IiPunch - Monk Guide

well, the Ambuscade cape question would likely best be DEX/Acc/Att/DA for TP. Smite, I cannot say for sure since I don't know the state of the Monk spread sheet, but I went STR/Acc/Att/Crit.

as for Howling Fist, it's a WS that ignores a portion of a mob's Defense, and is best reserved for targets that have very high DEF or are crit resistent. additonally, it benefits from higher TP values, so saving til closer to 2-3k TP will give you better results. if you wanted to make a cape specifically for it, DEX/Acc/Att/WS DMG would likely be best, as it is weighted very heavily from its first hit (the offhand swing is next to worthless). think of it as a very poor man's Rudra's Storm.

for anything more concrete, I would suggest hunting down the most recent spreadsheet, and playing with gear slots.

So Crit +10% is best choice for mantle VS as for DA+10% for TP mantle , Correct !?

Cool , thanks for info :)

also I wish Mythic would be able to proc on every hit (Making Tizona)

Night Guys ~

I don't think there's a single exception in game that allows to overcome the maximum number of 8 hits per attack round, no matter how you reach that number.

I wonder how DW and Multiattack work on 1H WS though.
On multiple hit WSs it doesn't matter. We know we can get Multiattack procs max twice per WS, wether this comes from hit of the WS itself or the offhand hits, doesn't really matter, does it? Result is the same.

But for 1h WS done while dualwielding it would matter.
Take for instance Rudra's Storm or Savage Blade.
If OH can proc a multiattack then it means that WS such as those could see two Multiattack procs.
If it doesn't, then we would still see max one proc only (the one on the WS itself)



@Kuro
If you're making a cape specifically for Vsmite then yes, Crit is gonna be better than DA, unless your crit rate is capped but that's not very likely to happen unless you're in Abyssea :D

Cool Thanks :)

So with current gear today, whats the best weaponskill to use (assuming you are fully geared to max it out)?

Im not seeing major damage differences between all the gear at the moment just using my generic DD armor, so not sure which one comes out ahead once stacked.

Assuming normal weapons and Reisenjama/ambuscade level stuff.

Victory Smite seems like it really likes that new Mummu+1 set.

It depends on the weapon and your TP values, and wether or not Impetus is up.
With no impetus up at 1000TP Vsmite and Shijin Spiral are pretty similar, possibly Smite being slightly better when there are no particular Crit rate down on target.
With Impetus up Vsmite at 1000 obviously wins.

At higher TP values the WSs you should be using are Raging Fists or arguably Howling Fist. Motenten drew a graph showing the approximate line where Raging Fists gets better than Howling and vice-versa.

For both WSs you need high TP values.
With Godhands you're gonna spam Raging Fists regardless.


I've been wondering that myself for Vsmite and Blade: Hi, but alas without testing it on a spreadsheet it's hard to tell.
STR values are not that bad (and AGI likewise for Hi).
They have good acc and good amounts of Crit rate, but only DA+5% for the hands.
What is really lacking is... attack.

Now the influence of attack on WS that can crit is inferior to that of other WS if I'm not wrong, but at the same time it's not irrelevant.
In a situation where you're getting Bolster Idris Frailty + Dia2 + Fury you're gonna be attack-capped regardless, so Mummu would shine there.
Against weak targets, again, you're likely gonna be not att capped, but close, so Mummu might shine there too.
But for everything else?
I really wonder.

So Victory smite then. I mean you said sometimes shijin spiral is the same but effectively speaking, V smite is the one to spam, only beaten by other WSes if you for some reason are high on TP, in which case use one of the others.

Another very practical benefit for V.Smite (or Shijin, to be fair) is its lv3 Light SC property. A lot easier to spam for easy light SCs, both with itself and with many other commonly spammed WS from other DDs (CdC, Reso, Fudo, Dimidiation, Blade: Shun, Jishnu's, etc.)


Unfortunately, when you take a closer look most of the pieces don't really look at good as you might initially hope from seeing all the crit rate (it's certainly where my mind went when initially seeing the set had all that crit). Where Mummu does really shine is for DEX based WS that can crit, especially multi-hit thanks to all the Acc (for instance, the set is fantastic for Jishnu's Radiance). If only Shijin could crit, this set might even have pushed MNKs to use that WS more...

However, as it is, even excluding (1) Herc and its many augment possibilities and (2) expensive HQ abjuration gear, Mummu+1 doesn't end up looking so great for Victory Smite after investigating more closely. Some comparisons:

Head
Rao NQ B: STR+45 DEX+29 Acc+32 Atk+15 Crit Rate +4%
Mummu+1: STR+20 DEX+44 Acc+40 Crit Rate +4%
Obvious easy win for NQ Rao

Body
Ryuo NQ B: STR+38 DEX+34 Acc+42 Atk+27 Crit Rate+4% Crit Dmg+4%
Mummu+1: STR+28 DEX+44 Acc+40 Crit Rate+8%
If not attack capped, Ryuo wins with significantly more STR, lots more atk, lower crit rate but additional crit damage.

Hands
Ryuo NQ A: STR+22 DEX+48 Acc+38 Crit Rate+4% Crit Damage+4%
Mummu+1: STR+16 DEX+49 Acc+37 DA+5% Crit rate+5%
This one may be close and would warrant more testing. Mummu+1 does have lower STR and lacks the crit damage on Ryuo, but DA+5% is pretty nice. However, at best we're probably talking sidegrade-ish territory.

Legs
Rao NQ B: STR+55 DEX+10 Atk+48
Hizamaru+1: STR+47 Acc+39 Atk+27 WSD+5%
Mummu+1: STR+33 DEX+7 Acc+39 Crit rate+6%
Mummu is just so STR and Atk deficient here that it hurts the piece a lot.

Feet
Ryuo NQ D: STR+36 DEX+19 Atk+42 Crit rate+3%
Mummu+1: STR+16 DEX+33 Acc+36 Crit rate+4%
Not even close, Ryuo thrashes them.

Mummu+1 isn't terrible, it's fine starter gear on V.Smite for people who didn't get at least NQ abjuration stuff. But it's not especially impressive for V.Smite either.


While not really relevant to MNK, Blade: Hi gains a LOT from WSD so Herc will still win pretty easily here. You probably saw my post in the NIN forum. Mummu+1 aren't bad though, and if you want to avoid the hell that is Oseem, there aren't as many great non-Herculean options for Hi that are as good as the predictable NQ abj stuff that's good for Victory Smite.

Again, woulda been phenomenal if MNK or NIN had a DEX based crit WS. Change Shijin Spiral or Blade: Shun to crit and this set would be fantastic for them. But alas, that's not what they are.

It's always weird seeing endorsements for low accuracy pieces in favor of STR or DA or Crit or some such. Those Ryuo boots look pretty terrible when you're dropping 46 accuracy for em.

Yeah, but what are you fighting on mnk... nothing that requires that much acc. Everyone only cares a little about mnk (after the lolupdate that everyone thought would save mnk) because the vol2 is bones.

You need (some) acc, but not all 5 pieces.

And blackhalo blu is way better than mnk for it anyway, but don't tell everyone.

What the real question should be is, how good is mummu+1 when you can't be bothered to get ryuo because its -5 inventory for a job you'll only use another week and can't be stored.

Well, you're simply wrong then. Don't forget the first hit of a WS gets a major acc bonus (~Acc+100, IIRC), plus any time you're using an elemental gorget/belt that's another Acc+10 on every hit after the first.

In most VS sets, you should be fine on accuracy with the overall set. A 20 STR (on a WS with an extremely heavy STR mod, not to mention the fSTR impact) and 40 raw Attack advantage on one piece is massive for VS. Giving that up solely for Accuracy in the feet slot is silly and will lower your WS avg. Spreadsheet it if you like, parse yourself and examine the results over time, but you're dead wrong here.

You can certainly make a low acc and high acc WS set, and that's a consideration. But on the vast majority of the content I bring MNK to, I'm not needing the high acc set. For instance, on this month's Ambuscade Vol. 2, Very Difficult, I can cap accuracy with meat with my roughly 1100 acc set. This is not the kind of content that requires you to load up on Acc for Victory Smite... Perhaps if you're using your MNK to melee burn Neak or something, you should be using your high Acc WS set.


Exactly. Mummu+1 gear is "good enough" V.Smite stuff, which is generally beaten by good Reisenjima augmented gear, NQ Abjurations, and obviously HQ Abjurations.

Some people might have some of these pieces, either for MNK or because they use other jobs. I know I have full sets of Rao/Ryuo, but I also play SAM NIN PUP so YMMV.

That is why people laugh at MNK, the people gearing for it never take it seriously.

So far I've been able to do some pretty big numbers with it and it's not even high JP'd. Once I start working on that then I should get to the point of doing high end content.

Guys, don't be idiots here...

The sets on the OP were up to date pre-December update and absolutely reflect people taking it seriously. It's one of the most up to date gear guides of any job on this site, and has a very practical layout showing 4 levels of accuracy:
1) low acc
2) some acc (probably your best default set)
3) high acc (your normal swap for harder content when acc becomes important)
4) max acc (probably pretty rare you will run into many situations where you'd need this)

Mummu+1 won't replace the previous best choices reflected in those sets (except maybe legs for DT- sets), so I'm not sure what exactly you're arguing about. If you don't have good Herculean gear or the superior abjuration stuff, Mummu+1 is OK. But honestly, it's starter endgame gear as far as MNK is concerned for TP/WS. My comparison above was in response to discussion of Mummu+1 as possible Victory Smite gear, and my response showed that (even for people who are less serious about MNK), existing stuff that a lot of people may already have that isn't Abj+1 or augmented Herc gear will STILL be better than Mummu+1, so it's really nothing particularly special for VS purposes.

In general, the best uses of the new Ambuscade set are for Macc (Ninjutsu, Light/Dark shot, Violent Flourish), DEX/crit WS (Jishnu's), or for ranged attacks when attack capped but you still want racc/crit (more so for ranged then for melee, since melee have so many good multiattack options that will be better anyway). Since none of those strengths really play to MNK's needs, they end up as decent but not great acc or crit WS pieces as far as MNK is concerned.

My thought is that your accuracy from gear essentially determines what content you can participate in on a given melee job, and 46 Acc is a shitload. Granted yes, you can use both and alternate sets as needed, but usually I figure if we're limiting gear options then we're considering players who probably don't have accuracy toggles.

Exactly. For this exact reason I have long since dropped the entire idea of a "Low Accuracy" set since if your at low accuracy then your soloing or doing random stuff where nobody cares about your damage. The benchmark is 1100 accuracy without any buffs or food standing outside your Mog House, and that's just the start line. Eventually the goal should be to have over 1200 accuracy in base TP set, which lets you participate in pretty much anything marked "end game" without gimping everyone else by forcing buffs to cater to you. The real problem in accuracy is during WS's since people like to pile on stat mods and completely ignore accuracy, then wonder why their getting 5k Victory Smites.

You need approximately the same accuracy in WS set that you have in TP set for any multi-hit WS. Single hit WS's can get away with up to 100 acc less, though I caution them about doing this because the accuracy bonus on the first his is why you like to use one hit WS's when your under acc cap. Attack is much easier to work around then accuracy and accuracy becomes paramount to dealing damage when people actually care about that damage.

Low acc sets exist, because even if you're soloing or w/e efficiency still matters. I'm not going to bother with any acc at all while I'm farming stones, or salvage, or dynamis, etc. But I still want maximum gains.

Changing one piece with zero acc isn't make or break. Especially for ambuscade, which is the only thing MNK is being used for.

There are tiers of content, that's why tiers of gear exist.

Fine, even if you want to say you need high accuracy at all times (which is obviously not true), Mummu+1 are still not great compared to other options. It doesn't require crazy augments for Herc to beat Mummu, and the question was whether Mummu+1 was good Victory Smite gear.

Herculean Boots (base): STR+16 DEX+24 Acc+10 Atk+10 TA+2%
Mummu Gamashes +1: STR+16 DEX+33 Acc+36 Crit rate +4%

I would expect the vast majority of what people are using MNKs for is not on stuff like Reisenjima T3 or harder content. In that case, they are not going to need to be using 1150+ unbuffed acc WS sets for V.Smite, and are likely going to get more damage trading excess accuracy that's doing absolutely nothing for them for useful stats like STR (and atk, assuming uncapped atk). If you're beating Neak with MNKs, you're probably good enough to know how to gear for that content without needing it spelled out for you in a guide.

My point was to illustrate that Mummu+1 set isn't that great for V.Smite, not to die on the cross for Ryuo shoes as the end all piece of wonderfulness. They're really good if you don't need heavy acc though, and if you do need heavy acc there are other previously existing options (Herculean) that beat the new Ambuscade shoes. In neither scenario would I replace them with Mummu+1.

Arguing over how much accuracy you should have in a set is dumb. Have as much power as you can in a base set, then as much accuracy as you can in a second set, then a few levels of accuracy in between and toggle as needed depending on your situation. Not everyone is going to need the same specific number of accuracy in gear for the same content since not everyone brings the same support or setup. Maybe one group has access to an Honor March BRD and one group doesn't. Maybe one group is getting Idris Torpor and/or Precision and another group is only getting Dunna Torpor and/or Precision. Quit calling other people wrong for the level of accuracy they're using in a set. If they're capping accuracy, then they aren't doing anything wrong accuracy-wise. Only thing out of all this I agree with and would like to reiterate is to make sure that, for multi-hit WSs, your WS sets have the same amount of accuracy as your TP set.

When did I say anything about Mummu...

I merely mentioned how accuracy was extremely important and anyone ignoring a %20+ hit rate difference with the excuse of "acc isn't important for MNK's because no one use's MNK for anything" is extremely dumb.

Mummu is Ambuscade gear and therefor by definition for new or returning players to be able to do things on build better gear sets. A few pieces might be situationally useful, like the rest of Ambuscade gear, but generally it's not something that can't be beaten by decent augments on Herc gear or Abjurations. This comparison will have to take place on a piece by piece level and the above posters comment about the feet was spot on, that accuracy is extremely important and shouldn't' be waived away like it doesn't exist.

Unfortunately this mentality doesn't work, ever. We establish baseline accuracy requirements so that one member of a team doesn't weigh down the rest. Things like Store TP, Multi-Attack, Critical hit Rate and Accuracy all work together, you can't modify one without considering the impact on the others. This is basic how-to-gear-DD 101. And just in case all you MNK soloers didn't get the memo, 1100 is the base level accuracy to participate in group content as a DD. Eventually you want 1200 so that you can participate in high level group content and be worth your slot. This number is without buffs, food or other increase's because those increase's will be then be determined on a content and situational basis.

There needs to be a general standard so you don't end up wasting potential buffs covering for one person or another.

Which is where those accuracy toggles come in. Wow, that was hard.

Someone at 1080 acc won't have acc toggles. They probably won't even know how to write gearswap lua's and just be borrowing from someone else.

Anyhow regardless of how much you want to pick at it, absolutely nobody cares how much damage someone does with trusts on easy content. They can do whatever they want, gear however they want and nobody will care, so we don't really need to discuss it.

My low accuracy NIN set barely breaks 1100 and my sets go all the way up to 1300. Our pre food/pre buff baseline for WoC/T4 Reisenjima is 1250. Not that I ever use NIN for that content, but I can actually hit that number in my lowest accuracy swap because of vorseals. When I do Omen, I start out in my lowest set and eventually end up in my second to highest set.

There's no reason not to have a low accuracy set. You can't predict what buffs you'll have and the accuracy you'll end up needing from your gear. If you don't have a lot of swaps (including a low accuracy set with pieces like Ainia/Dedition/etc.) then you're cutting yourself short. How other people tend to gear themselves has nothing to do with this.

Without critical hit damage gear, critical hits are a relatively minor damage increase at capped Ratio (4.5/3.5 for Monk~=1.29).

Lets round that up and say that a critical hit is +30% damage. If you had a base 25% crit rate, which isn't unreasonable for VS, then...

Base: 1.3*.25+.75 = 1.075

+4% Crit rate: 1.3*.29+.71 = 1.087
+4% Crit damage: 1.3*1.04*.25+.75 = 1.088


I haven't done the math for Victory Smite in particular, but for Evisceration (very similar) even on DNC (which has crit damage traits), crit damage almost always beats crit rate in equal amounts.

I feel people are entirely missing the point...

Those numbers are where you need to be so that a single set of buffs / debuffs covers everyone. 1100 is the lowest you can be and still participate in 128~130 content which is where the gear ladder really starts and CP starts becoming viable. Anything under 1100 simply doesn't matter anymore. You can easily go do Delve, Skirmish or various low level Escha NM's, but those aren't important in the grand scheme of things. Baselines are extremely important when determining buff load outs and they range from 1100 to over 1200, though much higher then that and you need to rethink your buff situation.

There is no group content that will involve gear under 1100 base accuracy and not have that person nerfing everyone's damage in the process. Lets take Frailty vs Torpor as an example.

900 Skill Dunna Torpor = -75 evasion (functionally same as +75 accuracy).
900 Skill Dunna Frailty = 28.3% defense down.

Now 28.3% defense down is monstrous once you stack it with something as simple as Dia II's 10% down. This is because defense down scales the same was haste does, increasing returns. 38.3% defense down is a 62% increase in attack. Use BoG or Bolster and it gets really silly, over 100% increase.

Now if there were two melee's and one was at 1100 base or over and the other under 1100, using Torpor to "compensate" would just be a waste and bring down the party. Instead that other DD needs to bring their acc to approximately the same level as the first one so that optimal buffs can be used. And since all the different jobs have different gear, different weapons and different augments, there needs to be a set standard otherwise the buff situation gets ridiculous. That standard is 1100 for ~CL130 and 1200 for things around ~CL140. Things under 130 we simply don't bother optimizing buffs for because they die incredibly fast anyway. It's like trying to optimize for level 99 content, possible yet a giant waste of effort.

Which leads me to ask, what exactly are people wanting to bring MNK to again? I'm in the process of trying to make it work at CL135 with the goal of it working at CL140 or above. Won't have Godhands anytime soon though, gotta do other things first.

Ambuscade Vol2 and only for people that don't have Cor or SMN for Vol 1 basically.

Nothing else.

The original question I was replying to, which I quoted in my initial response, was about whether any of the Mummu+1 gear was good for Victory Smite. But of course, you didn't pay attention to that and just wanted to jump into a fight based on a somewhat out of context reply.


Yeah, I *was* comparing on a piece by piece level, literally giving slot by slot comparisons to the Mummu+1 gear that was specifically being discussed with some other easily obtain options that may trump it, in the context of Victory Smite.

And yes, overall accuracy in the context of an entire set matters. Obviously. Which is why you can get away with using one piece that has some deficiencies (like a lack of accuracy) that brings a lot of other useful benefits (like, say, 20 more STR on a heavily STR modded WS) and can be made up for elsewhere.


Losing 40 accuracy doesn't mean a 20% decrease in hit rate if you're still capping accuracy anyway (and in such a case, a large amount of attribute for a heavily stat modded WS sure will make a significant difference). You're still gonna be at acc cap on stuff most people are currently bringing MNKs to, like Ambuscade. That being said, it's certainly reasonable to have sets for a variety of circumstances (like the well laid out OP gear guide in this very topic), and most GOOD players do that.

And while it's true most people are not using MNK on content more meaningful than Ambuscade:

1) I still want people who optimize for stuff like Ambuscade. When I'm spamming a fight 20 times, yeah, it DOES matter if you're overdoing accuracy at the expense of power and making fights take longer. That adds up, and I want my points!

2) To be fair, I wouldn't totally sleep on MNK as potentially viable for harder content. I'm skeptical it will ever be widely used on on difficult Reisenjima content, but it does seem like the job could be used in something like Omen. That's a situation where (like Snaps said about NIN), you can go in the same event from preferring a relatively low acc set on the initial floors to needing extremely high acc on bosses. Mantra is nice, saving additional boosts like Focus/Aggressor until needed is a help, etc.

Advocating against a "lowest acc" set is pretty much one of the worst arguments I have ever seen on this website. The term itself is relative to your other sets, not relative to content. I can cap in "low acc" on WoC and Kirin provided I have the correct buffs, or I can barely cap on T1 Reisenjima depending on the buffs. It's literally dependent on what buffs you have and nothing else.

That was you getting defensive and swinging at people.

This guy isn't taking it seriously


When gearing for TP / WS sets your always forced to make compromises, otherwise you end up 80~100 accuracy less and just whiff hits. Using the gear you recommended above (I actually have it all plus a few HQ pieces and extremely well augmented herc) I ended up slightly over 1030 base accuracy which is ridiculously, stupidly low. That's "please drop this guy because he's an embarrassment" low. By swapping in pieces with lower STR but higher accuracy I was able to get my accuracy to the 1080~1100 mark on both TP and VS/SS sets. The Ambuscade Legs + Feet are the important pieces as they carry a ***ton of accuracy and crit when enables you to stuff more STR/Multi-Attack/Crit into the other slots.

I see that mentality every time I get some PUG DD, they stuff things like STR while blatantly ignoring huge chunks of accuracy, because people like you tell them to, and whiff hard on extremely easy stuff like VD2 Ambuscade.

How the hell do the DRK's, historically the "all or nothing" group taking accuracy seriously while the MNK's, who traditionally have multi-hit WS's are "bleh doesn't matter anyway".

And yes losing 40 accuracy is a 20% difference when your already that low to begin with. I mean are you guys just screwing around as MNK/DNC on some weak *** mobs or something, with zero effort into doing CL135 or higher?

Yeah, most people ARE using MNK on stuff that's not 135 or higher. It's pretty obvious that if you are going attempt to use MNK on the highest level content, it will require appropriately high accuracy from some combination of acc buffs, food, strong acc gear. Anybody who's actually using MNK for that sort of thing, please share - would be interesting to hear about it, because I sure as hell am not seeing or hearing people using MNKs for that sort of stuff.

In any case, I still don't see where any of the Mummu+1 gear is that great in a VS set (which, again, was the original thing being discussed, not the "loading up on accuracy is important sometimes guys!" tangent that it turned into). For low acc situations like Ambuscade, there are better choices. For high acc 135+ situations, there are better choices (augmented herculean stuff that people probably already have, some NQ/HQ abjurations, some of the new AF once people get those - like the AF+3 head/body/hands in particular). It's solid enough gear to be respectable, but it's not replacing previous BiS choices.

Anyway, Merry Christmas!