Help With Low Monk DPS Please?

[Powercow]

Another noob question that I forgot to add in. What exactly IS an opener? Obviously from the name it's the skill rotation you start the fight with, but beyond that, I'm not sure I understand. When is the opener "done/over" and become just normal skill rotation? For MNKs I assume, as you said, our opener goal would be to gain GL asap, then it becomes normal rotation? Are openers just a rotation to get us set up for the rest of the fight?

An opener is over when you finish using all of your skills and you transition into the normal combo rotation. For some jobs the opener is short, for some it's extremely long, and where the "opener" ends can be a bit nebulous for some people. To me, a monk's "opener" is over when the first Riddle of Fire has worn off -- by then every single oGCD skill and damage cooldown will have been used and you have nothing else to do but just do your punchy combo until everything is back up.

As for gear, I did feel a little sluggish without my SKS, but maybe once I get into my "end game" set things will be different. I realize now that I might not need as much as I have melded atm. Do you mean even if it's a +35 to Crit or DH, I should just go Det? Or take any +35 that's available as well? I just hate seeing all the red when I meld those xD

Just go with the +40. While the general order of crit > direct hit > det > skillspeed is true, the differences are so small that it's more or less never worth sacrificing sheer item level (since that's where strength, or weapon damage and strength, come from) or secondary stat quantity (40 det is better than 35 crit or dh). Due to the nature of how stats work off each other, there's value in some diversity. It's a very long winded thing to explain but... think about it like this:
What's better, four 10% damage bonuses from stats, or 40% damage from a single stat?
100% * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 * 1.1 = 146.41%
100% * 1.4 = 140%
146.41% / 140% = 1.0457~

This means the 10% from 4 different stats is about 4.6% better than 40% damage from one stat.

This doesn't mean "make a perfectly equal balance of stats" but it means more of a "just get as much as you can while generally prioritizing crit>dh>det>ss." Really people put way too much emphasis on it -- as long as you have usable stats (i.e. not Dexterity or something stupid) in your materia slots, you'll be fine.

Also, what do you mean by "intentionally" clipping demolish?

"Clipping" a DoT or debuff means overriding it early in this context. For Demolish, that means to recast it even if you have a few seconds left -- you're effectively losing the DPS that you're overriding. The reason some builds do this in the opener is because that first Demolish is cast with no buffs up, whereas the one you cast right after Riddle of Fire will have: 30% from GL3, 30% from RoF, 30% crit from Internal Release, 10% from Twin Snakes, resulting in ~215% the damage they would otherwise have (more if you have an The Balance buff, or more crit from a Dragoon or Scholar). For the record, Dragon Kick has no effect on DoT damage. It *does* boost the initial hit from Demolish, but not the DoT ticks. Demolish can then also be recast just at the end of Riddle of Fire, again clipping it by about 5 seconds or so, so that the new cast gets the 30% from Riddle of Fire too. So by wasting about 2 ticks worth of damage at the start (100 potency), and 2 more with all the buffs up (about 215 potency), you get 4 ticks with all buffs up (430 potency) that you otherwise wouldn't have had. It's a bit complex and I'm really too lazy to do the fine math to determine if doing this is worth it, but I do find it lines up better as the fight goes on (18 second Demolish duration, 90s recast on RoF, means I can do 5 Demolishes cleanly per RoF cast.)

Regardless, it's a tiny gain or loss, probably about 0.1% overall DPS to do that or a more traditional opener.

Should I be letting the animation finish before moving?

Nah, as soon as you hit the skill and the GCD activates, the game "locks in" where you were and what buffs you had, even if the damage numbers don't pop up immediately. You can hit Demolish then move to the flank of an enemy before the animation is finished and the game will still register it as a "rear" hit and do 70 potency, even if the damage isn't applied until after you've moved to the flank area. Likewise, if you use Bootshine on the flank but move behind the enemy before the animation finishes, the game will register it as a "flank" hit and you will not get the guaranteed crit.

I knew that had to be one problem. TBH, while I know Riddle of Fire is great for damage, I sometimes don't feel confident using it because I feel I become too slow, which is why I'm worried about removing some SKS melds. Are MNKS ok to be a bit on the "slower" side?

Some people (a lot actually) have a problem with the idea of monk being slow during Riddle of Fire. Well whether they like it or not, being slow for 20 seconds every 90 seconds is how you do the most damage you can. Do keep in mind it's only a slow to your GCD. Autoattacks (which make up ~28% of your DPS) and off-GCD skills aren't penalized by the slow. RoF is an incredibly cracktastically strong damage cooldown. If being slow (well, normal speed) for 2/9 of the fight is a make-or-break thing, perhaps Ninja would be a better option. Or Samurai, they have a 10% haste thing too.

By combo, you just mean Boot->True Strike->Snap and such right? Wasn't aware those weren't comboing.

Monk combos are slightly different from other combos, but the same idea is there -- we have a 1-2-3 combo system, but we have slightly more flexibility than the others. This is why we can use Demolish every 3 rotations instead of every other rotation, like a Dragoon has to with their DoT.

Edit: Forgot to ask. I don't do it, but just to be sure, it's not a good idea to overlap Riddle of Fire and Internal Release, right? I should keep those separate?

Oh no, use them together as often as you can. They multiply off of each other to make for higher DPS. For example, just for autoattacks:
RoF is 30% more damage. If you do 1000 DPS with autoattacks, RoF will make it 1300 (1000 * 1.3) for 20 seconds, resulting in 6000 more damage.
IR is about 15% more damage (the amount varies based on how much crit rating you have, but 15% is about right for average gear) for 15 seconds. 1000 DPS from autoattacks, with IR it's 1150 (1000 * 1.15) for 15s, so IR adds 2250 more damage.
These two used seperately add 8250 damage total.
RoF + IR is the best though. With 1000 DPS on autoattacks you'd get 1495 for 15 seconds and 1300 for 5 seconds, resulting in 8925 damage total.

Don't postpone either one much to force them to line up, though. The only time you should postpone one is if a fight mechanic is gonna mess with you (like -100gs on Catastrophe, or the zoo phase on Halicarnassus, etc) where you would end up wasting a lot of the buff.

In addition, if Internal Release is about to come off cooldown but your next on-GCD skill is gonna be a guaranteed crit Bootshine, hold off on IR until after you use Bootshine so you squeeze out one more GCD from that buff. It's a tiny optimization, but it adds up.

[Veila]

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Wow, this is some amazing help from everyone, thank you!! Most stuff explained makes total sense now, so to keep my replies from being an essay, I figured I would just focus on things that I'm still not 100% on.

First thing was, I was able to try each opener last night, and I definitely saw an improvement already. Yay! Only thing is, for the openers that had Perfect Balance, I kept hitting a snag where PB would run out, and my form would drop mid combo, messing up the rest of the opener. I tried many times to see if it was a timing issue, but I couldn't manage to get around that block. Even just standing in one spot and hitting skills just before cd to try and get through them wasn't reliably quick enough (very annoying to have to wait for PB's cd every time. Don't suppose there's a way around this for practicing? lol). Some of the openers had oGCD skills sprinkled in between the combos, but even when I took those out to test, something's just not working right, lol. Now I'm even more worried about having less SKS.

For example, the opener would be going smoothly, then I would get to RoF (tried with IR and without), DK, TS, and just about after hitting TS, PB would drop and I couldn't use Dem or Snap. I did a little frankenstein-ing of the openers to try and shift the combo just beyond PB's drop so I could do it, but still working on it. I'm liking the RoF/and or IR just before DK and TS, and then getting a second Dem in there so they all get the buff, as suggested. Speed isn't a make or break for MNK, I just assumed I wasn't the speed I was supposed to be. Hard to explain all this in just text, sorry. Basically, my concern is getting around PB dropping my form. I guess I never realized it overrides whatever forms the actual skills give me while active. What am I doing wrong?

My only other question (that I can remember) was, are openers more just reserved for bosses? I would assume going through an opener for every little dungeon mob/add might be a bit overkill, not entirely possible, so how exactly are those treated? Just normal rotation? I know it can depend on which mob/add, but just curious.

To NintenPyjak64: I plan on watching that video! Haven't had a chance to today xD

Thanks again to you all taking the time to help me out :P It was fun to see how well the openers boosted me.

[Legion88]

My only other question (that I can remember) was, are openers more just reserved for bosses? I would assume going through an opener for every little dungeon mob/add might be a bit overkill, not entirely possible, so how exactly are those treated? Just normal rotation? I know it can depend on which mob/add, but just curious.

The full Openers ar mostly reserved to Raid bosses, because you can make shure all CDs ar up for this. For Dungeon bosses use what you have on CDs, but always start in Courl Form.

For your PB problem. In my Opinion you are using your RoF to early. You use RoF after PB falls off to make shure you get GL III refreshed before PB falls off.
In the Opener I don't want to have the lengthened recast from RoF while PB at all, but I'm a 0 SkS MNK and focusing more on the other secondaries.

[Meui]

Don't suppose there's a way around this for practicing?

What I like to do is hop into SSS (Stone, Sky, Sea) and use that to practice openers/rotations. So, if I (undoubtedly) mess up - all you have to do is step out (talk to the NPC to leave the area) and come back in. All CDs are refreshed upon entering SSS to my knowledge.

It's great you've been practicing and asking questions/for advice! Being open-minded and practicing is a wonderful attitude to have, and I'm confident it'll pay off for you!

[Veila]

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Gotcha! I'll be referring to this page often til I get everything down.

Haha...well that makes sense, and is most likely the problem. Maybe I was too sleepy and didn't realize; must be it. Logging in now to test that out. Thank you!!

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Hadn't even thought of that. Genius! Off to test that right now too.

Thank you so much for the kind words <3 <3 I'm going to become beast!