Acolyte of Chayula - Passives review and feedback

I'm a Chonk enjoyer since day 1.

I will start with each notable separately and then proceed to describe the issues of how these mechanics are linking each other and some ideas how to make it more pleasant:

[Chayula's Gift] - It's fine. Not too exciting, but it does its job well.
It should stay as is.

[Sap of Nightmares] - Yet another reveal of Leech related mechanics for Chonk. It's ok-ish, but I still have some issues with it:
1. Last League Energy Shield leeching version was vastly superior to this one and it was a sole reason to play the Acolyte for many people.
2. Instead of being versatile as a standalone 2-point Notable, it forces Chaos damage oriented playstyle.

[Waking Dream]+[Lucid Dreaming] - Aka [Into the Breach] - It's fine. With available support gems to boost pickup range - it's fine. Well played with Lucid Dreaming.
It should stay as it is.

[Grasp of the Void] - the new dodge roll black hole. It is severely useless, especially since we cannot use more than one Caltrops Gems now. Cooldown of 5 seconds on a dodge ability is just killing the idea before it even started.
It should have been [Reality Rending] left alone from previous league.

[Inner Turmoil] - Here we go...
Volatility pop damage immunity part is cool.
But the proc on Ailment application is... weird? We already can stack Volatility in the same max pace, but with crits and support gem [Volatility]. We kinda do go Crit on Acolyte by default too... So, is it there just to double dip to reach the max stacking tempo easier? I don't seem to be grasping the idea behind it.

[Unravelling] - What?
Randomized cycle of Ele-Ailment application from Chaos damage.
You want to compliment the Volatility from previous Notable in this chain.
So, we now get Volatility from EleAilments and the Chaos damage from this volatility will apply more eleAilments, so we get... unchanged volatility per second... Just more reliably? On an unreliable Volatility? What?
It's more like Insanity than Unravelling.
It could be ok-ish if [Cast on Ele Ailments] weren't garbage (Cast On Crit isn't better tbh). Also, [Snap] on cooldown too, so no synergy of Random Ailment from Chaos -> Snap. (Thanos was a Chonk!)

Summarizing [Inner Turmoil]/[Unravelling]:
Volatility immunity of some sort is a cool idea. Execution in these 2 nodes however, is really poor.

And all that cross-stacking Volatility with all the Elemental Ailments rolling just to loose all the stacks between monster packs or in a Boss invulnerability phase/ability scenario.
Yeeeet, It is frustrating.

Before we go to the Darkness, let's speak about some links I see here already:
Volatility stacking + pop-dmg-immunity is supposed to be "a proper way to deal Chaos damage for Acolyte". Honestly [Reality Rending] was more reliable.
Leech got linked to Chaos damage now too. Even tho on separate lanes.
Perhaps we should reconsider this setup and integrate Leech into Volatility nodes and maybe leave the Ele-Ailments idea. Please? More on that later.

[Darkness] - A little slow family member.
Noone wants is. It's still there. Someone in GGG wants it.
I mean, I get the vibes... It's a cool defensive layer, thematically cool and fitting. Doesn't work tho.
How do you want us to play it? How? Kaoms is the easiest pick, but what after that? We can't go Qstaff without Spirit. Qstaff needs Heralds or some Power Charges life-support shenanigans.
After my unnecessarily extensive research on this subject, I figured that there are two abilities in the game, that could somehow work without spirit. Gas Grenade and Gas Arrow. Why? Because these are dealing damage from Poison Cloud and not Hit, and these aren't Spells. Hits and Spells seem to be simply needing Spirit gems and mere 1800 somewhat-shield cannot bargain. But guess what? Darkness no longer gives Extra Chaos damage, which is one of few things that actually scales up the Poison cloud damage.
So yeah Darkness - you're unusable. Remove it completely or redesign it's Spirit interaction.

Ok. Let's wrap it up a little, so it's easier to follow up with ideas on how to make it all better:

[Chayula's Gift] - stays as a standalone 2-point Notable.
[Waking Dream]+[Lucid Dreaming] - staying as linked 2 Notables.
[Grasp of the Void] - is swapped for [Reality Rending] from previous patches.

Now the Leech and the Volatility:
[1st Notable]:
You take no damage from Volatility pop. In addition, your Mana Leech is based on Chaos as well as Physical damage.
[2nd Notable]:
You cannot Recharge Energy Shield. Your Mana Leech effects also Recover Energy Shield. (back to The Consuming Questions, as simple as that)

And the Darkness... I feel like it really needs some Evasion synergy, so we can fish for longer no-damage-taken periods, so the Darkness can recover. Also the Spirit part really needs to be bent. It also needs a buff just like that. It is not a scalable Life, so even base 900 is not that high of a number.
Invoker gets the Spirit from Body Armour stats in an act of some sort Grace technique, but sacrifices option to get Spirit from other sources.
Perhaps Acolyte could sacrifice the Spirit he has, to feed the Darkness inside of him?
Change will be adding scaling to the 1st notable already (buffing it as a standalone option) and redesigning second one to synergize with Evasion.

[Embrace the Darkness]:
- Base maximum Darkness is 100
- 5s Reservation
- +8 to Max Darkness per level
- -1 Spirit per level
- +1% of maximum Darkness per Unreserved Spirit point (you will figure out the UI for it GGG, I believe in You!)

[2nd Notable]:
Increases your Evasion rating by 1% per Unreserved Spirit point (or scale with Unreserved Darkness, so it caps at +100% when none reserved).
Effect is doubled if you have no reserved Darkness.

Simple yet effective.
We are feeding the Darkness with our faith, our Spirit, so it grows.
Then, we adapted to cooperate with the Darkness, so it conceals us, making us more elusive.
Yes, technically you could stack like 4k Darkness, but you'd have no other use of the Spirit you got.
And the second Notable - complimenting the first one nicely and making you to lean towards Evasion more.
If too op, just adjust the Darkness per level one point down a time until sweet spot found.


I really worked myself here to figure out how to help with this tree. I hope i helped.

Bump

I like this idea of interplay between Spirit and Darkness!


I think a simpler version would be:

1. Maximum Darkness equal to unreserved Spirit.
Now you can adjust your Spirit pool to use as a direct defense layer.

2. % damage reduction while Darkness is not fully reserved, scaling with Darkness skill level.
A much more straightforward Darkness power scaling.


Then, the second Darkness Notable could be some fun new interaction with Darkness. Maybe some effect when Darkness is fully reserved, a way to dissipate Darkness reservation, or a new offensive effect scaling with amount of Darkness reserved?

"

destroyerofeternities#0802 wrote:

I like this idea of interplay between Spirit and Darkness!


I think a simpler version would be:

1. Maximum Darkness equal to unreserved Spirit.
Now you can adjust your Spirit pool to use as a direct defense layer.

2. % damage reduction while Darkness is not fully reserved, scaling with Darkness skill level.
A much more straightforward Darkness power scaling.


Then, the second Darkness Notable could be some fun new interaction with Darkness. Maybe some effect when Darkness is fully reserved, a way to dissipate Darkness reservation, or a new offensive effect scaling with amount of Darkness reserved?

Sounds good brother!
I really like the 1st point simplification of whole system.
As for the second notable, I still vote for some sort of evasion synergy, but your points are really good!

While I don't agree with [Waking Dream]+[Lucid Dreaming] being fine because I find it still much to awkward to use and the duration too short...
(And still kinda more consistent than volatility, considering if you support [Into the Breach], you can get about 14% added chaos dmg per stack, so just two or 3 stacks already give you 24% to 36% added chaos, which seems faster to reach than with volatility...)

I really like your idea for darkness.
+1

Yeah, always found it funny that darkness just removes your spirit entirely, which is such a massive loss on a marital character like monk. Definitely should scale off more than just your level, taking your spirit and converting it into darkness seems very obvious to me! And it doesn't even give you a good reward. I feel like this Ascendancy is actually weaker this league which is kinda wild.

The thing that felt strong to me previously was constantly leeching ES and being able to live through a lot of incoming damage, and that's just gone now. And losing double effectiveness of flames of Chayula also feels bad.

I like your efforts but...


It's too complicated really, why jump thru hoops ?


Let's make Chayula simple and effective. (not complicated and ineffective)

"

ukarudenkai#6946 wrote:

I like your efforts but...

It's too complicated really, why jump thru hoops ?
Let's make Chayula simple and effective. (not complicated and ineffective)

What's complicated in my solutions? Current stuff is complicated, unreliable and tbh ineffective (besides maybe one Blackflame Covenant build).

I simplified it quite a bit tbh.
Volatility pop immunity + mana leech from chaos + es mana leech
Chaos resi
Chaos dmg roulette
Flames pickup minigame
Darkness shield scaling from unreserved spirit + Evasion boost from it.

Can't go simpler yet effective from puzzles we got so far.

How about a legit way to generate power charges? That would be nice.

I meant simple in general, anyway what you propose is still 10 times better than what we have now.


How about volatility pops immediatly, lasts 15 seconds and renew the timer when we create more.

Flames lasts 15 seconds and renew the timer when we pick-up more.

Darkness divides spirit by half.

Cherry on top, we can choose which ailment is generated by chaos damage.


Simple, effective, takes a few clicks (5 minutes ?) to implement in PoE 2.