🤜 NEW Martial Artist MONK Ascendency Looks STRONG! | Path of Exile: Return of the Ancients 0.5
Summary
- Detailed breakdown of the Martial Artist Monk Ascendancy in Path of Exile 2.
- Core synergies with Hollow Palm Technique for unarmed and quarterstaff scaling.
- Analysis of key Ascendancy nodes: Hollow Form Technique, Way of the Mountain, and Way of the Stone Fist.
- Strategies for utilizing extra rune sockets to maximize evasion, energy shield, and jewel stacking via The Adorned.
- Discussion on the transformation of glove modifiers into high-tier “Stone Fist” variants.
Hollow Palm Technique and Base Synergies
The Martial Artist ascendancy leverages significant power from the Hollow Palm Technique keystone. This keystone allows for attacking as if using a quarterstaff while both hand slots are empty. Key scaling factors include:
- Physical Damage: Unarmed attacks gain additional physical damage based on the skill level.
- Attack Speed: 1% more attack speed per 75 evasion rating on equipped armor items.
- Critical Strike Chance: 0.1% to critical strike chance per 10 energy shield on equipped armor items.
The new crafting meta and ascendancy nodes provide more ways to scale these evasion and energy shield values, making Hollow Palm theoretically much stronger than in previous iterations.
Hollow Form Technique (Mirage Attacks)
This talent is situated in the upper quadrant of the ascendancy tree and functions similarly to General’s Cry from Path of Exile 1.
Hollow Form Technique:
- Channel to create fleeting images of your astral self near a targeted location.
- Images perform a socketed attack once then vanish, targeting the closest enemy.
- Images cannot perform channeled or conditional skills.
- Range: 6-meter radius.
- Cost: 80% of the socketed skill's cost.
- Power Charge Synergy: Creates two additional images when consuming a power charge.
- Penalties: Socketed skills have 30% less attack speed and 30% less damage.
By converting Frenzy Charges to Power Charges on the passive tree, you can generate the charges necessary to maintain a high volume of images. This technique works with “Martial Weapons,” which includes axes, bows, claws, crossbows, daggers, flails, maces, quarterstaffs, spears, and swords. This broad definition suggests potential for mace-based “slam” configurations rather than being restricted to quarterstaffs.
Way of the Mountain (Defensive Mitigation)
This node provides a “turtle stance” capability, allowing for stationary face-tanking of high-damage content.
- Mountain’s Teaching: While you have any amount of this buff, you and your ascendancy images deal 20% more damage.
- Mitigation: Hits taken that are less than or equal to 30% of maximum life (after armor and resistances) deal 70% less damage.
- Stability: Grants 50% more stun threshold.
- Condition: All teachings are lost if 8 seconds pass without gaining any.
When combined with new rune crafts that generate Ward or keystones like Unwavering Stance, this allows for a stationary playstyle that mitigates nearly all incoming small-to-mid-sized hits.
Hollow Resonance Technique (The Bell Mechanic)
This talent introduces spiritual objects that interact with your attacks.
- Hollow Focus Technique: Manifests bells around the player that can be struck by the illusions from Hollow Form.
- Hollow Resonance Technique: Attaches a ghostly bell to your back. Critical hits with other skills cause the bell to ring out, dealing 224% attack damage to nearby enemies.
- Cooldown: 0.5 seconds.
- Requirement: Requires a non-talisman melee martial weapon. Note that this specific node does not work with unarmed attacks, requiring a weapon swap or a dedicated weapon build to utilize.
Runic Tattoos and Extra Sockets
The Martial Artist can engrave runic tattoos, granting additional equipment sockets:
- 1 extra Helmet socket.
- 2 extra Body Armor sockets.
- 1 extra Glove socket.
- 1 extra Boot socket.
This is highly synergistic with Hollow Palm Technique, as more runes allow for higher base evasion and energy shield. Alternatively, players can “kill” these sockets to insert jewels. This enables massive jewel-stacking strategies involving The Adorned or Voices, potentially driving up the value of those items due to the increased socket availability.
Way of the Stone Fist (Glove Transformation)
This node fundamentally changes how glove equipment functions.
- Transformation: Equipped gloves are transformed into the Fists of Stone base type.
- Modifier Scaling: Prefixes and suffixes are transformed into more powerful, “related” versions of the original modifiers.
For example, standard flat physical, cold, or lightning damage modifiers are significantly upscaled. It also increases maximum resistances and life gain on hit. It is currently unconfirmed if this applies to unique gloves like Thunderfist or Hand of Wisdom and Action, but if it does, the stat tiers could be exceptionally high.
Endgame Viability and Comparison
The Martial Artist appears to be a premier physical scaling ascendancy, potentially outclassing the Invoker for melee builds. With access to Mageblood and specific talismans (such as those providing permanent Onslaught or energy shield regeneration), a “full-blown pugilist” build becomes viable. For leveling, starting as an Ice Strike Monk is recommended before transitioning into these advanced physical and unarmed synergies.