Form Shift and AoE

I really like to AoE whenever it's the better thing to do especially as a monk. Now that I recently got Form Shift I'm stuck with a troubling matter.

It eats up a GCD, but I can skip a stance and get 60 TP back each time (because TP regens 60 every 2.5 seconds, so using a GCD that costs nothing is pretty much 60TP back). Almost sounds like the perfect excuse to skip opo-opo stance when spaming rockbreaker. But at the same time it means no damage.

What do you think? Good idea or bad?

Ehh. With invigorate and purification you should generally be fine. I am doubting this would be a dps increase especially if that means dropping dragon kick or twin snakes.

We are currently very good at keeping our tp. If you weave in a chakra between rotations, you shouldnt have to worry.

Oh definitely not skipping twin snakes. D:

And thanks :D

Form shift isn't meant to be used while you have enemies up. It's always better damage wise to do your rotation unless you have to be away from the enemy dodging an aoe or doing mechanics. This includes aoe situations. If the enemies are up long enough that you can't sustain through natural ticks and purification + invigorate, then there's a problem. Unless you have 4+ enemies there's not much need to use Arm of the destroyer anyway and that's your biggest tp consumer anyway

Aa a dps, you should consider any idea that involves not doing damage as a bad idea. You shouldn't be having tp issues but if it is an issue then just don't aoe. It'll be less damage but not less than form shifting through every opo opo stance. You're missing out on DK debuf and bootshine auto crit.

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Originally Posted by Claymore022

Aa a dps, you should consider any idea that involves not doing damage as a bad idea.

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Such as raising a Healer as Summoner.

Mathematically, I'm sure that the OP's idea is, at some point, better. The question is just how many enemies you have to stack to make the additional rock breakers enabled through Form Shift worth it and why they are taking so long to die that Invigorate and the Chakra replenish don't suffice.

Realistically, I don't think anyone will run into that situation. But still, it's a nice thought experiment. I'm just too lazy to do the math ._.'

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Originally Posted by Zojha

Mathematically, I'm sure that the OP's idea is, at some point, better. The question is just how many enemies you have to stack to make the additional rock breakers enabled through Form Shift worth it and why they are taking so long to die that Invigorate and the Chakra replenish don't suffice.

Realistically, I don't think anyone will run into that situation. But still, it's a nice thought experiment. I'm just too lazy to do the math ._.'

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I'm quite sure that situation doesn't exist. As for op, is there a specific dungeon or something that you're constantly running out of tp on? I think the overall dps is just so low that you're running out of tp from rockbreaker(RB). My best advise is to ask the tank for short to breaks in between pulls or just forget about using RB. I usually stop using it when I'm at like 200 to and I've no way to recover tp until the fight is over.

Your uses for form shift are basically two fold.

"Oh no, the boss has become untargettable and I will lose GL! But wait! If I form shift into Couerl I can smack him with snap punch/demolish and keep GL up! Life is good and beautiful!"

And entering a fight already in a form. Generally Couerl allowing you to get off a couple more moves while in your peanut butter.

There's not much other use for it. That said, once you get used to using it for openers and boss invuln phases, it will be amongst your most missed abilities when you're doing 50/leveling/whatever roulettes and don't have access to it.

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Originally Posted by Krylo

Your uses for form shift are basically two fold.

"Oh no, the boss has become untargettable and I will lose GL! But wait! If I form shift into Couerl I can smack him with snap punch/demolish and keep GL up! Life is good and beautiful!"

And entering a fight already in a form. Generally Couerl allowing you to get off a couple more moves while in your peanut butter.

There's not much other use for it. That said, once you get used to using it for openers and boss invuln phases, it will be amongst your most missed abilities when you're doing 50/leveling/whatever roulettes and don't have access to it.

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I have a bad enough time with Dragon Kick. All of monk and now at 50 DK comes in and throws a major wrench into my pattern. I won't have any problem missing it anytime soon. xD

Ideally you want to keep up Twin Snakes and actually spread DK to a second target to get more out of rockbreaker and non AoE GCDs. You are losing much more DPS than you think by using null GCDs. This would apply to more than just a 2 target AoE scenario.

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Originally Posted by Melonhart

Ideally you want to keep up Twin Snakes and actually spread DK to a second target to get more out of rockbreaker and non AoE GCDs. You are losing much more DPS than you think by using null GCDs. This would apply to more than just a 2 target AoE scenario.

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I don't understand. Why would it be more beneficial to put DK on a different nerby target instead of the main one you're focusing on?

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Originally Posted by Claymore022

I don't understand. Why would it be more beneficial to put DK on a different nerby target instead of the main one you're focusing on?

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Not sure if it's actually a DPS gain, but I imagine the point is to spread the blunt resistance reduction around.

You'd be better off taking that global and putting fracture up instead.

Please please please please please please please stop mentioning weaving in Chakra between GCDs. This horse has been beaten to death, do not weave in Chakra inbetween GCDs that is a bad idea 100% of the time, if you can do an attack and you instead do Chakra then congratulations, you played yourself.

The only time you should weave in a Chakra is if you are already at 4 Stacks, this way you gain a skill after doing 1 Weave. This is a DPS gain if you do Forbidden Chakra, or if you need the TP to keep going. Weave in Chakra if you are out of TP completely and can not attack or if you are 4 Stacks, do not do it otherwise.

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Originally Posted by RiisWolf

I really like to AoE whenever it's the better thing to do especially as a monk. Now that I recently got Form Shift I'm stuck with a troubling matter.

It eats up a GCD, but I can skip a stance and get 60 TP back each time (because TP regens 60 every 2.5 seconds, so using a GCD that costs nothing is pretty much 60TP back). Almost sounds like the perfect excuse to skip opo-opo stance when spaming rockbreaker. But at the same time it means no damage.

What do you think? Good idea or bad?

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All depends on the number of enemies that you can hit with RB, your TP levels, length of the encounter, and your Invig/Purif CDs. You seem to have the right idea of it.

I'd switch this up during repeated Vault runs while leveling, and at 4+ enemies it usually contributed to faster (wing) clear times, especially if the AoE pulls were back to back, exceeding my CD TP recovery. If you have access to parsing, that can give you a good idea of it, too, if the situations are similar between multiple test points.

There is also an application for weaving in Chakra during combat, but only if you're at what amounts to an otherwise shitty skill speed plateau, where you'd be reapplying DK/Twin/Demo/ToD just over a second and a half sooner than is absolutely necessary. You'd then be able to pop one Chakra per DK (per Demo, as well, but given that DoTs are a bit more leniently timed unless you're tracking the global tick + debuff arming time...). Ideally though, you'd have no excess skill speed to allow this, either having close to none, or enough to insert an extra GCD into your rotation, changing it, but if you happen to be at that plateau, inserting Meditation in those windows is essentially loss-less.

(Generally this will give you enough for a Purification per cooldown, or nearly a Purification and one Forbidden Chakra per 2 minutes if undistracted and with perfect uptime.)

Edit: if you have a main target during an AoE worth just short of spending every GCD on them (+/- using Rockbreaker every third), you still probably ought to keep up Dragon Kick if only for the Twin and auto-attack damage (GL does affect AA). As long as you retain full uptime on the target, it should outweigh Bootshine even without Bootshine and True Strike. (Bonus potency value of up to 105, or 255 total, just between AAs, Twin, DK reapp, and two Rockbreakers, while only 0-75 potency short of Bootshine. Even with such low usage, it will remain your highest value ability after Demo/ToD.)

With enough mobs, it's probably a dps increase if you're in a pull long enough that you'd run out of tp without doing this. As far as how many mobs it would take for that I don't know, but it should be easy enough to calculate. Figure your damage per tp cost based on a set #, include the time it would take to run dry on tp, change the #s to do what you're suggesting, see how it adds up.

You're definitely onto something though, if you get at least 1 more useful rockbreaker out of it let's say vs 10 mobs, that's 1300 more raw potency before modifiers vs 190 from true strike.

Any time you can do a GCD on a target and not use form shift you're gonna do more dps. Period. It's also not a viable way to conserve tp. And considering you can generate an extra 700 tp every two minutes you should have almost no problems sustaining tp if you manage your chakra stacks and use purification and invigorate appropriately while knowing when you can or can't spam out rockbreaker or arm of the destroyer.

tl;dr don't use form shift if you can actually use that gcd to do damage; use meditate to build up stacks for purify instead of using form shift to conserve tp.

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Originally Posted by PFM

You'd be better off taking that global and putting fracture up instead.

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This just creates more tp issues. Which is kind of the opposite of what the OP was going for.

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Originally Posted by Claymore022

I don't understand. Why would it be more beneficial to put DK on a different nerby target instead of the main one you're focusing on?

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Depends on what you are going for. If you need to kill a target quickly just do your normal and do dk/boot. If you are trying to conserve tp switch targets just for demo (make sure you don't lose auto attacks or positionals if you do this) if they will be alive for the full duration of the dot. If you just want to blast aoe damage out and tell people how cool you are get those dk's up so your rockbreakers and other aoe abilities do more damage.