[SSF-HC] A Chonks story. Seeking help, advice and wisdom. A self made build.

This is a long post and for now, it's just a story so be warned. Eventually a tldr will be added. This is overall however, just a placeholder for now to be edited when I can. Am starting this thread while I'm at work and I have limited time usually so I'm unsure how much I'll be able to add but we shall see.

So, story starts with the desire to make a Chonk. The aesthetics of the class I find to be really interesting. Along with it's low play rate and it's chaos infused sort of playstyle I was curious as to wether I could make it playable in end game using some sort of attack based gameplay. Chaos abilities are extremely limited as is and I was hoping to get something I think to be unique.

I didn't have a plan though so just made a new monk and just browsed all the abilities in the game. I first reach endgame in ssfhc with a simple icestrike monk, some of the most arpg fun I've ever had so I wasn't against the idea of exploring quarterstaves further.

I browsed all the xbow, bow and mace abilities first though and couldn't find anything that stuck out, so just decided to level with a stave and play around with new abilities as they unlocked.

Enter staggering palm.

Never seen anyone use this ability, shoots wind projectiles when you heavy stun an enemy with it, "how sick is this?" I thought. Have always loved shockwave like abilities (think wow warrior, icc era if anyone knows)

Thought process then goes something like,

- I want to shoot lots of these

- How sick would it be to pair it with charged staff

- OK I want to shoot lots of both of these so I need a delivery system

- But I need to heavy stun enemies

- Enter wind blast, "this ability is also sick"

- OK so wind blast to prep enemies for stun

- Now we need to deliver as many of these as possible, but I need power changes for charge staff..

- Google lightning to cold conversion poe2.. found brotherhood topaz ring.. I know they're not that rare and sure enough, hit it 1 for 1 with the only chance orb I have

- ok so now we are generating charges for charged staff, staggering palm is throwing force, how can we try incorporate the chaos abilities bit more

- pretty simply using mantra of destruction, linked with culling strike, activating mantra, bell with gem links, inc aoe, expanse. Culls everything and fully stacks chaluya flames easily. We attack super fast so we can stack combos easier and keep it rolling, giving us many chances at the increase chaos dmg from chonk tree as well

And now we have arrived to the present. I'll add videos and a max roll path eventually.

We are currently clearing t12 maps, slowly looking for gear upgrades. T12 is about as hard as we can push until we get some better gear, damage feels good but our weapon is pretty lackluster and we don't have enough defences yet to push further.

Aiming for fourth ascendancy in next day or 2.

Having an absolute blast though, build feels so insanely fun. Let's hope i can stay alive.

ALSO, looking for help, I'd like to increase the aoe clear of the build and have done some experimenting but haven't found a good solution yet. Eventual thoughts might be to incorporate enough flat cold to just replace brotherhood with a porc and use herald of ice but if I can avoid that route I'd like to. Would be cool to try to get staggering palm to do enough aoe blitzing to clear screens attack straight forward but I'm unsure if possible. I've tried salvo/fork to start but not enough yet

Tldr; still in the works

My Chalupa is running around with Charge infusion, Scavenged Plating, and the Crown of the Pale King + Briarboots to retaliate with critical chaos thorns against all hits.

Staggering Palm is also my bread and butter. The heavy stuns I get with it fully break armor and stack Endurance charges. Hand of Chayula w/ Sniper's Mark and Killing Palm get me the Frenzy & Power balls. Eventually I want to work Volatility into the mix for more scaling on my Chaos thorns and even MORE floaty balls! My survivability isn't good enough for that yet. It's been fun tinkering with it, if not a bit frustrating


edit: This is in Standard. I wouldn't dare try a thorns gimmick in HC lol