Early game monk feedback

Monk feedback after playing it in 0.1.0 and 0.2.0
Couple changes that would be lovely for early game!

Could you add level 1 support gem that allows Killing Palm to have small radius around it?
Sometimes you mouseover an enemy, but if there is lets say 10 enemies grouped up together, and you see the blue glow on one of them, the odds of you landing Killing Palm on that one specific target are not the greatest. Your monk will end up warping from target to target and you just cannot land the ability and generate the much needed power charge.

Monk is forced to play with Glacial Cascade for quite a long time, because you cannot generate power charges in single target fights (most bosses) before you unlock Siphoning Strike.
If you could move Siphoning Strike to be level 5 or level 1, you would have access to charge generation early on, and you could use Falling Thunder on bosses.
There are couple bosses where there will be weaker enemies that allow you to generate charges with Killing Palm, but not every boss has them.

Generating power charges with Killing Palm, sometimes you deal a bit too much damage with your primary ability, be it Tempest Flurry or what ever else you might be using, and the target never actually starts glowing for the culling strike to be possible, so you end up spamming Killing Palm only to avoid killing the enemy too soon.
There are many ways to solve this, maybe support gem that generates a power charge if the ability that you are using kills the target (has to have cooldown, like cannot occur more than once every x seconds be it 6 or 10 or what ever).

Overall the early levelling experience is not the greatest if you want to use quarterstaff, but this is mostly due to skills unlocking later on.

In act "6" (second time you get to act 3), you feel like a god because you finally have a working set of abilities and support gems to go with them!
You are in any kind of corridor, you just open up with Gathering Storm and clap the enemies, you generate power charges when you freeze/electrocute with Resonance & Combat Frenzy, you consume shock with Siphoning Strike and you Killing Palm if you want to feel fancy.

It is completely different world, you have over abundance of power charges in bossing situations and when fighting against weaker enemies!

I would just love to see some help when starting the journey :)

Trying to generate charges at low levels is a bait.. just ignore it. It's just like GGG giving warriors a shield at level 1 when they shold have a two hander, and trying to get huntress to parry.... its nonsense. Any half decent build kills things too fast for any of that to be worth the time.

Even if you have perfect targetting, trying to "mostly kill" something but not totally kill it, so you can farm the charge, is a huge waste of time.

I have leveled 5 monks since POE2 dropped, and I use Frost-Bomb, auto-attack, bell, staggering-palm (for earlieir stagger), and glacial cascade when I have to.... At level 16 I get Ice Strike for Geonor, and work my way into herald of ice. It's very easy.

wow monk enjoyer lol..

did 0.2 screw u?

I rerolled another Monk in 0.2 just to see how it feels... Seems about the same until Act 3 when I stopped... Freeze and Herald of Ice are a little weaker. but it didn't really affect anything.

ENDGAME, however, is another matter. My 88 Monk dropped down a few map tiers, and even having gear above the content I'm doing, it's still challenging... so I don't think my build would be viable to get to T10 anymore...

However, I'm playing huntress now, and it's crusing through T5 using lightning spear after finishing the campaign with twister, so it doesn't seem overly dificult... I think the viable builds just shifted alot.

Saw some posts here about their monk Dead in 0.2, ~100K DPS gone lol >.<

Yup, heard Spear LS is dominating the leaderboard stats

Monks not dead, just not in a good place right now - got even buffed again. Same as the huntress he is kinda charge/crit heavy. Early game charges is very clunky and frustrating to play.
It needs a lot of work to feel good down the line.

LS Spear amazon as people say, play it, but dont get in love with it. It WILL get nerfed not to kill the screen in one go like the monk did.
Its already confirmed by GGG in an interview. They would like to balance that right away, but that obviously a bad idea killing people character build.

Melee as a whole is in a awkward place atm. Youre defences arent reliable enough to really engange in close quarters all that much, depending on the monster/boss.

Did you miss all those Melee (Warrior) Threads here lol..?

Invoker Monks were gutted, deservingly TBH. Acolytes of Chayula were given ManaLeech/Darkness buffs + a new way to kill themselves with 'Volatility'. It's a step in the right direction but still needs more tuning.

I agree with OP in that Unarmed Strikes, in general, need a better AoE hitbox if they are going to keep that "AoE" tag.