Overview
Recorded three days into the league, this is the first pass at the Hollow Form Whirling Assault Martial Artist — the build that later becomes the creator’s flagship. The pitch is simple: a monk that plays like a one-button character, which is unusual for a class designed around combo chains, while full-screen clearing maps and deleting bosses in seconds.
The trick is a charge loop. Hollow Form Technique sends out clones that perform whatever attack is socketed into it, and more power charges mean more clones. A pair of gloves rewritten by the Way of the Stone Fist ascendancy grants a chance to gain endurance, frenzy and power charges when allies in your presence hit — and the clones count as allies. So the clones generate the charges that spawn more clones. The creator is direct about the origin: they saw the concept from another streamer and built their own variation around it.
Because all three charge types are always up, Charge Regulation becomes a permanent triple buff — critical chance from power charges, defences from endurance charges, skill speed from frenzy charges.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Near one-button gameplay with full-screen clear, rare for a melee class
- Charge generation is self-sustaining, so the engine never needs manual setup
- Cheap to start: the enabling helmet was around 30 exalted and is optional anyway
- Freeze and stun lockdown makes mapping forgiving despite thin defences early
Cons
- Hard-gated on the Way of the Stone Fist and Hollow Form Technique ascendancies
- Mana-hungry; needs conservative casting, mana regen and a good flask before it feels smooth
- Resistances are the weak point of the early gear set and the creator says so openly
- This was recorded on day three and is not min-maxed — the follow-up video supersedes several choices
Key Skills
- Hollow Form Technique + Whirling Assault — the damage core, supported with Heft and Heavy Swing for physical, Blindside for crit against blinded enemies, and Magnified Area for screen-wide clear
- Charge Regulation — converts every charge type into crit, defences and skill speed
- Pounce + Predator’s Mark — single-target setup; Mark for Death breaks armour equal to half the physical damage dealt
- Herald of Ice — freeze propagation, fed by the physical-to-freeze helmet
- Wind Dancer — retaliatory physical damage on being hit, given Heft, Maim and an area support
Gear & Anointments
The gloves are the only true requirement — without them there is no charge loop and therefore no build. The helmet that converts physical damage into chill magnitude and freeze buildup is the big optional upgrade; it also blinds enemies in your presence, which turns the Distracted Target passive and the Blindside support into real multipliers.
The quarterstaff wants increased physical damage and flat physical above everything else. An essence for added attack skill levels is worthwhile; lightning rolls are fine because shocked enemies take 20% more damage, and cold pairs with the freeze theme. The rest of the gear is hybrid evasion/energy shield with resistances — which the creator admits is the current bottleneck.
The amulet is anointed with Well of Power, recovering 5% of maximum mana on power charge consumption. Since power charges are consumed constantly, this is the main mana sustain alongside a clarity support and a mana flask.
The passive tree is crit-first: skill speed into the crit clusters, attack damage nodes early, then evasion and energy shield for mapping. Conservative Casting matters early for mana cost and regen. The monk section also picks up daze chance and increased damage and crit against dazed enemies, plus the node making quarterstaff power charge consumption count double.
Endgame Notes
At recording the character could do everything in the game including tier 15 maps, with Atlas progression still incomplete. Treat this as the entry version of the build; the creator’s later video adds a Blasphemy curse layer and a Chaos Inoculation conversion.
Credits & Source
Build credited to Ghosded. See the source video for the full build’s gameplay footage + voice commentary: 1 BUTTON MARTIAL ARTIST MONK IS GOD TIER.