The Last Dance: Gearing Paradigms For A New Age

Number of times I have wanted reduced Waltz recast while using Fan Dance: 0

The JA dramatically reduces the damage you take and is primarily useful in situations where you are blink tanking and get reamed by something. The whole point of using the JAs is so that you won't require multiple quick cures precisely because you used the JA.

It was a dumb idea on SE's part and it was designed to be a band-aid on high Tier waltzes (hence the % reduction) but it doesn't really help us in a support situation because it loses Samba and doesn't really help us in a solo situation because of the above paragraph.

Because the amount of use and the amount of benefit from having 5/5 Fan Dance is minimal at best.

It really comes down to personal preference, and how much you use it.

I use 4/5 Saber, 5/5 NFR, and 1/5 Fan, and I have no difficulty handling links in Dynamis DC's (the place where I use FD the most, ie once or twice a run at the most).

yeah well that ship sailed when i decided to make kannagi :(


But you have a mule! One you presumably bring to any event where such an enhancement would be useful. I mean, it's great that you do and it doesn't invalidate your opinion, but has it occurred to you that multiple accounts might have something to do with why you seem to consider this alien?


Well, it's dramatically MORE useful when you're blink-tanking, but I've found it's primary useful as a replacement for a PDT set in any situation where sitting in a PDT set (as opposed to swapping one in for a TP move or whatever) would seem like a good idea.

Fan Dance is to dancers what Apoc is to drks.


I agree 100%, but that doesn't make it worse than Closed Position.

I was probably a little strong on the Anwig, but it's still useful nonetheless and doesn't really compete with anything (except for BST, I guess).

I'd certainly no longer call SD merits mandatory, but I still would call them more beneficial on average than Fan Dance merits. As it stands, with Anwig Salade while solo, I can already almost waltz faster than TP gain allows for and I don't use Fan Dance very often. It seems that most Dancers either use Fan Dance as a crutch (and are generally just bad) or barely use it at all, so I personally would not advocate meriting it past 1/5. Your mileage may vary, however. Moving forward to slightly stronger content (Salvage v.2, meebles) things are hitting harder and more accurately so Closed Position is certainly an option as well. If anything, the obsolescence of Etoile +2 made G2 merits a giant gray area.

My personal experience in Dynamis is that I don't have much trouble sticking to 2 mobs at once, unless I have a healer in which case I act the fool just because I can. If I thought I were going to be dealing with crowds regularly solo, I'd probably go BLU. But that tends to be the case with DNC - anything DNC can do, someone else can do better.

Except skillchain. We've got that ***in the bag. Too bad no one cares.

This is the biggest point of contention here, I think; it absolutely does NOT matter how much you use it, so long as the situations where you do are important enough to justify it.

They may not be, or it might not make enough of a difference to be worth the points when compared with other options, but those are different questions.

Meanwhile, why 4/5 SD? Is that, in your view, better than 1/5 SD, 3/5 CP? Willing to bet it's inertia!

The situations where I use it aren't worth the extra merits, 1/5 is enough.

Because I would rather have an extra 18 seconds of Haste Samba (which saves TP and time), than 9 acc/eva when I am capped acc/eva on most content I would bring DNC to anyways.

I've had a look through the last ten or so pages without much luck. Might I inquire for some Weapon Skill sets for Exenterator? I am trying to take my Dancer up a gear and my Exenterator set is pretty terrible to be honest. I usually use Evisceration when I have one of the Crit+ or Two/Threefold Flourishes ready (correct me if I'm wrong in doing so of course!)

I love this job and I want a good reason to play it as often as possible. Great guide!

If thats the case, why dont wars 5/5 tomahawk? I mean thats useful every blue moon.

because they're bad

Fan Dance merits and Tomahawk merits are really entirely different creatures.

WS sets on page 88! I didn't really provide multiple tiers of Exenterator like I did the other WS because it's comparatively so easy to gear, but I'll entertain any questions about substitutions as needed :)

I swear I looked at every damn page! No idea how I missed those. I'll take a look through, thanks!

Thaumas this, Thaumas that... Time to get off my lazy butt and do some Neo Nyzul. Or aim higher and make a kickass Evisceration set. Or both.

I love having so much to do!

The only question of substitutes I would have would be for the Thaumas. What would be good choices until I pick those three (Head, Legs, Feet) up?

There's always the super duper budget exenterator set I posted ages ago!

Even my current set is better than that, so you made me feel a little better already!

Here, "blue moon" is defined as "every time you go to Legion or fight BRex, for starters."

Does this guy actually think WC is a better merit choice than Tomahawk?

lol

Again, 5/5 FD might not be all that good, but that's a question that has nothing to do with how much time you actually spend in Fan Dance.

(man who cares about mighty strikes; you can only use it once an event!)

To reiterate, the most obvious function of FD is indeed an oh ***button, but it also has the potential to be used in the same way as Apoc is used for DRK. Apoc's main draw is the healing on Cata, sure, but that alone wouldn't justify it; it also gives an aftermath that allows you to still cap haste/keep your hit build while sitting in heavy PDT, which, wouldn't you know it, is really useful in all the situations where Cata's healing is helpful enough to want to use Apoc to begin with.

Saying you'd rather sit in a PDT set and keep Haste Samba* than use FD and keep all your gear haste/offensive stats is crazypants.

*provided you aren't running support, in which case you probably don't need fan dance anyway

You realize that the 20% PDT given by Fan Dance is equivalent to using Twilight Torque, Mollusca Mantle, and 2 mediocre Dark Rings or a single D-ring, yeah?

I would certainly rather have 10% JA Haste than the gear that normally exists in those slots.

And the heightened PDT that comes before it's floored counts for nothing?

EDIT: moreover, why not use both?

I'm this particular discussion, yes because you get it at 1/5 too.

I guess for me it's a bit different because I basically use my DNC mainly as a healer/proccer in Dynamis (I'm sure you guys would choke me for how I play DNC, in my defense i suck at two boxing though), but I've run into a few situations where i might've used Fan Dance for a reduced waltz timer if it was actually a useful amount because the cures wern't coming fast enough while being swarmed by 4 enemies at once. Depends on my luck with evades and whatnot.

I do think it shouldn't kill samba though. I think instead of barring sambas, if they wanted it to be sort of a tanking/healing centered stance, it would've made more sense to me for it to bar weapon skills because you're spending your TP on heals anyway.

That's true, but my thinking is that if you are using Fan Dance at 5/5 to lean on a 15 second Waltz V with anwig, you'd still have enough TP to WS anyhow. Having multiple mobs on you doesn't you're keeping multiple mobs on you in perpetuity.

If you are in enough danger to force you to use Fan Dance, waltz3 will be better at keeping you alive. If you can get by with waltz5, you probably didn't need to use Fan Dance.

That would be true in a situation where Waltz V is a 23 second cooldown, but might not hold for 15.

Couldn't say from my own experience. I'd agree that a 6-second Waltz III is probably unnecessary (or at least unsustainable), but at the very least you get the opportunity to drop anwig and use etoile +2 (or khepri, for you lucky ducks) in that scenario.

Waltz Stuff

Waltz 3 is what you spam for keeping someone alive for more than just one burst heal.

Yeah, but this tangent is about whether it's viable to WS something while you're turtled in FD, which 5/5 would (maybe) help with.

Obviously if you're completely turtled HP/time is going to be better than HP/TP, but even then the HP/TP is not irrelevant, so changing up your hat helps.

I'll update that page with Fan Dance 5/5 numbers in a sec. Preliminarily I'm betting that having Fan Dance 5/5 makes CW4/5 better HP/time and HP/TP than Curing Waltz III.

I use Khepri (Etoile +2) with CW 4/5 already.