Mandatory "Please look at ascendant again" post of the patch.

Yet another patch has pretty much settled, and yet again, Ascendant has been left even more in the dust as other Ascendancies keep getting remakes and rebalances.

This time it's especially egregious, as Elementalist has gone from being "good all around for any elemental build" to "good all around for any build", directly taking the Jack of all Trades job and doing it outright better because of the absolutely broken golem scaling.

Ascendancies have become even more packed with power and features, and yet very little of that power trickles down to Ascendant with each Remake. She got nothing of the fire res scaling when Chieftain was changed, and basically only lost power. She got pretty much none of the parts that make Trickster good - why does she get life overleech from slayer but not es overleech from trickster, for example? She didn't get anything from Berserker changes. The Witch Ascendant nodes are all outdated by YEARS, and again, it's even more obvious now with how good Elementalist and Occy are this patch.
Pretty much most of Ascendant's nodes are like 4-5 lines, which is exactly the same as when Ascendancies dropped. And yet, all the other Ascendancies have become 5, 6, 10 times stronger.

As it stands, if you look at Ascendant, it's pretty much exclusively used for Armour stacker and some mediocre variants of Attribute stackers. Most of these are only efficient as Ascendant because of its unique ability to span the tree. It has NOTHING else going for it as a class.

In order for it to become a competitive choice, each individual node needs to be significantly stronger and share more of the features of the original class, especially now that the original classes have so much more packed into them. Elementalist needs the herald/golem stuff. Berserker needs the defiance stuff. Occy needs the chaos/cold/es stuff. Trickster needs the ES stuff. Chieftain needs the fire res stuff. Obviously, numerically adjusted in all case, to stick with the theme of "Ascendant gets the mechanic, but less powerful".

The way the game is going, once Ascendant loses armour stacker, there will be absolutely ZERO builds that the class is an optimal choice for. The original "Jack of all Trades" has been reduced to a one build class through sheer negligence.

Remember when Scion was new and exciting? Good times, good times. ='[.]'=

I always dislike her cutted down other ascendancy nodes. I want that she has access to original notable nodes. Maybe any two from one ascendancy and one from another. But not sure is that a good idea at all to have a hybryd mimic class.

Some of the ascendancies seem to have gotten a bit out of whack with the other class.

Not necessarily worse, but different. I was using the Ascendant Chieftain node for the 10% strength increase, then I decided to try Chieftain. That stat no longer exists on the Chieftain tree. The closest thing now is +3 strength for jewels. So it is the scions version of chieftain with a stat that doesn't exist on the chieftain tree.

There's nothing wrong with the node. I was going to use it. I also don't think scion is weak, I think it seems fairly balanced at the moment. Seems a bit odd though.

I'm not sure that the ascendancy points as a whole have improved. They have changed around a lot which makes things interesting. The classes seem relatively balanced at the moment which is good.

I don't particular think some of the ascendancies that have been added in are great though. I find some of them to be a bit too specific, where if you are not doing exactly what the say, you will not benefit that much off them. For example, champion has two points related to banners now. So if you are not using banner, that means you take 4 of the other 5. Not terrible, because the other points are pretty general, but it locks in the class a bit. Gladiator, of you are not a bleed build, same thing. I don't think it is bad the way the have it currently. I just think the ascendancy points should learn towards being general rather than specific, to allow for a lot of build variations. While sticking to a general theme. It's okay to have the banner stuff in there, but that might be starting to get a bit too specific.

Some of them do it a little better. I don't think Hierophant for example is limited by the totem nodes. Perhaps it is because the Hiero has an extra point on the tree.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

Not necessarily worse, but different. I was using the Ascendant Chieftain node for the 10% strength increase, then I decided to try Chieftain. That stat no longer exists on the Chieftain tree. The closest thing now is +3 strength for jewels. So it is the scions version of chieftain with a stat that doesn't exist on the chieftain tree.

There's nothing wrong with the node. I was going to use it. I also don't think scion is weak, I think it seems fairly balanced at the moment. Seems a bit odd though.

Here is the old Chieftain Ascendant.

20% chance to Cover Rare or Unique Enemies in Ash for 10 Seconds on Hit
1% of Damage dealt by your Totems is Leeched to you as Life
Regenerate 2% of Life per second
10% increased Strength
40% increased Fire Damage

Compared to the new one, it has 2% regen, and 40% fire damage. Everything else on the node, such as ignite immunity or warcry effect that it has now, is completely irrelevant for 99.9% of builds. At the time, this was extremely strong with Fire conversion RF spellcasters such as Reap. Of course, those builds have faded into irrelevance (other than ignite prolif elementalist), but the reality is the node was outright killed, and none of the good parts of new Chieftain were added to it.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

I'm not sure that the ascendancy points as a whole have improved. They have changed around a lot which makes things interesting. The classes seem relatively balanced at the moment which is good.

Elementalist golem node is stronger than the entire kit of Ascendancies like Warden or Ascendant. Overall power has gone up, and funnily, Scion's overall power has instead gone down. Again, you call it "balanced", but Scion literally has one good build at the moment. If you aren't playing Armour Stacker, you're essentially better off with any other class. Within less than a year, that will also be gone, because when GGG remakes ascendancies they do not give the Scion any of the new toys. This is what the thread is about.

yep, there is a problem

this league im playing Standard - and my thing is to re-make my old builds to use new tech. note: im always, ALWAYS trying to stick to the original plan even if it is suboptimal etc. i do not care, i want my old idea back

and I mention it because quite a lot of these characters are Scions. and i havent actually managed to remake a single one of these characters because the entire reason why I picked Scion for that particular character 5 years ago is gone and replaced with something a) weaker b) wildly different

Scion used to be great for Explosive Arrow, summoners, various attack builds, herald/aura stackers etc. I even remember - because i recorded video of it - a smooth and powerful Elemental Hit bow Scion. incompatible, there is nothing going on for current Scion that makes it good for that concept


on the other hand - Scavenger from Phrecia league was.. kinda cool. I know it was a cheap concept - slap unique mods together and it was obnoxiously lopsided and unbalanced but it was actually 100% more interesting than current Scion.

Scion's nodes hardly even match the theme of regular ascendancies, the values are bad - in most cases %more is replaced with %increased and the only valuable examples are hard, binary stats like +projectile that are hard to get otherwise

Scavenger is risky because you can stack unique-mod an real unique and get something obviously broken. that was the real problem with Scavenger. but i believe there are methods to mitigate that

because current Scion design is either too weak to be relevant or best for majority of buffs. the +passives aspect isnt significant and any character can reach middle of the tree and slot the same Jewel Set (unnatural/LOM/MotM)

By balanced, I mean across the classes the balance is much more even currently than I remember for some time. Trickster has been strong for a long while, and Witch is strong overall this league, but it fairly balanced currently. Yes the Golem node is strong, I used that one this league, but that has only just come in and I think a big part of it is the golem changes themselves beyond the ascendancy. Scion is certainly playable, I don't think it is in a terrible state. I have not played it in endgame recently, so if it is struggling there and needs some buffs, fair enough.

With scion they have typically been very cautious with buffs they give, because the combinations and position on the tree means the combined power can make her universally better than all other classes if they give her the same power levels on ascendancies. She is jack off all trades, if she becomes master of all trades as well it is too powerful. The downside to her flexibility is she is not as powerful at fully speccing into the other areas that those classes are specialists at.

There is a nerf there in the ascendancy for sure. No question about that. I'm not sure the ascendancy changes across the board over the past few years are large buffs though. There is some stuff, like the warcry buffs, that are certainly buffs, but in general I don't think the classes are a lot stronger from ascendancies, in some cases they may be weaker. There are a lot of other factors that have lead to power creep far beyond the ascendancies. I think going through them, most of them have not increased in power that much, compared to an extra tier of armor bases. Which is also part of why trickster is strong, because one of main ascendancy points is based of the bases. Scion doesn't get access to that, so unlucky there.

Which scion nodes do you think need to be buffed and which are currently acceptable?

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

... Scion is certainly playable, I don't think it is in a terrible state. I have not played it in endgame recently, so if it is struggling there and needs some buffs, fair enough.

With scion they have typically been very cautious with buffs they give, because the combinations and position on the tree means the combined power can make her universally better than all other classes if they give her the same power levels on ascendancies. She is jack off all trades, if she becomes master of all trades as well it is too powerful. The downside to her flexibility is she is not as powerful at fully speccing into the other areas that those classes are specialists at.
...
Which scion nodes do you think need to be buffed and which are currently acceptable?

Gonna focus on these parts of what you said. Of course we are talking about the endgame here. Statistically speaking, the only endgame viable scion build is armour stacker. This is not me feelscrafting here, this is the data - over 30% of Scion endgame builds are armour stackers, and the next most popular (with over 20%, so this is over half of the total scions in endgame) is support, which I will exclude. The builds after that are generally done better on other classes. Scion is a one build class when it comes to the base game currently. I will again remind you that I am not trying to talk about general game balance, which is in a decent state imo as well - I am only focusing on what happens within the Ascendant class. There is a reason the class becomes one of the bottom usage if you go away from Softcore Trade stats. It's really bad, for everything.

She is not a jack of all trades. That's the entire point. She has lost that identity to Elementalist, which is blatantly overtuned at the moment as golems give you literally every stat in the game. She is a jack of one trade, master of none, and if she loses that one trade, there will be nothing left to play on the class.

Which nodes are weak? ALL of them. Literally all of them when compared to the other Ascendancies. The main problem is that most of them offer nothing important from the base class, so the "mix and match" aspect is completely gone. There are almost no synergies left in the class, when there could be so so many.


Juggernaut: Literally does nothing. It's absolutely useless. Why waste an entire ascendancy for mediocre EC generation that you can get for 2 points in a cluster jewel? It's horrendously bad.
Chieftain: Again, wasting an entire ascendancy for 10% str and ash is worthless. This one is actually so bad, that even on the OPTIMAL build for it, a fire damage build that scales with strength, it's actually LESS DAMAGE than any of the random damage ascendancy nodes like Elementalist, Trickster, Inquisitor.
Berserker: Not gonna comment, I build for tankiness so this one's not for me. I don't think the 15% more is worth 5% inc dmg taken. The rest of the node is useless.
Inquisitor: Actually decent if you have a consistent way to generate consecrated ground. Not great by any means, but decent. Absolute trash compared to the original class though. It has no crit, no speed, no scaling, and it's basically a 3 liner because you want good cons ground generation with it. Also, if you're picking it, chances are your build is better as a Witch Elementalist.
Hiero: horrendous. You would never pick this over the base class. It needs minimum charges at least, as well as some mana to es scaling, to even be worth considering.
Guardian: Recently changed, and according to most, lost power because it lost the aura recovery scaling. Kinda agree. Still one of the better nodes because block is really strong right now, and at least it may allow you to run an extra reservation. Doesn't get any of the Radiant Faith scaling unfortunately, or a smaller chance at the elemental relics. Also, Guardian remake isn't particularly successful overall.
Necro: Only used because it scales attack speed on armour stacker. Otherwise, completely horrible. Consider this: this one is essentially a ONE LINER. Only ONE MODIFIER on it is useful or worth targeting.
Elementalist: Decent, but when compared to the base class, absolutely terrible. If you're picking this, chances are your build would have been better as an actual Elementalist once again. +1 Golem is a dead mod, it has only shock from the ailment stuff, and none of the herald stuff which was just added. Remove the golem stuff, add herald at lower number and ignite/chill at lower numbers.
Occultist: Decent because it actually retained 10% curse effect. Probably one of the better nodes, since it's still +1 curse and stun immune on es builds. If this one just got a partial version of the new es from spell block, it would actually be very interesting, as we'd finally get a nice synergy combo with Guardian here.
Assassin: Incredibly weak numerically. Not much to say here. It's so weak that even on crit builds it's weaker than every other damage node. Power Charge generation isn't as hard to get as it was when this was introduced. It needs numbers, it needs multipliers.
Trickster: Literally just Polymath's damage. None of the actual good trickster stuff. It's trash. One liner. This needs to be completely redesigned.
Saboteur: I think people use this for the cooldown reduction breakpoint on coc. Very niche, but then again, Saboteur is also niche, so I don't think that's fixable. This is actually numerically quite strong, just niche. That's fine imo.
Warden: This one is an LMAO and a half. Warden is probably the weakest class in the game, and this is aptly the weakest point here as well. Double tincture is trash because the only belt worth running is mageblood, 8% ele pen is laughable because inq and elementalist both have more damage, 20% suppress is a joke. 3 liner and none of them are good. Raider used to be one of the best nodes btw. Idk how this is fixable because Warden is trash to begin with.
Pathfiner: Well, flask generation. Not as valuable as before, still allows you to leaguestart concoctions if you want to leaguestart Scion for some godforsaken reason. Obviously falls off when mageblood, but that's the same problem as the actual Pathfinder class so... I'm inclined to call this one ok.
Deadeye: Decent. One proj is awkward compared to 2 (because of all the skills that will not fire in front of you), but this is actually one of the better lategame ones with nimis, snipers mark, moltenstrike etc. Niche but good. Tailwind also good.
Champion: Good because Aura stacker. Not much to say. It has 65% usage on Scion for a reason. This is the node you pick the class for. Once we lose this, the class is dead.
Slayer: Just worthless compared to the base class. It got nothing of the crit, charges, strikes etc during Slayer remake. It's just life overleech, and life is bad. Fixing this, Assassin, and Juggernaut should open up combinations, but nope. Left to rot.
Gladiator: Not getting block lucky really screwed this one over during the remake. Chance for Aggravate is bad imo, I don't want to be playing the roulette here as bleed builds generally don't attack fast. Presence also bad. If I had to fix this I would actually give it "Block is Unexciting" to be a weaker version of "Block is lucky", since it synergises well with the Guardian (and maybe Occultist if they gave her the block part).

I think that's all of them. Essentially, Ascendants main problem is that there aren't ANY synergistic combinations left other than Auras (the main use of the class) and the elemental nodes (which are weaker than Elementalist in every way). There is nothing interesting left to theorycraft because all the toys are limited to the original classes.

^^ pretty much spot on with few exceptions here and there

these nodes are very, very weak. most 'real' ascendancy notables fall into 3 categories:
- 20% more damage of some shape or form
- ~15% less damage taken, defensive in general
- enabler. (like unending leech on Slayer, crit on Assassin etc)
with occasional something 'extra' (like Pathfinder's poison prolif)

offensive and defensive offerings for Scion are mostly 'increased' rather than 'more' so they are horribly bad numerically and noone will ever pick them. even the good, strong mods - like Guardian's block - are butchered

that leaves Scion as a set of notables that - after removal of these weak, irrelevant mods - have two at best but usually one or NONE worthwhile lines

the enablers, nodes you pick real ascendancies for - like lucky block, overleech, chieftain explode - are missing.

what is Scions real advantage is access to more passives (6?) and huge 'free' attributes nodes. in the end building her is like crafting a Cluster jewel more than picking an ascendancy

Aristocrat made better use of these perks than Scion