IiPunch - Monk Guide

That's your take on it, and you're certainly entitled to it. Your opinion obviously hasn't wavered in quite a while. Granted, it's still just an opinion.

My take is that, in an essentially worst case scenario, I still pulled out a win. With optimizations, it probably still won't be the ideal setup, but it won't be nearly as bad as that fight made it look.

As usual, we will likely not meet in the middle because we're both stubborn people. I'm more than happy to admit that I've seen more of MNK's shortcomings, but I also feel that a projected 3:30 kill is not outside the realm of what qualified DD should be doing. Certainly seen slower when using LS/friends as DPS instead of my own BLUs.

As 'projected' doesn't carry much weight, I will hold off on further assessment until I have the job geared to an appropriate standard and have more experience. I just wanted to share the good and bad of that fight so that others would have something more tangible than a barrage of people crying about how useless MNK is.

The thing I love about FFXI is that there isn't any specific way to play it. The game lets you tackle content in any way you can dream up. There are certainly ideal ways to clear some content and some ways are certainly better than others. FFXI isn't really a challenging game by itself, because there is always something to be abused or broken mechanic that allows you cheese content. For clearing something the first time, those are pretty ideal. But eventually you reach a point where you can make an Aeonic in an afternoon, you really don't need to SMN burn everything anymore unless that's just what you want to do. If that isn't what you want to do, why do it?

Monk needs to be better. No doubt about it. I've bitched about H2H WS for a long while now. But I haven't seen a single person talking about Comeatmebro's Albumen fight talking about the only thing that actually matters. Was it fun?

Of course there are better ways to clear it. Doesn't mean they're fun. Efficiency doesn't always equal fun. I play PUP in basically every single instance where I can, which is damn near all of them. A lot of it time, it's not very efficient. PUP kills are usually pretty slow. I don't care, I'd rather play the job I want to play then do something I don't want to do.

Looks like someone managed to use Monk to do some content people don't typically use Monk for, and made it work. That's pretty cool to me and I don't play Monk.

no one is saying otherwise. You want to grow up to be a space candy bar?
That's your dream, no one can tell you're wrong for wanting to be one. Go out and be the best Milkyway you can be, Tiger.

But when one starts saying they expect to earn a million $ a year by being one, don't expect the rest of us to nod our heads.

You can play MNK if you enjoy it. No one has the power to stop you. Inviting y'all to parties, and allowing you to claim MNK is good is another story though.

It isn't.

It is the complete opposite of good.

Play it well, and you still are shitty shitty.

Similar to what Primex said...

If the test was meant to show that the rest of Thorny's alliance is so amazing that he can beat Albumen with only MNK DPS, that would be impressive. I, for one, am glad he won. And it is cool, like his Master Trial solo wins.

But the premise that everyone else is wrong and that MNK is just waiting for The Chosen One, the Monk Whisperer, to arrive and unlock its secrets and show its true potential is ridiculous and gives SE too much credit when they deserve none.

SE has triple-dog, double-dared botched this job. And there is no secret Konami code locked behind crafting shield quests that will make MNK what it should be.

Let this fact be left bare, so it might be addressed.

prob the best argument you've made all thread(that being accessible to a perfectly geared player and being accessible to everyone are not the same thing), and i'm inclined to agree with one provision:

since mnk's primary problem is ws damage, if boost is adjusted to give a significant increase(given the amount it adds to melee, this is not out of the realm of possibility), it would be very hard for me to consider mnk anything but fixed

i will say that as is, it could certainly use more work and the situations where it's viable are drastically outnumbered by the situations any other melee dps is viable.. i'm not going to say it's unusable trash because that really isn't the case, but it's far from being overpowered and could certainly use some additional love

basically, it's not underpowered on anywhere near the scale that smn is overpowered

I think you are arguing with people that spend their time with with trusts. Cherrywyne and blazed have proven their retardness many times so far.

Who is/has been suggesting this?

Right now Boost has, in spite of the fairly detailed specs in the update notes, absolutely zero discernable effect on WSDMG. It does have a very observable impact on the next melee strike, so evidently either the function of the ability or the patchnotes are incorrect at present.

The logical follow-up to this being a correction to the function, or a confirmation statement that the notes were in error.

Until one or the other occurs, any judgement is premature.

-dude comes back to game having no f'ing clue what anything is.
If you knew anything at all about me or what I do, the last thing you would associate with me are trusts. We low man ***in 30 seconds that you will be wiping to for months. and before we were doing that as SMNs we were doing it as BLUs, RNGs, WARs and DRKs. You're a primitive ape hurling feces at us from behind a cage.

Lets break it down to the pragmatic and simple truth:

1. Was MNK any good at anything before update?
No
2. Is MNK any good at anything right now?
No
3. Are there a bunch of people who enjoy playing MNK?
yes
4. Are these said people divided into groups?
Yes
5. What are these 2 groups?
- A group that recognizes MNK is still uber ***.
- Another group that refuse to admit it is uber ***.

The second group seems to be comprised of casual players/returning players/limited experience scope/exposure to other efficient strategies while the first group are elitists/seasoned/well geared vets.

Its that simple.

Hypothesis: The people claiming MNK are good don't know just how bad their performance in-game is. They would never say MNK gets by if they had any experience doing things even slightly effciently.

When a tank can out-dps a melee class, there is something wrong.
Lionheart RUNs ***bricks all over MNK loldps.
Even Arke/Arke+1 PLDs will probably destroy MNK dps lol.

^
Lionheart run's ***all over every class.

None of the above, just not going to write off a job based solely on a bunch of forum whining.

First non-JP black and white.
Server first everything for years.
Still the only person to multibox everything in the game, as far as I know.

For all the ego you guys have, how do you not have even a single master trial win under your belts? I'm multiboxing things you as a group have yet to accomplish. Seriously, your only argument seems to be 'I'm better than you'.. but you can't even back that up.

MNK isn't uber ***, it's just a little behind. And you'd do the rest of the playerbase a service by chilling on the toxic whining until we at least see what will or won't happen with boost.

You must be new around here. Blazed plays a character called Primex and there's plenty of material across all these forums of him and another guy called phuoc tearing ***up pretty ridiculously.
He posts screenshots of doing ***I haven't seen others do.
3 man kouryu kills in 20s econds. 4 man albumens and schahs. This is the hardest ***in game now. and many many many people wipe to it for hours trying to get clear, and they sell it for tens of million of gil for 30 seconds worth of effort.
T3/T4 melee tp burns when everyone else was Magic bursting them pre-geo nerf.
WoC melee burns.
And a MNK doing some impressive DMG by any standard. the fact that is mnk doing that dmg is even more impressive because everytime we get a mnk for ambuscade they do 2-3k victory smites and just make it very painful and long to get ***done.

I'll put Phuoc's BLU against ANY RUN any day of the week and collect!

And to be fair, the hardest part of a Master Trial is finding a reason to do it.
It is cool they exist, I guess. But it is probably more efficient to solo it then to waste the time of five other people to do it.

Same with doing Albumen with MNKs. It is cool and all you took the time to build up MNKs geared enough to not time you out on lullaby duration. But any reasonable group would take a look at three MNKs wanting to fight and be like... "Uh, I have to wash my hair/go to the store/set myself on fire."

I'm going to be honest, I don't understand this at all. You're saying it's better to make your 8th/10th/sell your 50th aeonic/whatever than to move on to harder content, simply because the reward is aesthetic? If you can already kill everything less than master trials reliably, why is the practicality of the reward an issue? Surely gear is only being acquired for aesthetics anyway at that point.

I'm not saying I'm the best player on these forums. I'm not claiming to be better than Primex, I'm not even saying I'm top 5/10/whatever number. However, the amount of people trying to say 'everyone supporting mnk is a noob with no experience' or things along those lines is ridiculous. You can't call me bad by any reasonable standard, my accomplishments speak for themselves.

I don't give a ***if you haven't done master trials, but don't come in here using your ego as your primary method of argument if you haven't even tried the hardest things in the game. Aeonic NMs are old news, ***was easy over a year ago.. it's trivial now. If you're good, cool. That only lends so much value to what you have to say, facts and supporting arguments have to get you the rest of the way.

You literally could not pay me enough, in cash to even enter a master trial. I may be in the minority, but that's where I stand on them.

But, I also have not/will not unlock mounts. Or do Monstrosity. Or pankration. Or the mog bonanza. Or making a crafting shield.

An odd standpoint about master trial, to be sure. Not sure why, but that's fine.

Mounts on the other hand, do you enjoy walking whenever you're in adoulin? What if you have to go up uleguerand for something? Being able to skip 'pest' level aggro in all these useless and huge zones is amazing. Do it.

The long and short of it; by flat out refusing to do it, shows it was wasted time. They say you can vote with your money, well refusing to do content is a vote.

This has nothing to do with monk though.

None of the *** waving has to do with MNK, but every time we get off it someone from that group seems to come back and drop some sort of insult or brag to bring us back full circle.

I'm not speaking from some deep dark need to make myself sound superior.
We don't even sell clears. If someone wants clears, is available during our playtime, and is willing to work hard enough to be worth the time, we invite them to our linkshell. So from that perspective, I don't think I am who you think I am.
I don't make Aeonics for myself. I make them as a group while we're having fun. Some of my teammates want this. Some of them want that. Some want to try this. Some to try that. And I really enjoy helping others accomplish their goals. Improving myself is generally done on my own time/happens as a side bonus.
I guess my point is, there are plenty of possible rewards available from completing Aeonic runs, and other pieces of content in this game.

Master Trials are very narrow in the team you can bring and even narrower in the rewards, so making them some kind of gold standard... Is really the only reason for them to exist. But I, for one, don't even like how the lockstyle weapons look so... If I cared more about how others perceived me, I probably would push harder to do these. But, as it is, they seem very hollow.

Honestly, my point was more about blaze and his related posters than you. I'm starting to agree with you on more and more things. I can see why someone with a lot left to accomplish wouldn't be interested in them. However, he is constantly bragging about how great they are and showcasing how fast they can kill content that is trivial now. When you're in that position, what do you have to lose by taking a few hours off aeonic mercing to try a fight that could actually challenge you?

If you just wanted to steamroll everything by throwing gil/gear, you may as well play a pay to win and drop the visa black card. Challenge creates fun. It's unfortunate they didn't put gear behind it, but I think the reason was so that they wouldn't feel obligated to nerf it in the future. If gear is unattainable to the 99% and good enough to matter, they have to eventually make it attainable. This isn't the case with master trial, as it's solely cosmetic.

Refusing to do content is not a vote when it's extremely doubtful that SE even tracks how many people unlock mounts or even some of the other content, nor is you not doing the content losing them any money.

Mounts are amazing, too.

Incorrect, on both accounts.

A vote is a vote whether they track it or not.

Mounts are neat, but clipper is better. and making 100 mounts like they are, takes time and space away from things that are more worthwhile. When you go and collect another waste of space mount, you're telling them; I'm fine with all the things that are broken, make me a horsie instead.

Yeah, the bragging back and forth doesn't really make any opinion or another more or less valid. We wouldn't be taking the time to post here if we didn't care enough about the game to have decent knowledge of it. The vast majority of PUGs can't even be bothered this much.

I thought we were finally settled with a "I guess we have to wait and see if they fix/adjust more." Because, if they don't, MNK is bad. If they do, MNK might be less bad. But from the responses I've seen on the JP side via Google translate, I'm very concerned for MNK.

I thought this post was pretty good:


I understand your rebuke of it, Thorny, as you don't really fit in the second group. And I can see how you wouldn't want to let that stand, since it diminishes you.
***I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, you are more of a seasoned/well geared vet that doesn't trust people on the internet to test/push content before whining that it isn't good enough.

Which brings me to:


My statement, as witty as it was, is also crude. I'm just trying to focus the spotlight on how MNK is flawed to its foundation. Its JAs are worse than they were. Average WS damage is still bottom of the barrel. And it has nothing to make up for a lack of off-hand or grip stats. So no player can make it good. No amount of inputs into that which is MNK can make it competitive.

I think we're in agreement on this, even if by degrees. So, let's wait and see. And hope.
And let's stop the personal attacks (that aren't good natured or at least partially in jest) and the bragging both. We're a MNK community that should be united in protest. Not divided by whether the job is good or not.

***EDIT: I added the above much later than I originally posted this message because I wanted to get that assessment as right as possible. It may still not be accurate. I'm calling attention to this edit more than the countless others I do because it isn't related to a simple spelling error and people have liked this post prior to the edit. So they deserve to see something has been added, though I feel this enhances the message of the post rather than contradicts any part of it.

You will notice every time I "bragged" about something in all these threads it was in response to someone trying to discredit my opinion on something with "probably plays with trusts" or "probably can't do ***" when in fact we do, and have been, doing plenty of ***others don't. We don't do it to brag but because we are bored out of our *** mind with how easy this game is and want to push the perception of what is possible. it gets people talking. puts some life back into the game. makes it fun. we're competitive. heck my crew is now insisting on me coming DRK and WAR to ***just to prove a point, and in response to when I said "they won't let me come on anything but SMN because we down ***in 30 seconds". we're going to aim for that with DRKs and WARs now. Its not bragging, unless some idiot like Pchan who has been out of it makes some baseless claims.

Hey Pchan, go do a 3 man Maju with your mnk. *** noob.

woo a challenge - I like. video or it didn't happen.

I'm not a very good mnk by any standards, but I have played many others jobs so I would get invited to end game content. From my personal experience people never invite mnk to endgame content. The last time I remember mnk being useful was when Delve was new and Oatixurs were the new rage.

The point I'm trying to make is that if SE actually made mnk a competitive DD class for end game content again I might actually be inclined to gear it and play it more again. I always liked mnk and would enjoy playing it again.

I agree that people need to stop arguing with each other and send a strong message to SE to actually fix the job. Does SE even realize the unbalanced DD potentials of each job? I don't know where to start to sending a strong message however. Would we be emailing SE support? Maybe we could 'report a bug' that mnk isn't balanced like it's supposed to be and to fix it lol

Any practical suggestions and I'm willing to invest a few minutes of my time to try to make a job I enjoyed years ago great again! (MMGA).

ok so, i was playing around on a low lvl job/mnk used boost... no attacks till boost wore... how is this supposed to work /mnk? lol

also tried boost >> engage but cannot attack for roughly 30 seconds while boost was wearing off.... lol

Yeah, if you waded through the *** you'd have known that. This thread went way past the point of anything of value.

It's broken (completely) for now.

You can draw weapon > boost > run in and attack for 10k though, for what its worth.

The official forums are really the only avenue to communicate with SE. Do you know anyone that speaks Japanese?