IiPunch - Monk Guide

I mean you could just adjust the defense loss on counterstance to something similar, like berserk or last resort. I don't know what the developers were smoking when they made the Monk lose ALL defense with the ability. It's something I definitely anticipate will get adjusted when it's Monk month for job adjustments

Don't count on it. They never reverse a nerf.

If there was a way to make regular melee hits hurt more (logical, you are lowering your guard to counter, and if you miss you pay the cost) without making tp moves wafflestomp your ***. Then it would be fine. But that's literally impossible.... or make tp moves counterable(holy *** broken)... or raise guard to 100% against tp moves to compensate... then I think we're getting close to reasonable.

I'd be okay with the counterstance if the reward for successful strikes was worth it. Something like gives double tp per successful counter strike landed. It'd still be a death wish, but the alternative is you could reasonably full time a DT set with counterstance and still have productive TP gain. Give Monk a bit more HP as well, and halve the cost of chakra so that monks can play dangerous and self sufficient when needed. The defense loss just needs to be lowered to 25% and it would break even with berserk and last resort.

The thing is.. it's not even close to even with berserk and last resort. it's very far from attack bonus. the penalty shouldn't be defense down. and it's not accuracy bonus, so the penalty shouldn't be evasion down.

Counters literally break the game lol. The penalty has to be as great as the bonus.

Impetus Focus and Dodge(and mantra and chakra and chiblast and footwork and formless strikes) already have no penalties

Counters don't break the game:
-They don't work on magic spells or TP moves.
-They don't work if the physical attack misses (includes blink/utsusemi)
-They don't work on physical attacks that register as TP moves (Shockmaw or Gorillas for example, all of their strikes are "lesser tp moves").
-They don't work when the monster isn't targeting you.
-They can also miss.
-Counter trait isn't 100%, even if you've reached 100% counter rate.

The only benefit counter serves is as a de facto DT/Damage "reflect" trait that protects the user and returns damage to the aggressor in return. Its only really seen as a cool white damage booster, which is very small and largely ignored in today's meta. The trait is far from broken, and it is 100% useless if you don't have the monster's attention.

The flip side is, however, you can be completely obliterated using Counterstance, even if the monster isn't targetting you. This is the real problem. Moves like Innin, Hasso, Seigan, Yonin, Berserk, Aggressor, Last Resort, Souleater etc all benefit the user and don't punish you in a lopsided way like Counterstance does.

Compare the below sets.

ItemSet 359590

ItemSet 360121

SAM has higher base counter (if using Seigan + third eye) than Monk does with gifts, due to really high base Seigan + Zanshin rates. SAM CAN ALSO CAP DT WHILE HAVING A HIGHER BASE COUNTER RATE THAN MONK. This isn't an exaggeration, do the math. SAM can reach similar counter rates to MNK without much of any downside. The bonus to SAM is that they can evade attacks they don't counter (third eye), and the only penalty they receive is casting and recast time down, and the loss of JA haste. SAM can also flip Seigan/Hasso on and off at will, due to 1min recast timers. Monk doesn't have the same risk:reward ratio using Counterstance. You either use it and keep it on, or take it off and wait a long time to re-apply it. Or don't use it. MNKs can counter stronger than SAMs, sure, and probably more frequently if using Counterstance, but they will be destroyed for doing it.

If Monk is supposed to be the king of counters, Counterstance needs an adjustment. Focus/Dodge are also equally as useless, and Boost is strange. I get they were going for the boxer defensive/offensive roles, but they are just badly designed currently. I wouldn't be surprised if every ability except Impetus and Footwork was adjusted.


The penalty in Focus/Dodge is in the duration. Formless Strikes is useless for WSing (not sure why), so anything you'd use it on you're really only get use out of it for white damage. Mantra is heavily penalized due to it's 10min re-use timer.

I'd argue that using Seigan over Hasso is a pretty big downside. Everything else sounds spot on and sad though.

I sort of agree all of these past 16+ years SE has been a bit too scared of Counterstance for players.
Given the current game meta I think they can safely ungimp it without fear of risking to break the game.

It's fun, it's peculiar of Monk, feels pretty much in line with what they said their goal with these small adjustments was.


Altough, if you ask me, I hope they gonna change Focus/Dodge (lower the potency, increase the duration) and Boost as well /cry

If you are the target of an attack, is losing JA haste, accuracy, and a little STR for 50~60s momentarily really that bad? You can re-apply the haste literally instantly, at worse one minute later. Is JA haste loss worse than -ALL of your active defense for a high counter rate? Just comparing the timers on Seigan + Counterstance alone means the SAM will never be without the ability for a long period of time.

Seigan also gains 50 defense with gifts. So a samurai in the right set can reach over 100% counter rate, in capped DT gear and ONLY lose attack speed (sam is a tp overflow monster anyways?), but a Monk requires the loss of all his defensive stat to accomplish the same, and can still die in one hit EVEN IF it somehow managed to hit 50% dt set. It's not even equal man

I'd be in favor of an even swap on Counterstance: reduce the player's current Martial Arts (attack speed) with the advantage of higher counters. That's way better than having an ability that's only a liability in end game content.

They buffed focus giving it extra crit rate so its more useful, and partially ungimped counterstance giving it less def reduction (via the vit mod or something). Its at least possible to see a better buff to counterstance via ungimping further.

(Also, id love to see a rework of so many merit traits/abilities. *** berserk recast reduction.... Its very good, but makes it off timer with all other offensive abilities.)

NO I NEED MAX DEEPS AT ALL TIMES

Let's change Focus to Crit Damage+ and Accuracy+, and i'll be happy with that for smite. Wouldn't even trip about the duration being low. Counterstance is -50% defense loss, but on anything ilvl, 600 base defense is the equivalent to losing all of your defense. It was fine before we went the CL150 route, but right now it's unusable on anything you'd really want to counter on...

I think ittd just be better to up the recast and duration of focus/dodge to better fit your other timers.

+179 evasion Dodge does nothing in a post-ilvl FFXI. It's a big nothing burger. Bump it up to +700 evasion and I'll be with that.

Nah, just add meva to it. +200 meva on a high meva job in a game where magic is the biggest threat.

You also lose Zanhasso. Its a pretty big hit for TP gain. But yeah its still clearly better than Counterstance.

Simply because your TP gain is 0 while dead.

This.

The loss of Zanhasso is for no longer than 1minute though. Hardly inhibiting. SAM's job abilities are designed so properly, you really cannot complain about any tradeoffs because they are all commensurate for the role you're taking on, and temporary. Both NIN and SAM illustrate this very well with their duo of Defensive/Offensive abilities, but MNK somehow never followed the same trend, despite being in the same family tree of jobs.

Zanshin doesn't go away if you switch from Hasso to Seigan, it just augments what additional bonuses come from it:


This is precisely my point with SAM vs MNK. Seigan turns SAM into a Tank, and Hasso turns it into a hyper DD, but the loss of defensive/offensive properties from using either is not so significant. Just activating counterstance alone is a death wish and most players simply opt out of using it even when tanking/taking hate because it's not worth dying over.

Meva is op. I recently do Omen Gin on various jobs trioboxing and meva is just OP. Just meva in gear on my THF blocks all debuffs and damage from most Gin's attacks. I take so little damage that my undergeared geo can main heal me.

Might be interesting to rework both impetus and counterstance on monk.

Give both 1m CDs and 1hr durations, and have impetus be the offensive ability with counterstance being the tanking ability.

Boost was reworked into being really odd, and doesnt feel as easy or streamlined to use, its nice for certain mechanics where you want to stop hitting the mob, but thats too niche for a job ability imo.

That's what needs to happen. MNK gets an offensive and defensive "boxer's" stance and can flip either at any given time. I posted about this mid last year in both JP and NA forums:

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/54265-Monk-Suggestions-to-make-it-more-party-efficient-and-attracive

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/54266-Monk-Suggestions-to-make-it-more-party-efficient-and-attracive (the JP really liked the thread)

Impetus + Counterstance rival each other, can't be active at the same time. Duration 5 minutes each, recast 3min. Impetus full-time will give MNK the needed extra DPS it so badly needs, and since it resets every miss or caps, that's penalty enough. Remove the defense penalty on Counterstance to Martial Arts speed reduction. Allow Counterstance to grant the Monk TP on successful strikes. During Counterstance, MNK is turned into a very strong defensive fighter, while Impetus turns it into a rushdown demon. Both contribute greatly to White Damage (Monk's Bread and Butter) and the boxer can adjust his stance accordingly mid-fight.

Go upvote/comment my threads, maybe SE sees some of it.

I dont think we necessarily need it to generate enmity. Just the option for something when we do get hate in no pld/run runs. Its not like sam gets enmity gen.

I wouldn’t mind this. MNK has so much martial art gear it can use that we probably wouldn’t even feel the downside to counterstance. Counter should be granting TP period how the hell does retaliation and Seigan give TP and ours doesn’t while being the shittest of the 3 counters.

Seigan counter doesn't work but that doesn't matter because SAM has zanshin. The fact that retaliation grants tp for warrior but counter doesn't is a travesty. If counter is a broken ability then retaliation is even more broken

The reason is because counter mitigates all damage. I dont think its a good reason, but, you know.

How about go /BLU and use cocoon? Its easy to maintain and will cancel counterstance def penalty. You would lose 10%da, berserk and aggressor, so its not that great but if you know in advance that you would like to use counterstance a lot then maybe its an option.

I think the better solution is just don't use it and keep sub war.

Wouldn't it be nice if other jobs offered something as a sub. You will almost never see anything that isn't mnk/war

Why not just use defender in that case? Sure you take an atk hit, but I assume you popped counterstance to stay alive so

Well if evasions not a good nerf, what about slow or straight delay increase? Not boost tier just akin to a regular sliw, since the mnk is focusing more on counters or some nonsense?

In the old Final Fantasy games, Counter was what Retaliate is today. Cancelling a monster's attack with your own is basically a form of Paralyze to the target where the monster misses and you steal a round instead. It's a strong move for melee defense, but let's be completely honest here: NOTHING in FFXI kills you from just simple melee strikes. Being able to counter those and not take damage is barely as big of an advantage as people pretend it is, because the biggest threats to any job's survival isn't melee hits, is "osht" moves (like throat stab/everyone's revenge), magic, and TP moves, and none of those are counterable. The bosses in this game who will probably destroy you simply from melee attacks is a boss who can dread spikes or counter YOU.

You almost never die from regular hits, so being able to counter/retaliate those and gain TP from it should really just be treated like you landed a melee strike. There shouldn't be a distinction between "this is counter, don't give us TP" vs "melee strike, give tp". It's just a regular melee hit, retaliation or counter