Best Path of Exile 2 Monk build

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The best POE 2 Monk Build is about working towards the Invoker and choosing Lighting powers.

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

The best Path of Exile 2 Monk build is one that focuses on lightning damage and lightning speed, working towards the Invoker so you can make the most out of this choice. The POE2 Monk is one of the most powerful and complex classes, so a build needs to balance easy use and high power effectively - and that's what we've got laid out for you just below. Here's how to make the best Invoker Monk build in Path of Exile 2.

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:

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  • 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.

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Joel Franey
Joel Franey
Guides Editor, GamesRadar+

Joel Franey is a writer, journalist, podcaster and Very Tired Man with a BA from Brunel University, a Masters from Sussex University and a decade working in games journalism, often focused on guides coverage but also in reviews, features and news. His love of games is strongest when it comes to groundbreaking narratives like Disco Elysium, UnderTale and Baldur's Gate 3, as well as innovative or refined gameplay experiences like XCOM, Sifu, Arkham Asylum or Slay the Spire. 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 Eurogamer, Gfinity, USgamer, SFX Magazine, RPS, Dicebreaker, VG247, and more.