Ideas for the Acolyte of Chayula Ascendency

Intro:

Alright, so I've been exclusively playing an Acolyte of Chayula Monk since the beginning of early access and have been experimenting with as many ways as I can think of to create an awesome build by leaning into the Acolyte of Chayula Ascendency (AoCA). Unfortunately, the AoCA seems to be underpowered as compared to most other ascendencies in PoE2. (Maybe this changes with skill gems yet to be released, but I digress.)


The main issues that I have with the AoCA are as follows:

1 - Embrace the Darkness

Embrace the Darkness removing all Spirit is far too great of a downside and far too build-limiting for the benefits that it provides.

Not being able to use Wind Dancer (max 80% increased evasion) and/or Grim Feast (double ES - a little more than 4,000 added to the hit pool for my build) for defense, and not being able to use a Blasphemy, Cast On, or Herald for damage in exchange for a maximum of 600 temporary hit points is nowhere near worth it.

2 - Waking Dream

I like the concept of gathering Flames of Chayula for buffs similar to other ascendencies. However, this mechanic is a bit too RNG and becomes less valuable for each type of flame that is not useful to a player's build.

For example: If a player were to take the Chaos Inoculation Keystone Passive, Flames of Chayula that leech life become useless (red flame). If a player is not increasing their chaos damage output then converting damage to chaos isn't all that valuable (purple flame). If a player does not need mana regen and/or does not have the Consuming Questions ascendency node then leeching mana isn't really useful.


How I think these main issues could be improved:

1.1 - Embrace the Darkness

I think that Embrace the Darkness would be far more useful if spirit skills could be reserved against darkness at double their regular reservation rate. The increased reservation rate would be to help make up for there being 600 points of darkness.

This makes sense to me since Invoker can gain something like 140 additional spirit with good equipment adding up to a total of about 240 spirit for that ascendency - while having better offensive nodes than the AoCA.

1.2 - Grasp of the Void

With the above change, I would also suggest that Grasp of the Void be increased from "Gain 1% of Damage as Extra Chaos Damage per 20 Unreserved Darkness" to "... per 10 or 15 Unreserved Darkness". This will allow players a great deal of choice and versatility in whether they want extra chaos damage, a boost to their effective health, or a large reservation pool.

2 - Waking Dream

Waking Dream could be revised to give players more control over its RNG mechanic by allowing players to turn on or off the types of flames that show up in the breach - similar to the Pathfinder's Brew Concoction.

For example, the default would be to have all flame types without affecting the number of total flames that appear. Then a player could turn off the red flames and ideally have the blue and purple flame show up in its place. This would mean that there is no usless part of the Waking Dreams node and the ascendency becomes more focused toward a player's build.


One minor change that I would like to see:

For the Chaos Resistance node leading to Chayula's Gift, I would like to see the amount of resistance granted increased from +7% to +15%. This would mean that a character with both the Chayula's Gift and Chaos Resistance nodes could not have a negative base chaos resistance. This Monk is Chayula's Acolyte after all, why would he be weak to chaos damage?


Let me know what y'all think about these suggestions. Do you have any suggestions for how to make this ascendency better?