Monk Melding, Stat Priority, and Consumables — Dawntrail 7.1

This section covers materia melding, stat priorities, and the best consumable choices for Monk. For a specific list of best-in-slot gear, check out our dedicated gear page.

Monk's stat priority is very simple.

1. Weapon Damage
2. Strength
3. Skill Speed until 955
4. Critical Hit
5. Determination
6. Direct Hit
7. Skill Speed beyond 955

Weapon Damage and your Main Stat (Strength in the case of Monk) are going to be the highest priority stat for every job and will have a much greater effect on your DPS than minor substat changes, hence why these should always be your priority when looking to upgrade gear.

Getting your Skill Speed to a minimum of 955 is important for Monk as this sets our GCD to 1.94, allowing our rotation to function cleanly without causing Riddle of Fire to drift. If you are running a 1.93 GCD, replace the number 955 with 1083. If you are running a 2.00 GCD, simply remove skill speed altogether.

Critical Hit is always going to be the substat with the biggest impact on Monk's DPS due to Deep Meditation II and Leaping Opo. Critical Hit increases both crit damage - valuable for Leaping Opo - and crit chance. Deep Meditation II also makes every critical hit effectively worth an additional 80 potency, compounding the benefits of the crit stat for Monk.

Beyond this, Determination and Direct Hit are both very close together in terms of value, and a general rule for melding is to try and keep them at somewhat similar levels, leaning slightly heavier into Determination. It is worth mentioning that this will not always be perfectly represented in best-in-slot gear lists as optimized melds still come down to stat tiering, so in some cases, best-in-slots may include a heavy focus on either Determination or Direct Hit due to the gear that is available to us.

Potions, or tinctures, are very simple in Final Fantasy XIV. The one you want to use will always be a High-Quality version of the highest grade Main Stat tincture available; for Monk, this is Strength.

The best food choices can be found on the aforementioned gear page, and these generally stick to the previously outlined stat priority.