Monk DPS Rotation, Openers, and Abilities — Dawntrail 7.1

The Dawntrail iteration of Monk can be summed up with a single idea: generating and expending different types of orbs. Between the new job gauge, chakra stacks, Beast Chakra, and Nadi, we are juggling 4 different types of orbs at any one given time. While that may sound like a lot to consider, the job gauge elements that Monk has makes tracking these different orbs very intuitive, leaving us with plenty of spare brainpower to consider how to use our orbs effectively and efficiently, ensuring that we can put as much damage into our Riddle of Fire as possible. On this page we will break down the Monk kit into its constituent parts, and then slowly assemble it to develop an effective understanding of the job.

The core of Monk's single target rotation is a very simple flowchart.

• When in Opo-opo form, do you have a stack of Opo-opo's Fury?
  • If yes, use Leaping Opo.
  • If no, use Dragon Kick.
• When in Raptor form, do you have a stack of Raptor's Fury?
  • If yes, use Rising Raptor.
  • If no, use Twin Snakes.
• When in Coeurl form, do you have a stack of Coeurl's Fury?
  • If yes, use Pouncing Coeurl.
  • If no, use Demolish.

This forms the basis of the Monk rotation, and is what you will be doing in-between burst windows.

Chakra is a resource that we passively gain throughout fights due to our Deep Meditation II and Brotherhood. We can build up to 5 chakra stacks, at which point they can be spent on either the single target The Forbidden Chakra, or the AoE Enlightenment.

Effective chakra management is all about avoiding overcapping chakra stacks. Overcapping refers to when you are are at Chakra capacity and generate another stack, wasting its potential potency. In order to avoid this, simply spend your stacks as soon as you hit 5 chakra.

A single stack of chakra is effectively worth 80 potency, as The Forbidden Chakra converts 5 stacks into 400 potency, and 400/5 = 80. Six-sided Star also deals an additional 80 potency per chakra stack consumed - but more on that later.

Perfect Balance allows us to use any 3 GCDs in any order we like, and generates a Beast Chakra based on the GCDs used. We are then able to execute Masterful Blitz, a powerful GCD that changes effects based on the Beast Chakra we have, while also granting 1 of 2 different Nadi. When we have 2 different Nadi, Masterful Blitz becomes Phantom Rush, our strongest skill with a massive 1500 potency. As a result, our basic gameplay loop revolves around generating 1 solar Nadi, 1 lunar Nadi, then spending them on Phantom Rush, repeat. The following section will outline the most effective way of doing this.

Firstly, let's look at Perfect Balance. This skill has 2 charges, and a 40 second cooldown. You may have noticed that we need 3 charges of Perfect Balance to execute our Phantom Rush - and that 3 charges multiplied by 40 seconds comes out at 120 seconds, or 2 minutes - keep that piece of information in mind for later.

As mentioned, we gain a Beast Chakra depending on the GCDs used in Perfect Balance - so Opo-opo GCDs give Opo-opo Chakra, Raptor GCDs give Raptor Chakra, and Coeurl GCDs give Coeurl Chakra.

There are 4 different blitzes that Perfect Balance allows us to use.

Elixir Burst grants one Lunar Nadi, and is generated by using Masterful Blitz while we possess three of the same Beast Chakra. That means that for example, you could use Pouncing Coeurl, Rockbreaker, and Demolish in order to generate three Coeurl Chakra, which would satisfy the conditions for Masterful Blitz to become Elixir Burst.

That being said, this would not be ideal.

Leaping Opo is our strongest "spammable" GCD, and so as a result we want to get as many of these into an ecounter as possible. To that end, whenever we want to generate an Elixir Burst we are going to use three Opo-opo GCDS, alternating between Dragon Kick and Leaping Opo depending on if you have or do not have a stack of Opo-opo's Fury.

We refer to this as a "Lunar sequence Perfect Balance".

Rising Phoenix gives one Solar Nadi, and unlike Elixir Burst requires three unique Beast Chakra: one Opo-opo, one Raptor, and one Coeurl, which can be generated in any order.

This is referred to as a Solar sequence Perfect Balance.

Although the order we generate the Beast Chakra in does not matter, we ideally want to be using these Perfect Balance GCDs in the order of weakest → strongest. The reasoning for this will be explained later.

Once a Lunar and Solar Nadi have been generated, Masterful Blitz will become Phantom Rush, regardless of which Beast Chakra are generated.

Although it is possible to use any sequence of any GCDs to generate a Phantom Rush, we want to do the same thing as for Elixir Burst - 3 Opo GCDs - for the exact same reasoning.

Upon use Phantom Rush consumes both Nadi.

Celestial Revolution is effectively a consolation prize for when you make a mistake under Perfect Balance, executed when you have accumulated only two different types of Beast Chakra. It has a lower potency than every other Blitz, while simultaneously being a single-target skill, whereas all other Blitzes are AoE. This skill should never be used intentionally. Celestial Revolution generates a Lunar Nadi by default, but will generate a Solar Nadi if you already have a Lunar Nadi filled.

Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Wind and Brotherhood are our three personal buffs.

Riddle of Fire increases damage dealt by 15% for 20 seconds, and has a cooldown of 60 seconds. It also grants the Fire's Rumination buff for 20 seconds, allowing the use of Fire's Reply once per buff window.

Brotherhood is an AoE buff granted to all nearby party members which increases damage dealt by 5% for 20 seconds.

Alongside increasing damage dealt, it also applies a buff that gives a 30% chance for the Monk who used it to generate a stack of Chakra whenever anyone with the buff executes a weaponskill, as well as temporarily increasing our maximum amount of chakra stacks to 10, reducing the risk of overcapping while temporarily increasing chakra generation.

Riddle of Wind increases auto-attack speed for 15 seconds, and has a 90 second cooldown. The additional auto-attacks gained end up being worth approximately 700 potency per use.

Like Riddle of Fire, Riddle of Wind grants the Wind's Rumination buff, which allows the execution of the Wind's Reply skill.

Form Shift is a GCD that does no damage, but grants the Formless Fist buff, which allows the use of any GCD with all form bonuses applied.

You will never use this skill during uptime, but before a pull and during downtime you will want to use it once so that you can avoid using any GCDs without the form bonus.

Six-sided Star is the highest potency of our "spammable" GCDs, but at the cost of having a double recast timer. It's already high potency can be increased even further, as for each stack of chakra it conumes it gains 80 potency, up to a maximum of 10 chakra during Brotherhood for a total 1580 potency.

In spite of this potential for massive potency, you do not want to blindly use this skill as it is absolutely a DPS loss when used incorrectly.

Firstly, the double recast timer.

While 780 potency in 1 GCD is a lot, when you consider the fact that the time it takes to use is as long as just using 2 other GCDs, and when you start to look at the potency of our other GCDs, you'll notice that almost any other combo of 2 GCDs ends up being more potency than 1 use of Six-sided Star. In fact, even in the one instance where Six-sided Star is more potency ( Dragon Kick + Twin Snakes = 740), you have to consider that Six-sided Star is not replacing those 2 GCDs - you will still have to use them in order to generate the relevant fury stacks. The GCDs that are really being replaced are the ones at the very end of a fight/phase.

Even accounting for chakra potency, using this skill in a vacuum is not a DPS gain. While Six-sided Star gains 80 potency per chakra stack, The Forbidden Chakra spends chakra at a rate of 80 potency per stack, as it is a 400 potency skill that requires 5 stacks, and 400/5 = 80. You are better off using The Forbidden Chakra to spend chakra stacks instead.

Having covered all the reasons why you shouldn't use this skill in a vacuum, we can now look at what situations are appropriate for this skills' use.

Essentially, the only times to use this skill are when we can bypass the double duration GCD timer.

That means things like using it as the final GCD before casting a limit break, using it as the final GCD before a boss dies or goes untargettable, or using it as the final GCD before having to disengage from a target. In all of these situations, we are able to leverage the high potency while being unaffected by the long recast.

Now that we have looked at all of the relevant skills in the Monk kit and understand what they do, it is time to start thinking about how to optimally use each one.

"Opo-maxxing" is all about getting as many Opo-opo GCDs into an encounter as possible to maximise the amount of buffed Leaping Opos we get. We have already looked at this a little bit with Lunar sequence Perfect Balances, but there are more opportunities in our kit to squeeze out additional Opos.

This primarily comes in the form of Formless Fist. There are 3 main sources of Formless Fist;

• Form Shift
• Masterful Blitz
• Fire's Reply

All 3 of these skills grant us a stack of Formless Fist, and so we want to ensure that we are always spending that buff on an Opo GCD.

We can also squeeze in additional Opos with where we place our Masterful Blitz, Perfect Balance, and Fire's Reply.

Essentially we only ever want to be using these 3 skills after an Opo GCD.

We also don't want to use Fire's Reply either during Perfect Balance or immediately following a Masterful Blitz, as this will waste a stack of Formless Fist.

This section is primarily regarding Riddle of Fire, Brotherhood, and Riddle of Wind.

The optimal time to use these skills is very easy to remember - it is on cooldown. Following your opener (which we will cover later), you will simply be pressing each of these buttons as soon as they become available. This is for 3 main reasons.

Firstly, it ensures we get the maximum amount of uses of each ability within an encounter. Were we to, for example, hold Riddle of Wind for a full 30 seconds to line up with our other buffs, we would end up losing a lot of additional uses of the skill. Having more uses of skills that don't necessarily line up is worth more damage than having less uses of skills that are aligned.

Secondly, it will keep us aligned with our own rotation. Riddle of Fire is a 60 second cooldown, where Brotherhood is a 120 second cooldown, so as long as we press each skill without drifting them, every other use of Riddle of Fire is going to naturally line up with Brotherhood.

Third, it will keep us aligned with the rest of our party. Every other raid buff in the game is also a 120 second cooldown, and most important burst skills are either 60 or 120 second cooldowns, so as long as everyone presses everything on cooldown, everyones burst windows will naturally line up together.

Now, though we do want to press Riddle of Fire on cooldown, it is important that we "late weave" every use. Late weaving an oGCD just means that we press it in the latter half of the GCD roll, instead of pressing it immediately following the previous GCD.

This is because it's possible to fit 11 GCDs into a Riddle of Fire window, but only if it is late weaved.

Following on from our 60 / 120 second cooldowns, this is an opportune moment to introduce the concept of odd and even burst windows.

The words 'odd' and 'even' merely refer to the minute in an encounter that these windows happen, so an odd window is any burst window at an odd minute - 1, 3, 5, etc. - where an even window is a burst window at an even minute - 2, 4, 6, etc.

The reason we distinguish between the 2 is because even windows are stronger.

We have Riddle of Fire up every 1 minute, whereas Brotherhood and all of the rest of the raid buffs in our party are up every 2 minutes. This means that odd windows contain only Riddle of Fire, whereas even windows are comprised of Riddle of Fire, Brotherhood, and any additional raid buffs from our party members.

We prioritise even windows because of this, and will look at how to build them later.

While the basic idea of Monk is to generate a solar nadi, a lunar nadi, and then spend them on Phantom Rush, we can play around with how we choose to generate nadi in order to gain DPS.

Playing as described above, generating 1 of each nadi in our opener, would result in Phantom Rush being stuck in the odd windows, which as covered, are weaker than even windows.

However, if we instead generate 2 lunar nadi in our opener, it pushes the entire nadi generation cycle back by 1, and results in our odd windows containing a Rising Phoenix instead, with Phantom Rush being the first blitz in our even windows.

In fact, you can take this a step further even and do what we call "triple lunar", where you generate 2 lunar nadi in the opener, another lunar nadi in the odd windows, and then even windows will consist of a Rising Phoenix and a Phantom Rush.

Of course, by overcapping on nadi we do increase the risk of losing a use of Phantom Rush, and so it is not always ideal to do.

While double and triple lunar gain damage from being able to put Phantom Rush into more buffs, if we were to lose a use of Phantom Rush as a result it ends up being a DPS loss overall. As such, if a boss dies after an odd window, solar lunar is better, whereas if a boss were to die after an even window it would be better to overcap nadi in the opener.

Triple lunar is essentially a slightly stronger version of double lunar, but at a greater risk of losing a Phantom Rush.

We generally recommend double lunar for unknown encounter durations, and then when you know what you killtime will be you can then decide if it will be better to swap to solar lunar or triple lunar.

The reason double lunar is recommended is that it ends up being better at more killtimes on average than the other 2 nadi alignment choices.

In summary, there are a few key rules to keep in mind when we are looking at building a Monk burst window.

• Press Riddle of Fire, Brotherhood, and Riddle of Wind on cooldown.
• Use 2 charges of Perfect Balance in even windows and 1 charge in odd windows.
• Always late-weave Riddle of Fire.
• Only use Perfect Balance after an Opo GCD.
• Only use Fire's Reply after an Opo GCD.
• Spend any Formless Fist buffs on Opo GCDs.

Now that all of the relevant rules have been established, we can cover how to build optimal odd and even burst windows.

Depending on which Nadi we are looking to build, there are 2 different sequences of odd window that will need to be learned. Thankfully, all even windows are structured the same, no matter which rotation you are using.

A few key things to keep in mind here is that because we are pressing Riddle of Fire on cooldown, it can be coming up during any of our GCDS. This means that we need to know how to sequence burst windows that accommodate Riddle of Fire happening on any of our 6 core GCDs.

Thankfully, we do not actually care about the specific GCD itself - only the form of each GCD, which means there are 3 possible Riddle of Fire placements.

Identifying Lunar odd windows is relatively straightforward - after pressing Riddle of Fire, use Perfect Balance after your next Opo-Opo GCD, and then start building out your Perfect Balance window depending on the blitz you are using.

Once you have finished generating your 3 Beast Chakra, you have a little flexibility. Either you immediately excecute Masterful Blitz, and then follow up with an Opo GCD → Fire's Reply → Opo GCD, or you can use Fire's Reply → Opo GCD → Masterful Blitz, → Opo GCD. In a vacuum, this order does not matter, however certain encounters may favour doing one over the other - for instance, if you need to move your ranged GCD to another spot to keep uptime more effectively.

Wind's Reply does not always line up with odd windows. In the instances where it does line up, you have the freedom to place it absolutely anywhere within the window, as it will not push any important GCDs out of the end of the buff. This grants the ability to fully capitalise on the additional attributes of Wind's Reply - the extra range and AoE damage - wherever it is needed the most.

Generally speaking, lunar odd windows will look something like this:

1. Opo GCD → Riddle of Fire
2. Raptor GCD → Riddle of Fire
3. Coeurl GCD → Riddle of Fire
4. Opo GCD → Perfect Balance → Riddle of Fire
5. Opo GCD
6. Opo GCD
7. Opo GCD
8. Masterful Blitz
9. Opo GCD
10. Fire's Reply
11. Opo GCD
12. Raptor GCD
13. Coeurl GCD

Obviously you cannot actually use Riddle of Fire 4 times, it is merely listed 4 times as those are all of the potential placements it can have.

Now we did say that there were 3 possible burst windows, but there are 4 Riddle of Fire placements here - this is because the first and last window are identical.

They both involve pressing Riddle of Fire after an Opo GCD, the only difference is that in the first instance, you wait until the next Opo GCD to use Perfect Balance, whereas with the other you double weave Perfect Balance and Riddle of Fire.

Again, both options here contain the exact same GCDs and do the exact same damage, you merely have the option to do either in case you need to move your Masterful Blitz or Fire's Reply around in the window to better accommodate certain fights.

Identifying Solar odds requires only slightly more brainpower.

When excecuting Solar odd windows, we want to press Perfect Balance before Riddle of Fire instead of after. To know when to do this, we need to keep an eye on our Riddle of Fire cooldown.

Essentially, we know that we are looking to press Perfect Balance following an Opo-opo GCD, so we need to find the Opo-opo GCD that is being pressed when Riddle of Fire has between 2 - 7 seconds remaining. This is the Opo GCD that we are going to follow with Perfect Balance. From here, we want to build the Solar Nadi by using our 3 GCDs in order of weakest → strongest, to ensure that only the weaker GCDs fall out of Riddle of Fire should it become available mid-PB window.

After this the idea is the same as the Lunar odd windows, including the mentioned flexibility. Blitz → Opo → Reply → Opo.

Generally speaking, solar odd windows will look something like this:

1. Opo GCD
2. Raptor GCD
3. Coeurl GCD
4. Opo GCD → Perfect Balance → Riddle of Fire
5. Weakest GCD → Riddle of Fire
6. Second strongest GCD → Riddle of Fire
7. Strongest GCD → Riddle of Fire
8. Rising Phoenix
9. Opo GCD
10. Fire's Reply
11. Opo GCD
12. Raptor GCD
13. Coeurl GCD

Building an even window is the same as building Solar odd window. We need to use Perfect Balance before Riddle of Fire, so we are looking for the Opo GCD that happens when Riddle of Fire has between 2 - 7 seconds remaining on cooldown.

From there, we generate our 3 Beast Chakra before executing the first Masterful Blitz. If done correctly, this blitz will be under the effects of both Brotherhood and Riddle of Fire.

Depending on the rotation you are following, this will either be a Solar sequence for Rising Phoenix, or a Lunar sequence for Phantom Rush.

After this we just continue to follow the rules we established earlier - execute our Masterful Blitz → Opo GCD → Fire's Reply → Opo GCD, before executing our second Perfect Balance window. Regardless of your rotation, this will always be a Lunar sequenced Perfect Balance, either for Phantom Rush or Elixir Burst.

Just as with the odd window, we have the ability here to place Fire's Reply after the Perfect Balance but before the Masterful Blitz if necessary, on either Perfect Balance use.

Again, Wind's Reply won't always be available in even windows, but when it is you are able to place it anywhere within the window without pushing out any important skills.

Generally speaking, even windows will look something like this:

• Opo GCD
• Raptor GCD
• Coeurl GCD
• Opo GCD → Perfect Balance
• Blitz-building GCD → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
• Blitz-building GCD → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
• Blitz-building GCD → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
• Masterful Blitz
• Opo GCD
• Fire's Reply
• Opo GCD
• Perfect Balance
• Opo GCD
• Opo GCD
• Opo GCD
• Masterful Blitz
• Opo GCD

"Blitz-building GCD" simply refers to the fact that this could be either a solar sequnce or a lunar sequence depending on your rotation, so adjust as necessary.

The second Perfect Balance will always be a lunar sequence, but the blitz itself could either be an Elixir Burst or a Phantom Rush.

In the instance where you misidentify the window that requires you to use Perfect Balance 4 GCDs before Riddle of Fire, you will find yourself in the grim position of having just used an Opo GCD, then needing to weave Perfect Balance, Brotherhood, and Riddle of Fire, all in the same weave slot.

Triple weaving is not an option here, however we do thankfully have a solution.

You are able to double weave Brotherhood and Riddle of Fire, and then use Fire's Reply → Opo GCD → Perfect Balance in order to get yourself back on track.

The only downside to this is that if Riddle of Wind is available in this even window, you will need to skip one of your Formless GCDs in order to fit Wind's Reply into the even window.

Now that everything else has been covered, we can finally go over the most important burst window of a fight - the opener.

As we mentioned there are both solar lunar and double lunar options for each opener, however each of these 2 nadi alignment options also have 3 different variations to accommodate certain different situations.

These are: DK 5s, DK 7s, and Demo 7s.

The DK refers to Dragon Kick, and signifies that the opener starts with that as the first GCD; likewise, Demo indicates that the opener starts with Demolish.

The 5s and 7s refer to the timing of Brotherhood.

The reason we have two different options here is that some jobs prefer 5s, and some prefer 7s. Monk itself does not care and can accommodate either timing - which one you pick depends on when the rest of your group is bursting in their openers.

Finally, the reason there is a DK 7s and a Demo 7s is because the Demo 7s opener sets up a very slightly stronger opener and 1 minute burst window. The DK opener can still sometimes be worth using depending on fury stacks at the end of a phase/encounter, but generally speaking Demo 7s is a better choice than DK 7s, if indeed you are doing a 7s opener.

1. Dragon Kick → Gemdraught → Perfect Balance
2. Leaping Opo
3. Dragon Kick → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
4. Leaping Opo → The Forbidden Chakra → Riddle of Wind
5. Elixir Burst
6. Dragon Kick
7. Wind's Reply
8. Fire's Reply
9. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
10. Dragon Kick
11. Leaping Opo
12. Dragon Kick
13. Elixir Burst
14. Leaping Opo

1. Gemdraught 1.4s pre-pull
2. Dragon Kick → Perfect Balance → The Forbidden Chakra
3. Leaping Opo
4. Dragon Kick
5. Leaping Opo → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
6. Elixir Burst → Riddle of Wind
7. Dragon Kick
8. Wind's Reply
9. Fire's Reply
10. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
11. Dragon Kick
12. Leaping Opo
13. Dragon Kick
14. Elixir Burst
15. Leaping Opo

1. Demolish
2. Dragon Kick → Perfect Balance → Gemdraught
3. Leaping Opo
4. Dragon Kick → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
5. Leaping Opo → Riddle of Wind → The Forbidden Chakra
6. Elixir Burst
7. Dragon Kick
8. Wind's Reply
9. Fire's Reply
10. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
11. Dragon Kick
12. Leaping Opo
13. Dragon Kick
14. Elixir Burst
15. Leaping Opo

1. Dragon Kick → Perfect Balance
2. Twin Snakes → Gemdraught
3. Demolish → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
4. Leaping Opo → The Forbidden Chakra → Riddle of Wind
5. Rising Phoenix
6. Dragon Kick
7. Wind's Reply
8. Fire's Reply
9. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
10. Dragon Kick
11. Leaping Opo
12. Dragon Kick
13. Elixir Burst
14. Leaping Opo

1. Dragon Kick → Perfect Balance → Gemdraught
2. Twin Snakes
3. Leaping Opo
4. Demolish → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
5. Rising Phoenix → Riddle of Wind → The Forbidden Chakra
6. Dragon Kick
7. Wind's Reply
8. Fire's Reply
9. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
10. Dragon Kick
11. Leaping Opo
12. Dragon Kick
13. Elixir Burst
14. Leaping Opo

1. Demolish
2. Dragon Kick → Perfect Balance → Gemdraught
3. Twin Snakes
4. Pouncing Coeurl → Brotherhood → Riddle of Fire
5. Leaping Opo → Riddle of Wind → The Forbidden Chakra
6. Rising Phoenix
7. Dragon Kick
8. Wind's Reply
9. Fire's Reply
10. Leaping Opo → Perfect Balance
11. Dragon Kick
12. Leaping Opo
13. Dragon Kick
14. Elixir Burst
15. Leaping Opo

Thunderclap is our mobility tool, and is arguably the strongest mobility skill in the game. With three charges, a reasonable cooldown of 30 seconds, and the ability to dash to both enemies and allies, this makes Monk one of the most agile jobs in the game.

The skill ceiling on Thunderclap is reasonably high, as there are many creative ways that it can be used in order to keep uptime, or to continue to hit positionals on a large target ring that you may otherwise struggle to maneuver around in time due to ongoing mechanics. If timed well it can also be used to almost invalidate proximity damage that may force other jobs to lose uptime, by staying in melee range until the last second, before Thunderclapping out to a safe distance by targetting a ranged party member, then dashing back into melee range as soon as the damage snapshot is locked in.

Riddle of Earth is our personal mitigation, granting us 20% damage mitigation and a 500 potency cure in the form of a 15s regen. As with Riddle of Fire and Riddle of Wind however, this skill has the Earth's Reply followup ability - an short range AoE heal with up to 500 potency. In combination with Mantra, this can be a very respectable heal for your party, and so these skills in combination can allow a Monk to be a great defensive presence within their party.

As for the best time to use these skills, this will always come down to what your healers need from you depending on how they are healing a given encounter, and so should be discussed with them. For general use outside of co-ordinated play however, you are typically safe to throw these out to cover instances of raidwide damage. Even if you end up overhealing, that's better than not healing at all, as it costs nothing to use.

Unfortunately, due to the fast GCD of Monk, double weaving is effectively impossible unless you have single-digit ping. This presents a problem as there will be scenarios that force you to double weave to avoid drifting buffs. Thankfully, there is a third-party program we can use to mitigate this issue - XIVAlexander. XIVAlexander works by effectively simulating a low ping environment by shaving off some of the animation lock certain skills have. While this is incredibly useful and evens out the playing field for those of us with worse ping, it is still a third party program and so should not be discussed in game. While there are no known bans of users who simply use this tool in a responsible manner (as it is not detectable unless modified to an extreme), I would still stress that you use it at your own discretion.

Our FPS matters when it comes to our GCD speed, as the game waits until the next frame is rendered after your GCD is up to execute the action you currently have queued. What this means in practice is that the GCD the game shows on your tooltip may not necessarily be accurate, resulting in a potential loss of GCDs over a large span of time. Given a consistent frame rate, your effective GCD including FPS may be calculated via GCD+((1-GCD*FPS) mod 1)*1/FPS, where "GCD" is the GCD speed shown on your in-game tooltips, "FPS" is your framerate, and "mod" indicates the usage of the modulo operation. This is easier to understand by graphing the results of this for a given tooltip GCD. The graph for a 1.96 tooltip GCD looks as follows;

As you can see, there are clearly certain framerates that are preferable to others. Each dip in the graph represents your effective GCD speed accounting for FPS being as close as possible to the advertised tooltip GCD, which occurs every 1+50n FPS where n is an integer, for example, 1FPS, 51 FPS, 101 FPS, etc.

At Monk's ideal GCD speed of 1.94, the rotation drifts slightly as you are forced to hold Riddle of Fire briefly in order to accommodate the late weave slot. This can be mitigated somewhat via third-party software that will minimize the amount of required Riddle of Fire drift in order to retain our ideal late-weave spot while simultaneously minimizing how much we drift out of our teams' 60/120s raid buffs. Both the ReAction plugin available via Quicklauncher and XIVAlexander have FPS aligning functionality, which will save you having to use something like Rivatuner to lock your FPS to a specific number.

To offer a simplified explanation of the problem, the GCD speed shown in-game is not strictly accurate, being variably slower based on your frame rate. For example, if your game displays a 1.94 GCD, but you play at 60 FPS, your actual GCD is closer to 1.95; as a result of this, after 106 GCDs (or roughly 206 seconds) you would be a full GCD behind someone who was playing at 1.94 but had an optimal frame rate. At the same, you can also suffer even when not a full GCD behind. With regards to end of fight/phase scenarios, if you were for example 1/3 of a GCD ahead, for randomly distributed encounter durations you would lose a full GCD in one in three of those. This is also not the only place where losses can occur due to frame rate; again, assuming 1.94 GCD 60 FPS, you would lose out on buff alignment over the course of a fight as you would be forced to slightly hold Riddle of Fire on each use in order to late-weave it, gradually pushing you further and further out of raid buffs.

Locking your frame rate at specific values via Rivatuner or using the FPS functionality of either ReAction or XIVAlexander mitigates these issues by aligning your GCD with your framerate as closely as possible such that you have minimized wait times before queued actions are executed. Please note again that third-party tools are to be used at your own discretion.