IiPunch - Monk Guide

That's a name that I don't miss but would love to see chime in

So I decided to put it into the TP calculator. I used the Low accuracy BiS set listed on the mainpage as my base point with an unaugmented cape. Again, this is my personal calculator and potentially error prone, but I made special care to add in Kick attacks and martial arts. The base TP value I got of 53 TP for a mastered monk with Karambit matches what I got naked so I'm going to assume it calculating properly. These values are TP/S

The values range from 0% crit from ddex to 15%.

Obviously STP wins out in every scenario here but adds no white damage, which as Simon mention is a big thing for monk so the Crit cape will most likely win in every scenario except the situations you are at max crit.

What was surprising to me is how the Crit cape got better than DA when Focus was up.

The 10% DA on the back translates into a 6.5% DA rate with the BIS posted. So yeah I can admit when I'm wrong. I'd be curious in trying other sets if someone wants to post the QA/TA/DA/STP/Crit range but pretty neat.

I'm actually curious if there is some value for what level of Impetus you have up that gearswap can pull in. May be interesting to make a set that changes capes based on your current level of impetus.

This hamster wheel discussion about cape augments about which is "best" is starting to annoy me. One minute white damage matters, the next it's a meh bonus in relation to ws spam.

The difference is minuscule. It does not matter in the slightest which you chose between stp da or crit.

Room for operator error is larger than the difference any of the 3 bring.

5% base
5% merits
4/5 Kendatsuba +1 22%
dDEX 15%

That's 42%EDIT: 47% Im tired :D total and it assumes you can cap dDEX.
AFAIK max from impetus is +50%, so even with max Impetus you would still use 8% from cape. If you take away some Kendatsuba pieces for more DPS, then you will use 10% on cape even with max Impetus.

EDIT: So with 4/5 Kendatsuba+1 you could maybe try to switch to DA cape (tho Kendatsuba+1 devaluate DA too). With other sets with less Kendatusba, you dont need to be worry about it.

Ideal Cape augments will depend on your gear, weapon, and playstyle.

Glanz you care more about white damage, vere and Godhands is frequency, karambit fall somewhere between the two extremes. Both are important, but you can't just gear for one extreme if you want to do well as monk.

Shits situational has never been more true. I will say DA is probably the most pointless Cape to go with, though.

As a practical matter, it's probably best to just choose the one that might do double duty for some other purpose. As in, for a MNK TP cape with DEX/Acc&Atk, stick DA on there because it's one of the sidegrade choices for TP but also serves as clear BiS for Shijin Spiral (LOLShijin I know, but at least there IS a use - particularly for anyone using Godhands).


As for the whole "OMG white damage matters now" discussion, worth noting that Vere isn't just about WS frequency (although spamming V.Smite is indeed effective). It's also a white damage monster with 50% ODT, and lots of those being crits - especially with a Kendatsuba-heavy build. Of course, people loved telling me white damage was useless back when I was saying the same thing in the fairly recent past for MNK or NIN using Empy, despite being two of the most white-damage heavy jobs... but FFXIAH gonna FFXIAH.

DEX/DA is useful for Shijin Spiral, so I would hardly call it pointless.

I mean... shijin is far from useful... so...

Make the plague stronger prz.

That whole 50 damage you'll get from using a dex/da cape vs your normal tp cape is pretty laughable. and costs you inventory space when inventory space is premo ***man.

SEs master plan is to release more wardrobes until ffxi costs $30/mo.

Most companies sell pay to win microtransactions.

SE sells pay to actually play more than 2 jobs and have lockstyle microtransactions.

Idk who said white damage on MNK doesnt matter, but it wasnt me.
Its also not only White Damage. It's a cumulative impact of high white damage, WS delay and WS scaling well with TP

Simple Example with a little made up numbers:
Spharai capped delay is almost 2sec.
Lets say damage per round is 5500
Raging Fists damage at 1000TP is ~22k
Raging Fists at 2500TP is ~41.5k

Lets assume 3 rounds after WS to FH and 7 to RF at 2500TP
RF at 1000: 22k+(3*5500)/8sec = 4813/s
RF at 2500: 41.5k+(7*5500)/16sec = 5000/s

This just illustrate the concept, not super detailed numbers (tho those numbers should be very close to reality)

skillchaining is pointless? 2008 called, it wants its tactics back

I want 2006 to call me back so I can start planning my skillchain around a BLM casting some AM.

Counterstance:
Very easy (level 113) - The Celetial Nexus II
Phase Shift: 1863 damage

joke lol.

I did the monthly superman fight on VE figured I'd speed it up with counterstance. Bopped for 3k lightblade.

Can anybody find a decent, even if inferior to other options, use for Hesychast Gloves +3? Other than Chakra macro piece of course.

I can't think of anything. Maybe for TPing when you need acc and att? /shrugs

Looks like very good Asuran Fists option. You don't need MA and you want accuracy and attack. Store TP is very good too, because you mainly want to use Asuran as SC linker, so getting more TP back is good thing. 20STR and 38VIT is not the best you can get in hands slot, but Asuran has only 15% STR/VIT mod, so even with fSTR, that STR loss wont do much here.

I had Anchorite+3 in my Asuran set (why? I dunno, for the STR/VIT maybe), I guess that's a good point you're making.
Thanks!

I currently use Mummu+2 in my acc TP set, looked at Hesy+3 but despite the nice STP+8 I don't see them beating the Crit/DA on Mummu.
I mean the attack could be nice if you're seriously underbuffed but even then I don't see that beating Mummu+2.

What's the best approach to WS usage with Karambit?

In particular, does it make Asuran worthwhile if you are just spamming WS and not concerned with SCs? If the answer to Asuran spam is no, is trusty old Victory Smite spam best, or are things like Footwork/TK and RF also worthwhile (since not using a TP Bonus weapon)?

Nothing makes asuran fists worth using. Still the same as any other weapon(*). Smite with impetus, Tkick with footwork, howling(raging) with neither. Asuran if it fits a skillchain link that the other 3 don't.

So, what you said makes logical sense to me for pure WS spam damage purposes.

What about if there's a realistic chance of SC with V.Smite - are TK and HF/RF strong enough that they're still worth using w/ Impetus down? Those three have pretty bad SC properties, and lose some benefit from TP Bonus if not using Godhands. Therefore, I would imagine that even inconsistent light SCs from tossing out V.Smites (assuming people using stuff that chains with Smite - i.e. lots of common top damage WS like Torcleaver, Upheaval, Fudo, Victory Smite itself, etc.) tends to outweigh stronger pure WS damage from TK/HF/RF. But please correct me if I'm wrong and the damage is that much more that it makes up for the loss of potential light SC damage.

I've definitely been a bit out of the loop on current MNK thinking, so appreciate people getting me up to speed.

That's kind of always the question isn't it.

Is it better to just spam ws or hold for half a second and skillchain. Gonna depend on what you're doing and if the other DD are cooperative, or competitive.

I ***think*** with R15 Vere it might be worth to go for Vsmite even with Footwork up.

I assume you use Footwork in the 2 minutes Impetus is down, right?
Then yes, while I'm not entirely sure about it, I think Vsmite is the way to go even with Footwork, if you've got a R15 Vere.

I'm sure it's totally worth it to go for Tornado when you have other weapons though, especially Godhands.

https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/36705/iipunch-monk-guide/242/

Has numbers for the other stuff (15vere)

Can confirm Tornado Kick with Godhands is Sex

With Veret with Impetus down you can go for Vsmite at 1000TP or go for Raging Fists or TK(footwork) at 2000+ TP. Holding till 2500 TP doesn't drop your DPS, but actually increase it, so don't try to TK/RF at 1000TP unless you skillchaining and you have no choice.

So, I've been thinking about this a bit more and grappling with the practical/real world implications of MNK WS approach. On a pure "spreadsheet DPS" theoretical view of spamming the highest damage WS whenever you can, that obviously supports using TK/HF/RF based on relevant JA buffs. However, I think I have a problem with that spreadsheet-centric approach considering what MNK is actually good at doing.

1. In general, MNK is just not a very good zerg job.
If you're in a fight where you are just spamming highest damage WS ASAP, you are in a fight where it would probably be a significantly better choice to swap that MNK out for one of MANY other jobs. Assuming similar quality gear/skill, I'd much rather use a SAM WAR DRK DRG COR in that situation, and (although perhaps somewhat more situational) BLU THF DNC NIN DD-RUN more often than not as well. MNK is really one of the absolute worst DPS slot choices you could make for a "WS spam" style fight.

Yes, if you're in such a fight and you happen to be on MNK, using those WS is probably gonna be your best option. But it's still just making you perform better at what will remain a pretty poor job choice for that situation. I get that the game isn't always about optimal party composition, sometimes people just say "bring whatever DPS you feel like" - and if you're just doing something for low stakes fun on MNK, great, spam away with the stronger WS. But I just can't see WS spam setups really being a great place to use a MNK over SO many other options.

2. If you're going for a "safe" strategy and reducing TP feed (like many people here have advocated in the fairly recent past as a great place for MNK), spamming WS is also not really an ideal play style.
You'd be much better served coordinating with other jobs with high levels of Subtle Blow and making each WS count more by tacking on SCs (doing more total damage with less TP feed). It's very easy to coordinate SC when you're doing that kind of low TP feed approach with limited number of DDs. And the jobs people typically think of for that kind of setup excel at chaining with Victory Smite for Light SCs, like two MNKs both using Victory Smite, or pairing a MNK with a NIN who can use Blade: Shun. Or, assuming some Subtle Blow II, perhaps your partner is a SAM with Fudo, WAR with Upheaval, DRG with several options, etc...

3. Even if you aren't going for an extremely controlled SC build, just the occasional accidental/random SC may make up the difference in lower cumulative WS damage by foregoing TK/HF/RF.
Victory Smite chains well with so many other commonly used WS that there's a strong likelihood that if you're getting random lights say, every 3 or 4 WS, that additional SC damage (whether you're opening or closing) very well may make up the overall party DPS from the loss in raw MNK WS numbers - and spreadsheets are notoriously poor at accounting for this.

To get some more value out of a spreadsheet comparison of different MNK WS, I'd want to play around with adding something to cumulative WS damage to give a rough model of the higher SC damage your party will likely end up with by having the MNK lean more toward Smite. For instance, what does the comparison look like if you inflate cumulative WS damage for V.Smite to 120%-130% to account for extra SCs?

4. Godhands is a little bit of an outlier.
Since TP Bonus has a bigger impact on TK/HF/RF, Godhands obviously is the weapon where it's most likely that those WS could be worth using (though that doesn't invalidate any of my concerns about the real worth of using those WS). On any non-Godhands weapon, it's even more difficult to make those WS "worth it" over Smite.

5. I'm not very concerned with optimizing WS for trash mobs.
That stuff is gonna melt regardless of WS choice, but yeah, go ahead and use TK or HF on those if Impetus is down. It's not a hugely significant scenario though, I'm more concerned with how to best approach non-trivial mobs.

Thoughts?
If I'm overlooking some things I would be happy to see discussion. Not claiming I have all the answers here, I'm just having a hard time wrapping my head around exactly why MNK would want to focus on a "spam your highest damage WS" approach in most practical situations where the job does well. And if you don't want to do that, more Smite seems like a better call than HF/RF for sure, and possibly TK (though maybe with Footwork up, that's still worth using).

Uhm... not sure I agree with this but it depends on the definition of zerg.
Are we talking about 30-60 seconds max zergs?
Sort of then.
Are we talking about stuff that lasts longer, like 1,5/2 mins?

Then MNK has something to say.



I've been playin around with MNK a bit lately in Divergence and I have to confirm MNK, while not the best DPS atm, it's not as bad as I thought it would be :o
This is probably the consequence of the 99% accuracy cap turning Impetus into something absolutely broken.

That's it. Basically when you have Impetus up your damage skyrockets, when it's down you're a lolmnk again.
To compensate for the "building" of Impetus, that takes a few seconds, you can use Focus to get the sexy crit rate+ for 30 seconds.
I dunno, all things considered if you can make a reasonable use of Impetus, MNK is not really that bad of a zerg job at all. Especially if you can stack 3k TP before the fights and then ride on AM3 with R15 Vere *-*

Again, not the best Zerg jobs, but really it's okay if you ask me.

My bias is clear because I've played Monk since the NA launch, but...

Who cares? 99.99% of all content in the game doesn't remotely require this level of neuroticism. I mean, it's great that y'all want to optimize, but there's gotta be a point where you throw up your hands and say, "It's a video game and the monster is dying while I punch it." Use Combo only at 3000% for all the difference that makes so long as the targets get beaten.

No, but you don't understand. The spreadsheet says it will be a sixteen second longer fight to include an inferior DPS. And the spreadsheets say that using WS at 1250 vs 1251 TP will result in forty five less DPS overall. The spreadsheet assumes I have perfect reflexes, buffs, never gets dispelled, won't lags vs the next guy, and that's the optimal way to play. THAT'S THE ONLY WAY TO PLAY! Picking an inferior DD for the sake of "fun" has no standing here in this video game. If you want fun, go work a 9-5 job. We're in the business of optimization and seconds matter.