Choosing to play as a Monk in Path of Exile 2 is an exciting decision for any gamer. This class offers a dynamic melee experience filled with versatility and engaging mechanics. If you find yourself uncertain about which build to follow, you’ve come to the right place. This guide provides an effective Monk build to kickstart your adventure as you navigate through the game’s challenges.
In this comprehensive guide, we will discuss the fundamental aspects of the Monk build, including essential skills, optimal support gems, and key passive abilities. Additionally, we’ll explore the best weapon and armor choices to elevate your gameplay.
Core Monk Build Overview
The focus of our build is a critical strike Monk, designed to maximize the frequency and impact of critical hits. The Monk excels in generating critical strikes, allowing for substantial damage boosts during combat. This build enables you to effectively tackle groups of enemies or larger foes with impressive speed and finesse, resulting in a thrilling gameplay experience.
Optimal Skills for Your Monk Build
Below are the skills we recommend incorporating into your Monk build. This selection includes lightning-based attacks and powerful palm strikes. While the build emphasizes critical strikes, lightning abilities provide excellent area-of-effect (AOE) capabilities and quick strikes in the early stages. As you progress, prioritize skill gems like Whirling Assault and Flicker Strike to enhance your combat effectiveness:
- Quarterstaff Strike: Your primary attack, which does not consume mana and deals decent damage.
- Killing Palm: Execute low-health foes for power charge generation.
- Falling Thunder: Perform a powerful electric slam that capitalizes on power charges for AOE damage.
- Staggering Palm: Dash to an enemy, stunning them and causing your regular attacks to fire projectiles.
- Tempest Flurry: Execute a rapid series of strikes that can trigger critical hits.
- Whirling Assault: Spin towards enemies while attacking, your main AOE skill once acquired.
- Flicker Strike: Teleport to an enemy and strike them, dealing additional hits based on available power charges.
Support Gems for the Monk
Support gems play a crucial role in enhancing your Monk’s capabilities. Below are our recommendations, including some tier 2 support gems ideal for later use. For initial acts, feel free to mix and match gems in order to bolster your skills:
- Quarterstaff Strike:
- Overpower: Increases stun buildup by 50%.
- Soul Thief: Restores 5% of physical damage dealt as mana.
- Killing Palm:
- Profusion: Grants a chance for an additional skill when charging.
- Momentum: Enhances damage based on movement distance.
- Falling Thunder:
- Lightning Infusion: Boosts damage output as lightning damage.
- Coursing Current: Creates a chance to shock nearby targets.
- Staggering Palm:
- Impact Shockwave: Generates a damaging shockwave upon stunning an enemy.
- Excise: Improves critical hit chance while introducing a cooldown.
- Tempest Flurry:
- Ambush: Significant increase in critical hit chance against full-health enemies.
- Inevitable Critical: Gradually improves critical strike chances with continued hits.
- Whirling Assault:
- Brutality: Increases physical damage while reducing elemental damage.
- Close Combat: Enhances damage dealt to close proximity enemies.
- Flicker Strike:
- Martial Tempo: Attacks increase speed by 25%.
- Overpower: Increases stun buildup by an additional 50% (swap this with another gem on Quarterstaff Strike).
Best Passive Skills for Your Monk
To maximize critical hits, this build prioritizes specific passive skills that enhance both the rate and damage of your critical attacks. The Monk’s passive skill tree also features passives that boost damage after landing crits, ensuring a balanced and rewarding combat experience. Furthermore, the build incorporates passives that improve attack speed and survivability:
- Flow Like Water
- Crashing Wave
- Moment of Truth
- The Power Within
- Critical Exploit
- True Strike
- For the Jugular
- Deadly Force
- Lust for Power
- Tempered Mind
- Savouring
This extensive selection of passives will significantly boost your crit chances and damage output while facilitating the accumulation of power charges, making them vital for effective AOE and single-target damage.
Weapon and Armor Recommendations
When it comes to equipping your Monk, prioritize items that enhance your innate attributes such as intelligence and dexterity. Your goal should be to obtain gear with a combination of evasion and energy shields. While it is acceptable to wear items featuring either stat, the long-term aim should be to focus on a blend that maximizes both.
In addition to core stats, look for beneficial sub-stats. Health, elemental resistances, and movement speed are universally useful, but for this build, specifically seek out attack speed, critical hit chance, and critical hit damage. Finding weapons or armors that deliver these attributes is critical for achieving optimal gameplay.
Lastly, don’t hesitate to upgrade your gear! While it might be tempting to hold onto materials for specific high-tier items, consider that common items can sometimes yield surprising upgrades. Remember, materials sitting idle in your stash won’t enhance your character’s power.
You’ve now reached the conclusion of our introductory guide to the Monk class in Path of Exile 2. As you continue to develop your Monk character, feel free to explore other builds, such as fire-focused variants, as you gain confidence and experience in the game’s mechanics. A core part of the Path of Exile experience is the ability to experiment with various builds, so enjoy the journey!
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