IiPunch - Monk Guide

Thinking about it more... Spharai vs Ver:

Spharai Aftermath increases kick attack frequency, which, with AF+3 feet can be really powerful. That and their hidden effect work really well together.

But any spreadsheet result I've been shown favors Ver Aftermath over other options.

If the MNK update boosts melee phase damage, both of these two weapons are going to benefit the most.

If the MNK update changes weapon skills, Godhands will become even more attractive.

These are my scatter brain thoughts on no-coffee. (Wife has me on some kind of 10 day diet thing... No caffiene!)

Defensive and tank arent the same thing. MNK has traditionally been one of the best dd as far as survivability. This really showed during late 99 and early to mid adoulin, but mnk tanks were always a fallback in old xp pts as well.

As far as the other clueless comments, the only worthwhile measure of survivability is amount of damage you can take before dying, if no intervention. Ie:hp and damage reduction.

Nobody cares if you can full heal yourself, the whm is sitting there at full mp. Fat lot of good itll do you if you get killed in 3 seconds by a tp>da with drain3 down.

Given that HP and DEF are now more dependant on the ilvl gear worn than the job itself, I'm not sure it can be argued that MNK is more defensive than a WAR, even if splitting hairs between a term like "defensive" and "tank."

I'm not home to swap between jobs and give definite numbers, but I don't think the HP difference between a BLU, THF and MNK are large enough to make a real difference.

WAR gets Defender, Bravura and Souveran gear.
DRK gear has some of the highest HP in the game, doesn't it? And spells and abilities that provide a bigger max HP boost than MNK can muster.
The duration of Drain III is 3min. The duration of Mantra is 3min.
The recast of Drain III is 3min. The recast of Mantra is 10min.

Chakra has a recast of 5min.
Inner Strength lasts 30 seconds.

BLU is in a league all its own.
DNC could be played very defensively.
Even SAM is probably more defensive than MNK. It can wear Tartarus Platemail and probably could live forever /DNC. Though, the greatest defense is a good offense, and all of these options are better offensively than MNK, even when playing defensively.

No matter how you look at MNK, it can't catch a break.

It's not really splitting hairs or a unique way to look at things. Overwatch classifies defensive DPS, offensive DPS, and tanks differently as well. I doubt it's the only one.

It's pretty obvious you refuse to see anything as it is. Either you're completely out of touch to the point you think MNK needs a massive overhaul, or you're lying to yourself in the hopes it will get one. All it needs is more damage.

MNK was a middle of the road DPS job for ages, and it was still highly favored throughout voidwatch, legion, both delves, and only started to fall out of favor when it's damage fell to extremely low levels.

Nobody cares about souveran on WAR. Bravura and defender while DDing are laughable, may as well say MNK can sub blu and cast cocoon. You might be able to make a case for arke with all the status resist. Realistically, though, Kendatsuba on MNK is a better defensive set than both. Magic evasion is king right now, and the amounts are high enough to resist a large portion of the game without support buffs and ensure your resist rates are great on the high end nms where others are toeing the line.

Drain III might have a 3:00 recast, but dark seal and nether void are both 5:00. It can be dispelled. It requires casttime. It's very likely to be resisted if not using JAs with it. Doing effective damage on DRK requires using defense- JA and potentially souleater as well. The only set DRK has with decent magic evasion is Ratri, which comes with huge damage taken- and for the most part terrible TP stats. The HP on it is a mitigating factor, but unless you fulltime the whole set you're not going to remain topped off and your swaps will cost you literally thousands of HP.

SAM is actually pretty close, because they're also on kendatsuba. But, again, having extra native HP makes a colossal difference. When you swap into your WS set, take fixed damage moves, get full dispelled.. whatever happens, you have that extra HP.

Naked MNK has 480 more HP than naked blu, btw. When most deaths are a matter of just a couple hundred(TP>spell or TP>DA), that's gigantic.


Again, and this is the point you've been struggling with for weeks now: MNK is not fine as is. They need a significant boost to their damage, because nobody is going to take a marginal survivability boost over a nominal damage boost. If the damage difference is in line with the survivability difference, MNK becomes useful again. It's as simple as that, it's the easiest way for SE to fix the job, and your ideas for overhauling JAs are all somewhere between ridiculous and overpowered.

Sure, you can classify jobs any way you wish. But when you look at the stats in play, it doesn't work out as you are describing. MNK doesn't have the tools to outlive other jobs if the goal is simply to live the longest.

Case in point, you brought up HP and damage reduction. When talking about WAR, Souveran is a logical choice if you need to go full-on defensive. No one is saying to full-time it, but if you want to be a defensive DPS, there it is.

For DRK, I brought up ability durations, recast times and ilvl armor stats.

BLU, DNC and NIN are all light armor, more defense-able jobs.
SAM is better DPS, better abilities and can wear strong light armor like the Kendatsuba line of gear along with heavy armor options like Tartarus Platemail.

Most of what you are recalling is pre-ilvl or pre-ilvl 119 w/ set bonuses (your words are "during late 99" and "voidwatch, legion, both delves [early to mid Adoulin]") which is likely why I refuse to base my thoughts on how anything had been. How it is now is completely different.

Yes, more damage will make MNK useable.
But thanks to macros, swapping gear and great abilities are what make a job defensive DPS, offensive DPS and tank.

Are you really this thick? Let me spell it out for you, nice and slow.

Most of what you've mentioned(bravura, defender, DT gear, blu in general) is primarily a benefit when dealing with physical damage.

As far as magical damage, damage taken is capped extremely easily due to shell being in the same term. Moonbow Belt+1, Loricate Torque+1, and Defending Ring accomplish this. Every job can be expected to cap MDT. That said, we further reduce magic damage by wearing magic evasion, which MNK has a shitton of on what happens to already be a great DPS set for them.

Now, let's look at mobs we currently fight(Omen, Escha, old content). How many strong physical moves can you think of that put people at risk of death? How often do you see PLD wearing ochain? The only particularly good example that comes to mind is Vinipata, but MNK surely has some sort of advantage there..

Even if content were to drastically change and increase the amount of physical moves in play, good groups already incorporate Geo-Wilt when relevant. With idris, it takes physical damage down to essentially nothing. There's no comparable debuff for magic damage, fade is a joke with how much MAB most current mobs have.


tldr; relevant damage is magic, mnk has great magic mitigation, you're looking at a bunch of irrelevant crap and trumpeting it as relevant

BLU gets phalanx, shadows, stoneskin, aquaviel, self-heals and all sorts of other awesome treats.

Compare a fully geared ilvl 119 MNK to a fully geared ilvl 119 WAR, DRK or SAM. So much HP is tied to the gear worn now. Naked comparisons don't show the full picture.

It seems our chief point of disagreement is that you see MNK as having some survival advantage, and that makes it almost OK.
I don't see any survival advantage.
When we do events and bring WARs, DRKs and SAMs, I'm not seeing them dropping dead.

A possible solution to needing DPS with great magical evasion is a DD RUN. It pairs very well with a WAR (their AOE buffs compliment each other amazingly).
MNK's AOE buff is 20% increase to max HP. Assuming 2000 HP, that's a boost of 400. Not bad at all. With more DPS, it wouldn't be bad. But for the reasons described here and in posts above, it still wouldn't be advantaged to other options.

Fade is most certainly not a joke, and makes many magical damaging mobs hit like kittens. I don't know about say, Teles, but it nerfs mobs like Omen Caturae and Neak pretty damn hard.

If one of your main concerns with Drain III is that it can be dispelled, so can Shell.

Survivability isn't a problem. I'm not sure why you are stuck on it.

Any job can live through an event. Many better than MNK.

We all agree MNK needs a damage boost.

30%, actually.

Phalanx is 15%. A full resist is 87.5%. MNK in full kenda nq has 536 magic evasion to BLU's piddly 321 and WAR's 324 in their best TP set. Change it to kenda+1 and it's 586. That's a greater difference than attune + vex. If the accepted m.acc formulae are still accurate, it's the difference between barely at resist floor and at resist ceiling. Stoneskin, Aquaveil, and the idea of using self heals in group content don't even deserve a response(or set points..). Can't forget that barrier tusk is diffusionable, either.

You can reduce the HP gap with gear, sure. It doesn't change that you're sacrificing optimal DPS slots to do so. MNK gets all of this magic evasion and HP with essentially no sacrifice.

Yes, RUN is also an excellent job for mitigating and surviving magic damage and debuffs. It can do great damage at the same time. That doesn't really change anything about MNK, though, as RUN's damage is still well below WAR/SAM/DRK and there's plenty of room to put MNK between the two.

Even failing that, RUN is a particularly expensive job to gear right and intricate to play right. A top notch RUN being arguably better than MNK wouldn't invalidate MNK, the game has always been full of close comparisons. It's not like we shut out all SAMs right now because WAR edges ahead, or vice versa.

Stop

DT / Bravura are for all sources of damage including Magical and Breath.

And currently the HQ pieces for the SU3 gear are so retardidly expensive I wouldn't use them as a basis for comparison. Use a hybrid set which includes the NQ if you must.


....

That is horribly wrong...

And, as I stated, MDT is very easily capped. This makes them largely irrelevant for MDT. I never said they don't give any.

If you reread my post, you'll see that I stated the magic evasion using NQ kendatsuba. The difference vs your stated WAR TP set ( http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/35200/the-parthenon-a-warriors-kyklos/82/#3271702 ) is greater than attune+vex at their stated 100 m.eva / 100 m.acc.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Barrier_Tusk - He was talking about phalanx on the basis of BLU, unless you have testing to prove otherwise. I know how normal phalanx works.

I'm not sure 536/586 MEVA is enough on mobs of worth unless you're supporting the monk with their own personal attunement/vex bubbles. My Dark Knight's MEVA set has noticeably more than +586 (and DRK has more MEVA from gifts than MNK, and probably more INT as well), and even with Miso Ramen (another +50), it's still not even close to reliable on T2 Reisenjima mobs (or even some T1s), let alone higher stuff.

It isn't necessarily enough to cap resist rate, but since it's wiggle room of greater than the difference between cap and floor, a MNK can be sitting at capped resist rate while a WAR or BLU is at floored resist rate. This means a party built around high-m.eva DD can get away with significantly less buffs, or in cases like albumen, cap resist rate where other jobs couldn't.

A RUN brings more to the survavablilty of a party than a MNK, even if said RUN is a DD.

As I've said, I'm not seeing DDs in less magic evasion dropping dead, so that extra magic evasion on available gear is not ensuring full resists. Nor are the lesser stats on other gear ensuring no resists at all.
Sure, I'm seeing bigger numbers on the gear, like you are.
I'm not seeing higher survivability in events, like you are saying there could be.

I'm honestly not trying to argue with you for the sake of argument.
It is just you are starting at point A (kenda nq has higher magic evasion) and then jumping to point B (where others die, MNK lives!) and I'm not there with you.

That's correct but you make it look like it's just a bonus. It's not.
Or rather: it comes at a cost, and that cost is having a weapon with lower damage, higher delay and using a bad WS to keep AM up.
Will the benefit of keeping AM up counter the cons?
I don't know but eyeballing I'd say no. If someone wants to math that out, be my guest though!

If you mean the occasionally increased damage, I don't think it can happen on Kicks.


Vsmite spam at 1000TP with Vere wins in the majority of tests I've been performing as well, but not all.
The reason why I think it wins is because it greatly improves what's currently the best part of MNK (white damage) while not creating too big of a drawback in the WS damage (which still sucks, and manageing AM1 wiht Vere is quite easy anyway)
Low delay + lotsa STR to boost Vsmite + AM = It's good even if the AM is borked for H2H and Vere has much lower base damage.

Still if you wanna talk bout Spharai, we need to define different situations

1) Fully Buffed
2) Mid buffed
3) Hardly buffed

I don't see Spharai winning in 1), attack will be inconsequential, fights will likely be very fast and lol at putting AM up for additional KAs.
In situation number 3) you get the bonus of additional attack, but 500 TP bonus to Howling Fist (which is really effective on low buff situations) plus 10stp and higher damage/lower delay is no joke. I believe Spharai wouldn't win here.

The real indecision is in situation number 2) which is quite generic because "mid buffed" can mean a lot of things.
Which buffs exactely? Do you have Crystalline Blessing for instance? Which again would favor HF/RF with Godhands.
In these situations Spharai can say something I think, but I'm afraid you're underestimating how bad FH is and what sort of impact it creates to keep AM up through it.


For instance talking about what Capuchin said, NIN with Kikoku doesn't have this issue because Metsu is a solid WS compared to the other options, it's not really a big deal to occasionally use that instead of your default one.


Regardless if you wanna show some setups where Spharai proves to be the best weapon or second best I'd be very curious to see it!

My naked mnk/war only has around 280 more hp than naked blu (with generic melee spell setup).

With specific regards to magic damage, don't forget that blu has a massive MDB advantage. +36 from gifts (mnk gets 0), +15 from mighty guard, possible +14 from setting one MDB trait with job trait bonus, and that's before talking about saline coat.

If you're just running with blu DDs, you can also drop haste songs/bubbles for more defensive ones.

Oh, no, I just meant the hidden effect is like a free Aftermath-1 while you have your Aftermath. So you have more higher damaging kicks and the occassional high damage punch.

Also, thank you Kyte for the correction about Mantra.



I don't have any. But Pchan might?

This is because you're looking at absolutes. I fully agree that in a competent group, with excellent support and an excellent mage, no competent DD of any job should be dying. However, this is a game with 22 jobs, and despite being able to clear everything with ~8 of them, others retain relevance for varying setups.

How about if you have a PUG WHM that's slow on the debuffs? How much damage will you gain from resisting almost all of them instead of none?

What if your GEOs don't have idris and you don't have a BRD for threnodycarol?

How much damage is lost every time a DD swaps to DT set? MNK doesn't really have to worry about that with how weak most physical damage is and how little they lose using full kendats vs an optimal tp set.

As much as you want to write off subtle blow and penance, MNK sits at 70/75 SB in their typical tp set(75 being HQ moonbow belt). WAR has 12, 15 if they HQ chirich, going by saevel's set. Ragnarok with capped dAGI and 15 SB would give the mob 64 tp per hit. Verethragna with 75 SB, penance, and capped dAGI would give 9 tp per hit, which amounts to around 60% less TP given over time. This is a gigantic difference on monsters that don't have regain, such as most of omen.


MNK doesn't need to be the best DD choice for every group to be a valid job worthy of play. It probably will never be the best choice for a high energy, high performance group who wants everything to die as fast as possible. They can support WARs and SAMs going all out, and get slightly faster kills as a result.

Where MNK fits in is the less than perfect groups, the groups who don't mind taking an extra 2 min on a more relaxed run, the groups who actually enjoy MNK. Might not be what you want, but it's what it is.

I fixed this for you.


I think you are placing more value on subtle blow than it really is worth in actual play. Similar to how you are overstating the magic evasion stat on gear when proposing that MNK will evade magical attacks better than other jobs.

Bosses will use TP moves. How many less will it use if you use MNKs? That real number is important. I expect the difference to be unimpressive.
Then consider that MNKs do so little damage, that any boss will likely use more TP moves over the course of the encounter.

For really dangerous stuff, we burn JAs and SPs to mitigate a boss's damage to as little as possible and pump out as much damage to the boss as possible.
MNK is bad for both of these things. It deals DMG too slowly to kill a Boss before SPs/JAs wear.

I agree with this.

I don't feel we should have to accept this as the final fate for MNK.


It doesn't fit here. BLU is better for the low-performing group you describe.
And sure, if you enjoy MNK, use it. But liking it doesn't make it good at anything.

For what has to be the 20th time, I have proposed that MNK be placed between BLU and WAR in DPS. My defense of it's JAs as is is conditional on it's damage being raised to this level. Why you continue to put the job down based on it's current DPS is beyond me, it offers no defensible standpoint and is something anyone will agree with.

Defend your position. I stated the #s as they are understood by our currently known formulas. I did not state a projected impact, simply the change that will be produced under those stats by our current understanding of them.

Again, you're looking at MNK as is. My standpoint has always been that it needs damage boosted regardless, but it's JAs are fine. How much it reduces the actual TP depends on the entire party's construction. You would expect a 60% reduction in TP given by DPS to result in approximately 40% reduction in overall TP acquired on a mob like the omen caturae.

Furthermore, if you're looking at a group that cannot make the mob trivial, number of TP moves over the course of the encounter is irrelevant. It's much easier to survive a TP move every 15 seconds than a TP move every 10 seconds.

Again, fixated on current damage. If MNKs damage was between BLU and WAR this would not be relevant.

Feel however you want, if a job tops both DPS and defensive it's overpowered and waiting for a nerf. MNK has never topped DPS, but it's frequently topped defensives, and currently is pretty close to the top.

Again, defend your standpoint. I've backed up every point of mine with the numbers behind them, and I use the currently accepted values and understanding of each of them. You just stick your fingers in your ears and say 'neener-neener-neener'.

If you are talking about BT then state BT, don't say phalanx because those are two very different effects though they share the same buff slot.

Given I was responding to this, context should have been a bit of a clue.

Just because he's wrong doesn't mean you should be too. And calling your LS mates won't help you.

The DT from BT is a -15% effect done after all other effects, this means it goes past the normal DT cap and should be a completely separate item in discussion.

If he had half a brain he would of discussed MDB and Magic Barrier before BT.

As for Bravura, that purpose of Bravura is that you can deal full damage while wearing minimum DT gear. It deals less damage then the rest yet due to it's AM you can continue to deal full damage while the other weapons must be in a DT set. In the context its' supposed to be used in it mitigates ALL damage, not just PDT. And *** dude, the worst ***in this game is Breath Damage precisely because it's so hard to mitigate against.

That being said, I'm not debating your position on MNK because honestly I don't care what people classify it as. It has a decent tool kit but it's WS damage is simply too low to be considered viable in content. SE would have to nerf all WS mods and fTP values in order for melee damage to matter again. If your trying to compare against BLU your going to lose badly due to BLU's massive set of utility spells and configurable Job Traits. MNK can't remove Subtle Blow and replace it with Magic Evasion Bonus or Magic Defense Bonus nor can it remove Chakra and replace it with a ~800 party AoE heal or replace boost with a +50 MDB buff or replace counter stance with a 550 point magic stoneskin. BLU is the king melee for pure utility, the closet job is probably DNC.

None of my LS mates post on ffxiah, sorry. I know how barrier tusk works, and I don't know why you're pretending it's worth the casttime for magic barrier's 500 damage stoneskin. If you're stopping to recast that after every time it gets depleted, you're losing a colossal amount of DPS and if you aren't, it's offering essentially nothing.

That's pretty much what I'm arguing for MNKs purpose in general. Obviously as is, it's damage is insufficient, but with better damage it would be a low maintenance DD that can continue to do full damage with little sacrifice.

I don't know that I'd agree with that. Maybe I'm missing something, but dragon breaths are easy to avoid. Pain sync is breath, but avoidable by design. What moves common to current endgame are breath damage now? (I'm not being sarcastic here, they aren't coming to mind for me.)

I'ts 550~600, 1 blue magic skill = 1 point of stoneskin. The purpose of it is to absorb big magic hits and let you continue plowing through the enemy. You would only use it on fights where you know there is going to be big magic attacks. Like everything on BLU it's situational, just another tool in the giant *** toolbox.

All HP based, static damage or most divide by X damage. Dragon breaths are the weakest of what you need to worry about and are largely avoidable by just not standing in front of their mouth. SE likes to use Breath type damage as a kind of "*** you" to players, Pain Sync was just the most recent version. Physical attacks can be reduced by Wilt / Defense / PDT / Block / ect.. and are rarely dangerous, Magic attacks can be reduced by Fade / Magic Defense / MDT / Magic Evasion / ect. It's Breath Attacks that don't have many ways to reduce them. Impalement comes to mind, things like that.


MNK would need a lot more work then because it's lacking all the other components needed to be a defensive DD. It needs far more defense and magic defense at a minimum, the MEVD from gear is something anyone can get and it's not the only one who can wear such items, all light DD jobs can. It would need damage mitigation JA's and traits first and foremost.

Impalement is physical damage, like Throat Stab, isn't it?

You said a lot there, but I didn't see a single breath move that was a problem listed. I can agree that they're hard to mitigate if you can't stand to the side, I just can't think of any recent and relevant ones. The latest fixed damage moves by caturae all ignore DT. And yea, impalement is physical.