All of my gear is used as an example and is far worse than what you can actually achieve in game.
Shoutout to WesteyWest for suggesting this build. His Guide can be seen here: https://mobalytics.gg/poe-2/profile/grim-flower-rcg8fc/builds/6284ed8d-2726-46a8-953c-1cc4b2f80b30?ws-ngf5-f7d82102-7e77-4a44-ad24-33b67e8ae7bf=activeVariantId%2C1
Ascendancy Order while Quarterstaff
Hollow Focus Technique
Way of the Stonefist
Ascendancy Points after Lochtonials/Shield Wall Swap
Hollow Form
Way of the Stonefist
Runic Meridians
Hollow Focus
Why Play This Build?
This build is disgusting in my opinion on a leaguestart scenario. The gear is super easy to obtain, and
Runic Meridians offers a lot of flexibility early on. It is insanely tanky thanks to Evasion/Energy Shield, Deflection,
Ghost Dance, Block as well as
Magma Barrier, and Armour/Additional PDR on shield and
Chaos Inoculation.
For context, in a Hardcore Private League, THC 4, I was able to kill Quest Arbiter of Divinity with only a +3 melee mace with Attack Speed from a greater haste essence and a 743 Armour Shield.
Requirements to Swap to Shield Wall
3x Level 9 skill gem, Sunder/Shield Wall/Volcanic Fissure
Swap at Isle of Kin since we get our first Level 4 Support from the Caged Beast Rare Elite Monster
Level 4 Support from Crab at Whakapanu Island for Mark for Death II to socket in
Pounce
30-40k Gold
Important Tech
Sunder MUST BE PLACED BEFORE
Shield Wall IN THE SKILL ORDER. This is so that sunder breaks the shield walls that get placed much easier.- Attack Speed is one of the best scaling factors for the build because it allows your clones to place walls and break them faster.
- Overabundance II is massive for Hollow Form because this essentially gives us +1 clone which allows us to have 3 Shield Walls placed at once to be detonated. With
Lochtonial Caress it is 2 Shield Walls, and with Overabundance it goes to 3. By far the biggest damage upgrade. - Later we use Bleed IV in Shield wall to do more Melee Physical Damage. Since Shield wall cannot inflict bleed, we still generate Incision fairly fast so our
Hollow Focus bells can make the target bleed. Alternatively you can use Bleed III in
Volcanic Fissure to guarantee bleeding as well. - Traditionally
Shield Wall does not benefit from attack speed on a mace, this is because attack speed is only local to the weapon and since shield wall does not use your weapon it uses your shield, it doesn't count. However, since we are using
Hollow Form this skill actually DOES use your one handed mace making Attack Speed super desirable on the mace. Keep in mind that things like stun buildup are also very desirable.
Shield Wall benefits greatly from increases to "Area of Effect" try to get this as much as you can on the tree because it causes the skill to get overlapping damage. Before
Lochtonial Caress you can also get regular rare gloves with Flat Lightning Damage for Damage as Extra Lightning and Strength for Increased Area of Effect through the
Way of the Stonefist notable.- The build is cursor dependent, this means that the closer you place the cursor relative to your characters position, the closer the clones will spawn to you. The same goes for things further away.
Hollow Focus Technique will be used early game in combination with
Killing Palm to generate power charges while bossing. We can also use
Storm Wave and
Siphoning Strike too, but
Killing Palm should be faster. We will use Thrill of the Kill to get extra lightning damage from culling our bells.
Rend will be used in this build because the buff that it gives is very good for our build. Giving us 50% of Damage as Extra Lightning Damage is insane. We can have this buff for 10+seconds which is more than enough time to use with
Falling Thunder. In addition we will use Heightened Charges for a 20% chance to DOUBLE the effect of
Rend giving us 100% Damage as Extra Lightning!- You can achieve curse immunity by using the 50% Reduced Effect of Curses and the
The Hollowkeeper. This node gets unlocked by allocating both
First Principle of the Hollow and
First Teachings of the Keeper.
Pounce along with Mark for Death II is a really good early game option to get free Armour Break. Since we're using
Sunder we can also take advantage of the Sunder Broken Armour too.
Wing Blast will be used early on to generate power charges on stunning a unique monster which we will then use
Rend for 50% damage as extra lightning for shock. Since
Hollow Form uses power charges, we benefit and get more damage from multiple clones as well.





























