EA Monk Chalupa Feedback

Hi

I want to first say I very much have enjoyed PoE 2 and I cant wake up in the morning without thinking about playing PoE 2. At the same time. I feel like I've been shafted for picking the Acolyte of Chalupa as my Monk ascendency for two reasons. And I'd like to explain in detail my thought process as to how I came to my decision to play this ascendency and why I thought it would be a good choice for me.

I have always liked playing a class that is able to tank damage. So that is the question - how can I tank damage?

When I saw the ascendency points that allowed the ability to leech Energy Shield based on my Mana Leech, which is also instant, I thought that would be a super way to be tanky and a fun way to be able to be resilient on the right side of the tree. In reality, I found I was strongly mistaken due to some key things I'd like to highlight below:

Mana leech in it's current state is STRICTLY only tied to PHYSICAL damage done which rolls on weapon, rings, and gloves. This wouldn't be so bad if it was leeching with Attack Damage, but its leeching with physical damage only.

I felt like being an acolyte of chalupa meant getting a ton of evasion and energy shield, and being able to leech mana instantly and stay topped off (2 ascendency points) and energy shield (another 2 ascendency points) to allow me to sustain myself through all sorts of damage while grabbing points on the tree to boost my evasion and energy shield. It turns out I was wrong. I feel like Im still just a Monk that's un-ascended even with 4 ascendancy points allocated. Why is that? Lets dive into that.

When I first put points in the first 2 points (mana leech is instant) I felt like nothing much has changed, but I was looking forward to the next 2 points which allowed instant energy shield leech. WELL I was wrong. When I was able to finally get my extra 2 ascendency points after failing 5 hours worth of overly punishing mods from the revamped ultimatum, I found that the ascendency node I had worked so hard and long for, amounted to nothing.

Why was it nothing though? Lets dive into that so we can both understand what happened.

Monks by design are expected to "combo" elements. This wouldn't be a big deal if mods for leech wasn't tied to physical damage. I WANT THIS NEXT LINE TO BE READ VERY CARFULLY IN CASE YOU, THE READER DOESN'T UNDERSTAND.

If physical damage is converted to an element (which most monk skills are) then leech only applies to the remaining unconverted physical damage.

That means when skills that convert 80% of physical to elemental, only 20% of that damage applies to leech. That might sound ok in MATH, but when playing the game and testing this myself, it feels terrible.

My thoughts after my first 2 points were "these are not doing much for me right now, but when i get that ES leech, it will be worth it." but in reality, my abilities didn't even leech 1 energy shield because after 80% conversion, it wasn't enough to even give me 1 energy shield per attack.

So I thought. "OK maybe since leech is only limited to physical damage, I need to change my thought process to: I cant do elemental damage for this ascendency to work out the way I planned."

It turns out I was wrong there too. I spent hours trying to make it work to deal only physical damage with quarterstaff skills so I could sufficiently leech an amount that felt comfortable, but at the end of the day, I still only would leech 1 energy shield per hit.

I'm not done here. Because I don't like to give up early. This is where I made a mistake because I decided to figure out where all the mana leech nodes on the passive skill tree AND where the mana leech modifiers can roll on gear. I currently revamped my gear to include mana leech on my weapon, and gloves, and took every increased mana leech notable available on the passive skill tree with the exception of "Suffusion" due to it being too far. I know I can get mana leech mods on both rings, but this is where I stopped because other ascendancies don't require a specific stat to be rolled on 4 items just to enable the use of an ascendancy. This is where i felt defeated and the reason i wrote long winded review. I felt like I "picked the wrong ascendancy" because I'd be way more tanky with less investment if I had just chosen Invoker, which doesn't require tons of stats just to enable my ascendancy.

I want to point out also, PoE 1 had Attack Damage Leech on the tree. Which would apply to elemental damage. Why does that not exist for the Monk, especially for the one that specializes in leeching? I hope my thoughts are helpful and I want to help make a better experience going forward.

I feel like I was cheated out of my build creation and creativity. I'm not sure how else to explain this feeling.

I'd also like to say - this message comes from a place where I have not watched streamers, youtubers, or redditors to sway my opinion. I don't know if I missed something crucial to the expected experience that maybe should have been explained better, or if this is an oversight on physical leech vs attack damage leech.

I feel like if the design is to keep the leech stat away from spell users, then attack damage leech would serve the same purpose while enabling the ascendancy without allowing casters to benefit from leech in the way melee should. (at least that's the design space I expected from this ascendancy)

I love the game, and have been having a ton of fun, but there's an underlying feeling that the first 4 ascendancy points I put into my character just feels like im a Monk still, and not an ascended class. Nothing has changed much since I've ascended. Especially since I spent so much time and effort on the 2nd ascension to find out my leech is so tiny it doesn't even amount to 1 energy shield per attack since its all converted to elemental.

I wanted to be tanky. Then I see Invoker has evasion converted to armour. Like a pseudo Iron Reflexes (which I nearly took on every character in POE 1 because I loved be tanky to phys damage). I feel like my leech from 4 ascendency points are less than a single watchers eye in poe 1 with ES on hit while discipline is active on. It's quite a let down and I hope I explained everything in a way that makes sense.

Also where is fortify?

Love, melee enjoyer Kroe.

I played Dark Monk first, then played Invoker afterwards.

I didn't go for the mana leech nodes, because I immediately realized they were nodes that would require itemization to work.

I didn't go for the darkness nodes, because they are only good once you've gotten yourself mind over matter and eldritch battery if you're using them for the damage buff. And if you aren't, they're bad since you're sacrificing good defensive layers like combined Ghost Dance and Wind Dance.

I didn't go for reality rending right away because its RNG extra chaos damage, and in the same manner the chaos resistance node is not a great first pick.

I went for into the breach, which was good sustain, but was also rng extra chaos damage since you need purple flames to spawn and each stack has its own timer.

Meanwhile, as an invoker, I have unconditional extra damage of the element of my choosing, a 40% damage buff that I can activate when I need it for burst so long as I've charged it, full elemental pen on crits, spirit from your chestpiece. . .

Overall, Invoker felt impactful right away, Dark Monk, if I'm using a quarterstaff, just feels like I'm playing wrong.

I've seen people make dark monk work as a caster by using occult spells exclusively, or a bow for poison skills, and that might just be the way to go, but it absolutely feels bad that you can't play quarterstaff monk at all by getting your phys damage converted to chaos from the extra damage modifiers on the tree because of how inconsistent they are.

The only use for the mana leech I've found is that Into the Breach's blue flames are "leech", so they became instant mana recovery that can give back ES too.