Monk experts please help

[Orgasomo]

So I started to practice Monk and getting used to his rotation but there is one thing that bothers me...

How do u guys manage to keep an eye on ur positive statuses (So u know if u need to refresh Bootshine and Twine Snakes buff), ur enemys negative statuses (so u know if u neeed to refresh Demolish), do positionals and look what the enemy is doing or casting?

In combat, I can't always remember which skills I last used.

I'm really struggling with this because I have to decide quickly which ability to use next because Monks very fast recast time

Hope someone can help or has some tips. o/

[NobleWinter]

Changing your HUD seems like the best thing. You can move the enemy target bar, the party list, and your personal status bar to be closer together. This way your eye doesn't have to travel as far to see all the important timers. Putting information in easy to reach places for the classes you play is a real game changer. Equally important is to sink some real time into Monk. The longer you play it the more natural the timers become. You will start to feel when Twin Snakes is running out front m muscle memory. So organize your screen to be comfortable and then run some content. Practice really does make perfect (balance).

[wereotter]

Hotbar layout helps a lot.

Coming from old monk, I grouped all the old flank position skills (dragon kick, twin snakes, snap punch) and the rear positional (bootshine, true strike, demolish) as a visual help when learning the job to remember which skills needed to be used from which side. This also helps with refreshing buffs

Dragon kick should be followed up with twin snakes, so you get your leaden fist buff and refresh disciplined fist. (Disciplined fist needs to be refreshed every other rotation) Then from there you look at the duration left on demolish. If it's 6 seconds or less, refresh it, if not, use snap punch. Then you do the two damage moves (bootshine and true strike) before making the same assessment if you should refresh the dot. Now that positionals are eased, you can spend 90% of your time sitting on the enemy's flank, just moving when it comes to using demolish.

Your rotation should look something like this

dragon kick > twin snakes > demolish > bootshine > true strike > snap punch > dragon kick > twin snakes > snap punch > bootshine > true strike > demolish > dragon kick > twin snakes > snap punch > bootshine > true strike > snap punch

It's a long chain till you're back at the begining of the loop, but it becomes pretty easy with a little practice.

[Sqwall]

I not an expert by an stretch. But like the others have mentioned. Hot bar placement helps considerably. I will say this though. I only care about my demolish timer. Once you get more practice under your belt you will get that muscle memory going so you won’t need to worry about disciplined fist, leaden fist so much as they will just be there with your rotation.

Monk is strict yet not. Strict during your non perfect balance phases. And very non restrictive during your perfect balance. Remember if you lose your place with buffs or timers, perfect balance can “reset” your buffs/de buffs very quickly. Formless fist after masterful blitz is a god send and helps with “what do I need most”. Monks that can free style during perfect balance are what separates the good from the insane.


Or you could just dragon kick 500 times. Sooo either way

[Gemina]

This isn't necessarily a MNK specific issue, but a UI one. Based on my own experience, there are two elements to a well designed UI: It is optimized to serve your needs, and it is clean. By optimal, I mean have your elements arranged in a way that facilitates your gameplay. By clean, I mean you are not looking at any information that serves no purpose to you. Especially in combat. It is imperative you design your UI, with combat in mind. Many UI settings are not truly reflected until you're engaged with enemies, so it helps to use striking dummies when setting up your UI. Even do it somewhere in the outside world where you can summon your chocobo to be included in the party list.

It is total trial and error. As an example, at one point I removed Gil and the inventory grid thinking I didn't need them for combat; then I went into a treasure dungeon, and was just like, "whoops! Looks like I do need those." Same thing with the Duty List. But when I removed it because of not wanting to look at my active quests, the objectives of a dungeon or other PvE instance did not show either. What I ended up doing was reducing the number of active duties to one.

Some things I can recommend based on your questions is to make sure 'status' are on your UI. There are several types: Enhancements, Enfeeblements, etc. You will want to utilize Focus Target in order to keep an eye on Demolish, and just DoTs you use from other jobs in general. As for your skills so you know where in your rotation you are at, that is a little bit more involved, and is highly preferential. One thing I can recommend is group together your skills based on form. If you compartmentalize them in this manner what happens is when you are in any given from, all the skills for that form will light up making it much easier to know what form you are in, and which skills you currently have access to. This applies to both controller and KB/M users.

Keep at it. Everything starts to fall into place when you do.