Feedback on how Acolyte of Chayula ascendancy *feels* to play

TLDR is at the bottom

I'm sure we're all very aware of the prowess of Monks and quarterstaff builds in general lately - especially the Invoker ascendancy and some Gemling Mercenaries using the quarterstaff skill synergies, and surprisingly, this will be a post giving feedback on how anemic my monk feels to play due to the ascendancy path I chose - the chaos chayula tree.

I'd like to add a disclaimer that I am certainly not good at the game, I never will be, I'll never fully understand the game in terms of depth or power potential in nodes of any ascendancy, this is purely a feedback on how it *FEELS* to play with this ascendancy. I can't offer balance suggestions, buff or nerf ideas, or suggest that something is too strong or weak, but I can offer my experience of how the ascendancy impacted my playthrough in terms of class fantasy realisation. It's simply my opinion, and with a lot of drama about clickbait bad build guides out there - I'd like to add that my opinion probably doesn't matter.

I'll start with the nodes that are easy to get out of the way -

Chayula's Gift - +10% to Maximum Chaos Resistance.
Chaos Resistance is doubled.

Reality Rending - 23% chance to Gain 25% of Damage with Hits as Extra Chaos Damage.
13% chance to Gain 50% of Damage with Hits as Extra Chaos Damage.
7% chance to Gain 100% of Damage with Hits as Extra Chaos Damage.

These two are essentially very powerful notable talents - they are not flashy, or cute, or particularly exciting, they simply offer an increase to power that I wouldn't normally find in the regular levelling tree - they don't offer any sense of individuality or heavy reward for my choice, but they do follow a class identity of meddling with chaotic energies. Every ascendancy has something like this - a bit boring, but not something I regret spending the points on too much - just fine, and they don't turn up on my radar.

Maybe because they simply work in the background as passive increases to the maths of my build, I didn't notice any real impact in how these change the feel of playing from regular monk to a chayula spec. I will say having Chaos Resistance being doubled makes being a mid-tier nobody player easier because I don't have to invest as hard in balancing my elemental resist, evasion, life/energy shield, and chaos resist in line with doing a good amount of DPS. It's one less ball to juggle, and chaos resistance can be a tricky ball to juggle well without sacrificing damage or other defences.

Ravenous Doubts - Mana Leech is instant

Consuming Questions - You cannot Recharge Energy Shield.
Mana Leech effects also Recover Energy Shield

These two are a bit more exciting and interesting when you first see them, and the immediate thought my mind went to was that if I have a large pool of energy shield, then if I do enough damage, I can essentially have massive life-on-hit with my mana leech instantly restoring chunks of energy shield mid-fights. If you have instead invested into Acrobatics and heavy evasion stacking, this is a less tempting choice because the lower your energy shield the less it makes sense to Leech it back.

The one frustration I had with experimenting with these two is that as a *traditional* monk and a low-skill player, I've never strayed from using Quarterstaves. Attributes are too hard to balance in line with my other things in the talent tree / on my gear so I've stuck with the weapon that naturally compliments my starting position on the talent tree. Quarterstaves work with primarily a lot of elemental damage, but mana leech works on Physical Damage.

Basically, to make the best use out of these Mana Leech = Energy Shield nodes, I think I need a lot of physical damage from maybe a different weapon which is likely to require a lot of strength - getting a lot of strength as a monk can be difficult, but maybe the idea of this tree is to stray from the regular path and experiment with more whacky ideas (pun intended). I don't feel like I'm an advanced enough player to make use of this.

Waking Dream - Creates a Breach around you, allowing you to see nearby Flames of Chayula.
You are considered to be in a Breach while this skill is active.
Red Flames leech a small % of your HP back to you
Blue Flames leech a small % of your mana back to you
Purple Flames grant you a stacking buff, your attacks have added % Chaos Dmg

Lucid Dreaming - Flames of Chayula effects and duration on you are doubled.

So these two are much more exciting for me, they change what you see on the screen, they add a little minigame to the usual gameplay loop - a seemingly fun and cute reward to picking Chayula Monk. Other ascendancies can create elemental storms, demon forms, unbound avatar forms, spawn special minions etc - this is one of those, a big class identity and class fantasy fulfiller with cute and fun effects.

The issue I've felt with these is that the flames of chayula feel like they have utterly no impact until I also invest in Lucid Dreaming. The purple flames in particular can stack up to 10 times, which would add a massive increase in chaos damage. They only last 4 seconds which doesn't sound too bad - because you'd expect to be able to find them fast enough to keep the stacks at 10. The issue is, each stack falls off individually based on when you last picked it up. If I run over a purple flame and get 1 stacked buff, then 2 seconds later find a 2nd flame - I have a 2stacked buff for 2 seconds, and then my first falls off, leaving me with 1 stack. Finding flames does not reset the timer for the stack buff.

This leads to me having realistically 1 - 4 stacks of the purple flame buff at a time even with Lucid Dreaming. The Blue Flames leech mana back to me which works great in tandem with the Consuming Questions, effectively turning them into extra Grim Feasts. When fighting a boss, I stand still to dps them in their stupid faces a LOT. This means during my crucial dps windows of a boss fight, the entirety of these ascendancies are not active, as I'm not running around to collect flames, and they fall off so fast.

One very cool thing about this is the Waking Dream skill is considered a spirit-reservation passive buff, but it reserves 0 spirit and it levels up it's own support gem slots as you progress your character. This means you can stack all the aura support gems into it for free without costing spirit. However overall this felt very disappointing in power level for the big flashy "assert your class identity onto the screen" in comparison to the power level of Unbound Avatar for example. This flame minigame rarely works for me - I usually have to work for this ascendancy to function, I feel like the ascendancy should function to work for me instead.

Embrace the Darkness - Removes all Spirit.
Base Max Darkness is 100.
Damage taken is Reserved from Darkness before Life or Energy Shield.
Darkness Reservation lasts 10 seconds. +5 to Max Darkness per Level

Grasp of the Void - Gain 1% of Damage as Extra Chaos Damage per 20 Unreserved Darkness

Inner Silence - 50% reduced Darkness Reservation Duration

Wow okay so this is a really interesting group of nodes. It completely changes the way you play, like a lot of the major talents on the regular tree. It comes with a massive, massive downside for me - eliminating all my spirit. I can't use Herald of Ice, Wind Dancer, Grim Feast, Ghost Dance, Herald of Thunder, or Combat Frenzy. I'll have to find a new way to easily generate Power Charges, and a new way to easily facilitate large-area clearing without Heralds.

In return, I get roughly 20 - 30% added damage as Chaos based on my level. That's it. I sacrifice the most premium tactics attached to playing a monk - the herald skills, and a clean easy way to generate power charges, and in return, I get an admittedly large boost to my damage - so long as I don't take damage myself. I feel like the sacrifice this forces me to make to my build options is extremely large in comparison to the payoff I receive. I don't think I am an advanced enough player to ever put these nodes into good practice. I am quite certain however, that there is going to be a very busted combination with this Darkness converted to added Chaos Damage idea. It's just in my hands I feel like it actively bricks my entire build rather than complimenting it.

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TLDR - I feel like the Chayula ascendancy is overall aimed at more experimental and advanced players who want to use alternate weapons other than Quarterstaff. I feel like it is aimed to reward massive heavy physical damage hits, as it is directed into % of your damage. Mana Leech from physical damage, and % damage added as even more chaos on top, all seems to me that I'm meant to use a big, heavy, hard-hitting build and infinitely sustain my energy shield whilst adding potentially 100's of thousands of Chaos Damage to my hits.

The issue I have with this is that it takes so much... doing. It takes so much understanding, finnicking, compensating for my position on the talent tree to make these things work. Compare this to Invoker - it simply increases how much you do "your thing". As Invoker, the more I do "my thing", the more I get rewarded - I don't need to find a special way to make it happen, I just slap on the ice and lightning damage that's been infront of me the entire time I've levelled using a Quarterstaff, and now suddenly that stuff does exponentially tonnes more for me without having to work for it.

As a basic billy blue bonnet baby bib bitch of a player, the Chayula tree feels like it's asking me to play my monk whilst doing a handstand and only ever using my feet to operate my mouse and keyboard, and in return it will offer me some modest damage increases. The only build-defining, game breaking, "here's-your-reward-for-picking-this-tree" I can try to see is the potentially infinite energy shield leeching.

But why would I ever choose to do all of that when I can simply spec into Invoker and smash out entire screens of monsters, as well as single target bosses, doing the exact same playstyle I always have whilst levelling? The Chayula tree is either far, far too advanced for my tiny brain, or it is very anemically under-tuned compared to the other monk ascendancy option. Maybe it was never intended to be played with Quarterstaff at all and that's what I'm missing. Maybe it's just that I am simply bad at the game, because I am.

Either way, I see no real reason to pick this ascendancy over Invoker at their current comparative power levels and ease of access.

100% agree. The best build for Chayula I've found is pretending to be an Invoker and basically ignoring the ascendancy.

Just asking random question that come to my mind without having ever played a Chayula monk :

-Have you considered playing with Poison ?
-Have you considered playing with a Bow ?

(Maybe daggers and their skills will fit better when they come out).

Not arguing that its probably one of the worst ascendancies by design alone.
- No one will sacrifice Spirit and its overpowered permanent buffs ever.
- The flames are annoying to collect, don't refresh the duration of purple on pickup so they just fall off and too quickly to be good.
- Chayula's Gift is not useful if CI... etc...
- AND Chaos damage just seems worse than PoE 1 not bypassing energy shield.


I'm not that rich, lvl 92, and my Chayula build is quarterstaff making actual use of the ascendency and getting `484k` Full DPS:

https://maxroll.gg/poe2/pob/819jh0yr

Lvl 95 would be 537k DPS with Blinding Strike added.

Build has entirely chaos scaling converting a majority of what would be lightning damage to chaos thanks to Original Sin, removing it cuts my dps in half to 269k. Seems to fit the theme of Chayula but absolutely requires at item. Map clear is mid. I kill 82 bosses in a single flicker.

How much better is Invoker than this? I think we do need an ascendency respec option soon.

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dwqrf#0717 написал:

-Have you considered playing with Poison ?
-Have you considered playing with a Bow ?

I also tried this with an Original Sin + Beyond Reach so freezing with chaos damage which almost every attack was, it wasn't as good as the quarterstaff. Probably the pathfinder builds would be okay as Chayula.