[0.3] Acolyte of Chayula Feedback

After playing Chayula in 0.2 and 0.3, I wanted to give feedback based on my own experience playing the ascendency and from other's feedback as well. In 0.2, the best nodes were 4 points in Energy Shield leech from Mana Leech (Ravenous Doubts/Consuming Questions) and 4 points in Flames/Into the Breach (Waking Dream/Lucid Dream). In 0.3, 4 points in Into the Breach (Waking Dream/Lucid Dream) is still the best while grabbing Sap of Nightmares (leech from both Physical and Chaos damage) and then personal choice of either Volatility / Chayula's Gift / Void Illusion depending on the build or progress.

My general assessment is that Chayula is weaker in 0.3 compared to the previous league due to a few factors:

- Removal of Energy Shield Leech
- Chayula's Chaos damage is more random/conditional than before via reduced Flame duration and the Volatility Mechanic
- By acquiring 4 points in Into the Breach (Waking Dream/Lucid Dream) to get reliable Purple flames, Chayula loses HP/Mana leech (which was partially Energy Shield Leech with Consuming Questions in 0.2), losing partial survivability while mapping
- In 0.3, Chayula's are forced to waste glove or ring slot to uniques (or both) to achieve Energy Shield Leech / Chaos damage scaling, losing valuable stats (whereas in 0.2, it was optional)

This has resulted in the class having these problems:
- Chayula has to invest heavily in 4 point branches to get some function (mostly Into the Breach), otherwise the nodes don't feel that impactful
- Requires a lot of investment to make the Ascendency work compared to Invoker while not achieving the same damage output or scaling
- Lack of defensive options due to Darkness invalidating Spirit, the most important & expensive stat in the game and no longer having Energy Shield Leech
- No meaningful scaling of chaos damage or its effects (i.e. Original Sin doesn't convert % increased Elemental damage into % increased Chaos damage)


I will now address aspects of the Ascendency:

[-] Volatility (Mechanic)

= In it's current form, Volatility is unable to meaningfully provide damage ramp up to players who are stacking in a way that isn't clunky or wasted. From my own gameplay and watching others play, there's been several flaws to Volatility:

- Players are so focused on clearing a huge pack of mobs, gaining 50~100+ stacks, by the time the stacks detonate they already cleared all nearby mobs or there's only a few small mobs left.
- The Catharsis support gem is used on Quarterstaff Basic Attack in order to detonate a random amount of Volatility stacks while giving some back. This leads to several issues such as: (A) you Catharsis denotate at 30 stacks but receive 6% damage stacks and returning ~20 stacks. You Catharsis denotate again and receive an additional 7% damage stacks, totaling 13%, and giving you back sub 20 stacks of Volatility. (B) Because Melee gameplay focuses hard on clearing waves and avoid potential deaths, players often forget to Catharsis detonate. (C) You have to use up a keybind for the Catharsis support which could have been more comfortable for another skill (D) You are burdened with manually detonating using this support
- Most Chayula players have to waste a valuable gem slot on their Charged Staff for the Volatility on Crit support gem and then use another support gem, Pinpoint Critical, to scale acquiring Volatility. This loses a lot of possible setup on Charged Staff just to guarantee Volatility
- Volatility is currently bugged to only give stacks every 0.13 seconds rather than 0.1 seconds, generating only ~7 stacks per second rather than 10
- Taking Volatility nodes on the passive tree can feel a bit unrewarding since you're losing precious passive nodes

Recommendation:

- Invert the way Volatility currently works to grant extra chaos damage per Volatility stacks and when it detonates (dealing Physical damage same as before), you're unable to generate Volatility for the detonation window. This would solve a few things: (A) Chayula players will have damage ramp up without needing back away from a fight / using an awkward Catharsis support to detonate stacks. (B) We can enjoy the floating purple orbs around our character as we ramp up more stacks as seen in the 0.3 reveal
- Change the Volatility on Critical strike gem to be an upgrade of Pinpoint Critical where it provides both Critical hit chance and gives Volatility on Critical hit
- Potentially compress or give some benefits of acquiring the Volatility nodes

[-] Inner Turmoil (Volatility detonation immunity & generate Volatility form elemental ailments)

= While it provides Volatility from Elemental ailments, if you decide to take Original Sin to convert your Elemental Damage to Chaos, you're forced to take the further node of Unravelling just to get this node to work. Also, a number of Chayula builds in the past and currently were running Poison builds (which is Chaos damage) and is a huge oversight not to include it as a way of generating stacks.

Recommendation: Buff this node to include all ailments of Bleed and Poison rather than only Elemental Ailements to benefit Chayula builds that work with those ailments, especially Poison.

[-] Unravelling (Chaos grants random elemental ailment every 2 seconds)

= Due to the randomness and also the ability to just use Lineage support gems that gives Chaos damage & inflicting a specific elemental ailment, this node leaves much to be desired. Additionally, it feels as though we're wasting valuable ascendency points to acquire scaling to generate Volatility

Recommendation:

- Merge this with Sap of Nightmares or another node
- Allow players to have the choice to choose what ailments they want to inflict of Ignite, Shock, or freeze rather than a random ailments every 2 seconds.

[-] Chayula's Gift (Chaos Resistance is doubled)

= With the improvement of better crafting to acquire chaos resistance and chaos resistance runes/passive tree nodes, this node falls off very hard. This is especially so if one decides to get Chaos Inoculation.

Recommendation: Instead of doubling Chaos resistance, give Chayula a similar scaling of Spirit akin to Invoker. My idea is that Chayula can't gain spirit from gear but instead acquires 1 or 2 spirit per Chaos resistance % on gear. This would reduce the burden of acquiring Spirit on Melee which is very expensive and would allow a theme of Monk acquiring Spirit from other "sources".

[-] Sap of Nightmares (Leech from both Physical and Chaos damage)

= With the loss of Energy Shield leech, this node feels underwhelming and also due to the fact that GGG introduced the Walker of the Wilds unique passive node which benefits Invokers.

EDIT: This node is currently bugged and only applies to Mana leech, not Life leech. So it's not actually worth using this over Walker of the Wilds at the moment.

Recommendation: Merge this node with Unravelling (with the choice of picking Chaos ailment) or remove it and place it as a unique passive node on the passive tree so Chayula's can invest into other parts of our ascendency.

[-] Into the Breach (Flames) / Lucid Dreaming (Choice)

= While this ascendency node has remained as the go to scaling of Chaos damage for Chayula, this has made Chayula feel way to conditional/random. It'd be best to open up more simpler ways to channel Chayula's chaos scaling rather than trying to awkwardly move around to acquire flames while mapping or bossing

Recommendation: Cut down the ascendency node to 1 point, reduce the strength to provide small but consistent values, and make it a base 1st point for Chayula. All Chayula ascendency branches to branch off from Into the Breach and move the Chaos damage scaling to other or new nodes. Chayula will therefore have 7 points to work with in acquiring different nodes (compared to 4 before)

[-] Grasp of the Void (Shadow Clone on Dodge roll)

= This is actually a good addition for Chayula in 0.3 and takes off some of the heat from mobs in Melee range. The only drawback to this skill is that it's random if mobs stop being aggro'd to your character to hit the clone. But I expect there might be an increase in usage in the future.

Recommendation: Make the Shadow clone detonate when the duration ends rather than it disappearing entirely to improve combat flow in close quarters.

[-] Embrace the Darkness / Deepening Shadows

= The most controversial part of the ascendency is Darkness. The grand majority of players don't understand why this node sacrifices your Spirit which enables most builds to for single-target, wave clear, and survivability for... a small shield for survivability with no other upsides and requires a very very conditional & niche build to function.

Recommendation: Remove the spirit downside and properly rebalance the shield or rework into a shield ability that parallels Meditate.

[-] Original Sin (Ring)

= It's unfortunate that new Chayula monks starting out have to spend a lot in this league to acquire this ring which has conversion scaling issues and wastes a ring slot.

Recommendation: Give a unique passive node on the tree that gives a similar effect of Original Sin (or like Blackflame Covenant).

Bonus suggestion:

[-] Atsak's Sight Veiled Mask (Helmet)

= I wanted to throw this out there but this Unique helmet provides an interesting way for Chayula's to apply Poison while running a Quarterstaff build.

Recommendation: Make a node on the passive to have Poison on critical strike to benefit Chayula monks (and potentially Shadow). This could potentially open up more builds for other classes in the future too.

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Thank you for anyone who read this post.

If anyone has additional suggestions, criticisms, or anything else, then please comment!

i wish the flames of chayula spawned a little closer to my character because it's annoying to be running around all over the place during couch coop

alternatively zoom out more for couch coop

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Cult_of_Resine#3258 a écrit :

i wish the flames of chayula spawned a little closer to my character because it's annoying to be running around all over the place during couch coop

alternatively zoom out more for couch coop

I think they used to spawn a bit closer in 0.2 but I can't remember. That said, I'd want more consistent Chaos damage output rather than trying to gather flames.

Sap of Nightmares doesn't even work correctly, so like getting original sin doesn't solve anything with the current state.

"

Mopizzle#4089 a écrit :

Sap of Nightmares doesn't even work correctly, so like getting original sin doesn't solve anything with the current state.

I wasn't aware the node was bugged but I did feel the Life leech was off unless I was using Flicker strike or Void Illusion which are heavily Physical skills.

bump

More chaos quarterstaff skill would be nice as well

I want to provide my takes as a player who used the Darkness nodes in both 0.2 and 0.3.

They are the best nodes to use on an alt designed to farm the campaign for SPIRIT GEMS.

When doubled up with high ES, Darkness effectively functions as a third life bar which you can pair with Crossbow or Spears that have good clear times in the campaign you can easily progress up until the Interludes.

At that point you already have all the Spirit Gems from steam rolling the campaign and can safely delete the character to rinse and repeat or respec into a Poison Build...which seems to be the only viable build option for Chayula in 0.3.

In my case, Darkness nodes, paired with X-bow skills, helped me skip the hassle of grinding stronger armour items in order to defeat both Jamanra and Silverback on normal with items that have a level requirement of under 25.

I think Chayula was meant to be for Monk, what Amazon Ascendancy is now for Lighting Arrow Amazon or what Smith of Kitava was for Warrior in 0.2...a buget build for grinding seasons or skill gems

So while Darkness nodes are crap for End Game, it's phenomenal for the Campaign because you can save up on Spirit Gems for other alts.

If GGG could make Darkness stick for End Game, then post EA, it could be the go to build for farming skill gems with the Monk character in order to fund other alts.

"

draco359#5475 a écrit :

I want to provide my takes as a player who used the Darkness nodes in both 0.2 and 0.3.

They are the best nodes to use on an alt designed to farm the campaign for SPIRIT GEMS.

When doubled up with high ES, Darkness effectively functions as a third life bar which you can pair with Crossbow or Spears that have good clear times in the campaign you can easily progress up until the Interludes.

At that point you already have all the Spirit Gems from steam rolling the campaign and can safely delete the character to rinse and repeat or respec into a Poison Build...which seems to be the only viable build option for Chayula in 0.3.

In my case, Darkness nodes, paired with X-bow skills, helped me skip the hassle of grinding stronger armour items in order to defeat both Jamanra and Silverback on normal with items that have a level requirement of under 25.

I think Chayula was meant to be for Monk, what Amazon Ascendancy is now for Lighting Arrow Amazon or what Smith of Kitava was for Warrior in 0.2...a buget build for grinding seasons or skill gems

So while Darkness nodes are crap for End Game, it's phenomenal for the Campaign because you can save up on Spirit Gems for other alts.

If GGG could make Darkness stick for End Game, then post EA, it could be the go to build for farming skill gems with the Monk character in order to fund other alts.

While it's nice you were able to find a niche for farming, I don't think 4 points of Ascendency nodes should be designed for it. It should be a good general ascendency and not eliminate a grand majority of monk builds(and potential off-meta builds) due to the spirit loss.

"

Darkomantis#0042 a écrit :

"

draco359#5475 a écrit :

I want to provide my takes as a player who used the Darkness nodes in both 0.2 and 0.3.

They are the best nodes to use on an alt designed to farm the campaign for SPIRIT GEMS.

When doubled up with high ES, Darkness effectively functions as a third life bar which you can pair with Crossbow or Spears that have good clear times in the campaign you can easily progress up until the Interludes.

At that point you already have all the Spirit Gems from steam rolling the campaign and can safely delete the character to rinse and repeat or respec into a Poison Build...which seems to be the only viable build option for Chayula in 0.3.

In my case, Darkness nodes, paired with X-bow skills, helped me skip the hassle of grinding stronger armour items in order to defeat both Jamanra and Silverback on normal with items that have a level requirement of under 25.

I think Chayula was meant to be for Monk, what Amazon Ascendancy is now for Lighting Arrow Amazon or what Smith of Kitava was for Warrior in 0.2...a buget build for grinding seasons or skill gems

So while Darkness nodes are crap for End Game, it's phenomenal for the Campaign because you can save up on Spirit Gems for other alts.

If GGG could make Darkness stick for End Game, then post EA, it could be the go to build for farming skill gems with the Monk character in order to fund other alts.

While it's nice you were able to find a niche for farming, I don't think 4 points of Ascendency nodes should be designed for it. It should be a good general ascendency and not eliminate a grand majority of monk builds(and potential off-meta builds) due to the spirit loss.

Personally, I would double down on the Darkness aspect and add more talents that complement the Darkness mechanic because as it stands, even if they were to buff Chayula based on these recommendations, I feel Invoker would still be a better pick for Chaos themed builds because Invoker nets you extra damage on chaos spells on top of improved build up towards either frozen or shocked ailments.

I think Chayula should be focused on Defenses, while also extending melee options by incorporating mechanics that further improve melee play styles...