Shattering Palm Invoker Build Guide
Dash to your enemies with a single button and kick off an explosion of ice! This Shattering Palm Invoker Build Guide shows you everything you need to know to shatter your enemies. You use the brass-knuckled unarmed skill Shattering Palm to deliver huge clear and Frozen Locus for massive single target damage. Once you are up and running, this build only needs one button to obliterate anything that isn't a high difficulty map boss or Pinnacle boss.
Gem levels are the primary scaling vector in this build, increasing both your single target and clear with one gear affix. This allows you to spend more on defence and survivability.
Use Shattering Palm to dash across the screen and strike an enemy. This covers all nearby enemies in ice, allowing them to explode. When the enemy you strike is killed, it explodes, causing all of the nearby enemies to take damage from Herald of Ice and shatters the ice that you placed on them. Herald of Thunder continues this chain by freezing enemies that can then shatter and explode.
On bosses, simply add one more button to drop a Frozen Locus that you can strike, causing it to explode, dealing a devastating blow to the enemy.
You do not need specific resistances or attributes on any item, just get the required total resistances and attributes amongst all gear combined. You need to cap your Resistances at 75% unless otherwise specified in the guide!
Path of Exile 2 is currently in early access, this means rapid development including frequent changes to builds as there are balance fixes and we learn more. Pin this page to be notified of any updates.
This guide assumes you are at least level 68 and have completed Act 3 Cruel, to learn more about the leveling process check out our leveling guide.
Skills
- Shattering Palm is your main skill that can leap across the screen and strike a single enemy, coating nearby enemies in ice and dealing a huge blow. The goal is to make this strike kill the enemy you dash to, causing a massive explosion. Getting to the highest possible gem level is more important than a 5th socket!
- Frozen Locus places a targetable object on the ground that when destroyed, creates a devastating cold hit to nearby enemies. Use your main skill to strike this object. Again, getting to the highest possible gem level is more important than a 5th socket.
- Herald of Ice causes frozen enemies to explode. This cannot freeze enemies directly, but it can shock them, allowing Herald of Thunder to cause new freezes on enemies, proliferating the explosions.
- Herald of Thunder can freeze enemies with enough Cold damage. This allows a proliferating chain of freezes and shocks, often blowing up the whole screen from a single strike.
- Cast on Critical is used to proc Eye of Winter to make enemies more likely to receive critical strikes. This also adds Sniper's Mark to enemies which makes them take more critical damage.
Use the <Prev and Next> arrows to navigate.
Skill Rotation
- Map clear is as simple as dashing to an enemy with Shattering Palm. If the strike does not kill the enemy, strike again. This chains explosions and then you can dash to the next pack.
- For single target, dash to the enemy with Shattering Palm to coat them with ice and proc your eye of winter. Sometimes this can take a few strikes. Then drop Frozen Locus and target it with the next Shattering Palm to destroy it. Continue to alternate Frozen Locus and Shattering Palm as needed.
- For particularly challenging enemies such as Pinnacle bosses, place Orb of Storms before the boss spawns. The orb is a stationary object, which can be supported by gems such as Font of Mana and Font of Rage to generate Rage for more attack damage. Be sure to stay inside the radius to continue to generate Rage, then fight the boss as noted in step 2.
- Frozen Locus can be a great way to get out of trouble when you are overrun, as enemies target it and you jump back while placing, and the enemy damage can cause the ice crystal to explode.
- Before you have Cast on Critical, cast Eye of Winter at the start of a boss fight to add critical weakness.
Passives
- Transition to Chaos Inoculation when you feel you have enough Energy Shield (recommended minimum 3-4k). You also want to make sure you are using Grim Feast, a good Evasion/Energy Shield Body Armour alongside Spectral Ward.
- In the early game, you should use First Approach to provide damage and Critical Hit Chance against full life enemies. The more Critical Hit Chance you have, the more you 1-shot enemies and therefore entire packs. Getting your critical strike chance to around 50% on Shattering Palm is the goal for mapping to feel smooth with Ambush, as this gets you to 100%.
- The mana cost nodes, Conservative Casting and Mental Toughness, are only necessary when your gem levels start to get well into the 30s. Allocate these as needed.
Click the arrows to open the full tree in a new tab.
Ascendancy
Learn how to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos to earn your first 2 Ascensions with our Ascension Guide!
- Lead me through Grace… causes you to gain Spirit per Energy Shield and Evasion on your Body Armour. This should be one of the first gear pieces you craft or purchase to reach enough Spirt to use all of your Passive Skills.
- Sunder my Enemies… is a huge Skill Point save once you have enough Critical Strike Chance, as it allows you to avoid needing any Cold Penetration nodes.
- I am the Thunder… adds Lightning damage to your skills, adding shocks and the ability to proliferate your heralds.
- Faith is a Choice allows you to meditate before battle, recharging your energy shield to double its maximum! This useful before boss fights or at the start of maps for more defences.
Gearing
Offensive Scaling
- Melee Skill Levels are the primary damage scaling in this build. This stat boosts both your Shattering Palm and Frozen Locus damage. Both of these skills scale insanely well with levels, making added damage less effective. Further, weapon damage does not work for either skill. You should prioritize gem levels over all other stats.
- Critical strikes are very important for scaling damage. This build gets access to 100% Critical Hit Chance against full health enemies once you have 50% crit chance and have Ambush slotted, so the Critical Damage Bonus stat is a very strong scaler. You should look for as much Critical Hit Chance and Critical Bonus as possible. It is important to remember that local critical mods on staves do *not* apply to your skills.
- This build does not need Penetration or Exposure due to Sunder my Enemies… ignoring Enemy Resistance for all Critical Hits. This is another reason why scaling Critical Hit Chance is so important.
Defensive Scaling
- Your suffix modifiers on your gear are very important as they have to fill a lot of mandatory rolls for the build to perform well.
- Cap your Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance.
- +# to Dex or Int to reach attribute requirements.
- Your Body Armour is important due to Lead me through Grace…. To reach the minimum Spirit requirements of 180 for this build you need a hybrid Evasion/Energy Shield Body Armour that gives at least 600 Evasion Rating and 240 Energy Shield. If you get a little extra, you can add Clarity for 10 Spirit.
- Evasion is the primary avoidance layer of the build, and scales a bit from the tree (such as Subterfuge Mask) and a strong Body Armour.
- Energy Shield is huge for mitigating damage from 1-shots. Evasion can only help you against Strikes and Projectiles, for everything else you're relying on your pool of Health and Energy Shield.
- Grim Feast allows you to overflow your Energy Shield in maps to up to 2x the value making you much more durable to ground effects and slams that are otherwise unable to be evaded.
- If you are still struggling check out our Survival Guide for additional useful information!
Here's how you should gear your Shattering Palm Invoker. Sorted in order of importance:
- The base is not a priority, but the best bases are Expert Barrier Quarterstaff and Expert Long Quarterstaff, as the implicits provide some Block Chance and increased range. The range makes it easier to strike moving targets with Shattering Palm.
- +# to Level of all Melee Skills (highest priority)
- +% Elemental Damage with Attacks (most important Prefix)
- +% Physical Damage
- Adds Physical Damage
- Adds Cold Damage
- Adds Lightning Damage
- +to Dexterity/Intelligence
- Gain # Mana per Enemy Killed
- 2x Soul Core of Citaqualotl
It is important to note that local damage on the weapon (added Cold/Lightning/Physical damage) does not help your unarmed attacks. However, it is still useful for your heralds' added damage, so you still want some Cold/Physical/Lightning damage (in that order). This should be your last priority on the weapon. Similarly, many other local modifiers do not help your unarmed attacks, such as life gain on hit, Critical Hit Chance and Critical Hit Bonus.
The Body Armour for this build is very important due to Lead me through Grace…. To reach the required Spirit cost for all Skill Gems, you need a body armour with at least 600 Evasion Rating and 240 Energy Shield. The best bases for the Body Armour slot are the Expert Scalper's Jacket and the Expert Waxed Jacket.
Blink is a very nice addition as you don't have the greatest movement speed. This requires an additional 60 Spirit, and should be added once you get enough Spirit from your Body Armour. Eventually, you add a Cast on Critical setup that requires 270 Spirit. This is only recommended when you have a very strong Body Armour. Before purchasing, be sure to do the math on Lead me through Grace… to see if it gets you enough Spirit.
Due to the fact that prefixes are so important on this item, prioritize the suffixes last. For suffixes, look for:
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
- +to Dexterity/Intelligence
Use a pure Energy Shield helmet to get the most value from Subterfuge Mask. Prioritize the Energy Shield first. Try to use the Expert Feathered Tiara base.
- 250+ Maximum Energy Shield
- % Critical Hit Chance
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
- Increased Rarity of Items Found
The Glove slot is a great place for more Melee Skill levels. You can get +2 as a Suffix and +1 as a corrupted enchantment. Your endgame gloves should have +3, but before the corruption you should look for an Energy Shield base (preferably Expert Intricate Gloves) with the following stats;
- +2 to Melee Skill Levels (highest priority)
- + to Energy Shield
- % increased Energy Shield
- + to Maximum Mana
- % increased Attack Speed
- % increased Critical Damage Bonus
- Increased Rarity of Items Found
For your Boots, prioritize Movement Speed, as there are very few sources of this in the game. Then you want a large amount of energy shield, preferably a Expert Feathered Sandals base.
- +% Movement Speed
- + to Maximum Energy Shield
- % increased Energy Shield
- + to Maximum Mana
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
Rings are an amazing slot in Path of Exile 2 due to Ingenuity and Breach Rings..
Your Rings can be any Base Type with a Breach Ring being the best to be used with Ingenuity in the future.
Before you can afford a Breach Ring, using Prismatic Ring bases are great for solving resistances. Breach Rings also benefit greatly from Catalysts as "to All Elemental Resistances" has a Fire, Cold and Lightning tag. Try to get All Elemental Resistance to go with increased Cold Damage to gain more from Catalysts. Be sure to fix resistances when swapping to Breach Rings. Lastly, Mana is very important here as we need a large pool for very high skill levels.
- + to Maximum Mana
- % Increased Cold Damage
- +% to All Elemental Resistances
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
- Increased Rarity of Items Found
- Adds Cold or Lightning Damage to Attacks (low priority, but is useful for herald damage)
The Amulet slot is another place to grab Melee Skill Levels. Similar to the gloves, your endgame Amulet features +3 Melee Skill Levels as a Suffix and has a +1 to All Skills corrupted enchantment. Prior to this massive damage upgrade, use a Rare Amulet (Lunar Amulet is best but the implicit is less important, just try to get a useful one) with the following modifiers;
- +3 to Melee Skill Levels
- + to Maximum Mana
- +% Maximum Energy Shield
- +% Evasion Rating
- Increased Rarity of Items Found
- All Attributes
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
- Critical Hit Chance
- Catalyse with 20x Carapace Catalyst or Neural Catalyst.
Getting a +1 to All Skills corruption makes it challenging to get the instilled notable you want, so taking any notable that is useful is your best bet. Before the corruption, the best 2 Passive Skill to instill are;
- Stormcharged for more damage.
- Doomsayer for larger Herald area of effect, improving your screen wide clear.
The best-in-slot belt for this build is Ingenuity, but it is very expensive. Rare belts are not great for this build, so even a 50% Ingenuity is a massive upgrade. The belt slot simply does not provide enough useful affixes, so upgrade this as soon as possible. Until then, use a Rare Belt (Linen Belt is best) with the following modifiers;
- + Charm Slots
- Thawing Charm
- Stone Charm
- Silver Charm
- + to Maximum Mana
- +#% to Fire, Cold, and Lightning Resistance
Jewels are very powerful in Path of Exile 2 early access. For this build there are 2 very good modifiers;
- Get 1 Ruby with "Rage gained on Melee Hit" and "Area of Effect" Once you get a Time-Lost with Rage Generation, this can be dropped for another Sapphire.
- Get 1 Sapphire with "% Mana gained on Kill", "Critical Hit Chance" and "Area of Effect". Until you have this, you can use the Siphon Passive Skill.
- Look for Sapphirewith the following mods in order of importance:
- % Mana gained on Kill
- % Increased Maximum Energy Shield
- % Increased Critical Hit Chance
- % Increased Area of Effect
- % Increased Critical Damage Bonus
- % Increased Cold Damage
- % Increased Elemental Damage
Any of these mods are also good on a Time-Lost Jewel and can be placed in the jewel slot next to Deep Trance. Make sure your jewel has:
- Notable Passive Skills in Radius Also Grant Gain 1 Rage on Melee Hit
- Notable Passive Skills in Radius also grant #% increased Area of Effect
In order to get another +1 level for your skills, grab a Diamond with Endless Blizzard and any other useful node. You can path to Endless Blizzard until you can find one.
A high priority upgrade is the Prism of Belief for Shattering Palm. This is a massive boost to your clear. It is not recommended to use the Prism jewel for Frozen Locus as it costs far too much mana for you to sustain, but can be an option early if it is cheap.
The Controlled Metamorphosis is a nice endgame upgrade, allowing you to reach out and grab a number of powerful nodes without pathing to them. This build has access to a lot of resistances and uses Chaos Inoculation, so the negative resistance downsides are not a big deal.
Atlas Passives
Click the arrows to open the full tree in a new tab.
- This build is great for both bossing and mapping, so it is up to you what content you want to take on!
- The more monsters there are, the better this build performs, so mechanics like Breach and Ritual are great.
- The build can do all map mods, but there are of course more dangerous ones like -#% To Maximum Elemental Resistances that you do at your own peril! Burning ground can also be very annoying. You can also avoid Monsters have #% increased Ailment Threshold because it causes your herald chains to fail to proliferate.
Learn about the endgame activities available to you in Path of Exile 2 with our guide!
FAQ
Melee Skill Levels are far and away the most important affixes for you in this build. Prioritize them everywhere you can, and you can feel your damage increase exponentially! If you feel like your map clearing is poor, focus on a +7 to Melee Skills staff with a decent bit of Cold/Lightning/Physical damage as prefixes.
Balancing Intelligence and Dexterity is the priority for this build, as both are quite important. Pick them both on your passive tree while traveling through the highway nodes, and move them around as needed. If you want to equip some equipment that requires small amounts of strength or dexterity respec some of the attribute points. Make sure to still keep enough to be able to use all of you abilities. Using items with very high strength is not recommended. Ingenuity provides 25 Intelligence and solves intelligence pressure on your build.
The keys to defence on this build are high evasion and a large Energy Shield pool. Use Meditate from Faith is a Choice at the start of maps for a boost to your Energy Shield. It is also important to note that because of the aggressive dashing nature of Shattering Palm, if you aren't freezing enemies and killing them when you dash in, you are at the center of a pack of enemies! Offense is truly the best defence in this build. Get more damage if you aren't killing white/blue mobs when dashing to them.
- Relic: 15% increased Mana Recovery from Flasks
- Venom Drought: 25% increased Mana Regeneration Rate
- Cruel Relic: 30% increased Charm Charges gained
- Cruel Venom Drought: 15% reduced Slowing Potency of Debuffs on you
NOTE: These bonuses are minor, if you picked something different for the Venom Draught, don't worry too much!
As much as possible! scaling Critical Hit Chance high makes your skills do massive damage. However, for Shattering Palm you want to reach 50% Critical Hit Chance so you can run Ambush, allowing you to reach 100% on full Life targets. Before reaching 50%, use First Approach to help you get there.
As you get to high levels of Shattering Palm and Frozen Locus, they will cost a large amount of mana. Luckily, you don't need to hit enemies many times. In boss fights, simply hit your mana flask every time it's available while you spam your skills. For mapping, less cost of skills combined with Inspiration on Shattering Palm lowers your cost. The cost is further lowered by Mental Toughness and Conservative Casting. For recovery while mapping, grab several rolls of either % Mana gained on Kill (Sapphires) and Gain # Mana per Enemy Killed (Gloves, Weapon, and Rings). Exactly how much you need depends on your gem levels, so adjust accordingly.
Video
Summary
- Shattering Palm is a skill that can cover massive distances and deal a devastating blow, starting an explosion chain that can clear the screen.
- Frozen Locus creates an ice crystal capable of 1-shotting most enemies and easily chunking down bosses.
- Screen-wide clear and freezing even the tankiest of bosses keeps you safe from enemy damage.
- Simple, 1-button gameplay is satisfying and easy!
- Evasion and Energy Shield allow you to utilize Grim Feast as well as granting you Spirit from your Body Armour to enable all of your Skills.
Credits
Written by: aer0
Content Reviewed by: Crouching Tuna
Language Reviewed by: Tenkiei