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
• Difficult to kill through Riddle of Earth and Thunderclap shields
• Highly mobile and difficult to shake off

Weaknesses

• Low AoE damage
• Vulnerable while animation-locked in Meteodrive

Every job has access to a few common actions:

• Recuperate - This is your most important healing ability. For a quarter of your MP, you heal around a quarter of your HP. Use this liberally—nobody wants to be the guy dying while at full MP. If your MP is low, consider stepping back to Elixir.
• Standard-issue Elixir - This is your second-most important healing ability. It takes a while to channel, but restores all of your HP and MP (more MP means more in-combat healing with Recuperate). 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. It can feel bad to step out of the fight, but dying is much much worse than stepping out for 5 seconds to restore your MP.
• Guard - Grants 90% damage reduction and immunity to most crowd-control debuffs for up to 5 seconds. Using another action cancels this early. This is your strongest defensive cooldown, so try to play around it being up. In addition, avoid blindly relying on Guard to get you out of sticky situations alone; make sure to have a plan for staying alive afterwards, for example having extra MP to heal up, stunning your pursuers, or running behind a corner. It is sometimes correct to cancel Guard slightly early, since good players will time their CC or burst for the moment your Guard ends.
• Purify - Cleanses all common crowd-control debuffs and provides a 5-second immunity to further CC if it cleansed something. Use this to prevent yourself from getting CC-chained to death. If you have none of Purify, Guard, or Riddle of Earth up, consider moving back to a safe area to wait for a defensive cooldown before re-engaging.
• Sprint - Toggle for increased movement speed. This is a GCD and using any other action cancels the buff, so be smart in using it. Prefer to use Sprint over a regular combo GCD if you need to stay in range until your stun comes off cooldown. 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 gameplay revolves around using Thunderclap to jump to and stick to targets, while using Riddle of Earth to stay alive and looking for kills with Meteodrive.

Thunderclap is your primary mobility tool. You can 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. Using Thunderclap also grants you a 10% haste buff, which can be extended by using Thunderclap again, or via your main GCD combo.

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

Monk's primary damage tool is their 7-hit combo. The third and sixth hits of the combo extend the haste buff granted by Thunderclap. The seventh hit, Phantom Rush, deals a lot of damage in an AoE.

Enlightenment deals damage in a line towards your target, as well as knocking back the primary target. Your next weaponskill or Meteodrive on that target within three 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 or into a stage hazard.

Rising Phoenix deals some small AoE damage around you, while buffing your next weaponskill by a lot. Use this before Enlightenment and Phantom Rush.

Six-sided Star deals a small amount of damage, stuns, and grants you a short burst of movement speed. Use this to lock an enemy down right before using Enlightenment in your burst combo, or as utility to help your team secure kills or run away.

Once activated, Riddle of Earth tracks how much damage you take for the next 10 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. Be wary that any hard crowd control can make you unable to use Earth's Reply in time, so be wary of your Purify cooldown.

Meteodrive is Monk's most feared ability, 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. With Pressure Point from Enlightenment, Meteodrive does 32,000 damage by itself, making it a potent single-target nuke.

Monk has two primary burst combos, one with and one without Meteodrive up. In either combo, Six-sided Star can be used before Enlightenment for extra damage and CC during the combo.

• Rising Phoenix, Enlightenment, Rising Phoenix, Thunderclap, Phantom Rush: 44,000 damage over about two GCDs.
• Rising Phoenix, Enlightenment, wait a half second for Pressure Point to apply, Meteodrive: 47,000 damage in less than 1 GCD.