The Monk Temple

[Subucnimorning]

Is it better to stay flank or switch positions constantly? Also is Fracture worth it? My attacks do way higher than 230 potency now so it seems useless..
The video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVDqzSBUhKY makes it seems like flank is better

You are mixing up damage and potency, they are not the same. Fracture is stronger than any dd attack you have assuming tp is not an issue.

You will stay at flank except for bootshine and when you want to use impulse drive.

[Allyrion]

What Disciples of the Hand compliment monk the best? I know you can be everything, but I'm wondering which is best to focus on.
Goldsmithing seems to worth with a lot of our weapons and gear, there are some leather working weapons too though.
My gear seems to switch between leather and cloth a lot.

I considering this with all the factors in mind, such as ilvl 70 crafted but also materia melding and repairs too.

[dragonflie]

What Disciples of the Hand compliment monk the best? I know you can be everything, but I'm wondering which is best to focus on.
Goldsmithing seems to worth with a lot of our weapons and gear, there are some leather working weapons too though.
My gear seems to switch between leather and cloth a lot.

I considering this with all the factors in mind, such as ilvl 70 crafted but also materia melding and repairs too.

LTW, they are the class to make the Monk relic weapon.
They can also make the ilvl 70 crafted set for monk.
Of course, you could just ask a LTW to make them for you if the Bloody Cesti and the Darksteel nugget are cheap on your server.

[Vektrat]

False mnks should never learn their rotations by heart. It's like the worse thing. Mnks are very manual. They should adapt and change at will.

Just like you can't Dot ifrit without knowing his time window, you can't have an internal clock on debuffs. Things will push/pull and kill you. There will be resets, lag time, and target switches, and animation frames. If they ever improve the debuff UI, it will get easier to ingest information quickly, but otherwise all you're doing is armchairing, and Mnks suffer the most when they try to over reach, because it penalizes them a lot.

I'm glad you took your time to hint how you are a true monk and decide to blame me for supposedly getting hit for areas while you just dodge everything.

I'll make use of this opportunity to show off this opportunistic titan dodge move, I think it's pretty cool! https://www.dropbox.com/s/4czjpxqrkji1rls/monkeys.gif

Now, I never talked about static rotations, and two to clarify, I with "rotations should come like breathing" I was talking about dealing with everything class specific to deal damage", that is keeping your golden rules into check, looking at buffs, feeling when to do what, etc.

About crafting (personal opinion)
I went leatherworking (complemented with mining), just because it seemed most of armour came from it, and because of the relic requirement, however this last one was just an excuse to get it up. I'm happy with it, feels a bit useless now (when thinking about geared MNK), but I have hopes for future changes that will let us benefit more from it.

I'd say goldsmith is also a good choice, most (if not all?) of the jewellery can be made by them, and some MNK arms as well, plus it seems to complement good with mining.

Another pair I'd have liked to level (more end-game friendly I guess), is culinary + fishing (I assume they can go by the hand?), the rest of tradeskills are the ones I'm discarding the most, no idea if I miss something important though!

[Rhained]

Can i mention one pro tip? It would seem... under certain situtations... you can pull out more damage with fists of wind rather than fists of fire!, unbelieveable eh?

But seriously... try fists of wind on heavy aoe fights that require a lot of dodging, the difference is huge.

And you can also switch fist stances if you know fight well.

Heck if you were very good you could pre emp fist stances (fire for when only damaging, earth for unavoidable big hits and wind for avoiding aoe's)

Just some thoughts... this makes monk even more complicated but if you could master these abilities it could improve many situations.

Does anyone actually change fist stance throughout fight? Im assuming most dont but im wondering how beneficial it could be to master it.

[Vektrat]

Can i mention one pro tip? It would seem... under certain situtations... you can pull out more damage with fists of wind rather than fists of fire!, unbelieveable eh?
[...]

Does anyone actually change fist stance throughout fight? Im assuming most dont but im wondering how beneficial it could be to master it.

I change to Fists of Earth under circumstances where I can't attack and I expect incoming damage, however I'm never using Fists of Wind (other than city running, never needed it on Titan either), I don't really think the speed buff is worth it in most situations, leave alone switch it on for a single area, looks pretty small to me :/

[Gwendolen]

Does anyone actually change fist stance throughout fight? Im assuming most dont but im wondering how beneficial it could be to master it.

I fist swap all the time, especially in predictable fights.

[Teeko]

I change to Fists of Earth under circumstances where I can't attack and I expect incoming damage, however I'm never using Fists of Wind (other than city running, never needed it on Titan either), I don't really think the speed buff is worth it in most situations, leave alone switch it on for a single area, looks pretty small to me :/

If greased lightning will fall off because there is a lot of target switching, or there is a lot of movement, etc then I will use it over fists of fire.

[mr_wazzabi]

How do i activate first of wind? I can turn on fire and earth but wind seems to need a stance or something

[Herrstarr]

How do i activate first of wind? I can turn on fire and earth but wind seems to need a stance or something

should be no requirement to activate it, should work like every other fist ability.

On a side note... I wish they would fix the tooltip/buff description for these fists............. really sloppy, All they do is give 10% Dmg Reduction, 10% Movespeed, 5% DMG.

I swap to Fists when there is a big aoe incoming, such as Titans, Geocrush as 1 example, otherwise I am fulltime on Fists of fire, Fists of wind I use to run around when not fighting, thats about it, Never needed to use it/saw any point using it in a fight, Maybe in the future there will be a fight that warrants getting A -> B 10% faster, but for now I've not encountered any problems where I must run away from boss and lose GL stacks, where 10% move speed would help.