Making the most of Tornado Kick

[Almalexia]

At only 330 potency, Tornado Kick stands to lower DPS if your timing is not perfect.

Bootshine and True Strike together deal 340 potency (over 400 potency when Bootshine is positioned correctly). In other words, if a target lives longer than 4 seconds after Tornado Kick is used, MNK suffers a significant DPS loss--a loss that compounds itself by sacrificing GL. Moreover, MNK is not likely to expend buffs (BfB/IR) on Tornado Kick for its intended purpose since you would not waste buffs on a target that's about to die or disappear.

If you strike with Tornado Kick too late, you risk missing the target, dealing overkill damage or hitting an invulnerability shield. If you strike with Tornado Kick too early--that is, the target remains engaged for >4 seconds--you face a DPS loss. You wouldn't casually use Tornado Kick as an off-GCD skill either, because the loss of GL is too great.

So monks: what, exactly, is Tornado Kick good for? Is it supposed to be an unforgiving, ultra-precise attack for monk masters? Or is it too weak to be worthwhile?

[Genocide]

It's only useful when you know boss is going to go invulnerable long enough where GL3 would fall off anyway. However timing the use of TK before the boss disappears will be inconsistent where the ability is used too soon or too late. Apparently TK was 500 potency before tweaks and was considered DPS increase used in normal rotation, but now that it's only 330 potency TK is pretty much insignificant.

[Mibhas]

There are quite a few times in Ravana Ex where the boss jumps away for downtime, which is a great opportunity for it. Same with Bismarck; my static's monk quite likes it. I imagine that SE will also design later content around class changes they've implemented.

Once you've had a few runs, it's pretty easy to figure out the timing you need for Tornado Kick.

[Naryoril]

At only 330 potency, Tornado Kick stands to lower DPS if your timing is not perfect.

Bootshine and True Strike together deal 340 potency (over 400 potency when Bootshine is positioned correctly). In other words, if a target lives longer than 4 seconds after Tornado Kick is used, MNK suffers a significant DPS loss--a loss that compounds itself by sacrificing GL. Moreover, MNK is not likely to expend buffs (BfB/IR) on Tornado Kick for its intended purpose since you would not waste buffs on a target that's about to die or disappear.

You are forgetting that the monk keeps attaking even after using tornado kick. While these attacks will deal less damage and be slower, you only loose a portion of the damage of the following attacks. I'm too lazy to do the exact maths on how much leeway you have before tornado kick becomes a DPS loss, but it's definitely more than 4 seconds.

[Arkenne]

As I math it. Tornado Kick can be a DPS gain (albeit not great) if its full buffed with BFB, IR, DK and Twin in a battle against something that will last a while without it going away so long you have Perfect Balance available to recover GL3 without dropping DK, Twin or Demo in the process.

Such rotations span for 27~34 seconds tho :/

[Humorless]

It's basically garbage right now. For raid fights you might use it 2 or 3 times if the raids are anything like final coil, which means 660/990 potency added over 10-13 minutes during progression. For random dungeon bosses it's often impossible to predict exactly when bosses are going to jump unless you've done the fight half a dozen times and like memorizing trivial content timing just to make a skill work.

[CouchOne]

It's basically garbage right now. For raid fights you might use it 2 or 3 times if the raids are anything like final coil, which means 660/990 potency added over 10-13 minutes during progression. For random dungeon bosses it's often impossible to predict exactly when bosses are going to jump unless you've done the fight half a dozen times and like memorizing trivial content timing just to make a skill work.

unless your timing is perfect, it's not even that much.