Dancer merrit-Ability Adjustments . Players Opinions.

[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:

[img]C:\Users\Kaj\Dropbox\Public\Last Dance\evadex.gif[/img]

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:

[img]C:\Users\Kaj\Dropbox\Public\Last Dance\evadex.gif[/img]

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.