Chayula's Gift Ascendancy Node, What Is It Good For?

Absolutely nothing.

My first impression of Darkness on the Chonk has been a struggle bus, but I enjoy the challenge, I enjoy the flavor, and I think it has potential as a defensive layer. I thought OKAY, 6 out of my 8 ascendancy points have to go into this for it to scale into the end game, that's a lot and I'm already giving up a lot, but whatever lets try it. Here is the thought process I think an average person would go through when diving into the Chonk Darkness ascendancy: With deepening shadows I get 1% increased Darkness per 1% chaos res, sweet, if I want to invest even more into that, I can spend 2 more points and get Chayula's gift, that will increase my Max chaos res so I take less damage from chaos and also double my (uncapped (198%)) chaos res to increase my darkness. I invest the points, check my darkness... wait a second... my darkness hardly went up at all. 1658<1743??? Wow... less than a 100 points... it only tracks off my max chaos resist?.. So I spend 25% of my ascendency points to get +10% max to chaos res and... 10% increased darkness? and a discount on chaos res? That is... very bad. I cannot select that.

Lets flesh this out. For 2 ascendancy points I would not select +10% max chaos res and 10% increased darkness. And doubling my chaos res? I have capped chaos res off of two items. If tracking uncapped chaos res is not the intent, that is an extremely useless line of text. I'm hoping darkness scaling with uncapped chaos resistance is the intent and this is a bug, but if it is not, just delete.

In this game you can scale energy shield to high tens of thousands, sorcery ward, so on so forth.. The absolute cap for Darkness is 2508. Crazy thing about that those other things is you don't have to give up all spirit skills and 6 ascendancy points. So why would anyone ever give up all that for darkness? They wouldn't. And very few people are playing it.

So before this game enters full release, let's get some people to play darkness. I think the pieces are here for this to be good they just need to be tweaked.

My suggestions:

Chayula's gift should be gifted to deepening shadows and deepening shadows should scale off uncapped chaos resistance. This gives a ton of scalability into end game.
Embrace the darkness should convert all spirit to darkness instead. This just makes sense and provides further scalability into end game. Scalable base number + scalable % increase = good POE design.
Replacement for chayula's gift. Infinite Void: While you have un-reserved Darkness, you cannot be stunned. OR X% of darkness also applies to stun threshold. Something like that might be cool. And it should FEEL strong.

All of these should FEEL strong and be strong. We're giving up every spirit skill in the game to run this thing.

When sorcery ward exists, I don't see any reason why we can't scale darkness and have it be stronger than sorcery ward, especially when we are giving up so much for it.

Also would be pretty dope if these changes were made when shadow is released. That's hopefully the unknown about why darkness feels so bad, maybe we're waiting for stuff to be added to the game still.

Anyway, thanks for reading.

Comments

IamBinx•5 months ago•1

Does darkness still have the bug where a DoT can just make it instantly disappear?

buttflakes27•5 months ago•1

Im on a chonk rn with 85% chaos res and it feels good i gotta say. The volatile plants dont do shit. I put a perfect ruin essence on a chest to see if it made a big difference and it didnt really I gotta admit, might be better for an armour based build. That said i mostly just took it because it was the only two nodes worth taking, since darkness is kinda shit (its good but not worth it in endgame really) and volatility is unreliable.

NeverRespawning•5 months ago•1

I personally think its fine. I was playing a hex based build and using essence drain/contagion. Having a large portion of extra health while waiting for the DoTs to do their work.

But losing all my spirit and being locked out of any kind of buffs really hurts once you start doing maps. Its a great node for campaign, but afterwards I dont think id keep it very long.

PM_Me_Ur_ArtConcepts•5 months ago•1

GGG is aware that Chayula needs another rework and another is on the way (maybe in 0.5 or 0.6). I don't think GGG has looked at any feedback regarding Chayula nor will they bother to (seeing as how they didn't address Darkness complaints from 0.1~0.4). Mark will handle the scope of the rework and give the general feel. All we can do is just pray

GH057807•5 months ago•1

Here's my two cents on how Darkness might not suck. I'm no math wiz, so all the numbers could be adjusted for sure.

First Point

All Spirit is converted to Darkness.
1% Increased Darkness per character level.
Skills that reserve Spirit now reserve Darkness, with a 50% increased reservation cost.
Non-minion Skill and supports gems that reserve Darkness have 20% more effectiveness.
When a non-minion skill reserving Darkness is used, you are dealt 10% of your total life and energy shield as Chaos Damage. This damage bypasses Energy Shield and cannot be mitigated by Darkness.

Second Point

1% Increased Darkness per 1% uncapped Chaos Resistance.
25% more Darkness if you have at least 75% Chaos Resistance.
Incoming Damage is dealt to unreserved Darkness before Energy Shield or Life. Darkness reserved by damage is returned after taking no damage for 4 seconds.

With the first point, you can still use buff skills, but they cost more. Wind Dancer and Clarity I would be 60 Darkness instead of 40 Spirit...but both the skill and support would get a solid boost on their effects. You take chaos damage directly to your life pool when a reserved skill procs (eg, when you use Herald of Plague, or an attack boosted by Herald of Thunder, or Cast On Whatever procs, when you use Convalescence, or Blink, when Wind Dancer goes off, etc).

Second point gives you a number of big boosts to your overall Darkness (which can be boosted by Spirit on gear) focused on maxing out Chaos Resistance. This focus on chaos resist will help mitigate the damage from the first point (or entirely with CI)

Second point also introduces the "shield" mechanic, now that you can have a much larger pool. You now benefit from reserving fewer costly skills, because you'll have more shield to absorb more damage...or reserve a ton of stuff with 20% more effect...

Or something...

Dorias_Drake•5 months ago•1

anytime you feel that acolyte of chayula has issues, just rewatch this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3GfYYtr9v4

darkness works.

DaryltheRigger•5 months ago•1

Chayula gift means hitting max chaos with basically no gear investment freeing up a ton of mods and not requiring CI.

Take a look at my implementation:

https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/blgmike-5184/character/bltchfistV

folktrollish•5 months ago•1

I tried a darkness build and paired it with eldritch battery, eternal youth and about 60% damage taken from mana before life. And its kinda good actualy. With 60% MoM the 2k darkness doesnt feel that low. The no spirit kinda suck tho

Santi-Emite•4 months ago•1

I use Chayula's Gift and I am sure of one thing - it may be boring, but it is working just fine.
Not everyone wants Chaos Inoculation and the node saves a lot of Chaos Resi mod slots on items.
I am using it since 0.1 and I am happy it remained unchanged.
It's Darkness that 's unnecesarily relies on this Node. Should scale with uncapped Chaos resi or Unreserved spirit instead.
https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/Evergrey-7535/character/Chonkest

We already have dead branch with Volatility and useless outside of campaign Darkness. GGG should work on these, not change what's working.

Chonk is S tier easily. Godly sustain, good synergies, boosted leech and chaos resi - perfect target audience for Soul Tether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKP_nsKcAXc

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