Bajaratt said:
For the record, by far the best monk merits added is Invigorate, which just gives you a big regen bonus on top of your chakra. Formless strikes also isn't hugely impressive, in that your strikes are significantly weaker than normal punches would be, I'm hearing your attacks are around 50% with a maximum of 60% of your normal damage. It's something, but it's hardly worth building up. It's also not something to make monk a good damage dealer for endgame. The most common combination of the new monk merits will likely be 3 invigorate, 1 formless strikes and 2 penance, which pushes monk into more of a support role for endgame than a damage dealer.
As for your Warrior's charge, guaranteed double attack on a big damage weapon skill is definitely a nice improvement to your damage and has endgame potential.
What skaw is saying is that monk has been getting very little to almost nothing from SE for a very long time now. The only time that monk gets a boost, is when the gear added effects all jobs(Rajas/Brutal/turban is a perfect example) or if the change relates to their subjob, which isn't really boosting monk at all. Yes, no JSE yet, but SE is adding more gear for every other job which IS closing the gap between monk and the other DD jobs. Warrior/nin is a very capable tank, while easily able to change to a heavy damage dealer in a few seconds. Monk, on the other hand, is JUST a damage dealer; that's all we do, beat the shit out of everything and the difference is slowly eroding due to negligence on the part of SE. All of the other jobs are recieving attention to improve them through gear, while monk is being left behind, it's not fair is all.
Here is what I was trying to get at and I think you both missed. The elite gear hasn't changed in 2 years with a few minor exceptions that have been stated. Why is this important? Those armors are roofs each job can never surpass. E-body/Ridill for warriors and D-body/Destroyers for monks (I think that's what's considered the best end game, no idea, I am not a monk). All the equipment choices in this game and the game developers have chosen to keep the same standard for the ultimate gear for 2 years. So each job has it's own glass roof so to speak. If those choices have not changed, then the jobs are no closer to surpassing their old ultimate gear combination now to become a high level DD next to monk then they were 2 years ago (Can exclude THF, but you'll probably agree THF is no top DD) and if they are approaching that level, it's not because they didn't have option 2 years ago, but because they are just now obtaining the gear. All the new options you have now are only slightly inferior to the ultimate gear, so you are still only encroaching on the level of being X's job's ultimate gear combination or it's damage threshold, but not the top damage dealer's threshold.
Skaw said:
Like Baja said, Formless just isn't strong. It
helps, but you're giving it far TOO MUCH credit.
I guess you need to have played the job for as long as I have to see the direction its going on. Dodges benefit is
lol at best at 75.
And saying Warrior was never meant to tank? What!
It gets most of the equipment Paladin gets(Adaman, Koenig, Shields) and has Provoke naturally.
Anyway. Give us the ability to use two hand to hand weapons and I'll be content, even if the job does fall behind WAR and NIN down the road in damage due to overall neglect. I'm the master of hand to hand combat, yet can't figure out how to use two seperate weapons! I mean geez, all the great FF Monks had natural ambidexterity.
Dodge may not vastly improve evasion, but it still does. In comparison to a warrior with a C in evasion, I don't evade a single thing especially while wearing all the -eva, -AGI gear. I've seen MNK sub NIN, hit dodge and do a damn good job of blink tanking, maybe not on VT-ITs, but it's better than nothing. WAR cannot blink tank, shadows are gone far too fast and although they greatly lessen damage, once they are gone, its hard as hell to get them back up. I have absolutely no hate tools beyond provoke and warcry which effects become useless once I stop doing vast amounts of damage. I can hold hate for maybe 10-15 seconds before someone else steals it off me.
WAR can equip a lot of the same armors a PLD can, it's true, but that doesn't mean we make great tanks. Have you ever seen a WAR tank anything end game? It sucks, it really does. They take damage like crazy and can't hold hate for the life of them. Instead, we need to add THFs to control hate and WHMs to zerg curing. Not a very superior method in tanking really. Had a WAR/NIN tank Genbu with some of the best gear available and needless to say, he died fast and the tanking went right back to NINs and PLDs. There is a difference between "WAR was not a tank" and "WAR is not a tank" which is what I said. "Was" refers to how it was designed and meant to be as the designers made it. WAR was meant to be a tank; however, now PLD far surpasses warrior in that position and warrior takes "backseat" role as a melee job. "Is" refers to how it IS used today by the players and that is rarely ever as a tank.
Just for the record, how is hand-to-hand damage and delay worked? I know the basics, that there is a base damage and delay (not sure of the damage, but delay for lvl 75 is 300). I know that the weapons add to the base damage and delay, but how is that done? Is the damage and delay per hand or one lump sum? I am guessing from the numbers the delay is one lump sum and the damage is per hand since you get +20 DMG which seems small considering a single handed weapon goes from 5-8 DMG at level 1 to 40-50 DMG at level 75. With that, I see why people are getting confused at halving stats and everything. If you were to have two weapons, you'd need to halve the delay, but not the damage (I think). The stats would stay the same, but depending on the stat, could possibly reflect one hand and not both.
I think the large problem with this is that the stats added to all weapons are numbers figured out by the designer to give a good boost to each weapon without being too huge. If you were to split hand-to-hand weapons, you suddenly have +stats which were only ever meant to be given once and not as a huge grouping. For example, they intended for you to get the high damage and +crit. from destroyers, but not the double attack from Faith Baghnakhs which would make you a TP god and your weapon skills high in damage at the same time. See? SE didn't want you to be able to get the best of both worlds and all the weapons would need modifying. Faith Bag. have low base damage for a reason, so they don't become so over powering and being able to sub them while main handing a Destroyers would be just godly. That's just one example. Wagh Bag. have latent effect +18 DMG and hidden effect +5 acc +18 attack which SE deemed ok to add to a single hand-to-hand weapon, but if you combine that with another form of +att or +acc from a second hand-to-hand weapon, SE might consider it over powering for monks.
Note: All the "occasionally attacks twice weapons with virtue stone equipped" weapons are either double handed weapons or already have a superior alternative (Joyeuse/Ridill). There really isn't a good option for dual wielding any of these particular weapons.
