In this Path of Exile 2 guide, I’m going to be showing you how to play theMonkclass. This is a beginner guide that focuses on the ins and outs of how to play the Monk in the early game and some things about the Monk that you might not be aware of if you’re struggling or if you’re new. This is not an end-game guide or a Cruel Difficulty guide or any specific build or anything like that. It’s simply a guide to kind of explain some of the basic mechanics of Monk so that you understand how to play it quickly and can get the most out of it.
Path of Exile 2 Monk Starter Guide - Attributes and Armor
So the first thing about Monk is that it is aDexterity and Intelligenceclass. It actually uses two stats, Dexterity and Intelligence, unlike some classes likeWarriorwhich focuses predominantly on Strength, and something like Witch which focuses almost exclusively on Intelligence. This is not always true in some builds, etc. But generally speaking, those classes are going to focus more on one specific stat, while the Monk will focus on both Dexterity and Intelligence. The reason for this is that the requirements forquarterstaff skill gemsrequire both Dexterity and Intelligence in order to use them. So you’ll need to increase both of these stats if you want to use these skills.
Additionally, the armor that the Monk uses utilizes bothEvasionandEnergy Shield. That armor has Dexterity and Intelligence requirements on it. The Monk has quite a few passive nodes that boost both of these stats, Energy Shield and Evasion. So it kind of behooves them to use this type of armor to get the most out of those passive skills.
Path of Exile 2 Monk Starter Guide - Playstyles and Skills
When it comes to thepassive skill tree, Monks begin on the upper right-hand side of the passive skill tree. They have choices ofSkill Speed,Attack Damage, orEvasion and Energy Shield, orMana Regeneration. Then they have passives that boost both Dexterity and Intelligence. You can either head north for mostly damage with some utility, or south for lots of utility.
Believe it or not, I foundMana Regenerationto be the most useful early on because I was tearing through my mana. So I kind of recommend taking theMana Regenerationearly on and then maybe respeccing out of the Evasion and Energy Shield points that you use right away, and putting them in something else like Skill Speed or Attack Damage. I think you just use a lot of mana as aMonk, particularly early on in the game. Eventually, you might not, but for the first 10 levels or so, you probably will.
If you likeFreezingas aMonk, there are someFrost Skills. There are a couple of good nodes that you can take that will help improve yourFreezing. Similarly, there are someLightning nodesthat improveShockandLightning Damage. So if you likeLightning Skills, you can take those as well.
There are a couple of nodes I want you to be on the lookout for, and these are calledLust for PowerandThe Power Within. These specific nodes will increase your Power Charge count if you like usingFalling Thunderearly on in the game. But I’ll get into that in just a minute.
The Monk is kind of a mix between a melee class and a ranged class in my experience. It has a lot of melee attacks, yes, but it also has some ranged skills likeGlacial Cascade. It hits enemies in a line at a distance, softening them up or outright killing them before they even get to you. This skill also does Freeze buildup with the part of the trail that is not the very end of it. And that allows you to Freeze enemies using it, which is great. The very end part of the trail does tons of damage, particularly if you hit frozen enemies with it. It will remove their Freeze and deal tons and tons of damage to them. So hitting them with the middle of the trail, Freezing them, and hitting them with the end can be a strategy. Or you can just kill them outright by hitting them with the end of the trail. This can be a tricky skill to use because getting your spacing right, depending on what you’re trying to do, is not always easy.
Monks have an early focus onPower Charges, as I mentioned just a bit earlier, which are gained from using theKilling Palmskill. This skill puts a blue glow over enemies that are close to death and teleports you to them to finish them off, hopefully in one hit. That provides you a Power Charge, which you will see swirling around your character.
You have to kill enemies using this skill in order to get Power Charges, and that if you kill them even with this skill equipped with other skills, you won’t get Power Charges.
Early game, Power Charges are consumed by using theFalling Thunderskill. The more Power Charges you have when using Falling Thunder, the more damage and projectiles it will fire off.
TheProfusionsupport gem gives you a chance to gain extra Charges when using the Killing Palm skill, so I highly recommend it.
Power Charges last 20 seconds from the time you got your last one, so you won’t be able to hold onto them indefinitely, and you may only have a maximum of 3 Charges to begin with. So once you have 3 Charges, you only have 20 seconds to use them or you lose them all.
This makes early Monk gameplay a dance between using regular skills,Killing Palmto gain Power Charges, and then usingFalling Thunderin that 20 seconds to consume them before wasting the Power Charges.
If you take either theLust for Poweror thePower Withinpassive skills, you’ll have 4 or 5 Max Charges, allowing for more damage and also allowing you to hold your Charges longer, as remember the timer resets each time you gain a Charge.
Falling Thunderconverts physical damage to lightning damage and hits in a cone in front of you. Once you have Power Charges, it sends out high damaging projectiles very far onto the screen, allowing you to kill enemies from very far away with just one click, giving you a very strong ranged option compared to Glacial Cascade. Ideally, you always want to use this skill with Power Charges and never without it because it has a medium to long animation and does way less damage without Power Charges.
This is a fun skill to build around early on, but remember that many bosses and mini-bosses don’t have any enemies to kill with Killing Palm, so you won’t use this as much in some boss fights and you will need to employ another strategy during these cases. Note that thePerpetual Charge gemgives you a chance to not consume Power Charges when using Falling Thunder, so you might want to use it if you like using this skill a lot more often.
Quarterstaff Strikeis actually really good on Monk early on and I recommend using it until you get something likeIce StrikeorTempest Flurry, which should replace it. Unfortunately, Monk has a slow start, so it might be a while before you get either Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry, but these skills do something similar but more in a combo that has a chance to build up Freeze or Shock on the enemy, increasing your damage or freezing them. It’s just a better alternative to Quarterstaff Strike, but again, it will be some time until you get them, so you might want to keep this on your bar until then.
If you like freezing,Frozen Locusis not a bad skill. I find I use it mostly in boss encounters or on aggressive bosses to get away from them and to build up lots of Freeze on them, but you’re able to use it in the landscape sometimes if you get rushed by a bunch of enemies to kind of flip out of the way and to freeze those enemies simultaneously. It has some utility, but it doesn’t do a lot of damage.
Vaulting Impactis a decent skill as well with decent AoE range and good stun buildup. I simply find though that it has too long of an animation early on to be effective, and it has a longer reach than you’d expect, so it can take some getting used to to position your character correctly when you use this skill so you’re not leaping too far past enemies. It also isn’t that great in my opinion against ranged enemies that don’t move towards you like aggressive melee enemies do, because even though you’ll hit the melee enemies, you won’t hit the ranged enemies that are hanging back, while if you use something like Glacial Cascade, you’ll hit the ranged enemies and the melee enemies simultaneously, killing both of them or dealing damage to both at the same time.
I also want to mention that because you’ll have a decent amount ofintelligencewith this character or this class, you’ll be able to also useOccultistandElementalskills in your monk build very easily, because again, you’ll have intelligence. So if you find some of these skills that you like, consider adding them in. I would strongly suggest messing around with them, particularly ones related to Frost or Lightning, because again, monks have access to both of those types of skills, not as much fire early on.
So if you like Frost, you might want to incorporate some elemental Frost spells in there, etc. And because you’ll havedexterity, you’ll also have access tobow skills, but the caveat with bow skills is that they require a bow to use. So unlike Occultist and Elemental that you can still use with the quarterstaff equipped, you would have to swap to a bow in order to use the bow skills, but you’ll have the requirements for a lot of those skills because of dexterity. So if you wanted to put the bow in your backup slot and use it as a ranged option to soften up enemies before you jump into melee combat, that is also a viable option for you.
Eventually, as you progress the game, you’ll gain what is calledSpirit. Spirit is another stat of your character that will regulate the number of buffs that you may use on your character at one time. You should be on the lookout for this because the more Spirit you have, the more buffs you can sustain.
A couple buffs that I like really early on for monk are probably no surprise to anyone areHerald of ThunderorHerald of Ice, depending on if you want Lightning damage or Frost buildup, etc. This is going to make your attacks with Frost and Shock skills much, much more effective. So if you want Frost, go Herald of Ice. If you want the Lightning route, go Herald of Thunder.
Path of Exile 2 Monk Starter Guide - Final Thoughts
Now, armor-wise, you want to look out fordexterityandintelligencearmor, which will provide you with evasion and energy shield to take advantage of the passives. As I mentioned earlier, this armor typically has dexterity and intelligence requirements, so you’re able to kind of see it by that. That’ll be very easy for you to see. But if you want to get the most out of those passives, that’s the armor type you’re going to be looking for.
So that’s kind of the ins and outs of playing the Monk. The Monk is a little bit more of a hybrid build than Warrior is by default, particularly for a melee character, because you can soften enemies up at range a little bit more easily than the Warrior can early on. Whereas a lot of Warrior’s damage is going to come from melee range, particularly with something likeRolling Slam, Monks have a couple of ways of dealing damage at longer range.
I think that’s really the biggest difference. And I think one of the reasons that you don’t need to worry about health or strength as much on the Monk is that you’re typically not just standing there going toe-to-toe like you are with a Warrior. A lot of times, if you’re meleeing a boss, you’re going to be rolling to dodge their attacks and meleeing. You’re not going to just stand there and take it because you have tons and tons of armor and health and strength. So there is a bit of a difference there.
If you like a play style that’s kind of somewhere in the middle between ranged and melee, I think the Monk is a good class for you.
So that wraps up our guide on the Monk. As always, if you have questions, please leave them in the comments. Or if you have other tips—things I didn’t mention—for you Monk players out there who have probably more experience than I do, please leave them in the comments to help other players out.
