This is what makes a Monk the most powerful Damage-over-time melee job. The Monk gets stronger and faster as he levels because of this trait. These are the levels you will get them.

• lv01 MA I - Delay = 400
• lv16 MA II - Delay = 380
• lv31 MA III - Delay = 360
• lv46 MA IV - Delay = 340
• lv61 MA V - Delay = 320
• lv75 MA VI - Delay = 300

Note: The H2H weapon of the Monk will add to these delays. For example, a weapon with a +60 Delay will increase a lv16 Mnk delay from 380 to 440 delay.

As you can see, with each reduction in delay, you will attack faster. This means you can deal more damage given the same amount of time. At first, it doesn't seem like a lot, but by the time you reach lv75, you would be attacking twice with only 300 delay (or 348-360 with weapons). If you read the Hand-to-Hand section of wiki you will notice this line:

"The damage of a hand-to-hand weapon is added to a character's natural hand-to-hand damage. A character's natural hand-to-hand damage is calculated by multiplying hand-to-hand skill by 0.11 and then adding 3. When calculating the Weapon Rank, however, the number used as the weapon base damage is the number displayed on the weapon plus 3, with no contribution from hand-to-hand skill."

This means by the time you reach lv75, your base weapon damage would be at 33 (or 35 with merit). Add in a +18DMG weapon (Destroyers, Wagh Baghnakhs, Hades Sainti...etc) and you will get a 53DMG base damage per punch. Since the Monk will attack twice per round, he would be like using 2 one-handed weapon each at 53DMG with only 174-180 delay. The Thf's famous relic weapon Mandau has 39DMG with 176 delay and the Bst's relic Guttler has 53DMG with 280 delay. So not counting the extra damage bonus from those awesome relic, a normal Monk beats both those weapon with his hands.

Note #2: Remember I told you that you could still use /War on lv74? This is one of the reason why (the other being the Haste equip). Mnk74 is a lot weaker than Mnk75 so you can get away with Mnk/War lv74 if there are lv75 melee in the PT

Think of this as a suppression to the TP gain rate of a Monster. I think this is around just so people won't talk like how Mnk is feeding TP too much to the monsters they are fighting. Monsters' TP gaining rate is faster than your average PC. For every physical hit it takes, it gains a TP proportion to the amount you gain plus a fixed amount (precise amount is your TP gain+3). A Mnk would naturally give more TP to a monster just because he's attacking faster than other people (esp compare to a 2-Hand weapon user with the same delay). Subtle Blow counters this effect by lowering the amount of TP the Mnk gives to the monster.

• lv05 SB II - 5% effect
• lv25 SB II - 10% effect
• lv45 SB III - 15% effect
• lv65 SB IV - 20% effect

The effect does not stack. By the 4th trait bonus, a Mnk will only give the monster 80% of the normal TP. I personally think this is very useful while soloing. I currently have 44% SB bonus (+14 from equipment) so I only give the monster 56% of the normal TP which less than the rate of TP I gain from attacking. It's nice to be able to use your WS to finish off a monster without allowing it to use its nasty TP attack.

Subtle Blow is especially useful under the effect of Footwork. A mnk will give significantly less TP to the monster compare to any other job given the same amount of Delay/Damage ratio. In a sense, a single kick is roughly equivalent to a Great Katana hit in terms of damage but will only give half or less the TP feed into the monster.

You get this at lv10. When a monster is attacking you, you start by trying to evade the attack. If you fail to evade the attack, then one of your shadows from Utsusemi will take the damage and disappear. If you don't have those then you will take the damage or you will counter the attack. Counter ignores the attack and allows you to hit the monster in return. Amazing trait when you are soloing or tanking. You can enhance this with equipments and merit. You can also greatly increase the counter attack rate with the job ability Counterstance which will be discussed later.

• lv10 Counter - 10% activation rate

You can bump this to 15% activation rate with merit. There are also other equipments that will enhance this trait.

Extra HP. Simple but somewhat useful. If you are a tarutaru and always find yourself with a tiny tiny pool of HP, then you will be very happy to see your HP gets higher almost everyone else in the PT with this trait.

• lv15 HP Boost I - +30HP
• lv35 HP Boost II - +30HP
• lv55 HP Boost III - +60HP
• lv70 HP Boost IV - +60HP

Total of +180HP added to the naturally high HP of the Mnk. Very useful from preventing the Mnk from getting one-shotted from nasty attacks. It should be noted that because of the naturally high HP of the Mnk, non-Whm healers will have trouble healing the Mnk if he gets damaged (a lot). A Rdm would need 2 cure IV just to get the my Mnk's HP from 50% to 100% since he has about 1,600 HP (average for a Hume)

Ah, the extra power to your Mnk's already awesome DoT ability. It's not amazing but it's very good to have. With this trait, occasionally, during your attack, you will kick once per round. Since you can only kick once per round, the kick attack is only one-half the power of Double Attack. The damage isn't great either since it's base damage equal to your unarmed hand attack (33-35DMG) unless you have equipment that increases kick attacks damage. Footwork will take advantage of this trait and makes it similar to Double Attack.

• lv51 Kick Attack I - 5% activation rate
• lv71 Kick Attack II - 10% activation rate

Effect doesn't stack but you can get another +5% (total 15%) with merit. I will discuss Kick Attacks later with Footwork usage.

Gives a bit more of TP when you guard an attack. You'll obtain this at lv77. Depending on how much beating you are taking, it's a slightly useful ability to have. It makes skill up your Guard skill not as bad as before.

Level 5

You get this ability at lv5 and they stack together if you use them multiple times. It's an awesome ability that serves two main purposes and a minor one. One, it raises your attack by 15% for one hit. As cool as the attack bonus sounds, it affects little to a Mnk's performance at higher level and abusing it at lower level causes more problems than it should. So if you keep using Boost every 15sec, you will attack slower and slower. It's much better just to use it before you perform a WS. The other primary use of Boost is to increase Chi Blast damage. You can have up to 12 stacked Boost to deliver a massive Chi Blast though you have to keep in mind that the effect will wear off in 3m15s after the 1st use.

Level 15

Gives you +20 evasion, +30 with AF feet. Somewhat useful in PT since there is no point not to use this ability. Fairly useful when tanking and soloing. Personally, I just put this along with Focus cause they have the same timer to save a macro slot. The evasion bonus is nice but it's situational. Unless you tank slightly harder monsters often or soloing EM+

Level 25

This is one of the best ability a Monk gets access to. It gives a +20 accuracy bonus for 2m (+25acc when activate with AF head). Accuracy is one of the most important stats a Monk should focus on at any level. This ability is so great that some Monks even put extra merits into it. The downside of this is that it only lasts for 2min out of 5min. Also, if you use sushi as your primary food source then this ability is not very useful.

Level 35

Another good ability to use both in PT and soloing. It heals you for about 100-150HP (2xVit) and removes Poison plus Blindness. With AF body, it will heal to about 200-300 HP (3xVit) and also removes Paralyze. With Relic hands it will heal for an extra 60% of your Vit and cures Plague. A Monk with proper equipments can pump the healing of this ability to 400HP healed and add another 400HP with 5/5 merit in Invigorate. Personally, I don't keep a set of Chakra equipments around, it has it uses when you are a soloist Mnk but the extra 250HP healed from a 5m ability isn't a lot considering you have like 1,600 HP.

Level 41

Not very useful exp PT as it does little damage without any Boost. The damage is based on your Mnd and the number of Boost you stack together (enhanced with AF hands). You can throw a Chi Blast every 3m for about 30-50 damage in an experience points PT, a bit more if you have time to Boost and carry your AF hands. For HNM and other NMs fighting, this ability is a lot more useful. With enough +Mnd and Boost, you can deal over 1,500 damage with a single Chi Blast. The merit Penance will further enhance this ability on NMs by suppressing the TP gain of the NMs.

This ability used to be the staple ability of Mnk on tough NM. However, most of the recently introduced NMs are immune or highly resistance to the damage of Chi Blast. Now, most Mnks use this ability for delivering a 1st strong 1-hit before switching to melee range.

Level 45

This is a double-edge sword ability and should be used very carefully. It greatly enhance your ability to Counter melee attacks directed at you (roughly 50%) while reduce your defense to 1/2 of your Vit (pretty much to 20-40 Def). This means you will take a lot more damage if you get hit, but you will manage to ignore 50% of the damage. This ability also ignores all equipments that reduces your Def (ex: Sniper's Ring). It will also make all effect that reduces your Def negligible (ex: Berserk). You can not counter a TP attack, however. This means if you get hit by a TP attack, you will take massive amount of damage (almost double the damage).

A popular method of using counterstance is when you are Mnk/Nin and concentrates on keeping up the shadows. When you are casting Utsusemi without any shadow up, you can counter an attack - thus prevent interruptions. Since counterstance put your counter chance to over 45%-50%, you can pretty much prevents interruptions 50% of the time.

Level 65

The moment you obtain this ability it might be worth while to take a look at the Kick Attacks page for a list of boots that enhance kick attacks. Depending on where you are in the game the follow boots are worth taking a look into Kyoshu Kyahan, Wulong Shoes +1 and Poise Shoes. KK is hard to obtain at lv65 since the NM that drop it isn't a pushover. Wulong will be a bit expensive and hard to find while the NQ version isn't going to be very good. Poise Shoes are at a higher level and much more difficult to obtain. In general, you can always aim for the Kyoshu Kyahan if you have a high level job or just ignore this JA until you reach lv70+

Level 79

This ability is fairly useful if you use it right. It not only makes you counter the next attack but might also activates on multiple attacks in a row. It will also cause all of them to deal critical damage. The major bonus of this JA is that it allows you to cast Utsusemi: Ichi while under attack (which normally will require a fair bit of luck). With this JA, your mnk will be a much more solid tank in small parties compare to others.

Skill level 5

Your 1st WS for H2H and it's an awesome WS. This WS will remain useful for a large part of your leveling and you should always trust in this WS even though sometimes it might seem that it sucks. I have seen lots of highs and lows with this WS but on average this WS will generally out performs other WS in the early levels.

Skill level 40

Your 2nd WS. This WS is relatively weak compare to Combo and the only reason you would want to use this is to Stun the target. This rarely happens, however.

Skill level 75

Perfectly useless WS. It's an extremely weak WS that might help in some situations but it's super weak. In fact, it's so weak that SE had to remove it from the Fomor Monk because people pretty much laughed at it when it used this.

Skill level 100

A somewhat powerful WS compare to the previous 3 WSes. When this WS causes a critical hit, it will out class Combo. When it causes normal damage then Combo will move ahead. It's a hit or miss WS but it might help you in exp parties since it requires less accuracy to deal decent damage.

Skill level 125

This is the upgrade version of Combo and will pretty much replaces all the WS before it. It remains a strong candidate for almost all situations until you get the next upgrade version.

Skill level 150

Area of Effect WS. Not useful in exp parties but might be useful in some situations where you need to deal AOE damage. It's fairly weak and will only deal about 1/3 to 1/4 of Raging Fists damage on a single target.

Skill level 200

A strong 2-hit punch WS. This is actually a fairly good WS when you feel that your damage isn't up-to-part with the other guys because you don't have enough attack. I'd consider it an upgrade of the old Backhand Blow and you can use it to replace Raging Fists in exp situations.

Skill level 225

A kick WS in a sense. It's not stronger than Howling Fist under normal conditions. However, under the effect of Footwork with a strong attack boots it will deal some serious damage. It remains a useful WS until the next version upgrade.

Skill level 250

This is the upgrade of Raging Fists and requires a quest call The Walls of Your Mind to obtain. It's pretty much the bread and butter WS of all mnks once you obtain it. It out-classes almost everything behind it with the exception of some situations for Dragon Kick and Howling Fist.

Skill level unknown

This is also a quest WS that requires you to obtain Burning Fists and complete the Unlocking a Myth (Monk). It can be considered an upgrade of Howling Fist. It's also useful for certain Skill Chain.

Skill level 300

The upgrade version of Dragon Kick and share similar properties. However, it can not do level 3 Skill Chain. This makes it somewhat less useful. It's a fairly strong WS when you have a good pair of boots and is using Footwork. Otherwise, it'll be less powerful than Asuran Fists.

Level Progression and General Guidelines

A Monk's primary role in a PT is to stand there and punch away. While the amount of HP a mnk gets can be very intimidating to some people, it's not really that safe for a Mnk to take over the tanking role. A Mnk loses HP very quickly if put into a tank role without proper tanking equipments... even with the proper equipments, he still loses HP faster than the nearest meat tank (Pld or Sam). This doesn't mean a Mnk can't tank, he's just not as good as other jobs. However, once you obtain lv75 and have a decent set of Haste equipments, then a Mnk can be a decent-good tank in several situations.

Monk can perform well as a support tank. Someone who can Provoke and hold the monster for the few seconds when needed. It's not the best support tank (compare to Sam and War) but Mnk is 'ok'. They pretty much loses Provoke once they start using Ninja or Dancer as a sub job but by this time a Monk no longer needs to support tank anymore.

Also, a Monk is not a very good puller. In fact, he can't pull unless he has Pebble which nobody really has in their pockets. Chi Blast has a 3min timer so it's not a good pulling tool either. Until SE could think of a way to allow pebbles to be found anywhere at anytime, you can put Mnk along with Drg as the non-pulling jobs.