When I asked around about what weapon to equip my young monk with, the most common response I got was "bare fists". I was told repeatedly that this was the best weapon for monks until they get to be much higher in level. I did some DPS tests and found that was very far from the truth. My advice to any new monks: do some DPS tests of your own on your favorite combat dummy. For my tests, I only used autoattack on a Model Beza combat dummy (Planes of Power era). I ran the tests for approximately 200 seconds (3.3 minutes). My monk was level 53 in Intricate Defiant gear. h2h (bare fists): 206s, 7k @36sdps 2hb (Vrodak Fighting Staff): 202s, 10k @48sdps 1hb primary/bare hands (Flawed Defiant Brawl Stick): 203s, 9k @43sdps bare hands/1hb secondary (Flawed Defiant Brawl Stick): 211s, 8k @37sdps 1hb primary/bare hands (Hammer of the Forgotten City): 207s, 9k @45sdps bare hands/1hb secondary (Hammer of the Forgotten City): 208s, 9k @41sdps 1hb primary (Flawed Defiant Brawl Stick)/1hb secondary (Hammer of the Forgotten City): 203s, 10k @47sdps 1hb primary (Hammer of the Forgotten City)/1hb secondary (Flawed Defiant Brawl Stick): 203s, 10k @48sdps 2hb (Mithril Shod Staff): 207s, 13k @61sdps *Special note: Monk was actually 1 level lower (52) for the Mithril Shod Staff test! Conclusion: From this test, weapons are significantly better than bare fists. Bare fists in the secondary slot gets close, but is still beaten out by holding 2 weapons. And if you can get a nice 2hb...look out!
weapons now have a significantly large damage bonus than bare fists. When they revamped the formulas it probably broke the idea of using bare fists.
I think the people suggesting bare fists were looking at the old (wrong) h2h dmg / dly stuff from what was supposed to be TSS instead of what it really is. Which are something similar/exactly to what this post lists: https://forums.daybreakgames.com/eq...l-50-monk-fist-dps.224350/page-3#post-3315427
damage = skill / 15 + 3 (Skill is equal to 280 if you have epic equipped, are greater than 46 and your actual skill is less than 280) delay (in ms) = 100 * (iksar - skill / 21 + 38) (Skill is equal to 280 if you have epic equipped, are greater than 46 and your actual skill is less than 280. iksar is equal to 1 if you are an iksar unless you have your epic equipped and are greater than level 46, then it's 0. It is 0 if you're another race as well)
To the OP, you're actually trying to compare Defiant weapons (which were added to the game with TSS as pseudo twink gear), a weapon from Veksar (which was added between LoY [5th expansion] and LDoN [6th expansion]), and a weapon from Tower of Solusek Ro (which is a level 60ish [raiders only, when current] zone from PoP [4th expansion]). Of course, they are all going to out parse bare hands. If you are not using the twink weapons and instead compare bare hth dps to the weapons which were actually obtainable by the player (not buying from someone else). Using the weapons that were current in the era, for the most part you'll find that bare fists generally out did (by far) the weapons of the times. It was only around Velious and Luclin that group weapons even started being consistently better than fists. As for the rest of the thread, The damage bonus change might have affected the viability of bare fists for live players, but the OP's examples do nothing to show or prove that. Bare hth delay is a constant (at least through level 50) 38/39 (non-iksar/iksar) delay unless you have your epic equipped in which case the delay changes to 28.
What I said in the first paragraph of my OP is still exactly what I meant and it is still correct. I did not ask, "What is the best monk weapon if I am trying to handicap myself and play like it is 1999 again?"
Since my lvl 52 monk has all of the weapons I tested with, I must assume your statement is incorrect. I'm not sure what you could be doing wrong that you are having such a difficult time obtaining weapons that haven't even been relevant for 10 years or more. But if you come to the Bristlebane server, I'll be happy to help you get some good weapons for your monk that are better than bare fists. There are lots of them. So many that I am willing to give you some if it helps you understand the point of my post. Which is that bare fists are not necessarily the best weapon for young monks.
Their point was that none of the weapons (besides defiant) aren't really obtainable by a solo/molo 50-ish monk. They're all easy with a higher level toon helping out.
Xianzu's comments seemed to come out of the blue and didn't seem relevant, since I didn't mention anything about soloing (or play style at all) in the original post. But as a PSA for folks who don't have access to the weapons, thank you!
You specifically mentioned previous posts, all of which are for low level or TLP servers, and then said that you were talking about what your monk should use ar low levels. You additionally did not mention what level monk was. Most long time players don't exactly consider 50 young or low level.
