IiPunch - Monk Guide

Your lowest delay is based on base h2h+weapon delay, not including martial arts.

So for Godhands it's actually 123.6

With base MA and no gear MA, you're at 127.5 with capped haste

With additional MA to cap delay, you'd attack about 3% faster, not less than 1%.

Not saying that's better or worse than 5 STP, I don't know, just clarifying that it is absolutely not < 1%.

Is there a source for this? BG says 96 which seems arbitrary, but ffxiclopedia is just a *** mess.

96 is the absolute minimum, ignoring all other factors. That's how I understand it anyway. The wiki will show examples and give formulas that show these numbers.

Ah yeah, the best write up is in this thread actually, as linked from BG-wiki.


So yeah the difference between 123.6 and 127.5 is probably not worth taking off Schere, Sherida, or probably even Dedition, since MA will reduce TP gain per hit.

Question: Maru Kala is a twofold attack. That makes it 3-hit similar to Tornado Kick. However, I don't see it appears on ftp replicating WS page. Does it mean this particular H2H doesn't have replicating ftp or nobody bothered to test it?

It, final heaven, and dragon blow do not replicate

No prime weaponskills replicate TP. Maru kala is no exception.

I'm replaying Monk after a few years off from the game and was wondering, with so many gear options available, where does the Kendatsuba set fit in now? Lots of triple attack and crit bonuses, but rarely see it in gear guides now. Seemed like the go to TP set, but now, like I said, there seems to be a ton of options available. Is it even worth using anymore?

Like a lot of gear from its era, while it has fairly good offensive stats, for modern high-end/endgame content it is just very lacking defensively. It has decent m.eva but not much else. You could probably get away with using 1 or 2 but personally I've retired my Kendatsuba pieces. Malignance, empyrean+2/3, mpaca from odyssey gaol, and limbus armor provide much more defensively with most of those providing more offensive benefit in the long run (especially stuff that gets more powerful with augments like mpaca and limbus set).

Morning edit: I concur with Buukki and Vargasfinio's thoughts too.

You can use the HQ body for Subtle Blow builds, specifically WS. MNK gets 35 Subtle Blow natively, so with HQ Samue, you only need 3 to cap SB1. If you use the standard WS pieces that have SB2 (Sherida, HQ belt, Niqmaddu), including Mpaca's Hose, you will fully cap Subtle Blow for every WS. The triple attack proc chance is very good for WS anyways, so it serves double duty. Obviously if you're getting Auspice it's irrelevant.

Personally, I've since sold all my HQ Kendatsuba gear and just made up the SB elsewhere, but that's a use for at least the body. Most of the other pieces are outdated imo, but they're not bad starter options.

I used Kendatsuba Sune-Ate +1 in my TP set for a looooooong time until Duty Sollerets became available. A few pieces may still be worth holding on to if you have them for filling gaps in full-on Subtle Blow sets or crit WS sets.

The thoughtful responses are much appreciated ^^

I have some gear swapping to do =P

I feel like Kenda hasn’t been that great since the oddy era. While mpaca has low magic evasion by today’s standards it’s actually quite high on magic defense. I used full mpaca for a few years before Sortie came out and I was very happy with it, and I cleared v20 ngai with 5/5 mpaca at the time. The best tp set by far nowadays is a mixture of duty and Jse. Duty armor also has subtle blow in addition to its defensive and offensive stats, and empyrean legs have everything you could ever want in a tp piece.

I actually think base duty armor is quite usable in the absence of malignance or mpaca. While the stp and triple attack need to be unlocked, you still get some double attack at R0, and the magic evasion is dramatically higher. I think I’d use R0 duty head and feet over kenda +1 in the current era. Kenda is good offensively, but as others have stated, its very squishy. Malignance, mpaca, duty, and empyrean body and legs are the go to’s nowadays. Mpaca is what I recommend new people to monk to aim for as a baseline, since its stats are front loaded and it doesn’t require Lilith spamming or tons of limbus grinding if you don’t have any of the alternatives yet.

I appreciate all of the feedback. Since i've come back a couple months ago, I've put a strong focus on JSE. Just unlocked Empy legs and body +2 last night, and i'm AF legs away from being +3 as a set overall. Will work on HTBF for rem tales next for relic completion and then finish my bead farming for Godhands. Atleast I think that's still the plan. Need to poke around Limbus a little more for currency for sure.

Going to be honest here, but I don't want to discourage your efforts. MNK JSE is kinda meh. 5/5 Empyrean+3 is cool, but if I were to breakdown which pieces are a priority, it would be:

Empyrean
Primary focus >> Legs/Body+3
PDL >> Empyrean+3 hands
Footwork/-DT >> Empyrean+3 feet
Subtle Blow/-DT >> Empyrean+3 head

Artifact
Footwork/Kick WS >> +3/4 feet

The rest are honestly macro pieces, and you could skip them if you didn't care about completionist. There really aren't any Relic pieces you need to bother taking beyond 109 if you don't want to.

Relic Head >> Penance (this one you will always carry around)
Chakra Hands/body (Relic body and AF hands)
Mantra feet
Hundred Fists legs
Focus head

The second list is honestly not important for much of anything besides Chi Blast Penance augment. I would not stress out making these pieces unless you just wanted to. I'd focus my attention more on Godhands, Mpaca base set, Nyame set, Duty (eventually), Moonbow +1/Ask Sash/Hoxne Ampulla (if you have gil to spend).

Just my 2c, you do NOT have to spend time upgrading armor that is not practical in most of endgame, unless you just want to. :)

edit: There might also be some of that new starter gear (Olorun Harness) you might be able to get too.
edit2: I should be fair. The +4 artifact hands are OK for WSD if you don't have Nyame. The +4 relic head is OK for WSD for the same reason. However, MNK WS aren't really improved that much with WSD trait, it's normally MA. Which is why Nyame-B is better (DA+WSD on same piece, plus SCD trait). So the benefit is minimal/temporary until you start augmenting the better sets I mentioned.

Buukki summarized our JSE perfectly. I'll TL;DR version it in my own words.

I only carry around the essential JSE. There are only 4 pieces that see heavy use. Empyrean body is for impetus, empyrean legs for is TP, empyrean hands is for all my weaponskill sets (except maru), and artifact feet is for tornado/dragon kick when footwork is up. There are four additional pieces I carry solely as macro swaps for JA activation. Empyrean feet is solely for footwork activation, but I took it to +3 so it gets the maximum attack buff, relic legs is for hundred fists activation which I left at I109, relic head for penance activation which I also left at I109, and relic feet for mantra activation, which is also I109.

That's 8 out of 15 JSE I carry around, and only 5 of them are max Ilvl. The mantra feet and hundred fists hands are easily skippable. I do recommend empyrean feet +3 though if you can. Footwork dragon kick is such a rush. It's just a shame it only lasts for 1 minute, but while it's up it feels like god mode. I don't bother with the chakra pieces, and the rest of the stuff is niche. If you're crunching to get geared up as efficiently as possible I'd recommend you just max out the essential pieces and get your penance hat and you should be good.

This is all super helpful for context. You guys echo pretty much what I've read in the gear guide on BG so I appreciate the confirmation. I AM a completionist, and I'm fighting myself not to waste gil on non essential pieces lol. I do have another question about AF vs Empy feet. Both seem very, very good for footwork/kick attacks. Am I correct in understanding that I should use Empy upon activation of footwork, then switch to AF for everything else from TP to WS?

I should add for future reference that I don't yet have any of the Ody gear, Malignance, Limbus etc. Im pretty much exclusively +2, +3 JSE as I fill in the content gaps.

I do also favor Howling Fist as my go to WS so WSD gear can and does help with that right? I still use Asuran, and Shijin often as well for SC'ing while I work towards getting Smite.

iirc these only need to be on for Footwork activation similar to the feet from Escha - Ru'aun

Edit: Mell already said that.

Howling fist still does replicate TP, but it does have pretty decent FTP values so it ends up being a mix of WSD and MA gear. If you are using Ampula, you're fine to just to WSD, but some TA gear from the Mpaca set might slightly out perform it overall. Emphasize might.

Edit: Mpaca is pretty defensive oriented too. Technically, Kendatsuba and/or Tatenashi has more triple attack, but definitely a huge step down defensively.

You are correct on both counts. Empyrean feet is strictly a macro swap for footwork activation. The attack buff remains for the JA duration once you take them off. My duty sollerets are ranked up to R30, so I keep them on during footwork and just use anchorite solely as a dragon kick macro swap. But that's the exception to the rule. In every other case you just fulltime anchorite while footwork is up and wail on stuff. It's very effective.

Yeah but I included them because they have a hefty chunk of -DT and are more defensively weighted overall than AF+4, at the cost of Kick DPS. So you can include them in other creative dps/defensive builds. The Empyrean pieces in general are all good and have a purpose beyond just application, I would 5/5 +3 the set before any of the other sets.

How should I manage my tp gain? Impetus for 3 mins, then swap to footwork after that runs out for a minute, then 1 min cool down, rinse repeat?

If you want to space it out, yeah. Short fights it can be better to just pop both, favor FW with tornado kick while its up then swap over to smite after, though even under impetus i think howling/raging can be the way to go sometimes as far as WS go

This is the standard approach. I follow this on most content, especially when there's movement between camps like in limbus. Often times you'll warp to a new floor or change towers as footweork wears off only to arrive at the new camp with impetus just seconds from coming online. But there are times when I just pop both impetus and footwork at the same time too, mostly for stuff like nariont explained. It's worth going that rout if you're fighting a single big thing, like gartell for instance.