MNK and GL

[wereotter]

snip

You're calculations miss the third aspect of GL. It provides an increasing amount of additional damage and an decrease to your global cooldown, which you mention, but the part you overlooked is that it also decreases your auto attack delay by 5% for every stack. This isn't flashy or impressive numerically until you add it up over the course of a fight. As an example, looking at some of my old parses from Omega, my auto attacks made up to 30% of my entire damage when compared to our dragoon or bard having only about 15% of their total damage from auto attacks, adding more frequent auto attacks to monk will make a difference. To that end, I would say it is always better to be in fists of wind if you unless you have fewer than three stacks of GL.

The tool tips sound like you can use RoF with FoW, so you get your 4th stack and still get your 30% boost. Is this the case?

Yes. You can apply Riddle of Fire while in Fists of Wind without losing your stance or 4th stack of greased lightning.

[Powercow]

You're calculations miss the third aspect of GL. It provides an increasing amount of additional damage and an decrease to your global cooldown, which you mention, but the part you overlooked is that it also decreases your auto attack delay by 5% for every stack. This isn't flashy or impressive numerically until you add it up over the course of a fight. As an example, looking at some of my old parses from Omega, my auto attacks made up to 30% of my entire damage when compared to our dragoon or bard having only about 15% of their total damage from auto attacks, adding more frequent auto attacks to monk will make a difference. To that end, I would say it is always better to be in fists of wind if you unless you have fewer than three stacks of GL.

Oh no, I didn't miss it, I used the word "haste" in my post (admittedly I did use "speed" first). It's the same type of buff as Presence of Mind or the old Arrow/Scholar fairy haste (and RoF's slow), so it does apply to autoattacks but does not have an effect on DoT tick damage like Skill/Spellspeed do.

Still, even if you squeeze out one more autoattack during that RoF opener (which is possible, if unlikely) it still wouldn't outweigh the 3% bonus general damage under it. But yes, after that opener you sit in FoW for the rest of the fight. Really the biggest advantage comes from the slight rotational tweak where you use True Strike twice per Twin Snakes (requires just under 1300 skillspeed to do.) This is a pretty nice rotation that was possible back in HW, but TP limitations at the time kept it from being especially good.