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PoE 2 Build

DonTheCrown's Endgame Cold Monk

presentationMonk
presentationInvoker
DonTheCrown
Verified
End Game
0.1 Early Access
Updated on Jan 15, 2025
Jan 15, 2025

Build Overview

This build is extremely powerful because it locks down your enemies with quick freezes that last a long time. Even bosses are vulnerable to being Frozen and we can just lay down the DPS while they are stuck doing nothing.

Leveling Variant


CLICK THE 'TWIN HERALD' BUTTON BELOW THIS FOR THE TWIN HERALD VARIATION INFORMATION!

Build Variants

This is a build focused around mid to high end mapping. For a more leveling focused version please reference: https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/builds/don-cold-monk

Mapping
For mapping use Polcirkeln to blow up packs of enemies. This makes Herald of Ice chain through packs since Herald's hits will chill and therefore explode enemies on death. This interaction in PoE 1 was much lower damage and yet incredibly powerful so in PoE 2 its rather ridiculous, I would expect this to be nerfed soon.

Gloves with Mana on Kill really help sustain your mana here.

Bossing
Switch off Polcirkeln for a rare ring with damage and switch gloves to mana leech instead. I have 2 relatively cheap gloves I switch between that cover resists, have life, and the mana related nodes. I only really need to swap these for Citadels and other high-end bosses.

Venom Draught
Stun | Chaos Res

Equipment

item
2
item
3
item
1
item
6
item
5
item
4
item
2
item
7
item
8
item
9
item
item
item
Equipment Priority
0
Helmet
Expert Hunter Hood
1
Main Hand
Expert Crescent Quarterstaff
2
Left Ring
Sapphire Ring
3
Right Ring
Polcirkeln
4
Amulet
Jade Amulet
5
Body
Expert Studded Vest
6
Gloves
Expert Gauze Wraps
7
Belt
Heavy Belt
8
Boots
Advanced Laced Boots

Gear
Life and resists are important, cap your elemental resist at 150 total resist because in endgame maps you will have -60 to elemental resists normally and -15% from curse mod on some map. You can check what your current resist by going to Act 1 normal difficulty.

Runes
Ideally you do not want resists runes in your gear because getting more evasion from Iron Runes is good.

Body Armor
Our body armor is a massive contributor to our spirit thanks to the Ascendancy Lead me through Grace... which provides more spirit than anything else. I currently have a 1889 Evasion chest that is giving me 125 Spirit. This Evasion also is really important for Beastial Skin which will add that Evasion to our total. Consider getting a Ev/Ev/Ev prefix chest if you have strong life rolls on the rest of your gear.

Evasion > ALL
We focus Evasion gear exclusively because we will take Acrobatics and this will allow us to Evade basically everything. This will also lower our Evasion by a lot so we need to stack it to the moon!

Spectral Ward will also give us some Energy Shield to play with for Ghost Dance to take advantage of.

Weapon
Here we are looking primarily for Physical Damage prefixes! Flat Elemental damage is not as impactful as physical damage modifiers since they all multiply together.
Expert Slicing Quarterstaff or Expert Barrier Quarterstaff are the best bases. Slicing for more damage Barrier for a bit more defenses.

Note: If you have a base w/ #Phys and % Phys (non-hybrids) then %elemental damage with attacks is an okay 3rd prefix, you must have big physical on the weapon though.

For suffixes Critical Strike Damage >> Attack Speed > Critical Strike Chance >>> Everything Else.

Crit Damage on weapons appears to perhaps be bugged to MULTIPLY your total crit damage and is very powerful.

Note that ideally all 6 affixes would be damage related but this can also be a good spot to get mana leech or mana on kill.

ALWAYS use an Iron Rune in weapons!

Amulet
There are a lot of great stats you can get on amulet, like Life, % Evasion, # Energy Shield, Resists. I recommend anointing Overwhelming Strike or Stormcharged or Vulgar Methods depending on what you need. Stormcharged is likely the most raw damage but it is rather expensive. Vulgar Methods is a bit less damage but it also provides some help with strength.

Rings
Rings are the go-to place to get resists. Ideally you would be able to get most of your cold resist from 1 ring here:
Cold Resist Base | Life / % Cold Damage / Flat Cold Damage | Cold Resist / All Resists / more resist...
You can use Catalysts to boost the effectiveness of certain tags such as Cold up to 20%. This would allow you to take the Cold Resist base from 30% to 36% for example, but also the cold damage mods, the cold resist, and the all resist. Now this type of ring is rather rare but is worth looking for.

Belts
Belts are in a somewhat awkward spot with itemization. For prefixes Life is great but then there are not many good options. For Suffixes resistances are great and you could potentially even get 1-2 Charm Slots.

Ultra endgame is probably getting a Ingenuity because this can make our rings up to 80% more effective.

Gloves
Gloves are a tricky piece of gear because you will want to balance offenses and defenses here depending on what your other equipment has. Perfect world gloves would probably be:
Life, Flat Evasion, Physical Damage || Attack Speed
and then add either "Leech #% of Physical attack damage as Life"/Mana or Mana on Kill.

Resists are also an option here if you need them.

Boots
Movement speed is most important here! 30% or better is ideal with life. Use Evasion boot base and additional Evasion rating is nice here but Movement Speed and Life Should be priority!

For Suffixes: you can get resistances and/or "Reduced Freeze Duration".

Helmet
Best Helmet will always have Life/# Evasion/% Evasion || Crit Chance / Resists. Crit chance is less important here though and can be skipped in favor of better prefixes/resists.

You can also pickup stats here on the suffixes if you want but helmets are a good place to stack up over 1,000 Evasion rating.

Jewels
Here we want basically any stats that give us defenses or damage.
Evasion Rating, dmg with Quarterstaves, crit damage, crit chance, melee damage, etc.
Notably you can get +1 Rage on Melee hit on jewels which can stack up to 30% more damage!

Charm
I recommend using a Thawing Charm to help you not get frozen. Freeze is somewhat rare but it is incredibly deadly. If you get a second charm slot you can use Stone Charm for stuns but this will have a harder time staying up since you will get afflicted by a lot of 'micro-stuns' when getting hit by enemies. Golden Charm is a decent option for magic finding. You should not need any of the elemental resist charms since your resists should be capped.


Polcirkeln Ring
This ring -> Polcirkeln is INCREDIBLE for Breach content and other content where there are a LOT of enemies together. It causes Herald of Ice to effectively chain explode the map which is great! I swap this in for Breaches but remove it otherwise because it messes up my resists.

Skill Gems

Support Gem Requirements:

Str 50

Dex 50

Int 75

Expand all
1

Unbound Avatar

Unbound Avatar
moredurationsupportplayer
supportcoldmasteryplayer
supportfiremasteryplayer
supportlightningmasteryplayer
2

Ice Strike

Ice Strike
supportfasterattackplayer
supportconcentratedeffectplayer
supportweaponelementaldamageplayer
supportaddedcolddamageplayer
supporticebiteplayer
3

Elemental Invocation

Elemental Invocation
balllightningplayer
supportslowerprojectilesplayer
supportmultipleprojectilesplayer
supportimpetusplayer
supportinspirationplayer
4

Tempest Bell

Tempest Bell
supportragefountainplayer
supportincreaselimitplayer
supportheftplayer
supportmanaleechplayer
supportmeleephysicaldamageplayer
5

Hand of Chayula

Hand of Chayula
hypothermiaplayer
freezingmarkplayer
supportcurseeffectplayer
supportrageplayer
6

Herald of Ice

Herald of Ice
supportincreasedareaofeffectplayer
supportfarcombatplayer
supportcoldpenetrationplayer
supportambushplayer
7

Wind Dancer

Wind Dancer
supportblindplayer
supportmaimplayer
supportcoldexposureplayer
8

Ghost Dance

Ghost Dance
lessdurationsupportplayer
supportcannibalismplayer
supportvitalityplayer
9

Grim Feast

Grim Feast
supportclarityplayer
10

Dagger Stab

Dagger Stab
supportmanafountainplayer
supportleverageplayer
supportcullingstrikeplayer
supportdazingplayer
Gem Priority
+38

NOTE: due to a limitation w/ moba builder I cannot show 2 bell setups yet
instead refer to the gems on Dagger Stab for your 2nd bell setup

Gems are in order of Importance for both Jeweller's Orbs and including into the build for spirit costs. Ghost Dance and Grim Feast will not do anything for you if you don't have energy shield from Spectral Ward or gear in general.

Due to how powerful Polcirkeln is for clear we no longer need Shattering Palm to help out. Instead I recommend switching it out for a 2nd Tempest Bell.

Herald of Ice quality gives more radius and combined with Magnified Effect and Polcirkeln you'll get some massive explosions!

Ice Strike - You can replace Ice Bite with Close Combat if you feel like your mana can handle the 40% cost increase.

Tempest Bell - This is used to do damage! Ringing it with attacks or Ball Lightning will cause damage around it. Really good against tough targets. Adding Soul Thief support makes this skill also leech mana greatly which helps offset the cost of Elemental Invocation against bosses.

Elemental Invocation - Alternative Option would be Ice Nova + Spell Echo + Spell Cascade + Inspiration

Ball Lightning can be level 11! We mostly just use this to ring the bell and not for damage. A lower level gem reduces the mana cost a lot.

Don't level Hypothermia or Grim Feast past level 13!

Hand of Chayula is an attack that applies two Active skills: Hypothermia and Freezing Mark, in order to also socket Heightened Curse or Cursed Ground you will need to have Hypothermiasocketed first.

Unbound Avatar is our "ultimate" ability that gives us a lot of damage. Unfortunately there are almost no supports that support it so we use Persistence and then Cold Mastery, Fire Mastery, and Lightning Mastery to add a bit extra to the skill.


Gem Levels
Unless otherwise stated level as high as you can.

Grim Feat - 13
Hypothermia - 13
Ball Lightning - 11

Passive Tree

main:
123
123
set 1:
20
20
set 2:
20
20

Crit is really good for Monk because quarterstaffs (war staff on trade search) have 10% base crit chance -> Expert Slicing Quarterstaff which makes each 10% increased crit node worth around 1% additive crit.

Travel nodes are mostly INT. Getting some INT or DEX on your gear. If you have way more than what you need you can get STR for the extra health that it provides.

Leveling
Take the Notables near the start -> Flow Like Water Flow State Mindful Awareness Step Like Mist Essence of the Mountain Crashing Wave and then proceed out towards Whirling Assault and Coming Calamity while taking any side nodes you think are important.

Endgame
Jewel sockets can add a lot of value for a few points so feel free to pick them up when you have good 3-5 mod jewels (corrupt jewels can get +1 line or implicit line). Also feel free to add/remove evasion/crit nodes as you need.

Take Acrobatics when it won't leave you below 50% Evasion.

Ascendancy order
I am the Blizzard...
...and I Shall Rage
Lead me through Grace...
I am the Thunder... (switch the pathing)
Note you can take ...and Protect me from Harm instead of Thunder if you want a bit more defenses but armour is not that great in PoE2.

Atlas Tree

I like this setup but there may be better, stay tuned.

WARNING!

Deadly Evolution applies to Citadel bosses! Remove it before opening them.
(this is the southern most node)

How it Plays

Use Hand of Chayula to close the gap with enemies and then hit them with Ice Strike. Drop Tempest Bell to help do more damage and use your Elemental Invocation directly on top of the bell to ring it repeatedly. Hand of Chayula will also apply our curse and mark which makes enemies easier to kill and freeze.

Changelog

Dec 13, 2024 - Build Published
Dec 15, 2024 - replaced Eye of Winter for Ball Lightning
Dec 16, 2024 - updated some gem links
Dec 17, 2024 - big itemization writeup, also removed cursed ground from Hand of Chayula because it appears to no longer work.
Added section about Polcirkeln ring
Dec 19, 2024 - gear updated to current gear instead of ideal gear
Dec 21, 2024 - changed passive tree to attack speed focus, removed variation since it's all in one now

Video Guide

Table of Contents

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