IiPunch - Monk Guide

To Sechs, that was my fault on VSmite, I only had it listed at 1000 TP because its mod is only Crit Rate as you said. With Impetus up and Standard BRD/COR Buffs it was putting an 80k Average with Vereth which is nutty O_o; but it makes sense with forced DA and healthy chunks of PDL to work with.


Ahhh ok it was erroneous then, good to know. At 2000 TP it was still equipping Moonshade and Mpaca Cap for the full 950, so effectively 3000TP WSs. Literally every major WS was 80k+ with Howling Fist Averaging 88k without Aria.

I almost wonder if an argument could be made to hold TP to 2000 but only if using Ampulla and SAM roll just from the sheer weight of that boost. Obviously WSing ASAP if Warcry is on in those same conditions. Or would still be a loss?

As an aside, why limit to 99k? The hard cap is 99k so if the average polls above that, I’ll just know it’ll cap out frequently. Or does it mess with the Sim in some way?

Edit: Grammar Fixes

This isn't true or we have wrong info on fTP/WSC Maru Kala.

I'm more leaning to anecdotal shenanigans. You are probably compering Warcry Disasters and Hover shot Sarv to 1000TP Maru Kalas or uneven buffs scenarios (MNK without Berserk might not be capped).

Disaster
60% STR, 60% VIT 3.05~6.10~9.15 fTP
Base weapon damage: 380
Max fstr: 50

Maru Kala
60% STR, 60% DEX 3.092~7.516~11.94 fTP
Base weapon damage: ~300
max fstr: 24

Same buffs, capped attack, no warcry, bis sets, Median:
Maru Kala, WS asap : 65434
Maru Kala, WS 3000TP : 129839
Disaster, WS asap : 56161
Disaster, WS 3000TP : 118204

I always thought the most effective tp range to weaponskill on monk was in the effective 2500 to 2800 range. Raging, howling, tornado and dragon all scale harder from 2k to 3k than they do from 1k to 2k, and we get tp so fast that going from 1k tp to 1800 tp happens in a flash anyway. Same goes for maru kala actually. Victory smite is the only weaponskill I think makes sense to fire off as close to 1k as possible. Even with godhands I think it makes sense to hold tp until 1500 to 1800 and use the full 950 tp bonus to really take advantage of the 2-3k range tp scaling on our weaponskills. I very frequently hold tp until 2k with varga.

This is without hoxne ampulla mind. I'll get the thing sooner or later. Right now it's still a little steep to buy off the auction house.

If you sim without the 99k cap, it will take WSs above 99999 to inflate avg. Like for example avg of 160k, 160, 80k, 80k is 120k. While in game avg would be 89.999 because those 160k would be capped to 99999.

Understood.

Yeahhh I remember seeing that as well. I’ll have to dig through and find the page and quote it but I distinctly remember it being mathed out to hold TP even with Godhands to capitalize on that spike. Unless self-Skillchaining of course.

I'm going off my own experiences. I have four primes now and I've had time to use each and every one of them. I've geared to their strengths and I've become pretty familiar with what they can do. I run with a static and I consistently have very similar buffs. My bard is fully decked out with all the bells and whistles, so I always have aria. I follow a similar playstyle with all my remas, consistently weaponskilling in the effective 2500-2800 tp range on them. All of my major tp scaling weaponskills; sarv, maru kala, ruthless, rudra's, and disaster have tp scaling that favors weaponskilling closer to effective 3000 tp than sooner, and my warrior and monk both have similar dps focused builds that put up big white damage numbers while silmultaneously getting fast tp.

From every experience I've had with these weapons, in every scenario, disaster does more damage on average than maru kala. Generalizing I would say it's about 20 to 30% more. Sarv does even more damage than disaster on average, but the nuances between ranged tp fight versus flat melee means I can't really compare the two. Maybe this difference is because Laphria has a higher base damage, maybe it's because I have more PDL on warrior than I do on monk, maybe it's because of some other factor, but maru kala has consistently ...always, and every time I used it, fallen short of disaster. And the numbers each weapon outputs are always similar.

I'm not going off spreadsheets here. I'm going off real in game experience playing with these primes under full party buff , in real fights in real content. The weapons are different and that plays a part. But I do not believe maru kala is as good as disaster. It is very strong. Varga is an incredible weapon. I prefer varga to godhands now. But I prefer it because of the whole package that varga has. Extremely high white damage. Check. Fulltime empyrean aftermath 1 effect. check. Very high base damage with great stat mods so the usual monk rotation is all working at peak numbers. Check. And it has a unique weaponskill that benefits from the WSD meta, so my nyame and WSD gear really shines with kala, and it skillchains darkness which monk has no other good way of making solo. Check!

Maru kala is STRONG. it's just not AS STRONG as the 2 handed prime weaponskills.

With Godhands Footwork and using Hoxne you definitely don't want to wait at all if you are in high attack scenario, because you will be doing 90k+ Tornado anyway and there is very little or none WS damage to gain. If you proc TA on one hand it's guaranteed 99k too.

Even assuming lower attack scenario and Howling Fist, waiting for 1500TP doesn't change dps at all. Lower ws frequency, higher white damage and higher WS damage will even out to the same dps level. waiting for 2000TP start to be a dps loss.

Maru Kala is the same. Holding tp is generally dps neutral.

Ofc if you have warcry from WAR you always want to WS asap.

You are compering apples to oranges. Are you using both at the same TP with same buffs in the same fights, or are you talking about different fights, different buffs, using warcry and possibly MS.

If you are not capping attack, berserk will push Disaster numbers by a lot compered to Maru Kala. If you are fighting targets with DT, tomhawk will push Disaster numbers too.
Unless it's proven wrong, Disaster higher numbers are because of buffs/debuffs, not WS itself. Like for example take MNK to Sortie basement bosses and pair it with WAR and GEO, so both have Warcry up and high attack and report then.

EDIT: I also assume you have bis gear for Maru Kala, right?

This is going to become a point of contention between some posters going forward I can tell. I don't own Hoxne ampulla yet. I intend to buy hoxne ampulla in the future, and I do intend to use it, but it will be sparingly. there is going to be a rift between players who are more wealthy versus those who generally farm enough gil to maintain their needs and get by. I fall into the latter camp. When I have something I want to buy I will go out of my way to increase my farming efforts, but otherwise I tend to let my gil income flow in more passively from dailys and monthlys.

I will not be changing my playstyle to revolve around the ampulla, and in most cases I won't be using it. It's not necessary to clear casual content and it's extremely expensive to maintain for the benefit. I will base most of my discussions around the assumption of NOT having the ampulla active, even though I do intend to indulge myself and use it from time to time. I'll have sets both for and without the ampulla.


And this is fine. DPS neutral is just that. It's a difference in play style. Neither one is going to make a significant impact on your overall numbers. Most jobs nowadays have roughly an 85% weaponskill to 15% white damage spread. Samurai leans more heavily toward a 90% to 10% spread, whereas monk and thief lean more toward 70 % weaponskill to 30% white damage or even 65% / 35% ratio. But for the most part we are in a meta where the bulk of a players damage comes from their weaponskill numbers. DPS neutral does not significantly impact that scaling one way or another. There is a valid argument to holding tp, especially when we multi attack and over tp so fast that weaponskill animation delay starts to become a factor.

We are not in the 75 era anymore. Going from 1000 tp to 1800 tp happens in a single attack round nowadays, and sometimes you can overflow to 2200 accidentally in the flash of an eye. I don't believe this "immediately weaponskilling asap at 1k" is nearly as impactful in real practice as some make it sound. Not when we're all walking around with 80% WSD in our sets and spamming savage blade -esque skills that scale HARD from 2k to 3k.

I will acknowledge the amulla does change that. And it is a personal prefernce that I am omitting the ampulla from the bulk of my discussions. I'm fine with you mathing it out, and encourage it. You're giving us some VERY good information to make the best use of the ampulla simon, and I will be using it sometimes. But for non ampulla play, i do not believe my playstyle is wrong. And I know how my primes work. I stand by everything I said firmly.

EDIT:


Of course. I said I took the time to build these sets to optimize them. This is mine. Nyame is rank 30 . Bhikku earring is about 75% max potency, with 11 strength and 11 dex. I suppose I could swap epa ring for regal ring, and Hesychast's crown +4 is an interesting option over Mpaca's, but I'm pretty sure mpaca's is the better choice. This is my set. It's as good as it gets. Cape is full strength and 10 WSD.

ItemSet 400222

Your set is bis set for uncapped attack.
For high attack set you are missing a lot of pdl.

High attack scenario with aria this set should be doing around 78785 median if you wait to ~1750TP.
Now below set would be doing over 92k
*bhikku+2 earring would be even higher, almost 93k but I like to have 25% SBII in WS set too and it's very rare earring anyway. I know you have different TVR ring, but this is generally what you are loosing in term of damage at high attack scenario.

20M drop today, down to 150M, 8 in stock. Gonna be sub 100M by March

I'm going to provide some numbers here for you simon and I want to hear your thoughts on this, because these numbers mirror what I see in game when I run events. This is a series of 8 weaponskills all performed at 3000 tp in gustaburg with no outside buffs using the following gear sets... minus one swap. I'm using my Heschychast's crown +3 to pump up maru kala even further. Since these were all done at 3000 tp it only makes maru better. I've provided a screenshot of my base stats as well to show the full picture for all the final numbers. These were done as Monk/war, War/sam, and Rng/drg, to mirror my actual gameplay because those are the sub jobs I use when I take these jobs to events.

ItemSet 401923
ItemSet 400222
ItemSet 393937




This supports every claim I made about maru kala being approximately 20-30% weaker in practice to disaster and sarv. I don't have any aria or etudes or any other party buffs here, but when I get them they affect all my jobs so by association this is still a good representation of the general power difference between the weaponskills.

Maru kala is strong. But disaster and sarv are absolutely stronger. I'm pretty sure the difference here is the weapons themselves. Laphria has a whopping 380 base damage to varga's 213, and Pinaka's base damage with arrow included is over 430. That base damage is going to factor into the scaling very heavily when you look at the fTP values at 2500+. It's the same reason that rudra's storm and ruthless stroke put out much lower damage when used without climactic or sneak / trick attack. The lower base damage on the dagger translates into significantly lower numbers without the crit effect.

Super reasonable.

Assuming always having Ampulla effect up is just silly. It makes a ton of sense to spend the gil for something like getting over the hump to win that tough Ody NM fight, or clear a troublesome Sortie boss, or challenge a Master Trial or something. That's where you pull out all the stops. But for a lot of content, why spend the gil? I'm certainly not gonna open up the wallet for some improved DPS in Segments, Dynamis, Limbus BS, Ambuscade...

I equate it more to something like expensive food. It's situational, there are not gonna be a lot of people who think it's reasonable to pop an Altana's Repast for Sheol C.

With that in mind, 100% agree that it's super useful to see the work Simon and others are putting in to help others understand the best ways to use this tool when it makes sense to use (based on individual discretion). I just hope that people remember that when we start talking gear sets, everything shouldn't be focused on sets geared toward max DPS with Ampulla as the default assumption. That's one variant set used in certain situations. Should be nothing new to just consider it one of the situational possibilities though, just like we've seen capped/uncapped attack sets, old school focus up/down sets, etc.

I think the ampula is a very useful tool. I think it's an invaluable asset to clearing more difficult content, like vengence 25 oddy fights or master trials. And I respect and encourage all the efforts simon is going through to show us how to maximize its potential. But I also think it's a luxury item that if used recklessly will ruin ones bank account a LOT faster than many people realize, especially if people play for multiple hours a day, and especially if you prefer to play on the jobs that I spend the most time on (dual wield). It's completely unnecessary for limbus farming and sheol C runs, and I don't want future gear discussions to become "well with ampulla this and if you don't use it I'm not gonna bother with this discussion". (I know that's not what Simon is doing. I'm just saying I prefer to keep the majority of gear discussion either specifically aimed at an ampula situation for when people want to talk ampula on, or for general talk about X thing assuming it won't be involved).

Monk is the job where ampulla makes the most sense because guaranteeing a double attack proc on both main and offhand swing for tornado kick is just..... yeah its drool worthy good. But even then, I'm more excited about the prospects of incorporating the duty gear augmented into my stuff right now. That set is amazing!!! The weapon comparison discussion is also pretty fun. I like weapon maths.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the prime WSs info are wrong, tbh.

That's why I'm providing some data and giving my own personal experiences. It's possible (even very probable) that some of our numbers and understanding are off. I know what I see, and I see it every time I use these weapons. The average strength difference between my disasters versus my maru kala's is incredibly consistent over time. The biggest factor is likely what I said... just raw base damage numbers. Laphria's 380 base damage is a LOT bigger than varga's 213. That matters very much when you're looking at big fTP scaling getting multiplied by WSD that... yadda yadda yadda