Feedback: Generic & Acolyte of Chayula

Forward Looking Statement: Apologies for passive aggressive writing but I forced myself to write this as I really want the game to succeed and am a dev myself, so knowing the users that I and prolly you work with, if you don't say what you mean and want straight up it is useless feedback.

I wanted to share some feedback after coming back to the 0.2 after I originally gave up on it in the first week since it was a terrible experience and decided to just take a break and also play PoE1.
Since I try to avoid meta build etc. I went with Acolyte of Chayula, yes k*ll me please, and also was using Embrace the Darkness, but let's not prologue it and get to the actual feedback, about the ascendency and balance etc. and how to potentially fix this mess.

Acolyte of Chayula (Played Ice Strike with Shattering Palm)

Let's go with the bad ones and then how to change and re-arrange things:

Embrace the Darkness: shots fired, thus far it is the worst thing that can ever be picked on any ascendency and there are a few reasons for that:
- No spirit and all the bonuses from meta gems and buffs, fairly obvious we are losing access to literally everything whether that's a defensive or an offensive buff
- The amount of Darkness per level is laughable in a world of people having 15k ES
- Every single degen on the ground or poison the whole Darkness is just gone immediately like it was never there in a first place
- Reservation that lasts 10s, even ES has faster recharge and recoup is faster than this
- Maximum on the level 100 with all the nodes is 1170 which is absolutely laughable

Inner Silence
- Absolutely useless who thought that 10s is even ok to begin with and then you add this node to cut it to 5s

Grasp of the Void
- 1% Extra Chaos Damage for 20 unreserved Darkness, considering that I was constantly without Darkness due to degens or being hit, thanks entropy 85% evasion rating does nothing even with considerate investment into the blind nodes

Reality Rending - similar to Grasp of the Void is just as random and because the way game calculates damage it is all based off base damage to begin with and barely any nodes on the tree that increase chaos damage

Waking Dream - while the idea is really cool the random flames and the constant cooldown and running around to collect them is super annoying, yet resulting in another RNG mechanic for the ascendency


The rest of the tree is fine and good enough as it is.

Now let's focus on how to actually fix this:

Embrace the Darkness:
- first off the base amount should be at least 200 to begin with(It only helped in the campaign)
- reservation duration should be at all time 6 seconds
- amount of darkness gained per level should be changed to +12 to really feel like it has any impact
- let's talk spirit since there is none, we need a big benefit: While you have Darkness critical hits poison enemies or increases to Spirit on the gear affect Darkness at 150%, I would prefer Poison on Crit though
- fix the degen part where Darkness is gone in an instant it should deplete like ES or life
- the biggest problem that I do not know how to fix is the Charge Generation(No Spirit), this is a very tricky one and I leave it up to you

Inner Silence - completely changed and merged with Grasp of the Void
- Unaffected by poison
- 1% Extra Chaos Damage per 30 unreserved Darkness
- 3% More Evasion Rating per 30 reserved Darkness, yes Evasion, when I want to focus on Darkness I dont think about ES

Reality Rending:
- Percentage chance changed to 25, 15, 10 plus 1% chance to deal 150%

Waking Dream:
- Flames should erupt from enemies being hit by attacks with increased chance to drop on kill, increased pickup radius
- You are considered to be in the Breach, really? If it is an RP text thats fine, but while in the breach should grant a bonus, dodging phases thru enemies


Generic skills feedback:
- Vaulting Impact the positioning is so annoying to execute the skills
- Why most of the skills push me backwards? Like Wave of Frost
- Mantra of Destruction is really weak, tried to use it but the difference was negligible
- Lack of Physical Skill gems for Monk
- Skills gems requiring level 42 should require 38 instead, are you afraid that you put the best at the end and nobody play other skills coz if that is the case then why bother?
- Freezing Mark, change to Upon target being frozen release the nova instead of upon death, nobody is using this gem and we can only have 1 mark active anyway unless some sort of prolif


Generic Feedback:
- Why are you so fixated around Lightning Damage everywhere, literally every meta build is some sort of Lightning Skill?
- Hand of Wisdom and Action along with Attribute stacking is the only way to actually significantly boost the damage to the point that nothing matters anymore and again it is Lightning?
- Amount of ES on the Skill Tree, cut it by 85%, why do I need to get life on all my gear but when it comes to ES I can just grab a random node that gives me 50% increase, like seriously PoE1 has the same issue all the meta builds are ES/CI based
- Blind chance on the skill tree should have all nodes changed from 5% chance to blind to 10%, if I commit to this layer of defense I should have a higher chance to to actually hit it, everyone goes Crit/Att Speed anyway so why punish off meta so hard?
- Buff other elements other than Lightning, I am so tired of Lightning skills and haven't touched a single one even in PoE1 for years, is this a real epitome of power for you or it is what sells?
- Armour is still in a terrible state, please adjust the formula

Items:
- Crafting is still absolutely RNG and nothing helps
- Lazy dev aka +X Level of XXX Skills this is the biggest problem currently, I refused to change my gloves ever since I got them in a first act of campaign until maps because they granted me +1 to Melee Skills and Flat Phys. If that is really your solution then I will just not bother playing since the only thing I look on the items is if they grant me that stat, if not immediately trash
- Runes vendor recipe, 3x runes of the same type 1 random from vendor

Hot Take:
- Since you want us to use different skills, combos etc. I would suggest having a look at some of the Roguelike games and how they handle this, I would love a smooth transitions(extra action speed) when performing combos and using different skills, it would have to be as smooth as butter, maybe a support gem or item not sure but something like if you have used a different skill recently grants 20% skill speed and +50% stun threshold, something that would actually allow the player to perform those combos extra smooth
- XP loss is fine, the issue is the XP gain around level 80 that takes a big hit, I would increase it but please fix Omens

Maps:
- A lot of clutter still and the size is just way too much, add more yellow chests, more interactions etc. something that makes players want to go thru them, like the more monsters killed more XXX whatever that might be, I need an incentive to deal with the layout, but seriously remove all the small blockage, most of the maps should be open with just a few obstructions

Since I kinda forced myself to write all that and still experimenting I will leave this post open so I can add more. I know the dev cycle for you is still going so a bunch of easy things still can be added.

EDIT:
- Embrace the Darkness ascendency node I used did not involve any MOM(Mind Over Matter) I had 0 ES and was solely focused on Evasion and Blind, 0 ES literally on my gear.
- If not the Shattering Palm I would have stopped playing as with no Spirit I would have had 0 AoE clear(No Herald of Ice).
- I did not use Flicker Strike or charges at all
- Strength should grant 1HP more

EDIT:
- There is way too many on death effects and monster AoE effects like temporal bubble
- Monsters speed is still overtuned, plus thee light radius attracts more of them constantly when you move across the maps.