New Chieftain Ascendancy small sadness

Dear GGG,

I have been playing POE since Invasion almost entirely HC and have something well north of 10k hours into the game. I am not representative of most of your audience, so please take my feedback with appropriate salt.

One of my favorite mechanics in the game was totem leech. I have created several builds around it over the years, both as Chieftain and Scion (I always felt it would have been more appropriate as part of Hiero, but that's a minor point). It is a great sadness to me that, with the Chieftain rework, totem leech has been almost entirely removed from the game (I know it's still on troll timber, but that's not really viable as an endgame shield these days). Leaving aside any other issues with the Chieftain ascendancy, I wish you would consider finding a place again for this kinda niche but very fun mechanic.


With love,
Orion


Edit: And they FIXED IT!! Not in Chieftain (which may or may not be dead), but by providing a totem mastery that allows this mechanic into the game (though only for physical attack damage). No complaint--it shifts my focus some, but leave me super excited!

Many thanks guys!
-O

Seems like the ascedancy will be less popular than ever from 1% to 0.1% all of these stuff is nerfs.

Tawhoa and tukohama didn't stack. also there are no skills that works with fist of war and ancestral call so it's like picking one point that didn't match with the next ones from next one we grab only 1 from 2 options that works with our build like 1 free gem? ?

Ascedancy should be more creative than adding just "gems" into them.

don't forget that fist of war is actually a damage support, AC is just QoL you get from gear/warcry/passives/gemswap anyway so fundamentally is pretty bad for strikes.

Honestly I still think the chieftain rework is pretty bad, I keep looking at it and coming away with a frown on my face. It works for a couple of builds but the old one worked for those builds too (and more)

The fact Tahwoa doesn't work with fist is like a big anti-synergy. I might even call it a noob trap. If they fixed that part i'd be more interested as the slam-man.

Flies in:
Get slams at level 35 ad 55 labs.


They will make you THE STRONGEST ascendancy from all ascendancies out there by allot!!1
It literally gives you 200%+198% MORE DAMAGE on first hit totaling in doing 100(base)+200(tawahoa)+198(fistOfWar) totaling 498% dmg first hit, every 2 seconds. Frontloaded damage separated in multiple hits, which fixes accuracy issues, each rolls it's stun crit etc.
Pro tip, you can start attack and then cancel it by walking. The ancestrall spirit will finish the slam even tho YOU canceled it, allowing for INSANE acts clear speed.

Endgame t16 red maps:
In endgame you switch from slams to strike skills once you get yourself +2 strike nearby enemies with strike skills.
The lvl 30 ancestrall call gives 10% more dmg on it's own. But little tip, you can double hit enemies with lighting strike if you stand in your strike range of enemy, your projectile hits + ancestrall call hits boss again.
But all in all, so far the ascendancy falls off in endgame compared to other ascendancies, but it looks OP for first act clear and getting your atlas opened to red tier maps.

"

tw3tye wrote:

But all in all, so far the ascendancy falls off in endgame compared to other ascendancies, but it looks OP for first act clear and getting your atlas opened to red tier maps.

I think this has been brought up in earlier threads: the problem is that steep rolloff.

The resistances are incredibly nice when you are starved for gear your first playthrough, but very quickly you are overflowing with enough resists on gear to make that 50% cold/light resist node totally worthless. The non-downside melding node is simply not worth 4 ascendancy nodes to get, over just getting the jewel or using forbidden flesh/flame on other ascendancies.

Strike skills are already a problem in the game, so having a (single) node that specifically buffs them is uninspired and only going to appeal to a very small crowd. Additionally, unless they change it, Tawhoa's Chosen only works with slams (even though it says its triggered BY strike skills), so that's a totally dead node for strike skill builds.

Basically the only thing the ascendancy is good for is early game slam builds...and then it rolls off at even that. So what is the actual point? Plus, they wanted to give it a "fire" theme and then you have those slam nodes that...don't do anything related to fire. They lost their own identity focus when designing the ascendancy making synergies incredibly difficult.

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

I think this has been brought up in earlier threads: the problem is that steep rolloff.
.

Stealing juggernauts "unbreakable" (Double armor from body armour + 8% of armour applies to elemental damage) and equipping brass dome 4k - 4.5k armour->8-9k.

Scaling a little bit of armour with determination will make you UNKILLABLE.
Putting lvl 23 purity of fire on top of that puts you at 85% fire and 90%cold/lighting max res.

Molten shell exists...

You can run around with 4k life total and survive 100% deli or simu 30 with these defences cause brass dome makes your ignore crits.

How is this budget solution not crazy OP endgame?

But there is stronger way with arctic armour, pantheon, and never moving, which other keystone promotes.

"

tw3tye wrote:

"

jsuslak313 wrote:

I think this has been brought up in earlier threads: the problem is that steep rolloff.
.

Stealing juggernauts "unbreakable" (Double armor from body armour + 8% of armour applies to elemental damage) and equipping brass dome 4k - 4.5k armour->8-9k.

Scaling a little bit of armour with determination will make you UNKILLABLE.
Putting lvl 23 purity of fire on top of that puts you at 85% fire and 90%cold/lighting max res.

Molten shell exists...

You can run around with 4k life total and survive 100% deli or simu 30 with these defences cause brass dome makes your ignore crits.

How is this budget solution not crazy OP endgame?

But there is stronger way with arctic armour, pantheon, and never moving, which other keystone promotes.

Do you actually play hard content or do you just talk? You seriously think you would be "UNKILLABLE" with that pathetic amount of armour and no strong engine of recovery? The Jugg stealing the other way would be unkillable because he also has strong recovery. Chief lost all of its endurance charge and regen from previous ascendancy for this crap. It now also has no damage on top of that.

i liked a lot the changes to the chieftain tankness, but yeah... i was wondering why it felt so bad for me... maybe its actually a nerf, but i do hope we find a new build to work (in terms of meta skills) with chieftain.

ya the only chieftan i like to play is vf totems, im not completely sure if thats dead or what but time will tell.

"

tw3tye wrote:

Flies in:
Get slams at level 35 ad 55 labs.


They will make you THE STRONGEST ascendancy from all ascendancies out there by allot!!1
It literally gives you 200%+198% MORE DAMAGE on first hit totaling in doing 100(base)+200(tawahoa)+198(fistOfWar) totaling 498% dmg first hit, every 2 seconds. Frontloaded damage separated in multiple hits, which fixes accuracy issues, each rolls it's stun crit etc.
Pro tip, you can start attack and then cancel it by walking. The ancestrall spirit will finish the slam even tho YOU canceled it, allowing for INSANE acts clear speed.

Endgame t16 red maps:
In endgame you switch from slams to strike skills once you get yourself +2 strike nearby enemies with strike skills.
The lvl 30 ancestrall call gives 10% more dmg on it's own. But little tip, you can double hit enemies with lighting strike if you stand in your strike range of enemy, your projectile hits + ancestrall call hits boss again.
But all in all, so far the ascendancy falls off in endgame compared to other ascendancies, but it looks OP for first act clear and getting your atlas opened to red tier maps.

Well said,
but Tahwoa's chosen cannot be supported by fist of war. Granted I don't know what changes they will do when they release this live. If tawhoa gets charges and fist of war support it will be Nutty.

Also Fist of war is 119% at level 30. A nice boost. Very nice.

What we are getting is a minor melee dps increase for slams between the two skills. Tawhoa is nice for clear, but rarely is noticeable on bosses, and strike skills get 2 free strike extra, which is nice, but doesn't really do anything to bosses. Getting more multihit doesn't mean you hit the same target with each attack. It is going to be nice with like molten/lightning and returning projectiles.

The vibe I get is that Chieftain is a lot of really nice clear, but no real boss dps from the ascendancy. On paper this ascendancy appears very weak when compared with other Marauder options, It is kind of in the same position of assassin and gladiator. Other ascendancies just do their gimmick better and cheaper.

Tawhoa and Tukuhoma just need like 20-40% more melee damage to be on par with juggernaut and Berserker. Not to mention the defense is very very nice, but isn't going to do jack all for physical or chaos damage.

Losing fire conversion and totem fire immune (free reflect immune for totems) is a huge loss for a lot of totem builds.

We also need to see the mastery/passive/skill changes for the next patch if some setups will still work.