Monks are in a really bad shape right now, a meme class!

I’d like to list the main issues I’ve noticed while playing Monk this league. To give some context: I started the league as a Deadeye (for obvious reasons, since it’s very strong right now). I had no trouble finishing the campaign and farming maps, but I eventually got bored and decided to switch to my long-time favorite class, Monk, which I’ve been playing since patch 0.1.

I got my Monk to level 50, reached Act 4, and had to stop. The class feels absolutely awful right now, borderline unplayable. The gap between Monk and the other classes is massive. To compare, I started a Warrior right after, and I can say without hesitation that Warriors are in a much better spot.

Here’s my feedback on the problems with Monk:

1. MANA
Mana is by far the biggest frustration. I respecced multiple times, heavily investing into mana talents early on, like Walker of the Winds (since I was running Invoker). Even with this, mana felt terrible. I tried stacking mana leech on gear, no real improvement. I then rushed Immortal Thirst, barely noticeable difference. Picked up Conservative Casting, still awful.

Meanwhile, with my Deadeye spamming Lightning Arrow, mana never dropped below 40%. Same story with Warrior, no problems at all. But on Monk, spamming two or three skills immediately drains your pool, even after investing heavily into mana. It makes no sense for a melee class, that literally requires constant skill spam to build combo points, to be crippled by such extreme mana issues. Right now, it feels ridiculous.

2. LACK OF DAMAGE
The mana problem directly bleeds into damage. Most Monk skills rely on building combo points before you can unleash your burst. But since mana constantly runs out, you often don’t even get to use those burst skills. I tried swapping to a non–combo-point skill like Falling Thunder (which itself has a strangely high mana cost). At first, it looked promising for map clear (though still nowhere near Deadeye’s clear speed), but when it came to bosses, it completely fell apart. I had to go back to Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry, both of which felt unplayable.

On top of that, the starting Monk tree feels like a disaster. It’s mostly skill speed, a penny of mana regen, some crit, and a bit of evasion/ES. Easily the weakest starting talent tree by a long shot.

3. HOLLOW PALM TECHNIQUE / CHAYULA
Hollow Palm Technique is a fantastic concept, it really fits Monk’s identity as a hand-to-hand fighter. But in practice, it feels like fists of paper, it doesn’t even come close to using a decent quarterstaff. Right now, it’s a complete meme option that needs serious buffs to be viable.

As for Chayula ascendancy, the devs had said it would be buffed, but honestly it still feels terrible. There’s no reason to take Chayula over Invoker right now, I don’t think it needs just a buff, it needs a full rework, because the design simply doesn’t hold up.


Overall, Monk feels like the weakest class by far in the current league and is badly in need of serious adjustments. My intention here isn’t to call for nerfs to other classes, Deadeye and Warrior are both fun and strong in their own ways, but rather to ask that Monk at least be brought up to a viable level while keeping its unique identity intact.

I appreciate all the work that went into patch 0.3. The game feels much more fun and polished compared to when I last played (I skipped 0.2 because it was unplayable for me). You’ve done a great job making the game enjoyable again, now I just hope Monk can get the same treatment so it can be just as fun and rewarding as the rest of the classes.

Thanks for reading, and I genuinely wish for the continued success of PoE 2.

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luizdoc#0279 wrote:

As for Chayula ascendancy, the devs had said it would be buffed, but honestly it still feels terrible. There’s no reason to take Chayula over Invoker right now, I don’t think it needs just a buff, it needs a full rework, because the design simply doesn’t hold up.

Yeah, Chayula is still a complete joke, I had to respec cause this ascendancy is literally unplayable total waste of time to even bother with it, honestly embarrassing that the devs still haven’t fixed this dumpster fire of an ascendancy.

I posted my level 47 invoker in my signature, because I saw so many posts like yours. It's extremely strong, with great clear, and my only deaths were my own fault. I agree mana sustain is a problem, but once I invested in efficiency everything was smooth.

I'm playing a monk also.

I agree that the mana cost is wild, just unlocked my lvl 17 ice strike. It just feel like before, dont see yet improvement but they said the improvement was mostly gems lvls 20+ so we'll see.

The damage is fine for me so far, needed to adjust some things. Using ice strike as main abilitie.

I tryed the wind skills for a while, until maps lvl 4 or 5. I had really good damage during the campaign but than i had to give up cause it really never match elemental, like not even close. And i hated feeling stuck in low lvl maps.

The way whirling assault work is kinda weird with only the first hit counting for your crit and not all the small hits. Was a sad moment for me cause i really enjoyed the game play. Now i'm not the smartest at the game also, maybe i specked wrong.

Hollow palm is more decent than i tought it would be at first, but i doubt it'll ever match a +x skill levels quarterstaff. I'm sticking to it anyway cause it's very fun and as you said fit well the monk charactere that i love.

I started Chayula up to level 80 and than swapped because, using elemental, invoker feel way better still. Was mostly stubborness that make me keep it until 80 but yeah it's not that yet. Might be interesting for other type of build with different weapons but idk, volatility feel very unconsistent and the rest isnt that much of an upgrade when you have invoker available.

Yah Monk is weak as eff in the campaign, then it gets better between act 4 and interlude, about the mana issue try the mana remnants spirit gem with harmonic remnant support you will never run out of mana ever again.

For your mana, try getting some mana leech on your items (just one is enough), or slot the mana leech support.
If you're playing physical damage, you'll need nothing more.
If you're playing with elemental damage, grab the Walker of the Wilds keystone.
If you're playing chaos damage, then you're probably playing Chayula monk, which means you should try the Sap of Nightmares ascendancy node.

I think the monk is fine, been mapping with Hollow Palm/Falling Thunder. Main tips I can give you are to get better at dodging, stack EV/ES to maximize Hollow Palm and make sure your gloves and rings give you some form of damage or skill ranks. You can definitely get by with other skills as well but I recommend anything that spends power charges as the damage scales per charge and you can stack up to 7 with a free extra charge from the quarterstaff node One With the Storm. My monk is only 70 at the moment because I've been messing around with multiple classes checking out the changes.

Like I said, I was using Walker of the Winds, Immortal Thirst and Conservative Casting, with mana leech on rings, I'm running out of mana very quickly with ice strike. And by the way, the idea of a class to have heavily invest on mana to be able to spam skills while the whole class is based on combo points, it feels very dumb design for me. But I already abandon mana talents + prefixes on gear, since it wasn't make any difference, I'm just spamming mana pots right now and HOPE for the devs to balance this in future patches. I'm level 74 now, still having a lot of issues with mana.

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luizdoc#0279 wrote:

Like I said, I was using Walker of the Winds, Immortal Thirst and Conservative Casting, with mana leech on rings, I'm running out of mana very quickly with ice strike. And by the way, the idea of a class to have heavily invest on mana to be able to spam skills while the whole class is based on combo points, it feels very dumb design for me. But I already abandon mana talents + prefixes on gear, since it wasn't make any difference, I'm just spamming mana pots right now and HOPE for the devs to balance this in future patches. I'm level 74 now, still having a lot of issues with mana.

That's probably just an issue with Ice Strike in general, you have to spend mana three times to get your big damage strike and even then it's less damage than Falling Thunder with no power charges spent... have you considered using another skill and just using an ice ability as support? That's kind of the reason I'm running Frozen Locus, it's just there to activate Ice Bite support and give me a little more damage if I need it but I rarely cast it so it's kind of a wasted slot.

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Halted#7926 wrote:

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luizdoc#0279 wrote:

Like I said, I was using Walker of the Winds, Immortal Thirst and Conservative Casting, with mana leech on rings, I'm running out of mana very quickly with ice strike. And by the way, the idea of a class to have heavily invest on mana to be able to spam skills while the whole class is based on combo points, it feels very dumb design for me. But I already abandon mana talents + prefixes on gear, since it wasn't make any difference, I'm just spamming mana pots right now and HOPE for the devs to balance this in future patches. I'm level 74 now, still having a lot of issues with mana.

That's probably just an issue with Ice Strike in general, you have to spend mana three times to get your big damage strike and even then it's less damage than Falling Thunder with no power charges spent... have you considered using another skill and just using an ice ability as support? That's kind of the reason I'm running Frozen Locus, it's just there to activate Ice Bite support and give me a little more damage if I need it but I rarely cast it so it's kind of a wasted slot.

I just abandon monk until ggg fix his mana problems, I'm back to Deadeye, I tried everything to keep my monk playable, no success, thanks for the response!