Path of Exile 2: Invoker Monk Ascendancy Explained

This guide focuses on the Invoker Ascendancy for the Monk, covering their Unique Skills and Skill Interactions.

Invoker Overview

The Invoker specializes in dealing Elemental Damage and inflicting and inflicting Elemental Ailments.

Invokers can become an Unbound Avatar by frequently inflicting Ailments, enhancing their Elemental Damage, and their ability to apply Elemental Ailment. This temporary state can give them a huge window to deal heavy damage.

Invokers have options that allow them to make excellent use of Meta Gems (Also called Buff or Trigger Gems) by applying Elemental Ailments like Shock. This gives them multiple great options for Meta Gems to make use of.

Lead me through Grace…

Lead me through Grace grants 1 Spirit for every 8 Energy Shield or every 20 Evasion Rating on our Body Armor.

This isn’t particularly powerful in the early game unless one of our Meta Gems are short by a small amount to be able to use a Support. That’s easier to get a meaningful amount from gear, with Body Armor being able to get flat Spirit rolls that allow for multiple Spirit Gems to be used.

In the late game, however, with Body Armor built around this effect, there’s a high potential to get more Spirit than what is offered by a single affix. Outside of Sceptres and those Affixes, we’re capped at 180 Spirit otherwise.

The extra Spirit also has synergy with the Invoker being able to make great use of Meta Gems. Compared to other classes that don’t use Sceptres, this High Spirit allows them to setup some crazy combinations.

…and Protect me from Harm

Protect me from Harm allows Evasion Rating to also grant Physical Damage Reduction, similar to Armour. This comes with a penalty of 35% less Evasion Rating.

Protect me from Harm is a strong passive, working similarly to Iron Reflexes, without purely converting Evasion to Armor. This allows an Invoker to become deceptively durable, and reduces their need to pick up a ton of Armor, instead favoring stacking Evasion.

Despite the downside of also removing a portion of our Evasion, this also pairs incredibly well with Spectral Ward and Subterfuge Mask. With this, Invokers can build Energy Shield, Evasion and still get plenty of Physical Reduction all by stacking purely Evasion.

Faith is a Choice

Faith is a Choice grants the Meditate Skill, allowing Invoker to channel for a short duration and overcap their Energy Shield to 150% of its value.

This can work incredibly well paired with the combination of Protect me from Harm and Spectral Ward. Stacking Evasion Rating and still ending up with a good amount of Energy Shield on top of it is worth the effort to grab the required nodes.

The downside to this skill, however, is that we’re left immobile during the channel. This also leaves the skill more or less unusable in combat, as any damage will end the channel early. It’s great for prepping our Energy Shield before a Boss still, but that’s about its only use.

It’s also very worth considering when using Chaos Innoculation, where we’d be entirely reliant on Energy Shield. The higher the Energy Shield we end up with, the more effective this becomes.

I am the Blizzard…

I am the Blizzard grants additional damage as Cold Damage, allowing for all skills to build up the Chill and Freeze Ailments. Additionally, Freezing enemies will create Chilled Ground, slowing enemies that walk over it.

This is great for helping to kite out enemies, as well as pairing a Damage over Time (DoT) with Drain Ailments. Combined with the additional Cold Damage, there’s a higher chance that every cast of the DoT skill will gain the bonus of Drain Ailment and boost its damage.

Freezing Enemies also opens them up to being Shattered, making them take additional damage from the skill that shatters. Certain skills, like Glacial Cascade, can also consume the Freeze to deal significantly increased damage.

I am the Thunder…

I am the Thunder grants additional damage as Lightning Damage, allowing all skills to build up Shock. Additionally, Shocking enemies create Shocked Ground.

Shock by itself is a powerful ailment for boosting damage, as it increases all the damage an enemy takes while afflicted with it. Shocked Ground will constantly apply this Shock to enemies that stand on it.

Much like Freeze, various Skill and Support Gems utilize Shock for different benefits. One of the more notable Gems for this is Siphoning Strike, turning consistent Shocks into Power Charges by consuming the Shock.

…and I Shall Rage

I Shall Rage enables the use of the Unbound Avatar skill, which grants a huge bonus to Elemental Damage, Elemental Ailment Chance, and Elemental Ailment Buildup. This requires Elemental Ailments to be applied to build up Unbound Fury. Unbound Avatar has a cooldown of 12 seconds.

Unbound Avatar is by far one of the strongest buffs available for Elemental Damage, and really allows Invoker to push their damage potential. The Ailment bonus also makes it even easier to Shock, Electrocute, Freeze, and Ignite Bosses as well.

This passive is effectively mandatory for taking on Pinnacle Bosses. It’s not as mandatory if those bosses aren’t our priority, but it can still be useful for even map bosses on particularly difficult maps.

The Soul Springs Eternal

The Soul Springs Eternal allows Meta Gems to build up energy faster, allowing them to trigger more frequently. Additionally, Meta Skill Gems have 50% increased Reservation Efficiency.

With how well Invokers can use Meta Gems, this is exceptionally powerful. Using well-tuned Meta Gem Links can provide a variety of beneficial effects. Everything from providing Life or Mana Sustain, generating Charges, or potentially creating chains of Meta Gems to fill the screen with skills.

Update 0.4 added Reservation Efficiency to this passive as well, making it even stronger. This makes the high Spirit cost of some Meta Skills far more reasonable. With most Meta Skills reserving 100 or 60 Spirit, they will now instead reserve 67 and 40, respectively. This reduces the need for getting an insane amount of Spirit.

Sunder my Enemies…

Sunder my Enemies will make all Critical Hits ignore non-negative Elemental Resistance.

For those Familiar with POE1, this is very similar to the Inquisitor’s Inevitable Judgement Passive. The biggest difference is that Negative Resistance is not ignored, making it much stronger. This however, comes with the trade-off of losing the Elemental Penetration on Non-critical bonus.

With a Critical Strike build focused on an Elemental Skill this is incredibly powerful. It effectively allows us to ignore Elemental Penetration on our Gear and Passive Tree, so long as we Critically Strike often enough.

By not ignoring Negative Resistances, this opens up potential synergy for items like Doryani’s Prototype or similar Uniques that can modify enemy Resistances.

Late game, this effect can be replaced by the Rakiata’s Flow Lineage Support Gem. This is an even stronger option, since it Inverts resistances, so 75% resistance because -75% resistance, as if they had their resistance lowered by 150%.

…and Scatter Them to the Winds

Scatter them to the Winds triggers an additional Elemental Hit when Critically Striking. Our Attributes modify how often this will trigger; with Strength increasing the chance for a Fire Explosion, Dexterity increasing the chance for a Lightning Bolt, and Intelligence for a Cold Wave.

This is yet another Skill we can modify, this one is particularly good for helping to trigger Meta Gems like Elemental Invocation. While it deals fairly low damage by default, it can trigger often which can contributes to building up Ailments.

While most times we’ll only ever be able to realistically use the Cold or Lightning variations consistently, there may be cases where a Strength-based Invoker could get more Fire out of this.

As of Update 0.3.0, this was buffed to deal increased damage. It’s not great damage overall still, but it can be a viable way to apply Ailments by boosting the AoE of the skill.