On the cheap 1: Monk.

Ok, this is going to be a series of posts that I am going to do to help people that are new to jobs at end-game. This comes from experience and opinion, but in the end, it is what I believe is the best, easiest and quickest way to get to a point where you can start tweaking your gear instead of trying to get major items that you really need. Before I go into today's subject, Monk, I am going to go over a few things that I believe are prerequisites for this discussion to be of any help at all.

1. You can't be dumb. Sorry, if you are dumb, I can't help you. If you are the kind of person that hears something and then sticks to it no matter what, just quit now. If you can't adapt to changes in the game, quit. If you refuse to do something because you don't think that should be the play style of the game, then just fucking die in a fire. Flexibility is key, the more we learn about things in the game, the more we improve the play style and the more things change.

2. You have to really be an end-game player. I am not expecting you to have every title in the game, and have done ever mission everywhere, but I do expect you to have done main story-line content. This should be a goal of an end-game player at the very least. Zilart should be finished up to at very least Sky, CoP should be finished up until the end, and Aht Urhgan up until the end. If you don't have these, or at least most of it and trying to get to the end, then you aren't an end-game player, you are just lazy or your are just making pretend.

3. You have to be able to do some end-game events. I am not demanding that you be in a full-time HNM LS or anything, but you should have access to a LS that does at least some of those end-game areas/events. If you don't then you really aren't an end-game player, you are just a player with a job at 75.

4. You have to be willing to spend at least a little bit of gil. Sure, this series is called "On the Cheap" but it is not called "On the Gimp" so you will need to spend some gil getting some of the gear that you need. I am not going to tell you to get all HQ gear unless it is cheap, and I will also indicate expensive items that you will need anyway, or cheap items that are good replacements. This is like the FrugaL Gourmet for FFXI. Yes, I know, none of you got that reference. :(

Ok, on with the show.

Now, Monk is a ridiculously fun job and I love it personally. It is, though, a very situational job, so I do not use it in all situations. If you are looking for a Chi Blast set-up, then you are looking in the wrong place because Monk is and should be about punching things, punching things hard and punching them fast.

Ok, the TP set up first.

Weapons. You definitely must have Destroyers, and honestly, this is much easier than most people think. Just get a couple of friends and do Double Dragonian, it is no where as hard as people make it out to be, because they don't understand how the Dragons work. The Dragons become much stronger after their two-hour, not when the other one dies. So a simple strategy is go sleep the Bard dragon, quickly kill the Warrior then go back and kill the Bard. If you have problems at all with this then just kite the second dragon while you are recovering. Until you get Destroyers, you can use Faith Baghnakhs or Wagh Baghnakhs in the meantime.

Ammo. Two real options here, but I definitely favor Tiphia Sting because of the additional accuracy, and accuracy is what makes and breaks a good Monk. A Monk you should by end-game always be eating meat no matter the event, so you want an good amount of accuracy to keep up with that, and getting it in cheap places like the ammo slot is never bad. I will of course directly contradict myself on this later, LOL. Another good alternative is the Smart Grenade too, but I favor the extra accuracy.

Head. Walahra Turban plain and simple. If you don't have one, get one. This is a no-brainer.

Neck. Now, here is an area that can be a little varied, but as a minimum I would suggest Spectacles. 7 Accuracy is very nice, and for Monk, the +3 STR from the Chivalrous Chain isn't going to overcome the Accuracy from the Spectacles. Remember here that the effect of one piece isn't as relevant as the cumulative effect of all your pieces. 2 Accuracy here, and 2 Accuracy there can add up pretty quickly.

More tomorrow! :)