Combat Art Overload

[Shandael]

<p>Greetings,</p><p>I'm enjoying playing as a monk, but the one thing that concerns me is the sheer number of combat arts we have. I've been listening to others about combat damage, and timing CA's with auto-attacks for max damage output, but the sheer number of CA's monks have makes this very confusing, since if we combine auto-attacks with them, a lot of CA's will never get used.</p><p>So many in fact that I don't have to tell any monk here they take up a good portion of two hot bars. Are there certain ones I should keep and just remove about half of the others to keep a good CA/Auto-attack set-up?</p><p>Here's what I have on my hotbar, and this isn't including the AA, AE's or situational master strike/Dev Fist;</p><p>Charging Tiger</p><p>Striking Cobra</p><p>Silent Palm</p><p>Rising Dragon</p><p>Arctic Talon</p><p>Frozen Palm</p><p>Waking Dragon</p><p>Roundhouse Kick</p><p>Rising Phoenix</p><p>Five Rings</p><p>Doesn any other monks out there have a more streamlined set-up for combining CA's with auto-attacks that doesn't end up having half of our CA's never used...because that's pretty much what I seem to experience. By the time I get half-way across the hot-bars hitting the next CA that comes up, the others behind it are already refreshing and the mob dies before I get through the first hotbar of CA's and start on the second...</p>

[BChizzle]

<p>It takes getting used to.</p>

[EQ2Luv]

<p>I'd try to use them all.  From what I hear, we will have 4.0 delay weapons in the next expansion, at that point it should be a lot easier to squeeze all the ca in, especially with all the +cast speed/recovery that will probably be floating around.</p>

[Siatfallen]

<p>Even with the current 2.5 weapons, it is possible to string it all together so you get all the damage CAs off, with a few seconds left to spare before the 30 second reuse stuff comes back up again.</p><p>It does take some getting used to, though, I'll admit. And as soon as it becomes necessary to use any situational buff (tsunami, spirit of mountain, whathaveyou) maintaining the rotation gets really dicey.</p><p>All in all: You get used to it. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></p>

[Blu]

<p>My experience is that combat is a lot of whack-a-mole, with most of your "thinking" going into responding to the situations that the encounters present.</p><p>I currently use 8 total hotbars...  I have one hotbar +1 filled with nothing but single-target, non-specialty CAs (e.g. not Dev Fist, Master's Strike, Sneering Assault, etc.). However, on long fights as dps in groups, I can still run out of CAs before the rotation starts over. I could fit 2 more in, actually, 1 if Lighting Palm were 30 sec recast instead of 60.</p><p>One thing that I do that I'm sure I will get derided for is I make a lazy-mode macro of all my non-specialty damage CAs. Then I just hit it once between auto-attack swings (perhaps more if your haste is lower). The auto-attack bar of ProfitUI really helps timing that. Since I also have a hotbar that shows the CAs themselves, I can see which ones have been used and can manually use them as the need arises (e.g. using Five Rings early when the fight is going to be short). It works quite well, and it's easier to pay attention to the situation. Based on my tests vs the training dummy, I don't see any difference in dps unlike I have seen claimed. And I make no apologies for simplifying something that's needlessly cumbersome.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Shandael wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>Greetings,</p><p>I'm enjoying playing as a monk, but the one thing that concerns me is the sheer number of combat arts we have. I've been listening to others about combat damage, and timing CA's with auto-attacks for max damage output, but the sheer number of CA's monks have makes this very confusing, since if we combine auto-attacks with them, a lot of CA's will never get used.</p><p>So many in fact that I don't have to tell any monk here they take up a good portion of two hot bars. Are there certain ones I should keep and just remove about half of the others to keep a good CA/Auto-attack set-up?</p><p>Here's what I have on my hotbar, and this isn't including the AA, AE's or situational master strike/Dev Fist;</p><p>Charging Tiger</p><p>Striking Cobra</p><p>Silent Palm</p><p>Rising Dragon</p><p>Arctic Talon</p><p>Frozen Palm</p><p>Waking Dragon</p><p>Roundhouse Kick</p><p>Rising Phoenix</p><p>Five Rings</p><p>Doesn any other monks out there have a more streamlined set-up for combining CA's with auto-attacks that doesn't end up having half of our CA's never used...because that's pretty much what I seem to experience. By the time I get half-way across the hot-bars hitting the next CA that comes up, the others behind it are already refreshing and the mob dies before I get through the first hotbar of CA's and start on the second...</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #993366;">That's all? I have 4 hotbars and am still running out of room.</span></p>

[Damager]

<p>I run 8 hotbars. </p><p>Basically run 2 rows of 4 side by side, right hand side is buffs, pots, and extreme situational. Left 4 the top row is all saves and 1 target macro so they are easy to get to, bottom 3 are all attacks/Taunts.</p>

[Lethe5683]

<p><cite>Damager wrote:</cite></p><blockquote><p>I run 8 hotbars. </p><p>Basically run 2 rows of 4 side by side, right hand side is buffs, pots, and extreme situational.</p></blockquote><p><span style="color: #993366;">Well I use all 10 but only have 5 visible.  I use the shift + number to toggle to hotbars that have buffs or whatever then toggle it back.</span></p>