Best Path of Exile 2 Monk build

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The best POE 2 Monk Build for the early game is a lightning-damage invoker

Path of Exile 2 Monk
(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Making the best Path of Exile 2 Monk build was always going to be tricky, as the Monk is one of the game's most complicated classes, with a high degree of complexity and skill required to get the most out of it. Still, for those who can, this POE 2 Monk build based around lightning damage and speed devastates most foes you go up against. With that in mind, we've put together a build guide to help players reach that crackling, shocking model, and electrically smack their way to superiority.

The best Monk Build in POE 2

Path of Exile 2 monk

(Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

This Path of Exile 2 Monk build prioritises the following elements:

  • High speed, evasion and battlefield manoeuvrability
  • Lightning damage and rapid AOE attacks

The monk's strengths have always been towards agility and speed, and while this makes him more complicated to play, leaning into these qualities goes a long way to showing why he's in the S-tier of the Path of Exile 2 classes. Some have had a lot of success making the Monk invoker model focused on both cold and lightning, but we had more luck doubling down on one. Here are the essentials of the loadout you should be aiming for, as well as what mods and abilities you should try to find on each one:

  • Equipment/loadout
    • Weapon: Quarterstaff (lightning damage/physical damage/attack speed)
    • Head: Mask (evasion/energy shield/critical hit chance/life increase)
    • Body: Robes/Garb (prioritise evasion/energy shield buffs)
    • Hands: Linen Wraps (attack speed)
    • Boots: Threaded Shoes (prioritise evasion/energy shield buffs)
  • Skill Gems
    • Quarterstaff Strike
    • Falling Thunder: Lightning Infusion/Perpetual Charge
    • Killing Palm: Behead
    • Stormwave
    • Tempest Flurry: Conduction/Martial Tempo/Lightning Infusion
    • Tempest Bell: Magnified Effect/Ruthless
    • Cast on Shock: Concentrated Effect/Comet/Spell Echo/Inevitable Critical
    • Orb of Storms: Lightning Exposure/Overabundance
  • Passive Skills
    • Work towards Lightning Damage, Evasion, Mana Regeneration and Critical Hit Chance
  • Spirit Gem
    • Herald of Thunder
  • Ascendencies
    • Invoker
      • Sunder My Enemies
      • Lead me Through Grace
      • The Soul Springs Eternal
      • I am the Thunder…

The key elements here are lightning damage, done mainly through Falling Thunder and the Tempest Bell, and mobility - stay moving, keep using your skills both for damage and battlefield control, and be incredibly liberal with the dodge roll.

Obviously what's above is a rough template and path for players to follow out of the early game, with enough wiggle room to experiment with other abilities along the way. Make sure to use the Path of Exile 2 trading system to get electrically charged items, and test out various combinations of passives with the Path of Exile 2 respec system.

Go from brawler to sniper with our Path of Exile 2 Mercenary build guide, where we show you how to be a master of the elements and explosives alike.

© 12DOVE. Not to be reproduced without permission

Joel Franey
Joel Franey
Guides Writer

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and raconteur with a Masters from Sussex University, none of which has actually equipped him for anything in real life. As a result he chooses to spend most of his time playing video games, reading old books and ingesting chemically-risky levels of caffeine. He is a firm believer that the vast majority of games would be improved by adding a grappling hook, and if they already have one, they should probably add another just to be safe. You can find old work of his at USgamer, Gfinity, Eurogamer and more besides.

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