While New Diadem (Diadem II? Diadem: Revengeance?) isn’t perfect (and my plan is to get into that on Friday, now), one thing it’s doing is freeing me up to spend Scripture on things I want for glamour with only a fraction of the usual guilt (the Proto-Ultima accessories help with this, too)!  So, despite having a very nice Sunburst body for Monk (that’s better for my purposes than the 270 Scripture one), I still bought and upgraded the Shire Pankratiast’s Jacket yesterday. I’ve had my eye on it for a long time, but never thought I’d actually get it in any reasonable timeframe. The announcement of Samurai and its use of Striking gear changed all of that though, skyrocketing Monk to the top of my gearing priorities as I ready for the expansion.

For a long time, I’ve had a slight preference toward making my Monk glamour resemble my Ninja one in some way. Canonically, Alahra is meant to fight with her hands and feet as much as she does with weapons (if not more, really). In terms of her “archetype,” she’s meant to be a ninja or rogue (her World of Warcraft incarnation is the latter, for instance), but in general I have always imagined her as a cross between that and a martial artist. So when it comes to glamours, as a way to represent that in FFXIV’s design space, there’s something satisfying about Ninja and Monk sharing glamours to me (at least in overall style).

I don’t like for them to be identical, since that’s just less fun for glamour variety (in the Arachne glory days of 2.4/2.5, I did have more or less identical glamours for them, but it got old), but it’s nice to have the general beats feel the same. That’s where I’m at with his Monk glamour, which I like better in some ways than my Shire Ninja glamour and less in others.

 

Glamour Components
Head: Elegant Rimless Glasses (Jet Black) | Body: Augmented Shire Pankratiast’s Jacket (Pure White) | Hands: Griffin Leather Bracers of Striking | Legs: Makai Manhandler’s Quartertights | Feet: Scion Healer’s Highboots

Overall I think I like the Pankratiast’s Jacket more than the Emissary’s Jacket. Despite having the same overall profile, the placement of the leather bits gives it a heftier feel, which works well for Monk (and will hopefully work well for Samurai come 4.0). In particular I’m really fond of the belt, and something about the reversed angle for the shoulder strap really works for me. The only thing I’m not particularly fond of is the grey on the sleeves, but that’s actually a bit of a mixed blessing; it means that the bits of grey that come along with Pure White have something to key off of (though the shade isn’t a precise match, it still works).

The three main differences from the Ninja version of the look come from the swap in glasses, needing to use different gloves, and Monk having access to a version of the Makai Quartertights. The last of these is an upgrade to the core of the look, as the Quartertights are just so much better than the Lady’s Knickers for actual combat glamours thanks to their not being skin-tight. In many ways I’m a lot happier with this look because of it.

The gloves, though, proved to be very tricky. The Pankratiast’s Gloves just don’t look right to me, at least not for Monk. I couldn’t place it at first, but I think it’s because they share a model with the Shire Philosopher’s Gloves. Since I like that model better thanks to the metal part, I think I mentally associate the gloves with casting stuff rather than punching things. The base gloves are also not quite the right black to match the Highboots (I’m going to get the 270 ones next week to see if I like them better in Jet Black, just in case).

I struggled to find something that worked here: initially I wanted longer gloves to cover most of the grey, but the only Striking pair I like are the Allagan Gauntlets, which just didn’t gel with the rest of the look very well, since they aren’t the best match for the boots. The Griffin Leather Bracers at least fit well with the boots (which is why I used them for my last Striking glamour, too), though I’m not 100% sold on them yet. I do really like them, though, and I’m not sure of anything in particular that’s going to outclass them for me.

The other change, from the Reading Glasses to the Elegant Rimless ones, was because I’d gotten a bit down on the former from the matching Ninja glamour. I decided to try them out, and found I liked them better—I probably should have gone with the Elegant ones to begin with, actually. They seem to work better for Alahra’s facial structure. Since I prefer them here, I also went ahead and swapped to them on Ninja as well.

I rambled on about this one a lot longer than I planned to! Friday’s post should be another retrospective for Heavensward, on Diadem and its overall place in FFXIV’s endgame (as well as just general thoughts on the new version of the content, of course). But, I’m also working on a healer glamour, so if I can figure that out before Friday afternoon, I’ll probably post about that first (since it was kind of a toss-up which glamour would end up going up today).

Oh, and just an “editor’s note” kind of thing: With Samurai on the horizon, Striking gear will soon no longer be a Monk-only gear category, so as with glamours for Bard and Machinist, future glamours for Monk will now be categorized as Striking DPS, except where the glamour uses job-specific gear, as usual. Older Monk glamours will probably remain titled as is, but categories have now been updated for all of them, for anyone who makes use of the navigation bar. I don’t know if this is of particular importance to anyone other than myself, but in case you the formatting change intrigued you, you now have a reason.