Dancer In Merit Parties

I first want to apologize. This is going to be a fairly long read. I know this thread is going to attract a huge amount of controversy and "trolls," but I ask that you guys please at least read through the information before you spam the thread with useless memes and such.

The goal of this post is to dispel the common belief that dancers are not good additions to merit parties. The math that will be provided is somewhat theoretical, and based off of a traditional merit setup with a COR BRD and RDM (or WHM) for support. This post will mostly observe the damage over time through basic melee attacks only and how the addition of a dancer will greatly improve that output.

For this example, we will assume that everyone is receiving the haste spell (15%), double march (Assuming 20%), haste gear (25%), and the SAMs will be using hasso (10%). The concerned jobs will not be using any weaponskills or spells in this calculation. This is simply a calculation of the damage they do with auto-attack per minute, since using job abilities and weapon skills actually slows down your auto-attack rate slightly per use. Weapon skills are covered at the bottom of this post.

Samurai's base delay with Leviathan's Couse: 480
Samurai's modified delay with aforementioned haste: 144 (480 * 0.3)
Samurai's rate of attack: 1 attack per 2.4 seconds.
Samurai's damage per minute from auto-attack alone at this point assuming a generous average of 175 damage per hit: 4,375
DPM assuming 15% double attack with /war and Brutal Earring: 5,031
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Now, we will view the same Samurai's attack rate and damage per minute with the addition of a Dancer. The dancer will be utilizing a meritted haste samba, providing 10% additional haste to the party.

Samurai's modified delay with aforementioned haste and added Haste Samba: 96 (480 * 0.2)
Samurai's rate of attack: 1 attack per 1.6 seconds.
Samurai's damage per minute from auto-attack alone: 6,562
DPM assuming 15% double attack with /war and Brutal Earring: 7,547

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Now to view the dancer's actual damage over time.

Modified delay with dual wield and Suppanomimi assuming combined weapon delay of 411: 328.8
Modified delay with haste: 98.64 (328.8 * 0.3)
Rate of attack: 1.64 seconds per attack phase
Average damage per minute, assuming 63 damage per hit on average, with 3 attacks per phase on average (55% double attack with both hands): 6917.4 (36.6 attack phases a minute * 189 average damage per attack phase from three hits)

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Now for the important part, since the numbers are now available for reference. This section compares the addition of a Dancer to a party instead of adding another Samurai.

Party Setup 1: Sam, Sam, Sam, Brd, Cor, Rdm
Each Sam will theoretically do 5,031 damage per minute with their normal melee attacks at this rate. This nets a total of 15,093 damage per minute.

Party Setup 2: Dnc, Sam, Sam, Brd, Cor, Rdm
The Dnc will theoretically be doing 6,917 damage per minute while each of the two Sams will be doing 7,547 for a total of 22,011 damage per minute.

The concept: Adding a DNC instead of a third SAM will have a larger effect than adding 2 SAMs in its place in basic attack damage. Not only does haste samba mean substantially faster ws's, DNC also comes included with defense and evasion down debuffs to further benefit the party. These benefits were not calculated within this post, as it would require way too much explaining.

Proof, with a "7 person party" which is impossible: Sam, Sam, Sam, Sam, Brd, Cor, Rdm
4 Sams, 5,031 damage per minute = 20,124 total, compared to a 2 Sam, 1 Dnc party's 22,011 damage per minute.
As you can see, adding the Dnc is the rough equivalent to DoT as replacing it with 2 additional Samurai.

Though DNC itself doesn't do outstanding damage that will defeat a good Sam or War in a parse contest, its significant boost to party members makes a massive difference in party strength. It should, however, be noted that Dnc are quite capable to put up decent numbers, however. It is very easy to hit 1100-1300 DE's consistantly with a properly geared DNC, with occasional spikes as high as 1500-1800 when all 8 hits land from Saber Dance's massive double attack boost. Though a Sam, War, or Drg will still out WS them by a bit, it is still a notable contribution to damage itself, even without the massive increase it gives other jobs.

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I wasn't going to include this part of the discussion, but oh well. Now we’ll take a very brief look into the effect of DNC on the total number of WS’s used within a minute’s time frame.
This is not entirely accurate, as every time you use a Job Ability, Weapon Skill, or Spell you will be unable to auto attack briefly, thus lowering the amount of attacks netted per minute. It is, however, still a reasonable comparison between the two different parties illustrated above in the body of this post as they both share the benefit of ignoring the said parameter.
Anyways, here are the examples:

3 Samurais without a Dancer: 25 attacks per minute with a 6 hit build would net 4 WS’s per minute from each Samurai, meaning they will total 12 WS’s per minute (3 Sam * 4 WS)

2 Samurais with a Dancer: 37.5 attacks per minute with a 6 hit build would equate to 6 WS’s a minute per Samurai, netting 12 WS’s between the two of them. The Dancer will also, of course, be able to WS as well in this scenario, netting even MORE DoT and spike damage than the alternative (3 Sams).



Conclusion: Dancer adds a whole lot more to a merit party than most people think. Though it takes decent gear to effectively DD as a dancer, it is not too hard to obtain. Almost all of the relic and artifact pieces will have uses in your life as a Dancer, and all are pretty easy to get. The Rapparee Harness is also relatively easy to obtain, as well. Though you are not a heavy DD, and will not outparse a good Samurai, Dragoon, or Warrior, your benefit to the party will be a hugely substantial one. On top of that, you will still be able to maintain pretty recognizable damage dealing potential. Ignoring a DNC's contribution in damage to the party would be a mistake, even though their strongest suit is making everyone else in the party perform substantially better.

This being said, I'm going to go take a nap. I'm sure in a few hours when i wake up this thread will be full of useless replies and meme spam. But at least the information will be out there and maybe fewer people will doubt the potential of a dancer in a merit party.

The problem is that most dancers suck.

I'd gladly take a good dancer over a third DD(as long as the 2 other DDs are good)

6 Hit Polearm SAM? O.o

I actually see this far too often on Cerberus :P

I mean 6 hits as in repeating a WS after a previous one. Say you ONLY netted 13 tp from your weapon skill, you could easily reach 100 tp with 6 hits after that.

100 - 13 = 87 TP required.
87/6 would only require 14.5 TP per hit.
Leviathan's Couse = 13 TP per hit + 25 store tp from trait alone for sam = 16.25 TP per hit.

Besides, a SAM with Leviathan's Couse could get a true 6 hit build from 0 tp with Rajas and Brutal earring equipped. 31 total store tp puts them into a 6 hit build, if I'm not mistaken. I'm sure they could probably reach a 5 hit build, but I'm not bothering with the calculations on that one. I don't play samurai, so I'm not sure on what store tp gear can be worn while still maintaining your haste build and enough acc to cap it out on birds.

A Samurai with a 480 Delay Polearm WITHOUT a 5hit (ws + 4 hits) is just lazy.
All it takes is 5\5 merits, rajas brutal + hachi hands and feet. That place them at 20tp return\hit

Myself/Thorn/Vegetto have beaten the "DNC is awesome in Merit parties" point to death.

Yes, DNC is awesome, yes you should invite a good one to your merits.

At that point, they will drastically reduce their haste potential, as well.

Lets assume a 25% haste gear sam with a 6 hit build vs a 20% haste geared sam with a 5 hit build. We will compare them over the course of 1 minute.

25% gear: 96 delay, thus 1.6 seconds per attack. 37.5 Attacks total.
They will WS 6.25 times from that attack rate

20% gear: 120 delay, thus 2 seconds per attack. 30 Attacks total.
They will WS 6 times from that attack rate.
They also hit 7.5 less times with normal attacks.


Obviously these numbers aren't completely accurate because the chances of being engaged to a target 100% of the time for that minute are slim in a merit pt. Also, using a WS causes a delay before your next attack phase, thus slowing down your attack speed a bit. It is simply an example.


Edit: Whoops, messed something up...
25% gear will WS 7.5 times and 20% haste gear will WS 7.5 times. I forgot we were taking into account a WS as one hit, thus meaning i must divide 37.5 by 5, and 30 by 4 instead of 6 and 5 respectively. They'll WS the same amount of times, but the 25% haste gear person will score more melee hits, netting more damage over time total.

Edit 2, in regards to Niniann: I feel there wasn't any substantial evidence as to why adding a DNC would be better than adding another heavy DD job in a thread of its own. Most of the serious discussions on the topic were done within other topics (during derails), thus someone looking for the information would have a very hard time finding it. The evidence also wasn't the same as what I'm presenting.

OMG rly? 3 sam's hitting haste cap in merit pt with polearm is good..... no wai

Idiot number 1 has taken the stage!
Sorry for the low-grade insult... But someone didn't read the post :P
3 sams < 1 dnc 2 sams. By a huge margin.

I feel safe with my thread's state at the moment so NOW it's nap time, lol. Peace~

But dnc can only give 10% haste, haste isn't exponential. I think your #'s must be way off. Looks like your making 10% haste out to be some amazing increase that would give some super inflated return.

Needs less SAM and more COR.

2 SAM, DNC, BRD, RDM, COR.

DNC is easy to play, it's just played by a lot of idiots who are using level 30 cHR/str/i don't even know what the hell they're using at level 75, so I don't want to invite a random dnc <_<

Replace SAM with a war/sam that has voke on their macro sets(this is actually very rare, it might be a myth in fact)! No voke makes me not able to eat pizza @ birds ; ;

Thanks. This is the winning combo.

And I am soooo praying for Haste Samba II at 80. I have a feeling they'll stiff us and not give it to us til like 90 though.

And Kozuki, I know your pain there, but I use them anyways on DNC. I just buy/make 10-12 of them before heading out. Once those are gone i switch to meat or sushi. I do typically make parties with at least 1 war... But not many WARs out there are that great. I like Polearm WARs a lot, but sadly very few out there utilize that option.

Maybe he noticed some people didn't seem to know and wanted to make a forum explaining to people why Dnc is a good choice in a merit party, rather than just saying 'dnc iz kool' or 'dnc>sam LUL'.

Clicking a forum, not reading what the OP took time to write, writing rude comment about post you didn't read, it's time to choose a more productive hobby.

You haven't read the other threads have you :<

In all seriousness though, WHM is probably better for Esuna, and keep the DNC on cure-duty (which they should be doing anyway....). Having to throw out a Healing Waltz for Wivres kinda *** with everything.

Edit: And unless both bird camps are empty, you can't pull 40k/hr+ without chaining Wivres.

I skimmed it. You must not of read anything else he's written.

idk, I never used windower until very recently (so i'm not sure on the exp/hour rate) but I've chained 400+ on Greater Colibri camp in a party that I'm sure was well over the 30k exp/hour threshold. Setup was Dnc (me), rdm, brd, cor, sam, war. Me and the Cor were both DD'ing. We were pulling the middle and bottom birds, and sometimes mamool ja when we had to. We stayed away from the Wivre. The BRD and RDM said they weren't up for fighting them at all.

With this setup, even with mediocre DD/a not meleeing COR you can pull 20-30k/hr easily. No real reason to not pull Wivre though with that much support. It's obnoxious to have to do healing waltz, but eh. They're pretty squishy.

Sorry lol, i forgot to specify why we didn't pull the Wivre. I edited it in right before you posted, however. The RDM was mainly having MP trouble.. Idk how considering they had ballad, refresh, and evokers... Buuuuut they did.

(Gave up on my nap btw >.> Keep getting distracted by my PS3 and the forums. Gonna AFK for a bit though.)
By the way, Nin, if you feel like meritting sometime when I'm on let me know lol. I'll most likely be the lolbrd D: Usually am :(
Btw, you should PM me your Dancing Edge build :o

Check your PMs g'dammit Ninian :( I want to get to bed but cannot sleep until this is resolved!!

And yah, common knowledge although it may be to a lot of people, Duvessa did do some good in posting it here. Hopefully more people will come to accept that DNC is a good job.

People have a hard time accepting the newer jobs because they dont have a defining role like the first jobs. Since they cant doing X as good as Y but can do Z better then Y, they think it sucks.

Really? I feel sometimes voke is the only reason I get invites on WAR.

It really is too bad that there are so few DNC's I've met with halfway decent gear (too much cobra><) and merited Haste samba.

@Duvessa:

DNC's TP is best spent being a cure-***. Have your SAM's /WAR, etc, ride Hasso and let them die. Well. Figuratively, you should keep them not-dying realistically.

Thorny needs a metric ***-load of merits and I'm his curebitch, and we ALWAYS need a BRD, so I'll look you up.

I'll go post my DE/Kleos builds on my page, but they both suck because I essentially never use WSes because I party with insane DDs.

@Raen:

You have a good eye for fanart! D: Fire Emblem FTW.

5 Hit Pole SAM loses 1 Haste over 6 hit :|

I pm'ed you what i use for my dancer's DE's... It's not great but it puts me in the 1100+ club for my average WS on the parse charts. I refuse to heal in merit pt's as DNC, cuz I'd just play RDM if i wanted to do that. I do understand how it's useful, though. But damned if I'm not gonna use the hell out of my 5/5 saber dance merits, which render healing impossible lol.

The way i look at it is... If your RDM or WHM/SCH can't heal on their own with BRD, COR, Sanction, and Refresh Gear... Then they should be replaced immediately. Thus freeing the DNC up to spam their yummy dagger WS's :D

Cheers :O I know my cats!

Wouldn't Tomoe be a better polearm?

Idk, you sacrifice 3 attack and 3 DMG for 5 acc. I'd personally take Leviathan's Couse over it. Make up that acc elsewhere.
Tomoe
Leviathan's Couse

Added Item tabs for mouse-over comparisons :3
War can also use Levi's, which makes it that much cooler. I only have Engetsuto +1 for my war, sadly ; ;