How much optimization is too much optimization?

Wya more important to be nimble and consistent than push out that fart of extra DPS. Optimal doesn't mean practical. It's good to understand what's going on but the margins aren't so tight that 30 DPS is worth the potential fumble.

For simply clearing content?

It's not necessary; MNK's basic loop rotation is plenty for clearing content.

You optimize when you want to push yourself to be even better for personal reasons. A higher parse, a faster clear, etc.

The balance has a little table comparing the different play styles. The difference between "optimal drift" and "braindead" (or idgaf as you put it), is less than 1%. same thing with double solar, it makes very little difference even with the ideal buff party. it really doesn't matter unless you're trying to parse and like get like #1 top parse in the world, which no one cares about because it's useless.

If your party is struggling with DPS check, I doubt the extra ~0.15% extra damage you do will matter and it's much more likely the slack is coming from other people.

The point of the balance is quite literally to go in depth and figure out the absolute most optimal way to play, not the most practical way to play.

To answer the title question: "Too much optimisation" is the point where you start to have notably less fun. If that point comes before the necessary dps for savage then you probably wont enjoy savage tbh.

Fortunately, as everyone else has said, the simpler rotation is more than enough for savage!

But how could you tell without consulting reddit? Well firstly you gotta read through everything on The Balance carefully - it gives you almost everything you need to be amongst the top parsing players on your job, but that's far beyond what's required. So, in addition to all that, they typically provide comparisons to other builds/playstyles that people may want to use and give information over what's reasonable/recommended and what isn't. These may be a bit more buried away, but they are (mostly) there.

Secondly: Stone Sky Sea in Palaka's Stand. It's essentially a test of whether your damage is good enough for the fight you choose. It's not perfect, since you're not having to dodge, it doesn't account for party buffs, and it's only ~3 minutes long which can be overly optimised for. That said, it does help let you know if you're doing something massively wrong - clearing it doesn't mean you can definitely beat the fights' dps check, but failing it means you definitely would struggle (if everyone was at the same skill level).

Finally: At this point in the tier, you're very unlikely to fail clearing any savage fight due to not optimising your rotation far enough beyond the basics. Instead it'll be due to low uptime, overcapping gauges, not using abilities, dying, etc etc etc- ie, not performing the basics well enough.

I'm not a monk main so i don't know exactly how much difference it would make, at a guess i'd say it probably only matters on week 1 clears. Generally as long as you can do your rotation kind of well then thats usually good enough, especially when you start getting your ilvl up through tomestone gear as the tier goes on.

So as a monk who's done and is doing savage, the short answer is don't get to in over your head about optimization.

What I mean is this. To clear savage fights, the basics you will need are :

Decent gear - as in you will need current content gear. Not necessarily max ilvl, but stuff that is in the current raid tier. Usually HQ crafted gear will be a good start point. This helps with both dmg and survival.

Decent understanding of your class - as in you need to know atleast what your skills do, a basic rotation that can be performed successfully without to much thought on your part, and what you can and can't get away with in a fight.

An excellent understanding of the fight mechanics - as in you need to know the fight inside and out and be able to perform the necessary things required to clear it.

That said...

The reality is you do not need to know Opt. Drift to play monk good for savage. You can do every fight currently with brain dead rotation from the balance using only the lunar-solar opener and still parse green and provide enough dps for clears without being a burden. Will you have the biggest DPS ever? No. You will have decent DPS and that's all you need. As long as you understand your skills, hit positional, keep demo up and use abilities on CD, you will be fine. As you get more experienced with fights and the class, you're going to learn what you can "cheat" in a fight to male things work out for you.

Which really is the bigger aspect I would advise you. Learn the fights through and through. Know how each mechanic works and how it is resolved. It's all scripted pretty much. There are some RNG aspects but the mechanics will always appear more or less at specific times or in specific order.

Don't learn the fight from the perspective of "I need to be in 'x' clock spot or I can't do the fight". Learn it from the idea of "I need to do 'x' thing to resolve the mechanic". This will make you incredibly flexible in fights and able to keep better uptime. Not to mention allow you the ability to save adjust incase a fellow raid member botches their mechanic or dies.

Practice brain dead rotation on striking dunmies until its almost muscle memory to you. Use x potions to simulate pot usage, make sure your GCD is atleast 1.94, and that you can repeat the rotation and positional for 6 minutes and things should line back up.

When you get into savage, if it's a first time in party, don't be afraid of just spamming dragon kick or something as you learn the mechanics. You're not going to clear it on first, second, or even tenth pull unless you're getting carried. Don't waste your pots (though do eat food for survivability). Pay close attention to mechanics, and when you are feeling comfortable that you can do the mechanic without to much thought and no hesitation, start doing your opener and DPSing to see where things line during the fight.

That's about.the long of it. Don't be afraid and intimidated of savage. It's really not that bad and is pretty rewardi.g when you get the hang of it and pull off a fight. Most importantly, don't get frustrated and bent outta shape. If you're gonna use PF, some groups are gonna be trap and bad. That's not necessarily your fault. Just stay positive and have fun. Of the groups not working out, just say thanks for the party and find one more your speed.

GL c:

Optimal drift is 100% NOT REQUIRED for savage. There is 0 content you cannot do in this game with just the standard looping rotation.

Short answer is do as much as you can. Monk is a rabbit-hole of "what could I do better?" As long as you know your rotation and when to press BH and RoF, you're probably doing better than most players.

Optimal Drift is just that. In a vacuum, this is what is most efficient. But current content doesn't work like that. Much of the content has mechanics that break your flow, and you're better-off learning how to re-enter your rotation from a suboptimal drift rather than practicing a perfect rotation that will rarely be utilized.

I didn't read your entire post just saw the mention of perfect drift and I can tell you this from my MNK friend:

Its not worth going for perfect drift if you fumble once you lose more dps than you would have done with the easier rotation.

Overall it comes down to preferences and especially fight knowledge down the line. You can't optimize something you don't know after all.

You can clear all the content with your group parsing greys across the board. Don’t stress yourself out, the way you broke this down already shows me you’re ready to clear savage from a DPS standpoint! Learn the fights and you’ll be done very quickly.

Hey guys, though I'm not responding to every comment, I'm reading all of them and am very thankful for all the helpful and frustration-soothing advice. Thanks!

Outside of some very specific challenges in the game, there is almost no need to ever need to optimise at all beyond basic comprehension of your job. Personally, I always just use Dragon Kick Combo to Bootshine Combo and repeat, maximum Skillspeed, and whatever gear I can put together, and I've encountered nothing where I've felt the need to optimise. Optimising is optimal in FFXIV.

I'm not gonna read all of this because i know the idea of where this is going. i don't play monk but i will say when I'm learning a new job, there's a "good enough" to my min maxing that i reach and once I've reach that "good enough" i then research the down and dirty/janky sections of optimization and try to add them into my gameplay. if you try to optimize too much while you're still learning then you'll become overwhelmed and quit. best to create a starting point that is "good enough" then move onto the complicated/janky parts of optimization

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I had the same issue when starting P5S-P8S not too long ago. I thought i did fine doing 8.8k dps up until ive found out about the mnk section in The Balance discord.

I tried to understand but ended up just using the baseline advice for the odd and even windows. When raiding i then started to check the amount of gcd's during my Riddle of fire aswell as the dot uptime via xivanalysis to improve.

Even though i dont get the optimal drift correct i can still do 9.5k+ now so id say understanding the baseline odd and even windows was all i really needed.