Dancer merrit-Ability Adjustments . Players Opinions.

[Asymptotic]

I don't believe in Evasion Daggers.

Also, our opinion on the value of "dropping saber dance and waltzing" in Abyssea at 90 cap may differ, because I'm never /NIN in Abyssea. /THF or /WAR only.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree on old news.

For everything else, there's this:

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/27...-for-a-new-age

[Lokithor]

Almost 100% of my time on dnc is solo for mobs that are tougher than i can comfortably handle on thf. For me, SD has zero value as I really don't care about maximizing damage, just maximizing survivability. I also don't care about CP because I can dual wield capped EVA daggers if I want (versus Twashtar + TP Bonus Centovente when I don't care about EVA). I don't expect this change to influence my merit setup at all.

[scaevola]

I don't believe in Evasion Daggers.

Also, our opinion on the value of "dropping saber dance and waltzing" in Abyssea at 90 cap may differ, because I'm never /NIN in Abyssea. /THF or /WAR only.

I kind of want to make PDT daggers and try 5/5 New Fan Dance to solo Empyrean weapons as DNC/WAR for KIs and DNC/THF for the main event.

Not that this would necessarily be the best way to even do any of that solo.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree on old news.

For everything else, there's this:

http://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/27...-for-a-new-age

And again, you do good work and it's a useful thought experiment, but I question the importance of conclusions based on the assumption that DNC in particular will have mage support, since the class is designed from the bottom up to do fine without it and that's pretty clearly not the sort of environment that makes people want to DNC in the first place.

[Asymptotic]

Dark Knights want to cast spells, but that doesn't mean that it's the most effective way to play the job.

Anyway, it's really only "designed" to do without a mage effectively while solo. You can do whatever you want while solo, the only person whose time your wasting is your own.

When I make suggestions, they're for group play. Any group worth its salt has a mage. As a result, waltzes are pretty much worthless to an efficient group.

[Asymptotic]

I kind of want to make PDT daggers and try 5/5 New Fan Dance to solo Empyrean weapons as DNC/WAR for KIs and DNC/THF for the main event.

Not that this would necessarily be the best way to even do any of that solo.

I do this now without PDT daggers.

[Asymptotic]

Also without fan dance, lol.

[scaevola]

Dark Knights want to cast spells, but that doesn't mean that it's the most effective way to play the job.

"I'm telling you, man, we can equip Almace! Why WOULDN'T we build our red mages totally around melee to the exclusion of everything else the job has and expect to be just as effective as the melee classes that can't use all the other really considerable abilities we're ignoring???"

Anyway, it's really only "designed" to do without a mage effectively while solo. You can do whatever you want while solo, the only person whose time your wasting is your own.

Dancer was introduced as the 20th (!!!) job in this game to fill a niche for simple, straightforward solo play we desperately needed.

When I make suggestions, they're for group play. Any group worth its salt has a mage. As a result, waltzes are pretty much worthless to an efficient group.

The best suggestion is "take your Glavoid Shells and make Ukonvasara, because Exenterator's Accuracy Down is going to be much more useful for anything you'd actually want to use DNC for anyway".

[Asymptotic]

Really, you're going to compare a DNC forgoing waltzes to focus on Sambas+DoT (the two things it does well) to RDM melee (something RDM doesn't do well)? I hope you're joking.

Also DNC (and SCH) were directly stated by the development team to be designed as ideal support jobs, which is why they've had so many issues properly balancing them as a main job.

I will continue to reiterate, in a good group, waltzes are needed almost never to never. That aside, I'll re-explain why this merit adjustment is more or less worthless on Fan Dance's end:

1.) In group play, there's virtually no reason to have up fan dance except for emergencies. You should have haste samba up all the time, and you don't need waltzes most of the time anyway.

2.) In solo play, there's virtually no reason to full-time Fan Dance. With a few exceptions, if you need Fan Dance to win, then you need better gear, or to suck less, one of the two. For most things that ARE soloable, you can just ride out Saber.

3.) In solo play, there's virtually nothing that you can realistically solo that will put stress on waltz recasts as they are, and since you don't need fan dance in the first place, there's no reason to merit it for the purpose of shortening waltz recasts.

4.) In group play, if DNC is the main healer for some reason, if it's the type of group a DNC can realistically support, the current timers are fine as is, and once again, it's group play, so you should have Haste Samba up anyway.

Of all the stupid things I've soloed out of stubbornness, the only thing that has ever stressed my waltz timer was soloing Feuerunke at 90 cap. Anything I couldn't solo was because I either (1.) couldn't stun it (2.) had spikes that I couldn't deal with or (3.) terror.

tl;dr There's no reason to take Fan 5/5 unless you're bad at DNC.

[Lokithor]

I love how people make statements along the lines of "if you don't agree with me, you must be <insert insult here>". Great debating style.

Fact is, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to put more than 1 merit into either SB or FD anymore, unless the affects on samba duration and waltz recast are really dramatic or take effect without actually having SB or FD active. But when would SE do anything dramatic on the beneficial side? Nerfs, now ...

[Asymptotic]

Fact is, there doesn't seem to be any compelling reason to put more than 1 merit into either SD or FD anymore

Etoile Tights +2

I love how people make statements along the lines of "if you don't agree with me, you must be <insert insult here>"

I never said if you don't agree with me, you must be "insult insult here." I said that the only reason you'd benefit from 5/5 FD is if you're bad at DNC.