IiPunch - Monk Guide

Hello to the fellow MNK community here. I had a couple questions, mainly regarding choice of body piece for various activities. I was away from the game for about two years, so I'm still getting back into the swing of things slowly.

I've been working on my MNK and am currently at about 750 JP spent so far on it, so I have SP3 available. My main question is on when is using the various body pieces I have the best choice. Pieces I currently own for MNK body are:

Ashera Harness
Bhikku +3
Adhemar +1
Kan. Samue +1

I know that Bhikku is best used when Impetus is up, but when should I use the others I have, or should I use them at all? And should I be looking to add any other pieces to my collection? I have Nyame, but that's the only bit of Odyssey gear I have so far, still need wins from the A3 NMs.

Disclaimer: Im not a "career monk". I have those pieces, that being said, my Bhikku is only +2. Most of the time, I rely on Bhikku (impetus up), as you mentionned, and Mpaca when its down. Otherwise Samue had its uses. The only piece I'd leave out is adhemar, which feels outdated to me.

Either way, I encourage you to see what works for you, with the gear you have. Izanami relasead a while ago a tool on his Github to calculate WS sets, but also tp sets. I always have fun seeing what does come out of it; it's not perfect, but it works quite well.

(Link to the whole thread; the tool link is more or less in the upper right of the post).

It kinda depends what you want to focus on, what's your angle on playing MNK.

Beyond any doubt, Bhikku+3 body when Impetus is up, for both TPing and for Victory Smite WS too.

When impetus is down, I kinda suggest Kendatsuba Samue +1.
It offers accuracy, triple attack, subtle blow and a very high amount of Magic Evasion. So it's good for attack but also for defense.

Adhemar+1 will probably be slightly better for pure DPS, especially if you pair it with other Adhemar+1 pieces (head? hands?) for the set bonus, but it's very weak in the defense side .
So, I dunno, it depends what type of content you use MNK for. For anything relevant and/or relatively recent, I don't really suggest using Adhemar.

I do have the Adhemar +1 hands and head as well. But yeah, I've noticed that while Adhemar is decent at TP, it's probably best reserved for WS mode.

Is Ashera just not up to snuff for MNK usage at least? Or is it just a niche piece?

+45% Resist Paralyze is pretty nifty on certain NMs.

Ashera retains some value until you get Malignance Tabard, as a good DT-/hybrid option with Store TP. But Malignance has more DT-/STP/Meva, so replaces Ashera for that purpose once you get it. Ashera remains a good TP/hybrid body for BRD and RUN (i.e., the jobs who can use it but aren't on Malignance).

For MNK, as previously noted, for Impetus up it's definitely Bhikku Cyclas in all situations other than a max defense/Meva emergency set (and even then, Empy body is like the last thing I'd swap for a more defensive piece)

Impetus down?
I usually prefer Mpaca, but will switch to Malignance if I feel I need to mitigate magic damage/enfeebles (though Mpaca's physical DT-10% is very nice). Note that Mpaca's Doublet is good even without augments; it just gets better as you add augments for more Atk and STP.

Kendatsuba+1 is a similar option to Mpaca, loses atk and PDT- and gains some Meva - which to me isn't usually a trade I want (and if I'm really concerned about meva for a particularly dangerous fight, I'd probably go Maligance over Ken+1).


Is it though? Remember that "resist [trait]" from gear is halved on NMs. And while it isn't the same stat, Malignance (and Nyame) have 43 more Meva that help on all debuffs, not just the mythical NM which has only a nasty paralyze (which is what... Ongo? Which you wouldn't be using a MNK to fight?).

Ultra-niche use case at best.

Ashera is Resist Para-90 base, they already halved it.

Happen to have a source where that was tested?

I thought I remembered Omen body testing long ago showing the "Resist [trait]" +90 stat worked like it normally does for gear: full potency on normal mobs, halved on NMs. IIRC that testing might have been for Shamash Robe's Resist Silence, but would be surprising for one of the Omen bodies to work differently than the rest.

In any case... would still be a super niche use case regardless of para resist proc potency. As a practical matter, while a solid Meva/resist set in general is good to have, most people aren't building MNK resist sets for a specific debuff. I can't think of any specific NMs where I'd make use of a Para-specific MNK set. YMMV of course, but if anyone is actually making use of this in reality, I'd love to hear the use case.

They are saying the other poster already halved the Resist Para +90 to resist para +45.

As said, it was already halved, so you got a 45% chance, which there's no other resist para only gear mnk can use aside from a few rings, so you're looking at a coin flip which is pretty unreliable to me, would rather just load up on more meva

Also, 45% chance of lower duration not just full resist. Paralyze for 30 seconds or paralyze for a minute is still paralyzed.

1/2 1/4 1/8 duration isn't a resist. Dogturds.

Thought resist traits completely resisted if it activated

Yeah wiki says it's the full resist not the fake resists, doesn't ever feel like it though

If stage 5 varga purnikawa follows the same 30% triple damage on first hits that the other stage 5 primes show, that means these have an innate stage 1 emp aftermath on them, with a huge damage advantage over vere (Base damage, 15 crit rate, 12 pdl AM). I think a lot of people lost interest in these because the weaponskill was subpar, but if you just use the ws to keep am3, these have to completely thrash vere in attack capped situations.

Thoughts?

I tried to check it fast in sheet and assuming both having AM3 and spamming Vsmite under Impetus, Veret is still winning slightly, even without Aria of Passion (Higher baseline of PDL from Aria would diminish PDL aftermath on Varga)

Outside of Impetus it doesn't seems to beat Godhands too, using various WSs.

Well that's disappointing, thanks for checking.

To make it more clear, because maybe "slightly" was too vague. I'm talking about almost even, head to head situation and in some scenario Prime could pull ahead over Veret by 1-2% using Vsmite with AM3 during Impetus. Depends on targets stats, I have Veret winning slightly (1-2%) or Prime winning slightly (1-2%).

People complain, but this is actually best case senario here. If the primes were way better than all other remas, there would be such a clamor that they'd adjust the strength of all remas to match.

Newer is supposed to be better. You got 10 years out of vere, the newest should beat it.

There's zero point in making the new, if it doesn't clearly beat the old. It's literally dead before it's created. Wasted effort.

It doesn't have any strengths. Inferior from AtoZ.

Why would you say so?
Vsmite is a STR based Crit WS and Varga has 35 STR, 35 DEX (which gives crit thanks to dDEX) and 15% crit rate.
That in addition to being the 2nd highest damage H2H and highest H2H skill (+1 Base damage compared to other weapons at ML50)

What do you think it lacks that other H2H weapons can provide to Vsmite? Other than Verethragna's higher STR and 10% Vsmite dmg?

I'm not saying Varga is the BEST weapon ever for Vsmite, but it seems to me it's pretty good? If it's not the best it's probably gotta be 2nd best after Vere.

Whether you "believe" it or not, a fact it remains.

To be completely fair. It is free*. Zero gil for a 2nd best option, is a "strength".

BUT, you have to pick it over clearly superior prime choices, so, yeah.

This is pretty bad example imo. Maru kala is much worse WS at 1000+TP and if you want to make darkness with it, you would need to solo skillchain most likely. So it would be some kind of low man in Sortie and lowman groups in Sortie would go for E and G bosses, because they are much easier and for both of them you want to use light, not darkness. Also Sortie bosses have WS wall, so 3x Maru Kala in a row is terrible idea. On those bosses lowman MNK solo skillchain would be asuran>howling>dragon>vsmite with both footwork and impetus and using Godhands.

Did I miss something? My MNK shows as having 749 guard skill (uncapped mlevel 30). I have Bhikku+3 hands on, is this how 'tactical guard' works?

Not seeing the issue, iirc skill from weapons, in this case guard from h2h are added to the total, capped mnk is 453, you get anywhere from 242 to 269 from a h2h, ml adds 1 lvl, then merits.

Tactical guard on gear just means you get +x more TP on a guard

Master - 453
ML30 - 483
Merits - 499


Are you wearing a weapon with 250 guarding skill? Or you have +269 guard from weapon and don't have the skill capped.

That's not how Tactical Guard works, it provides a bonus to TP when you guard.

Oh yeah, Godhands, I have been playing mnk for years and never noticed this haha.