Pushing Monk's Limits: [Evasion Skill]
The job with the highest evasion potential in the game is thief. But Monk has a very high evasion potential. The exact difference between evasion and evasion skill is still an open question. Evasion skill could in theory be more important because:
1) Evasion skill is the main stat that progresses from level to level and makes a big difference in what makes a T mob dangerous vs a DC/EP or too weak mob miss you so much they are close to harmless.
2) There are only a handful of items that give evasion skill, while there are a ton of items that adjust evasion (further suggesting its importance as a stat that would cause imbalances if boosted too much).
3) General impressions of ppl although these are never too reliable (it's hard to test these types of defensive skills even with parsers).
4) The main difference between how well different jobs evade or tank is their base evasion skill, more evident when they equip the same gear (e.g. combat caster on a whm vs mnk), thiefs have highest, mages have lowest etc.
There is a relationship between weapon skill, accuracy and attack but one between evasion and evasion skill is never been really tested and would likely be different. On the other hand there is an evasion correction based on level so arguing over level differences can be deceiving. The only think we understand well is that each point of AGI also adds half a point of evasion (aside from providing various other benefits on crit mitigation, defensive skills activation etc), but we don't know exactly how evasion skill compares to normal evasion aside from completely untested speculations.
Soo anyways, just considering evasion skill, just how much can monk get at 75 counting evasion merits and equip? Can they beat thief's base evasion skill? Absolutely. A 75 Thief has 276 base evasion. The picture here shows my evasion skill capped at 301 evasion skill as monk (with gear and merits).
That is basically the evasion skill that a thief level 80 or so would have hehe o.O
It is not the theoretical highest, I could get a total of 2 more and get to 303 by getting HQ gear, but I like to make and sign my own NQ gear and generally don't like to wear non-rare-ex gear anyways =POn top of that much evasion skill, monk also has probably the most evasion+ gear and abilities of any jobs.
At 75, Monk af1+ boots have evasion+10 and an estimated extra evasion+30 more (total of +40) when using dodge. Usual optical hat for an extra +10 evasion, +10 on hands from rasetsu tekko, +10 from lantern food, add +30 with bat earrings, +10 from fenrir's stone, +15 from wind ring, +10 from wind staff or +5 from mighty patas h2h, etc...
Even without using any expensive item (e.g. scouter's rope +10 vs cheap survival belt +5, or scorpion harness +10 vs crow body +8, just 2 evasion less and really cheap), You can easily get +150 evasion on monk at 75.
