Dancer - 1 year after WotG

[eva00r]

/rant on

pup needs even more attention than dnc, but even SE developers ninja skipped pup questions in the recent interview

[Genosync]

[derail]
No offense but the cor you just described isn't all that spectacular, /nin is pretty terrible for anything outside of nyzul. Unless your pulling (/whm best for this), /rng is really the only way to go. 4 fold merits isn't all that amazing either, because if you're at 5/5 snake eye most of the time you're either at lucky or pretty close to 11. Adding winning streak lets you melee for longer periods of time without worrying about buffing everyone every minute or so. Really only 1 Fold merit is worth it IMO.[/derail]

You're fucking retarded; do three COR/NIN with full melee builds, and full ranged WS builds, with spamming sushi, on birds, with two Bards and a RDM, or a melee WHM with Kclub/Boon; get 37k/hr+; and then we'll talk.

You buff TWICE. It takes no time at all. You're just another fucking lazy ass Corsair that has no idea of his potential.

Have you gotten 1700+ dmg Slug Shots on Birds without Dia? All it takes it the right gear, Martial/Steel, two Minuets and a Chaos Roll to break some very, very strange damage cap on the WS. Also, Hunter's Roll/Sushi gives you just the right amount of RACC to not miss all the damn day long. TPing to 100 in under 15 seconds 100% of the time, and to TP most of the time to 100 in under 10 seconds, is extremely terribly broken when your WS damage is 1500-1980 (which is what I noticed my Slug Shot cap out at against a Wivre with Boiling Blood on, fyi).

Minuet x2
March x2
Haste
Rolls: SAM DRK RNG COR WAR and THF or MNK (because the sixth roll is kinda pointless)

And none of the Corsairs should bother giving an Evoker's Roll because the RDM shouldn't need it anyway.

DoT of that of a Dancer, WS damage that of a Ranger, and the ability to buff themselves and make them ridiculously powerful at the same time.

Bard with Guns and Sword?

More like old-school Ranger returns in a form no one ever would have expected. I don't expect any of you to believe me either, because no one would believe me until they PT'd with me--and now there's only two corsairs left on Bahamut with that kind of setup, because they're the only ones that aren't too fucking cheap and whiny about spending money to do it.

Did you ever go through a stack of Steel Bullets, with only using WSes, in way more than under an hour? Stack of Sushi on Corsair lasting you on average 45-50 minutes?

If not, you're not doing it right. Stop gimping your goddamn Corsair and refusing to believe it works until you actually go full throttle and try it. It's exactly like playing old-school ranger, but now includes even more haste/buffs than before.

Clear middle birds/wivre, and then end up having to pull 4-5 birds from the bottom in order to not lose chain.


And for the sake of Dancer discussion, I'd love to have killed the third Corsair spot and put in a full merited Cat1/Cat2 Dancer instead. The extra Haste and potential added to the Dancer would have been interesting to see with all the Attack buffs and how much they benefit dagger.

[Devek]

rage!

[Genosync]

rage!

you know it

rage of the taru



it's easy to see when I'm actually angry--I actually capitalize the first word of my sentences and care about how I type, etc

[Flippant]

Well, the double attack rate is insane at the beginning, and with good attack, you can really put out respectable damage. Do a WS early in SD's life and its even better.

I don't believe the DA procs during WS? I've used it immediately prior to WS many times, but have never noticed a leap in damage.


Anyway, DNC doesn't hurt in merit, especially if the merit party already consists of good melees. I can outparse a COR on colibri (while still healing bleeders), but that's about it as far as I am compared to well, or even decently, equipped melee. I'd probably come very close if not outdamage those really gimp people in pick up parties though...

DE with Minuet IV and Sole Sushi is ~1200, and considering DNC's TP gain rate, that's not too bad. However, if the RDM isn't awesome, you'll have to heal a lot, and get to see less and less WS as the party wears on.

Overall, DNC does fine in a "linkshell merit" party, since the other melee should be more than enough to make up for what DNC lacks.

As for Limbus, I've been to a run on DNC. It was nothing special, as in Dynamis. I've pulled hate and died a few times in both instances, so I guess at least I'm doing noticeable damage, though D;

[Tsutsumiko]

Well, the double attack rate is insane at the beginning, and with good attack, you can really put out respectable damage. Do a WS early in SD's life and its even better. Give a DNC haste and bard songs like other DDs and you really will not see drops in total damage (especially since any 'lost' damage for not having a premier DD will be made up by samba effects and steps decreasing a mob's stats).

I pretty much agree with wafik (I'm a 75dnc). I think dancer is best in limbus/dynamis/small man sea. Their biggest strength is in lowman, or in a 2-hander melee party on prolonged fights. It's much easier to heal now without using the Spellcast plugin with the new <stpt> (but I still prefer spellcast).

You really can't underestimate the power of insta-cures. When people die who are not one shotted, it's usually because of the casting time on cure spells. Having a dnc there to heal them instantly saves many lives.

Honestly, though, the best use for dnc is to duo with one in campaign if you are a paladin or blue mage. A dancer will make them indestructible.

Spoiler: show

Also, they're mother fucking sexy.

http://www.bluegartr.com/gallery/alleya/1233513167.png

What these two, along with Wafik, have said is pretty much all that needs to be said.

From my experience with DNC @ 75 for about 13~14 months now, it has come a long way. It is an incredibly useful job in Limbus, Dynamis, Sea, Sky Farming, and to a much lesser extent Salvage and even Solo play (I've been trying to find random NMs to solo on, so far the only one I've really nailed down was an Ose that some people wiped on and I took it from 33% to 0 with some minor difficulty.)

The job really only shines when you have AF2 Body/Pants, Azoth, 5/5 Haste Samba, 5/5 Reverse, 5/5 No Foot Rise, and then whatever you want after that.

Saber Dance gives you some stupid numbers on WS as Toth said if you use it early on. Then you NFR => Reverse and you have about 100% TP immediately. You don't miss a beat when healing or keeping Sambas up with NFR and I suggest any DNC that doesn't have it at 5/5, please do so as the effectiveness of the job nearly doubles with it maxed. (Granted going from super low effectiveness to low/moderate isn't a lot, it is still a massive boost to the job)

Fan Dance is pretty much restricted only to solo play. It was incredibly helpful on Ose, as said before. Otherwise, I find it to be worthless. 1 of tech merit only.

What really is holding the job back is what's already been said: Individual healing timers, a Divine Waltz II, and better gear. The job's accuracy is so abysmal in merits that you pretty much HAVE to use Sushi or Sushi+1. Meat is never a feasible option it seems. (ACC calculator constantly has me at 65% or so on Birds, and I have pretty solid gear for DNC imo. My feet and upgrading my other ring to Sniper's+1 is about all I can change.) Fix those, and you'll see the job is very potent when fully merited.

[VZX]

What really is holding the job back is what's already been said: Individual healing timers, a Divine Waltz II, and better gear. The job's accuracy is so abysmal in merits that you pretty much HAVE to use Sushi or Sushi+1. Meat is never a feasible option it seems. (ACC calculator constantly has me at 65% or so on Birds, and I have pretty solid gear for DNC imo. My feet and upgrading my other ring to Sniper's+1 is about all I can change.) Fix those, and you'll see the job is very potent when fully merited.

If you have 5/5 Closed position merit and always meleeing in front of the enemy, you'll have about the same accuracy as THF does.

[Xno Kappa]

A lot of e-thuggery going on in this thread lol.

[Eddard]

I must say after reading this thread, as well as many others about dnc, that this job is very much merit dependent on what you want to do with it. So much that I've been contemplating merits really hard and my dnc is only level 41 lol. I really look forward to 75 and try some of these things out.

[orinthia]

I've settled with capping haste samba, reverse flourish, closed position, three into no foot rise, and one into sabre and fan dance. Reasoning on three NFR is that if I'm in real need of tp I will already be meleeing, in which case I'll already be using steps and RF. Since RF is on a 30sec timer I'll nearly always have some FMs stored, meaning a capped NFR won't get full use all the time. I figure one step plus three FM from NFR will put me at five for a full RF.

A counter to that would be the uses of capped NFR without using RF all the time, in which case you might already be sitting on a good chunk of tp or just had a bad missing streak with steps. I'll be out a little bit but three is enough as is for me.

I also like the thought of free acc on dnc with capped closed position so I won't have to merit dagger skill to get it. Though if I take it more seriously I may wind up with dagger merits anyway haha. Job is fun, a lot more fun then my others so I might just try to do more with it.

[Gaea]

We have a pretty awesome enkidu/ninurta galka dancer on Odin server who isn't really happy about the lack of "Divine Waltz II". My dancer isn't 75 but I can definitely see the need for it.

I think if SE makes a Divine Waltz II they'd have to make it get about the same hate as Divine Waltz I. If it literally gets double the hate, it could make dancer an awesome hate machine that people will probably turn into a tank. It would be like giving a Paladin Curaga III.

I know Dancer's have only proven themselves as situational tanks, or co-tanks. I'm just saying that giving dancers the ability to pull so much hate with DW2 could give players incentive to find ways to exploit Dancer's as more of a mainstream tank. To avoid that, they could just make DW2 only pull about the same amount of enmity is DW1.

One thing I'd be interested in, also, is a Healing Waltz II that's area of effect.

[VZX]

Healing Waltz really need an upgrade as you level like Barrage for RNG. 20 secs erase and locking out Curing Waltzes is really the drawback compared to the other WHM or /WHM.

I've mentioned how RF, WF, and BF are not always available regardless I have the FM and I need the flourish to be executed right away.
There is also times where you only want to boost acc and attack for your WS (2 FM BF), but you already too late and stored up to 3FM or higher.
I guess if they want to refine the JA recast and FM consumption from flourish, DNC can be an excellent job in the hands of good players.

[Starr]

Urat delivers again

[Bakthi]

I think if we had someone join our linkshell that only had say...DNC and SMN, I might be able to tell you more about DNC at end-game. I've gone to sky triggers as DNC once and...I don't think anything else. The problem is that I have other jobs that will contribute more, and the other 75 DNC in our shell has an E.body WAR, NIN, WHM, etc. I mostly use it to solo mission/quest NMs, stuff like that, and even then I go on NIN/DNC half the time.

I'd love to be able to sink a bunch of merits and gil into it and really push it harder, but for someone with the jobs I have, I don't see it happening in the near future.

[orinthia]

Took dnc to farm things in sky yesterday. Was able to stun despot, steam cleaner, and mother globe every time I tried though it's not like those are particularly hard anyway. The nice thing though about each stun was its length: felt like five seconds at least. MG would be stuck doing nothing for quite a while whenever I VF'd it, which you can do without facing it (same with steps, didn't want to deal with shockspikes unless I needed the tp for a step).

That's probably the biggest thing I've been noticing: VF really does seem to act like a "bash" with stun durations whereas I've seen stun spell hardly last as long. You could just about recast utsu:ichi every time. It could also be the relic body's enhancement at work since I always wear it...

Now if only they'd let me cotank sky gods with it... Just let me be the one trick attacked while I use WF to set them up and VF every chance I get heh. Shouldn't be too bad at all I think combined with fan dance insurance and eva+ gear. Would be a little change of pace at least.

[urat]

Nice thing about VF is mobs dont build resistance to it.

Fought a T mob for a good 7 minutes, must've stunned it at least 10 times, and it landed every time, and the length stayed at a solid 4-5 seconds.

Maybe it takes more than that for the resist to build, but it is almost the perfect length to recast utsu. Very good macro to have when soloing / tanking

[Talint]

That's probably the biggest thing I've been noticing: VF really does seem to act like a "bash" with stun durations whereas I've seen stun spell hardly last as long. You could just about recast utsu:ichi every time. It could also be the relic body's enhancement at work since I always wear it...

I did some basic tests on some elementals in sky after I got my casaque. It doesn't even land on anything thunder or earth based, so it's more like a stun WS than it is a bash effect. :/

I'm kind of surprised it landed on MG. I was always under the impression she was Thunder-based.

[orinthia]

I did some basic tests on some elementals in sky after I got my casaque. It doesn't even land on anything thunder or earth based, so it's more like a stun WS than it is a bash effect. :/

I'm kind of surprised it landed on MG. I was always under the impression she was Thunder-based.

Meant with just the durations as a shield or weapon bash stun lasts quite a while as well, though as you mention, ws stun is similar. Wonder if there's something more we can do besides stutter steps to help it stun other mobs that are resistant to stun. It's on a short enough timer and you don't even need to face the mob to continue using it. A few dncs could near stun lock a mob like that heh.

[Gaea]

Meant with just the durations as a shield or weapon bash stun lasts quite a while as well, though as you mention, ws stun is similar. Wonder if there's something more we can do besides stutter steps to help it stun other mobs that are resistant to stun. It's on a short enough timer and you don't even need to face the mob to continue using it. A few dncs could near stun lock a mob like that heh.

It is but there's a difference between thunder-based abilities and thunder-based resistances. Elementals have specific resistances to their base element and the element they are strong to. A thunder elemental would resist both thunder and water. MG, however, with its thunder-based abilities doesn't necessarily have thunder-based resistances. It may have a resistance to water (I've never tested it), but it doesn't have have the thunder-based resistance that's special for elementals.

Most monsters aren't specifically weak to the element that their job abilities are based on, however there are several that are strong to the element that's weak to their element. Some people associate jobs like Warrior with Fire and Thief with Wind/Lightning, a ranger with Wind, etc because of their job abilities associations, but these jobs dont have natural resistances to these elements just because their abilities are based on it.

It's not too uncommon for monsters to get be imbued with a resistance based on the element that is weak to their base, but that doesn't mean they'll get a special resistance to the element that their based on as well; just the element that may be weak to it.

I guess an example would be an earth based mob being just as likely to take damage from wind, fire, blizzard, etc, so people tend to use blizzard alot, however thunder may have a resistance. However, just because it's earth-based doesn't mean it also gets resistance to earth, just thunder (weak to earth).

MG might not have any weaknesses, but if it did, it would most likely just be water. Feel free to test. There's also monsters that don't follow any rules. SE gives them whatever resistances they feel like it no matter what their based on. And sometimes SE gives them the ability to change resistances.

/end derail

I think if we had someone join our linkshell that only had say...DNC and SMN, I might be able to tell you more about DNC at end-game. I've gone to sky triggers as DNC once and...I don't think anything else. The problem is that I have other jobs that will contribute more, and the other 75 DNC in our shell has an E.body WAR, NIN, WHM, etc. I mostly use it to solo mission/quest NMs, stuff like that, and even then I go on NIN/DNC half the time.

I'd love to be able to sink a bunch of merits and gil into it and really push it harder, but for someone with the jobs I have, I don't see it happening in the near future.

I think this hits the nail on the head, really. With the job coming so late in the game, even the people that have it to 75 and with good gear tend to have tried-and-tested jobs at 75 that people feel more comfortable taking. More and more great players are getting this to 75 and meriting it and getting good equipment for it and making people see it in a better light and and and and and and and etc. Sorry my comma key got broke >.>;

[Tsuko_Asura]

Nice thing about VF is mobs dont build resistance to it.

Fought a T mob for a good 7 minutes, must've stunned it at least 10 times, and it landed every time, and the length stayed at a solid 4-5 seconds.

Maybe it takes more than that for the resist to build, but it is almost the perfect length to recast utsu. Very good macro to have when soloing / tanking

Since when do general monsters build resistance to Stun?