Abyssea DNC WTF R you doing?Follow

It's not just you, but Abyssea had brought all the bad players out of the woodwork. Those who would have been kicked instantly from a normal six man party are now harder to see among 18 man alliances.

Even prior to Abyssea, 95% or more of all dancers made little to no effort to gear and play DNC properly. At least the ease of obtaining Aurore has made them a bit more useful than back when they used to full time 5/5 AF.

I haven't done that much abyssea (got my jobs to 80 prior to people finding out about it) but yeah, outside of it I've seen this behavior and much worse. Sadly it's mostly from JP players and I can't effectively communicate how much they suck...I er mean...give them constructive criticism =P

Thankfully all of the very good DNCs on my server I'm all friends (rivals) with and we communicate quite a bit on gear, playstyles, etc. So it does make me feel better that there are some peole out there that take the job seriously and want to improve.

But I will say this....there are a TON more gimpy and horrible THFs out there than there are DNCs...I have too much work to do on that end ; ;

I wish it was JP players, sadly this poor DNC behavior that has me so confused I had to question myself is comming from ENG players. They want to be DD but lack the skill to know what to gear swap and do low #'s and on top of that don't samba at all. Don't cure unless it is themselves. Geared up like a 2006 rmt at lvl 50. And when ppl are like let's get a whm or rdm or sch to help with cures no one is demanding the dnc to step up and assist. I assisted because i figure less downtime, bickering, needing to find a back up healer = faster kills, more xp. I don't know what all these dnc are thinking with this (full time saber danc, ws with tp, assist no one) mentality. I was in a party yesterday and same shyt. I send a /tell ask why you play this way? and response "Its the best way to play DD". Again they are doing weak ass ws #'s, and allaince is hurting as a whole from lack of a cure tossed here and there (not often just emergency). It's disgusting.

I've noticed a lot of crappy DNCs in abyssea also, and I tend to agree with the sentiment that they all crawled out of the campaign woodwork where no one could notice their fail until someone turned on the lights and they were suddenly covering everything like cockroaches in a cheap chicago apartment.

/rant on
I have a serious problem with people who wear the full aurore set, DNCs and THFs especially, becuase those are the two jobs I play most. The reason most of them give when I ask them why their gear fails so much is that they don't get the stp without the whole set... well whoopity-@#%^in-do, there is no possible anomaly in time or space that would EVER distort reality enough to make 8 stp better than the 6-8% haste (depending on dusk+1s/homam/whatever) that you give up by not wearing dusk/(homam for thf), rap harness, and turban. If you're hurting for STP so badly go get a fusetto... though that opens a whole new world of fail that I'll not get into right now. It just doesn't make any sense. Turban is free and easy to get, rap harness is mostly free and incredibly easy to get now that the lvl cap is remoed, dusk on my server is ridiculously cheap these days. why would you gimp the hell out of yourself for 8 measly stp that are going to do very little for you because you're dual wielding at every occasion now that you hae DW4 native to you?
/rant off

I enjoy DDing on my DNC, when i have haste samba up, am hasted, and perhaps getting a march or two my TP guage flies up like crazy (gogo auric dagger) that's more than enough TP to throw out steps, use building/wild flourish, toss in a stun or two, and, most importantly, have TP left over to cure people in need of it, especially if you're /SAM with sekkanoki and meditate it just starts to get ridiculous on what you can do with TP gain/WSs/debuffs/cures. It makes me sad that I've learned to do all of this stuff simultaneously, and I get passed over for other jobs in an abyssea alliance, or asked to change to another because of all the retards that can't get decent FREE gear to tp in, and do their damn job with anything resembling competence.

Where have you been my whole life!?

Also, does DNC share a lot of gear with THF? I've already got the dagger merits, and plan to level THF to flesh out my recent Assassin's Armlets aquisition I figure if I'm in the neighborhood... Might as well use all that gear for more than one purpose.

I just had my first experience with DNC in Abyssea, and I actually had the other problem.

Just because I'm a DNC, just because I can cure, doesn't mean the bloody WHM can afk.
About half way through the run, I noticed the WHM would do a Haste cycle and then bugger off. I let some people slip into red, just to see if they got a cure, and nada....

It pisses me off because my DNC is nicely geared (or... it was for 75 anyway) - and /war, I wasn't exactly hurting for TP (Hell, I was getting Haste and March x2.... Freakin hundred fists!!!) - but, just because I'm there, doesn't mean I don't want to DD. I was pulling some really nice Pyrric Kleos on the mandies (I always felt it was nice to get that eva down on the mob right off the bat, but that's just play style) - but half way through, I'm main healing the whole freaking alliance. And if I'm going to do that.... rep the damn mages, get me some more DD's and a 2nd GOOD DNC and we'll kill faster... damn slackers ;)

There's a lot of hate for the full Aurore set, but I think people aren't quite understanding its true value.

I've built a rather extensive spreadsheet to determine gear change values for mnk. A caveat is obviously that certain aspects won't work exactly the same for other jobs, but carefully applied base comparisons are generally extensible in a generic manner. I can make quite a few tweaks to the types of damage being done and the relative values of gear changes remain basically the same.

With that said, starting with the full Aurore set, there are very few -single- pieces of gear that can be swapped out and beat the full set. Use Turban? Worse. Fumas? Worse. Dusk Gloves? Worse. Shura Togi? Worse. Etc.

Dusk Gloves +1? OK, those are a tiny bit ahead. Usukane feet? Tiny bit ahead. Rapparee Harness? Less than 0.5% better if you have fully capped accuracy and low haste buffs; it gains more with high haste buffs (maybe a 3% edge); but as soon as you're getting any notable accuracy from the Aurore body it falls back to being even or worse (depending on how much haste you get). Etc.

Once you break the set with the first piece, then additional pieces getting swapped out start being worth more. Turban+Dusk Gloves+Rapp Harness wins out handily (pushing +10% with high haste) with sufficiently high accuracy and outside haste buffs. However even moderately evasive mobs (the equivalent of Greater Colibri when 75, even using pizza) leave Aurore in the lead if you're not getting Haste+2xMarch. (Additional caveat: that's using attack-oriented weapons rather than +acc weapons; +acc daggers would give you more leeway to swap to haste gear.)

Basically, there are conditions where a mix & match set will beat full Aurore, but there are also a not insignificant number of situations where full Aurore will win. If someone doesn't understand when each gear set is better, I'd just as soon see them in full Aurore as anything else since there's still a decent chance it's the best option for them at the time. What I -don't- want to see is almost-full-Aurore.


For thf, on the other hand, Homam hands and feet provide enough haste+acc to beat Aurore in most cases, so I would expect a serious thf to never wear much Aurore. Full Aurore is still a huge improvement over a Christmas tree thf, though.

Obviously this is mostly silliness that this individual thinks that Aurore is "gimp"; however to kinematics: what mobs stats do you use as the new standard to compare gear against now that pink birds are off the table? I just wanted to do some checking of my own.




Edited, Sep 4th 2010 5:51pm by doctorugh

Edited, Sep 4th 2010 5:51pm by doctorugh

Obviously this person is one of the aformentioned idiots.

Yes, by fulltiming Saber Dance in Abyssea, clearly I am leaving in the lurch the 3-4 WHM/RDM/SCH whose combined healing duties equal one PLD getting hit for 60 damage by a mandragora.

Thank you for setting me straight.

I just recently reactivated and lvled my sch from 75 to 85. All the abyssea parties I was in I was practically forced to full time dark arts and act like a blm. I cured a few times out of boredom when we were low on pearl kills and I got yelled at by the whms and rdms because they said curing was their job. What does this have to do with dnc? Well I have a 75 dnc and plan to lvl it next so I do know a little bit about the job, but honestly in abyssea I don't think theres a real need for dnc to cure unless unless some of the healers had to go afk or their low on mp or something(which mp really isn't a problem for mages in abyssea). Whats more is if you aren't expected to heal at all then its hard to notice the occasional times (like once or twice every 2-3 hours) when someone in the alliance needs a cure and the healers went mysteriously afk. I don't know about you, but when your in abyssea for like 3-6 hours and your job isn't primarily to heal, constantly looking at the health bars of 18 people isn't one thing I generally do. Now if the dnc is looking at the alliance health bars and notice someone in red thats not getting cured and the dnc doesn't try to cure him, then thats a completely separate matter.

Also there are times when full time aurore gear can be an overall improvement. For example, people tend to use rapparee harness quite often. rapparee is theoretically one of the best body pieces for tp gains (at a decent enough total +haste), however if their accuracy rate is quite low a scorpion harness/af2/enkidu's harness would turn out better. The store TP +8 bonus tends to be easily overlooked.

Edited, Sep 19th 2010 9:53am by palomaru

Edited, Sep 19th 2010 10:21am by palomaru

The last DNC I had in Abyssea exp:
- 72.08% melee hit rate.
- 239.25 average WS damage.
- Barely used Samba.
- Parser missed it completely if he used any Step.
- But, Samaba/Step didn't really matter, since he liked to duo with the THF 'puller', making his Samba/Step moot for the rest of the alliance. (He'd stop melee a monster as soon as a PLD Provoke/Flash it...)
- Cured himself. A lot. The rest of us? Not so much.

That DNC may have been the worst one I've met, but in general, DNCs have been low damage, low cure, largely useless leeches in Abyssea pickup groups. Random DNC? Do NOT want... Give me a PUP instead. I'll even take a BST melee'ing in CHR gear as long as he brings those high level jugs. Anything but a random Dancer.

* * *

The sad thing is, I really like the DNC job. Really miss that DNC friend of mine who had to leave FFXI due to RL. Watching these idiots messing up DNC makes me grind my teeth.

That description made it sound like he was holding mobs the THF would pull until the PLD got it off him. Not sure why he'd do that, unless you were fighting something unsleepable or difficult to sleep.

Okay, that's fair, he was a moron. But one person using moronic, ineffective tactics doesn't mean that dancer is a low damage, low cure, leechy kinda job.

If you're looking for a job where a small group of elitists aren't going to criticize you for not having the best of everything, this game probably isn't you for, cuz the other 19 out there aren't any better.

A good player can impress on DNC equipped with barely anything more than the Artifact set and a few choice AH gear; my friend (as DNC75) was tanking Vulpangue for us with gear like that.

The problem is this job just seem to attract idiots.

Gear will make a good player great, but it'll never make a bad player good. Sweat the gear, but be sure to sweat not sucking at the job first.

I did that! ~45-72 anyway.


^

It's entirely possible to be a good player with purely AH gear. It may limit your capabilities somewhat, but no reasonable person is going to completely reject you as long as the skills are there. That still requires that you have the basic skills though...

Edited, Sep 22nd 2010 4:24pm by Beleren