Elvaan Best Monks?

[Skeepz]

Are Elvaans the best race for monks?

[Pai Pai Master]

They're certainly the most popular, due to their high Strength and Mind attributes. They have relatively low dexterity, but that is probably the only flaw of an Elvaan monk, and can be corrected easily with proper equipment.

[Anheuser]

i have an elvaan monk. all i can say is accuracy sucks. too many times i'm in a pt hoping no one saw how many misses i made. >_<

[Kirsteena]

It depends what level you are at - if you are low level, everyone will be missing because you don't have access to accuracy gear yet, nor is Sushi a viable food till the late 30s. It does get better!

[Vasilis]

I am a 61 Elvaan MNK, and i dont miss as much. But i do wear Chivalrous chain, Scorpion harness, Life belt, Super ribbon, Tiphia sting, and each Sole sushi as needed. But i try to use Coerul subs(sorry if miss spelled) for the added ATT. But in my honest opinion elvaan are the best due to the high STR. MND helps for Chi blast, and the VIT helps with Chakra as well. Taru and Mithra are good for ACC. but taru WS's are a bit weaker. as elvaan I out DoT taru MNK's easy. Even if i miis a few hits. So don't worry about the misses you get. If you want to play as elvaan. Screw what everyone else thinks. Just have fun with the game.

[Elisen]

I'm a 62 Elvaan monk. The only thing I've ever had a problem with as Elvaan monk is accuracy, but that can be easily corrected with sushi, and then a life belt. Sniper Rings and other +ACC rings are nice, but if you have sushi and a life belt I found that I really didn't need them anymore and went back to STR rings. Little by little the higher lvl I get the less +ACC I need and can go back to +STR and +ATT. I've heard somewhere between 65-70 you can switch to brown belt from life belt and not even miss the ACC.

[Dryhus]

As an Elvaan MNK at level 60, I parse at 85%-90% Acc in XP with 2 Sniper's Rings, Scorpion Harness, Tiphia Sting, and sole sushi. My weapon of choice is Spartan Cesti, which has Acc+2 I believe. The rest is dedicated to STR/ATK, except for the situation Crow Beret.

If you didn't have much of a budget, you could drop the SH and Brown Belt for AF body and Life Belt. Acc is easy to compensate.

[Loial]

If you haven't chosen a race yet (i.e. you haven't started the game), just pick whatever race you want to play. To attain every piece of gear that can make your monk "better" than the rest would take a long long long time. You might as well just pick whatever you want.

BTW, Elvaan fight animations are pretty lame :P Well, just one Galka's opinion. And have you ever seen them cast Utsusemi?

[Icemage]

If you haven't chosen a race yet (i.e. you haven't started the game), just pick whatever race you want to play. To attain every piece of gear that can make your monk "better" than the rest would take a long long long time. You might as well just pick whatever you want.
Truth.


BTW, Elvaan fight animations are pretty lame :P Well, just one Galka's opinion. And have you ever seen them cast Utsusemi?
The fight and utsusemi animations are at least reasonable, but the one that I detest is the Elvaan male animation for summoning. It's like Mr. Spock meets the Power Rangers.

Galka animation for Utsusemi is pretty amusing too. Makes me think of John Travolta in Staying Alive... (but I love my Galka buddies anyway - great for a taru to hide behind, and big enough to use as an umbrella when it rains!)


Icemage

[Kirsteena]

I am assuming you mean Elvaan male Utsu animation, and not female - cause the female is ok.

And yes, Elvaan male summoning looks like they are constipated or something...

[KoukiRyu]

I wanna cry every time I hit my summon macro ._. I don't want to be around anyone when I summon cause they'll laugh at me ; ;

But umm, I have MNK75, and besides looking a little lame when you punch, like they've said, just use some acc gear/food to make up for it. I ended up only using one acc ring, AF and sole sushi to 72, where I switched to Pahlu Body and now I can either eat str food(with my new merits) and one acc ring instead of two, or eat sushi and use a couple str rings..just depends on what you wanna do...and if you want cool animations, Taru mnk ftfw! Asuran Fists on a taru <3<3

[Loial]

See? You have bigger things to think about than a few STR points or MND points. And yes, us Galka blink tank in style!

[Armando]

Anyone saying his/her Accuracy sucks because he/she is Elvaan is under a placebo effect. Racial differences aren't nearly big enough to matter outside of the HP/MP department, and to a small extenct THF main SATA.

[Auron517]

I am assuming you mean Elvaan male Utsu animation, and not female - cause the female is ok.

That may be true, but have you seen the Elvaan Female HtH stance? Yuck! ^^;

[Mog]

The best animation yet is when a tarutaru uses a great sword.


/enemy approaches
/unsheath sword
/staggers due to the weight of the sword.

Oh shit....

[KoukiRyu]

Anyone saying his/her Accuracy sucks because he/she is Elvaan is under a placebo effect. Racial differences aren't nearly big enough to matter outside of the HP/MP department, and to a small extenct THF main SATA.

Err...I missed like a beast with the same gear as my Mithra monk friend...we were both 64, the only thing different was she had a weapon with no acc+ while I had Spartan's with Acc+2...and she had Sniper's, I had Woodsman, and she had one STR+3 ring while I had a Venerer on, other than that, our gear was identical. And we both ate Rice Dumplings(she shared some with me)...she hit a lot more than me, while I actually missed every hit with Raging Fists at one point there. It's not just a placebo effect, it's honest because Elvaan really do miss.

[Loial]

I'd recommend parsing to see what the real % differences are. I know from personal experience that its very easy to pick out your high-end or low-end damage, but miss all the stuff in the middle.

Some other MNK or WAR might do 1200+ on a WS once (because all hits critted or something) and you never break 1100. Yet, you might also be doing an average of 1050 whereas the other guy does about 950 on average, but got that lucky all crit WS in there.

All I'm saying, parse to get the real numbers. By level 64, racial differences in DEX are nearly non-existant. They are negligible.

[Dryhus]

Err...I missed like a beast with the same gear as my Mithra monk friend...we were both 64, the only thing different was she had a weapon with no acc+ while I had Spartan's with Acc+2...and she had Sniper's, I had Woodsman, and she had one STR+3 ring while I had a Venerer on, other than that, our gear was identical. And we both ate Rice Dumplings(she shared some with me)...she hit a lot more than me, while I actually missed every hit with Raging Fists at one point there. It's not just a placebo effect, it's honest because Elvaan really do miss.


How much other Acc did you have? If that's all you have for Acc gear, sushi was probably the far better option there. Rice Dumplings at 64 lack in Atk and Acc too much for them to be considered over meat or sushi, IMHO. I understand you were looking for a balance, but again, at 64 that balance is a mediocre one.

[KoukiRyu]

Yar, at the time I hadn't used Sushi yet...the one time I had when I had some leftovers from Promys, my LS all asked me why the hell I was using sushi, so I didn't think I was supposed to use it(I do use it now because it's awesome, my LS just told me it was for thf onry originally...dunno what they were thinking -_-). >_> But just nevermind, I don't keep exact percentages, and I don't parse, I just know that I always hit less than her, I watch the battle log relatively closely, especially with another mnk cause I like to compare with them all the time. And at the time I wasn't trying for a mediocre balance, as I said, she gave me some Dumplings, I usually used chiefkabobs at that level and I had ran out of food. But, she always has less +acc gear than me, and I always hit harder then her, and as of us both reaching 75, there isn't much difference anymore. All I know is that Elvaan -do- miss a lot, and people don't make fun of them for it just because it's funny, it's because it's honest. x_x;

[Partyboy]

I believe its not what race that determines if your good, its how you play your job.

[Minaku]

I've exped side by side with Taru, Elvaan, Hume, and Galka with all kinds of gear. The racial differences are so small that I'd never pick Elvaan just because of it's stat bonuses. It should be about how you want to represent yourself and what you want to stare at for hours and hours.

[Dryhus]

Now I'm getting a little perturbed at people insisting Elvaan, as a race, miss a lot. I can't possibly see every facet of your anecdotal evidence (Gear? Meat? Sushi? Level? Mob level? Focus? Frost? Gravity?), but I can inanecdotally say that I (as an Elvaan MNK) have never been outparsed in either Accuracy or total damage output by a player the same level as myself or lower. I realize a Mithra MNK the same level as me, wearing the same gear as me, and eating the same food as me would likely parse at 89.0% Acc over my 88% Acc, but I have yet to see that scenario.

[Maju]

Now I'm getting a little perturbed at people insisting Elvaan, as a race, miss a lot. I can't possibly see every facet of your anecdotal evidence (Gear? Meat? Sushi? Level? Mob level? Focus? Frost? Gravity?), but I can inanecdotally say that I (as an Elvaan MNK) have never been outparsed in either Accuracy or total damage output by a player the same level as myself or lower. I realize a Mithra MNK the same level as me, wearing the same gear as me, and eating the same food as me would likely parse at 89.0% Acc over my 88% Acc, but I have yet to see that scenario.

It's placebo. Elvaan do not miss significantly more than other races. The stat difference simply isn't large enough if all else is equal.

[GuardianFaith]

I'm a 75 Elvaan monk and I beat out my hume friend on WS while we're messin around about 80% of the time and he has more merrits than I do. I think the STR does make a difference. I can one shot the skelletons we were playin with for around 1400~1500 damage with Asuran... same with SA Dragon Kick. For some reason he can't quite get up there with me. Gear wise we have the same +STR except for I use 2 Flames and he uses 2 Victories. Funny thing is , I was using Hanzo Tekko for +6acc+6eva and he was using O'skote. I dunno, I've been embarrassed by Taru's, Mithra's, and Humes alike.. but they had maxed STR H2H and Crit merrits, not to mention Shura gear and Osode for WS. And the difference was about 100~150 damage on WS usually. Still I've had nights where I had the highest WS in KRT pt'ing with the same folks.. FFXI is random.

Oh and someone was talking about the shortcomings of Elvaans when it comes to Sneak Attack and other Thieveness. I can't speak for the later levels, but @43 I was doing 4~500 with Regular SATA about 1/5 times and 400~500+ with Viperbite about 3/5 times.. I don't know if you think that sucks, but I've yet to pt with a thief in those levels that does any better. I have +26DEX & +21AGI with gear and food though, maybe that makes up for it @ this level. I've put quite a few mediocre mithra thieves to shame though.

So in conclusion it goes both ways, just play whichever race catches your eye and be damn good @ your job. ^^

[Malacite]

Life Belt { No Thanks }

Accuracy Rings + Brown/Black Belt FTW (Rajas too if u got it :3)

[Kildem]

That may be true, but have you seen the Elvaan Female HtH stance? Yuck! ^^;

Hey hey... elvaan female hand to hand position is like "come here grab my hips". That is fine to me... lol

But yes regarding accuracy... life belt??? Naaaah get a brown belt.

[Malacite]

I love our Utsu animation, reminds me of Squall in FF8 when casting or drawing magic. We're just that cool.

As for our bizzare H2H stance, I believe this was discussed in another thread. It's an intimidation stance, which naturally portrays our arrogance and ferocity. We're basically saying "Hit me I dare ya" with our body language.