Dancer merrit-Ability Adjustments . Players Opinions.

[Eri]

The Suggested Adjustments can be found here (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/22679-dev1113-Job-Adjustments-Dancer).


Now I'm asking for your Opinion on these.

From my Point of View:


Saber Dance
While i like the 3 minute recast i can't see that a longer Duration of Sambas is a great benefit at this point.
You merely save a few TP at best, not only because of not recasting that often but also due to a few more swings considdering Ability Delay.
(I would have liked a increased effect of Sambas rather than duration)

Fan Dance
3 minute recast here is nice certainly. Lowerd recasts sounds nice at first sight too.
The +15 Enmity (for useing Fan Dance) isnt a huge drawback due to the hate cap Issue. Like it always was.. the loss of Haste Samba is the Issue here.


My Commenet:
At first sight i thought: I'm going full Fan Dance. But i may reconsidder.
Due to Dancers current Role in Party it'll maybe depend on how much the Duration of Sambas is extended an how much recast for walzes is cut.

Im leaning towards a 3<>3 Split on these at the moment. Then again it remains to be seen how strong the effects are.

[Trumpy]

i feel you are lookin at the 3 min recast thing like something they are adding. they are jsut removing the useless reduction of recast per merit like all the other changes. so you can have the 3 min recast wiht one merit instead of 5 like before.

i am not saying that dancers arent for damage dealing, but i rarely do anything as dnc for dmg. Im usually soloing something or low manning or tankin and full fan dance actually really helps (takin 7 dmg hits with fan dance when its normally 700 dmg a regular hit is the tits!). I only look at the samba duration addition as icing on the cake for saber dance when i reexamine these merits.

I dont even have saber dance merited atm cause i always end up havin to cancel it to cure even if we have a effin whm (its sad i know) Ever since the addition of Presto i havent had no foot rise merited either. I have closed position and fan dance full merited atm cause i was usually solo and i decided i liked 3 minute fan dance for when something likes to dispel or i need fandance recasted before the 5 minute timer is up for soloing.

Ive been waiting for these updates to be announced to figure out how i am goin to change things around tho. also i have been building a mule whm so i can focus on more damage aspects as well.

Im not expecting a huge reduction on fan dance for waltz timers cause i jsut dont want to get my hopes up. and I think i must be the only dnc that would prefer waltz potency over stupid 2 seconds less on that mini expansion head (especially now that i stick to waltz 3 and only use higher tiers if its emergnecy, and 3 is generally up pretty fast). but if im in a situation that i may be throwin lots of cures around i imagine id be up in the battle and i can only see fan dance reducing my dmg i take while im all up ons to be beneficial.

I usually look at situations as do i need drain or haste sambas, or fan dance for survival (sometimes i start with fan dance and eventually jsut haste samba cause dmg taken isnt as bad). I have a 2-4 dagger that keeps my TP build pretty high so haste samba isnt always that necessary for me. And ive never been in a situation as not DNC where people said "Damn i wish we had a DNC with haste samba here!"

[Shibayama]

This is actually really tough for me - My current Merit setup is 5/5 NFR 3/5 CP and 1/1 fan and saber respectively. I probably should have knocked some merits off NFR anyway - i used it mostly for pre-75+ cap to build TP in stuff like Einherjar and ENM's and stuff - not much use for it now personally especially with Charis Bangles +2.

Anyway when I first saw the coveted Waltz Recast - this morning I was excited and expecting to rearrange my merits to get 5/5 fan dance. The merits certainly add another element of picking your fighting style depending on what is needed. I have to agree in saying that the increased samba duration on saber is kind of underwhelming. Yeah I guess after awhile the TP from 3 haste sambas adds up to another weaponskill but I've never really found myself hurting for TP from samba cost especially with Saber up.

I agree that samba effect would be much interesting but perhaps they feel like the haste samba merit from G1's already does that, or perhaps they'll be changing that merit to just be samba effect in general... Hmmm

Anyway I was thinking about the potential Waltz Cooldown effect on merits - most likely it wont be any higher than 4 seconds for 5/5: Either 1 second for every merit past the first if it's gunna be a flat rate or like... 5% every merit for a total of 20. Hopefully it's just a flat reduction because then only V really has a benefit worth putting 5/5 into it... Just anything more than 1 would prolly end up being broken - 2 per merit would make 1, 2 and 3 recastless with anwig Salade's -2...

I'm guessing it's just gunna be around 20-25%ish honestly.

[Asymptotic]

Etoile Tights +2

[Lokithor]

While not specifically stated, I presume that the lowered recast time for Waltz only applies while Fan Dance is active? Same for Samba and Saber Dance?

[Eri]

While not specifically stated, I presume that the lowered recast time for Waltz only applies while Fan Dance is active? Same for Samba and Saber Dance?

I think it sounds just like that.

[Asymptotic]

Anyway, loss of samba kills the fan dance adjustment, it's simply a boost for the 3 solos in Vanadiel where fulltiming Fan Dance would be helpful and not a detriment.

The samba adjustment is just icing on the cake of why you should already have saber dance 5/5.

[Shibayama]

Not entirely sure I get why you are espousing Saber 5/5 and the additonal 5% DA from etoile tights +2 so heavily - care to explain?

[Byrth]

Follow the fun flow chart with me:
1 : Are you on Dancer? (Yes/No)
2 (No) : Leave.
3 (Yes) : You should probably have Saber Dance up. Do you have Saber Dance up?
4 (No) : Okay, then Etoile Tights +2 aren't the best TP legs. Finish using your one Waltz every 3 minutes and put Saber Dance back up.
5 (Yes) : Etoile Tights +2 are the best TP legs.

[Shibayama]

I see...

/shrug ah well, as far as the meriting is concerned though I can see why having 5/5 saber was better prior to this but going 5/5 now just for longer sambas seems like a waste.

Yes I know Fan cuts off our only unique support and inhibits the bonus from tights +2, but it seems like 5/5 fan would at least give an additional defensive utility to the JA depending on the amount of waltz recast down it gives.

I can at least see a situational advantage of having it, while I cant really see one for longer samba durations - especially since with sword/presto the 35 tp you'd lose every 1:30 isn't gunna hurt you realistically.

[Asymptotic]

Except, you're still going 5/5 to get the +5% double attack, and just taking the free samba adjustment. It's like I said: the samba adjustment is just icing on the cake of why you should already have saber dance 5/5.

Fan dance is nice to have for emergencies. On average, emergencies happen less often than once every 5 minutes, or else there's something else you need to be examining besides your merit distribution.

The fact of the matter is, barring those 'OH SHIT' moments, you're either going to be fighting something where Fan Dance doesn't matter, or you're going to have a mage around.

Fan Dance is basically a solo adjustment, and a useless one, because

1.) Waltz recast is rarely an issue while soloing
2.) Skilled dancers rely on PDT gear, not Fan Dance, when defense is in order.
3.) For most hard solos, the DNC will be /NIN anyway and shadows mitigate the need for even PDT gear, for the most part.
4.) If you're not maintaining haste samba, most of the reason to invite you on DNC is gone, and you should have come another job. I would bring a melee RDM before I would bring a full-time Fan Dance DNC.

[Asymptotic]

I can at least see a situational advantage of having it, while I cant really see one for longer samba durations - especially since with sword/presto the 35 tp you'd lose every 1:30 isn't gunna hurt you realistically.

This is not the right way to look at it. The less often you have to spend that TP, the less JA delay you have to experience, the more your DoT and WS frequency increase. It is hurting you realistically, because you have a better option that you'd be sacriificing for a more or less useless ('arguably sitiational') alternative.

Saber dance is not situational (at least not toward the connotation with which we use the word for FFXI gear). You should have it up most of the time, and thus 5/5 Saber Dance to take advantage of Etoile+2 is the best route.

[scaevola]

Saber dance is not situational (at least not toward the connotation with which we use the word for FFXI gear). You should have it up most of the time, and thus 5/5 Saber Dance to take advantage of Etoile+2 is the best route.

I agree, but for the sake of clarification I think you might be mischaracterizing Shibayama's argument. No one is saying you shouldn't be 5/5 Saber Dance right now, or that you shouldn't be using Etoile +2 when you are 5/5 SD. The thing is, we were all (well, many of us were) 5/5 SD before Etolie +2 was around to reinforce the decision, because a 3-minute cooldown on SD is an extraordinary benefit to the way DNC actually plays both solo and in a group compared to a 5-minute cooldown, and more than justifies the 5 merits on its own. Etoile was a windfall, the same way this new Samba duration would have been if the 3-minute cooldown were not standard.

Shibayama's point is that the 3-minute cooldown is now gratis so the main reason we went 5/5 to begin with is off the table. He's not saying that we wouldn't still spend 95% of our time in SD even if we were 1/5; he's just wondering if 5% DA from Etoile +2* outweighs reduced recast timers on Healing Waltz and (yeah I'll say it) Divine Waltz (BOOM) when you actually need them. It's a fair question, and one we ultimately can't answer until we know how dramatic the cooldown reductions actually are.

For what it's worth, I have always sort of taken issue with the assumption of "you'll always have a mage healing you" in discussions about a job whose entire raison d'etre is for when you don't have a mage healing you, but I realize I'm not going to get much traction on that in Dual-Box Fantasy XI. :P


*and come on, it's not like it's replacing a garbage piece of gear in Charis +2

[scaevola]

well, a 20% recast reduction at 5/5 is a non-issue if it's fan-only.

[Asymptotic]

Post Presto, and before Etoile+2, the standard was 5/5 Closed Position, 1 in Saber and Fan, at least 2 in NFR, and 1 to whatever.

5/5 Saber wasn't particularly good or worthwhile until the merits translated into extra attacks. (Pre-Etoile+2, the difference between 5/5 and 1/5 was ~1.5% average DA over the duration of the effect).

The only reason to have Fan Dance up is ... soloing .. and then, full-timing it is mostly detrimental if you're worth your salt. Waltz recast is generally a non-issue soloing, so it's a completely useless upgrade.

So, you might as well take your extra 5.5% DA and call it a day.

[scaevola]

Post Presto, and before Etoile+2, the standard was 5/5 Closed Position, 1 in Saber and Fan, at least 2 in NFR, and 1 to whatever.

5/5 Saber wasn't particularly good or worthwhile until the merits translated into extra attacks. (Pre-Etoile+2, the difference between 5/5 and 1/5 was ~1.5% average DA over the duration of the effect).

The only reason to have Fan Dance up is ... soloing .. and then, full-timing it is mostly detrimental if you're worth your salt. Waltz recast is generally a non-issue soloing, so it's a completely useless upgrade.

So, you might as well take your extra 5.5% DA and call it a day.

5 in closed position? In Abyssea?


....really?

[Asymptotic]

Remember that Relic+2 wasn't out until the 99 cap.

But, Yeah. At 90 cap, you weren't naturally evasion capped on everything without making DD sacrifices. 5/5 Closed Position helped solidify that deal, preventing you from having to use an evasion set.

Closed position was nice to have around in the early days of Voidwatch, but we have better things to do with those merits now.

If you don't believe me about it being more or less standard, you can look through the discussions in the DNC thread on FFXIAH and see where we all switched.

[scaevola]

Remember that Relic+2 wasn't out until the 99 cap.

But, Yeah. At 90 cap, you weren't naturally evasion capped on everything without making DD sacrifices. 5/5 Closed Position helped solidify that deal, preventing you from having to use an evasion set.

Closed position was nice to have around in the early days of Voidwatch, but we have better things to do with those merits now.

If you don't believe me about it being more or less standard, you can look through the discussion here and see where we all discuss switching our setups due to relic+2.


I...what? The difference between 1/1/2/5 +1 floater and 5/1/2/2 is a whopping 9 evasion. You're seriously telling me people sweat 9 evasion in Abyssea? Dynamis, okay, MAYBE*, but Abyssea?

More to the point, I've been listening to people who sweat 9 evasion in Abyssea?

The accuracy argument seems pretty weak, too, considering 9 accuracy is like, less than one Quickstep** and if you're having accuracy issues, you can be assured your friends are.

*the ability to drop SD and waltz every 3 minutes wins over 9 evasion there, too

**provided you are lucky enough for the mob to be facing you at any given time because hey dudes fanatic's this chump

[Asymptotic]

Closed position is really an all-or-nothing game. You either took it 5/5 or you put your merits elsewhere.

As for why it was good:

C:\Users\Kaj\Dropbox\Public\Last Dance\evadex.gif

Let's face it though, if you were on DNC in Abyssea while it was still "worth discussing," you were soloing, or XPing. You didn't really have much other reason to be there. I don't allocate merits to XP parties vs. trash mobs. Versus anything "hard" you weren't "dropping saber dance every 3 minutes and waltzing."

I was actually 2/5 Saber, 5/5 CP, 2/5 NFR, 1/5 Fan. (Converted to 5/5 Saber, 4/5 NFR, 1/5 Fan)

There are times when I miss CP, honestly. I'm about 10% from capping evasion in my DD set vs. DCs in Dynamis (I parse 67-72% evasion depending on what I'm fighting). I'm usually about 5% from capping accuracy in non-accuracy oriented DD builds versus high-tier VWNMs on DNC after Presto+Quickstep. CP would more or less solve the first problem and somewhat address the latter (it's not always facing you, but hey, stand next to the guy who takes hate the most....or if you play as aggressively as I do it will probably be facing you most of the time anyway).

Also one Quickstep is 8 evasion, but I'll save you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant P+QS which is 12 evasion.

[scaevola]

Closed position is really an all-or-nothing game. You either took it 5/5 or you put your merits elsewhere.

This sentiment really doesn't make any sense at all. There are maybe some merits that one could consider all-or-nothing but CP is definitely not one of them. You are trading 1 merit slot for 3 accuracy and 3 evasion. You can do it up to five times. That's all CP is. It might be good for a job that had crummy Group 2 options. DNC is not that job!


As for why it was good:

C:\Users\Kaj\Dropbox\Public\Last Dance\evadex.gif

don't know what that is but I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it's something you you want me to believe you couldn't have done by finding 9 more evasion in gear to wear for that one specific mob.


Versus anything "hard" you weren't "dropping saber dance every 3 minutes and waltzing."

that's....pretty much exactly what I was doing! Surprise, Curing Waltz V isn't totally useless!


I was actually 2/5 Saber, 5/5 CP, 2/5 NFR, 1/5 Fan. (Converted to 5/5 Saber, 4/5 NFR, 1/5 Fan)

There are times when I miss CP, honestly. I'm about 8-10% from capping evasion in my DD set vs. DCs in Dynamis (I parse 67-72% evasion depending on what I'm fighting).

(evasion kila offhand)

(oh no not my 20 attack)


I'm usually about 5% from capping accuracy in non-accuracy oriented DD builds versus high-tier VWNMs on DNC after Presto+Quickstep. CP would more or less solve the first problem and somewhat address the latter (it's not always facing you, but hey, stand next to the guy who takes hate the most....or if you play as aggressively as I do it will probably be facing you most of the time anyway).

That's cool. If you're saying you'd rather give up the raw DA increase and convenience of 3-minute SD than, I don't know, use mantis eye rather than potestas, I don't really know what to say!


Also one Quickstep is 8 evasion, but I'll save you the benefit of the doubt and assume you meant P+QS which is 12 evasion.

thanks

in return, i'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not read this as you saying you saw a discrepency of one point of evasion and thought HAHA THE WORM HAS TURNED

I like your posts because I think you're generally a pretty practical dude, but come on, man; this is really crazy-talk.

[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/27566/the-last-dance-gearing-paradigms-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/27566/the-last-dance-gearing-paradigms-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.

[VZX]

you're bad at DNC.
That's not an insult?

Anyway, I think I'll end up with 4FD, 4SD, and 2 NFR after this update implemented. Of course, I'm hoping a significant decrease on waltz timer on FD.

The 3-minute recast timer is quite a deal for me. Now you can switch between offensive and defensive stance more often.

[Asymptotic]

Whether or not being bad at part of a game is an insult is up for debate, the fact of the matter is, I didn't say if you don't agree with me, you're bad at DNC.

I said you're not going to benefit from 5/5 Fan Dance unless you're bad at DNC. I used to think Fan Dance was better, myself, because I didn't realize the full potential of what I could do on DNC.

In my eyes, this is the exact opposite of an insult, because I'm giving advice under the assumption that you're not bad at DNC, and therefore don't need Fan Dance except for emergencies.

The waltz timer changes 5% per merit level. Since waltz recasts aren't that long anyway, it translates to a few seconds most of the time.

With Waltz Hat:
Waltz 3: 8 Seconds
Waltz 4: 15 seconds
Waltz 5: 21 seconds
Healing: 11 Seconds

5/5 Fan Dance w/ Recast hat:
Waltz 3: 6 seconds
Waltz 4: 12 seconds
Waltz 5: 16 seconds
Healing: 10 seconds

tl;dr It's not saving you or anyone.

Not going to do times w/o Waltz Hat, because if you don't have waltz hat, you probably have BST, and therefore I hate you anyway.

[Asymptotic]

Seriously though, Dancers, invest in a PDT set!

[Eri]

Not going to do times w/o Waltz Hat, because if you don't have waltz hat, you probably have BST, and therefore I hate you anyway.


Lol best comment ever. XDBST! Bst is fun to play tho sometime... im not 75 since im soloing only that'll take long....

[Camate]

Howdy!

Just wanted to give a bit more insight into the dancer adjustment.

As a result of the increased Samba effect duration for Saber Dance, the rate of recasting and TP consumption are reduced, which contribute to a greater attack rate.

The main effect is focused on Saber Dance itself, so instead of raising the effects on Samba, we made adjustments aiming to allow players to concentrate on attacking.

[Asymptotic]

No offense, but it's not a very useful adjustment at all. Should have been something along the lines of +attack/criticalhitrate/accuracy per merit level.

Interested to know what kind of adjustment you would have given to Sambas, though.

[Motenten]

As a result of the increased effect duration for Saber Dance, the recast time and TP consumption are reduced, which contribute to a greater attack rate.

Clarify please? As I understood it, Saber Dance has exactly the same duration as before (5 minutes). Saber Dance is not a Samba, and thus won't be affected by the increased Samba durations. "As a result of the increased effect duration for Saber Dance" therefore seems to be either wrong or nonsensical.

[Trumpy]

you see, if you have to cast sambas less with saber dance, you will have more rounds of attack because you wont have the job ability delay you get for rounds of attack. I am sure the recast time thing means since one merit now equals 3 minute time recast instead of 5 before.

[Camate]

Apologies for any confusion. I updated my previous post to make it easier to understand. Basically with a longer Samba effect duration from Saber Dance you do not need to recast it as often and can save more TP which lends to more attacking.

[scaevola]

No, we knew what you meant. It's just that the duration bonus, if this is indeed what we're going with here, is not nearly large enough to be considered something other than a quality of life adjustment.

It's a pretty nice quality of life adjustment, don't get me wrong. But that's all it is.

EDIT: oh, motenten was confused.

[VZX]

If they instead make samba have reduced recast timer during saber dance, I think I have more reason to keep fan dance lower.

[Tile]

yea longer Duration is nice and all, but when are we going to get see something that boosts the effect.

[Trumpy]

i guess im the only one willing to be content with the planned changes? i mostly see just complaints

EDIT: Boost the effect? like maybe those relic +2's do?

[Babekeke]

yea longer Duration is nice and all, but when are we going to get see something that boosts the effect.


EDIT: Boost the effect? like maybe those relic +2's do?

And those Haste Samba Merits?

[Asymptotic]

i guess im the only one willing to be content with the planned changes? i mostly see just complaints


Fan Dance adjustment is absolutely worthless aside from the free 3min recast @ 1 merit. Saber Dance adjustment is kind of like pretzels. It's not what you want, but you eat them anyway because they're around.

[Karbuncle]

Fan Dance adjustment is absolutely worthless aside from the free 3min recast @ 1 merit. Saber Dance adjustment is kind of like pretzels. It's not what you want, but you eat them anyway because they're around.

You pretty much just nailed 90% of what these Merit Adjustments have been. I"m not in the slightest surprised that this one was situational and not entirely a huge upgrade, just like Assassin's Charge, Feint, Warrior's Charge, etc etc all were "Okay" Additions, BUt nothing game changing.

Its not that I don't understand the idea of wanting more, But what was to be expected? Almost all of the other reduced timer Merit updates were mediocre at best.

And calling something absolutely worthless aside from Clearing up 4 Merit slots to adjust to other areas is a bit silly. Then again I'm not too keen on what DNC's merit this days, BUt I imagine clearly up 4 spots could call for some readjusting of your cat. 2, Which could be the real bonus.

[Trumpy]

well i have 5/5 fan dance already cause i do alot of solo so i find its adjsutments very nice. granted now i may make some changes, but i def dont see these things as worthless.

[Lokithor]

Really? The Samba everyone uses is haste Samba. That costs a whopping 35 TP. Duration now is 1:30, or, 23 TP per minute. What is the new duration per merit level? I haven't seen any numbers. If it is double, then the cost would be 12 TP per minute - a saving of 12 TP per minute.

Really? You would barely notice that on a parse. SE seems to have a habit of making adjustments that make imperceptible differences and calling them earth shattering.

Now, if you really want to make a difference, look at the effect of the merit ability themselves. Have each merit lift the decay floor of the effect. For SD, after 30 seconds, the DA rate would decay to 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%. Same for the damage reduction of FD.

Now you'd have something.

[Asymptotic]

144 seconds with AF1 head.

[Asymptotic]

well i have 5/5 fan dance already cause i do alot of solo so i find its adjsutments very nice. granted now i may make some changes, but i def dont see these things as worthless.

Stop using it as a crutch and learn to solo without Fan Dance.

[Asymptotic]

Clearing up 4 Merit slots to adjust to other areas

Real DNC don't 5/5 Fan Dance now! No merit slots were gained from the Fan Dance adjustment!

[scaevola]

I think Karbuncle's talking about Saber (going 1/5 rather than 5/5), which was my original point, though again I agree with you that Etoile +2 makes it moot.

Though it's hard to complain about anything today because Hotkey FFXI :D :D :D :D

[Karbuncle]

Real DNC don't 5/5 Fan Dance now! No merit slots were gained from the Fan Dance adjustment!

Then asbolutely nothing will chang efor "real DNCs" Except getting full 5/5 Pre-Adjustment benefits for 1 single merit. Seems like even a bigger gain than clearing up 4 merits if one had 5/5'd Fan Dance in my eyes.

This adjustment may not have bring DNC's back into being useful for anything but white procs in Dynamis, But its on average with about what allt he other adjustments have been.

I don't think anything they could have changed for Saber Dance would have made DNC Mainstream again, So we should hold out for something a long that line in the near future when all the merit adjustments are done... We'll go sit next to THF, SMN, and RDM. You can sit next to RDM though, He smells.

[Asymptotic]

Well, I actually used Fan Dance today guys!

[Byrth]

First off, I'd like to say that overall I'm both surprised, disappointed, and excited about the new changes. I'm surprised that they chose to add these specific enhancements. I'm disappointed that they didn't add enhancements that made more sense. Finally, I'm excited that they didn't choose to nerf Saber/Fan Dance and force us to restore them using tier 2 merit points.


I feel what you're saying, Camate, but the adjustment is too weak for the additional effect you've named to make any real impact. With +15 seconds per additional merit level, I would be much happier. Then we can activate Saber Dance and Haste Samba at the same time.

It's not about losing a nominal amount of TP. It's about the JA delay and how often you have to pause to maintain an essential buff. It's like asking RDMs to cast Refresh on themselves once every 2.5 minutes. For a long time it was the brutal standard, but eventually you guys were like, "Hey, it would be an incredibly minor enhancement from a Balance-perspective and an incredibly major enhancement from a gameplay-perspective if we just let them cast three times less often!" Thus, Composure was born. Saber Dance could have been our Composure.

120 seconds : current
144 seconds : Test Server with 5/5 Saber Dance
180 seconds : What I'd like, = to Saber Dance's recast timer


Twashtar/Pugiunculus (new dagger) with one healer supporting you :
176/150 delay w/ 48% DW = 84 delay per hand = 4.2 base TP
4.2 base TP w/ 21 STP = 5 TP/hit
5 TP/84-delay hit, 50% Haste (Spell, Samba, Gear Haste), 33% DA, 8% TA = 10.45 TP per second

All considered, activating Haste Samba inefficiently costs us ~56 TP (2 seconds lost, 35 TP cost).

Currently, this represents 4.5% of our TP gain in the same amount of time.
On the test server, this represents 3.7% of our TP gain in the same amount of time.
With what I proposed, this would represent 3% of our TP gain in the same amount of time and would be much more convenient to activate.

[Fupafighter]

A good dancer has 2 minute samba..... If you're not macroing afv1 head, you doing it wrong. Look at the bright side. We get to 1/5 saber dance and fan dance if we desire, opening some acc/evasion or max no foot raise. Job is getting a boost and people are complaining it's getting a boost because it's not big enough.....really? They could just realize dnc is already amazing and nerf us. Be happy with what we got lol.

[Thelona]

loving the fan dance adjustment, means I can do something really stupid every 3 min instead of 5!
seriously though, if it's dead it can't hit you back. 5/5 SD
only time I use FD is for red life, or I pulled 5+ mobs accidentally in dyna, coupled with trance to stabilize, or if no procs came up in VW and it's looking at me with no fanatics

[Shibayama]

So for anybody who didn't know:

The merits are a 5% increase past the first per merit for both for a total of 20% samba duration increase and 20% waltz recast reduction. Thats an extra 18 seconds to sambas. I guess if you combine the FD merits with the -2 second reduction head you can... push V's recast down to what IV's is...

I feel like both are pretty underwhelming - was atleast expecting a flat 10 seconds per merit to be added to samba duration so the biggest boon to these merits still seems to be AF2+2's effect regardless.

[Lokithor]

So for anybody who didn't know:

The merits are a 5% increase past the first per merit for both for a total of 20% samba duration increase and 20% waltz recast reduction. Thats an extra 18 seconds to sambas. I guess if you combine the FD merits with the -2 second reduction head you can... push V's recast down to what IV's is...

I feel like both are pretty underwhelming - was atleast expecting a flat 10 seconds per merit to be added to samba duration so the biggest boon to these merits still seems to be AF2+2's effect regardless.

That is so laughingly ridiculous. Serious?

[Shibayama]

Yup - So assuming that you did go 5/5 on fan with the expansion head with waltz -2 on it your timers for all waltzes from III would be:

Curing Waltz V: 16 (from 24)
Curing Waltz IV: 12 (from 17)
Curing Waltz III: 6 (from 10)

Divine II: 14 (from 20)

Healing: 10 (from 15)

So you'd be sacrificing 5-8% potency (depending on if you have the Khepri Bonnet which most of us most likely won't have anytime soon) for roughly one third or so of the recast time for waltzes shaved off with merits + head while fan is up.

As far as the saber merits go, you really have no compelling reason to merit it to 5/5 other than to get the awesome full 5% DA enhancement from Etoile +2 which is a shame because I was really expecting to get atleast 40 or so extra seconds out of it. Oh well.

[Byrth]

I went and tested out the new Apollyon zone (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/CS_Apollyon_%28Lv._99%29)on the test server. It's a bunch of demons that can 2-hour. I think I used Fan Dance . . . once? Against the boss? Really what I needed was more damage (rode Saber). I could barely kill an entire group of demons in half an hour (mostly because the bosses had so much HP).

But yeah, if I can solo content that isn't even released yet and is designed for a party without using Fan Dance, what is a possible justification for it?

[Fupafighter]

Dnc can without much effort, get 26% waltz potency and be using desulter -5 cost and -2 delay head.

[Asymptotic]

I---what? ....

[Thoraeon]

An extra 18 seconds to Haste Samba with 5/5 Saber Dance is very... underwhelming. If it weren't for the Relic+2 Pants augment, I would be removing 4 of my merits from Saber Dance.

[Byrth]

24 seconds, unless they nerfed it?

[Thoraeon]

Oh yes, because 24 secs is much better... (Isn't 20% of 90 secs only 18 secs? or does it also apply to the additional 30 secs from Artifact Head?)

[Byrth]

It also applies to AF head.

But yeah, you can look up and see my opinions on the subject. +20% is a stupidly short duration increase.

[Thoraeon]

Yeah, I just checked... oh boy 24 secs.

What would have been good to see would have been a static increase. Ideally an extra 1 min duration to make Haste Samba recast coincide with Saber Dance recast, but I suppose that would be too much to hope for. Once pants come out that are better than the Relic+2, I may be dumping some of my Saber Dance merits.

[Trumpy]

looking back on things i guess i actually havent soloed much with fan dance since maybe 90 or so was the last time, been busy on other jobs and group things where i am another job. but i mostly used it for the mobs that hit me for like 500-700 dmg regularly (AKA no crit).

seems like that one cockatrice in altepa abby comes to mind. but that was all a learning experience as i was doin it. droppin those hard hits down to less than 20 dmg a hit when he would get thru shadows was a godsend. i didnt have much of a pdt set back then either. he could mute and stone me so those times i had fan dance up could be life savers.

and since then when i am dnc if i ever end up using my tp more for curing and it gets more difficult to actually mount an offense i start using fan dance and generally makes everything easier (sometimes its less bout how fast i can kill that NM nobody else is waiting on but how stressful it can be for me NOTE: im not one of those solo it for an hour kinda guys btw).

usually when i try something for the first time i try it with fan dance and usually end up just using haste samba pretty quickly in the end. with the changes now i may just cut it down to 1/5 fan dance or cut it all together. with the ease of things with level 99 and a new whm mule it just isnt worth as much.