IiPunch - Monk Guide

i think there's a point where 'optimizing for damage' becomes superfluous and you'd be better off wearing more pdt just in case one of your healers gets a surprise *** and afks midrun or something, or that one time someone isn't curing perfectly

are you really that concerned about 30 min runs vs 35..?

TEAM BLACK BELT REPRESENT

Well, the original point was that I made a statement in regards to damage capabilities of items, and someone responded that it wasn't best for reducing the damage you take.

Orly, you don't say?

How to Optimize Spellcast For Defending Ring (A Guide)

Step 1: Obtain Defending Ring
Step 2: Equip Defending Ring in (left,right) ring slot (pick one)
Step 3: /sc disable lring

*if you chose right slot in step 2, do rring instead

Step 4: Dun!

You can think this is fast but :

1) you lose something like 0.2 to 0.5 sec everytime you use boost

2) Boost only applies on first hit unlike the boost from JoL

Obviously you should only use boost during hund. fist since you are hitting so fast it doesn't matter.

The main problem with boost is that you have to swap the hands slot twice. Even with wdw macros you cant make it happen with a single action end you end up wasting way more than one second.

I don't seem to have that problem with Windower4 or Spellcast.

99.94% sure gear swapping does nothing to attack delay, outside of the stats like haste, slow, martial arts, etc...

It does if you dont use spellcast and have a /wait 1 between every
gearswap.

He wasn't saying swapping gear affected attack delay, just mentioning that /equip temple gloves /boost /wait 1 /wsscript /ws tends to not swap gear properly with windower macros, mainly because the hands slot is trying to change twice in a 1 second time frame. I used to Boost > Smite all the time and check my gear during WS only to find that temple gloves were still equipped if using windower scripts. I have not had that issue when using spellcast, however.

Swapping a piece of gear causes no additional delay.
In the Backstabs case, it would just wait 1 second between switching the gear. Attacks could still occur.

Equip something <wait 1>
equip something else <wait 1>
equip something else <wait 1>

wouldn't cause your attack rounds to stop at all. The only thing that may change is changing haste values between swings.

Make a macro that spam swaps your rings with a 1 sec wait between each one to check it.

if you're using spell cast, it's even faster. My SCAST has a rule for boost as well as shijin. So the macro looks like:
/ja boost
/wait 1
/ws shijin

I asked about boosting earlier but it was explained that it slows down the total WS animation too much and that it adds up.

So instead of just raw Shijin which is what? A 3 . something sec animation? You tag boost to it and it turns into a 4 . something sec animation which is 1.something seconds you could be swinging. Which is small but could add up ESPECIALLY in high haste situations where your delay should be just about capped putting you somewhere in the ball park of what? 80ish delay for Rigors, 100ish for Oats? Which are both right on that 1.something second mark that's getting eaten by the boost animation. So from that stand point, the question then becomes: is boosting really worth stretching out your WS animation that much?

There are two fundamental problems with boosting...
A) Does a boosted WS apply the attack bonus to all hits of the WS? Or just the first?
B) If the attack applies to all hits, is it worth the stretched out animation?

It's a valid question because in relevant fights, you're gonna be buffed to hell and the target will be equally debuffed. Creating a likely hood of pDIF being capped especially after this next update where all current weapons are getting massive attack bonuses thrown onto them which might make boosting even less fruitful assuming the attack bonus applies to all WS hits in the first place.

It was advised to not boost unless you only have Haste. After thinking about it more clearly, it makes sense.

Edit: Clarity

Regarding Boost, aren't there eventual plans for a change t what it does or how it works? Pretty sure I read something about Boost enhancing Chakra and having new/different/additional effects at some point.

Would be nice if it did something more like increase WS damage/accuracy rather than increase attack. Not like anyone in their right mind uses Boost for regular hits or anything.

To clarify, If you're doing

/ja boost
/wait 1
/ws shijin


You're actually losing 2 seconds of attack rounds, not one to use boost. There is a one second hard delay upon using a JA, during which no actions can be performed, followed by a one second "soft" delay during which another JA or spell can be started, but melee attacks do not fire.

The macro scheme above loses another 2 seconds to WS. So you lost 4 seconds of attack rounds when you could have lost 2! :(!

Boost is bad, mkay.

Yeah that's even worse than what I guesstimated. Like he said, Boosting is bad

Unfortunately I have my Manibozho legs going for those RNG status.

What other alternative legs is there to use? Usu legs+1?

Thanks in advance.

I would venture that the second best after the update is going to be Xux Trousers.

That is not correct. Your description of what happens is mostly right, but the conclusion isn't.

/ja boost -- occurs at time 0.00

Absolutely no additional actions can be performed before 1.00, although you can still do gear swaps.

If no other actions take place, normal melee attacks resume at 2.00.

/wait 1 -- inserts a 1 second delay between the /ja line and the /ws line.

/ws shijin -- occurs at time 1.00

This is perfectly valid since the hard 1 second delay has passed. It now begins another hard delay, this one taking the full 2 seconds.

Melee attacks resume at 3.00, 2 seconds after the weaponskill is used.

The 'soft' 1 second delay that's part of Boost has already passed, meaning it has no effect on further melee delays.

You do not lose 4 seconds from Boost+Weaponskill if performed in this manner. On the other hand, if you manually hit separate macros for Boost and Weaponskill, the delay is probably longer than you think it is, and you're likely to end up with a 4 second total delay because the weaponskill didn't start til about 2.00.

I still maintain that Boost is bad, mkay.

Won parse by 2%+ just by keeping tantra body on during impetus, 1100 crits on Kurma holy cow @_x

This doesn't require testing, per se, just an understanding of the math.

Using Boost+WS in a macro with a 1 second delay, such that the two actions occur over 3 seconds total, has two effects that need to be balanced:

1) Using Boost adds 1 second to the period where melee attacks cannot occur, leading you to lose that much melee damage.

In a max haste situation (gear+magic haste) using Rigors or Oatixur, melee delay is ostensibly 106.25 or 117.5, respectively. Minimum delay for those weapons is 108 and 115.2. So actual delay will be 108 for Rigors, and 117.5 for Oatixur.

Using the 60 delay per second conversion value, that works out to 1.8 seconds and 1.9583 seconds, respectively. You thus lose 0.5556 rounds and 0.5106 rounds of damage for each. Factor in multi-attacks and accuracy to determine how much damage that actually is. Ignoring kicks, you can figure something like 1.6 punches worth of damage lost.

2) You then compare that to the amount of damage gained by using Boost on the weaponskill. As pchan mentioned earlier, in theory Shijin should be worth an average of just about 10 melee hits. For Boost to be worth it (just breaking even, overall; not even a net gain at this point), it would have to raise damage to the equivalent of 11.6 melee hits, or 16%.

Boost increases attack by 18.75%. Damage increases linearly with that unless level correction is a factor, or you also have another attack boost in effect (eg: Berserk, Chaos Roll, attack food). However any situation where you're getting substantial amounts of haste probably also has you near the attack cap already.

With Chaos (25%) + Berserk, Boost effectively becomes a 12.5% attack boost. If total attack is less than ~120 from cap (cRatio over perhaps 2.05), you won't get the full benefit of Boost either. That hinders the viability of Boost in any high-buff situation.

And then there's the occasional untested assertion that Boost only applies to the first hit of a weaponskill, rather than all the hits. If that were truly the case, it would be virtually impossible for Boost to ever be worthwhile simply due to the math involved. Boosting just the first hit would have to basically double the first hit's damage to put it within range of being 'worth it', and that's exceedingly unlikely when just adding 18.75% attack.


You can also see that at lower haste levels, the amount of melee damage lost from the 1 second of JA usage goes down, lowering the threshold of damage increase needed on the weaponskill in order to be considered 'worth it'.


Conclusion: if you're getting any significant amount of buffs, using Boost will usually be detrimental to overall DPS. In many cases where you're getting only moderate buffs (ie: weaker mobs), Boost probably won't do much for you either, if it's likely that you'll cap attack, and thus not get the full benefit of the attack increase. If you're pretty much unbuffed against anything that's not trivial fodder, Boost is probably worth using.

Didn't argue against that. Even at 1 second delay, the value of Boost is questionable (see above post). However your assertion of how the mechanics work was faulty.

I add that extra second in a lot :( I had to redo an entire 5 paragraphs of step/flourish bashing because of it :(

The conclusion was the same it was just slightly less angry :(

Using seperate macros lets you use the WS macro right after boost. So in theory you are not losing time. My main concern with boost is how to implement in a macro the swap of the hands slot twice : one for AF1 gloves, then boost, then one for ws macro then boost. I couldn't find something better than 2 macros. One swapping hands and boosting, one swapping gear and wsing. It definitely doesn't waste 4 sec. You have to be quick at hitting macro though.

Come play with me sometime!!!

No it doesn't. 1 second after boost is the minimum amount of time before you can WS. This delay is absolute. The minimum delay is 3 seconds for using Boost+WS.

The delay between using boost and being able to WS really doesn't feel like a whole second, if a delay at all. The reason i stopped using boost was due to the delay between the WS and next TP phase feeling longer when i did :s

Now i have to log my WHM in and go outside of town to prove myself wrong...

First part wrong second part correct, other wise the game wouldn't know when to stack JA delays and would apply 2 seconds systematically.

There is a 1 second delay between JAs and WSs as he stated. The last JA,WS gets the 2 second delay. If you stacked Zerk,Agg,Imp then WSed it would be 1 second,1 second, 1 second, then 2 seconds.

if 1 sec (ja hard delay) + 2 second (WS hard delay) is not 3 secs then i repeat my last post