Trial of Chaos/Ultimatum issues

First off, I love the game.
Just to be clear, I'm giving feedback because I hope it improves certain lesser parts of the game.

Recently I got to the Trial of Chaos/Ultimatum, and I must say this is incredibly unenjoyable and unbalanced.

I will attempt to explain each mechanic that doesn't work well as best I can (this is my opinion yes).

1. Everything is random, from maps to debuffs to enemy buffs to enemy types.
This often backfires due to how certain combinations multiply each other's difficulty dozens of times over.
Example: Taking the trap that sends out electric waves in random directions and getting an escort mission map, where the escort pillar is smaller than the trap and it has to pass directly through the trap (which instant kills you) but having an absolutely abysmal escort range where you practically have to stand on top of the trap to move the escort target.

2. Buffs to enemies (which also apply to bosses) and debuffs to you.
This is absolutely dismal, as you are essentially nerfing players.
More so of a problem in this game which has a much higher health and damage output on bosses than players, of which most heavy attacks are already more than capable of one or two shotting them especially in the early acts where this content is located.
A souped up boss whose patterns you don't even know yet and you die on the first hit, let's redo the entire 4 rooms before that yippee....
Why are these not optional to take to improve rewards?

3. The difficulty spike is insane compared to act 2's Trial of Sekhemas.
This is mainly because there are some buffs/support on the Sekhemas trial and not every map gives you a debuff, here EVERYTHING is a debuff.
The debuffs are also much harder, like 30% increased speed or damage on enemies, or instant killing mechanics, stuns, slows, etc and they stack rather than rotate out like 3 effects tops.

4. There is absolutely no planning/prepping possible, as every run is completely different and most runs just end up hard-blocking progress making you redo the entire set.

5. There are no rewards if you die even for what you already completed, this absolutely feels like a waste of time.

6. It (at least currently) locks out players from achieving the next ascendancy points.

TLDR

The mechanics are too random and are not well designed in my opinion.
Certain debuffs, maps and enemies should be mutually exclusive.
There are too many debuffs at once, you should be able to choose the entire run beforehand, or forego the debuffs altogether unless you choose to have them to get extra rewards (it should be an achievement, not a roadblock).
I don't mind spending time learning a boss's mechanics/patterns/move set, but I do mind wasting my time on something I can't predict at all for absolutely no rewards.
RNG is the most hated mechanic in my opinion in any video game, I accept that loot is RNG based, but I will absolutely not play any content that is so heavy on RNG that 99 out of 100 runs will end up failing because of incompatible situations that I can't control.

Quick update, I did clear the first run through and beat the Boss.
Took me about 12 attempts but to be fair it's only because I got absolutely lucky with a wide boss arena that made the boss de-aggro constantly giving leeway and an actual boss whose move set I already knew (Chimera).
Still did not like the whole thing one bit.

This trial is the most nonsense they could ever add into this overtune fiesta.

From the whole ''more slow paced game'' bullshit straight up into a bullet hell surrounded by hordes where even basic attacks can delete you after enough debuffs.

Chaos as a melee character is incredibly frustrating. You get hit every time you try to attack anything, and you lose honor with no reliable way to refill it, as it's completely random whether you'll encounter a node with a refill on your path. How are you supposed to engage enemies as a melee without taking hits? It feels like the developers who designed this content were exclusively playing ranged characters.

As a melee player, my choices seem to be either running away from everything and relying on the few ranged skills I have, or dying to honor loss while trying to fight in melee. And when I brought this up in-game, people told me, "Just run away!"—but there are plenty of nodes that require you to clear mobs, like Ritual and clear the rares.

Chaos is just awful for melee. Ultimatum might be RNG-heavy, but at least it's occasionally manageable if you're lucky with the nodes. Chaos, on the other hand, feels completely unfair for melee builds.

The honour system is complete bonkers for melee. Who designed this has never played a melee character, especially warrior on this. It just UNFAIR because you cant negate AOE damage in any way. And those trials are FULL of AOE damage..

Yeah Sekhema was fine (Even on melee, at least for floor 1. Cleared it without overlevelling,) but trial of chaos feels like a huge roll of the dice. You're praying you get one of the easier bosses, you're praying you don't get unplayable combinations, and you're praying that the combo of two curses you took doesn't line up with the challenge you're given making it near impossible.

Going to be honest, ive levelled 2 characters and my 2nd one is now at the trial of chaos and ive just closed the game

I neither play or enjoy either of these gameplays in POE1 (and thats with the massive overpower) in my 1500 hours of POE i have done both types of gameplay a total of about 10 times because i detest them its not what i enjoy in games, If i want to die 100 times on a boss thats my choice, but making it so if i die 1 i have to do the whole 30min event again is a joke

The issue with Chaos is you have the same punishments you do in POE 1 but you dont have the power creep to counter the punishments GGG seem to have forgotten that bit - Think of the one where all mobs get 50% health - this should be 10% and thats fine given mobs hardly go boom by just looking at them in POE 1 style... but still makes it a bit harder.

I feel the fix is 'fairly' easy we can see that ranged have easier but still not simple task with Sekhema and Melee will often find the chaos one easier (not much but still) why cant the token be for either, it just makes it simple.

I posted on day 2 that the forced mechanic is WORST thing any game can do, be that grouping, solo, platform games in MMO etc.. Forcing a player to play something he doesnt like or is ill equipped to do is a sure fire way to dead servers eventually.. (ive seen it across 30+yrs of gaming)

So by making the tokens level specific say min 22 for 1st ascendency, then 36 for 2nd etc.. you can still do it, this keep the mechanic down to the player to decide what (s)he wants to do, and not force them.

I am left on chaos (i hate it with a passion) to overlevel it by 4-5 levels as i did on my 1st character - this becomes meaningless then, it stops being gameplay and challenge if you have to over level something to do just complete it...

PLEASE PLEASE give us a single token for either way of completing, or for love of god give us the 3rd option what ever that might be.

A lot of us players are older with families, 30 mins of gameplay is a long time in the evening so for 0 advancement its a waste, so why do it, this isnt about 'get gud' this about making the game enjoyable and not forced for a LARGE % of the player base

I got a lot of people saying the 'get gud' in chat etc when i moaned about chaos im amazed at how easy people find and yet they arent earning £10000000s playing Dota etc if they so imba!!

I read the recent patch notes, it would be nice to know what changes were made to the trials.

"Generally improved balance across the board with Ultimatum monsters, bosses and modifiers. Mostly targeting outliers that were too difficult and bringing them in line."

This does not tell us anything, I don't care to find out the minute details myself by playing the Chaos/Ultimatum trial as I do not enjoy the entirety of it as a whole currently.

Like were trap mechanics damage reduced significantly, are aoe's smaller, do the effects occur less often, are they mutually exclusive to certain maps, are there far lower percentages on extra damage/speed for mobs, are there far lower percentages for debuffs on the player?

If anyone else has specifics on what changed please let us know.

I've just farmed 50+ 10 trial ultimatums in a row and here are some thoughts!

Overall I like the Chaos Trials and think they're a far more interesting expression of the roguelike system than the Sekhema trials. It feels like the player has more agency when it comes to the difficulty modifiers, and the modifiers themselves are in general interesting to deal with and make for more engaging gameplay without being just stupdily frustrating like some of the Sekhema effects.

**Rooms**

- Survive Until the Timer Expires: Monsters spawn painfully slowly, and almost 100% of the time, when they do spawn, it is just 2 packs of white monsters that you kill in a second or two and then just stand around doing nothing waiting for something to do.

By far the worst room, you can't speed this process up in any way by either character power or player skill, and it is pretty much an afk room. Monsters need to spawn much faster, and killing rares (at least, or maybe just killing anything) should subtract seconds from the timer. OR at least give the player something else to do while waiting around.

- Sacrifice Enemies In Blood Circles: Similar to the above, monsters spawn very slowly and are almost always white monsters, resulting in a lot of standing around waiting and doing nothing.

- Collect The Soul Cores: If you get pushed by a monster while putting the Soul Core into the altar, you DROP the soul core and the Soul Core gets teleported back to it's original spot on the floor, meaning you need to go back and pick it up again and insert it again. This is very frustrating and time wasting, especially as it can't be prevented by clearing out monsters near the altars, since more can and do spawn and then charge into you causing this issue. Presumably this is just a bug and not an intentional design.

Some of the soul core room layouts are definitely pretty tedious, and I often find my approach to this room is just running back and forth between cores and altars ignoring monsters as much as possible to get it done quicker. Least favourite room after the AFK room.

Suggestions to make these more interesting: Get rid of the switches and wall puzzles, they're not engaging, just annoying and cause more waiting and walking. Instead why not have each soul core guarded/held by a mini boss, so that there is some actual gameplay in these rooms, would make collecting the cores much more engaging than just running past everything and clicking on them.

**General**

- Downtime: Definitely too much pointless walking/waiting between the trials. Between the elevators, the stone doors, the time stops, and the sometimes very long hallways, I feel like at least half my time in a run is spent just getting to the next encounter. This does not make for engaging gameplay and seems like it should be very easy to improve, this is one area where Sekhema does it better.

- Where Are the Rares?: In many runs it seems like there are zero to very few magic or rare monsters, even when selecting the Lethal Rares modifier, I often run into 3 or less rare monsters over an ENTIRE run. I guess 30% of zero is still zero... Regardless, one shotting sparse packs of white monsters and an occasional magic pack isn't particularly engaging. Perhaps pack size and magic/rare monsters should increase with each modifier you select as a baseline.

- Endgame Scalability: This might be an unpopular opinion, but whereas Sekhema trials feel painfully long and tedious, Chaos Trials often feel very short. This is not a problem/criticism, having content like this that you can jump into for 10-15 minutes is a positive. But I think the Chaos Trial formula could also lend itself well to a more 'infinite' system, where you can keep progressing and stacking more difficulty modifiers until you die or cash out.

Or at least perhaps have Ultimatums with more rooms, 15, 20 etc. Since in Sekhema you're already going through dozens of rooms per run, this doesn't seem too crazy. Perhaps you can use currencies on Ultimatums like you can with Waystones, which increase the room count and give various modifiers to the run. This again doesn't seem too wild since the Trialmaster can already drop Ultimatums with various rarities and modifiers.

Perhaps have a modifier that increases the area level of the rest of the run, or maybe every X rooms, or when you defeat a boss, the rest of the run gets +1 to area level.

These options would provide some extra endgame scalability to the runs so that they can still provide an element of challenge and interest for powerful characters.

- More Difficulty Modifiers!: The current pool of difficulty modifiers is fine, but can get stale pretty quickly if you are doing a lot of runs. It would be awesome to see the pool expanded so that you are less likely to get runs where you are just choosing the same 3-5 that your build can deal with easily. I think this would increase the replayability significantly.

- Heart Tethers: Unable to use travel skills while tethered (only tested with Leap Slam and Stampede). Is this intentional or a bug? Means that if your clear skill/s are also travel skills you can't use them and thus cannot choose to stay in the heart tether and fight if you don't want to get stunned, and also have to try and walk/roll out of it while getting attacked and not being able to use your abilities. If this is an intentional extra challenge that's fine I guess, but it is very counterintuitive and is not indicated in the description of the Heart Tether modifier.

- Rewards: Having all the rewards be corrupted, while a thematically fun idea, in practice makes these rewards pretty much useless. In 50+ runs I have never seen even a vaguely usable item from the non-soul core loot. As others have said, if they are going to be corrupted they could at least have max quality, sockets, and affixes. Even so the majority would still be vendor/salvage trash, so I don't see how this would be too good.

- Chimera Boss: The flying off is not an interesting mechanic, it's just annoying, and due to the size and verticality of the arena, means that if you don't kill it before it flies off, you spend more time walking around to find the boss than you do fighting the boss. I don't think I need to elaborate on why this does not make for engaging gameplay.

**Overall**
Chaos Trials are probably my favourite endgame activity, I hope to see them refined and expanded on in the future.

For reference: Lvl 93 Titan.

Thank you for reading and have a great day Exiles.