The Warrior of Elements monk subclass is the 2024 update for the Way of Four Elements, but the folks making D&D clearly recognized that the old one was just not... good. It was bad. It effectively gave a way to spend precious Ki points on spell-like effects that were quite underpowered.
The new version... I like, but I don't know whether it's truly powerful powerful or just decent. I'm skeptical of the need to spend a focus point to go into Elemental Attunement, but unlike, say, the Astral Self monk, you still have some things you can do when you aren't in your "activated mode," and the cost is far lower (especially since Focus Points are easier to recover now).
But this is getting real narrow in focus - we're going to talk specifically about the 6th level feature for the subclass, which is Elemental Burst.
As an action, you can expend 2 Focus Points to send a fireball-sized (and with the same range, I believe) explosion of elemental damage. Creatures inside make a Dexterity saving throw, taking damage equal to three rolls of your Martial Arts die on a failure or half as much on a success.
Now, while Focus Points are a precious resource still, they're a little easier to throw around. What my question asks is this: when is it optimal to use this feature?
That is actually two questions, though. One concerns action economy, and one concerns Focus Point efficiency.
If we assume no magic items (though I hope a DM would find an opportunity to give their Monk some Wraps of Unarmed Power,) and we assume that the Monk started with a 17 in Dexterity and a 16 in Wisdom (the latter being open for debate,) and taking a feat at level 4 that bumps that Dex up to 18, we're looking at a +7 to hit and a saving throw DC of 14 at level 6.
At level 6, our Martial Arts die is a d8, so each attack assuming these stats has a +7 to hit and deals 1d8+4 damage. This feature deals 3d8 damage.
We can assume that our most efficient use of Focus Points in a single-target situation is Flurry of Blows (yes, there's Stunning Strike as well, but I'm going to set that aside for now).
We also have to make certain assumptions about enemies' ACs and their Dex saving throw modifiers. For that, I'm going to (perhaps arbitrarily) assume we're fighting things at this level with an AC of 15 and a +2 to Dex saves.
In order to determine when it's optimal to use this feature, we need to compare it to the alternative. What we want to know is how many creatures we need to be able to hit for this feature to be worth it. Thus, we find out the average damage against a single target and then the average damage of our alternative (Attack action in one case and Flurry of Blows in the other,) and see what we need to multiply the Elemental Burst damage by to make it better than its alternative.
Action Economy Efficiency:
Normally, our action will be two melee attacks. In most cases, by this level, we can just use our unarmed strikes for damage, as our hardest-hitting weapons do a d8 at most.
With a +7 to hit and attacking monsters with a 15 AC, we need to roll an 8 or higher to hit, meaning we've got a 65% hit chance. We do 8.5 average damage on a hit, and we add 4.5 damage on a crit. Thus, our damage per attack is:
8.5x65%+4.5x5%, or 5.525 + .225, which comes out to 5.75 average damage per attack.
Then, we make two attacks with our action, so this becomes 11.5 damage per Attack Action.
Our Elemental Burst does 3d8 damage, or 13.5 damage on average, but on a successful save, we only do half of that, or 6.75 damage. If our enemies have a +2 to Dex saves, they need to roll a 12 or higher to save, meaning that we're looking at a 55% chance to fail and a 45% chance to succeed. Thus, we take 13.5x55%+6.75x45%, or 7.425 + 3.0375, which comes to 10.4625 damage against a single target on average.
That's actually pretty damn close. We might have underestimated what kind of Dex saves our foes will have, but even if that damage were significantly lower, it would be optimal (in terms of action economy) to drop one of these on just two foes - and quite a bit better, in fact, than attacking a single one.
Now, what about as our martial arts die goes up?
Well, I suspect that Elemental Burst gets slightly better - by this point, without magic items, our Dex modifier will only go up once more (at least until we get our level 20 capstone). Then, essentially, as our martial arts die goes up, the dice we roll for each attack both go up (adding two average raw damage at level 11 and then again at level 17) while all three for Elemental Burst go up at the same levels (adding 3 average damage at level 11 and again at level 17).
But let's consider the other thing:
Focus Point Efficiency:
Flurry of Blows effectively adds one more attack for us to do each turn, but it's also half the cost of our Elemental Burst.
In other words, if we look at the average damage we get for a single Focus Point from Flurry of Blows, it's essentially that same 5.75 damage we calculated earlier for a single attack. If we halve the damage of the Elemental Burst to represent its "damage per Focus Point," we find that it's the same exact ratio as what we had before - Elemental Burst comes close to doing the same damage per FP, but not quite, and so as soon as we have a second thing to hit with it, it becomes more efficient.
But: what about at level 10?
At level 10, our Flurry of Blows now lets us do three unarmed strikes over the free single attack, rather than two. That means that each Focus Point is granting us two additional attacks.
If we made some assumptions about things being proportionately similar damage, we might say that you then need to be hitting four creatures. But let's look at some new assumptions:
Let's say at this point that we're fighting things with higher ACs and maybe higher Dex save modifiers.
We'll say we're fighting things with ACs of 17, and they've got +4s to Dex saves.
We'll say we took an ASI at level 8, so we're now at 20 Dex, but still at 16 Wis. Our PB has gone up to 4 now. So, we have a +9 to hit, and our saving throw DC is 15.
Now, at level 10, our martial arts die is still a d8, but only for this level. So, just for the hell of it, let's look at level 11 instead, at which point we'll have d10s.
Attacking with Flurry of Blows, our Focus Point buys us two additional attacks, each of which deals 1d10+5, or 11.5 damage on average, adding 5.5 on a crit.
With a +9 to hit and against an AC of 17, we're going to hit on a roll of 8 or higher, which is actually the same hit chance we had before (I hadn't intended that consciously, but here we are).
So, per attack, we're going to do 11.5x65% plus 5.5x5%, giving us 7.475 + .275, which comes out to 7.75 damage per attack.
However, because we're getting two of these per Focus Point spent, we're going to double it to 15.5.
Our Elemental Burst is now doing 3d10, which is an average of 16.5 damage on a failed save, and half that, or 8.25, on a success. Our monsters are now going to save on a roll of 11 or higher, meaning a 50% fail/success chance. Thus, we essentially take the average of the two, or 4.125 plus 8.25, giving us an average damage of 12.375 damage against a single target.
However, because we're spending 2 focus points for our elemental burst, we once again have to halve this damage to represent its damage "per focus point spent," meaning it's 6.1875.
Thus, simply hitting two targets with this won't be as efficient a use of your focus points as using Flurry of Blows. But if you can get a third target in there, it's actually going to wind up doing more damage overall.
Caveats:
This is all very abstract. For one thing, we're making big assumptions about AC and dex save bonuses that might not bear out. One of the benefits of Elemental Burst is that it does guaranteed damage, whereas you could totally whiff on a Flurry of Blows or Attack Action.
The other big consideration is what requires damage here and now. The benefit of AoE damage is the way you multiply the damage across each target. But as powerful as that is, focus-fire can often be a more important consideration in a fight - the sooner you take down one monster, the less damage your party will wind up taking overall. And sometimes, you'll want to prioritize certain monsters. Maybe there's a powerful "controller"-type monster that can stun or charm or otherwise take one of your allies out of the fight. That monster probably needs to go down quickly, while the minions that make a couple melee attacks can be worried about later.
These sorts of calculations always kind of make an assumption that what's most important is the amount of damage you can put out, rather than how much damage you actually need. Consider Disintegrate versus Finger of Death. The former does more damage (75 on average versus 61.5) but if a monster dodges your Disintegrate, you get nothing for that 6th level spell, whereas a monster who saves against Finger of Death is still going to probably take about 30 damage. If your foe is sitting at 50 HP, it's probably going to die on a failed save to either spell.
At its maximum, Elemental Burst is going to do 3d12 damage, or 19.5 on average. At level 17 and higher, it's unlikely that that alone will take out even the weakest minions (unless your DM is a masochist who wants to roll attacks for the 90 zombies or skeletons that would be required to challenge just one 17th level character, according to the DMG's encounter-building guidance,) but on the other hand, you could soften up a big group that might then take the Sorcerer's Fireballs and the Paladin's Destructive Waves. If it means that the Fighter or Barbarian, or you, the Monk, only need three attacks instead of five to take down one of these minions, you're potentially speeding up the fight a lot.
But yeah, anyway, I think generally speaking you can use this on two or more monsters, and then maybe wait to be able to hit three after you get to level 10.
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