IiPunch - Monk Guide

I think you are all really underestimating mnks dps potential. with howling fist and and tornado kick mnk has some of the strongest ws's in the game atm. I play with some really well geared people and mnks will still pull 5% to 10% high in our dyna runs on average compared to drks or sams.

survivability at this point is pretty equal across the board assuming you have capped pdt and decent meve(drg falls behind in this regard). I also don't see mnk needing that much less baby sitting than a sam or drk. yeah chakra is nice but you're still bringing a healer, if they're doing their job you shouldn't need heals.

blunt being ***in ody is the entire reason I leave them behind in runs. imo ody is all about quick efficient runs with as much dps output as possible. mnk being limited to 1 dps type just doesnt fit into most runs, and blunt being the worst dmg type doesn't help at all.

Great explanations and answers. thanks, everyone. except for that one dude who was like "WAAA if you love mnk you play it even if it sux" lol, dafuq? get real dude. other than that, cheers for your time and advice.

Well i did dyna sandy with some friends 18man run other dds were masa r8 Sam. War with ambuscade sword. Drk with calab r0. And the normal cor, Brd buff. My mnk end with 28% ish of the dmg the other dds were around 11-13%. And i was just fking around on mnk while dual boxing whm. So pretty much mnk dps potential is good enough even while keeping high survavility. I was using r15 vere. R12 godhands cause just farming the detritus while farming ashera harness for my brd mule

He has a slight point in its a game and enjoying yourself should come first, and for 80% of the content it really doesn't matter what job you're on. Job selection is only really an issue for the main bits of endgame dyna and ody and to some extent omen. anything else the difference will be so minute as to be semantics.

I will find that mnk doesn't get as high in waves 1 and 2 because the mobs don't have enough hp so the 1 hit ws guys get inflated numbers. My rng in dyna does 80k savage blades in waves 1 and 2 for example so half that damage is wasted most of the time. Even with that said mnk is a beast in any dyna run.

there's tons of jobs and a lot of them are just as enjoyable if not more. I love DRK and WAR too. Since WAR is in a good spot, I'll invest my time into that.
Only a sith deals in absolutes

war is a solid pick, its never going to be the best dd at any one damage type but it has great all around options, party buffs and a really strong 2 hour for zerg situations. If you have tate from gearing mnk you have most of your tp set

After 2 years worth of Ody farms I'll take whatever gets the job done with the least friction. :D

I probably should note we mainly still run B because most members have a ridiculous surplus of segs and Wings are basically worthless at this point, so obviously C runs are different in practice despite the end result (gil and segs) being the same.

Monk can still do things that other dd's struggle to do. Its high hp and subtle blow, combined with good survivability make it a beast in its own right. That being said, as others have pointed out, its not the strongest segment farming job.

like this months ambu, I didnt even know the thing had tp moves for the longest time since mnk just destroys it.

My group is in desperate need of segments so c is all we do even though wings are worthless.

Monk is fine in segment groups. I have taken a good one along with me many times and we still hit that 10k/1m mark. It's hindered by a weapon type, but then destroys anything in it's path. In most cases, you get a blunt-resist monster type on occasion, and usually it is paired with or close to some other group/agon beastmen where the MNK can deal even dps there so they aren't suffering. Not nearly the hindrance to a segment farm as some may make it out to be.

(FWIW, I have had a Monk outparse me in seg farm on my Sam, but floor layouts could have played a part)

Do think its a pretty bad error in design how the conversion rates from segs works.

Because once you have most of the Gaol gear you want ranked up, and still have enough segs on-hand to do triple bosses to keep your amps upgraded there's not a lot of incentive to do C farms.

that just sounds like your sam needs more work. I have a really good mnk, no vere but everything else is bis. I have yet to see mnk do much more than the cor does in a run. the mnks at 15% and the sam/drg/war are each at 30% that's pretty bad imo. mnks basically a leach at that point. most of the mobs that are blunt friendly suck to kill and the good ones are mostly slash or piercing weak. You guys can try but mnk is never going to be optimal for C farms. sure you might have some good runs with it but you would have better runs with a better dd.

As easily as you say my SAM needs work (its R15 everywhere and BIS besides an uncapped neck, including Mpaca), I could counter and say that you haven't brought a good enough MNK to actually compare the dps. But moot point, as that was not necessarily the focus (I did include a disclaimer); MNK is sufficient for what segments are; a daily 30-minute glorified EXP party where getting 10k/1m is not even challenging if you have done it hundreds of times. To act as if MNK is so far behind other jobs in Segment farms is laughable. You could probably send one in a bones grouping and it will be done killing before the rest of your group can kill another set. It's not nearly as bad as people are pretending it is in seg farms.

I have come as NIN, THF, BST, BLU etc to segment farms. BST being the worst (Dolichinus, not even switching weapon types, no SB). And still managed over 900k gil reward. It really is not that big of a hindrance to bring a MNK which only has 1 weapon type, lol

The conversion rate could be better in Sheol A and B. The other problem is that it just takes too long to get around A and B. You spend half the time walking around.

It's the same in Odyssey. Jobs that do 2*50k WS to kill 60k HP mob looks nice on parse, but it's virtual damage. What should be competed is segments gain across many runs and also don't compare jobs by compering two different players using them unless they have exactly the same lag/no lag. I'm 100% sure that any NA or better JP player playing my WAR would do way more damage. Im struggling with 5 second lags on auto targeting etc. and in event like Odyssey when you need to switch target like 100 times per run I'm probably losing at least 200 seconds of being engaged. I try to counter this with playstyle and I'm WSing mobs that are not my main target, so I can be engaged longer and split damage, but it's still a massive problem for me.

Speaking about that in my opinion we can divide DPS for Odyssey Segments farming in two tiers:

1) One WS
2) Two or more WS


Jobs of group1 are DDs that can oneshot monsters with a single WS.
Jobs of group2 are DDs that require 2 (or more, but tipically it's just two) WS to kill a monster.


I think this creates a massive difference in the efficiency of a group going with a classic strategy.
Between each of those groups there are better and worse ones as well of course, but I feel it doesn't really create that huge of a difference really. Each job brings different cool things and different levels of versatility to the pt. If you play your job well and synergyze well with the rest of your pt, it's not gonna be a huge difference.

Having only DDs from group1 or only DDs2 from group2 instead, regardless of which specific DDs, that creates a pretty noticeable difference.

You need lotsa and I mean LOTSA runs to see what I mean though. Doing one or two runs only and than getting to conclusions can be pretty wrong because in each Odyssey run there is a somewhat considerable amount of randomness that depends in the placement of monsters, of the pop pillars, of enemy types etc.
I guess this is not really a big "variable" for groups that kill every single monster on every room of every floor, but for 90% of players it's undoubtely going to create large variations even with the same identical players and jobs.



To get back into Odyssey and MNK.
I think MNK is a very strong member of group2.
Doesn't have a lot of versatility in terms of damage types, but it's a beast for Blunt, nice survivability and some cool utilities for the whole PT.

In what group you will put Ukon WAR killing one mob with melee, while WSing other targets for efficiency (by the time I get 2000TP mob has often like 15k HP left, so there is no point doing 40k+ WS and WSing before 2000TP is worse DPS than just swinging)? :)

That falls into a category of its own imho, together with other unusual playstyles.

Mine was just a general analysys that describes the large majority of situations, not every single one of them.

This one got way off course of the original question about GH WS usage, do yall all also just spam howling unless footwork up?

My goto is usually vsmite with impetus, tk with footwork, howling with neither if uncapped, raging if capped.

With godhands specifically, I'm almost always 3-4 stepping bc that skillchain damage adds up quick and I don't often use monk in zergs. Stuff like TK > Shijin > Shijin > Vsmite works well on Kei, current ambu, etc. Don't bother with it on Ngai though, skillchain damage is pitiful there iirc

Wave 1 and 2 dyna is poor comparison on a jobs capabilities anyways as it depends on positioning on pull, engage time, lag and not switching to a mob that someone beats you to 1st. I've seen people who win parse on zerg but lose parse on wave farming because it's harder work to outclaim everyone for that dps gain than stand there spamming on a single mob.

Will say that for Ody think Sechs summed it up pretty well, main thing is pair a Mnk with a job using different damage types like Sam or War.

I'm not too much of an expert of Godhands to be fair. I do own a pair but it's Rank1. Granted that Rank1>Rank15 isn't exactely a huge difference...
I normally just use Vere 100% of the time because... because I get personal enjoyment from that I guess.
The few times I used Godhands I was always moderately disappointed, except a couple of situations.


Anyway, with Godhands I normally spam Howling Fist, unless I'm 101% sure I'm overcapped on Attack, then I'm gonna be spamming Raging Fists.
For instance I use PDL stuff like the Neck+2 on Raging Fists, and other small differences like that.
When Footwork is up, I of course use Tornado Kick.

I use other WSs as well, but those are normally just for specific uses.
SC needs I would say, or apply the Plague effect (Shijin Spiral)



Edit:
My post may give the impression that Howling Fist is better at att uncapped and Raging Fists is better at capped att but that's not necessarily the case.
I personally have multiple toggles on my MNK lua but I don't have one for "att cap / uncap".
So I basically geared up the 2 WSs differently, keeping in mind that Howling Fist would be used in uncapped att situations and Raging Fists would be used in overcapped att situations.
It's more a choice I made rather than some absolute truth, altough I guess you could argue Howling Fist's Att bonus would be sorta wasted if you're already overcapped in att to begin with.

The fun part of Godhands happens when Footwork is up.

Really appreciate the input. Finally got my Godhands over the weekend and immediately upgraded them to R15, been playing around with them trying to figure out optimal WS style.

The one item you mentioned that I have not been seeing is VS beating HF/RF with Impetus up. Nor does that seem to be the case in scenarios I've tested while messing with the most recent spreadsheet that Simon posted a few pages back (where Godhands/Howling seems to straight up murder everything else in most situations I've looked at so far). Anyone else think Impetus/VSmite is a better WS call for Godhands (excluding SC purposes)?

Also...
Do people tend to prefer splitting up Impetus and Footwork? That's what I've generally been doing - Impetus & Aggressor and/or Focus, then Footwork+TK when Impetus drops.

And I need to figure out best way to stack Berserk (when uncapped)... I've been just sticking it in my Impetus JA rotation without much though, but when I do think about it more - it might be more optimal to have Berserk up for all of Footwork to take advantage of those sweet sweet TKs, and then still have some left over for Impetus.


I wouldn't say "huge" or that it radically changes things... but DMG+24 sure isn't nothing! Acc+30 and better Shijins (for when you need to use it for SC or aftermath) are also nice enough little perks, even if they aren't the top highlights.

Is it worth 60m of Swarts? That's a personal call. Me, I R15 all my RMEA just because. I even ran out of stuff to augment and was slowly tossing detritus at Aeneas for a long while until R15ing it (now THAT's a weapon with a mediocre boost from augmenting), so take that for what you will.

GH+HF probably best when I am not capping atk. I use it extensively and pretty much exclusively. But when atk is highly buffed and impetus is up then vere+smite begins to shine.

You can check on the spreadsheet, make test with whatever weapon you want by artificially raising the dmg of +/- 24, you'll see the difference is truly small.
Arguably the best part of the agument is the Acc+30. In situations where acc matters it allows you more freedom in every other slots selection. That's something that can create a more noticeable difference.
Either way I repeat what I already said, the difference between R1 and R15 is truly truly small, sadly.


For your question about how to stack Impetus and Berserk, I'm not sure what is the "best". Is there an approach that is always the best in every possible situation?
I wonder about that.
What I do most of the time is the following.

Min 0
Impetus+Focus
Min 3
Footwork+Berserk

I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to be fair. My reasoning behind it is that this way I'm gonna have Berserk up for the whole duration of the "impetus down" phase, and for the first min after Impetus activation.
Why? Because Impetus already gives att, but it's bound to Impetus stacks.
It was my attempt to "spread" att bonuses in a more even way on the 5mins cycle MNK follows because of the duration of its cooldowns.

Of course this makes no sense for short fights or zergs.
Again I'm not really sure this makes any sense or if it's actually better DPS than other approaches, but it's what I try to do most of the time.



I'm not sure I'm following what you said there, but maybe I'm missing a key point.
I mean I get the HW spam when att is uncapped, makes perfect sense.
But next you mention using Vere+VS at capped att? How exactely is that supposed to be a meaningful answer to someone who asked which WS to use with Godhands? Because that was the initial question let me remind you.

Furthermore I'm not sure that's quite the case. Given how VS is a WS that can crit, arguably you could say it can create bigger differences when your att is uncapped (because of how crit hits work in FFXI).
At overcapped attack and with Footwork down I think Raging Fists has the highest damage potential, at least from what I remember in my Spreadsheet tests.

Yeah I'm likely wrong about VS vs HF/RF then. I only really play monk in situations where I'm skillchaining so I've never bothered to test it. Good to know :>

Yes. During Impetus spamming Smite is quite a bit better than Howling. Doesn't even include the additional light skill chains.