IiPunch - Monk Guide

Depends on content, as always. Bhikku is for more high end, Sortie/Ody, stuff. Can get away with other things for lower tier content.

He said that because you asked if they were up to date. +4 came out last month/month before and nothings been added since. Bout as up to date as can be.

I wouldnt full time a set of anything for both tp/ws, its a mix gear game, also if reddit discord is like their pages your milage is gonna vary a whole lot on actual advice.

Ws sets are about as good as it gets on that page as far as raw dmg goes, tp is more debateable in regards to being defensive but is designed to get you to 1k TP the fastest. For just about all of the set pages by kastra that'll be the case theyre simmed to give the best result but forego being super defensive which can be just as important on sortie basement bosses or v20/v25 odyssey bosses, even smaller cases like Ody C or Dyna W3 get a lot of benefit of a sturdier set, so youll have to decide where those places are and shift stuff accordingly(like limiting how much glass is in the Vsmite set for example)



Usual DD solo setup: ulmia/joachim/healer/rdm/sylvie or qultada. Sounds like you need to work on your WS sets though or fight lower level apex as 10k is really poor, you should be able to 3 step most of a mobs HP away with either shijin > Vsmite > vsmite or asuran > howling/tornado kick > vsmite depending on what buffs are up. Relying on trusts to sc is generally not great, especially as you go up to higher level apex where their accuracy is garbage, only DD trusts i ever consider using is shanII, or mayakov for haste samba

King of hearts is the best possible rdm for apex, because it opens with Dia3. Then Sylvie and Qultada. Then Ulmia, Joachim and healer.

only reason i kept it to just rdm as they all have some minor quirk that can be annoying, king will -aga often on mnk for example as its all going to be light based, so thats a potential link issue/mp drain(can just resummon though) koru is slow to dia3 sometimes and can be slow to haste II as well just cause he spends a lot of time on other spells, and arc1 will do great at keeping haste II going but she doesnt dia at all, and she also has the chance of doing her own aoe. If you have a camp that isnt ontop of other mobs kings not really much of an issue

End of the day the most annoying part of using trusts will be keeping capped haste going, as brds will eventually do something to push them into ballad/paeon, or haste II gets "blocked" cause of Haste I. Least thats always my big annoyance with solo cp/ml grinding

I consider KoH vs Koru situational. KoH opens with Dia and his Haste lasts longer, but as Nariont mentioned, he nukes and melees too. Koru may be slower and have less enhancing duration potency, and yes he will prioritize Dia less than his other functions, but he doesn't ever nuke or melee, which leads to less links if you ever make fusion/light, and his AI logic heals you faster than KoH will. Qultada will already annoyingly get in the way as well, so adding more melee can slow your kill speed down a bit unless they're helpful ones like Matsui-P or AAGK.

Anyways, Nariont and Simon are spot on with their trust breakdown. You need capped haste (however you accomplish that), rolls from Qultada, and Sylvie would be a huge plus. My guess is you don't have Ygnas or Monberaux at this point, but I've found you don't always need a healer. You can even use a trust tank as your fifth option (AAEV) for heals. They might not hold hate very long, but they'll get initial threat and mitigate damage long enough for you to get TP to start your DPS rotation. Another option is ignoring the healer trust and just relying on Sylvie/Joachim/Koru for heals (and add Excenmille (S)), but that might be a more experienced route to take if you have the appropriate gear sets and are into dismissing trusts after you get the buffs you need. I think a healer trust like Cherukiki would be ideal for the 5 trust option, assuming you're Sylvie UC (can't understand why anyone isn't Sylvie at this point, she's miles ahead of everyone else).

Koru also provides distract2, not very useful later on but it can be nice for when youre starting out

You really need to start applying critical thinking skills instead of just randomly bouncing off of every idea the last person said to you. If someone says some off-the-wall nonsense, you should try to figure out WHY they said it. Compare the piece you were using to the piece they've suggested, and then figure out what the differences are and why they (or the guide) has the one they picked and not the one you have.


This was pointed out by someone else but just to hear it from the cow's mouth, yes...I pointed out it has relic+4 in it because that gear is 2 months old. The idea that a guide with THE LATEST GEAR RELEASED IN FFXI in it being outdated is absurd. This guide was updated, at most, 2 months ago. At that time we know for a fact that this person had access to every piece of gear in the game, because nothing has come out since then. It's logically impossible to think this guide is outdated. I was trying to point out the absurdity of your question.


You should try applying logic to his equipment choices. If he's wearing 5/5 Empy+3 for TPing and WSing, he's a moron. If you try logically thinking about why he would pick this gear for these sets, you'll quickly realize that it doesn't make sense, and he's a smooth brained idiot. Having a prime weapon doesn't mean you're smart necessarily. See also: argument from authority. Again...you really need to evaluate their claims based on the game mechanics and the way stats work, not based on how smart or accomplished they seem. Use your brain, to think.

You've posted on probably 10 different job threads by now, always with the same attitude/questions. Your immediate reaction to playing a job seems to be:
1.) Ask if the guide is up to date
2.) Buy/acquire everything in the guide and blindly follow it

Which is a fair strategy (though a bit annoying) most of the time, since the job/gearing guides are mostly up-to-date and helpful, but...it really doesn't develop any kind of autonomy, help you understand the nuance of different situations, or develop any "soft skills" in FFXI.

I would again encourage you to try to actually research and understand the way the game works rather than just following templates and luas. Try to actually CONSUME the guides rather than just copy them into your lua.

good advice, although completely unsolicited. not everyone wants to learn everything, especially in FFXI where the game doesn't help you much at all. either the dots will eventually connect for them or they won't, but if them asking the same questions for every job annoys you, just ignore it.

I see enthusiasm for trying new jobs and at least some desire to understand gearing choices. gotta start somewhere.

I would note that the bg guides are based on the python sim and use specific criteria for buffs as well as a metric for tp sets that can be easily misunderstood. start there if you're interested in learning more, then you can generate your own sets for many occasions. in fact, if you really want to learn, skip guides altogether, learn how to use the sim and tailor it to your needs.

It could be argued that coming to a forum and asking questions about how to play the game is asking for advice, but I guess the format of the advice isn't what he was looking for. Unfortunately if you don't know how to play the game, it's hard to predict what kind of advice you need, so I don't put too much weight on the types of questions he wants answered.

See: what WS should I be spamming?

You can answer this question, but it's doing a disservice. Explaining why it's a dumb question is much more valuable to a clueless player than saying "it's howling fist" and letting them continue taking 12 HF to kill an eruca.

Thanks, I agree with a lot of what you said about critical thinking, but I think you're being a little too judgemental.

I wouldn't have lasted as a RDM main this long if I was just going with whatever and not experimenting / learning things by reading and trying it out on my own. I think I played around with COR a few times and figured out a few solo tricks I won't ever find in guides because 1) people don't usually make too many guides on soloing because there's no need to, and 2) COR is more of a group support role.

Anyhow, with me comparing with an LS friend with 5/5 bhikku, it was because they mentioned doing 40k VS while I was doing around 20k if lucky with almost close to the same gear shown in the BGWiki gearsets page.

Also, with MNK specifically I've found it's difficult to accurately apply critical thinking because the job isn't traditionally 'tp hard and WS hard', there's a lot of multihit/auto-attacking involved with the job, and finding the perfect balance of crit/multihit/storetp, etc, isn't always easy to compare across different builds whereas I could comfortably build my own dualwield sets for dancer because it's easy hitting the cap based on the haste amount I'll have as well as finding the balance with store tp and multi-attack.

Also I took the relic+4 comment sarcastically because so far they've been macro pieces, and I hadn't imagined seeing it on a WS set, I thought you were being sarcastic in a 'why would you trust that page if they're following relics' because unfortunately that's kind of the response everybody gives about monk gearing, usually with other jobs the answer is very clear.

'Blindly follow it' isn't something I agree with. I cannot acquire things at all as you say which is exactly why I ask, sometimes you've got to just try things out to see how it works and I won't just spend a few millions on something just to say 'nah it didn't work' (well, I still do for fun but it's not feasible longterm), I come to you all for advice specifically because you're all experienced and can point me towards the right direction because it seems like you all did your research already.

None of my LUAs are copy/pastes either, in fact, I steal the most basic ones I can find and build it up from there based on how I wanna play, and if I realise that 'oh, I've come to a point where I need more DT on my TP build for specific encounters' I'll add a mode and allow myself to switch to a new DT mode if I need to. I get rather overwhelmed jumping into top-notch LUAs with billions of combined sets and modes that I won't be able to use efficiently, let alone fill in the gearsets with gear I don't have.

As for spamming WS, I'm generally SCing a single mob if its HP is high and I don't have others to coordinate SCs with. In many occasions (or at current time) with my TP sets, I can't always successfully SC even 2 steps unless multihits come lucky, even with a bard and haste 2 and gear capped haste so sometimes it does come down to me finding spamming a single WS works well, which is why I asked. Me asking such a question isn't about me believing it's the best thing to do, it's simply asking for an answer to the question so when I have nothing better to do, I can switch to spamming it. I also asked before a few times so I could get an idea of how buffs affect WS so I can learn what's useful in X or Y situations, I'm not sure what else that is if it isn't trying to learn.

Anyway I think I'll take a step back from everything for a bit, just had a crap week in the game and I'm not feeling like discussing this further either.

don't take anything personally, maletaru knows his stuff but can be a bit harsh with word choice if you aren't familiar with his posts.

It's more similar than you think, the goal for all jobs minus a few when using empyrean is getting TP fast(WAR/THF can make some DA/TA dmg swaps to push their white dmg up without much of a sacrifice elsewhere), the white dmg sacrifices you could make are often at the cost of getting TP slower and it not equaling out. for example one might think tping in af boots under footwork would be cool, +10 kick rate, +120 kick dmg, sounds sweet. Loses to a simple pair of aug'd herc boots overall, or tate+1 or malignance for more meva/dt.

Same for emp body and impetus, though this is a bit more hazy as it is a decent dps boost but also lacks defenses so the argument can be made to just wear malig, get more tp/hit and have better defenses.

Ultimately the goal in the TP set is the same as nin/dnc/rdm, cap your martial arts needed(which varies based on your total haste, like DW) and stack MA/STP within whatever defensive parameters you feel is needed which varies by content, if it has boosted crit rate/dmg on it as a side stat, neato

Super unpopular opinion but I'm gonna fire away because it's a peeve of mine: I really don't think players who barely have a grasp of a job's core fundamentals, game mechanics, or can't gear themselves out of a paper bag without constantly asking "what should i be wearing for [insert situation]" should even touch a sim, because they're probably not going to apply the proper parameters to it in the first place. I think its a telling sign that you should play the game more and learn exactly how a specific job or ability works, learn what situations you need a specific set for, and create your own sets from scratch by applying some basic common sense.

I get that many people don't know how every single thing works, so a sim is a great starting point, but I have seen far too many instances where people wear certain stuff, and when asked why they do it (they didn't apply any human thought behind it), they say sim said this is BIS. Perfect case is in the DRK thread the other day, where discussion was glass cannon sets or just full sakpata. Someone mentioned sim shows like 3% difference in dps, but someone would see that and say "SEE, MY QA VALOROUS GEAR DOES WIN, THATS WHY I WEAR IT IN". No consideration to anything defensive. It's so bad. I still remember doing a Bumba V25 with a DRG who kept dying in his Jump set. Upon investigation, it was a bunch of Valorous QA/STP nonsense. I'm sure the "math" said it was the best TP return among all his gear, but the decision was bad. I agree with Maletaru's point in that players need to apply some critical thinking when it comes to gearing; it's really not that hard to just think for a minute.

I think sims are super useful for people to get general gearing ideas on what they can wear, but they should have the final say at the end of it instead of blindly taking the suggested set with zero consideration to other factors.

well said. it is a good learning tool but does assume a higher level of general knowledge and using improper settings can lead to bad output data, for sure. I think the interactive nature of being able to change buffs and gear and immediately see results is extremely powerful once you know what you want from it.

Tbh your two examples are pretty bad ones. Both of those items should be in your tp set 100% during footwork and impetus respectively. Af feet full timed in tp set imo. In general MNK has issue with capping gear haste when you are using bhikku legs and af feet are one of the few feet options with 4%haste and definitely the overall best ones by far if you care for some semi decent meva.
Empy body during Impetus is so much dps boost that any loss in tp speed doesn't matter unless you are in scenario where self skillchaining some 4 or 5 step is the most important thing to do. Eventually maybe also in scenario where you 3 steps something and that 3 steps overkill, but you can't push to 2 step finishing the kob even with more white damage, so you still need to do 3 step. Then doing that 3 step ASAP is best and tp speed is bis.
Vsmite damage will be very different with and without Impetus and Focus and during Impetus it will also depend on how many stacks of Impetus you have and multi attack proc. With buffs it can hit anywhere from 40 to 99k

This happens whether people use sims or not.

Literally any excuse under the sun to not wear Sakpata and always an excuse to wear some Escha-level gear.

But it's 2% moar dps-ing! Gotta dps! What's that, I can't WS while I'm dead? Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

People will literally ask "What TP set should I wear", get told 4/5 Sakpata or some other similar tier set and some empy by majority of people, and then turn around and go "Great, I can wear 1/5 Sakpata and fill the rest with dark matter augments then".

Most the time it seems people are looking for validation as to why their pre-existing choice of trash TP gear is in fact, okay to use, rather than advice on what they should be using.

imo gear priority for non-main Mnk starting fresh at 0-100 JP would be Ambu>Mpaca/Malignance/Nyame, Other H2H>God Hands and accessories.

after 500jp, then people can decide if they want to sink more money and time into the job.

Full timing Bhikku is not as crazy as it sounds. You get 41% DT, cap out subtle blow and get a decent return to your kick damage.

Full timing it for TP could be a solution for some DT/Subtleblow set indeed, but there are better options. Now full timing it for WS is illogical in every way. Only Body and gloves are conditionally good WS pieces. Legs, feet and head are terrible.

A post by K123 in the Random question thread reminded me of something I've been wondering about lately.
Raging Fists.

Recently I've had the chance to undust a bit my MNK, which I haven't been using in a very long time, to do some 130 full clear Limbus runs.
I've been using Vsmite with R15 Vere and Impetus up (which is the majority time becuse in the time where you take the porter and walk to the end of the next floor, when the monsters are gathered and you're ready to engage, Impetus is very close to being up again)

Still, I was occasionally swapping to Godhands R1 every now and then. Tornado Kick when Footwork was up, otherwise I've been messing around with Howling Fist and Raging Fists.
Both were giving me pretty disappointing numbers, aside from a couple of really high Howling Fist (I assume that was 2x TA proc, or something like that).
Raging Fists especially has been very solid in its... disappointing me.
Now my sets are not BiS but they're still nice. Given the buffs I had (Crooked Chaos, Sam, HM, Minux3, Aria with SV up) and food (just a cheap Red Curry Bun) I'm confident I should've been way above att cap for those targets.
Is this wrong? Was I below?
Because Raging should really shine when you're att-overcapped and have enough PDL, yet those numbers were so incredibly disappointing, lower than my Vsmite Average, which says something about it.

So where is the problem here? Was I under att cap perchance?


I should check a doc I have at home to see the avg numbers but my Vsmite average was like 38k I think, Howling Fist was much lower but it spiked well over 50k a couple of times. Tornado Kick avg was pretty low but it spiked to ~70k a few times.
Raging Fists avg was something like... I don't remember but I think it was like ~20k.
I seem to recall Howling numbers were slightly above but very close to Raging.
I assume the spikes raised the avg, and this suggests me (?) that I was in fact over att cap, otherwise if I were below, Howling Fists's att multiplier should've generated a noticeably higher avg compared to Raging, right?

i have recentrly felt like Howling Fist was some how nerfed, in General Id like to see mnk ws be more consistent and should be higher. most jobs have access to ws that do well above 50k, why doesnt mnk have that?

h2h ws will always be inconsistent because of the way they are geared for as ftp replicating ws. those multi-attack procs add so much more damage than meta ws where you just stack as much wsd as possible for single big hit.

Yes absolutely but I'm not talking about MNK vs other jobs, I certainly wasn't expecting to come on top on the parse.
It's more about comparing numbers with my own other numbers.
The Raging and Howling average with Godhands R1 shouldn't be that far below R15 Vere's Vsmites with Impetus up.

This was the general consensus years ago, that the best setup for MNK was to use Vere with Impetus, Godhands when out of Impetus.
Fulltiming Vere and Fulltiming Godhands were pretty close avg overall dps numbers anyway.

So if we're speaking about WS numbers specifically, the avg from HF and RF really shouldn't be that far below my own Vsmite avg numbers.
Or am I missing something big here? I fear that I might, because otherwise this all makes no sense to me.

someone posted numbers the other day, probably simon, and Raging beat VS on average with high buffs. With extremely high buffs I think Raging could be the best to use, particularly if avoiding sc. You need a LOT of attack for nice numbers though, doubt you had it in Limbus.

I only havd GH (R15) personally, but really don't think I need Vere for anything. I am certain Ngai V25 can be done with GH and I did all the T1+T2 blunt mobs at V25 using them (often 2boxing BRD).

was addressing the other post, and wanted to add this. consider give your mnks fighter's roll to make them very happy.

I haven't done Limbus so I can't speak on anything that might be going on there Sechs

You gear for triple attack on Raging Fists though?

My HF and RF sets are extremely similar. I think I have like, what, 2 different slots.
Hey! I said my sets are not BiS! Good but definitely not BiS, I'm aware of that at least.


Also, I personally got my V25 Ngai win with Vere, but if you ask me I'd say it's perfectly viable with GH. Actually... I wouldn't be surprised to see GH fulltime slightly more beneficial than Vere.

Either way I wouldn't say Ngai 25 is one of those fights where you're starving for every possible single digit of additional DPS like, I dunno, Ongo or others. You rarely time out on Ngai because of not enough dps.
In my, admittedly low, experience Ngai is about surviving, which means paying a lot of attention to the defending side of your DDs in ALL their sets, and also luck.
There's that Ngai move, I don't remember the name, when he uses it the Aura arrives. It's that moment where you have to start one WS and then 2 other WSs very quickly to remove it.
If you fail at that, it's basically a wipe.
First time it's 1+2, second time is 1+3, third time is 1+4.
I think that's it. It would be very very hard to perform 1+5 and you certainly can't expect to do 1+6.

The amount of times Ngai uses that move is... random.
I've had runs where he used that move A SINGLE TIME the whole fight.
Way to go! Easy win!
Other times it used it like 3 times in like what, the first 40% of health?
Of all the aspects that could go wrong and *** your run, I'd dare to say that one is by far the most relevant one and, alas, it's not something you can directly control.

Wonder if a BLU meleeing with CLUB and using Feather Tickle could help, also noone seems to melee on adds and WS on Ngai for it which could work if PLD tanks Ngai and heals?

PLD WARorMNK BLU BRD COR GEO could probably do it that way? RDM instead of GEO for extra cures maybe.

There is a reason Paladin is a nono for the Ngai fight. Protholithic Puncture is a full hate reset. Paladin CAN'T tank Ngai for very long. The standard setup is what it is for a reason

Monk/war/cor/brd/geo/whm

You can modify the setup to include other jobs, but it's much easier to have your whm build a proper SIRD/DT hybrid curing set and let the two cracklaw adds do their whirly swings on them. A blue isn't necessarily bad, but a war and monk are just so much better at dealing blunt damage fast. Ngai is an endurance fight, but having high dps can make things a lot less painful. There is an argument for getting a blue mage in, but paladin is not going to contribute much in this fight at all. Especially on V25. And you really don't want a paladin holding the two adds and being the main cure.... not when ngai is as much of an offensive powerhouse as he is. Cureskin, cureskin, curaga 4, Curaga 3, cureskin!! This is the way you heal through ngai.

Does the BRD and GEO help do damage?
That's crazy if like 3 jobs are thumbing there butt
At least cheer the WHM on
lol

GEO does, BRD doesn't (in my experience). Maybe some people have the BRD doing damage, I don't think it's worth it IMO.

FWIW my group runs a slightly different setup: MNK BRD COR WHM GEO PUP.

Automaton tanks the adds, WHM stands at range and never gets hit by anything.

Also worth noting, if a WHM is tanking adds, they can also use Aquaveil to avoid getting interrupted and not used SIRD cure sets. Can just use a SIRD set for Aquaveil, if necessary. I'm not sure if this is possible since you (occasionally) have to recast Aquaveil maybe you can't afford to do that without dying, IDK. I've never tried that strategy. I'd imagine it would help your cure sets to not include ~92% SIRD but again IDK, I've never bothered.