I'm almost afraid to express this opinion, but...

I love Trial of the Sekhemas.

I know, I'm sorry. I didn't even like Sanctum so much, but honestly Trial feels perfect to me. It's the right amount of tension, stakes and difficulty. Yes, you get screwed up by RNG some times; c'est la vie. But I like my ascendancy process to carry some risk and Trials hits the right spot for me.

The honor issue can be easily circumvented with relics (hitting 75% honor res isn't hard and it makes all subsequent ascensions in a league much easier), and unlike Lab there's a lot less backtracking and aimlessly walking through corridors looking for the next door, which I always found insufferable.

I know it's not a popular opinion these days, but I'm stoked Trial of the Sekhemas is one of the ways to ascend (and the one I'll continue to use until they tone down the Ultimatum bird boss a bit).