DNC merits

[kareface]

I'm gonna cap out Haste Samba, but I don't play dancer all that often. What do people who have the merits think about tier 1 and tier 2 merits for the job?

[Talint]

http://www.bluegartr.com/forum/images/icons/icon10.gif I'll never miss an opportunity to talk about DNC.

Haste Samba 5/5 and No Foot Rise 5/5 seem to be generally agreed upon. After that, there's some dissenting opinion. I am personally doing 5/5 Reverse Flourish and after that 5/5 Closed Position, though Closed Position is down low on the totem pole in terms of "things to merit".

Step Accuracy seems unnecessary, since I gear swap in +accuracy gear for landing a step. And I rarely weaponskill when I'm in a party on DNC, so Building Flourish is also kind of meh. That's why I'd opt to go for max Reverse Flourish merits.

If you're wielding daggers x2, some prefer Saber Dance. But I usually wind up main healing the parties I get into, so not having access to healing is a no-no. I don't actually like either of the dances, since I'm able to use most of the abilities on DNC without problem.

[Shadowhusky]

Pretty much depends on what you do really. But in general, Talint hit the nail on the head.

[VZX]

I have my DNC as solo build. So on group 2 I took 5/5 (4/5 now actually) Closed Position
1/1 Saber and Fan Dance
3/5 No Foot Rise

For group 1 I did max Reverse Flourish and max Haste Samba effect.

I think the best mode for practical use of DNC is not having Saber or Fan Dance up. Saber Dance + Haste Samba is nice, but soon within 1 minute or so, your PT may dire from the waltz curing. Fan Dance, as we know, has damage reduction down from 90 to 20%, so beyond that point, you may just want to turn it off and let drain samba heal you.

3/5 No Foot Raise is perfect since I can get the rest 2 FM by just getting close to mob and have 1 attack round fully landed. 5/5 NFR, IMO, is unoptimal unless you like to do flourishes with it before trying to do any step.

5/5 Closed Position, like I said, is the part where it define solo build.
+15 eva on top of Evasion Bonus III will make our Evasion slightly higher than THF for soloing
It also helps me on accuracy due to I don't have any more space for dagger merit.

[astrael]

DNC is a tough one to merit for imho, it depends heavily on what you want to do with it. I agree without hesitation for group 1 to max Reverse Flourish though, it has the most immediate benefit of all the merit abilities.

I tend to disagree that step accuracy merit is entirely useless, this is the key to making DNC viable on HNM, and coupled with max Closed Position you're gauranteeing the ability to land steps on stuff that even the best accuracy gear available wouldn't help you with - without reliable steps DNC is pretty much useless. But, as I said, that's only if you plan on taking DNC to HNM at all, hard to say since you only said you don't play the job much. I actually do 3 haste samba and 2 step accuracy, and I'm still not happy with the % of steps landed (and that's with both relic and AF enhancements)

I like Fan Dance over Saber Dance, if there's anything you can sacrifice easily on the job it's Samba since it only affects the frontline of your current party and only if they aren't using En-spell effects from SCH or DRK 2-hour. I agree that anything more than 3 merits in No Foot Rise seems over the top, when you can land a step almost always with it to get the full 5 finishing moves. I would say it comes down to your choice whether you want the extra +6~12 accuracy/evasion bonus fighting things solo/tanking, or have the ability to refresh Fan Dance faster to get the 90% DR back. I went for a balance since I do a lot of tanking with DNC.

My spread is 2 Step Accuracy/3 Haste Samba/5 Reverse Flourish/3 Fan dance/3 Closed Position/3 No Foot Rise/1 Saber Dance.

[Spider-Dan]

5/5 Closed Position, like I said, is the part where it define solo build.
+15 eva on top of Evasion Bonus III will make our Evasion slightly higher than THF for soloing

DNC: 256 evasion skill + 35 evasion from Evasion Bonus III + 15 evasion from 5/5 Closed Position = 256 skill + 50 evasion

THF: 276 evasion skill + 48 evasion from Evasion Bonus IV = 276 skill + 48 evasion

2 evasion > 20 evasion skill?

[VZX]

DNC: 256 evasion skill + 35 evasion from Evasion Bonus III + 15 evasion from 5/5 Closed Position = 256 skill + 50 evasion

THF: 276 evasion skill + 48 evasion from Evasion Bonus IV = 276 skill + 48 evasion

2 evasion > 20 evasion skill?

If there's a sequel or better test than this one. Let me know.

It just seem to me, in practicality, that extra 20 skills shows nothing on harder type of mob.

[Wintieu]

I think the more important question to ask is: What do you plan on doing the most with your Dancer? End-game activities? Merits? Ballista? Solo? Crafting? Idling?