How's Dragon Kick?

[Unholy Prince]

Hello.

Our static party is approaching 65 and i was wondering how Dragon Kick stood up as a Renkei closer. We have a Mnk and Rng as our DDs, is Arching Arrow a better closer? Is it worth losing the /war bonuses for our mnk to sub thf for SATA Dragon Kick. Talking non-bone mobs here, the choice is obvious on bones.

So hows it stand up to the other 225 WSs? and is it worth subbing thf?

[bleegh]

From what I hear:

Mnk's Dragon Kick and Drk Spinning Slash are the 2 big Light closers at 65+

Arching Arrow will deal a few hundred less than sidewinder, but will open up light chains very nicely. If your rng is having trouble turning the mob for SATA (which he shouldn't) have him sub war and voke it as well.

Also, don't forget that guns and bows deal piercing dmg, which get a 50%(?) dmg reduction against bones. Unless, of course, your rng decides to use bodkin arrows.

so... in essence - SATA Dragon kick = yes. RNG + MNK vs. bones = think about it.

[iglak]

if your static is not having any hate-holding troubles, then there is no reason for the MNK to sub THF. the extra damage from SA and the resulting skillchain (if it closes the SC) is not nearly enough to counter the benefits of a WAR sub, especially from double attack.

if anyone other than your MNK is taking too much hate, then it might be a good idea for the MNK to sub THF to TA off the person that is taking too much hate onto the tank. if the MNK is taking too much hate, subbing THF for him will lower his damage output and he might not be taking too much hate anymore, but it would be better for the RNG to sub THF to TA off the MNK onto the tank.

does SA/TA work with ranged attacks?

[Rogan]

Originally posted by iglak


does SA/TA work with ranged attacks?

no, that would overpower sidewinder making it always hit and do like 1500+ damage

[Fox the Sly]

He's right. SATA doesn't work with ranged attacks. Just imagine the crazy damage a RNG could do with SATA + Sidewinder. XD

[l)@RK-l)EVIL]

dragon kick is the most random ws i ever saw
sometimes i realy like its damage but aother times it do very sucky damage (i believe this feet equipment effect its damage and race)

mnk is not very good renkei closer (for 2 reasons in order to let mnk close renkei they must sub thf and mnk not very good with thf sub and reason 2 is the damage still not the highest drk or thf can do higher damage[ light damage depends on last ws thats why people want stronger ws to close renkei like spinning slash or sharkbite)
any mnk know how war sub is way better for mnk
mnk lose alot of his power when he dont sub war (berserk+ double attack kick in alot for mnks XD)

even if you doin bone pts i prefer drk more than mnk for renkei close

i was in crazy pt before 2 days
mnk/war mnk/thf drk/thf pld brd whm

first the plan was i solo cross reaper the pld ( or use it after dragon kick for distortion)
renkei redlotus>howling fist> dragon kick

dragon kick (from hum race) keep doin 500~900 and that was vs bone mobs the damage should be lower vs norml mobs (its realy random O_o)
then i replaced the mnk to close the renkei and my spinning slash was doin 1000~1200 almost always i did 1400~ spinning slash once and light +2000

[frogfromsaturn]

oO... I know its off topic..... just had to say it...

I like that sig!!!

[Rossb2k]

Let me start off by saying that Dragon Kick has nothing to do with foot equip. Dune Boots/Kung-Fu Shoes/Wu-Long Shoes don't affect it's damage. For some reason, CHR adds damage to it. I have no idea why, but if you stack some CHR gear and do some kicks you'll see what I mean. That being said...

/WAR is the best option for dragon kick. Dragon kick damage is spead out over it's two hits, so its SATA damage is therefore limited compared to Spinning Slash. I'll be the first to admit that until the 74-75 range, DRK w/ Spinning Slash is the better closer on a light skillchain for the big damage even on bones. Their regular melee damage sucks in comparison so it makes sense to balance it like that. With /war your dps will be incredible and you'll have that all-important double attack trait that can kick in on the weaponskills you used. I've done 3 and 4 hit Dragon kicks that did some insane damage without sacrificing the dps of /THF.

That's not to say mnk/thf as a renkei closer is a bad choice and you should stick with /war all the time. Simply put, DRK/THF with Spinning Slash specializes in closing the skillchain and a monk would be better off focusing on dps to maximize damage in the party.

[Ungerpurr]

Ross beat me to it - in that it's not that Dragon Kick's damage is random, it's just that, like all monk WS, it's inherently multi-hit (in this case, two) due to the way the weapon works. This is why Shoulder Tackle, One Inch Punch, Backhand Blow, Howling Fist, and Dragon Kick vary so much in damage.

For a monk/warrior, just think about the possibilities with even Howling Fist...

0 hits
1 hit
1 hit, crit
2 hit
2 hit, 1 crit
2 hit, 2 crit
3 hit
....
4 hit, 4 crit (on the average IT, this'd be somewhere around 1600 damage, non-skeleton).

*******WARNING: INCREDIBLY POINTLESS ESTIMATED STATISTICS BELOW*******

Of course, figuring double attack at about 10%, and thus the chance of two double attacks in one Howling Fist being about 1%, figuring crit rate at suppose 5%, and thus the chance of 4 crits on the same WS about 1 in 160,000, multiplying out we get...1 in 16,000,000 chance of doing this. Supposing you use your WS during an xp PT, on average, including downtime, every 2 minutes, you'd see this roughly:

Once every 32,000,000 minutes
Once every 533,333 hours, 20 minutes
Once every 22,222 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes
Once every 60 years, 322 days, 5 hours, 20 minutes

...of xping.

Given that:

1) We have ~1.5 million characters (recent announcement)
2) Monk/wars make up about 4.4% of the level 60+ population(Vana'diel Census)
3) The 60+ population makes up about...15% of the total FFXI population (estimate from Vana'diel Census)
4) The average monk levels from 60-65 at a rate of 4kxp/hour
5) A total of 146kxp is needed to level from 60-65, so an average of 36.5 hours of xping
6) Nearly all monks stop using Howling Fist after obtaining Dragon Kick...

We have a total of 36.5 * 1,500,000 * .044 * .15 = 361,350 total monk-hours of xping done from 60-65 thus far. So...we've roughly a 68% chance that this has happened, at least once - that is to say, a 4-hit, 4-crit Howling Fist, given the above assumptions, which are many and guessed-at.

That said, the most you'll ever get with /thf is 2-hit, 2-crit, although you ARE guaranteed at least 1-hit, 1-crit, which is significantly better than the two options worse than it. But, you lose berserk and double attack and...anyway....

*******End POINTLESS RAMBLING*******

I think Dragon Kick only has slightly more base damage than Howling Fist (anyone have some hard stats on this?), but has a better growth rate. At any rate, throwing a mnk and rng into the same PT at 65+ doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, as monk's specialty is rng's weakness.

[Xien]

Fighting Procs in Boyahda Tree, I PTed with a monk at 65. SC was Mistral >> Dragon kick for light. Bard was there to provide Minuet/Madrigal/Light Trenody. Mnk subbed War. Mnk had decent equipment, not blinged out (harness, etc) but normal-above average equipment. Race was Elvaan.

My thoughts on Dragon kick? It's decent, on avg. more damage than Howling Fist but very unstable. Twice it reached 600-800 dmg but for the most part, 300-400 were the norm. Completely missed once. Compared to some of the Spinning Slashes I've seen, it's a no-brainer to see which one's better.

I guess the benefit of Mnk is that they can charge TP just as fast as mine, so we can SC just about every fight with little overkill. I find that Drk/Thfs usually can't keep up with TP (due to loss of double atk), making it more worthwile to alternate which mobs to perform SC on (mistral>>spinning on a mob with 40% life is insane overkill).

Xien

[taps]

The reason Spinning Slash seems better is because all DRK sub THF when using it, I've watched a Lv75 DRK with Adaman Heuberk miss it on TW mobs... my MNK friend subs THF when we party together and nails DK for 800-1000 DMG every time...

[Dano]

TP100 200 300 Hit 修�_��_�目　　 備考
H2H
Combo　　　　　　　1.00 1.50 2.00 ×3 STR_20 DEX_20
RagingFists　　　　　　　　?.??　?.??　?.?? ×5 STR_?? ?
Shouldertackle 1.00 ×2 VIT_30
1-inchpunch　　　　　　　　1.00 ×2 VIT_40
backhandblow　1.00 ×2 STR_30 DEX_30
Spinattack　　　1.00 ×2 STR_35
Howling Fist　　　　　　　1.50 2.00 3.00 ×2 STR_20 VIT_50　 仮
DragonKick　　　　　　　2.00 2.50 3.00 ×2 STR_50 VIT_50
Asuran Fists　　　　1.00　　　　　　　×8　???_20 ? STR�VIT������

these are estimates on how weaponskills multiplier works. So is it good? i will say it's pretty good, since it uses the 2 highest stats of a mnk, Vit & Str.

it's good till drks get spinning slash then they will replace us as skillchain closers, but overall it is still very powerful at 300%.

the thing that it is unstable it's becoz it's a 2hit ws, miss either 1 hit you'll get a crappy dmg plus the dmg is not divided equally between the hits i would probably think the 2nd hit does the most dmg. That's why even with SATA(coz SA only garuntees crit on first hit), a dragon kick would not be as good as a spining slash(i would assume spining is a one hit and all dmg is concetrate on that one hit)

[Unholy Prince]

Our rng hit 66 last night, opening Arching Arrow and Heavy shot. We tried out Light for the first time.

at 300 TP Dragon Kick did about 500 damage, Arching Arrow did the same.

We later decided to switch it to Arching Arrow being the closer. We had more stable results that way.

A lot of determining factors are going to be put into this. We're going to do extensive testing. Currently our mnk is decked our in acc gear(rich galkan ><). Specs, x2 Snipers, Life Belt, Shivas Claws. Hes going to try useing Brown Belt and 2 Sun rings to see if the damage output is higher. Plus we'll eventually be camping for CCs and Kung Fu Boots.

Would an equipment change macro here be key? Switch the STR items in for Dragon Kick and the ACC items in for normal attacks?

Will the STR gear itself be a noticeable increase? Or the Kung Fu Boots and CCs?

We have not yet decided to test /thf again. Our pld holds hate just fine as long as we can do the SC after the 2nd voke. We never were impressed with /thf, even if it adds to Dragon Kick by a little I don't see it outweighing the natural DoT of /war. But in some of your opinions would /thf and the STR gear be a worthy trade?

While we will do a lot of testing, I am interested in hearing the experienced monks on this board's feedback. It seems wrong to have Arching Arrow close the Renkei for some reason. I guess i'm looking for ways for us to increase the damage of Dragon Kick to make it a worth closer vs normal mobs.

Thank you all for your time.

[Rossb2k]

There are a lot of factors that are going to change when you start gaining levels, so you'll have to adjust as you go. Anyway...

It seems right now your monk is a little too focused on accuracy. I stopped using life belt and snipers past 60, and I loved the damage boost I got from it. Monks really don't have any accuracy problems in this level range til 75, so it'd be a good idea in my opinion to focus more on damage. If anything, get him CCs or new weapons. Shivas are great for their accuracy and relatively low delay but their damage is very weak. Judging from your post it seems like you want to maximize your renkei damage. If this is true, I would say get new weapons, and trade the snipers for sun rings. Swap in Brown Belt for life belt as needed. As for a macro equip... I've never been a fan. Monks already have to boost to maximize their damage, and that takes a few seconds. A macro equip always seemed like an unneeded 2nd step that could make me miss the chain all-together. It could work but.. you need the balance of accuracy and STR for the weaponskills as well as regular attacks. Missing part (since Dragon Kick is a 2-4 hit weaponskill depending on how many times double attack kicks in) of the weaponskill means doing really crappy damage.

As for thief, look at the earlier post I made about it. To summarize, /thf just isn't worth it.

Most importantly, you're 66 so I assume you're still in Boyhada fighting Processionares and haven't moved on to Gustav to fight Skelatons. Once you move there you'll see a huge increase in the monk's regular damage and weaponskill damage. All things being equal (ie, no damage bonuses or penalties) a RNG doing Arching Arrow will probably do more than Dragon Kick. So for now you're right in letting the RNG end the chain. However, once (if?) you move onto bones, definitly let the monk end the chain.

[Aneyeisuponyou]

Yo Taps, Spinning Slash seems better cause it's one hit which SA/TA has more of an impact on then DK, which is two. Which is why I don't really like thf sub much, but you gotta do , what you gotta do.