Dancer merits (Macro question now too!)Follow

I just dinged 75 DNC and had 4 merits saved up. I put 2 into Haste Samba and was looking at what else to merit.

I currently have 8/8SWD (I use joyeuse) 4/8DGR (4 katana merits too...but I might take them off) 4/4 CRIT and 4/4 EVA. So I have the combat skills done. I'm mostly curious about DNC specific. I know 5/5 Haste Samba is my main priority, but what then? I was mostly torn between Step Acc. and Reverse Flourish Effect

For Group2 merits I was planning on going 4 Fan Dance, 1 Saber Dance, and 5 No Foot Rise.

The 4 Fan Dance would help me a lot in ballista which is what I mostly do. One saber dance for e-peen DE and No Foot Rise is just great.

Many thanks for any replies to this.

Edited, Mar 6th 2009 12:01pm by Hiswhitewings

Ah I understand that it's for melee only. I just LOVE sentinel when I go PLD to ballista so having a sentinel like JA for DNC just seems like the right choice to me.


Thanks for the reply though. After I made my post I noticed that relic had enhances step acc so it really leaned me towards reverse flourish. I've also been doing birds since 73 and have been landing them just fine.

If I'm ever really hurting for ACC I could easily just take off the 4 katana merits and add them to DNC since I can see DNC becoming my new merit job.

This is the path I took my Dancer Merits, some are recycled over from my other 75 jobs.


Leftover from DRG and BRD: STR+1 DEX+1 CHR+2 Crit4/4

Tier 1 Dancer Merits:
Step Acc. 1/5, Haste Samba 5/5, Reverse Flourish 2/5 Building Flourish 2/5

Tier 2 Dancer Merits:
Saber Dancer 1/5 Fan Dance 1/5 No Foot Rise 5/5 Closed Position 3/5

Combat Skills:
Dagger 8/8, Eva 4/8

I see the majority chose to 5/5 in Reverse Flourish, but I chose only 2 because that is a TP return of 66, and the highest amount of TP you need to use any JA is 65 TP for Curing Waltze IV. I wanted to have Building Flourish merited because I have big number syndrome, recycled DD merits, and I was already doing lovly with TP gain as it is I figured more would be over kill.

Check out the post by Kornemunio (sp?) on the solo thread a few down from this one. I really like his take on Saber and Fan dance ALso his thoughts about NFR to only 3 make sense to me at least.
I'm currently at 2 haste samba 2 reverse flourish 1 saber dance I plan to add 1 fan and then finish up reverse flourish to 5 and haste samba to 5. NFR to 3
Then Closed Position to 5 most likely. I really want to see what I can solo.

Ugh I have 5 rows of macros.... I swear I blink so much I'm invisible.

Row 1: Is basic DNC JA's (samba's waltzs ect) Utsu, pulling macro and all the abilites I had befor 75.

Row 2: Merited abilities + Equipment Swaps (soloing, ws, capped event, TP set)

Row 3: Abilities for Differnt SJ's for DNC that I just copy and paste as I need when I am on a differnt sub.

Row 4: Balista and Brenner macro (same as row one w/ no equipment swaps)

Row 5:silent dance1-4 macros, M.C. Hammer's-Too legit to quit emotes, and Back that azz up <t> macros.

Honestly, putting more than 3 merits into NFR is a waste. A lot of people who advocate 5/5 NFR seem to limit themselves to the "I need to start with TP" thought process at the start of any given event. Sure, that's fine, but beyond that, the additional finishing moves are either going to be wasted or fumbled.

It's mainly an issue with regard to recasts. For example, Reversing 5 finishing moves and then using NFR to get those 5 moves back instantly means you're sitting on them for the duration of the recast of the second set of Flourishes. All but Animated Flourish in the first set use 1 finishing move, so essentially you're putting 4 finishing moves (at most) to waste if you're spamming Steps.

I find accessing 3 finishing moves instantly easier and more effective to juggle whilst maintaining the rest of DNC's abilities (i.e. steps). I don't know about other DNCs, but I don't use Steps purely for their enfeebling effects. If I'm not getting my 2 finishing moves, I feel like I'm putting that 10 TP to waste.

The most effective structure of Group 1 is echoed throughout this forum: 5/5 Haste Samba and 5/5 Reverse Flourish. Step Accuracy can be boosted through generic accuracy and Step Accuracy enhancement items. Building Flourish Effect's boost is minor at best, and it is limited to the DD aspect of DNC. Reverse Flourish, on the other hand, has applications in everything DNC does: healing, support, DD, tanking.

Of course, at the end of the day, the DNC Group 2 merits are extremely flexible and can be well-adapted to individual playstyles. You would probably be hard-pressed to find a "defined" merit set-up like certain other jobs. My advice would be to intelligently assess what exactly you want your DNC to be able to do. By the sounds of it, you already know what you want to do. My own personal preference is to play to DNC's versatily and flexibility; others may wish to specialise in a certain aspect. Up to you! :p

^This is pretty much my reason as well for wanting 3/5 into NFR: once you start going you should be trying to use steps every chance possible. Since RF has a 30s timer, there's two steps worth of time to wait for RF to be ready. Unless you're just on a horrible missing streak you won't have too much trouble keeping something up.

After that, one in saber/fan to have them and 5/5 closed position for me. One thing I've wondered though: how far off center with the mob's face can you be and still have the effect? For example, can you avoid sticky thread from a crawler without voiding the acc bonus?




For my dnc macros I try to keep things as simple as possible since I play on ps2 and use keyboard near exclusively. I have all my most useful macros on the ALT# lists since my thumb easily rests on left and right ALTs (left hand).

ALT 1-10: battle target (/ta <bt> or an /assist), waltz3, waltz4, utsu:ni, utsu:ichi, haste samba, drain samba3 (to be replaced with a step set as soon as I get the relic shoes), ws set, tp/haste gear set, and a no dusk macro. Left-ALT 1-5 are the easiest for me to tap with left hand so I have the most important things there (might move haste samba over there sometime). I move my hand and switch to the right-ALT to hit the others (or just hold ALT for the bar to come up and arrow-key over).

In my waltz macros I currently swap body and head for waltz+% first, /ja CW <stpt>, /wait 1 (so the waltz with gear goes off), then swap back those two pieces for normal tp gear. I'm thinking of going to a /recast CW# (for identity, I've hit the wrong one a few times), /ta <stpt>, waltz gear swaps, /ja CWIII <lastst> and then just hitting my tp macro again. I'll have to do that if I ever get a roundel earring as six spots is all I'm working with... in fact if there's ever more for me to really swap (not for 5 more hp, but for additional %s) I'll have to make a single macro for the waltz gear swaps and be quick with tapping the waltz and tp macros (will have to replace the <bt>/assist macro).

My CTRL macros are mostly innocuous as I barely use them: /sea all <t> (to be replaced later if necessary), CW2 (to be copied and pasted into my ALT set, lvl cap depending), CW4 (so I don't lose it), gear dump macros (gear swaps I can copy/paste depending on lvl cap), aspir samba2, /p Dancer tp:<tp>, and pulling macros. I do all flourishes/steps/jigs through the menus. If there's ever more flourish enhancement gear then I'll make macros for them (I just fulltime relic body outside of waltzes).

Might seem bothersome to go through menus for so much but it keeps me more engaged.

~Ori

Edited, Mar 6th 2009 7:31pm by orinthia

I was able to solo Aq as NIN/DNC, and without a very potent evade set(O-hat, SH, velocity earring, and a lack of -evade gear elsewhere), so I doubt a properly geared DNC should have any problem. The Bonuses Blind/Slow/Paralyze provide should be covered by DNC's higher evasion and better heals I'd think. The availability of violent flourish to stun when things may be getting bad is a plus as well. Of course, grav and run a short distance away is a strat I used to get back up shadows that can be used on either class too. Shouldn't be hard.