Need help understanding new MNK.

I've leveled it myself to 90 over the years and always enjoyed the job but I'm really worried it's just not for me anymore. I can't seem to wrap my brain around all the beast chakra, the nadi, and buffs, and try to be super active or optimal.

It feels somehow simpler and more complicated?

I just want to punch and kick things and I genuinely feel embarrassed because I can't seem to retain the beast chakra information on top of everything else actively going on in a real boss fight or even big pull.

I'm kind of beside myself with how bad I suck at this job now! I waited to post to sleep on it and give myself more time to try and figure it out... but I'm hopeless. For reference I just beat Shadow of the Erdtree the other day, (with dryleaf!) but coming back to XIV monk has been way more of a challenge? I'm baffled and defeated lol. Does anyone have a proper guide or some advice that might help? Anything at all.

It isn't that hard if you break it down.

Starting with beast Fury, this is tracked by the gauge under the Nadi one and shows 3 beast symbols, with differing numbers of 'pips' next to them. This tracks how your rotation flows now. Rather than keeping up buffs and debuffs, they have gone and it is replaced by this. Using Dragon Kick, Twin Snakes or Demolish fills the pips of the corresponding beast fury, which match the form you are in when you use each move. From left to right, Dragon Kick grants 1 Opo-Opo Fury, Twin Snakes grants 2 Raptor Fury and Demolish grants 3 Coeurl Fury.

You then have the fury spenders, Bootshine, True Strike and Snap Punch (and their upgrades at 92). they all consume 1 of the corresponding fury and the fury makes them stronger. Bootshine is powered up by Opo-Opo Fury, true Strike by Raptor Fury and Snap Punch by Coeurl Fury.

You can keep track of what you should be doing in 2 ways, via the gauge or via the actions themselves. If the form has no fury banked, the fury generator will light up, if you have fury to use, the spender will light up. That is the gist of the basic rotation flow.

For Nadi's, it is quite simple. there are only 3 you need to worry about, using their level 90 names, Elixir Field, Rising Phoenix and Phantom Rush. To use these requires you to use Perfect Balance and the outcome is determined by the number of Beast Chakra gained over the next 3 GCDs. If they are all the same, ie. after Perfect Balance you use Dragon Kick > Bootshine > Dragon Kick, generating 3 Opo-Opo Chakra, you will use Elixir Field, which opens up the Lunar Nadi, which is the orb on the left. If you use actions from 3 different forms, ie. Bootshine > True Strike > Snap Punch, you will use Rising Phoenix and generate a Solar Nadi, the orb on the right. Once you have each orb lit up, the next time you use Perfect Balance, it doesn't matter what you do, you will always do Phantom Rush.

Of course, during this, you generate Chakra via crits to be able to use The Forbidden Chakra, which is just an oGCD attack.

For basics on how you should structure things, 2 Perfect Balance windows under Riddle of Fire and Brotherhood, which should be every even minute window and then 1 under Riddle of Fire every odd minute window.

That is the basics of Monk. If it doesn't make sense, spend some time hitting a training dummy and going through things a bit slower so that you can see what things do.

I had the hotbar set a specific way and I think sticking all the earners on one and spenders on another is going to help a lot, thanks.

I know how to do things like the nadis specifically in order to get Phantom Rush but it feels like a lot to be doing right now while trying to get the beast chakras right. I still kind of hate the way that feels now, but hopefully I'll get better and it'll stop being so overwhelming soon. I'm still slapping that dummy and hoping things click.

It wasn't as hard as people thought in EW and now it's even easier in DT.

Fury stacks (aka "Ball Meter"):

This is just for your downtime rotation. All you do is just hit dragon kick, twin snakes, and demolish to receive balls. And when you have a ball in that form do bootshine/leaping opo, true strike/rising raptor, and snap punch/pouncing coeurl to spend balls on more damage. You will have proc lines on the "ball giver" moves when you are out of balls for a form and get proc lines on "ball spenders" when you have balls so you can literally just follow the dotted lines.


Beast chakra/Blitz:

This is also even simpler now that we no longer have any buff timers. You only use perfect balance to do a blitz while you are buffed by Riddle of Fire. You will use perfect balance twice in the opener and during the 2 minute buff window, and you will do perfect balance once during the odd burst windows. So it's a 2-1-2-1-2-1-2 pattern of how many perfect balances you use when ever Riddle of Fire comes off cooldown. You will always do a double perfect balance window when you have both brotherhood and ROF up, and only one PB combo when it's just ROF.



Which blitzes do I use though?:

Well you want to use Phantom Rush as much as possible since it's our biggest hit, so what you do is do both a solar and lunar blitz combo in the opener and then do phantom rush with both nadis on deck (the purple and white orbs) during your odd ROF window. Then you just repeat this forever. When Brotherhood and ROF is up do a lunar and solar combo. When just ROF is up spend them on phantom rush.



How do I do "Solar" and "Lunar" combos?:

You need a purple and white orb to phantom rush. You get a purple orb (lunar) by pressing Perfect Balance and then doing three moves of the same form. Which three moves though? You'll want to do Opo form moves (dragon kick and bootshine) because buffed bootshine does the most damage out of all of your combo moves. So you will always do bootshine > DK > bootshine OR DK > bootshine > DK. To maximize buffed bootshine usage you will actually do an Opo move before doing the lunar combo. You also get a free formless fist buff after every blitz move and after Fire's Reply. How do we use our free formless fist? Always on an Opo Move... Whenever we can opo, we will opo. Opo is big damage. Consult the balance discord to see when exactly what the recommended openers look like

For the solar combo literally just press one of every form during perfect balance. Order doesn't really matter. You also want to do an Opo move as our last combo action before pressing PB just like the lunar combo in order to further maximize buffed bootshines

*sidenote: formless opos are good because it automatically gives you the form bonus for bootshine for the auto-crit. Usually you have to be coming out of coeurl form (the third part in our combo) to get the auto-crit. And if you don't have the opo ball just do dragon kick so we can get that ball for free.


How do I do phantom rush?:

For phantom rush you do perfect balance once you have a white and purple orb and then you can do literally any three buttons you want. So which three buttons should we use?... you guessed it we want to do all of them as Opo moves. Yeah Monk does a lot of Opo'ing. In Dawntrail there is no reason to ever not use Opo moves as our phantom rush combo as Opo moves straight up give the most damage.



When should I use celestial revolution?:

Never. It's a fail state. It's bunny'ing for Monks


Advanced: So according to the folks at the Balance, the most damaging rotation in most scenarios will actually have you do two lunar combos in the opener , do one solar combo in the odd ROF window, do phantom rush and then a lunar combo in the even burst window, do solar again in the next odd window to get both nadis again, and repeat from there. So basically you just do a crap ton of opos in the opener and even windows when party buffs are up.

I think I'm just not a good fit for this job anymore. It's probably much better for people than it used to be but I can't relearn this for some reason. I'm just going to have to move on. Super disappointed, maybe I'll just take another break.

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Originally Posted by Bear_Trap_Snap

I think I'm just not a good fit for this job anymore. It's probably much better for people than it used to be but I can't relearn this for some reason. I'm just going to have to move on. Super disappointed, maybe I'll just take another break.

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Bro you just gotta get the feel for it, don't give up already. It's a very smooth job to play. Kinda wish I didn't waste time breaking it down as simply as possible for you if this is how you're going to respond with this defeated attitude. Hope my breakdown helps someone else!

I've been trying for days. I appreciate the input but reading it was what made me realize this is not for me anymore. Also I mentioned several things I got and understood and I think you just glossed over that and overexplained anyway. I guess that's all there is to it. Thanks anyway.

I gotta say that the new monk GCD rotation is...interesting overall I find it very cool and interactive a bit like a simon says also glad they fixed the over abusive Dragon Kick spam rotation (you would be surprised by the number of player that I seen just spaming Dragon Kick) overall I think its an interesting take on monk that and the new Brotherhood too

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Originally Posted by Bear_Trap_Snap

I've been trying for days. I appreciate the input but reading it was what made me realize this is not for me anymore. Also I mentioned several things I got and understood and I think you just glossed over that and overexplained anyway. I guess that's all there is to it. Thanks anyway.

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I mentioned how to do Phantom Rush for anyone else reading it, not just you. The reason I had to break it down to its basics because based on your OP you were having trouble grasping the basic concepts and rotation of the job and were overwhelmed. Don't be mad when people properly answer your request for help as you made it. Players like you will continue to struggle though because they do not make a modicum of effort to learn the job or use any of the countless well-made community guides available to them.


When Endwalker monk came out and I had trouble getting used to it... the balance and youtube was just a click away though and I got over that hump very quickly

Note to everyone else: if someone gently tells you they're not feeling it or it's not working for them the correct response isn't to start criticizing them like you're getting some ADHD dopamine fix from arguments. I have much regret about posting this at all and would delete it myself if I could! I'm going to take another long break because Dawntrail was not what I hoped it would be, but if you like it, I'm really happy for you. But here we are. Personal attacks based on nothing and attention seeking elitism over a bunch of boring game changes. They hadn't even played the updated monk before telling me all this lol. Now I think I'm going to go play something else and have fun. Be nice to one another.

Not acknowledging when people type out a breakdown to help you is also rude just so you know. All you needed to say was "thanks for the tips, I'll try it out" even if you don't intend to follow through. Also I have played the updated Monk so you are factually incorrect of that

Also kinda wild to say I am "insulting people" when you are literally saying i have ADHD. Pot meet kettle!

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Originally Posted by Amh_Wilzuun

When should I use celestial revolution?:

Never. It's a fail state. It's bunny'ing for Monks

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This, and the Beast Chakra system, are the result of SE listening to a certain content creator's drunken ramble in which he wanted MNK to incorporate certain ideas and concepts from Naruto that he didn't really understand too well. This resulted in the devs trying to force NIN-esque mechanics onto MNK, and it's terrible. Not only does such a fail state not belong on MNK at all (along with any RNG whatsoever), but it goes against the MNK power fantasy.

Viper is what 6.0 MNK should have been, instead of this nonsense. Anyone who played MNK in 4.x or 5.x (but before 5.4) will enjoy that.

Coming at the Job at 90 when you've lazy leveled it can make it harder to pick up as there's a lot of mechanics swamping you at once and can feel overwhelming. That's not a shot at you, I also just lazy leveled Monk without really paying attention. Good old Prae spam got it there :D

Late EW I started paying attention to it and it was... confusing and chaotic, not going to lie, but I was really liking the style of the job.

So I made an alt! Materia has the road to 90, so leveling was insanely easy. It allowed me focus on rotation, then beast, then nadi. My UI was also poorly optimised, so it helped there too. Everything I learnt I could apply to my main.

If that's not an option, my other advice is the Trust/NPC dungeons. Use them and just focus on rotation, ignore the rest. The new system is jarring at first, but recently I've been really pumped at how my flow is getting better and it's getting more fun.
Then introduce elements from there, reading up on like the Balance to help give you an idea where to try and steer and focus.

For me, rotation/chakra/nadi is mostly sorted. I have no idea on the burst windows. People keep talking about odds and evens and I'm yet to find what that even means! (I've mostly been healer in FFXIV) But it's not impacting the fun at the moment leveling in the MSQ :)

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Originally Posted by Middie

Coming at the Job at 90 when you've lazy leveled it can make it harder to pick up as there's a lot of mechanics swamping you at once and can feel overwhelming. That's not a shot at you, I also just lazy leveled Monk without really paying attention. Good old Prae spam got it there :D

Late EW I started paying attention to it and it was... confusing and chaotic, not going to lie, but I was really liking the style of the job.

So I made an alt! Materia has the road to 90, so leveling was insanely easy. It allowed me focus on rotation, then beast, then nadi. My UI was also poorly optimised, so it helped there too. Everything I learnt I could apply to my main.

If that's not an option, my other advice is the Trust/NPC dungeons. Use them and just focus on rotation, ignore the rest. The new system is jarring at first, but recently I've been really pumped at how my flow is getting better and it's getting more fun.
Then introduce elements from there, reading up on like the Balance to help give you an idea where to try and steer and focus.

For me, rotation/chakra/nadi is mostly sorted. I have no idea on the burst windows. People keep talking about odds and evens and I'm yet to find what that even means! (I've mostly been healer in FFXIV) But it's not impacting the fun at the moment leveling in the MSQ :)

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I've mained MNK since Stormblood. The EW changes are neither confusing nor difficult to me, but that doesn't change the fact that the design decisions are still rather obtuse and go against the rhythm and flow the job used to have. Viper is essentially the wish-list of everything old-school MNK mains wanted from the job in 6.x but didn't get, and everyone loves it, but it's a shame that they didn't get to see what it was like in 4.4.

From just evaluating the overall kit from a game design perspective, Viper is a lot better designed as a package than Monk is, even putting aside whether or not I like the changes. It's just a much tighter package overall. EW MNK has around 45 seconds of convoluted resource micromanagement followed by around 2 minutes of nothing to do, and that downtime is incredibly boring. VPR has the "always on, gotta go fast" feel MNKs wanted, and we didn't like the downtime when it was considerably less in SHB when we only had a few oGCDs taken away. Now it's missing... everything... and stuff was put behind a convoluted version of NIN's mudra system that does not at all belong on the fists-fighting job since it's not NIN.

MNK still has RNG which everyone kept saying for 7 years to get rid of. RNG-based meter does not belong on a melee job whatsoever, regardless of whether or not they made it lesser. It should have none at all. They didn't fix that after more than half a decade of people complaining.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

It isn't that hard if you break it down.

Starting with beast Fury, this is ....

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Wow, this guide was awesome and exactly what I was looking for. I'm amazed I couldn't find a simple explanation like this on Icy Veins or the Balance somewhere. I was just hitting my buttons as they lit up and knew that just had to be wrong. Thank you so much for this.