The Last Dance: Gearing Paradigms For A New Age

You don't get it. If you actually play like a DD your DPS will ***all over lolRag and MNKs now.

Yep, I was pretty damn happy with my 4/5 Saber Dance merits last night. Neck and neck with Ryuno DRG going all out. DNC is reeeeealy fun now.

Fan Dance is for emergencies, solo, and holding mobs. It is nice to have the tool though, it's like a PDT set macro on steroids. I did some Incursion last night mostly for CP farming and was going all out DD with Saber up, but we did an NM per run too and I made some use of Fan Dance (held NM while group killed adds) and stacked a couple lv10 steps... all while still doing solid damage.

Question on the legs conversation last page: Horos Tights +1 maybe competing for best in slot TP legs w/ Saber up if you have enough Saber merits? I was getting pretty good results even before update with 4/5 Saber, and the DA helps even more now. Been using STR Quiahuiz (Saber down) / Horos+1 (Saber up) but now working on tweaking things in this new world.

Sometimes I need better healers to play it more 'DD mode', I get punished brutally or sometimes die trying to ride sabredance.
How anyone is surviving multihits damage from things like cdc (AAs), merciless mauling, predator claws,etc without already being in fandance is beyond me.

I worked really hard to get into HT BC's, etc on DNC long before they buffed rudras.
The only way I got invited to stuff before was because I played it more defensive/tanky 'ok she can come dnc cause she's a really hard to kill if things go wrong/someone else dies or dc's, and she has a terpsi'

Now that we can do more damage, okay I can probably back off from that defensive style - my entire rep for being useful in endgame was utility/tankyness in a pinch before (because they sure werent bringing me as top shelf DD) - so i'm sorry if i'm a bit hesitant to go all 'dagger samurai' and go full DD.

Has anyone gotten /SAM to work well as a dd sub? I kinda like it over /war for sekka/meditate but I dont have too much practice with it.
Building 3k tp -> sekka and then rudra->climactic->rudra might be a good thing now.

Considering how strong Rudra is now, I'd be curious if /THF has any merit too due to SA+Rudra TA+Rudra. That would fill the gap nicely in between Climactic timers.

Not that I've tried it yet, I've been sticking to /WAR and have a feeling that's probably gonna remain best.

I wouldn't think that 2 abilities on 5/3 minute recasts and 15 stp would out perform the... 3? 4? duration buffs plus DA, atk bonus, hp bonus, def donus traits from war.

Have not seen it posted yet. How is rudras storm working out on Dnc after the update.

It's the ultimate stupid.

/edit: But to be fair, Pyrrhic Kleos seems to be on par or better at 1000 TP, even for non-Derps. 9.75 fTP + 1.95 fTP for each extra attack against Rudra's 7.0 fTP (9.25 fTP with Moonshade Earring). The latter gains 0.9 fTP per 100 TP though, up to 2000 TP (1750 with Moonshade Earring), so it bests Pyrrhic Kleos pretty early on for non-Derps.

So...with the ws update is meriting Sabre Dance instead of Closed Position is better? Or still pending? Just asking if I need to update.

I think they're still kind of situational. Meriting Sabre Dance gives you a full-time benefit of not having to pause for sambas as much, and meriting Closed Position gives you the situational benefit of 15 bonus accuracy if you so choose to get in front of the mob (sometimes you just can't). Assuming we're talking about DPSing, I think Closed Position lost some of it's appeal with the A+ dagger skill increase because DNC is less accuracy needy now, but if you need accuracy, and can go toe to toe, then it's a different story.

The main benefit of Closed Position right now is the additional store TP from Horos shoes.

It's not relevant to the Rudra's part of your question, but I did compare /SAM and /WAR after the update at Bivouac #2 in Marjami Ravine for about 10 minutes of non-stop killing, using Eviscerate at 1000% TP; /SAM came out around 80dps lower. Eviscerate just hits so much harder with Berserk up. I would expect that 3000% TP Rudra's would be similar.

I forgot that Horos STP was per merit level. I've played around with removing Horos shoes (fully merited) since the update, but it's probably still situational, especially since I did it using Eviscerate and ele belt/gorget.

Longwinded post relating to this and farming:
dyna+salvage farming dnc get nice benefit out of closed position because its 'always on'. For salvage well yeah you can sabredance all the things, but the content is trivial.

Sabredancing at 1/5 versus 5/5 doesnt significantly change dyna currency yield (sabredance in general can be too much extra white damage before stuff procs, you have to click it off to waltz semi-often so you dont always have it up,etc).

Sabre *is* still useful for farming, for someone farming the question is whether 1/5 or 5/5 helps your farming yield - I say it doesnt matter.
There's usually a handful of times per farm session I just kill something, have no tp, I step on new monster, and get a stagger. OK so now yes pop sabredance if it wasnt up, get to 1350tp -> samba -> ws it dead and move to next and ride sabre till you gotta heal, maybe turn away or switch to diff monster and juggle multiples while you are ultimately JA stagger bound.


I farm like 450 dyna money (not counting 100pieces from whiteprocs) with these merits:
1 sabre
1 fan
3 NFR
5 Closed

I've used for hundreds of farm runs (yes i've spent far too much of my life farming dyna to bankroll my RMEs).

Dynamis playstyle is heavy with tp expenditure for step, JA delay, and overkill damage is especially easy now. For farming you just need strong tp set with good white damage and no competition to do well.

Dyna is about shrinking the window between proc, making the target dead and getting close enough to the next one and getting a JA on it to repeat the cycle of JA->stagger->kill. The best estimator on spreadsheet for this is tp phase white damage and time to 1k tp.
ws damage in dps calculation should really be completely removed since anyone can oneshot dynamis stuff with this ws update.


For no solo farm serious things like HT battlefield, you can either pull enough hate or stand in front like SAM has to for overwhelm bonus so can almost always leverage the closed position bonus.

Also interesting data for farming dancer in dynamis cause I think about this way too much.

In 2hrs being in dyna:

Average 1hr 25minutes of engagement time fighting stuff.
25% of your time is spent moving between TE hunting+monsters+camps,sheathing/unsheathing weapon.

Average 1.5M total damage dealt , roughly 35% of that will be WS damage with a good portion of it being overkill damage.
You will also only WS about 90-100 times per session but kill more than double that number of monsters so polishing your tp phase white damage+tp gain time set matters more than your ws set.

Also crit average is 30%, and with 65%+ of your damage coming from white damage, OaT atoyac with crit hit rate +4 is imo a dyna farmers best friend when it comes to dagger options.

Also don't evaluate the usefulness of pyrrhic damage post update by looking at the damage it does on dyna monsters, most monster dont survive all the multihits so the damage will be low.
If you use rudras you will obviously see better numbers and a higher average because its all stacked in the 1st hit.

Especially for content that's trivial, do you really think you're getting much out of CP even when it's always on?

You don't need the accuracy, you don't need the evasion, and Store TP (via Horos shoes) on a dagger job is way less appealing than a high delay 2hander/ranger. The difference between a 6-hit and 5-hit? Important. Difference between a 17-hit and a 16-hit? Practically meaningless, particularly when you're using as much multiattack/OAT as your typical DNC will use (this overrating of Store TP may not show up too well in spreadsheets assuming WS instantly at 1000tp). And if you're in Dyna, you can't even WS at 1000tp frequently if you're trying to proc.

I don't even use Horos+1 shoes, I generally go with Qaaxo. Usually path A for DA+2 which I find way more useful on low acc required mobs than Store TP. Sometimes Path B when I need heavy Acc (along with PDT-3% that's often quite useful on that kind of difficult content).

Horos +1: STR+12 DEX+24 Accuracy+13 Evasion+85 "Store TP"+5 (plus additional Store TP +3 per CP merit level)

Qaaxo A: STR+9 DEX+21 Attack +15 Accuracy+5 Evasion+92 "Store TP"+3 Double Attack+2%

Qaaxo B: STR+16 DEX+21 Accuracy+20 Evasion+77 "Store TP"+3 PDT-3%

Basically, I favor DA & Saber Dance over Store TP & Closed Position on DNC.

I have 4/5 Saber (seriously considering 5/5 now) and ride it as much as I can. With DNC working so well as a DD-focused job post-update, that looks to be more often than ever. I don't even bother with Waltzes solo for the most part, can rely on trusts where you can use them, or the occasional Drain Samba III or drop Saber and toss a waltz when truly solo (Dyna, Salvage, etc.)

I don't bother with CP because I don't think the Acc (and STP from shoes) is that necessary. We're A+ skill, Acc Bonus III trait (+35), have Quickstep and lots of acc gear... I really don't get CP in today's FFXI.

[EDIT: I'm also not really focused on Dyna farming, so please don't take this as a discussion about that kind of content. While I get that you say Saber is sometimes counterproductive because it makes you kill too fast before proc, that's a Dyna-specific concern and I'm really talking about more current content - CP farm, Incursion, Delve, high tier fights, as yet unreleased stuff... Besides, if I was really focusing on Dyna/Salvage farming, I'd be on THF anyway for TH8 and not DNC.]

+stp gear when you are solo in dyna/salvage (not loltrust solo) 'buys back' the tp loss per hit from the crazy amounts of dual wield gear you wear in a solo tp set (which would be +30 dual wield on my case).

you can 'lol x hit dagger build' but the point of my post when I was discussing it in a true solo dyna farming context is being overlooked I think. Let me try to explain it differently.

Without cp merits in a non SoA zone (dynamis in this case) horos shoes+1 with 5/5 cp in the itemset below give a atoyac or terpsichore 57tp/hit (200 and 205 delay dagger).
If you just use qaaxo instead you get 49tp/hit.
57 versus 49tp, what's the big deal right?

A step costs 100tp, so 1 combat round (1 mainhand 1 offhand hit) will allow a CP merited dancer with horos shoes+1 enough tp to step in a single combat round, that's without OaT/DA/TA/QA going off.
ItemSet 331545
Atoyac is OaT with +4crit hit rate
legs have +2haste augment
Cape is 3stp 5DW +16RF

Given that steps are on 5 second delay and JA delay and the stalling effect it has on your tp gain over time, being able to only need to hit twice instead of thrice before you step/flourish has a pretty significant effect on dynamis tp gain over time and general farming efficiency.

Also in the case of my tp set and whether CP+Horos shoes are worth it, its actually a difference of an 18 hit versus 21 hit dagger build if you are purely racing to 1k tp to ws. One can theoretically ws 14% sooner with 5/5 CP+horos shoes and if you want to remeasure it in rough combat rounds, it comes out to about 1 combat round sooner.

And even if you want to backpedal and make this only about hard content, the closed position effect on ws frequency is significant.

It's clear you've thought about optimizing DNC for Dyna, which is cool. But totally irrelevant for me since I have THF and will always prefer the TH8 for low end farming activities.

So to talk about harder content and value of Store TP, let me ask this... how often are you really WSing at 1000tp on DNC without going a hit or two over?

For me, it's not that often because of a multitude of factors that all work together: capped delay reduction, low delay weapons, tons of multihit, Reverse Flourish, intentionally waiting to time a SC, occasional server lag, and simply lots of other stuff to do (my alliance that's all benefiting from steps doesn't particularly care if it gives me a little JA delay, it's a worthwhile tradeoff). I'm honestly skeptical that just from the nature of the job I can really take advantage of shaving a couple hits off an x-hit build that's still in the upper teens (i.e. for a DW job, sometimes you will shave off 1 attack round). Spreadsheets might tell me it's better, but that's not accounting for the inability to actually WS the instant I have TP available.

The cost to me of going 5/5 CP would be reducing Saber merits, which I don't want to do. I think it comes down in part to reconsidering whether it's viable to ride Saber much more often now, and take advantage of the also very hefty Enhances: Saber Dance buff on Horos legs (DA+1% per merit). Maybe it's just a question of style.

Everyone overflows, so if I have more stp vs qaaxo i'm hitting my ws macro more often just because i'm getting to/past 1k Tp per hour of RL time.


I never said CP beats sabre and that was never my intention just to be clear.
I was trying to mainly point out a few positives a CP build brings and the mix of mathing it out and personal experience makes me vouch for their usefulness paired with Horos shoes +1. If you scroll waay back in the thread horos shoes were spreadsheet'd out to be 'worth it' if you had at least 3/5 CP and more than that made them even better.

I have 1/5 sabre (and everyone should at least have that) so its really a matter of do you value your +4%DA from 5/5 sabre and lock yourself into using those pants, and wear whatever shoes you want, or stick with horos shoes and go all in with 5/5 CP.
I also have a terpsichore so getting back to 3k tp to maintain AM3 is a significant thing that I also weighed in my assesment. As much as I love multiattack, there is something to be said for the reliability of +stp versus the streakness of multiattack to get you to your tp goal. I have like every dancer shoe at my disposal and I keep coming back to horos+1 for my tp builds.

There is a multiattack+stp build sweetspot where with max buffs you spam ws so fast you start easily skillchaining with yourself just spamming rudras, and also your ws frequency starts making more accidental skillchains with the other people ws spamming and I think both CP and Sabredance builds reach that spot.

I would like to ask for advice regarding this job. I do not play it, however my dad does, and I tend to help him out with his gearsets because he isn't good at making them.

The most important thing I would like to ask is whether Rudra's Storm is the best WS now for DNC (non-mythic), and if anyone had an up-to-date set for it? I have looked through itemsets but can't find any recent ones. His DNC isn't amazing, but I would say it is decent. He is still working on a number of gears for it when he can, and it would be cool if someone could post a rudra's storm set to aim for. Providing alternatives would be awesome as well, I don't expect him to have the best of the best.

Thanks for any tips.

If climactic flourish is available so you can force the critical, this is all you really need to push out a 25k+ rudra at ~3k Tp
ItemSet 331553
+dex aug on wkr hands.
this is easily attainable by most and is not 'ultimate tier', sidegrade options are numerous and free/cheap.
If he doesnt have mani A15 legs, maxixi+1 legs are good especially if you are closing on another dnc or thf rudras since they have "Skillchain bonus" +12 on them.

Since sc damage is super huge now (my record is 72k double darkness atm) I should probably fulltime switchover to maxixi+1 myself.

Disclaimer: since ftp for rudra is fTP 6.0 / 15 / 19.5 now, it has called into question ele belt and gorget use.
I dont have updated spreadsheet yet. With that in mind, belt and neck options may change and its something the THF thread is still figuring out too.

The THF thread seems to be highly suggesting stacking the absolute crap out of DEX in every slot. I'm no good at WS calculations, so I'm not sure, but how would Dread Jupon fit in the body Rudra's? High DEX and 2 DA. Also, in what situations would Ramuh +1 beat Rajas?

Thanks for this. I will let him know.

Additionally DA/TA isn't likely to do as much as more +dex or prisilio +1

I'm finding that using Striking Flourish (with charis +2 body) every 30s is working better than Climactic (90s) in terms of overall damage, it does about 25% less damage on the actual number but the fact you can use it more often seems to compensate

I've had bad luck getting a jupon to drop, if I had it i'd use that for a ws body.
Statwise its a better str/dex ws body option and an upgrade beyond the casual tier reforge body.

When you have a +27str +37dex body and you are worried about dropping 5str to get 4 more dex on a finger slot, it comes across as a cointoss/situational.
Yes the ws is 80%dex mod and yes still go for dex.

Best thing for most people is to optimize main gear slots +str +dex before fussing over rings and earrings.
Personally I dont have a ramuh+1 ring and I wont spend that kinda money on it because my damage is already crazy with a rajas+eponas.

For belt slot, noone does provenance anymore and I always hate recommending gear that some people might not have, but for str+dex stacking its another belt option to consider.

I have a dawn earring in my own ws set, its kinda hard to come by, but its another option instead of brutal which yeah is just adding extra strikes and saving you from not whiffing entirely like 1 out 300+ ws's. I've had 2 complete whiffs since the update and I play alot.

They're most likely right. Belt + gorget at best is a 6.2/6.0 = 1.0333 = 3.33% increase in damage, which does not account for Moonshade Earring. Doing that, it's +2.42% at best and getting significantly worse with higher fTP values.

I don't remember how much DEX I have on DNC, but my THF alt has 281 DEX during Rudra's Storm before neck + waist.


Under the worst possible circumstances for that setup, the combination of neck + waist has to provide 15 DEX or more to be better than elemental belt + elemental gorget. That is something along the lines of Moepapa Medal + Artful Belt +1.

(Wanion Belt is worse in this case, because we assume capped fSTR already. Given uncapped fSTR, Wanion Belt will pull ahead by a small margin.)

tl;dr: Going apeshit with DEX gear is more worthwhile than gorget/belt.


Better than Maxixi +1. But Sapphire stated that her set was not "ultimate tier".


In all.

/edit: Hrm. The spoiler tag doesn't work?

I'd like to know if Charis Tiara +2 under effect of Climactic Flourish can really stand up to Horos Tiara +1 with its STR 23 / DEX 27. Seems to me that both STR and DEX from the head piece represent more than 20% of their respective totals, 20% that should be supposed to be covered by Charis +2.

Charis Tiara +2 kicks every other option's *** for Rudra's.

PS. 16 second T2 Dynamis NM fights:


I got my time down to 10 seconds on later NMs, but didn't screenshot them. There was not a single NM that didn't die to CF Rudra's -> Rudra's, and two of them didn't even live for the second Rudra's skillchain.