Chayula Monk Ascendancy

Chayula Monk's ascendancy feels awfully mid in general, I like the RP and idea of it, but the ascendancy itself just feels like it falls short. To begin, Reality Rending is just bad, it feels useless and it kind of is. Such a low percentage for such little reward just isn't worth it in my eyes. The two mana leech nodes could be really good and interesting, but it just becomes useless if your mana is full as it doesn't recharge your energy shield anymore (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BPz4C21tgs&ab_channel=emiracle) as can be seen by this video. Finally, the maximum darkness mechanic is a good defensive barrier which I think is good but it could be better and should be better.

Reality rending could be fixed in my eyes by just making the percentages for extra chaos damage higher so it procs more often. Or instead, just give a guaranteed extra chaos damage on hit with some tweaking.

For Maximum Darkness, you sacrifice ALL of your spirit. No matter how much spirit you might have, it only gives you the 100 base maximum darkness. The darkness scales with level, but it's a flat scaling which is fine. But, my point is that I feel maximum darkness could be better as a defensive layer if it is also scaled with your total amount of spirit. Furthermore, if you take the ascendancy in Act 2, it makes fighting bosses like the Bog Witch obsolete as you do not need spirit so it can just be a skip boss as you have no reason to even fight her since you don't benefit from the increase in spirit. It would feel like a better tradeoff for the maximum darkness if it took your total amount of spirit into consideration for scaling purposes, especially since spirit is often a build-enabling aspect with the spirit gems that can be acquired. So to completely sacrifice that, I think the reward should be just a tad bit better. It could also work as a mechanic to reduce the darkness reservation duration, but I could see why that might not work or might be broken.

To sum up my thoughts, reality rending feels bad and just not worth the ascendancy. Mana Leech in conjunction with the leeching for energy shields needs to be fixed. And the Maximum Darkness would feel better if it scaled with spirit and gave more of a reward for the big tradeoff.

Agreed. I love the concept, but it is really irrelevant gameplay wise.

I was already disappointed during the first playtest, and decided to give it another try with the leech changes but as you've shown, there clearly is an issue with the ES leech when mana is full. I think it hasn't been anticipated because of the instant leech removal, but it really feels underwhelming. Made me wonder if I should go Eldritch/MOM + ravenous doubts just so I can tank properly thanks to leech. (EDIT: It still has to be mentioned that the change on Ravenous doubts is great, and makes the ascendancy clearly more enjoyable & playable than the previous version)

I don't really mind Chayula's gift & reality rending - the first is perfect as is and a good alternative to CI. RR stat wise is fine imo given the high attack speed you have as a monk, but it still is hard to feel when it comes into play and simply doesn't make you feel anything while playing.

Into the breach is cool. I haven't tested it yet, but I doubt Lucid Dreaming affects purple flames from Mantra of Destruction ? It would be great if it did, but it wasn't the case in the first playtest.

And the big issue now... Embrace the darkness
I don't know where to start with this aberration
I'll go with the more blatant one: Spirit removal. Excuse me ? If I want to play this to have a base 990 darkness shield at lvl 100 (Which is not that great and unscalable), I have to sacrifice the possibility to use wind dancer and ghost dance ? So far, I can accept it, trade tanking spirit gems for tanking darkness. But I also can't use any heralds, and mainly can't use combat frenzy and lingering illusion, making the only viable options to gain power charges as a quarterstaff user siphoning strike ? I guess it's "okay" if you play lightning+chaos, but the whole concept of acolyte is to build on chaos damage. It leaves you with sniper's mark when bossing (requiring resonance) and profane ritual when mapping (which won't work with resonance). Chayula's acolyte clearly need another option to build its power charges imo. For example a node working like Hateforge but with a purple flame or volatility threshold: when you reach ~20 or more, it consumes them and grants a power charge.
On top of that, the sacrifice isn't worth it in tanking potential and damage output given by Grasp of the Void: Darkness being consumed before ES means it will be reserved really fast during your fights as a melee, nullifying the chaos damage bonus, and not working along Ravenous Doubts/Consuming Questions.

The whole ascendancy feels a lot more like a Ranger ascendancy than a Monk one.

darkness base should be based off the player's spirit, that is a very good solution