Overview
Bellshatter pairs the Martial Artist ascendancy’s Hollow Focus Technique bells with a mace Bone Shatter setup. The plan starts from level one with a mace on Monk, leveraging the patch’s Brink-as-level-one support and the faster Rolling Slam base attack time to get into Bone Shatter rotations quickly. Once the first ascension lands and bells start spawning, the build comes online: every Bone Shatter on a bell produces three simultaneous shock waves — Bone Shatter’s heavy-stun wave, the bell’s own destruction shock wave from Hollow Focus, and a third shock wave from Hollow Resonance.
The central trick is that hits against Hollow Focus bells are guaranteed critical hits. Because a shock wave that originates from a critical hit propagates the crit to everything in its area, every bell-strike effectively crits the surrounding pack. That makes mace-on-Monk worth playing despite mace’s traditionally low base crit, and unlocks normally awkward nodes like Throat Seeker (60% increased crit damage bonus, 20% reduced crit chance) as free scaling.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Three overlapping shock waves per bell hit — exceptional clear and boss damage from one input
- Guaranteed crits on bells extend to AoE-hit enemies — turns crit-damage nodes into pure value
- Hollow Resonance bell builds heavy stun on bosses, enabling Bone Shatter’s unique-enemy bonus
- League-start friendly: a single mace from act one carries through to the first ascension
- Way of the Stonefist gloves unlock either huge defensive value or strong unique interactions
Cons
- Bell spawn radius (3 m baseline) can be unreliable on moving bosses without quality scaling
- Mountain’s Teachings stack generation can be slow because Bone Shatter kills before Hollow Resonance lands
- Runic Meridians vs Way of the Mountain is an open question depending on rune availability
- Mace levelling on Monk is unconventional and demands strength splash on the early tree
Key Skills
- Bone Shatter — primary damage skill, finishes heavy-stunned targets and bells
- Hollow Focus Technique — ascendancy bell spawn, the build’s central interaction
- Hollow Resonance — second ascendancy node, third shock wave on critical hits
- Rolling Slam — campaign opener, builds stun for Bone Shatter
- Brink (support) — increased stun buildup, now level-one accessible
Gear & Anointments
Mace from act one is the only required weapon for the campaign portion. Way of the Stonefist gloves in the third ascendancy slot upgrade gloves into a body-armor-tier defensive piece, with rare modifiers like 10% power charge on crit and 10% quality on all skills. The Hollow Focus quality stat is highlighted as exceptionally valuable because it tightens bell spawn radius around the player — combined with AoE scaling, it makes bells reliably overlap with the boss. Specific uniques to be confirmed against the source video.
Endgame Notes
The fourth ascendancy choice leans toward Runic Meridians for the extra rune sockets and the gear flexibility they grant in a patch full of new runes. Way of the Mountain remains a viable hybrid damage/defense pick but is held back by Bone Shatter and Hollow Focus both being unable to build stun — only Hollow Resonance can, which makes Mountain’s Teachings stack generation inconsistent. The build expects to nearly one-shot campaign bosses whenever a bell spawns adjacent to them.
Credits & Source
Build credited to Dreamcore. See the source video for the full ascendancy walkthrough and in-game shock-wave-crit demonstration: BELLSHATTER Martial Artist - My League Starter for 0.5.