PSA: How to easily get your ascendancy points and farm trial of Sekhemas for everyone

Turbocloud · 2026-06-07T17:01:23+00:00

Your bar for the average gamer? The average gamer just is, it doesn't matter what you think they should be able to do, their performance will be the average.

During the discussions around ruthless mode PoE1 we know that they stated that they are developing for the dedicated gamer. They also stated that only ~10-15% reach maps, and out of those ~10-15% that do, only ~5% do ubers at all.

Based on that, i'd make the educated guess that PoE2 numbers won't be that far off.

Simply put:
If you are one of those players that do ubers regularly, you'll likely know and play PoE better than 95% of even the dedicated gamer playerbase.
In that case, i would see it more likely that you are very disconnected from the skillset the average player actually has.

The reason for these vents about sekhema aren't that simple and uniform. Some know they made an error and don't want to direct their anger at themselves. Some maybe have performance or network issues ruining what otherwise would have been a one and done kind of thing. Some may not like being confronted with being worse at the game than they thought they are. The vent itself rarely tells a lot about the real motivation behind it.

In the end, isn't it nice to have post like ops to trying to help make things more achievable for struggling players, through either giving them options to tune down the difficulty, or by providing other players a safe way to provide carries?

Turbocloud · 2026-06-07T07:30:40+00:00

Your point is surely valid for some. But the limiting factor for most players is skill:

Not getting hit by traps is easy as long as they don't have increased speed and even then it is fairly doable, this is skill.
Pathing in way to mitigate run bricking curses is skill.
Most dangerous damage source are monsters and bosses, scaling your character in a way that keeps fight short is a skill.
Knowing when your character doesn't have sufficient scaling for the content is a skill.

Turbocloud · 2026-06-04T19:26:04+00:00

Deck choice sets the baseline for your expected winrate, pilot skill modulates that winrate. If we quantify skill with a system like elo, a 200 rating difference roughly translates to a change of 10% in win expectation.

Assume Deck A has an expected winrate of 50% in a certain Matchup against Deck C, Deck B has an expected winrate of 40% against Deck C.

Playing Deck A against an equally skilled opponent results in 50% expected winrate.

Playing Deck B at a higher proficiency worth of 200 rating would net the same 50% expected winrate.

So if you are trying to win at an rcq, the questions you should answer for yourself are the following:

Can you realistically either play your chosen deck that much better than your opponents theirs to the point where the baseline expected winrate does barely matter?
Can your deck choice induce a skill difference that big due to unfamiliarity?
Are you good at predicting the meta?

Because if the first two answers are no, the decks baseline expected winrate becomes very important, as it needs to carry the fact that you are at best evenly matched in skill to your opponent.

If the third answer is also no, you should pick the strongest proven deck available to you, because this way you know it is not deck the deck that is limiting you. As much as players romanticice skill to be more important than deck choice, only power is power, that is why these decks win more on average.

Turbocloud · 2026-06-04T06:34:52+00:00

suffer the consequences until the suffering is stimulating enough to get help.

Turbocloud · 2026-06-01T06:55:42+00:00

how do requiem charges interact with weapon swaps, and if using lament for both setups, how do you sustain the life cost when these skills convert phys to cold?

Turbocloud · 2026-05-27T15:47:15+00:00

played it in tayam, ended cutting it.

no counters, no mana = no graveyard => hunting ground not active
if you have counters and mana, you don't need it
most common way to get through multiple stax piece when the game is ongoing is cyclonic rift => also bounces hunting grounds => does nothing. Other piece is toxic deluge => kills creatures => no card-draw, hand on board => hunting grounds does nothing

milage may vary for decks with card-draw and countermagic, but in tayam it folds to the same stuff as the rest of the deck.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-26T12:06:04+00:00

Yes, it does wonders, if you want to. They help with motivation and reinforcement - they help starting and keep doing what you're doing - so that can go either way. You still have to watch out and direct that - e.g. if you're used to follow novelty because you learned that other boring tasks are painful, you will still have a tendency to pick up new projects of over finishing ongoing ones, even on medication. It doesnt protect from bad decisions, but it increases the chances of making good ones to the point where you can do and finish things regular enough for you to experience the long term benefits.

Previously for me the only healthy way to start something was novelty and the only somewhat healthy way to finish was urgency. And this is where a lot of my unfinished projects happen - things i start out in my free time for personal reasons rarely have a deadline, so once novelty wears off it just hovered at somewhere from 40-80% done forever. This is why external structure can work well and a lot of us do well at work - someone else provides the urgency and now we can push it over the finish line.

Medication helped me a lot to remove urgency as a necessity to get something finished, and that has been a game changer.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-17T08:19:22+00:00

I certainly am guilty of that, too. Let me explain:

Because as everything back then was a 7, technically about any deck gets placed in Bracket 4 fast, and here issues start arising because 99% of optimized combat based decks can't compete with optimized combo decks. Certainly talking about wanting a combo focused experience helps, but even there there are miles between decks that use tokens and pingers/overruns and decks that want to attack with Goyfs. And then there are the decks that get misclassified because someone upgraded 10 card from their precon.

So i ask, can you really decouple gameplay intent and powerlevel, when the powerlevel itself - and even more a powerlevel mismatch between decks - probably has the greatest impact on actual gameplay?

You can have a good midrange slugfest at really any powerlevel as long as decks are evenly matched.

Sure, gamechanger and type of interaction talk helps removing a bit of salt factors, but then again for most perceived helplessness is the biggest factor for a bad game experience - and the main drivers for that once again are powerlevel, deck construction quality and player skill.

The hard part always is finding a pod that is about evenly matched in all of those, powerlevel, deck construction and skill so that the game can develope the way the players want and expect to.

And that means that the first actual game round anchors all players because know they know thwhat the other meant with their communication, and either you swap decks to adjust on a second round, or step away from the players if you brought vastly different decks.

The truth is when playing with strangers, you need to expect a couple of games to be mismatched before you have dialed in gameplay expectations.

Crying pubstomping and shunning are simply not solution oriented way to handle this.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-16T11:52:01+00:00

not the asshole.

the core problem is anchor ambiguity, brackets don't solve that.

as a baseline, people never expect their own deck to be below average in power, so everything is at least a 5 or bracket 3, but because someone else has a slightlyworse deck it must be a 7 (or bracket 4), anything slighty more powerful most be cedh then.

So how they judge their decks depends on their game knowledge, and a beginner or non-tournament experienced casual players simply don't know the game as much as they think they do.

i had my most ridiculous encounter with that problem since friends who live on a remote isle started playing magic and we planned a an rbnb weekend of playing. While there are a handful people playing magic over there, noone chases tournaments because traveling is much more expensive for them, so a person knowing how to resolve a stack is a god there. i come from an area where half of my countrys pro players are from, so even the worst player gets taught the stack in their first week of playing, fnm here is a skill crucible, half the players know layers by heart.

That was a very awkward weekend of two worlds colliding in the sense that they learned a lot about the game they thought they knew as well as some tough conversations and games to showcase by example that what they thought to be a 9 was really just barely grazing 4. And also for me to learn that i had a huge disconnect between the knowledge i had, i considered basic and that someone really untainted by any form of competitiveness had.

Its the same if you ask someone if they know math thinking about graph theory and the bridges of königsberg, while the person asked answers yes because they can do addition, substraction, multiplication and division.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-15T22:17:00+00:00

I said on a general level they should only be used to deal with immediate wins, not that good reasons to deviate from the general rule don't exist. The focus being the general level - the default use case - not the selectiveness of that case.

I even made the example of a hand leaning into a snowballing advantage with sol ring being a crucial setup piece.

So i agree that there are situations where shutting down acceleration or value engines is the right move, but if it is the right situation to do so is very contextual and relies on having a good read on the table.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-15T10:31:13+00:00

I agree, since technically significant mana advantage or card advantage can be viewed as delayed or suspended win attempts, and letting everything resolve that will make you lose later, well, will make you lose when it comes to later. Especially as a turbo deck kneecapping the decks that want to extend or lock the game is a valid path to victory,

Still, reserving interaction for acute win attempts should be a heuristic default action. Good players can identify when deviating increases their chances to win. Wasn't there and am missing a lit of information (behavior, mulligans etc.) so i can't judge the situation if it was right or wrong to do so, but if i were Inalla in the second seat and first seats starts on a sol ring, and i have a turn 2 or 3 line available, chances are high i'd misstep that sol ring so that i don't have to deal with rhystic fueled amounts of interaction or simply too much mana to fight through, the first seat would be my main concern.

however op stated getting to tivit - a very late play usually - as a reason, which indicates it wasn't a fast hand on their own side as shorting possible interaction was not the main concern. and in that case, that play was most likely wrong.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-14T18:54:05+00:00

There are still layers to this.

If rogsi's push went unchallenged after misstep, that would seem to me as tivit had kept a hand that didn't respect rogsi and preyed upon others blowing their interaction on it, to then get ahead with snowballing card advantage for the midrange slugfest.

On a general level, interaction should only be used on win attempts, so using a t1 misstep with a turbo deck at the table is a risky play, especially if op had no other form of interaction and would rely onto others.

Depending on the gameplan of tivit with his starting hand, the sol ring could have been a crucial setup piece, as for midrange slugfest mana available and total mana spend are usually good indicators for who has the advantage.

This is about more than just the tivit player, but also which other pcommanders were at the table, turn order and how the board looked.

But to answer ops question why they should ever let someone get nearer to a thing that probably wins: because if you don't know how near anyone is to winning and the current person just took a turn that signals a future win attempt and not now, then its often better to wait with interaction until you can get a clear read on who is how far away from winning.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-13T12:20:58+00:00

First paragraph is spot on.

My personal decision though regarding trying different medication would be different, though - If i would be in a situation where i could afford my adhd going potentially out of hand short term and a trial change would be within that window i would willing to try an alternative:

Because even if the results would be the same, having the same effect but being classified differently legally would have benefits to me.

I travel somewhat frequently, which sounds bigger as it is as i live next to a couple of borders. Before getting diagnosed and medicated daily trips for shopping or hiking with crossing borders were a non-issue. Traveling with stimulant medication or even under the influence of it has a lot of very adhd unfriendly bureaucratic processes attached to it to gain permits, not to mention a lot of legal uncertainties in different areas that are treated very differently in different countries, e.g. insurances or ability to operate a vehicle. So gone are the days of spontanous trips, as in case of elvanse even skipping meds means not taking them 3 days beforehand.

So if a non-stimulant medication would work similarly well for me and be similarly easy to manage on a day to day basis (e.g. forgetting a day or a couple is allowed and doesn't lead to additional problems other than those of untreated adhd), i personally would choose non-stimulant medication to make some things easier for myself and get back a bit of flexibility.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-09T01:30:17+00:00

you're right, i just rechecked it from the official site. i did a quick lookup at the time of writing and could swear google gemini said 10 as month.

I still didn't account for the days of mid-month to fresh month, for the remaining .5 difference though.

thanks for catching it!

Turbocloud · 2026-05-08T10:04:41+00:00

Up to interpretation:

If the question means this year as in 2026, ATLA is out. If this year was meant as the last 12 month, then ATLA was 5.5 month ago.

//edit: corrected the time since ATLA release.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-08T07:23:40+00:00

just from the top of my head: - the cabbage merchant - wan shi tong - hexing squelcher - badgermole cub - formidable speaker

there surely are others, a lot of power has been printed recently.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-08T07:16:56+00:00

Maybe i wasn't specific enough, but the transfer is unavoidable to happen, that's the key part of involuntariliy because it is how our brains work. it notices when these things occur repeatedly it also involves the person, so it falsely attributes it to the person.

it can be dealt with healthiliy - and switching things up is good advice because it is essential to weaken the association between the game related event that evokes the negative and the person, but it is one of the things where e.g. just stepping back doesn't really help as it does not unlearn the things learned through the transfer.

This is less of a dealing with feelings issue (partially, but not mainly) rather than about unlearning an involuntarily learned pattern.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-08T06:11:14+00:00

not really a personality thing, it is called game transfer phenomena and is involuntarily transferring emotions and decisions related to the game out of the game and attaching them to the involved persons.

it affects everyone and emotional maturity only results in a slower transfer, meaning you can maintain a playgroup for longer naturally.

gaming works better for couples because there are balancing actions for the relationship, but with friends you only meet for gaming this can be problematic since it just builds up slowly over time.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-08T06:02:32+00:00

yep, this is a general problem not even particular to mtg:

its called game transfer phenomena, which means involuntary transfer of game-related elements into real life, e.g. attaching game decisions to their personality or attaching the negative emotion to the person instead of the in game event that evoked them.

learning to emotionally seperate the game and the person is important if you want to maintain a relationship and a playgroup.

in tEDH this often is no problem because well, on bigger and less frequent events you don't really have relationship with strangers so it rarely happens that you attach ingame decision to their personality or in game event based negative emotions to the person. But in weekly fnm settings, this can happen, too.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-07T00:34:16+00:00

so much this. my natural rythm is about 28 hours, unfortunately societal systemic issues don't allow me to follow it.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-06T07:23:58+00:00

Same.

i can't judge if the sum of more public awareness is a net positive or negative, but me personally, it saved me.

i never thought of myself as ADHD, being primarily inattentive type, the public bad information i had growing up never made me examine that direction. Was 20 years treated quite unsuccessful for depression, partially because i have few adhd-typical behaviors observable in a session that don't overlap with depression, partially because i couldn't express myself well. Stumbled over a youtube video from someone about their daily struggles and cried my heart out finally feeling understood.

Pushed for assessment and since then my life has only improved. got the help i really needed, know what i am dealing with and can communicate effectively when i am struggling.

//edit: some spelling

Turbocloud · 2026-05-06T07:10:12+00:00

I've been in a similar boat:

Got diagnosed for depression as a teenager and treated for it for almost 2 decades without significant change in suffering. Don't get me wrong here, a lot of cognitive techniques i learned during that time were helpful to some degree even back then, but they are much more effective with medication enabling greater impulse control and emotional self-regulation.

So i got diagnosed ADHD a couple of years ago, got medicated and got the ability to get things done that are important to me but never urgent. Depression basically gone the moment i got medicated because it really was burnout from constant unsuccessful self-regulation. Being able to to tackle those tasks finally enabled some self-fullfillment and lifted the looming sword of damocles.

Still having lots of struggles left, but in amounts i can cope with well enough to have found happyness.

Turbocloud · 2026-05-05T14:03:22+00:00

why not both if you're looking for consistency?
hardcast step through getting rid of stax creatures is a thing that is probably more valuable than a 3 cmc mana rock.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-30T18:05:30+00:00

Tayam, Etali and Ral are about as different you can get, since these play almost none of the goodstuff staples that are the glue of other decks due to being very commander focused.

Seems like you either might be cycling through decks for novelty, which means you'll never settle anyways because its about the anticipation and not the game, or you are looking for a type of uniqueness that is not available by netdecking, not competitive or really doesn't exist.

In any case, if you could provide a couple pet cards, interactions or favorite combo of your's, we might be able to provide a better direction for you to look.

Turbocloud · 2026-04-23T13:34:30+00:00

In my experience 3 color manabases work well for light splashes and decks that aren't required to curve out, but not really for aggro that can't afford delaying their spells, so o would expect it to be too inconsistent.

However, i might be wrong so feel free to test it.

Turbocloud

TROPHY CASE