According to the official confirmed timeline, Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.0 will be released in about two weeks. While this update doesn't bring a new class, Monk introduces a very cool ascendancy called Martial Artist. To help you have a smoother experience during your progression, let's explore Martial Artist's skills and mechanics together!

Martial Artist is Monk's third ascendancy. Players had long speculated that it would be some kind of hand-to-hand combat style, but the official announcement reveals that it's not purely hand-to-hand combat, but more like the attack-building, charging, and detonation combat loop style from Diablo 2.

Core Ascendancy Skills

Hollow Focus Technique

This skill periodically summons a ghostly bell near you. Your attacks instantly shatter the bell, releasing a shockwave that damages nearby enemies and powerfully stuns enemies already in a stun preparation state.

The bell itself remains in a stun preparation state and can be executed. This is essentially a significant upgrade to Monk's original bell skill, making it automatically triggered and requiring no manual placement.

Hollow Form Technique

After channeling Hollow Form, illusions will be summoned near your target location. These illusions will disappear after using one of the melee attack skills in your inventory once.

This means that skills with smaller ranges can now be used efficiently to clear mobs, especially when combined with the ghostly bell attack generated by Hollow Focus Technique for maximum map clearing efficiency.

Hollow Resonance Technique

A spectral bell is attached to the bell. When your other skills crit, the spectral bell emits a resonant wave that damages nearby enemies.

This is a huge boost to the critical strike Monk build, as the previous weakness of Monks was generating energy orbs; now, critical strikes can trigger resonance. Sustain and burst damage are significantly improved in boss fights.

Runic Meridians

By engraving runes on your body, you gain 5 additional rune sockets, distributed across your helmet (1), body armor (2), gloves (1), and boots (1).

Each piece of equipment can gain additional sockets through corruption. Martial Artist further pushes the limits, giving players more freedom in rune configuration to compensate for weaknesses.

Way of the Mountain

Gain Mountain's Teachings stacks when immobilizing enemies. Each stack increases attack damage and stun threshold.

Additionally, minor damage from enemy attacks (damage not exceeding 30% of your maximum health after armor and resistance reduction) is reduced by 70%. Stacks disappear after 8 seconds without gaining new stacks, and are also consumed when hit or used.

Way of the Stonefist

Way of the Stonefist is the most crucial and anticipated skill in the entire advanced skill tree, though many players may find it absurd.

It transforms your equipped gloves into a new base called Fists of Stone, and the original affixes are converted into more powerful related affixes.

Fists of Stone is a glove base that cannot be obtained through normal means; it can only be created by using Martial Artist's Way of the Stonefist skill. Unequipping the gloves will restore them to their original base.

Fists of Stone provides a base stat of +3 evasion rating per level and +1 maximum energy shield per level.

But what's even more astonishing is the affix conversion mechanism of this skill.

A pair of ordinary gloves that originally only provided physical damage, cold damage, lightning damage, and various resistances, transforms into an extremely powerful piece of gear after being converted into Fists of Stone, providing additional physical damage, additional cold damage, additional lightning damage, percentage-based maximum resistances, and a massive bonus to damage dealt.

This is by no means the expected unchanged state; this skill may be significantly nerfed before Patch 0.5.0 is officially released.

Skill Synergy

Martial Artist has great potential for synergy with Nightfall, a new item dropped in Patch 0.5.0. Nightfall is a Unique Fortress Tower Shield, dropped by Breach pinnacle boss in Patch 0.5.0, and its essence lies in granting players the active skill Soaring Midnight.

Throw your shield as a projectile, and it will return after its flight. During the shield's flight, this skill will be replaced by Embrace the Fall. You can teleport to the shield's location and unleash a powerful downward slam.

This skill has a 4-second cooldown, but the cooldown can be skipped in the following two situations: first, successfully catching the shield upon its return; second, destroying Ice Crystals on the field during Embrace the Fall impact.

While Martial Artist's damage potential with this shield is impressive, from a pure efficiency standpoint, Titan, with its AoE nodes, might be a better fit for this skill.

However, Martial Artist's almost unbalanced Way of Stonefist glove amplification makes it difficult for players to be unwilling to sacrifice some area-of-effect damage for maximum damage.

Leveling Strategy

Nightfall drops from Breach pinnacle boss, a high-difficulty endgame item, making it extremely difficult to obtain.

We can use other strong leveling classes to complete early leveling and map clearing, farm Nightfall while also accumulating PoE2 currency, and then level a new Monk character to build the final build.

Monk ascendancy class Martial Artist in Patch 0.5.0 possesses almost monstrous damage potential. However, the official release is still about two weeks away, and Nightfall isn't easily obtained, so the final playability will depend on the official values ​​released when the new patch goes live on May 29th.

Remember the rumors circulating widely within the community a few days ago that Frozen Trail would be the next update for ARC Raiders? Regardless of how that information was leaked, it turns out that some of those details were indeed accurate!

Just yesterday, ARC Raiders development team finally released a new announcement revealing their update plans for the second half of 2026. This announcement officially confirmed Frozen Trail as the next major update, alongside a host of other significant changes.

If you plan to continue playing ARC Raiders over the coming months, we highly recommend taking a close look at our breakdown and analysis of the new roadmap to help you prepare for the changes and challenges that lie ahead.

Changes to update frequency

Since its launch last October, ARC Raiders has consistently released a new update almost every month. While the scope of each individual update has varied, the release frequency itself has remained remarkably steady.

However, this pattern is set to conclude with Riven Tides update. Moving forward, ARC Raiders will adopt a new strategy: releasing two major updates per year.

One reason for this shift is that the pace of monthly updates placed significant pressure on the development team, making it difficult to consistently guarantee high-quality content.

Furthermore, smaller-scale updates were insufficient to support the kind of deep, comprehensive exploration and expansion the game requires to evolve as a whole.

Of course, to ensure you don't get bored during the intervals between major releases, the team will continue to release patches, new store items, and special events at their current, steady pace.

More importantly, the two major updates released each year going forward will offer significantly greater depth and richness of content. Perhaps in time, you may even have the opportunity to uncover the truth behind ARC invasion of Earth.

Frozen Trail will arrive in October

Due to the shift in update frequency, the next confirmed update, Frozen Trail, will not launch until this coming October, marking a six-month interval since the current Riven Tides update. Subsequent updates are expected to arrive next year.

Interestingly, the title Frozen Trail matches the name found in the previously leaked documents; this suggests that the other information contained within those documents may also be highly credible.

The newly released roadmap indicates that Frozen Trail will introduce a new map, new ARC enemy types, new ways to upgrade your Raiders, various new item categories, and a complete reset of the skill tree.

More specifically, the new map promises to be unprecedented in scale, offering a unique environmental landscape, one unlike anything currently found in any of the game's other maps.

According to leaked information, the new map features a snowy, frozen setting and contains multiple POIs with highly intricate interior layouts, offering significant value for looting.

As for the new ARC content, it involves more than just an update to enemy types; more importantly, these new adversaries will appear with visual designs and behavioral patterns entirely distinct from existing enemies, forcing you to devise brand-new strategies to survive your raids.

Combining these two elements, it is expected that Frozen Trail update will offer you the opportunity to explore the mystery behind the origins of the ARC enemies, knowledge that may prove invaluable in your quest to help all of humanity return to the surface!

Tackling new enemies and exploring a new map will inevitably require new gear; consequently, the introduction of these new items signifies an expansion of the existing blueprint system.

Upon the update's release, you will be able to utilize new character progression methods to more efficiently scavenge for additional ARC Raiders blueprints within the new map, thereby allowing you to craft the new gear needed to counter the new enemies.

Introduction of a new trader

Unlike Frozen Trail, the new trader is scheduled to arrive as early as next week. Although their name has not yet been revealed, it is confirmed that they will become accessible once you reach Level 25.

The vendors currently available in the game offer only relatively standard trading options; however, this new Trader will not only sell more unique gear and cosmetic items but will also offer a weekly rotation of special rewards.

While acquiring these rewards may require you to consume more coins or rare materials, this very requirement serves to provide you with greater motivation to explore the endgame content, rather than simply engaging in the tedious grind of repetitive, low-difficulty combat.

Furthermore, this new trader offers access to two new perks: additional storage space and Expedition Vault feature.

The former is self-explanatory; the latter, however, serves a specific function: it allows you to carry up to five items with you into an expedition, designating them as your starting reserve supplies for the run, meaning you no longer have to start completely from scratch, as was previously the case.

As one of the core mechanics of ARC Raiders, Expedition has historically suffered from lower player engagement, largely because, for casual players, the prospect of having all their hard-earned loot wiped clean in an instant felt like a frustratingly steep penalty.

However, with the introduction of Expedition Vault, you can now preserve high-tier weapons or blueprints acquired during a previous run, thereby enabling you to get off to a much faster start in your next session.

It remains to be seen whether this feature will fundamentally alter the original design philosophy behind Expedition system; nevertheless, implementing changes of this nature was undoubtedly a necessary step.

Further macro-level changes

Overall, ARC Raiders has implemented the aforementioned plans to free up more time in the future to address overarching issues, such as simultaneously deepening existing features and ensuring that both combat and narrative elements are effectively advanced.

Furthermore, the development team will now have the bandwidth to focus on and finally resolve the long-standing and heavily criticized issues regarding frequent bugs and cheating, thereby ensuring a fairer and more stable gaming environment for you in the future.

How do players feel about these changes?

While the new changes and content are certainly exciting, some players feel that the update frequency, limited to just two major releases, is a bit too low. After all, ARC Raiders is a live-service game; surely there is no need to bundle all new content into a single massive update.

However, to be honest, if they were to release the content piecemeal, wouldn't that essentially amount to no change compared to the current status quo?

Therefore, you should place your trust in ARC Raiders, or, at the very least, wait until Frozen Trail is released before passing judgment.

That wraps up everything we have to share with you this time around. If you are interested in Frozen Trail, be sure to check out our previous coverage regarding the leaked content! We wish you the very best in Speranza!