Some More Thoughts on the Acolyte of Chayula

In the above image are my thoughts on how the Acolyte of Chayula ascendency can be improved. Below are some descriptions of the changes.

1. Waking Dream now only grants the "free aura" buff for socketing support gems and is a prerequisite to the Flames of Chayula and Darkness abilities.

2. Darkness is automatically combined with the chaos damage buff rather than having to spend two more ascendancy points to get it.

3. Flames of Chayula now include a white flame for energy shield leech, and include an option to be able to choose which flames appear in the breach.

4. Nodes 5 and 6 have been replaced with "You take 25% of Physical damage as Chaos damage" and "You take 25% of Elemental damage as Chaos damage" respectively.

Let me know what all you other Acolyte of Chayula players think about these changes. Good, bad, or something in between?

Love that you posted this while I was writing my own version of the same thing :D.

Had a similar idea for Into the breach:
Waking Dream - Remove damage from purple flames, make them restore ES instead.

Lucid Dreaming - For each flame you pick up (of any color) you get 5% extra chaos damage for 8 seconds, stacking up to 10 times.

Also don't forget consuming questions is not working.

What do you think?

I was wondering why the ES leech in my building wasn't working, haha. I guess that confirms that there is an issue.

I think that either adding a white flame for energy shield or changing the purple flame to energy shield leech are equally good solutions. In both cases, I would really like to be able to choose which flames appear in the breach. Like, maybe I just want mana sustain so that I can do other things with my ascendency points than spend them on leech. Or maybe I want only flames that give ES for the defensive buff. The most important thing, I think, is the ability to choose/customize.

I thought about the flames giving extra chaos damage rather than converting to chaos damage as well, but I think that competes with the darkness mechanic too much. The goal being that we only have 8 points to spend, and I think that an ascendancy is good when making those 8 choices is difficult because you want everything for different reasons.

What do you think about the "take damage as chaos" added to the ascendency? Too powerful? I thought that it synergized well with Chayula's Gift giving overcapped chaos resistance - or CI, if one chose to use it.

I'm down for any change that makes the class on par with tier b-c ascendancies :)

Same, man. Same.

Another thing I noticed is that purple flames buff is not refreshed when you pick new ones up. The timer will go up in seconds, but the number of instances will decrease as previous flames expire. Don't think it's possible to have more than 3 active.

some interesting ideas here!

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Tommo26#1554 wrote:

Another thing I noticed is that purple flames buff is not refreshed when you pick new ones up. The timer will go up in seconds, but the number of instances will decrease as previous flames expire. Don't think it's possible to have more than 3 active.

I noticed this as well and completely agree!

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some interesting ideas here!

Is there something in these suggestions that you think would be particularly effective in helping the Acolyte of Chayula ascendency?

I feel like GGG had some interesting ideas for this ascendency but didn't finish cooking. Here are some ideas to make the ascendency viable.

Ascendency
1. Ravenous Doubts (Mana leech): This node is fine and seems to be the only way to make a viable build out of this ascendency (a MoM mana stacker).

2. Consuming Questions (Mana leech applies to ES leech): ES leech needs to not be removed when unreserved mana is filled as per Fast Metabolism for life. If this node worked it could be worth taking the ascendency for this alone.

3. Chayula's Gift (Chaos Resistance): This node is fine as it is.

4. Reality Rending (% chance for % damage as extra chaos): Only worth taking because of a lack of better options.

5. Waking dream and Lucid dreaming (flames of Chayula): I'd rather not spend my time running around collecting pickups during combat so mechanically I don't like these nodes but I do like the concept. At least into the breach lets you use aura support gems. Maybe if the flames applied to you automatically on crit/kill?

6. Embrace the darkness and inner silence (darkness mechanic): Damage is taken from darkness before ES or HP. However with MoM, damage is taken from mana before darkness. I doubt this is intentional and even then I don't think its worth giving up spirit. If this mechanic was changed so that you take damage from darkness after HP (same as it currently works with mana), it could be more viable, by applying a damage bonus based on your level and a last resort health pool?

Volatility
The idea is interesting but it is so poorly implemented. Taking 100 damage per stack for 1% added damage as chaos per stack is absurd. Especially when you compare to innervate as a baseline (35% damage as extra lightning damage on killing a shocked enemy).

Something that I think could be interesting would be to combine volatility and power charges into a new charge. You'd take a node in the ascendency or passive tree which modifies power charges to a buffed version called volatility (or chaos) charges. For each active charge you gain 11% damage as extra chaos but also take an amount of chaos damage per second until the charges are spent. This would synergise well with the leech mechanics on the tree too.