Falling Thunder Invoker Build Guide
The Falling Thunder Invoker Monk is all about generating tons of power charges to annihilate screens of enemies, with enough burst damage to one shot even the tankiest of rares, and sometimes bosses!
Generate Power Charges by combining Combat Frenzy with the Resonance Keystone in order to maintain your Charged Staff. Unleash Falling Thunders with excess Power Charges to either destroy rare monsters of large packs of enemies.
This is a hybrid life/energy shield build that can go into Chaos Inoculation at very high levels of gear. Ghost Dance does a a good job of replenishing Energy Shield but you can be susceptible to damage over time or frequent hits from enemies preventing your recharge. Large amounts of Evasion make you deceptively tanky, as long as you have your Dodge Roll ready for un-evadable hits!
This build uses one key Unique, Serpent's Egg. This doubles your charge generation and is when you'll start being able to throw out a lot more Falling Thunders. Until you Your Amulet doubles your charge generation, after you get this you can use Falling Thudner more consistently.
You do not need specific resistances on any item, just get the required total resistances amongst all gear combined. You need to cap your Resistances at 75% unless otherwise specified in the guide!
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Skills
- From Level 1 use Glacial Cascade supported by Martial Tempo and Concentrated Effect. This is your primary single target damage for early bosses, make sure to hit enemies with the tip of the skill for the extra damage.
- Frozen Locus is great for dealing with large packs of enemies as it deals area damage and freezes surrounding enemies.
- Tempest Bell adds a lot of damage but requires you to Quarterstaff Strike 4 times in order to place it.
- Check the skill rotations for your damage rotation at this stage.
- Place Frost Bomb to reduce enemy cold resistance and keep this up at all times against high health enemies.
- Grab Herald of Ice once you defeat the King in the Mist to begin shattering packs of enemies.
- Once you hit Level 14, drop Glacial Cascade and add in Ice Strike. This is going to be your bread and butter skill for the remainder of the game. It builds combo points, dashes you towards enemies and constantly freezes for added safety.
- A little into Act 2 you'll get your first Rank VII skill gem which should be used on Storm Wave. Use storm wave to deal with the more difficult zones in Act2&3 when it's tood angerous to go into melee range with Ice Strike.
- With your first Rank IX Skill Gem, engrave Charged Staff. This is a buff skill that consumes Power Charges to gain a decent lightning damage buff. It also adds a shockwave to your attack, dealing moderate lightning damage.
- You won't be able to use this skill until you collect your next 30 spirit in the Azak Bog. Once doing so, engrave Combat Frenzy and allocate the Resonance.
- Now, once every 5 seconds, when freezing an enemy you'll gain a Power Charge.
- You cannot use Falling Thunder consistantly until you are generating enough Power Charges. This is increased by;
- Higher levels of Combat Frenzy.
- Quality on your Combat Frenzy.
- Profusion support gem.
- Serpent's Egg doubles your charge generation, and results in 3 Power Charges per Combat Frenzy proc.
- With your last 40 spirit from the campaign, add in Wind Dancer for a boost to your Evasion Rating.
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Gem Engraving Priority
Skill Rotation
- Always try to go into boss fights with duration remaining on your Charged Staff or with power charges to activate the buff.
- Build combo points with Ice Strike and place Tempest Bell whenever available.
- Once the boss is frozen, unleash a Falling Thunder for large burst damage.
- The reason you wait until the boss is frozen is because of the Heavy Frost passive node. Ignore this once you have the Sunder my Enemies ascendancy node once reaching a high amount of Critical Hit Chance. At that point just Falling Thunder when you have 6 Power Charges.
- Generate and spend Power Charges to maintain your Charged Staff buff at all times.
- Spend 6 Power Charges on Falling Thunder whenever they are available. This is especially good for off screening or one shotting Rare enemies.
- Use Ice Strike whenever you need to generate Power Charges.
- Place a Frost Bomb underneath the target to reduce its cold resistance.
- Quarterstaff Strike the boss 4 times to build combo points.
- Place Tempest Bell underneath the boss.
- Frozen Locus to build distance from the target.
- Glacial Cascade so that the tip of the attack hits the boss for maximum damage.
Ascendancy
Learn how to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas and Trial of Chaos to earn your first 2 Ascensions with our Ascension Guide!
- I am the Thunder… grants extra damage as Lightning which further enables you to Shock enemies.
- …and I Shall Rage grants the Unbound Avatar skill. Make sure you have it available for bosses, but otherwise use it on cooldown.
- Lead me through Grace… disables spirit from gear. However, it grants you spirit bases on the Evasion Rating and Energy Shield of your Body Armour.
- The total amount of spirit required for this build is 165. To reach this value you need a hybrid body armour with at least 650 Evasion Rating and 260 Energy Shield.
- Sunder my Enemies… causes you to ignore enemy elemental resistances with critical hits. This is a massive damage boost, but shouldn't be used until you have a decent amount of Critical Hit Chance.
- Until reaching at least 50% critical hit chance, use I am the Blizzard….
Passives
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- The Levelling tree emphasizes damage to make the more difficult stages of the campaign easier. This results in a larger respec when switching to the Falling Thunder Mapping tree.
- For the attribute nodes take enough Intelligence, Strength and Dexterity to meet gear, skill gem and support gem requirements.
- You can use your Gold at the Hooded one or Doryani to respec and change your Attributes if a new skill or gear upgrade leaves you unable to use your skills/items.
- Campaign Tree - Early on, prioritize increased damage nodes such as Echoing Frost, Echoing Thunder and Killer Instinct. If you get a fire damage roll on your Gloves, Ring or Weapon make sure to pick up Echoing Flames. Grab nodes like Tenfold Attacks and Flow State to better deal with fast mobs stunning you out of your attacks.
- After entering Maps, your main priority is swapping to crit and grabbing as many power charges as you can to increase the bonuses they provide for Charged Staff and Falling Thunder.
Stat Priorities
Offensive Scaling
- Flat Damage
- Cold, Fire, Lightning, Physical
- Elemental Damage with Attacks.
- Melee Damage %
- Elemental Damage %
- Attack Damage %
- Attack Speed.
- Critical Hit Chance.
- Critical Hit Bonus Damage.
Defensive Scaling
- Sufficient +#% to Fire, Cold, Lightning and Chaos Resistance to cap your Resistances.
- Maximum Energy Shield.
- Evasion Rating.
- Physical Damage Leeched as Life and Mana.
If you're struggling to survive, or want to learn more about damage and defenses in Path of Exile 2 check out these additional resources:
Gearing
- During the campaign, your main focus is finding a powerful weapon. Always look to get the highest DPS Quarterstaff base with additional good modifiers.
- Attack Speed helps with hitting fast mobs early on.
- Check vendors for gear with any Dex or Dex/Int bases with Life or Resistances and use your crafting materials on them.
- Flat Damage on Rings and Gloves provide a lot of additional damage.
- Once you leave the campaign your main priority should be to cap your resistances and increases your Evasion/Energy Shield.
- A good Hybrid Body Armour is the best defensive purchase for a number of reasons;
- You need at least 850 Evasion and 300 Energy Shield to reach the Spirit requirements for this build.
- Beastial Skin doubles the evasion rating from your chest which is a huge boost to defence during early mapping.
- A large energy shield roll adds a good amount of recovery due to Ghost Dance.
- Cap your resistances without using glove suffixes if possible as Gloves have some great modifiers for damage in the suffixes.
- Serpent's Egg doubles your charge generation meaning you can spam your Falling Thunder much more frequently.
- For the weapon, a 100%+ roll of Elemental Damage with Attacks is massive for damage as you don't get a ton of increased damage on this build. After that focus on Critical Hit Chance, Attack Speed and High DPS (Phys>Elemental).
- In order to gain the maximum benefit from Ambrosia, make sure to grab an Ultimate Mana Flask with as close to 70% increased maximum charges as possible.
FAQ
This substantially increases the mana cost of skills to the point where they are unmanageable without heavy investment into mana sustain. Investing into this much sustain typically detracts from any benefit the additional levels would provide.
Yes! You would need to change the supports but Falling Thunder and Flicker Strike are interchangeable in this build. With an Unset Ring you can even use both!
Make sure you got the 100 spirit from quest rewards during the campaign. Outside of that you need another 85 from Lead me through Grace….
NOTE: These bonuses are minor, if you picked something different for the Venom Draught, don't worry too much!
This is an all purpose endgame Atlas Tree that scales the map modifiers and those granted by tablets. It can be used for any farming strategy that focuses on Breach, Expedition, Ritual or Delirium.
Video
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Summary
- Generate Power Charges by freezing enemies with your rapid hitting Ice Strike.
- Spend them to maintain the additional damage buff from Charged Staff.
- Spend excess power charges to unleash massive damage with Falling Thunder.
- Scale Evasion and Energy Shield to have great survivability and gain enough spirit from Lead me through Grace… to activate all your Aura Skills.
- Evasion allows you to utilize Ghost Dance to quickly regain Energy Shield in dangerous situations.
Credits
Written by: Milkybk_
Content Reviewed by: CptnGarbage
Language Reviewed by: Tenkiei