IiPunch - Monk Guide

quoting from BG wiki:
"The damage calculations for Hand-to-Hand vary from those of other weapons, as a character will have a damage rating with no weapon equipped. Base Hand-to-Hand damage is calculated simply by multiplying Hand-to-Hand skill by 0.11 and adding 3 (in other words, base damage raises every 9 Hand-to-Hand skill points). "

Does hand to hand skill still add directly to dmg or is this outdated?

It works as is stated.

Crit dmg v WS dmg for VS/AF?

Crit damage at least as far as VS is concerned.

5/5 Penance and the other 5 doesn't matter.

5/5 Mantra the only other semi useful one

Formless has literally zero use on anything anymore (t worked neat on ambuscades where they spam invincible)

Chakra, meh regen

Penance, Mantra, and Formless Strikes are the three with situational uses.

Mantra and Penance are the most useful day-to-day, and Formless is extremely useful in pretty rare situations. Best option is probably to go 5/5 Penance, 5/5 Mantra, and swap to Formless 5/5 when you are going to a situation where you want to use it. 22 merits ain't ***these days.

If you want to just run around with one set of merits, I'd say 1/5 Formless, 4/5 Penance, 5/5 Mantra.

This months shadow Lord event htbf for all jobs gs is the most recent use for formless strikes. Helps pass thru magic phase. Probably could be some situational use during Onychophora where he goes into stone mode (you don't have to turn and wait for fire mode of you're meeting).

Also works if you solo omen cards and need to perform 30k WS through a skillchain but don't want normal hits to take off too much hp to land the objective. Might have some situational use fighting a cerberus or something that occasionally puts up a physical shield, so you can continue damage (at least white damage). Theoretically, you could choose to pop formless + HF in instances where a monster may have a lengthy physical resist mode.

You have to play Monk enough times to appreciate the uses for it, but the average person will just concede is useless, but it's not completely.

I suppose using formless strikes with a staff would be fairly powerful against mobs with physical shield, altho you'd need a fairly decent magic attack WS set for either Cataclysm or earth crusher (depending on if the mob resists darkness)

You can't kick with staff up, so you lose a ton of attacks with formless up. Nonetheless, if you want to invent scenarios to use it, there are some. May not be practical but they are there. Would be cool if there was an ilvl mercurial staff for Monk, to exploit magical phases. Monk h2h does not have any magical weapon skill innately, so it can't exploit any hybrids to their advantage. I think that's the reasoning behind why formless strikes does not work on weapon skills, as you'd theoretically be able to turn every melee hit and weapon skill into a magical attack that bypasses physical resistances.

Re: current Formless uses, somewhat of a stretch but maybe the occasional PLD mob in Dyna? Timer being what it is, maybe not a very reliable thing, but if you're running with a somewhat light on nukes group and you get one of those annoying mobs who gets WS'ed down to single digit HP% then pops Invincible... Could Formless up to kill it. Save your COR or whatever from having to waste TP from Quick Draw > WS when they might rather hold that TP for a statue.

But yeah, shouldn't need more than 1 merit, with the other 9 distributed between Penance and Mantra (and personally, I'd 5/5 Penance and 4/5 Mantra, but YMMV)

If there's some monthly Ambuscade gimmick where Formless helps, just 5/5 it for that month (or for an Ambu session).

With augment on neck kick + 25 %
and with gear (feet 10% AF+3, legs relic+3 19%, merit 5% + AM3 up 15% from relic, did we can get a ...
base : 14%
merit : 5%
neck +2 full : 25%
feet AF+3 : 10%
legs relic +3 : 19%
Relic weapon AM up : 15%
So around 88% kick attack rate without footwork, i'm right ?

Guys, the elephant in the room is the SB II +25 being copy/pasted for every path B dyna weapon @_@

Almost right.
You are forgetting about cape (10%KA rate and 25%KA damage).
So 98%

If your rich enough, you probably could if the game lets you do it on more than 1 weapon, one weapon for power, another for TP feed

I dunno. Depends on what's the proc rate of that "additional" attack.
If it works like the old Jailer weapons one (as in it can proc pretty much everywhere, even at the same time as Multiattack proc) it could be very very interesting for some jobs, in some builds, despite SB+25 being appearently (emphasis here) useless compared to the sheer power of STP+25. (path A)

Maybe among EN players. JP players love safe methods to kill stuff and they will for sure do some weapons with that path.

Anyone know the Augs on the Sagitta?

I might be wrong, but that SB II will probably let mnk not give any TPs with white damage and has a nice synergy with the extra attack rounds the path brings. Also 25 stp is huge, but given the current status of h2h ws's, it might not be as beneficial to h2h than, say, to GSs, or ranged.

Not sure what you mean Sechs. It's listed there on every weapon.
At least imo the 50% in " Chance of follow-up attack +50%" is exactly the activation rate.

The only problem with that on MNK is that you can already reach 9 hits in round with 2x QA proc and kick attack, but that wouldn't happen very often. If you add following attack into the mix tho and take advantage of new monk neck, then you might run into scenario where much more 8+ hits rounds will be cut down to 8.

Yeah the 8 hits per round cap is annoying.
Altough you would have to factor the amount of DPS brought in when you don't exceed the 8hit cap, it might still be worth it despite the "loss" of those rare (?) procs that would get wasted.

I don't have the answer, I just said it sounds like an interesting option for some jobs. Wether or not it would beat other available options I can't say, I was just trying to point that I can see some potential in path B, it doesn't look as shitty as someone else was tryin to say.
Granted, of course, mine is just a hunch, it would need further tests and research.

Oh I think path B is very good for a lot of jobs. It has the highest TP gain among all weapons and if you pair that with WS that doesn't benefir a lot from multhits but mostly from TP, then you have a winner.

You would only use Footwork now (as always) for the bonus to Tornado/Dragon Kick. We can maintain +98% Kick Attacks Rate, with +165 Kick Damage Base. With Footwork, +185 Base Kick damage, and if using Suzaku enhancement, thats 25% Footwork attack modifier. You also gain 20 KA attack from JP. So many sources of kick attack, rate, and damage, it's hard to not include it in many of the sets now.

I'm going to have to test how good footwork is now, with the PDL+10% augment available. After the Geomancy/Roll nerf of course. Might be able to hit some impressive numbers, if not only during that 1min window.

I've already stopped using Kenda+1 legs for TP unless hybrid, because KA seems undervalued. At least now for Spharai users, you can hope to maintain a near 100% rate of an extra attack, so 3 minimum per round. The SBII augment doesn't appear so beefy at first, but I hope SBII +25 puts MNK in territory where it can TP and the monster never gains TP. That would be a huge bonus to Monk, given it's already high SB/SBII

Wait MNK is at 100Subtle Blow now?

Sherida, Niqmaddu, Moonbow Belt +1 is 25% SBII
You already cap tier 1 very easily
With new weapon augment, you hit 100

But then you have to factor in Job Points, which Decreases TP given to target by 10% when capped. Not sure if the Gift bypasses the normal cap and deducts after the normal SB reduction, or if it means you just dont have to wear sb gear (never needed to actually). Then again this won't matter if hitting 100 SB relieves MNK from being able to give the monster TP, and would make Penance entirely useless, except for other DPS' benefit