Acolyte of Chayula - League Starter/SSF - Off-Meta - Hexblast Monk to get to Endgame (and beyond)
 ------------------------------------------ MaxRoll Link: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/planner/r7fft010 I really don't like the way MaxRoll has their Planner set up as it doesn't give a great opprotunity to show specific steps of the build. I do however, like it's ease of use for showing off armor stats and skill set-up. Please take a look there if you have questions on those things. ------------------------------------------ End Game Example of the build (Cruel 3)  ------------------------------------------ 1. Introduction 2. Pros/Cons 3. How to play it 4. Ascendancy 5. Final Passive Skill Tree 6. Gear & Stats to look for 7. Act Walkthroughs 8. Problematic Enemies 9. Theorycrafting 10. Closing ------------------------------------------ 1. Introduction Hello there, if you are reading this, than you, like me, have been on the hunt for a decent guide to use that won't get you stuck in Endgame. I've been playing PoE for about 9 years now with ~3000 hours into it and I'm very passionate about the game and community, so I'm truly hoping this helps people out, at least a bit. I won't be able to respond here a ton, as I am a working Dad - so please be patient with me if you have questions or suggestions. As with everything in PoE2, the game is super new and things are changing constantly, so what might be viable today, might change tomorrow. I will try my best to keep things up to date here. Even though this is more of an advanced/intermediate build, an important note here is I'm trying to keep this as simple as possible for new players, utilizing only three spells so you don't get overwhelmed. While I absolutely love the PoE community and how it constantly strives to obliterate the game by making insane builds, these are usually extremely daunting and confusing to players. I'm hoping this guide can serve as a jumping off point for players to learn the core concepts. Please also note I've gotten a few asks to post up my guides in Mobalytics and while I would love to post my guides in other places, I specifically tried this out and you cannot upload anything unless you are a verified partner with their site. Until that happens, I will continue to make builds right here. If you ever have questions, please ask in the forum here or stop by my Twitch channel, I stream pretty often and would be happy to answer things live. I play typically on Standard league, to provide help for my friends, but if I'm testing out builds - it will be strictly self-imposed SSF. With all that out of the way, I'm excited to try this build out and update it as I progress. Mainly, this will use Hexblast as the main damage source. ------------------------------------------ 2. Pros/Cons Pros +++ Straightforward - can focus on learning fights instead of class abilities +++ Easy to Gear - no Uniques that are absolutely required +++ Room to Expand and add your own flare +++ Cool Style, Dark Monks are badass! +++ Chaos Resistance is barely an issue Cons --- Early Game is really rough --- Straightforward - could be boring if 2-3 buttons isn't enough for you --- Close Combat Spell Caster (Enemies need to be in your presence) --- Almost purely chaos damage and spell hit --- Relies on Enemies that can be Cursed --- Defensives take a bit of brain power to fully understand --- Can't use Hexblast until 42 (~Act 3) ------------------------------------------ 3. How to play it Reminder: I wanted to keep things as simple as possible for this build for new players to get through content and enjoy the game. There is plenty of room for more veteran players to pick this up and experiment/push the boundaries of this as well - more on that in theorycrafting sections. Important Note: This build comes online at level 42, until then just use Essence Drain and Contagion with Enfeeble and Decayed Hex Support, I'll go over that in more detail in the Walkthrough section. These are the main skills you will be using for this build. I. Hexblast
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This is the only ability you'll really be using. Hexblast works by clearing curses on enemies. However, we run curses as an aura, so we can just spam Hexblast without having to worry about recasting Curses. By the time this build comes online, Enemies will have huge penalties to Resistances and Damage, and you'll be pumping out massive Chaos explosions.
Support Gems: Concentrated Effect for the 40% damage boost. Considered Casting, Controlled Destruction, Arcane Tempo and Chaos Mastery are all great as well. If you would like, you can also experiment with minions and their supports - but I generally had better luck stacking damage.  II. Blasphemy
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We'll basically turn this on once and never really have to worry about it again. Note that you need to make sure you have 60 Spirit reserved for this and another 60 when we pick up the additional curse.
Support Gems: You'll need two nodes reserved for curses, I tend to use Temporal Chains and Despair, but you could swap out Temporal Chains for Enfeeble if you wanted to. Other support gems should beMagnified Effect, Heightened Curse and Clarity.  III. Soul Offering
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This just boosts up your damage a good amount. You could utilize minion support gems in this skill to make it more beefy or last longer. My support suggestion is anything that boosts duration here.
 IV. Buffs
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The Good -Withering Presence debuff enemies around making them take additional chaos damage. Worth noting, this does not reduce enemy resists, it has it's own separate mechanics in the game. -Blasphemy This is required for our build! -Archmage This just does an absolute ton of damage on top of our chaos damage as lightning. We stack Mana already which makes this buff even more powerful (5% extra lightning per 100 mana). The downside is that the buff will eat into our defensives as everything will innately cost more mana to cast, so be careful if you decide to use this. The Okay -Time of Need Big Strength investment with this one, but the heal and cleanse are really nice. -Lingering Illusion It's nice because we don't have a lot of things to drop aggro if playing solo. The Power charge generation could also be neat in some sort of variant of the build. -Attrition this buff is great, but requires a ton of strength and dexterity investment which is why it's just okay for us. The Untested -Blink This sounds like it could be a great defensive tool - I plan to test it out soon. The Traps -Arctic Armor It might need to be in the okay category, but we don't do elemental or freeze build up so this just isn't very good for us. The buff VFX are neat though. -Grim Feast we don't use minions. It could be really useful in an minion build, but we also shed Energy shield halfway through progression. ------------------------------------------ 4. Ascendancy We take Acolyte of Chayula here. The reason being the defenses and chaos buffs they get here are pretty stellar. We need to do some work to make the defenses really shine, but it won't be too hard. I. Ascension 1
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First up is Waking Dream. We take this because of the crazy amount of pick-ups this begins to generate for us. It will help us sustain our Life and Mana while boosting our damage while we get through acts. Not to mention, it looks damn cool.
Future Thoughts
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Currently Breach Rings special property is that they go up to 50% quality. In PoE1 these rings doubled in stats while in a Breach. Waking Dream states that you are always technically "in a breach" so if these rings ever change, this could be extremely potent.
Thank you to rastaqki#6957 for the correction!  II. Ascension 2
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Here you put your points or into Reality Rending for the big boost to chaos damage as you will primarily be using Hexblast at this point.
 III. Ascension 3
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This is where you'll swap to the big change in your defense. Pair this up with Mind over Matter and Eldritch Battery to really smooth out your effective defenses. We'll grab Ravenous Doubts to make all mana leech instant. With our Mana pool basically becoming our Life pool, we get access to instantaneous healing in the form of blue Flames of Chayula and a Mana Drain wand.
 III. Ascension 4
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This is your End Game Ascension in the form of Chayula's Gift to round out your Resistances. This will double your chaos resistance and add +10% Maximum to it, making you not have to worry much about gearing for it, and being able to tank a ton of chaos damage. It's a really strong defensive Notable.
 ------------------------------------------ 5. End Game Passive Skill Tree  ------------------------------------------ 6. Gear and what to look for I. Body Armour & Helmet Anything that has Life, Energy Shield & Resists is perfect. Stay focused on gear that is primarily Energy Shield base stat - we don't use Evasion or Armour. Anything that boosts Chaos or Spell Damage is also a great addition. If we can find spirit, we also utilize that as we are a bit buff heavy. (needing about 120-210). II. Boots Same as above, but Movement Speed is the primary stat we are looking for. III. Gloves Same as Body Armour. IV. Rings Resist Rings (Ruby, Topaz and/or Sapphire) here to balance your resistances to as close to 75% as possible. Otherwise, same stats as Body Armour. V. Neck We'll want a Mana Regeneration or Intelligence Neck once we pick up Mind over Matter. Before that, just grab a Strength or Life Neck if you can. VI. Wand & Focus For One-Handed, Mana Drain wand with a boost to Chaos or Spell Damage is what you should run. Focus should focus (heh) on the same stats, Energy Shield, Chaos or Spell Damage ------------------------------------------ 7. Act Walkthroughs Note: I won't be going through a general guide here to get through the campaign and end game, I'm sure there are guides out there that would do a better job than I would, this is just generally where the build should be at each point in the game. We stack Intelligence and only get another stat if a gem or armor piece requires it. Intelligence is absolutely huge for us and we can never have enough of it. I. Act 1
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Leveling up as this build is rougher than I would like. This build does absolutely fine with packs early game, but can struggle with bosses if you don't know the mechanics. This build is very nice if you are playing with friends, because you'll be focusing on debilitating curses making everyone's lives easier.
Once you start getting your chaos and spell power nodes, things get easier. Until then, just grab a Mana Drain Wand, Essence Drain,Enfeeble (with Decaying Hex Support) and Contagion. You'll want to start practicing how Essence Drain, Enfeeble and Contagion work together. Essence drain then cast Enfeeble on an enemy and then hit them with Contagion immediately afterwards, they're health will drop rapidly and when they die, the same debuffs (with a big damage bonus) will apply to all other enemies around them. It's great for clearing packs until we get Hexblast. The upfront damage on Essence Drain is also fine for the mana cost, so we can spam that while we wait to reapply Contagion and Enfeeble. You'll use this strategy all the way up to Act 3 until you switch over to Hexblast. Bosses will be a bit tougher here (I had eight tries in on Count Gregor) than a lot of starters, so make sure you are learning mechanics as you are progressing. Make sure you also focus on boosting your life, armor and resists as much as possible early game, with a heavier focus on cold resist for the time being. You'll want to even your resist out to cover every element as soon as you hit Act 2. Keep checking the stores when you level up to snag any good resist rings and weapons here. 13 Skill Points
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The first few skill points feel pretty rough because we are traveling fairly far to grab the chaos nodes as Monk, afterwards it feels slightly less bad.
 23 Skill Points
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Towards the end of middle of Act 1, you should be good to fully utilize the set-up of aMana Drain Wand, Essence Drain,Enfeeble (with Decaying Hex Support) and Contagion. This will be your main damage set-up all the way up until Act 3. Otherwise, we will just be stacking damage and resistances on our gear.
 The Count Boss is really rough for this build as the build comes online later, just stick with it and burn him down with attrition. It's also a great way to learn the fight and improve as a spellcaster if you aren't familiar with it. II. Act 2
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More of the same as we grind through mobs and bosses with our damage set-up. If you are having trouble, keep a look out for a solid Wand and Focus, even a level appropriate white can be crafted up to be something really amazing with some luck.
33 Skill Points
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We pick up the ability to apply hinder on all of our curses and make it so damaging hits do more damage on hindered enemies. This keeps us a bit safer, while buffing Essence Drain a bit more as well.
 43 Skill Points
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More chaos damage and we pick up two Jewel Sockets. If you are able to find some jewels along the way, you can craft these up to potentially be as strong or stronger than notable nodes. This is mainly for end game, I've played through this build without jewels - but if luck goes your way - you might get a nice damage boost.
 At this point, you should be hitting your Ascendancy trials for the first time - check out the Ascendancy section for information on that. That should wrap up Act 2 with you rolling into Act 3 with mostly rares and hopefully if you are lucky, 50-60% Resistances and with a good amount of Energy Shield (200-300) III. Act 3
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Things in Act 3 do a ton of chaos damage, there aren't a lot of things that help with that that are accessible for us right away, so this act tends to be very burst and 1-shot heavy. The best you can do here is keep your resists as high as possible while boosting your damage as much as possible. Keep your distance from enemies, you can even run away if things get too hairy and let your damage over time effects do the work.
During this Act, you'll also be completely changing your strategy by utilizing Blasphemy and Hexblast instead of the Essence Drain Contagion combo that you've been used to (you can still supplement damage with that combo if you like, but it shouldn't be necessary). 52 Skill Points
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Nothing too fancy here, more chaos damage, more happy.
 63 Skill Points
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This is a huge shakeup to your defenses but should make you significantly more durable. All damage you receive will be hitting Mana instead of Life and Energy shield will be merged into your Mana pool instead of protecting your life pool. This will make the Mana Drain Wand a very potent survival tool, and allow your Ascendancy Flames that you pick up to help even more.
Now, any Mana, Mana Regen or Max Energy Shield, will be a big boost to survivability so keep an eye out for gear with those bonuses.  72 Skill Points
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Big focus on survivability here, grabbing lots of Mana nodes that are close by. We also pick up 3% Spell Damage per 100 Mana, so we have an even bigger incentive to grab Mana nodes.
 IV. End Game
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Now you'll be getting into end game so we will start focusing more on what makes this build strong. This is also a great time to spread out and try things out for yourself and make some unique edits. I'll get into some ideas for that in my theorycrafting section.
83 Skill Points
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This is a major power spike for us in that we allow all enemies to be cursed by an additional curse from us, so Hexblast will hit even harder. We also grab intelligence and Energy Shield nodes for more damage and survivability.
 93 Skill Points
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Again, nothing crazy here - just grabbing some more mana regeneration and moving into another chaos node for our next levels.
 102 Skill Points
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We grab another big chunk of chaos damage and a flat 10% increase to our Global defenses which is pretty nice.
 113 Skill Points
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This section gives us huge chaos damage bonuses at the cost of some life on each chaos spell cast. Our recovery and leech should mitigate this to where it's a non-issue, but you can also just use the life flasks that we never use to help here.
 Final Tree
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We grab some final % Increase to mana to improve our effective health point pool and damage some more.
It's also worth noting I removed the Zone of Control notable to free up some points in the tree to grab extra mana. You can totally do this earlier - probably even when you move into Blasphemy, as the Area of Effect nodes don't help us when we slot curses into the Aura. ------------------------------------------ 8. Problematic Enemies
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-All Early Game bosses until you get to run Hexblast are problematic, which sucks! Almost all monster packs are trivial when keeping your distance. Remember to kite enemies if they are particularly dangerous, you're not a front-line character!
After you pick up Hexblast, things are much less of a problem all around. -Iron Sharpshooter (Cruel Act 1) We don't take Physical Damage Reduction with this build so these guys do ridiculous amounts of damage with their rapid fire exclusively physical projectiles. They usually show up in packs too, which is even worse. -Constricted Spitter (Cruel Act 3) Hoooo boy, do these guys suck. They have a ton of HP, deal tons of upfront physical damage (our weakest defense) and poison on top of that. They can tear through ~3k eHP in seconds flat. They also stun us.... a lot. Be super careful around these packs. ------------------------------------------ 9. Theorycrafting I'll go over some of my ideas for alternatives for the build or how to make it just generally better while adding some complexity to it. Please feel free to also hit me up with your own suggestions or if I overlooked something here. I. Weapon Swapping
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I'm not finding any major reason for swapping or weapon sets in this build. The closest idea I have is to swap out curses in Blasphemy for specific boss fights.
II. Chaotic Freeze Support Gem
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I feel like there is a pretty solid build to come out of using Chaotic Freeze support. I haven't experimented with it too much but it sounds like it could be pretty cool. *Applause*
 III. Minions
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I played around with having a wall of Skeletal minions at the beginning of me powering through the Acts with this build. It's not bad for packs as they clog up pathing and make the enemies stay in one place. Without minion life and resist nodes though, minions kinda stink at boss battles. I opted just to go pure cast around Act 2 and there wasn't any significant losses I felt. There is probably something to be said about using the minion support nodes to help with damage (especially if we use offerings down the line.)
You might be able to dip into this once we jump into converting Spirit to Darkness, but I found it hard to piece in to the build.  IV. Blood Mage
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I think this build would have a higher ceiling as a critblast build with Blood Mage. However, I'm pretty certain that leveling that up would be even more painful than this build. It would probably only really pick up speed around Cruel Act 2, which is a lot of time and agony invested.
------------------------------------------ 10. Closing Update #3 12/19/24
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Finished out the campaign and I can confirm that this build is very very fun. It's a very nice challenge solo and I'm sure it would be super fun in a group. The build is nearly unkillable outside of Physical Projectile mobs that stun-lock us. Particularly annoying were the Vaal Archers and Constrictor Spitters.
I opted for a bit more cast speed and curse effect instead of the energy shield bonuses. I found out about halfway through that Max Energy shield actually doesn't affect Eldritch Battery at all, which I found a bit weird. Overall, very awesome theme and very fun to play. I basically only used Hexblast and had extremely poor/mediocre gear throughout the game. I wasn't even resist capped when I finished out the campaign and it was pretty easy. Anyway, I'm going to be moving onto a new guide now and consider this one wrapped up. Please ask questions or stop in the stream - happy to help wherever I can. Update #2 12/18/24
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I've realized that the Energy Shield nodes don't actually help us at all. I will need to redo portions of the tree, but that frees up some points for more damage elsewhere.
This build also pretty consistently struggles with boss damage. The build is super hard to kill, but fights can be slow. Stuns are a huge weakness for us, the build can get chain stunned without charms up. Some enemies really are hard to deal with because of this, especially any Physical Damage Projectile users. Other than that, I typically clear packs with one Hexblast which feels really nice. Once I grabbed Eldritch Battery and Mind Over Matter, I was nearly unkillable which felt pretty good. The scaling potential on this build is pretty nuts, I have exceptionally bad gear and I'm clearing through Cruel with little trouble. Thanks for all the comments so far! Update #1 12/17/24
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I'll keep updating as I go along with this one. I'll be recording my progress as well by streaming on Twitch if you want to pop in and ask me any questions. I enjoy chatting it up about the game so please don't be shy.
So far, even with the rough early game, this build has been awesome. It's been super challenging to get past certain areas but the payoffs are really nice. (Reminder I play on self-imposed SSF). The theme for this also is one of the coolest I've cooked up - who doesn't like being some sort of corrupted monk just blasting baddies with explosions of dark energy? If this helps out even one person, I'll feel like it was worth it. Heck, I'll even consider doing a few others for builds I'm currently working on. Thanks for reading, see you later exiles! ------------------------------------------- If you enjoyed this, check out my other guides here: Titan - League Starter/SSF - Beginner Friendly - Fire Build to get to Endgame https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3625751 Pathfinder - League Starter/SSF - Off-Meta - Beginner Friendly - Blood Alchemist https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3657241 -------------------------------------------- Shoutout to monik390#5560 for the guide format. They have a very good style with the guides they make, please check them out as well! Last edited by Kobyjoe#5354 on Dec 24, 2024, 9:42:07 PM Last bumped on Jan 2, 2025, 8:48:19 AM
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Nice guide, will be following it for my first Monk! Question about your skill tree though; for the stat notes is there any we should be stacking? Or is it just "choose what you need to hit gear requirements?"
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" Good question! We stack Intelligence for the mana, gear and skill requirements. |
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whats your stream link? would love to see it in play, i went aoc, but it didnt work well for me so i rebuilt into a shock monk with a useless ascendency lol, going to rebuild again but hoping they add more to the chaos staff gameplay,
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Hellol, thank you for the build.
I have a question though, could you maybe use mobalytics for at least the endgame skill tree so we can better see what you went for? Or would you say that unecessary since they re all stacked on intelligence? |
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Hellol, thank you for the build.
I have a question though, could you maybe use mobalytics for at least the endgame skill tree so we can better see what you went for? Or would you say that unecessary since they re all stacked on intelligence? |
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" Good question - I don't promote much, but you'll see the little Twitch icon on my name if I'm live. VoDs should also help you get an idea of how the build works. https://www.twitch.tv/jessesme I will say this build works more like a traditional caster rather than a bo-staff monk. You'll feel much more like a Harry Potter Wizard than anything else! Last edited by Kobyjoe#5354 on Dec 18, 2024, 11:55:36 AM
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" I was actually thinking of checking out Mobalytics. I need to see if things are easily transferable over there from here. Hopefully, I wouldn't have to recreate the guide from scratch, haha. |
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Uh, I already wanted to try Acolyte with Chaos spells because I'm not a fan of the combos :D This looks great, I'm so going to try this out! Also great that you're making this budgetfriendly with an open end investment wise, that's awesome :)
My Hideout -> https://hideoutshowcase.com/hideout/show/2881 (PoE1)
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" Glad you are trying it out! It's pretty budget friendly, I only used a blue wand from Act 2 - Act 1 Cruel, haha! |
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