behave almost the exact opposite. Having an instant-lose condition on taking damage is just so at odds with many other parts of the game. Hope you weren't relying on thorns!

If I was at the reins I would have made it so that you need a set amount of honor to complete the trial. Things like chaining kills or clearing rooms quickly would grant honor (basically an arcade style scoring mechanic). You can still have things drop it. But at the end, if you have low honor do things like add more modifiers to the boss, so a low honor run could be redeemed by taking down a harder boss fight. That even ties back in with the whole redemption theme it seemed to be going for.

[Warsign]

Originally posted by BaconCommander:

I'm aware the sanctum mechanic in POE was popular, as a fun niche mechanic. However, I hope it can be understood that forcing it as a players first method of ascendancy, when it specifically punishes several play-styles, is understandably perceived as a poor design choice, at the current difficulty level. High difficulty problems are great, but I would say that for a first helping of getting your ascendancy, a 30 min time sink that ends in a boss fight you lose just trying to figure out mechanics is overly frustrating.

Changing it outright is likely impossible: however, if the first run through could be changed into more of a 'tutorial' difficulty, I think it would go over better.

My warrior spends about 1.5 hours to get to the 3rd boss with about 3k honor, and fails to get the scorpion past 50%. I'm just going to play with 4 points until my character can no longer progress. GG.

[Maman Brigitte]

Scorpion fight feels unfun to me, tbh.

She's invulnerable 3/4 of the time, so you just roll around the room. Then, when she's low on life, the room fills with unavoidable damage mechanics and you're told to "get to the platform" but the platforms spew poison, which would be fine, except tanking isn't allowed in a sanctum. So it's not "Regen-tank the poison to avoid being stunned by the floor" it's "choose your method of losing a third of your honor bar over the next 20% of this boss's life."

So it becomes a ranged DPS check which, fine, I'm a ranged DPS build (can't even imagine this boss on a melee character), but again, she's invulnerable for 3/4 of the fight, so you just kinda roll around on the floor while your honor bar slowly depletes to passive mechanics.