If you want to do damage, sub WAR. If you want to be different, you won't do as much damage, people won't invite you as much, you won't level as fast, you'll generally get worse parties... In short, if you don't want to play MNK/WAR and be the best damn damage dealer in the game, don't play MNK. Go play SAM, or THF, or something else. Maybe WAR. Variety is in the main jobs. Diversity is in the main jobs. Situational adaptability is in the support jobs. You don't wear arctic camo to the middle east, you don't go as /BLU into /WAR territory. You are not special because you are a MNK/WHM in exp, or a MNK/PLD, you are a hinderence. Way back in the PC release days, I was a MNK/RDM. One day around level 30, I partied with a MNK/WAR, and had my ass handed to me so throughly that I wondered why I'd wanted to play MNK/RDM in the first place, and proceeded to level my WAR sub.
Because killingifrit runs so godawful slow, I'll copy and paste some of pathwriter's guide here. Read the whole thing sometime:
http://killingifrit.com/forums.php?m=posts&q=78697 You'll be a better MNK for it.
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Introduction
A Monk is the master of the unarmed martial arts of Vana'diel, a blend of the San d'Orian tradition of the Davoi Monastery and the Galka martial artists of Bastok. They excel in producing fast yet powerful strikes to quickly dispatch an enemy and are armed with an array of abilities to enhance both their attacks and their defensive capabilities. A Monk is a strong addition to any party as well as an adept solo player.
The path of a Monk through Final Fantasy XI is neither the easiest nor the fastest. It requires patience, dedication, and, above all, a love of the job and what it can do to reach not only level 75 but also an unparalleled degree of strength and excellence. While certainly not the most difficult melee job to play, the finesse required for Monk to reach its fullest potential can provide a worthy challenge. If you are interested in dealing heavy front-line damage while retaining the ability to operate solo, Monk is most definitely an excellent option.
The Basics
As a Monk, you will spend most of your time using hand-to-hand weaponry to enhance the natural strength of your fists. A new player will notice that, unlike swords and axes, hand-to-hand weapons increase your base natural damage and delay, which is to say, they give +damage and +delay rather than merely setting your damage and delay directly. What this means is that in the hands of an experienced Monk, the same weapon will attack faster and hit harder than when equipped by a less experienced Monk.
The primary stats a Monk focuses on are STR (Strength) and DEX (Dexterity). STR relates to damage caused and DEX relates to both melee accuracy and critical hit rate. Of lesser importance to a Monk are VIT (Vitality), AGI (Agility), and MND (Mind). VIT affects your ability to take damage, AGI affects your ability to evade or guard blows, and MND relates to both magic resistance and specialized damage caused by the ability Chi Blast. Secondary stats important to a Monk are Accuracy and Attack. Accuracy's effect should be self-evident and the same is true of Attack. Further, Evasion has a role to play in a Monk's career, though it is generally not important in XP situations.
In general, a Monk should try to find a balance between STR, Attack, and Accuracy, not necessarily in that order, between his gear and food. No one stat is overwhelmingly more important than the other two and excessive amounts of one will lead to diminishing returns and reduced effectiveness. Additionally, while DEX may provide Accuracy, it is best not to try to substitute DEX for Accuracy as it requires far more of the former to achieve the same result as the latter. In terms of how STR is related to Attack and how DEX is related to Accuracy, 2 STR will produce a gain of 1 Attack and similarly for DEX (based on independent research). Considering that the only items with significant enough DEX to exceed similar items available with Accuracy exist at level 70+, it is best to simply focus on Accuracy when you are failing to hit your target.
Role
A Monk's role in an experience party is to be a primary front-end damage dealer. In this role, a Monk is expected to balance the use of his abilities, produce heavy amounts of damage-over-time, announce TP, and skillchain. A prudent Monk will learn to judge when to start a skillchain, if he is the one starting it, based on the remaining life of the target and the likely damage to be done by the skillchain, renkei damage, and magic burst (if any). It would behoove a Monk to learn the renkei chart by heart. For whatever reason, leadership is a rare quality in FFXI players, even among those who assemble parties, so stepping up and declaring what skillchain is used will prevent such bungles as Howling Fist > Penta Thrust.
Support Jobs
In many ways, what job a person selects as his support job will dictate what he does moreso than his main job does. Monk has a variety of options available, though only a few are reliable in practice.
Warrior
This should be the first support job a Monk takes and it is the most consistently reliable. Double Attack and Berserk provide powerful increases to damage-over-time and are essential for a damage-dealing Monk.
Thief
A secondary damage-dealing support job, this is not as powerful as a Warrior support job but it is vital for farming purposes. For certain battles and in certain kinds of parties, the burst damage from Sneak Attack stacked with a weapon skill can be quite effective, but it is generally inferior to the damage-over-time produced with a Warrior support job.
Samurai
This was once the strongest support job available to a Monk due to the huge amount of TP gained when using Asuran Fists. Unfortunately, changes to TP gain from multi-hit weapon skills has reduced this to a lackluster third-string support job. It can be useful in Ballista for a quick kill, but it falls far to the wayside compared to a Warrior support job.
Q: Do I need Ochiudo's Kote?
A: For the most part, yes. This question is asked regularly because the price tag is extremely high. It is high both as a result of high demand for a powerful item and because the item itself is generally monopolized by gil-sellers. Be aware, however, if that those same gil-sellers stopped monopolizing, the price would very likely rise due to a decrease in the supply.
At any rate, Ochiudo's Kote is a new Monk's introduction into the realities of the game. Monk is not a cheap job, it takes a lot of gil to outfit because, ultimately, a Monk is only as good as his gear. There is skill involved in how gear and abilities and support jobs are used, but it will be equipment that determines the bulk of damage dealt. Pick up gil-making strategies early while working to afford Ochiudo's Kote and they'll serve you through the rest of your career.
/war is so deadly, yet so deadly to one self 
