Early Access Acolyte of Chayula feedback

In the current state of early access the Acolyte of Chayula ascendancy feels quite lacking, especially compared to Invoker.

Here are some ideas I've come up with that I'd like to get out there in case they'd be useful to shaping the ascendancy in the future.

I would like to preface this by saying I am a player who has only played the monk class and only wielded quarterstaffs and bows. Either one of the two or both with weapon swapping. This will likely have colored my perspective and ideas. If you have a different variation of the ideas I've presented here please share them.

Chaos leech:

Through ascendancy nodes, preferably Ravenous Doubts but Consuming Questions would also make sense in my opinion.

Darkness buff:

Needs to be on a somewhat equal power level to spirit skills, maybe a chance or guaranteed chaos explosion on kill effect and/or being able to scale higher Darkness pool.

Another possibility either separate or in conjunction to the change above would be to make Darkness damage reservation mitigate damage better (for example improved chaos, elemental and/or physical damage mitigation) so you'd be incentivized to play around Darkness reservation.

Waking Dream aka Into the Breach:

Flames of Chayula feel a bit weak atm and Lucid Dreaming feels mandatory. A solution would be for Purple Flames of Chayula to not have individual timers but instead refresh on purple flame acquisition. This might mean that Lucid Dreaming would need some retuning and/or purple flames in general.

Another buff to Waking Dream's flames would be to add unique supports for Into the Breach that would block either purple, red or blue flames so that only 2/3 spawn (thematically mastering and wielding chaos better making it a bit less random and catered to the wielder's needs). Essentially opening Into the Breach up for optimization so as to work better for different types of builds.

Purple and blue for Chaos Inoculation. Purple and red for a non-energy shield Acolyte with mana leech looking for more life leech / defenses aswell as more purple flames. Red and blue for a pure resource focused Acolyte, most likely one not really specializing into or caring for chaos damage as a whole. This is just an experimental idea but thought I'd put it out there.

Lucid Dreaming:

Currently only affecting damage of the Purple Flames of Chayula from Mantra of Destruction but not duration. This is an interaction that doesn't quite seem intentional but I am aware that the flames from mantra scale with skill effect duration. If it is intentional it would be nice if it was stated somewhere.


Possible changes that are not necessary in the current state of the game (in my opinion) but could be fun:

Make chaos damage interact with tempest bell, either buffing it with a unique chaos effect or in the theme of chaotic energies make chaos damage randomly attune the bell with either fire, cold or lightning elements.

Quarterstaffs, support/spirit gems, and the Monk's entire location in the Passive Tree need reevaluation. The Chaos-tagged support that's implemented is a clunky mess of jank that cannot fairly compare at all to what is offered to Invokers.

chaos damage interacting with bell is a great idea.

As Acolyte's concept is chaos based, and the lack of support gems/interactions/ways to scale chaos dmg or even chaos skill gems in general.
I would have liked to hear GGG's opinion on the state of Acolyte.

Compared to Invoker who has the better nodes on the passive tree via scaling either Cold or Lightning, that the only viable skill gems for Quarterstaff Monk take full advantage off simply from the fact that Cold/Lightning is way stronger than Chaos.

Chaos dmg in general seems underwhelming to me after now trying out Lightning bow skills on Acolyte and it really feels underwhelming especially when the Purple flames are so inconsistent as a dmg buff. If the flame buff duration would stack + reset the duration timer and not be separate duration buffs that stack, then the added Chaos dmg would probably feel way nicer.

You have no idea what this class is.
You see it right in front of your eyes, yet you fail to understand it.

This darkness, is unique.

This is... guaranteed block/evasion. On top of your block/evasion. You are not actually HIT when you are HIT. (If you are HIT I mean)

The critical-like chaos buff, the 85% chaos resistance, the ES leech...
Those are hard to get stats.

But the darkness... This is very unique.

And I do not want to see this character changed, just so it can fit for the general population "fruit ninja" dream.

I really don't.

"

NorskBrunost#7276 wrote:

As Acolyte's concept is chaos based, and the lack of support gems/interactions/ways to scale chaos dmg or even chaos skill gems in general.

This is plain and simple wrong.

You do not actually need to scale your chaos damage. Or play chaos skills.
This is a noob trap.

You can scale global increases like with projectile damage, or attack damage, or crossbow damage, grenade damage, you get it? So both initial hit, and the extra benefit from this.

It becomes ADDITIVE MORE. (I am not sure if this makes any sense).

It stacks additively with other sources of EXTRAS, but its effect is MULTIPLICATIVE to your increases from the skill tree.

So you are basically playing 7-link gems.
Do you get it?

1. I really like the idea to discard one of three flame types. It should be a node with three options, like deadeye's Far Shot | Point Blank, or concoctions.
2. I don't like that 'Lucid Dreaming' quadruples effect of purple flames. Both 'Lucid Dreaming' and 'Inner Silence' feel mandatory for their prior nodes. It's a bad design.
3. I don't like that spirit is completely lost instead of being somehow converted to darkness.

"

EightInchFloppyDisk#2190 wrote:

You have no idea what this class is.
You see it right in front of your eyes, yet you fail to understand it.

This darkness, is unique.

This is... guaranteed block/evasion. On top of your block/evasion. You are not actually HIT when you are HIT. (If you are HIT I mean)

The critical-like chaos buff, the 85% chaos resistance, the ES leech...
Those are hard to get stats.

But the darkness... This is very unique.

And I do not want to see this character changed, just so it can fit for the general population "fruit ninja" dream.

I really don't.

I think we all understand that Darkness is reserved depending on the damage that was meant to be taken from you as a form of mitigation, this happening after checking for a successful block or evasion of damage. But Darkness can only be scaled to a maximum of 780 with an investment into all the ascendancy nodes connected to it meaning you'll have to invest 6 points to gain its full potential. But doing so will lock you out of the spirit based gems like wind dancer, ghost dance, grim feast, herald of thunder/ice, cast on (condition) gems and blink. The amount of missed power you get for a form of mitigation that has a 10 second timer (5 if you invest 4 ascendancy points) is just not worth it in the current state of the game it seems.

Also one of the nodes gives you a maximum of 39% gained chaos damage as extra but this max value only happens if you've not been using the mitigation mechanic and kind of pales in comparison to purple flames of Chayula and/or reality rending when you consider that those mechanics do not lock you out of spirit.

If you have some interactions I might be unaware of and/or numbers to back it up I'd be very interested. I think all of us commenting here really love the theme and idea of the ascendancy but would just like for it to have its unique power that is equal to the others. I do in no way wish for it to look like any other ascendancy but it definitely seems to lack in power atm.

"

EightInchFloppyDisk#2190 wrote:

"

NorskBrunost#7276 wrote:

As Acolyte's concept is chaos based, and the lack of support gems/interactions/ways to scale chaos dmg or even chaos skill gems in general.

This is plain and simple wrong.

You do not actually need to scale your chaos damage. Or play chaos skills.
This is a noob trap.

You can scale global increases like with projectile damage, or attack damage, or crossbow damage, grenade damage, you get it? So both initial hit, and the extra benefit from this.

It becomes ADDITIVE MORE. (I am not sure if this makes any sense).

It stacks additively with other sources of EXTRAS, but its effect is MULTIPLICATIVE to your increases from the skill tree.

So you are basically playing 7-link gems.
Do you get it?

You do not NEED to scale chaos damage but the gained damage still adhere to resistances of chaos and gets improved by wither. This DOES incentives the player to at least make use of the wither mechanic or scale chaos damage on the tree or from gear as this will affect the gained damage as well. You are right with attack damage for example being then a really good source of increased damage to scale into as long as you do not use any form of non-attack damage.

"

Macnic#1174 wrote:

You do not NEED to scale chaos damage but the gained damage still adhere to resistances of chaos and gets improved by wither. This DOES incentives the player to at least make use of the wither mechanic or scale chaos damage on the tree or from gear as this will affect the gained damage as well. You are right with attack damage for example being then a really good source of increased damage to scale into as long as you do not use any form of non-attack damage.

I literally wrote a whole post, how you should not wither and scale chaos damage, because it will be a mistake.

What part you didn't get exactly?