IiPunch - Monk Guide

Bearpaws ftw

Through the years I've seen conflicting data concerning this.
Has anyone done a test recently on the updated 119v3 version to see if this is still the case?

I think this is important to know because if it still stands true (doesn't apply to multihits proc of the main hand) then it greatly affects the final tier placement of Verethragna.
If it works I'm confident Vere is likely the best weapon atm, if it doesn't then Godhands might be above, arguably Glanzfaust in situations where you can make good use of AM3.

I also wonder what sort of difference is there:
1) Between RMEAs
2) Between the worst of RMEAs and the best of non-RMEAs (the best non RMEAs should be perfect Fleshcarvers, Denouements and Comeuppance+1, if I recall?)

Is it a huge difference? Is it small? Is it in line with the average difference you can find for other weapon categories?

It doesn't. Same thing goes for Spharai and it's been like that forever.

@Byrth
Can you suggest a scenario to test the Footwork stuff on MNK? I would be glad to provide some data for you guys to analyze, but this time I want it to be useful and meaningful data (last time I spent many hours into what ended up being pretty unconclusive data)
My MNK has hardly any JPs so that gives me the chance to make some tests a bit easier.


For instance which targets should I pick to make sure my attack is capped while using Relic Knuckles, and at the same time ensure stuff doesn't die on the first two punches?

Vice-versa, which targets should I pick to make sure I'm more than 25% attack away from being att capped on the current target?

Eh, I went out and did some tests because I wanted to have a good baseline for post-patch. H2H damage is calculated as I remember.

For fists:
Base damage = 3 + weapon damage
fSTR = floor((Base damage)/9)+8
Total damage = Base damage + fSTR + floor(H2H skill * 0.11)

For kicks:
Base damage = 3
fSTR = floor((Base damage/9)+8)
Total damage = Base damage + fSTR + floor(H2H skill * 0.11) + Kick shoes + Footwork bonus


At capped pDIF for both types of swing, non-crits range from 3.25*(Total damage) to 1.05*3.25*(Total damage). Crits range from 4.25*(Total damage) to 1.05*4.25*(Total damage).



With no Job Points spent, Footwork Bonus appears to be 20 base damage in the same term as "Kick Attacks" attack+ shoes. Alternatively, it could still be +18 and fall into the "base damage" term, where it would affect fSTR (+2 cap). I have not tested the cape or other sources of "Kick Attacks" damage. For the moment, I'm going to update bgwiki saying it's 20 base damage.

Footwork +% had no effect on kick base damage, which means it is likely still a +% attack bonus.

Updated with a bit more information. I was testing this using battlemod without condensedamage in Abyssea - Tahrongi. My mule had Indi-Fury active to cap my ratio. I used STR and Attack Atmas.

Basic plan was to hit blunt-neutral monsters until I got a conclusive base damage number out of min/max range.

For "Kick Attacks" attack+, I used Anchorite's Gaiters, Anchorite's Gaiters +1, and Shukuyu Sune-Ate. I reused the Sune-Ate to test whether Footwork+15% affects base damage.

Left to test:
* How much of a Kick rate boost does Footwork give? - 20% per the JP Dev post
* Confirm that Footwork+% gives an Attack boost to kicks.
* Does Footwork+% also give a kick proc rate boost during Footwork?

According to JPWiki, Footwork is +20% Kick rate.

So basically Footwork is pretty much the same as it used to be (base kick damage boost, ~10% baseline attack boost, but just for kicks), the difference is just in the way the JA works.
Before it was a "turns all your attacks into kick", now it's "Gives a ~20% KA rate bonus".

It's left to be seen if that 20% bonus is additional to your other bonus (Job Traits, Merits, Leg equipment boosting KA rate) or in place of them.
Thinking about DNC and Saber Dance for instance, where the bonus from Saber Dance "overwrites" your other DA sources. Actually I'm not sure if it overrides gear DA, but I'm sure it overrides the DA from /WAR.


Concerning the attack boost from Footwork feet equipment I guess we can assume that:
Tantra +1 => 3% additional bonus
Tantra +2 => 5% additional bonus
Bhikku NQ => 7% additional bonus
Bhikku +1 => 10% additional bonus
Shukuyu ==> 15% additional bonus

It's left to be seen if to receive this bonus you have to keep them up, or if it's enough to equip them on JA activation. I'm betting on the latter.



Edit:
Going by SE's patch notes, Footwork also mantains the effect of making the game use Feet base damage instead of H2H base damage for WS like Dragon Kick and Tornado Kick, if used when Footwork is up.
This is completely useless now since H2H base damage is much higher than kick base damage, even with full Job Points.
Makes you wonder why SE kept the effect...

I would believe +20%. I was getting only about 5 kicks per JA usage, and normally I wouldn't have gotten 0.

With the JSE cape (+25) and Shukuyu Sune-ate (+100), H2H damage and kick damage for a non-RME Monk (or for a full JP RME Monk) are pretty comparable and we assume the WSs would receive Attack+25% as well. It might be a net gain, depending on the target.

But yeah, I'm not sure this JA is worth the activation time.

As far as whether you have to keep them equipped, iirc you only got the footwork attack bonus when you had Tantra feet on back in the day when we could actually see our Kick Attack when Footwork was up? That would mean that you do need to keep them on.

Before engage!1!one!
But yeah for many reasons KA is just a "weak" multiattack (at beast it's more or less like a punch) that can proc max once per attack round and can't proc on WS.
Sure it benefits from accuracy and attack bonus, but what good does that do when you're acc and att capped?

If things were how it used to be, with KA proc being that rare huge damage proc that can happen once per round, things would be different maybe?


Oh another thing that (maybe) we forgot to mention is the base TP gain for kicks. When old footwork was activated that gave your kicks a fixed TP return (regardless of what you equip in MH) of a 480delay weapon, and you were also getting full TP from the first TWO hits of a WS instead of the first alone. Not sure if the WS part was for all WSs or just Dragon Kick + Tornado Kick.
I imagine this TP situation is still active when Footwork is up?
Could be something to be considering if it works for all WSs, would benefit the damage output a bit.


Oh yeah? I seem to rembember the other way around but couldn't find data in old wiki or BGwiki.

To test this we would need targets where you're ~25% or more away from attack cap.
Check for KA procs with a slow weapon with just Footwork, and see the results with JA activated with Shukuyu instead.
A 15% attack difference should be quite noticeable even with a small sample, supposing we use targets with the same stats/level.
Or am I wrong in this?

Saber Dance doesn't ignore gear DA, just JT DA. (Which as DNC has no native JT DA, and as we know from things like BLU and the like, JTs don't stack and only the highest tier is counted. This is likely why SD doesn't stack with /war as this interaction indicates it's a "job trait". A "DNC DA" JT and the WAR JT.)

But given that MNK has a base JT of Kick Attacks, and assuming they did the SD coding, then it should likely increase it as it's possibly +"tiers" instead of "+%".
A few parses of it (either weaponless or in a reive would work best I would think) should easily show it replacing the base or adding to it.
With 5/5 merits, you're at 19%... so if parses consistently show no discernible change.... then there's the proof of replacement.

SE's JP Dev post about Footwork quoted a JP player talking about adding sources of Kick Attacks+% together to get 100% Kick rate (including Footwork) and while SE didn't directly address the validity of their combination of Kick+ sources, they also didn't say it was wrong.

I likely remembered the Attack+ from Tantra wrong. The way Motenten has the MNK DPS spreadsheet set up wouldn't have made sense if the boost didn't stick.

Footwork no longer has any effect on WS TP returns. It does, for Dragon Kick and likely Tornado Kick, still substitute Foot base damage for Hand Base damage, which is a penalty for RME users.

I'm hoping Monks weapon skills get a boost. i think white damage on monk is pretty reasonable. 30 k VS yes please

I Hope so

H2H boost was actually just raising the H2H pDIF cap from 3.25/4.25c to 3.5/4.5c, so less than a 10% maximum possible boost. Not close to what was needed. I haven't checked whether this also applies to kicks, but it probably does.

On the upside, Smite potency increased and Monk got another +7% attack from it.

So they created a new "custom" ratio instead of using the currently existing one for 2H jobs?

I bet they didn't change the STR>Att conversion rate either, which was better than the old 2:1, but worse than the new 4:3.
Difference was that the 1H boost only applied to MH whereas the H2H one applied to both fists.

Well, it's technically the same pDIF cap as Marksmanship, but yeah. I don't know if they changed the STR->Atk conversion and I already logged out, but I doubt they did.

so again, they didn't fix anything at all ><

I wish they would bring 3.25/4.25 ~> 5.0/6.0 at least ><

Well it's surely better than before!
Can't complain too much, situation got better.
Just nowhere close to where it should be, and I'm afraid it will never get there until they give up their resistance about buffing H2H WSs

True, but I truly hoped that MNK would be back its former Glory :(

or at least to being useful again in END GAME (Victory Smite doing 2-5 K Spikes of 14 k when needs to be doing 8-15 k spikes of 20 K+ at least)

Under what conditions are you using it? 5.25 total fTP with a chance at critical hit and 80% STR based. You should be getting some pretty solid numbers from that. The only weakness I'm seeing is that MNK doesn't have a WS with crazy fTP scaling, Raging is ok but it's lower WSC means it doesn't respond well to stacking.



If you are refering to early Delve era, MNK was only super popular because Formless let you ignore certain NN -DT requirements and MNK's had better survivabiltiy due to higher natural HP and Mantra.

I agree with everything you said except that "only".
Compared to the average DPS damage and average WS damage back then, Victory Smite was quite an awesome WS, not THE best but one of the best arguably.

After the multiple WS rehaul the game has seen since then every single WS (almost!) got incredibly better whereas VSmite is almost the same as it was then =/

There were many WS's stronger then VS, Resolution, CDC and Requiescat (depending) come to mind.

Seriously, the only reason MNK became super popular was because it made several of the NM's easier with FS / Mantra rotations. NM's did a lot of damage and we didn't have much HP in comparison so MNK having a few hundred more HP then everyone else, along with Mantra rotations, allowed for better survivability. Many jobs were stronger then MNK in pure offensive power.

back then MNK had survivabiltiy yes, but also DMG was pretty good compared with other jobs.

Nowdays I see PLD will out DD a monk........... >.> Which is sad Specially for those that put effort on MNK (Not only for DELVE but as an Actual JOB)

that is what I am refering, if MNK could at least Stand with a VICTORY SMITE (7-9 K) most of the time be nicer than a 2-5 k as it is.

Absolutely agree with you, aren't we saying the same thing, with VS as "one of the best WS" at the time?
And the difference between those WS wasn't really that huge.
Now see the average Vsmite damage and compare it to the average damage of plenty of other WSs.

The gap between VS and other WS is much larger nowadays than it was back then, and several WS which were clearly worse than VS are now just as good if not better.

This is what I meant! :D

But it's not when I look at it. I think people are compared buffed "other WS's" vs non-buffed VS's. BLU's don't do 20K CDC's without lots of party buffs. My god tier WAR's Resolutions are only 9~11K without outside buffs on most relevant content.

VS is 2.25 + 3x 1.0 fTP hits with 80% STR and 10/25/45 crit chance. About the only downside I can see is that MNK doesn't have access to the high STR heavy DD armor but it does have HQ Rao / Ryu which have pretty solid STR augment paths along with Adhemar and Herc gear.

The only real downside I can see is MNK not having a very good fTP scaling WS like Savage / Ten / Resolution / Torc / Mistral / Rudra's / Stardiver. Raging fists looks interesting but it's 32/32 WSC kinda limits how much you can exploit stat stacking.

Fair enough but wouldn't you say 2-5 K is weak ?

All we asking is to make that into a 5-8 K Spikes of 12 K maybe !?

Reasonable DMG to be consider OK to bring along on a party.