Possible Changes to Arm of the Destroyer for Monk

So, I'm a long time monk on FF14 and while I love the class and feel a sense of accomplishment when I play it well since it's possibly one of the harder classes to play at a high level (what with the positionals, optimal use of Perfect Balance, buff management, etc), I've been bothered by the fact that three of its moves don't seem to have very much use compared to other classes (most of which have a frequent use for all of their moves) in PVE content. Those moves are Arm of the Destroyer, One-Ilm Punch, and Riddle of Earth. For the sake of character usage, I'll be dedicating this thread to Arm of the Destroyer.

To start, Arm of the Destroyer is an AoE move that hits everything in a circle around you, has a potency of 50, has an added effect to silence enemies if used in Opo-Opo stance, and uses 130 TP. Quite frankly, there's not really much use to it in an AoE rotation due to the fact that it does too little damage for the amount of TP it costs in comparison to Rock Breaker (which hits for more than twice the amount and refreshes Grease Lightning, but hits in a cone before you). Simplest way to fix this is to either lower the TP cost, up the damage, replace the silence with a minor DoT (something that's low enough to not consider for a boss encounter), or a combination of all three. Even if this results in monks losing TP more quickly, I'd at least include it in my AoE rotation. Of course, with TP soon to be removed in 5.0, this is most likely a moot point, but the potency increase and DoT application would still be a nice change.

Be sure to check out the threads on possible changes for One-Ilm Punch and Riddle of Earth as both find much more use in raid encounters.

I don't know why you're not using Arm of the Destroyer in your AOE Rotation. Just take a look

In Opo-opo posture you don't have much powerful attack.

You got one with 100% crit if in the back with 140 Potency
You got one with +10% damage from your punch on this single target at 140 potency on the side.
And you got the Aoe Silence for 1 Sec with possibility of spamming Silence (No immunity) at 50 Potency.

Let's take a look

If you got 2 Monsters in the pull, Obvsiouly using one of your 140 potency's Punch is more worth than anything.

But, if you got 3 Monster or more.

You get this Math : Number of target Hit x Potency = Total damage

140's Punch : 1 x 140 = 140 Potency damage

Arm of destroyer : 3x50 = 150 Potency (And this number increase as much if you hit more monster)

You are about to say : "But you consume TP too much" and I will respond "You will rarely see any pack of monster in dungueon that will last long enough to survive that, and don't forget that Bard and Melee dps could restore your TP and you get the +400 TP restoration once"

I use Arm of destroyer on 3 monster or more, because it's more Potency efficient AND IF the monster are casters, you delayed their attacks by 1Sec and that could save your tank if the heal is a little sloppy.

I don't play Monk in HL Raid or something, just for fun. But with that math, i don't know why you're not using this.

You do it at 4+ targets.

At 3 targets, you Dragon Kick and Bootshine. Dragon kick is 140, but +10% for everything that follows will beat out the 10 potency gain on Arm of the Destroyer x 3

You can make the argument that for longevity, even on 4 targets you skip Arm of the Destroyer.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

I don't know why you're not using Arm of the Destroyer in your AOE Rotation. Just take a look

In Opo-opo posture you don't have much powerful attack.

You got one with 100% crit if in the back with 140 Potency
You got one with +10% damage from your punch on this single target at 140 potency on the side.
And you got the Aoe Silence for 1 Sec with possibility of spamming Silence (No immunity) at 50 Potency.

Let's take a look

If you got 2 Monsters in the pull, Obvsiouly using one of your 140 potency's Punch is more worth than anything.

But, if you got 3 Monster or more.

You get this Math : Number of target Hit x Potency = Total damage

140's Punch : 1 x 140 = 140 Potency damage

Arm of destroyer : 3x50 = 150 Potency (And this number increase as much if you hit more monster)

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Just because the potency overall is higher the more targets you hit, doesn't mean the enemies are dying any faster nor does it mean your attacks are hitting any harder. If we're excluding single target GCDs and oGCDs, even if you use Arm of the Destroyer in your AoE rotation, the amount of time it takes to kill 1 enemy is the same as 5 enemies. The problem is that if you run out of TP with the latter, even if you kill 1 or 2 enemies, you still have 3 more to deal with with low TP. And if you're in a situation where a tank pulls a lot of enemies at once, every enemy killed is less damage the tank takes. So you want to kill the most enemies with the lowest TP usage, which for melee DPS means picking off one while whittling down the others.

The problem is that currently, using one of the Opo-Opo single target moves is much more efficient than using Arm of the Destroyer even in an AoE rotation simply because it's more cost efficient (single target moves use less than half as much TP) and will actually do a better job at whittling the heard more quickly.

Here's a basic example of how it looks when comparing a rotation with AoTD versus one without it. We'll use 1600 as a total to represent the HP of 5 enemies (320 per enemy) and assume that all single target moves hit for 140. We'll do each rotation twice.

With AotD: 50+140+130+50+140+130=640 (2 enemies dead, 3 left over. Total TP used=600)

With Single Target Moves: 140+140+130+140+140+130=820 (2 enemies dead, 3 left over with one having a little more than half its HP. Total TP used=440)

Now, obviously this is a very vague example as the other enemies will have even less HP due to the AoE damage, but the point is that using single target moves will pick off enemies in a shorter timeframe with less TP cost than using AotD, which in turn results in less damage the tank is taking. What's more, considering the potency increases, buffs, and effects that go along with single target moves, the amount of damage to a single target it worth way more than 140 potency, resulting in single targets being picked off even faster.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by TabrisOmbrelame

You are about to say : "But you consume TP too much" and I will respond "You will rarely see any pack of monster in dungueon that will last long enough to survive that, and don't forget that Bard and Melee dps could restore your TP and you get the +400 TP restoration once"

I use Arm of destroyer on 3 monster or more, because it's more Potency efficient AND IF the monster are casters, you delayed their attacks by 1Sec and that could save your tank if the heal is a little sloppy.

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If you are referring to single group pulls (which are usually 4 or 5 enemies at most), quite frankly, it's not really worth it as a melee DPS to use an AoE rotation on them more than once, if at all. However, in a pull with several groups, I guarantee you that enemies will live through an AoE rotation with AotD. And while Invigorate and Purification help a lot by providing +700 extra TP, it doesn't change the fact that AotD doesn't kill enemies nearly as quickly as monk's single target Opo-Opo moves while still using more than twice as much TP. I also wouldn't rely on another DPS using a TP refresh since you can either find yourself with a caster DPS or the other melee might not have Goad on their hotbar. (Quite frankly, even if both DPS are melee, if they use their AoE rotation and switch to single target around 200 TP, their really isn't a need for Goad.)

Yes, if the pull has casters it could potentially save them, but that's really situational and doesn't make up for the TP cost. If it were an AoE stun, that'd be a bit better since it works on everything (though it'd still need a slight potency increase). As it stands however, killing enemies 1 second faster is much better than delaying several enemies for 1 second.

Well, I've learned something at least. Those explanation seems pretty clear to me.

Thanks for showing me that I was wrong.