Acolyte of Chayula 0.3 feedback

I have played Acolyte of Chayula on each PoE2 patch, and I have to say we've come a long way from 0.1/0.2 to 0.3 ! However, not necessarily because of the AC changes: I still think this rework is good and helped, but it still feels a but underwhelming compared to Invoker or the current "meta" ACs.

Acolyte's whole theme is centered around chaos, offensively and defensively.
0.1 & 0.2 main feature was mana & ES leech on mana leech, firstly only on physical damage then on all damage types. The you had into the breach, the 85% chaos res node, some random bonus chaos damage, and the infamous Darkness nodes that turn your spirit to void.
It was overall... but clearly lacked damage, and wasn't that much chaos centered. Actually, if you did go 100% chaos with Original Sin, your only way to play a monk build was to use Lingering illusion, or Combat Frenzy and use pin to generate charges. (Or use second weapon set to gen off corpses or minions) This was not fun nor efficient.

Now, with the addition of Ailith's chime, we have a consistent charge generation even when playing 100% chaos dmg, which feels amazing in comparison to previous versions, thank you GGG for this one

On the AC itself though, I feel like we got somewhat nerfed:
Losing the innate ES leech, and having to use life leech + Essentia Sanguis for that purpose, on top on mana leech or mana remnants to sustain it is a pretty heavy investment. Having no life leech due to Essentia Sanguis also kind of forces us to go CI (And making Chayula's gift's 85 chaos res irrelevant) in order to ignore bleeding, which would otherwise kill a ~1500 hps monk in a few seconds

While those previous changes can be worked around the described way, two things still bother me on the AC:
The first and worst one, Embrace the Darkness: I've thought about this node a lot, but cannot find any reason to use this. The maximum darkness if I'm not mistaken is 1845, if you use 3 AC points, 2 in darkness ones and 1 for Chayula's Gift.
Considering this rather low number, the fact you have NO spirit if you go this way, and that Ghost Dance regenerates at the bare minimum (Endgame) 1000 ES 5 times for 30 spirit, why would anyone go this route ?

The second main issue with the new AC is the Volatility on ailment one. Well actually volatility overall: The generation is done either with this AC node on ailments, on crits with volatility support, or on kill with tree's passives. This is alright, generation is rather consistent. Its usage on the other hand is a bit clunky: you either invest in less volatility duration, and still have to stop hitting anything for a few seconds to let the bonus proc (This is not fun and breaks the flow) or use Catharsis support to force a random amount of volatility to proc (I'm fine with that) but you need to have 20 volatility to use that skill. While it is not that hard to get 20 volat, it still is playable, but not that fluid in practice: More often than not, you try to use a skill for that purpose, only to actually not do anything because you don't have enough volat remaining: I think it would make more sense if it worked like Rageforged support, where you don't get the benefits of exploding volat if you don't have 20, but still can use the skill normally in that case.

Lastly, the new Unravelling node is really fine,and doesn't absolutely need changes, but I would love it to actually apply the 3 ailments permanently, at the cost of their magnitudes being lowered... Or even at the cost of exploding volatility to apply them



After all that, Chayula feels a LOT better to play, I actually have fun playing full chaos ES leech, thank you GGG for the new supports and not ignoring our dark edgy boy

Totally agree with everything said above.

Every Chayula Nodes are weak, unreliable and duration sucks big time.


Basically Chayula has only 2 things he does decently:
1: Leeches, but requires 2/3 expensive items to work and with delay.
2: The new lineage support gems that creates ailment based on chaos damage, but require to be level 65+ and have at least 2 of them, probably more.



Chayula desperatly needs innate damage conversion into chaos, as well as beef'd up durations on his buffs (and easier generation of volatility, the 0.1 second per stack hurts big time).

Basically, Chayula needs QOL. (make volatility pop instantly and immediatly please)


PS: Darkness node is the worst deal you could ever think off.

if chayula had a 2 point node branch that said life leech effects apply to energy shield as well like we had in 0.2, chayula would be solid and so much more playable. its the one thing holding it back. get rid of the dumb darkness nodes, no one is going to sacrifice spirit lol what are ya thinking. also like the guy above me said pls give chayula easy conversion into chaos for all damage types. dam that would be juicy

Im currently playing acolyte of chayula and I feel like the build is too heavily reliant on certain uniques. Having chaos conversion within the ascendancy itself along with some other damage increasing capabilities maybe even with some sort of sacrifice for it, would help. Even after having the required uniques, the damage is lacking compared to just about everyone else. Im confident this ascendancy choice will get there within future updates.