Path of Exile 2 Martial Artist: Everything You Need To Know (5 Game-Changing Skills)
Path of Exile 2 will release Patch 0.5.0 - Return of the Ancients - at the end of this month. GGG revealed in a recent livestream that Patch 0.5.0 will introduce two brand-new Ascendancy classes. One of them, the new Ascendancy for Monk - Martial Artist - boasts incredibly creative and imaginative skill designs, offering immense potential.
However, if you're a new PoE 2 player, the sheer volume of terminology in GGG's livestream might have put you to sleep. What skills does it have? What makes it strong? How do you play it in practice?
Today, I will provide a detailed introduction to Martial Artist.
Core Skills
To understand Martial Artist in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0, you first need to understand its four core skills:
- 1. Hollow Form Technique
- 2. Hollow Resonance Technique
- 3. Runic Meridians
- 4. Way of the Stonefist
Hollow Form Technique
Hollow Form Technique is the signature skill of Martial Artist in PoE 2 Return of the Ancients and is the core of the entire gameplay. You can select an attack target around you and create several mirror images of yourself near the target.
These clones, once created, will immediately copy a pre-set attack skill, attack your target, and then quickly disappear. This mechanism is very similar to General's Cry in PoE 1.
However, this powerful attack naturally comes at a cost. The number of clones is limited, their attack speed and damage are reduced, and the energy cost of the skill is increased accordingly. However, you can create two more clones by using Power Charge.
Hollow Resonance Technique
Martial Artist's second powerful skill is Hollow Resonance Technique, a very interesting damage-enhancing mechanism. Using this technique, you can attach ghostly bells to your back.
When you land a Critical Hit on an enemy with another skill, the ghostly bell on your back automatically emits a powerful sound wave towards surrounding enemies, dealing area damage. This skill significantly increases your attack power without putting any burden on the player.
Runic Meridians
The third skill for Martial Artist in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients, Runic Meridians, balances character build depth with defensive stat boosts. It's a passive skill, but very practical, allowing you to socket more runes into various equipment slots.
Specifically, it provides up to 5 additional rune slots: 1 for the head, 2 for body armor, 1 for gloves, and 1 for boots. While these extra runes may seem insignificant, their value is immense in the late game when building your own build.
Way of the Stonefist
This is also a powerful passive skill. Way of the Stonefist changes the base type of your equipped gloves to Fists of Stone and directly enhances all existing modifiers on the gloves.
Judging from GGG's livestreams, the enhanced glove modifier values are astonishing. More importantly, GGG doesn't seem to mention whether this transformation applies to Unique Items, such as PoE 2 Hand of Wisdom and Action.
If it does, the potential power of this build will far exceed expectations. After all, high-quality unique gloves come with powerful special modifiers, and with the amplification from Way of the Stonefist, their strength is unimaginable.
If you don't have Hand of Wisdom and Action or other Unique Items, you can obtain them by defeating Pinnacle Bosses or by trading with other players using Path of Exile 2 Currency.
Reason for its Strength
Having understood Martial Artist's skills, the next question is, why is it so powerful?
This brings us to a famous Keystone Passive in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients - Hollow Palm Technique. When combined with Martial Artist's various skills, it greatly enhances Martial Artist's combat capabilities.
If you are new to PoE 2, you may not be familiar with Hollow Palm Technique. Specifically, its effect allows you to deal high damage "bare-handed": as long as your character is unarmed, all your Quarterstaff skills can be used normally as if you were wielding weapons.
Furthermore, in this state, your attack speed receives an additional bonus based on your Evasion Rating, with every 75 points of Evasion Rating providing a 1% attack speed bonus; your critical strike chance also receives an additional bonus based on your Energy Shield, with every 10 points of Energy Shield providing a 1% critical strike chance bonus.
Therefore, the core of Hollow Palm Technique is to encourage players to maximize their Evasion Rating and Energy Shield, maximizing the benefits of attack speed and critical strike chance. Martial Artist's Runic Meridians skill allows players to socket multiple runes into their equipment, making it easy to maximize these two attributes.
Of course, if you don't have such powerful runes, you can trade them with NPCs or other players using Path of Exile 2 Currency.
Furthermore, Martial Artist's Way of the Stonefist provides a significant stat boost to gloves, while Hollow Palm Technique enhances unarmed attacks. These two skills work together to allow players to easily deal high damage.
Gameplay Guide
Now that you understand the basic mechanics of Martial Artist in PoE 2: Return of the Ancients, let's look at some practical playstyles based on these mechanics.
First, you can use Hollow Form Techniques to create clones and utilize them in attacks.
Simultaneously, you can combine this with core talents like Unwavering Stance to become immune to enemy stun abilities, while maintaining high health and armor stacking.
Add some powerful PoE 2 Unique items, such as Mageblood - which permanently grants buffs from potions on your belt, further enhancing survivability and damage output.
In this gameplay, players can use a single key to control their clones, remaining almost immune to all damage while the clones unleash devastating attacks.
This concludes my detailed introduction to Martial Artist in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients. It's a very interesting and powerful Ascendancy, and we should see many Martial Artists in dungeons when Patch 0.5.0 is officially released. In short, I hope this guide has been helpful.
