IiPunch - Monk Guide

Yup, I totally love that kind of idea. And frankly, it's a lot more INTERESTING than just "eh, we'll over-buff a WS" and repeat the Rudra/CdC bandwagons.

It's a concept known as perfect imbalance. Perfect balance would be extremely boring for us as there would be no room for us to explore and discover new tactics and evolve our play style.

Extra Credits explains it the best

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w

I say that every stream.

I wish we lived in a more melee monk DPS game. The AF+3 feet are sexy. It too bad herc get triple attack+6%. Kick Attack+120, Kick Attacks+10% and 46Acc. You can not tell me that isn't sexy.

I remember back in IG days. My DPS/WSD was 50/50 with 99 vere. I miss that.

I think tying the bonus to boost would be a step back playstyle-wise. You would be boosting ~every WS, which would just be more annoying than a hypothetical job trait with the same effect.

Kick attacks could be a viable path forwards. I think it is currently possible to get a 69% rate (10% back, 10% feet, 20% legs, 14% base, 5% merits, 10% Gifts) without major sacrifices. Footwork bumps the attack up (and can be enhanced) and gives another 20% proc rate. If they could proc twice per round and they had higher base damage (talking like D200 higher, it is dumb that you punch harder than you kick), this could substantially improve Monk's TP gain and DPS.

A 15~30s timer on the JA would ensure it's not every WS, unless for some reason the MNK was getting TP at an abysmal rate. This is similar to THF's Sneak Attack / Track Attack functions but on a smaller scale. It offers a nominal increase (1/3 ~ 1/4 of your WS's) to WS damage but also offers a method to strategically play by boosting ahead of time and using it to close a SC. And yeah I agree that KA needs fixed, it should proc on both hands and be treated like a MNK form of DA with the base damage being the same as your weapon + KA gear. Hell I'd just let MNK equip grips already and call it a done deal.

Boost's recast is 15 seconds. If their TP time with a JA and WS each cycle is 13 seconds (~4 seconds of forced delay plus 9 seconds of TPing) and Boost's bonus is significant, it would probably be worth waiting even if they were using a WS with a shitty TP mod.

I am just not sure it would make Monk more fun to play.

Boost+WS is still a thing in my brain from those exp days of 2005, can't say I'd mind it. It's not like there's a whole lot to do on the job other than admire your punch punch kick animations.

I figured you would just use it when it's up because TP time should be in the 5~7s range. My gimpy half JP'd MNK with cobbled together gear can get TP fast enough to self SC with appropriate buffs, so HQ pimped MNK's should be doing even better. Melee wise MNK is fantastic, it hits fast and hard, it's just the WS's leave a huge gaping hole in the damage department because SE didn't update them to be in line with the rest of the DPS jobs. Hell even NIN has a few different options for exploiting a WS.

Wait, what? No they're not!
The fact they're the least worst options doesn't make them good option!

Footwork is okaysh, it's a straight, moderate boost to a moderately DD JA that you can use for 1 minute every 5 minutes.
So yeah, very marginal boost. If this is one of the best, we clearly get an idea of HOW BAD the rest are.

KA is also one of the best but in itself it sucks. It gives more attack and more accuracy to Kick attacks.
Okay... how useful is more attack gonna be when you're attack capped? And just how bloody useful is to have more accuracy in your KA procs when you're supposed to be acc capped on the current target (if you're not something is really wrong!) anyway?

It's a really poor idea, it barely affects MNK DPS output.



MNK white damage is not THAT bad, the problem is that in the current metagame white damage hardly matters, or not as much as it did during the 75 era. Damage these days mostly comes from WS damage or SC damage, period.
MNK has okayish whitedamage we said, but that's hardly relevant.
It has weak SC options (that are not light) and its WS frankly are quite awful compared to other jobs.

Boosting WS somehow (higher FTP, higher anchor points bonuses, replicating FTP, whatever) would be a solution. If they're scared of boosting PUP too much then I dunno, they could make a new specific job trait for MNK that boosts WS damage by a certain % and is applied to all hits?
Something like that would be MNK specific and solve the issue.


Another thing that bothers me is the position of Kick attacks in nowaday's MNK balance.
Kick Attacks used to be that rare proc once per attack turn that did a lot of damage. Man the numbers you'd see when you would crit on KA!
Now KAs do less damage than your fists, in some situations KAs might actually negatively affecting your damage (in the rare situation where they "steal" one of the 8 attack spots per turn from a double QA proc, for instance).
They should boost KA base damage so it's higher than it currently is. That way they would be boosting KA traits, KA gifts and also Footwork and it would also be an original and job specific way to boost MNK.
(in addition to boosting WS somehow, of course)

Despite the WS adjustments post saying STR/DEX in both languages, JP Wiki says Howling Fist is STR20% / VIT50% and I suspect they're not wrong.
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/42588-dev1216-Weapon-Skill-Adjustments
http://wiki.ffo.jp/html/2422.html

I went through the spreadsheet/adjusted things and sent it to Capuchin for the seal of approval. A few observations:
1) Bhikku legs +1 and Anchorite Feet +1 are a solid TP combo with or without Footwork.
2) In absolute max-buff situations, I still get Victory Smite with Vereth being the highest DD combination available.
3) Godhands is pretty close, though, and Tornado Kick's 50% Attack boost and fTP scaling closes the gap if you're not at the attack cap.
4) If Footwork is up, Anchorite Gaiters +3 are easily the best Tornado Kick shoes.
5) I can nurse Monk up to nearly 4k DPS. My Dancer can hit almost 7. I stand by my lack of faith in MNK, but it might have a place in low buff situations.

1) How comparable to Samnuha/Herc?
2) I remember observing the same, with Godhands being slightly behind
3) Interesting, I never considered it cause of Howling Fists

1) Better than them
3) Tornado Kick looks better to me even if Howling Fist is actually STR/DEX.

Here is the sheet just for funsies:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fysy8axdyj5nxow/DPS%20Calculator%20-%20Mnk%20Jan2017v2.xlsx?dl=0

guhhhhhhhhhhhh now I have to redo all the sets

byrth why couldn't you just withhold this information Q_Q

on a more serious note, I can probably just use the exact same sets for Tornado/Howling with the exception of Feet, correct?

Yeah I'm pushing and tweaking but the lackluster WS's just hold it back compared to the better options other jobs get.


TK would be pretty good if it had higher fTP at 1000 and 60/60 WS mods. It only gets really nice past 2K TP and by then you could of done two VS's. HF is only good in situations where your Acc (and therefor probably Atk) isn't capped and your wanting to maximize that damage from the first Hit.

I just played around with the spreadsheet, capped conditions I had

(Godhands)
Samnuha Cap/Anchorite +3>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +3 (4109)>Samnuha Cap/Herc TA+4 (4087)>Samnuha Cap/Herc TA +2 (4050)>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +1 (4023)

(Verethragna)
Bhikku +1/Anchorite +3 (4295)>Samnuha Cap/Anchorite +3 (4281)>Samnuha Cap/Herc TA+4 (4219)>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +1 (4186)>Samnuha Cap/Herc TA +2 (4183)

so actually it might be best to go with Samnuha/Anchorite as a generalized set

This is with Fighter/Samurai/Rogue, I'll play around with/without rolls and update results as I look.

No rolls:

(Godhands)
Samnuha/Anchorite +3 (3490)>Samnuha/Herc TA4 (3435)>Samnuha/Anchorite +1 (3407)>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +1 (3402)>Samnuha Herc TA2 (3394)

(Verethragna)
Bhikku +1/Anchorite +3 (3652)>Samnuha/Anchorite +3 (3629)>Samnuha/Herc TA4 (3571)>Samnuha/Anchorite +1 (3537)>Samnuha Herc TA2(3534)

Chaos/Sam

(Godhands)
Samnuha/Anchorite +3 (3964)>Samnuha/Anchorite +3 (3963)>Samnuha/Herc TA4 (3890)>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +1 (3870)>Samnuha/Anchorite +1 (3866)>Samnuha/Herc TA2 (3854)


edit: god damn it footwork was down

Those were the old mods, before the update. Are you sure the wiki just hasn't been updated?

just gonna do a quick one with sam/fight and capped attack:

Bhikku +1/Anchorite +3>Samnuha/Anchorite +3>Bhikku +1/Anchorite +1>Samnuha/Anchorite +1>Samnuha/Herc TA4>Samnuha/Herc TA2

Other interesting tidbits:

Neck doesn't particularly matter, Asperity/Anu/Combatant are all within .01% of the same DPS

Dedition Earring is also a single digit DPS increase over Telos when paired with Sherida, Brutal/Sherida is the best combo by about 20 DPS.

Herculean Gloves with TA+4 is actually very slightly worse than Adhemar +1 B when capped acc (for obvious reasons Herculean are less practical across multiple sets but are also significantly cheaper if you can get a good acc augment)

As expected, Herc Vest TA+4 is better than Adhemar Jacket +1, but as soon as you need Acc/Atk the latter is significantly better.

Feet have to be Anchorite+1 only if Footwork is up.
I think if Footwork isn't up then they won't be used for the damage calculation of Tornado Kick and Dragon Kick.
...or at least that's how it used to be on old Footwork.

I was thinking the same.
Shouldn't it be easy to test using Howling Fist first with a Shijin Spiral set (all DEX) then with a Final Heaven set (all VIT)?
Even with a small sample it should become clear wether the primary mod is VIT or DEX, no?

Not sure if this is intentional, but if Footwork is turned on for Set 2, the DPS significantly drops if Anchorite isn't equipped for WS on Tornado Kick

That's intentional, and one of the things I commented on in the last page. Fist damage is substantially higher than Foot damage without pretty major Kick damage gear.

Durr

Ok so I went against Bluffaloes in Abys Uleguerand and this is the outcome of a small test.
Sample is really small so probably irrelevant, I'll leave the conclusions to the math-guys, I suck at that.
All WS have been performed at 3000 TP.
My gear set had no FTP increasing stuff, no WSdmg gear, no DA/TA/QA gear either.
I even avoided Voracious Violet Atma so I wouldn't get the 10% DA from it.


VIT path

DEX path

I kinda got bored in the end so DEX path has less samples, sorry.
I'd dare to say that, to my big surprise, JP wiki is right and the WS is really STR/VIT like before and not STR/DEX?

Your spoilers aren't working. Use Code instead.

Yeah, that's pretty unambiguous... except for your random 8000 damage one in the second case. WTF was that?

Edit: Actually, maybe something else must be going on here. What weapon were you using for these? No weapon?


Okay, I went out and did this on MNK/SAM using Sekkanoki in East Ron. I'm using Suwaiyas 682 combined skill and capped fSTR (D250 weapon), which I confirmed through my melee hits.
203 VIT, 224 DEX, 208 STR Base case: 3449
203 VIT, 278 DEX, 208 STR case: 3467 (+0.5% damage from base)
222 VIT, 244 DEX, 208 STR case: 3682 (+6.8% damage from base)



because the VIT case is more than 5% greater than the base case, we can conclude VIT is a mod. I can't technically conclude DEX is not a mod from this, but if we're choosing between DEX/STR and VIT/STR, it's VIT/STR.

Edit2: Actually, the 50% DEX/20% STR fails while the 50% VIT/20% STR fits my data.

Definitely has the Capuchin seal of approval. Big thanks to Byrth for the further updates to polish up my last version.

Like I told Byrth, doing the manual labor of adding the new gear is something I can do just fine, but some of the finer points of the spreadsheet model occasionally give me fits. Glad to receive assistance to give the MNK community a more modern tool!


Aw man... Have 7 Paragon Monk cards burning a hole in my mog sack, and I think I might have to go make +2 shoes tonight and play around with em.

It's a bug with FFXIAH, I reported it. Anna Ruthven said Rooks is working on it.

I did the test before going to bed.
I don't remember that 8k damage on second set at all.
Confident I wrote "8" as first digit but it actually was a "6".
Sorry... the two 8k WS on the first set are real instead, I remember them pretty well and was wondering why the damage was so much higher considering the TP return was the same.

I was without weapon. Gearswap was loaded so I could use WS without engaging, but "//gs disable all" was up so that no gear was swapped at all.
Of course no other buff was up as well.


So now we know why Howling Fist was always producing shitty damage in reality when in the spreadsheet it was supposed to give results somewhat similar to Raging Fists (in certain circumstances actually better!)
Thanks Byrth for bringing this up!

About the Verethragna Vs Godhands numbers that Byrth posted earlier, are you guys sure the Spreadsheet is taking into account the Empy Aftermath limitations?

A couple of months ago Byrth already started theorycrafting that Verethragna were the best weapon, but those numbers got destroyed in the end when the Aftermath limitations (no multiattack procs, no offhand, no kick attack etc) became evident.
I'm afraid the Spreadsheet hasn't been updated to reflect those limitations? If so that might make Vere results unreliable.

Also one more consideration about the "ideal" conditions of a spreadsheet vs "realistic" ones.
In reality with the massive amounts of multiattack we get these days, it's very common to end up at more than 1000 TP.
Having even just 100TP more on average won't affect much Victory Smite, but it's gonna have a huge impact on stuff like Raging Fists, closing the possible gap between the two WS/Weapons setups.



Edit:
Also are we sure Tornado Kick mod is STR/VIT now?

Edit2:
Kick damage with Anchorite+3 during Footwork is 120+20+20 which is 160. It's "only" +10 damage over a weapon like Godhands.
But Footwork also grants an additional attack bonus, furtherly boosted by some gear, and then there's KA Job Points which also raise base kick attack by +40 and acc by +20. Wonder if those are in effect on WSs during Footwork? If so, it would be a pretty big boost in uncapped att situations. There's also the bigger TP return during WS, an old remnant of Footwork which I assume is still active during the new version of the JA?
This means that Tornado Kick is arguably the best WS to use in uncapped att situations when Footwork is up, i.e. max 1 min every 5. Yai...
Bit Skeptic Tornado Kick can provide any meaningful number over other WS options when Footwork is down.

Don't forget Segomo's Mantle also has KA+10 and KA attack+25. Not that it massively changes the overall thinking, but it helps.


Yeah, this is sorta my impression too. We're talking about a WS option for the max 20% of the time Footwork is up.