Monk dps prob a nub question

[Luminthal]

For the monks out there that use controller. Do you use the lock view feature to strafe on bosses or do you free roam it? Was curious if you lose auto attack time if you free roam it or not.

[Nutz]

You do lose auto attacks if you're not locked on (or rather when facing away, which will happen), however you move much slower if locked on which can be dangerous in a lot of encounters. Getting used to toggling lock on quickly is probably the best way to handle the situation, though I think a lot of players just stay in free roam mode and accept the loss of an auto attack every now and then.

[Krindor]

While not a controller player, not using lock on will delay the attack time of the AAs, in the short run it might not be significant but over the course of a fight it's going to be noticeable. As Nutz mentioned, learning to lock on and off is the best.

[Jas710]

I tend to hop on/off the fence with the whole lock-on targeting thing. You do miss the auto-attack dps benefits, but it's not going to do any good if you're laying dead on the floor or get hit with a debuff from not turning off the lock-on soon enough.

I guess it depends on what you're fighting. If there is a lot of dodging, forget it, it ain't worth it.

But for mostly stationary fights with occasional movement, it's doable to lock on.

[Kahnom]

Getting used to toggling lock on quickly is probably the best way to handle the situation.

That's what I do,Still,need to be fast when dodging AOE though.

[Thoro39]

Absolutely do lock on. I was asked by a friend once on how to improve their monk dps when we did sephiroth ex together.
A quick glance spent analyzing the combat logs on a *certain site*, it turned out that he has done 50~ish less autoattacks(around 48k less damage just from AAs) than me in the very same fight even though I had to disengage for a while for the earthmechanic while he had the biggest uptime possible. Which translates in itself to a 60 dps loss in that one fight, just from not using the lock-on feature.
If you want to improve and do yourself a favour, learn toggling the lock-on feature on demand, and turn it off in cases where you want to disengage. Afterwards you will be rewarded for more dps for a thing that becomes second nature by the time you got accustomed to it.

On general charts, Autoattacks make up for 20-30% of your total dps, so it's best not to neglect it.

[Lilyth]

I'm probably alone in this but I ,personally, am not a big fan of Locking on a target. It severely tunnels your vision on that specific target and, while this might sound good on paper, there are several fights where it's important to keep your eyes keen on your surroundings at all times, and complete awareness of whats going on in the fight is key to not ending up tanking the ground.

That said, I'm one of the few players who rather use the "standard" controls on my melee DPS instead of legacy. This pretty much allows me to always keep facing the target and the strafe keys let me hit my positionals while moving from rear to flank and vice-versa. Back-paddling isn't really an issue as well.