New Monk Guide!

[mev]

Originally Posted by Nixtar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Great guide but disagree on the TBoots.

Why is it better to buy SoW pots? Gets extremely pricey in the end and all you need to do to keep TBoots up is cast it every once in awhile. Its not like you're going to be active so much as a monk you can't stop for 1.5 seconds.

TBoots is the budget alternative or for those who do not want to wait for someone to finally sell a MQ or to camp one yourself. Personally, I fall into this group of people. :P

TBoots are worse than SoW pots in some situations and worse than JBoots in other situations. The situations when TBoots are a good option are extremely limited.

SoW pots cast SoW, which is superior to TBoots / JBoots. SoW lasts for 36 minutes whereas the others last 18. That is very nice when you're heading into a dungeon and can't re-SoW. SoW also improves movement speed by 55% instead of the 35% you get with the other options.

Also, SoW pots cost 10pp per charge, which means you would get 500 charges of SoW (300 hours of SoW) before you would break even on your purchase of TBoots even assuming you didn't care about the speed boost from SoW or the extra SoW time in dungeons. I'm not sure I've spent that much time on EQ in outdoor zones outside of a group with a SoW class in total, and I'm pretty sure that I haven't spent that much time since I got my JBoots. So, SoW pots are cheaper, and you also don't have to spend all that money up front (which is better for the time value of money -- after 300 hours solo outdoors, you probably have a lot more cash on hand and can afford something like JBoots).

In short, if you care about the 1-2k that you'll save by getting TBoots instead of JBoots, you probably would be better off saving 5k now and just getting SoW pots as needed.

If you can accept that, then why would you ever get JBoots? Because they can cast instantly! This is extremely handy in many situations. A few that come to mind:

Trash buffs: if you're fighting or pulling casters, it's important to make sure that your first few buff slots are filled with things that you're okay getting dispelled. Some mobs (eg, Phinegal) proc 4 slot dispells too often to combat even with instant trash buff clickies, but normal spell casters will cast dispel infrequently enough that if you have 2-4 trash buffs on top, your good buffs (eg, Focus or Aego) won't get dispelled. Any instant cast buffs (Monk epic / Shrunken Goblin Earring, Robe of the Whistling Fists, Bracer of the Hidden, Kromzek Surveyor Scope, etc) are amazing for this! There aren't a lot of these items, so if you are outdoors, it's great to have JBoots for this purpose.

Recasting during a pull: if you're pulling casters and didn't stack your buffs properly, your SoW / TBoots might get dispelled. When that happens, you have to either flop (which can be risky when pulling casters!) or pull without SoW (which can be risky if the mobs you're pulling have SoW). TBoots or a SoW pot won't work because you have to stop to recast it. JBoots lets you recast without missing a beat.

Circle kiting: If there are too many mobs at once in a raid situation, it's common to have someone grab an extra mob (especially a boss mob) and kite it around while the rest of the raid fights what they can handle. Bards are the best candidates to do this since they have Selo's (which they can cast while running, similar to JBoots), but I have filled in as a kiter quite a few times. My SoW has faded in these situations plenty of times before, and if I didn't have JBoots, I would have needed to kite without SoW, which would be annoying and possibly result in my death (and the mob's return to the raid) or my needing to flop (which would have resulted in the mob's return to the raid).

Resetting the global cooldown: this isn't relevant for monks, but other classes can use JBoots to reset their spells when outdoors (though they probably would use either a class specific item like a Rod of Insidious Glamour or an item that's usable indoors like a Shruken Goblin Earring).

In other words, you should only get TBoots instead of JBoots if: you have 5k to spare and you wouldn't buy anything else good with that money, you don't have 6-7k to spare, you don't care about the speed boost from a SoW pot, you don't care about the duration boost from a SoW pot, you expect to spend over 300 hours outdoors without anyone to SoW you, and you don't expect to make enough money in those 300 hours to afford JBoots, and you don't care about the many reasons why instant casting is cool.