IiPunch - Monk Guide

I'm certainly not following the main point he's trying to make. For Cataclysm, I use the following.


I'm sure some improvements could be made. I just slapped together whatever gear I had from playing other jobs. For weapon I'm using Reikikon.

That's exactly the items I had in mind actually, minus the staff. I have that on my mule along with an Alber or Bloodrain, so that's cool. Thanks

Would not recommend doing this. If you can get from there to here you have my respect.

Would, exalted staff+1 > reikikon?

18 WSD

I can't eyeball that and tell explicitly. Reikikon has Magic Damage, MAB, and a huge amount of INT, so for Cataclysm, it's a very good staff. 18 WSD probably wins out regardless, but its a matter of 18 WSD vs 30MAB, +17 modifier, and 226 magic damage for a magical WS.

Weapon vs weapon, Reikikon is better. That magic damage is really beefy.

Diminishing returns and higher WSC values might throw that out the window though.

Monk can hit +50% WSD quite easily with herc, cape, and exalted +1. Someone needs to spreadsheet all of that because I'm thinking of forming a MNK aoe CP party. Spam dat Cataclysm!

What buffs? I tried this awhile back using a similar set with both raetic +1 and exalted +1 and didn't get nearly as good results.

After some napkin math, I can't see Exalted beating Rekikon, at all.

This is obviously hugely relevant information that isn't being provided. Since there is no way to do Kin without doing Floors 1-4, even if we all just go with MNK/NIN being ~3min faster on the boss, to use Ruau's comparison to his RUN/SAM setup, if it takes 3min+ longer to GET to Kin (assuming same midboss) you've kind of destroyed the entire reason for using the MNK setup for Kin.*

The potentially more intriguing part to me is actually whether the MNK NIN setup makes some of the Omen midbosses significantly faster - particularly Thinker and Craver. If so, this would also have some applicability to other Omen runs, excluding Kei for obvious reasons.

*Unless, of course, you're only using MNK for safety/survival and people are dying and losing to Kin without MNK. Which nobody is saying here (and Ruau's RUN SAM Kin times were all wins too).


Apologies if you already said this and I just missed it in the many pages of discussion, but did your SAM RUN also have good Subtle Blow sets on? It's very relevant to the comparison; if Subtle Blow matters enough to affect kill speed in a gimmick fight like Kin, we need to be sure the other group being compared is also taking advantage of whatever Subtle Blow they reasonably can. Might be some changes from typical TP sets for those jobs, but if Subtle Blow is truly important for a specific fight it stands to reason that swaps could be worthwhile.

SAM SB+55 (or SB+65 with Dagon) is not all that hard to hit in gear alone, with Kendatsuba gear helping a ton.

RUN can potentially get SB+60 (SBII+10 from Sherida/Niqmaduu), though relies a bit more on Auspice to stay capped. Still has a good bit of SB through gear alone though, with Sherida/Niq plus other stuff like Adhemar Bonnet +1 (8), Herc hands/feet (5/6), Chirich/+1 (7/10), Bathy Choker +1 (11), etc..

Auspice getting dispelled (e.g., via Interference) could matter a little bit more to non-MNK NIN setup who aren't capping SB in gear/traits alone. Though to be fair, for Kin that's only a concern in the last 25% of the fight.


To be clear, I'm not bashing Ruau for posting stats of a combination of jobs that he used. It's still nice to see the information.

But thinking critically here... is MNK NIN really that great of a combination? NIN can easily cap Subtle Blow at 50 (with no Subtle Blow II access), but wouldn't a lot of other DDs at SB+50 or greater be just as good, if not better, for that MNK partner role? In some ways it pains me to say that, because I love NIN (and most of the time my attitude is "I'm using NIN anyway cuz I like it"), but I can't ignore logic...

Option A: use a different 2nd job to pair with your MNK. As was discussed several pages ago, it's not hard to get SB+50 on a lot of jobs, with some like SAM WAR DRG even getting significant Subtle Blow II gear to exceed the 50 cap. If those jobs can do more damage than the Ninja, aren't they probably a better second choice to pair with a MNK?

SC compatibility is also a consideration on a lot of fights (but not Kin, another reason that's a very one-of-a-kind scenario). NIN and MNK do OK with Victory Smite and Blade: Shun, though you're probably going to get even better results with a lot of other MNK partners (WAR Upheaval, SAM Fudo, etc.)

Option B: use two MNKs. Both can hit SB+75 and they can rotate Penance, addressing the apparent desire from everyone here to minimize TP feed. This is clearly the lest TP-feedy setup. As long as Light SCs are a viable option (again, not the case for Kin but it's certainly a point that would apply to most mobs), it's also very easy to use MNK x2 for a lot of SCs. Aside from just the simple 2-step VS->VS light, you can mix in Shijin Spiral with Godhands for 3+ step SCs, Radiance, etc.

You do still have to deal with somewhat hampered DPS due to the general weakness of H2H WS, which is obviously the biggest downside to MNK x2. But perhaps the superior TP reduction and ease of SCing add enough benefit for it to be a worthwhile trade-off.


People have shown how much Subtle Blow II reduces mob TP moves, but not that it's especially "useful" in most situations. The one mob people are discussing in detail has a very specific TP-move gimmick which obviously can't be treated as a generalization. If you're trying to optimize for Kin farming... congratulations, MNK seems to be a contender!

I'm not discounting the possibility that future content might include similar gimmicks to Kin that align with MNK's TP reduction ability. Maybe there are even some other good examples out there NOW that people aren't talking about. If that's the case, highlighting them would be a hell of a lot more of a compelling case for MNK than a theoretical discussion of "using MNKs results in X less mob TP moves over a Y minute fight". That's nice and all, but who the f cares if your white mage can cure people with ease in either case...

Funny how this thread was dead for weeks and got revive threw petty arguments.

Um, excuse me... August 3, 2018 was the one year anniversary of the update that MADE MNK GREAT AGAIN. Totally reasonable that it heated back up in remembrance of the life changing update.

There's a bunch, people are just not reading comments.


There are several Ambuscade fights in the past that have had some pretty stupid gimmicky TP moves, where, having a MNK TP-soft-setup might have proved more effective. I recall that Dullahan which overheated if attacked at the wrong time. Instances where melee would see the message, turn, and almost instantly wipe because multi-attack from the 2-3 DD caused the quick TP gain and subsequent explosion. Or Noahito move he does under 25%. Or Miasma move from the Mamool where he starts counting down to full Mijin Gakure the entire zone (I don't recall if this was random or HP triggered). There was a frog ambuscade where he used the hammer move if certain buffs were on; . I would be interested in seeing if 2 MNK + SMN mew/penance strat could make that melee-efficient.

I mean, there's potentially a ton of possibilities you could apply the whole MNK Subtle Blow experiment to, but you have to stop thinking "That's slower, so not effective". The general principle of the strategy applies to every fight where you would want to avoid those crappy TP moves, or at least prolong them for certain periods of time.

Also on this:


This is really a bad example to use when it comes to the "How much time did it take" argument, because Random Omen Objectives. The Monks could have gotten free-floors, or kill 1, or kill all, or kill trans...you see where this is going. The floor objectives are randomly chosen, and you're never going to get a true comparison of the two. The entire run-speed would always vary; sometimes favoring the sam group, sometimes favoring the mnk group. I feel like this argument is nothing more than a deflection to take away from the whole "MNK was better in this instance" point being made. But if you really want to play devil's advocate...MNK and RUN have comparable cleaving abilities in Omen between Fell Cleave + Cataclysm, so the argument of "how long did floors 1-4 take" really does not hold much weight in the grand scheme. The only real comparison that can be equated is at the Boss level.

Holy ***that was a year ago, woah.

this....

I mean, 7 pages of ***fest is probably painful to read, but IMO its more civil to post questions if nobody else has post the same thing.

Anza, you do know that most questions that you've asked, has already been asked by DirectX, and answered by more than one person.

But I'll go through everything again since at least I trust you being more logical and less emo in a discussion than another guy.


The original argument being made, is to find out if SBII really affects actual clear speed on Kin, and if shorter fight time from jobs with less SB results lower total TP move.

It's not about best job for Omen.

Kin was just chosen to be the test subject because it's one NM that has design mechanics benefits SB. If you choose an NM without design mechanics that benefits SB, then you may as well don't do the test beause we all already know that MNK has the lowest dps ceiling and will probably not make a difference in kill speed.

Since the entire argument is about the effect of SB, then it's perfectly reasonable to leave out F 1 to 4 in omen because they are not relevant to the discussion.



Whether it's useful or not, you'll have to let the community decide, based on the data provided.

Those who already has mnk geared, it's a nice option to use if they run into mobs with crippling TP move prolonging the kill speed. Those without MNK geared, they probably wouldn't gear MNK just for it.

nobody here is arguing everyone should now drop 200m worth of gear on mnk, or bring the job to everything. It's just an option, nothing more and nothing less.


Back to point 1, this discussion nor the purpose of video isn't to promote the best Kin setup for Omen. It's mean to demonstrate how SB would make a difference with more visual evidence.

It doesn't matter if you go MNK MNK, MNK RUN, MNK COR, MNK BLU, MNK NIN with capped sb build. As long as TP move is reduced and kill speed increased as the result, then the video already made it's point.

So I really don't understand why everyone got super focus on the job itself, and ignore the original purpose of the discussion.


This is a reasonable question and relevant to the discussion, I'll leave Rua to ans this.



People posted one video to prove SB made a difference, which results pages and pages of ***fest. At this point I wonder if anyone would bother to create even more video to demonstrate the potential of SB.

Use MNK if you wish, if you don't wish to use it then just don't. In the end of day, in an era that every DDs are close enough for DPS people would choose whatever jobs they have geared for anyways.

But calling this video isn't making any difference is pretty disrespectful of tester's time imo. It already showed quite a bit of essential information about SB in practice to theorycraft setups, and in FFXI, we usually theorycraft first(based on the info that we have), then come up with solutions.

And THAT is the whole point of this video. People questioned SB, a video was posted to prove SB made a difference in real scenerios. Everything else about optimal omen DD job setups, whether MNK will be bandwagon or not, 200m worth of gil to gear mnk, if mnk can pull and cleave, is not the point.

I was at the Subtle Blow cap on RUN (I show Sword Sleight in the video) and was actually at 60% (Niqmaddu and Sherida). As far as I know the SAM wasn't using any Subtle Blow.

A test I will do sometime is to use NIN/MNK and one of WAR/DRK/SAM with a Subtle Blow set (it's not that hard to make, especially since Samurai Roll will recover lost Store TP). DRK especially, as Soul Enslavement rotated in when Penance falls will completely shut down anything.

OK, but the point still remains that in order for the MNK/Subtle Blow strategy to really make sense to use, you have to have TP moves that are either:

(a) so disruptive that their frequency without heavy Subtle Blow will cause potential deaths or recovery issues that your backline can't handle
- this is often more rooted in your backline players being mediocre, but I accept that is sometimes a concern people run into
- RNG strat (or BLM SCH if magic damage is viable) doing much safer damage from a distance is likely a significantly better way to deal with this kind of "safety" problem in almost every case. Or, potentially a SMN Mewing Lullaby setup for something that's really SO deadly it will kill people.

(b) slow things down so much that reducing them leads to faster kills even with a 'lower dps' DD job like MNK.
- This is the Kin example (less chance of healing the mob since it does fewer TP moves), or some other potential gimmicky TP move fights like the occasional Ambuscade.

My point is not that we shouldn't consider MNK might have uses for those very specific kinds of fights, but I do think those are exceedingly rare. Thus, I totally agree with people like DirectX who think it's very unlikely to result in widespread MNK use (for anything other than bringing MNK "just because") since the situations are really uncommon.


LOL yes. I can't say I've processed every word when there were like 5 pages worth of posts yesterday, may well have said some things that were already addressed.


This is a reasonable take. It's one legitimate way (of multiple options) to deal with a particular situation if you happen to have the MNK/Subtle Blow resources available. I just don't think it's a very common situation.

While it's always subjective based on how well a particular group can deal with TP moves (healers on the ball, is Yagrush available and helpful, etc.), I also have a feeling that even when Subtle Blow matters, there is a good chance that using ANY DDs with capped Subtle Blow is sufficient to make it easy enough to deal with, without needing to use the *best* Subtle Blow/Penance job, MNK. I'm sure that the party with a good SAM WAR can also ease the burden a bit by intentionally gearing for Subtle Blow, even if not to MNK levels - and that seems likely to be "enough" for most groups (and probably better DPS for most comparisons of players with similar skill/gear quality).


It does matter to me a bit though in that I'm trying to move past the discussion of just "is there a potentially viable use for Subtle Blow". For argument's sake, I'm accepting that it might be useful sometimes. So if that's the case, I am trying to help people think about how to better optimize that kind of setup. This should be something pro-SB pro-MNK people would want to do, and most aren't really discussing it.

I honestly don't think that MNK NIN make a very good pair, despite NIN being cited many times in this thread by Ruau, Buukki, and others. Aside from NIN easily self-capping SB, it has no big advantages in a low TP feed setup over other melees. No Subtle Blow II, lower DPS ceiling than other melee jobs, probably worse SC synergy with MNK than something like a WAR or SAM.

MNK and MNK? Seems legit.
MNK and [WAR or SAM or DRG or...]? Seems legit.
MNK and NIN? Eh, probably worse than either of the above two.


I'm not upset about one video, and I appreciate the effort. I just think that Kin is such a super-specific case that it's a particularly poor mob to use as an example that teaches much that can be applied generally. It's more an example specifically about Kin and that very rare type of mechanic (healing during TP moves).

Is it possible that sort of mechanic comes up again in Ambuscade or other future content? Sure, but I'd kinda expect it will continue to be quite rare.

you should, not saying it's wrong to ask any of your questions. But you have to read the vibe. If the question has been asked by another guy and ended with 10 pages of personal attack, blisting, mod cleaning up posts, then the exact same question got asked again by another person. It just brought up the bad memory and seem like the discussion will never end. Because god knows if another guy will pop after another 5 pages asking the exact same question again.



His point was already addressed and agreed by others 12345678 pages ago:


Then it got brought up again, and again, and again, and again. It should end already, for real.



Nobody here is making claim of "MNK will be next wave of bandwagon." I don't understand why people's immediate reaction is "But it will not result in widespread MNK use".

And not just once, or twice, or 5 times. But way more than that.

Everyone already know we aren't going drop 200m to gear MNK for omen. No need to keep saying it over and over.



The key point of discussion is mostly b) but not a). So I'm not going to address a) as for now.

Comeatmebro already addressed b) pages ago. TP move isn't just about healing Kin, but there are also TP move that cause stun, hate reset, amnesia which all lose DPS. So the potential use of SB can be applied on more than just Kin and it's mechanics, but many other NM as well.

Kin is just chosen to be a target of the video, but the same principle can be applied on other NMs.

I highly suggest you read the original argument and all the answers to DirectX, minus the personal attack and ***postings, many points made a lot of sense. No point to repeat the same question over and over and over.


This question is also addressed by me, kind of. I posted a COR/NIN 50 SB TP set immediately after someone questioned another job's ability capping SB, and that capped SB TP set loses 0.6 DPS at capped attack/acc/fstr situation over normal TP set.

So yes, you are correct that NIN isn't the only job that can cap SB easy while losing minmium DPS. If COR can then I assume most other jobs can too.

Once again, I really suggest you go back and read what was posted. There ARE some relevant and valuable information buried deep in waves of DirectX ***posts and personal attacks.

I'm not sure how to fix monk but complaining about it on FFXIAH surely is the right method to fix it.

In fact I'm going to e-mail all 211 pages of this expert analysis to SE headquarters. I'll get back to you when they summarize their findings.

I think Ninja's addition to the discussion is that it can fill in as a tank, SB job (and lose nothing), and dps. It pairs very well with monk, actually, if there's TP moves and hits you don't want your boxer taking. The job isn't spectacular for SB in and of itself, but if you're employing a lowman strategy or just trying to minimize healing, NIN is absolutely a great pair with MNK. You can just go MNK x2 for sure, but that's going to be more healing. NIN just makes it a bit cleaner, without making any sacrifices to gear (NIN's BIS set basically caps SB without even trying).

I don't really mess with spreadsheets much, but I modified my Cataclysm set tonight before maintenance and came up with something like this from what I had on hand so i'll test it tomorrow after work if i remember (will also test with Raetic +1 because these are the only 2 staff options I currently have):

Will also test with regal cor and non-idris geo for buffs.

ItemSet 360450

I did make a cape just for it from mats I had on hand and have INT +20, macc/mdmg +20, wsdmg +10. body/hands capped augments, legs are INT +10, macc/mab ~30, wsdmg +2, and feet macc/mab ~30

I don't remember but I was probably pretty stacked. To get the one shot, I think you only need Malaise.

Thanks for the input! I'm going to do some testing tomorrow if I've got time.

Yeah I cap easily without Myoshu and Auspice in my NIN TP sets. Which REALLY makes me wish they turned Myoshu: Ichi into Subtle Blow II (or did that through a Ni version of the spell), cuz as-is the spell is practically worthless to me (and most decently geared endgame NINs).

Still kinda feel like if you're going the low TP feed route, pairing 1 MNK with something like a Subtle Blow 50~65 SAM or WAR is gonna help significantly speed up the fight versus a MNK NIN pair. I just can't see myself going for NIN as an "optimal" choice for that kind of strategy unless Migawari or Utsusemi's defensive benefits are really important for a particular fight. And I love NIN.


I mean... I've scanned all of it and thought I pretty much had the gist of the conversation, but I'm not going to pore over 7 pages of bickering that showed up in the course of a day and a half like I'm studying for an exam. Waste of time, and if there's a point that's really that vital that somehow got buried, I'm sure someone can summarize.

Should I invest in a Moonlight Nodowa and Ken head/body +1? I quit about a year ago and haven't upgraded my MNK gear since then.

What MNK relic is good?
Preliminarily : Looks like feet don't matter vs. +1. Hands are still a Chakra macro piece and are slightly better than +1. Body is still a macro piece and not functionally better than +1. Legs are higher Acc Bhikku Hose +1. Head is cool for Howling Fist maybe?



Also, I heard that MNK is the best for every event all the time and that Subtle Blow II is the most important job trait to stack. Is that true?

Moonlight/Kenda: Yes

Relic: Head for pretty much most WS that aren't WS since all of their ftp is on the first hit.

Subtle Blow II: Yes

DNC.

The relic body is kinda cool for DT