Monk PvP Guide for FFXIV

PvP Monk is highly mobile, sticks to targets like glue, bursts hard, and can be difficult to kill. It can fill both a strong frontline role or dive for kills on the enemy backline.

This page will focus on Crystalline Conflict. While bits and pieces may be applicable to other PvP game modes like Frontlines, it is not specifically aimed at them.

Strengths

• Extremely high single-target burst
• One of the most powerful Limit Breaks.
• Difficult to kill through Riddle of Earth and Thunderclap shields
• Highly mobile and difficult to shake off
• Capable of high pressure with melee and ranged attacks

Weaknesses

• Vulnerable while animation-locked in Meteodrive

4.

Skill Selection

Recuperate Standard-issue Elixir Guard Purify Sprint

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.1.

Recuperate

Recuperate – This is your most important healing ability. MP in PVP is only used for this ability. With a max of 10,000 MP, recup will consume 2,500 and heals you for 15,000 HP. The amount of healing received can be increased and reduced by healing up or down status effects, such as Summon Seraph to increase or Biolysis to decrease. You gain 500 MP per 3 seconds passively, something to keep in mind!

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.2.

Standard-issue Elixir

Standard-issue Elixir – This is your second-most important healing ability. Elixir allows you to gain back all your HP and MP, resetting yourself for the next fight! The listed cast time is 4.5 seconds, which means the cast is actually snapshotted as complete after 4 seconds, after which you can move and opponents can no longer cancel your Elixir. You'll see moments where you get hit, and the position will still finish.

When not under pressure, make sure to top up your resources for the next fight. As with the animations counted in the death timer, you will be out for 20~ seconds instead vs a 4 second Elixir!

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.3.

Guard

Guard – Grants 90% damage reduction and immunity to most crowd-control debuffs for up to 4 seconds. Using another action cancels this guard early. Damage over Time effects that have been applied before Guard will always tick for the full amount and wont be negated with Guard!

Per Patch 7.1, there have been multiple abilities added that work against Guarded targets. Where Shield Smite and Chain Stratagem half the defensive bonus of Guard (90% → 45%), there are also abilities that simply ignore guard when dealing damage; Drill, Assassinate, Enchanted Riposte, Disesteem, Wreath of Fire, Serpent's Tail and Chaotic Spring

Damage per ability is now tight to animations, compared to pre-7.1 where the damage would register when pressed. This means Guard is more reactive than it has been before, but it's also possible now to start ability animations that will hit the moment your Guard ends. Beware of your surroundings and what the enemy is doing!

A Monk-specific trick to escape after your Guard runs out is to use Thunderclap on a far away enemy or friendly target to quickly dash out of danger.

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.4.

Purify

Purify – Cleanses all common crowd-control debuffs and provides a 3-second immunity to further crowd control, draw in and knockback effects. Use this to prevent yourself from getting CC-chained to death.

With the amount of crowd-control abilities, try not to be trigger-happy when using Purify. Taking a stun with no follow up from the enemy team, doesn't bring you in danger! If you have no defensives ready against a crowd-control heavy enemy team, it's recommended to play defensively before making another engage.

Every job has access to a few common actions, but some will have additional info for you.

3.5.

Sprint

Sprint – Toggle for increased movement speed. This is a GCD and using any other action cancels the buff, so be smart in using it. Sage is a fragile job, as it has the lowest HP out of any job. If you are using off-global abilities repeatedly while running away or chasing, you should try to late-weave them if you can afford to, to avoid canceling too much of the Sprint duration.

Monk is a bruiser job that has some incredible tanky-ness to it and is able to stick to a target for a long time. The job is a great duellist when it comes to 1 versus 1 situations and is capable of a high AoE burst after some build-up.

With the 7.1 rework, Monk lost it's stun, but gained ranged attacks in return. These changes make Monk versatile when it comes to playstyle, where you can offer support from ranged or still be clinging on the enemy to build up your Phantom Rush.

All of this with your Limit Break, Meteodrive, becoming a controller at the battlefield and able to lock an enemy into place, regardless of them using Guard.

Monk's primary damage tool is their 7-hit combo. It's a gcd combo that will build up to Phantom Rush (PR). In a full up-time situation, it takes about 10 seconds to get to PR. You will be able to deal 12,000 potency on the main target and 2/3th against the enemies within 5 yalms of the target.

Phantom Rush is one of your main sources of Burst and should always buffed with Rising Phoenix, increasing it's damage output by 50%. When you gain access to Phantom, the skill will be there for 15 seconds. This means you can build up to PR and hold it till you can align burst on the enemy with your team!

Most of your skills are instant, or have a very fast animation. This is also the case of PR. The damage comes out instantly when you press it, giving you incredible amount of pressure on a target. More on this later in the Burst Chapter!

Wind's Reply deals damage in a line towards your target, as well as knocking back the primary target. This target will get the debuff called Pressure Point .Your next weaponskill on that target within four seconds will do an additional 12,000 damage. This is a big part of your burst combo. You can also use this to push an enemy player into the middle of your team, into a stage hazard or off the Crystal right before Overtime.

Pressure Point will only be applied to the target if the knockback was successful. Meaning they will NOT get the debuff while in Guard or under the effect of Purify. Once applied to the target, the target still takes the full damage of Pressure Point while under the effect of Guard.

After the use of Wind's Reply, you will gain Wind Resonance , giving you 50% movement speed for 4 seconds.

Rising Phoenix deals a small AoE damage around you, while buffing your next weaponskill 50%. When used, you will also gain the buff of Fire's Rumination , lasting for it's duration and enhancing your Flint to Fire's Reply.

Being able to hold up the buff for 10 seconds, you can precast Rising Phoenix and wait for the right moment to use any of your big skills. The Resonance buff its often used on these 3 weaponskills: Phantom Rush, Wind's Reply and Fire's Reply.

While Wind's Reply's damage will be buffed, Pressure Point will not.

In Dawntrail, Monk has gotten the ability to do ranged attacks. With a standard 2 charges ranged poke, Flint's Reply got added to its arsenal. This low damage single target ranged attack gives the Monk options to poke from afar, if they are holding the crystal, see someone escape of want to do a filler-gcd before its time to use Phantom Rush.

When you use Rising Phoenix, you will not only buff your damage by 50%, but also gain the Fire's Rumination buff. This will upgrade your Flint's Reply to Fire's Reply. Increasing its damage and turning it from a single target to a targeted AoE attack. Together with with Rising Phoenix buff, Fire's Reply can deal up to 12k AoE damage on and around the target.

Where Flint can be more used as a filler-GCD or poking from ranged, Fire's Reply can also be used to deal big AoE damage on the crystal when the enemy team stacks up. Both of these ranged attacks have great synergy with Wind's Reply, as you are able to knock the enemy away or into a group, followed by your ranged attacks being able to proc the Pressure Point debuff.

Once activated, Riddle of Earth tracks how much damage you take for the next 8 seconds. Activating Earth's Reply heals you for half the compiled damage and deals damage equal to a quarter of the damage taken. Use this proactively when you expect to be taking a lot of damage.

If you use Riddle of Earth and chug Recuperate while taking a lot of damage, Earth's Reply can easily end up healing you to full. However there is a small animation delay on Earth's Reply, meaning it will NOT heal you instantly or deal damage. The animation delay is about 1.2 seconds.

This delay can be used in your favor offensively. When you press Earth's Reply and dash towards a target, it will be resolving while you are jumping to a target. This can help in dealing unexpected quick damage. This technique can be used with either Thunderclap and Meteodrive.

Thunderclap is your main tool of mobility and will stack up to two charges. When using Thunderclap, you rush to either an enemy or an ally. You give a shield to the ally you jump to, or to yourself if you jump to an enemy.

As you have two charges, it's advised to hold one of these chargers for an emergency. Whenever you are being focused, a teammate needs a shield or a quick reposition, its great to to have one charge ready. Thunderclap has a relative short cooldown, but do try and manage your usages!

Here is a useful macro for Thunderclap. This is a mouseover macro, meaning it will try to activate on whatever your mouse is on, whether it be the name entry in your party or enemy list or the player's model on your screen:

/merror off
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/pvpac "Thunderclap" <mo>
/micon "Thunderclap" pvpaction

Meteodrive is Monk's most feared ability and probably one of the most powerful Limit Breaks in the game. You are able to lock down a target with an uncleansable stun for three seconds, break Guard, and deal a lot of damage.

Despite the tooltip, Meteodrive does 24,000 damage to the target, regardless of whether or not they are in Guard. It is unknown whether this is intended or not. We do want to mention that Pressure Point from Wind's Reply no longer gets triggered by Meteodrive!

Whenever you are going to use Meteodrive, be sure to let your team know who you are focusing! Either a quickchat or Attack 1 marker should do the trick.

There are some special ways you can combo with Meteodrive, more on that in the Burst chapter!

Monk has a variety of combo's it can use to deal damage to it's targets. In most cases, just like in the Rising Phoenix chapter, your burst is build around 3 core abilities that can be used in combination with Meteodrive; Phantom Rush, Wind's Reply and Fire's Reply.

Before going into the combo's, I want to state that Riddle of Earth can be used offensively. Tanking damage, resolving Earth's Reply and dealing extra damage will be helping you during burst windows anywhere, as it's an OGCD. This can be done during any combo, but as it's has so many uses and isn't always as reliable, i will not actively put them in all burst windows.

First up we are going to look at combo's without Meteo, as there are some advanced techniques that come to pass with that one. We are looking at perfect scenario's, where you hit all of your abilities for full damage.

• Rising Phoenix
• Wind's Reply
• Rising Phoenix
• Phantom Rush / Fire's Reply

This combo will result in a 50k vs 40k attack over 3 GCDs, where you preparing a burst on the target where you have the option to Thunderclap after the target, and use a Phoenix with a stronger PR on them, or stay at range and shoot a fireball from afar. Pressure Point . The 10k difference will be found in the Rising Phoenix that wont hit and the difference of 6k damage between a buffed PR and Fire's Reply. Another downside of this combo is that you are losing one proc of Fire's Reply, as you will overwrite it with the second Rising Phoenix.

This combo will be available every 32 seconds, as you need 2 charges of Rising Phoenix. A quicker combo you can do every 16s will be the same, but removing the first Rising Phoenix. Resulting in a 42k/32k damage combo.

Another way we can use our abilities is to have AoE damage on a group of people. We will save Wind's Reply here, and focus on Fire's Reply and Phantom. Because of the animation delay and the instant usage of Phantom Rush, we can do a lot of AoE damage spreading from a target.

• Rising Phoenix
• Fire's Reply
• Rising Phoenix
• Earth's Reply (optional)
• Phantom Rush

With this combo, and you would hit all your Rising Phoenix as well, you would be dealing 38k+ AoE damage around the target. Same as with the previous combo, this one would take 32s to build up with needing 2 charges of Rising Phoenix. With Riddle of Earth resolving, the damage may vary!

With the current state of the game and animations being resolved before the damage registers, there are a few advanced techniques you can do when it comes to Meteodrive, as you can make your burst be unguardable before the damage even lands.

First and foremost; Meteodrive is instant. This means that the moment you press the button, you are breaking the enemy's guard and stun them in place. Both Fire's Reply and Wind's Reply have a wind-up animation before their damage comes out, meaning we can do a big setup from close by or afar when we have Meteodrive ready.

• Rising Phoenix
• Fire's Reply / Wind's Reply
• Earth's Reply (optional)
• Meteodrive

By pressing Meteodrive right as the animation of Fire or Wind reply start, you are able to break the enemy Guard before the damage applies, making them take additional damage while immobilised. If you are using Wind, try to shoot them towards a close by wall so they don’t move to much and your team can follow up. You can then also follow up with any attack (preferably PhantomRush) to proc the Pressure Point

With the new patch of 7.2, we have gained a new addition that will only work in Frontlines and Rivalwings. You are able to choose 1 of the following skills;

• Smite
• Swift
• Bloodbath

There are different options that suite different kinda playstyles. Out of personal experience playing solo , having Bloodbath is a great choice for sustain. If you want to play as an assassin and get some extra damage, running Smite is the go-to!