Six-Sided Tornado Star - The 5.0 Monk TK Rotation

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Your rotation for tk burst if you have pb is wrong.
It's showing 2 consecutive dragon kicks.Thats deffintly a dps loss.

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Believe it or not, doing that is actually something I picked up today from the optimization guide that you can find on the Balance Discord. Basically, because you exit PB formless, your LF Boot won't be a guaranteed crit, which you want it to be at all times as the damage from that move is no joke. In terms of immediate damage, one crit-LF Boot does more damage than any combination of the other regular GCDs at a minimum crit multiplier value of 1.5 alone. And because crit increases in damage the more you have, using a crit-LF Boot is almost like using a Demo with all of it's DoT ticks applied at once. Most likely, it's the singular move that currently makes monks so powerful.

I have to ask.

Clearly, you are aware of the Balance and the number-crunching they do over there, plus the vet players who create the guides are regularly amongst world first raiders with 100 percentile logs. You absolutely have a right to play how you'd like to play with your own rotation, opener and such. But don't you think it's irresponsible posting your ideas as a "guide" when there are clearly better rotations available from people who parse much higher than yourself? Surely, as someone who'd want to mentor new players, you'd point them in the direction where the most widely crowdsourced and up to date information is, backed up by players who can demonstrate their optimizations with their own numbers?

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Originally Posted by Rockette

I have to ask.

Clearly, you are aware of the Balance and the number-crunching they do over there, plus the vet players who create the guides are regularly amongst world first raiders with 100 percentile logs. You absolutely have a right to play how you'd like to play with your own rotation, opener and such. But don't you think it's irresponsible posting your ideas as a "guide" when there are clearly better rotations available from people who parse much higher than yourself? Surely, as someone who'd want to mentor new players, you'd point them in the direction where the most widely crowdsourced and up to date information is, backed up by players who can demonstrate their optimizations with their own numbers?

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I don't play MNK, so this is coming from an outside perspective when I say this. First off, I get where you're coming from, and I understand it. Secondly, I get where OP is coming from, and I understand it. The optimal thing isn't always the fun thing, and skills exist to be used, so you can't blame people for wanting to use them. Furthermore, plenty of things were considered consensus over the history of mankind. Many of them were wrong but that didn't stop a lot of people from agreeing with them. Not to say that OP is right and that the Balance folks are wrong, just that the argument of "lots of people agree with this" is not an argument. The data helps of course, but part any statistical or scientific analysis is to not discount possibility, and that means exploring every avenue. Theory is great but it's just theory. If someone doesn't go through and try this sort of thing out then no one will ever know the truth of it's efficacy. Even if all it does is prove the "null" hypothesis (that is to say, the standard MNK rotation is the best) then that's valuable in and of itself simply for the boundary that's been established via the conceptual exploration.

I agree with you that optimal doesn't always equal fun. Monk is a weird class where SE seem to implement actions that they don't intend Monks to use. Heavensward was full of theory crafters trying to make a Tornado kick rotation work and that didn't happen until unintentional changes in Stormblood. Anatman is not used at all for it's intended purpose, they nullified that with form shift changes. Six sided star is another frustrating skill that as a gcd, you'd think it would be part of the rotation. Instead, its Tornado Kick 2.0. Monk has had the same core rotation for 6 years now since 2.0 with only off gcds added so I get this, I get wanting to make something else work, I really do.

But it doesn't work like that :/

My problem is the advertisement of these ideas as a "guide". "The Monk 5.0 Rotation" specifically. If you want to play your own rotation, by all means, do it. But don't present it to the community as a finished product for those looking to refine their rotation or better themselves as players when this rotation is utterly sub optimal as demonstrated by hard numbers.

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Originally Posted by Oxdarock

Believe it or not, doing that is actually something I picked up today from the optimization guide that you can find on the Balance Discord. Basically, because you exit PB formless, your LF Boot won't be a guaranteed crit, which you want it to be at all times as the damage from that move is no joke. In terms of immediate damage, one crit-LF Boot does more damage than any combination of the other regular GCDs at a minimum crit multiplier value of 1.5 alone. And because crit increases in damage the more you have, using a crit-LF Boot is almost like using a Demo with all of it's DoT ticks applied at once. Most likely, it's the singular move that currently makes monks so powerful.

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Which is why you'd go true strike dragon kick instead of double dragon kick.Double dragonkick is never a dps gain.There is absolutly no benefit to double dragon kick in your rotation.Please do some proper research before posting these guides.This is basic monk stuff.

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Originally Posted by Quor

I don't play MNK, so this is coming from an outside perspective when I say this. First off, I get where you're coming from, and I understand it. Secondly, I get where OP is coming from, and I understand it. The optimal thing isn't always the fun thing, and skills exist to be used, so you can't blame people for wanting to use them. Furthermore, plenty of things were considered consensus over the history of mankind. Many of them were wrong but that didn't stop a lot of people from agreeing with them. Not to say that OP is right and that the Balance folks are wrong, just that the argument of "lots of people agree with this" is not an argument. The data helps of course, but part any statistical or scientific analysis is to not discount possibility, and that means exploring every avenue. Theory is great but it's just theory. If someone doesn't go through and try this sort of thing out then no one will ever know the truth of it's efficacy. Even if all it does is prove the "null" hypothesis (that is to say, the standard MNK rotation is the best) then that's valuable in and of itself simply for the boundary that's been established via the conceptual exploration.

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This is pretty much the reason why I went through all of this trouble. I didn’t know using TK in the regular rotation was a thing until 4.5 and even when I did, because it went against everything I knew about MNK to that point, I adamantly dismissed it. However, once I realized that it actually was optimal to use, it reinvigorated the class for me and became a lot more fun to play and optimize (as well as making me more open to experimentation). It’s hard for me to want to go back to using 2.0 monk after that. Even if using the TK Burst turns out to be less optimal, knowing why and what gains you can get from it despite that is worth going through all of this experimentation and documentation.

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Originally Posted by Rockette

I have to ask.

Clearly, you are aware of the Balance and the number-crunching they do over there, plus the vet players who create the guides are regularly amongst world first raiders with 100 percentile logs. You absolutely have a right to play how you'd like to play with your own rotation, opener and such. But don't you think it's irresponsible posting your ideas as a "guide" when there are clearly better rotations available from people who parse much higher than yourself? Surely, as someone who'd want to mentor new players, you'd point them in the direction where the most widely crowdsourced and up to date information is, backed up by players who can demonstrate their optimizations with their own numbers?

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The main issue I have with the Balance and it’s optimization guide is that it specifically advertises a playstyle that requires a third party program and low ping, and it’s literally the only guide in the entire Balance the does this. As someone who plays on the PS4 and has moderate ping (low enough that I can still decently double weave on other classes), this is akin to saying “LoL, sucks for you.” The fact that it also requires a specific sks tier and doesn’t provide any means to adjust for this also comes off as inflexible imo. Not only does the current BiS have higher sks than what’s considered optimal, it’s only going to get higher in future patches.

Honestly, I’m more bother by the fact that the Balance completely disregards using 6SS for anything other than disconnects, even though it has its uses outside of the TK Burst. I also believe that there is no point in double weaving for fast classes like MNK, NIN, and SAM. For example, take the Shoe Shiner opener, which is nearly identical to the Double Twin opener. According to the Optimization guide on the Balance, aside from requiring Triggernometry, it gives a “possible” method of fitting the final LF Boot within RoF. On the other hand, with the Shoe Shiner Opener, that same LF Boot is guaranteed regardless of your sks, plus you gain an extra use of Shoulder Tackle. The most ironic part about this is that using the 6SS/Anatman, probably the core of the entire guide, was something I picked up on the Balance Discord.

The Optimization Guide also downplays the other uses as being sub-optimal, which I find odd. For one, it suggests that using two DKs in a row is more preferred over using 6SS. While the possibility of earning two crits for more Chakra procs is a valid point, it’s very unlikely that this will happen consistently. What’s more, two DKs only equals 400 potency total if you hit both positionals, so if you can’t or don’t for some reason, it then becomes a dps loss. For the 6 Opo-Opo PB, which again, assumes that you’ll always hit 6 GCDs, it states that using 6SS after PB is a dps loss, which again is odd since you wouldn’t be able to use 6 Opo-Opo moves unless you use RoE or Anatman (while the former is actually a decent argument, there’s no guarantee that raid or player specific damage will occur during every PB window. And of course the latter requires Triggernometry, which doesn’t help PS4 players).

I’m not sure if I’ve said this before on the OF, but quite frankly, I never expected to get into theory crafting and guide making for FF14. Not only am I not, but never have been, the best MNK, I didn’t even realize that lining up raid buffs was a thing until 4.4. So as depreciating as it sounds, I’m really just some upstart rando. But when the only way to Optimized MNK requires third party programs and the best connection possible while downplaying the rest of the class’ new toolkit without even explaining why, I feel the need to do something about it. Had I not been in the overwhelming minority of people who thought using 6SS and TK regularly was worth it, it probably wouldn’t have taken me two and a half months to get to this point (and I most likely wouldn’t be the one writing the guide).

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Originally Posted by Metalwrath

Which is why you'd go true strike dragon kick instead of double dragon kick.Double dragonkick is never a dps gain.There is absolutly no benefit to double dragon kick in your rotation.Please do some proper research before posting these guides.This is basic monk stuff.

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You're very much underestimating how hard a guaranteed crit LF Boot regularly hits for, which is a mistake I made not too long ago. And as I said, that piece of advice was something I picked up from the Optimization Guide on the Balance Discord, which most people use, so I figured it'd be a valid argument, even though the TK guide goes against a lot of points it makes.

You don't need a third party program, to optimize MNK, it just makes your life easier. You can manage all of those things on your own. And what you can't will be very small DPS losses if you screw up, where here you pumping out between 5-10% less DPS. Which is quite significant. Skill need to be adjusted, and if people complain I'm sure it will get adjusted, kinda like SAMs lvl80 skill. Although, since they are moving towards simplifying everything I doubt they would intentionally add anything like SB TK use.

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Originally Posted by kashi11

You don't need a third party program, to optimize MNK, it just makes your life easier. You can manage all of those things on your own. And what you can't will be very small DPS losses if you screw up, where here you pumping out between 5-10% less DPS. Which is quite significant. Skill need to be adjusted, and if people complain I'm sure it will get adjusted, kinda like SAMs lvl80 skill. Although, since they are moving towards simplifying everything I doubt they would intentionally add anything like SB TK use.

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I'm interested in where those number came from in order to make that claim. That said, whether you have a third party program as a visual aid or not, the issue with using Anatman between two regular GCDs in order to build GL is that it's a lot less consistent and is likely to cause you to clip GCDs, on top of the missed auto-attack(s). When using Anatman right after 6SS, along with the extra damage to balance out missing an auto attack, you're almost always guaranteed to gain one stack of GL, regardless of server tick (although there are rare cases of having to wait a fraction of a second into the next GCD to build a GL stack. There are also cases where you'll gain two GL stacks within 6SS's CD, though you should avoid intentionally doing this). I will admit, however, that using a third party program would indeed come in handy during PB windows in order to avoid using a Coeurl stance GCD and just spamming DK and Boot.

The only thing I can think of that could lower the skill needed to use Anatman mid-rotation (other than using it after 6SS) is if it gave you a GL stack as soon as you use it. While that alone would make the TK Burst slightly more powerful, if it ends up keeping it's original function of gaining a GL stack after 3 seconds or server tick, then that's make the TK Burst and every opener in the guide much more powerful as you'd be able to reach GL3 in about 6-8 seconds using a 6SS/Anatman combo and GL4 in about 10-12secs.