The Monk Temple

[Ownage]

2. As far as positioning does anyone know if the zones around a monster are perfectly 90 degrees or do they overlap something like 120 degrees? The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious if there is a sweet zone for us where both our flank positioning and behind positioning qualifications overlap.

The zones works pretty much correctly as u see them and u can only hit at one zone at a time, Front, Back, and Flank... in fact the target in the ground is always pointing with an arrow to the front of the mob and at the back u have a blank spot without any target in it... if u hit the blank spot u are hitting in the back of the mob, if u hit in the zone that stays in the middle of the the blank spot and the arrow u will be actualy hitting the flank of the mob... so the best way u can do to do not miss is to always look to the target at the ground

[kukurumei]

I'm curious about 2 things I've not really seen asked or answered.

1. Are we supposed to weave our skills between the damage of our AAs (not necessarily the animation) or just do everything on CD?
2. As far as positioning does anyone know if the zones around a monster are perfectly 90 degrees or do they overlap something like 120 degrees? The reason I'm asking is because I'm curious if there is a sweet zone for us where both our flank positioning and behind positioning qualifications overlap.

AA will proc as of b4 and independent of GCD, but not independent of animation (which is a slight issue for mnks). But all damage buffs will apply to AA so you are getting the grease/dragon kick/ etc stuff. So don't worry about AA. Mnks don't have to deal with TP problems so spam those combos because grease is a really short duration.

Use the training dummies to find out your front flank rear, the lag makes it slightly different for each player that is sliding around.

rear starts to loose much of its purpose when you become a mnk because you get more flank skills (and loose the nice archer skill in mnk form), but flank does have a bigger angle then back in Solo mode. You can flank easily but near impossible on rear for a moving target.

Demolish is probably the only DoT worth considering out of limit break charging because it does have a slightly enhance grease.

Stacking 3 grease is more or less impossible without perfect balance, so most of the time pug/mnks will be fluctuating between 1 and 2 grease. Considering GCD, buffs and animation(a real problem for mnks), Dots are off the table for a better part of rotation. They charge the LB gauge so it's good in situations where you can rapidly plow through LBs, but otherwise, you need every optimal second to keep yourself at 2 grease.

[Vensaval]

Demolish is probably the only DoT worth considering out of limit break charging because it does have a slightly enhance grease.

Stacking 3 grease is more or less impossible without perfect balance, so most of the time pug/mnks will be fluctuating between 1 and 2 grease. Considering GCD, buffs and animation(a real problem for mnks), Dots are off the table for a better part of rotation. They charge the LB gauge so it's good in situations where you can rapidly plow through LBs, but otherwise, you need every optimal second to keep yourself at 2 grease.

Seriously, the management is not as difficult as you're trying to make it sound.

Now, I can see your point for the early stages seeing as the 2.5 GCD can make things very restrictive. However, with gear and the bonuses from Greased Lightning, managing to weave other skills in your rotation is more than reasonable.

With the typical 2.5 GCD, it is true that you have next to no room to use other moves besides those not on the GCD (e.g. Featherfoot & Second Wind). This is because once you use a Coeurl Form skill to get the first Greased Lightning stack, going through that first GCD and the next two after the other skills to get back into Coeurl Form, you'll only have 2.5 seconds (7.5 spent) left of the Greased Lightning buff. Which is why things would be difficult.

Now, if we take Skill Speed into account, we'd be able to save 1.5 seconds (assuming the GCD is reduced to 2 seconds). Which gives us 4 seconds left of room. With that (again, assuming the GCD is 2 seconds), we are able to fight in one more skill into our rotation. This could be many things. Haymaker, Touch of Death, Fracture, Invigorate, etc.

We can fit in an extra move and have two seconds left to spare (to keep our Greased Lightning stacks up) as long as we manage our time efficiently. Which is the key to mastering this class, as I keep saying. It's better to be a Monk that has taken this challenge head on and overcome it than to be a Monk who has given up (for lack of a better phrase) and stuck to the simpler things.

I look forward to the challenge this class presents, and I do expect that I will manage to master that time management (I'll probably stick to calling it a rhythm) in due time. I expect that using Perfect Balance to use a Coeurl Form skill three times in a row to stack Greased Lighting first will probably be a commonly used tactic.

My greatest challenge will probably be making sure I'm in the correct position at all times. Different challenge altogether.

[Almalexia]

As far as I've been able to discover*, DoTs are affected by the active buffs you have at the time the DoT is executed. Meaning that activating the Twin Snakes buff before applying Demolish on an enemy will take the 10% damage bonus into account for each tick. So, instead of the usual 40 potency per tick, it'd be 44. Which adds up to a total of 264 rather than 240.

Just ran outside and tested for myself. By god, it's true!

DoTs are not only affected by +X% multipliers, but STR and crit as well. There is no reason to not have DoTs active as long as your target can soak most of it.

I want to point out "potency" is a part of a larger calculation. Bonus damage from Twin Snakes (+10%), for example, doesn't turn 40 potency into 44 potency; it adds 10% more damage to the formula after all other factors are considered. In other words, you are underestimating how much +X% damage affects your output.

[kukurumei]

Seriously, the management is not as difficult as you're trying to make it sound.

Now, I can see your point for the early stages seeing as the 2.5 GCD can make things very restrictive. However, with gear and the bonuses from Greased Lightning, managing to weave other skills in your rotation is more than reasonable.

With the typical 2.5 GCD, it is true that you have next to no room to use other moves besides those not on the GCD (e.g. Featherfoot & Second Wind). This is because once you use a Coeurl Form skill to get the first Greased Lightning stack, going through that first GCD and the next two after the other skills to get back into Coeurl Form, you'll only have 2.5 seconds (7.5 spent) left of the Greased Lightning buff. Which is why things would be difficult.

Now, if we take Skill Speed into account, we'd be able to save 1.5 seconds (assuming the GCD is reduced to 2 seconds). Which gives us 4 seconds left of room. With that (again, assuming the GCD is 2 seconds), we are able to fight in one more skill into our rotation. This could be many things. Haymaker, Touch of Death, Fracture, Invigorate, etc.

We can fit in an extra move and have two seconds left to spare (to keep our Greased Lightning stacks up) as long as we manage our time efficiently. Which is the key to mastering this class, as I keep saying. It's better to be a Monk that has taken this challenge head on and overcome it than to be a Monk who has given up (for lack of a better phrase) and stuck to the simpler things.

I look forward to the challenge this class presents, and I do expect that I will manage to master that time management (I'll probably stick to calling it a rhythm) in due time. I expect that using Perfect Balance to use a Coeurl Form skill three times in a row to stack Greased Lighting first will probably be a commonly used tactic.

My greatest challenge will probably be making sure I'm in the correct position at all times. Different challenge altogether.

excessively long animations(omg touch of death animation is stupidly long) prevents that. Just like buffs even if they are off GCD, are still affected because the animations themselves exceed GCD.

Just casting internal release animation it-self will slow you down and that's the minimal power up mnks are expected to do.

There is no way to weave in anything short of demolish and even then.

The worse of it is, all calculations are set after the animations so even if you can hit the edge of GCD limit, you will still fail the buff check

Stacking 2 grease as long as possible is pretty much the limit, and maybe hitting 3 grease if you sped up to full blown mnk-ism.

Pug/MNKs have a huge bonus with the amount of skill spam they can do, I think the developers intentionally snubbed them with the short grease times.

[Vantwan]

Kinda off-topic from what you guys have been discussing, but what's the general consensus on fists of wind? Seems to me like it doesn't do anything considering the movement speed bonus is hardly noticeable at best, and it doesn't even increase attack speed. At least Fists of Earth gives damage reduction and Fists of Fire is a 5% damage buff.

[Vensaval]

I would like if Fists of Wind provided something like Skill Speed during combat.

I disagree with the movement speed buff being hardly noticeable, though. During Phase 3, I used it all the time during travel and always noticed a fair amount of an increase in speed.

[TheWitcher]

Monk is unpopular because they basically have one job, high sustained DPS on a single target, but fates are all about burst damage and aoe spam, something monks are not good at, and the complexity of their combos drives away most of the rabble, my razer naga says hello to Monk though and im gonna start leveling it now

[kataly]

Hi guys, first time posting. Be gentle.

So as an aspiring monk, are there any cross class skills from lancer or marauder that I should be considering? The rotation posts in this thread seem to suggest that monks are too busy with their native skills to care about cross class skills, but I just want to make sure.

[Meleena]

Are you guys sure that the "fist of" stances actually work?
The fists of wind running speed bonus is non existent, the skill speed bonus does not reflect on GCD timers and the "consumes MP to apply effect" on the buff description does not apply on my MP bar...

I havent checked on damage done and damage received when fists of fire and fists of earth are active, but none of these consume my MP as well...