Talk about Trial of the Ancestors and you'll still get a split reaction. Some players remember it as a fresh break from the usual map grind, and others just shrug and move on. That tension is why POE currency chatter often gets tied to ToTA too, since people are always weighing whether the mode is worth the time, the setup, and the rewards.

What makes the discussion sticky is that ToTA never felt like a normal league side activity. You walked in, picked your units, and suddenly you were dealing with a different kind of pressure. It wasn't just about damage numbers. It was about positioning, timing, and whether your team would actually do what you wanted. For some folks, that was the hook. For others, it was exactly the problem.

Why some players still want it back

If you liked ToTA, you probably liked that it gave you something to do when maps started feeling flat. You could sit down and run match after match without needing to think about sustain, atlas trees, or all the usual endgame noise. It had its own pace. That matters more than people think.

• It offered a real change of rhythm from mapping
• It gave non-map players another place to spend time
• It had a tournament feel that a lot of players still miss
• It could be a fun sink for weird builds and side goals

That said, the best memories usually come from the early part of the climb. Once the ranks rose, the cracks showed. Units could feel clumsy. Some fights felt less like strategy and more like hoping the AI did not mess up. People were fine with losing. They just wanted losses to feel fair.

Why the pushback is so strong

A lot of the negative reaction is pretty simple. Some players just did not enjoy the mode. They found it slow, awkward, or too far removed from the parts of Path of Exile they already liked. And if you're one of those people, making it core would just mean more content you'd ignore.

The bigger complaint, though, is balance. Players who were open to ToTA still pointed at the same issues again and again. AI behavior felt off. Difficulty ramped in a way that didn't always feel earned. The mode could be fun for a while, then start feeling like it was fighting the player instead of challenging them.

What would need to change first

Most of the middle-ground takes land in the same place: keep the idea, but fix the rough edges. If ToTA ever comes back as permanent content, it'd need to feel less like a one-off experiment and more like a system that knows what it wants to be. Right now, that part is still fuzzy.

A sensible version of the mechanic would probably need cleaner unit control, better balance between offense and defense, and a difficulty curve that gives the player more control. If that happens, more people might give it a proper shot instead of blocking it the second it appears. And yes, some players would still ignore it and go buy POE currency elsewhere instead, but that's part of any optional system. The point is to make it good enough that the choice feels real.