The Last Dance II: The Show Must Go On

Assuming you can only afford/obtain the NQ cursed pieces, do you think that abjuration armor list remains the same for NQ (i.e. is NQ is still BiS over anything but the +1 pieces)?


Seconding the above list as pretty good advice, Empy head/hands are clearly the standouts (head for Climactic, hands for Rev. Flourish and also a solid WS piece).

I'd add a few points:

- Horos feet are less appealing the less you actually stand face-to-face with mobs for the Closed Position Store TP bonus. More often, I've been going back to Taeon Boots for most situations I currently find myself in on DNC, and if you have Adhemar/+1 feet those are probably also a better option in many situations. IIRC, Byrth mentioned Maculele Toeshoes +1 as another contender if you don't need a lot of accuracy (personally, I'm more comfortable with some more accuracy most of the time).

- Maculele+1 body is probably worth making, given the fairly low cost of materials (Dark Matter) and utility in low buffed situations, assuming you don't have Adhemar.

- I also really like having Horos +1 body for Violent Flourish, and for that alone it's arguably worth bumping up to the highest priority tier.

Given that the Vagary event crashed most markets, now is a better time more than ever to splurge and get the 119 af3 head!

It's also a good -PDT piece and I use mine fairly frequently, but I reiterate this is what I'd call the absolute bare minimum.

It's not as good as Emet+1 from a PDT- perspective though, so YMMV. That being said, nice hybrid piece with PDT/Acc/Atk and I never hate on Resist Amnesia! I used to basically fulltime this piece back in my heavy Incursion days.

Totally on board with your comments in general though, with the exception of maybe giving a little more value to Horos Casaque +1 solely for stun purposes, and a little less value to Horos Toeshoes +1 due to evolving metagame (not standing face to face with mobs).

But, I mean, yeah... I'm 15/15 on JSE 119 gear. Get it if you can! Any pieces you use for Curing Waltz are also improved by going from 109 to 119 by virtue of the significantly higher attribute stats. But like you said, you were talking about the minimum "must have" requirements.

If the people last page are still reading, this is pretty much where my head's at, too, wrt the 109 pieces other than AF1 head (which is just there for sambas). Going to 119 isn't awful these days, so it's probably worth doing for any piece I mentioned except for AF2 legs, which again is really just there for Jigs.

The 119s I picked are obviously there for the base stat bonuses; the AF2 feet, as you say, are (arguably waning?) TP gear, so all the stats are key, and so much of your damage potential on DNC comes down to closing skillchains with CF Rudra's that AF3 head and hands are "necessary" (as in, very much worth it) to 119 for the extra DEX alone.

Thanks for the input everyone, very helpful. I used my one and only Chloris Bud on the head and it pains me to think I need more!

Chloris Buds aren't nearly as hard to get as they used to be. Sure, the NMs to pop Chloris are all over the map, but Chloris himself dies in about a minute, I solo him often with no issue.

Revisited my DNC a bit this week for some soloing. There's a ton of new, powerful gear that makes me miss the job. And playing with the spreadsheet, DNC is still capable of a vast amount of melee dps, blowing past all other options under ideal conditions with ideal gear. I'm surprised that I see almost no one playing the job "seriously". It's maybe a function of having worse skillchain options?


Yeah, with the enmity changes, for "real" stuff, we are a lot less likely to be standing in front of a mob. I think Horos feet are still worth making, because when you can take advantage, they are fantastic.

Anyone have the augment values of Enchufla?

Wiki just has
A: ATK
B: ACC
C: SUBTLE BLOW
D: EVA

Stolen from https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Nolan#Escha_-_Ru.27Aun

Personally, it's a combination of lack of feasibility for melees at CL 135+ and simplicity of other jobs. The only times I go DNC myself:

a) Something dies in 5-step double Darkness or some set-up huge double Darkness.
b) Sinister Reign, unless I'm better off 2-boxing BRD + GEO/BLM.

For anything else that is supposed to be abused physically, I found that hitting a CDC macro whenever I hit 1k+ TP just works, too, and since I don't do Slavage on DNC, I often am too lazy to change to that job. Plus there's even less motivation to change, because I don't even get Capacity Points on DNC anymore.

SC-wise, it's not that horribad; you can always trick people into closing Darkness for you to close big, fat double Darkness. Ideally, you'd coordinate with the other DD etc., but who am I kidding.

Also, most things CL 135+ are borderline melee-hating, so I'm found on other, more suitable jobs for those. BRD, SCH, GEO, even RNG.

D'oh, thanks lol. Which path is recommended? Have one of them lying around that I'd like for situational use.

Was thinking DEX+15 for Rudra's/PK?

I'd play my DNC in all 130+ content if I could. It can keep up with BLU pretty well. It's an amazingly fun class for SR and performs great there.

But in regards to the new escha content I've yet to see anything other than manaburns for t2+ (especially for the new gods content) and my group is not any different considering with a 1200 jp BLM and a SCH you can nearly oneshot anything other than Kirin.

My totally and completely uneducated first pick would be A or B, depending on if you are facing accuracy issues with what you're doing. (You usually don't though, I suppose.)

I just put another few thoughts into this and chances are C indeed is the best all-round dagger, being both useful for Evisceration spam and CF Rudra's shenanigans.


I'm more inclined to say "BLU can keep up pretty well with DNC", but that's nitpicking.

T2 can be melee'd very feasibly; Yilan might be a bit annoying with Chilling Roar, but the real cockblock happens when stuff like Vir'ava just says "*** off" to something around 1750 effective accuracy.

I made a C and it's not bad, I occasionally use it and one Taming Sari (I have one pretty good and one trash aug Sari) in situations where I can use the DW and care about waltz recast. Prob the best choice of the augment bunch - the DEX gives same amount of Acc as the straight accuracy augment on B path, and the added crit rate and WS mod is more valuable than STR for DNC. Shame about the third aug being Subtle Blow, but eh... can't have everything.

If I ever get two good Sari, I doubt I'd pull it out much. But eh, I was fine dropping the 3x lixir+2 on a toy. Does let you play around with stuff like less than capped magical haste setups (use different trusts, like Robel-Akbel who loves to MB your self-Darkness SCs), or different DW gear setups to hit cap and swap out other DW pieces, not use Haste Samba, etc.

DNC is great at being a melee DPS and dagger is one of the few weapons that has powerful SC choices in all T2 categories, unfortunately DNC doesn't get a Fusion option. Not a big deal since PK is pretty boss, esp with a mythic. It suffers from the same problem as BLU, it takes a lot of skill and knowledge to play properly. It can't be bandwagoned, as all those noob BLU's are about to find out, like MNK, DRK, SAM or BST.

And yeah everything CL135+ absolutely hates melee's. Ridiculous evasion means you need every buff in the game just to hit the damn thing, ridiculous status ailments and TP moves means you need Vex + Attunment and a dedicated WHM just to survive being near it. SE really *** up the upper end of this game.

I would go as far to say DNC has a higher skillcap too, knowing how to use your steps properly to minimize autoattack losses given the tempo of the fight is something I'm still mastering after playing it for a long time.

BLU has devolved into 1k tp CDCs and maintaining buffs, which works incredibly well for all the content its brought to.

Ehh it's far more complicated then that. DNC is about which JA to use when, BLU is about which JT's to set. Your limited in set points and the more potent utility / support spells cut into JT selection. What is optimal in one situation won't be optimal in another, and your gear must compliment your JT selection which must compliment the buffs your getting and food your using. Some fights require more defensive options like MDB, Saline Coat, Cocoon, Barrier Tusk or Occulation while others don't. You need to chose between a powerful self heal like Restoral, that can do 1600 HP but costs 7 points and only targets yourself vs M.Fruit which can heal 600~800 costs 3 points but can target anyone in your party. You also have White Wind which costs 4 points and heals everyone you based on your max HP, but is very slow and MP expensive to cast. Then you gotta chose if you need aoe erase from Wings, which is 5 points. Then we get into if a crowd control ability is needed or not, MAB or whatever.

So a good 70% of the job is preparation and understanding game mechanics well enough to make extremely situational choices. Once made they are difficult to change mid-fight.

I can always spot noob BLU's because they blindly follow a guide without actually understanding what each of those components do and then fail to adapt to the specific situation at hand.

Just spamming CDC @1K won't get you very far if you don't know the mechanics behind all this. Similar to a DNC spamming Evis/Pk/RS @1K while keeping buffs up.

Which is why you always see either epic BLU / DNC's or utterly crap ones, rarely something in between. Anyhow I'm not trying to screw with you guy's thread, just mentioning that as powerful as DNC is, it's not used because it has a high skill vs power curve and upper ended content isn't melee friendly.

I totally agree with you if we're talking about any of the Escha T1/2 NMs.

I would say in SR it's about equipping your best buffs and hoping things are dead before MG expires.

But, in retrospect I would say it's the same for DNC in SR, it's hoping nobody interrupts your 3 step and that's probably most of the boss' HP with proper buffs.

Question. What is the timing on double dark? Can't seem to get it to work.

Hrm. So I get it now, maaybe. Rudras-Rudras-Rudra's can't double dark ya? It has to be Evis-Phyrric-Rudras?

Its also not "shout groups" friendly... because of it needs coordination. When everyone is spamming their TP, it's easier to have just 1 dude doing SCs and an army of GO NUTS magic bursters...

But, given a well oiled team, and coordinated folks that knows what they are doing, then a lot more things become viable, and even good.

Evi -> PK -> RS & Evi -> RS -> RS are 2 major ones.

I consistently outparse everything regardless the coordination level on DNC. Of course I go BLM instead of DNC when the situation calls for it, but if it can be meleed at the moment, DNC is my weapon of choice.

Having two melee fighting something does make it more complicated, but you can still take advantage of their spam if you pay attention.


I hit a 19k pyrrhic kleos in SR last night. What is your high score, guys?

Absolutely agreed dancer and blue can't be bandwagoned but there are enough info out there for a dedicated player that will devote time into a job to read learn play and over time become good at a job.

Well, with CDC, if you use two melee, like BLU + BLU or BLU + SAM, you'll be making non-stop Light SCs. It doesn't require any coordination, and people can just use their WS at 1000 TP. So from that standpoint I think DNC could fare better. And yeah, doing stuff like Salvage, or cleaving JP/silt, or cleaving in Vagary, or whatever, BLU just brings a lot more to the tablet. Though dancer isn't a total slouch- Waltz is severely underrated and Steps are pretty handy, and if you're like me and still farm Dyna on occasion, DNC is a lot better than BLU there still.

And yeah, the little bit I've done of 135+, it's just not friendly to ANY melee. It's pretty much SCH SC paired with MBs, lol.


Skudo is right, seems to be the other way. I updated all of my dps spreadsheets and DNC is way ahead in something like a Unity zerg... something like 40% ahead of SAM and 30% ahead of BLU, with using ideal gear sets for all that leave nothing out. That doesn't include SC damage and is just PK spam with Terp, so it's a best-case scenario.

I'm doing a Terp next. This is never going to be nerfed, I think, because it's not exploited :D

That's the rub, both DNC abd BLU require a lot of time to master individual game mechanics. The good players that do all that crazy stuff took years to perfect their craft, it's not something that can be done in a month or two like the "flavor of the update" jobs. Byrth's DNC is an absolute monster that he's perfected over the years. Take a random bandwagon player, give him the same gear and GS file, and they would completely fail at it, even after a few months of practice.


Even SR goes back to that 70% preparation. There is no "best spells", there is a range of offensive and defense traits and buffs along with utility that must be selected ahead of time. Things like Glutenous Dart and Barrier Tusk, together they take up two slots and 5 points but give a very hefty HP Bonus along with BT being a -15% DT II effect. Just as an example. Oraen, the guy who's taken over from Proth doing the equipment, just discovered that an assumption he made reguarding JT's ended up with him recommending the wrong feet. DWIV + Crimson vs DWIII + Taeon. Little stuff like "how much DW should I set with my current equipment" vs how many tiers of accuracy bonus vs "should I drop a tier of trait X to equip magic evasion bonus" and so forth. And of course the ever present "do I really trust this WHM or should I bring my own emergency stuff". WoP of course gets set, unless that same WHM has yagrush, and even then I still set it. Optimizing your load out for each situation gets complicated fast, especially if you don't really know the group your with well. Going SSJ on stuff is fun, but it's rarely practical in today's game.

But assuming you preped correctly, then once it's game time you do indeed go into a spam CDC to chain lights while keeping your offensive and defensive buffs up. Seriously, Cocoon and BT save my *** all the time. When the PLD eats August's one WTFBBQ damage move, I turtle and hold until the PLD gets pulled back up and we continue on.

I have shamed famiry.

YOU ORAEN, NOT ORBEN!

17330. I have absolutely no accuracy buffs in our setup, so I'm somewhat surprised I hit that even.