The Last Dance II: The Show Must Go On

So if I get on the ambuscade grind this month, ignoring total hallmarks, what should I be spending all my hallmarks and gallantry on? as much dagger upgrade materials as I can?

Also the old community guide says this
"Thief is a very attractive option in endgame if you utilize Rudra Storm, this means you can potentially double the amount of forced critical Rudras Using Sneak Attack during these fights."

I think it could be outdated though, does this not hold true anymore?

Yes, as many weapon upgrade materials as you can. Get enough to at least get up to the Kaja (second-to-last) step, as you need another ultra-rare weapon to finish the last step and get Tauret (in addition to the last hallmark upgrade item). Unless you already have one of those weapons, you might be better off spending points this month on more of the +2 armor upgrade items than Abdhaljs Matter.

And that blurb doesn't reflect how people actually play DNC, no. Was possibly true when we were stuck at 5 FMs but it's not now.

What are FMs?

Also should I be upgrading my +0 armour when it will rotate out and a +1 version will be available on its own for hallmarks at some point.

Finishing Moves.

Don't upgrade +0 armor; you'll get +1 for free from total hallmarks. Save the mats to upgrade +1 to +2. Also, opinions on mercing vary and I don't know what your finances are like (probably not great?) but if people sell Intense Very Difficult clears for 6 million gil on your server like they do on Asura, that's probably the best 6 million gil you're likely to spend in a very long time. One V1VD clear with an Abdhaljs Seal will net you 10,800 hallmarks, which will put you reasonably close to a full set of +1 armor and your Kaja Dagger.

That's an incredible amount of hallmarks, I am on asura, so that could be an option, I think I have only about 60'000 gil at the moment, whats the best way for a fairly new player to grind gil?

When using steps my FM seeming cap out at 5 also?

Changle when finishing moves go over 5 you will see a + symbol next to the 5 for fininshing moves.

Not necessarily the best but an easy way to grind gil is farming sparks. 500 damage dealt and gain exp are fast and easy, great way to get merits that you still might need. Max sparks (99,999) is approximately 1M gil from selling acheron shields to an NPC vendor. You can also sell prize powders from the unity NPC, purchased with accolades, for approximately the same gil/currency ratio but that is a lot of clicking, like a lot.

The current Walk of Echoes Surge campaign is (extremely) random, but gives you a small chance to get extremely valuable items like Flume Belt +1 or Pixie Hairpin +1, and is public so you don't have to worry about clearing the whole thing yourself if other people are running it. Look for walks other players are running (11 is popular, for Flume Belt), go in, and hit things. You'll need to do this to unlock Rudra's Storm anyway.

Also, you're stuck at 5 FMs max because you haven't gained many (any?) Job Points yet. As you gain them, the cap goes up to 9.

I'll check this out tonight, thanks guys.

Another thing I would like to know, if there is a generic "rotation" for my skills I should be using, what takes priority etc?

I generally open by putting haste samba on an enemy, and then alternate between presto quickstep and regular quickstep.

If for some reason I run out of TP I use reverse flourish.

I'm aware everything is enemy specific, but are there any general things to follow?

Not sure if this is the best rotation but this is what I can think of:

Right after entering: NFR/Meditate (if you sub Sam)/reverse

- you may want to use offensive TP JA that has long recharge time while waiting for buffs so the cool down timer overlaps with buffing time.

Right before engage: presto/saber/haste
- you may want to use presto before engage to avoid losing dps mid fight. Saber/haste is the same but use them after presto since saber decays and you may not want to use saber too early.

Steps: right before a ws to reduce JA delay. Box step if you are in high lv content or under buffed, feather if you use evis. Quickstep is usually less useful if pt has proper setup.

If presto is up then probably presto > step > WS all in a combo.

CF/BF: same as steps, use ws boost JA right before WS.

Refresh saber: ideally done as soon as it's up again for max potency.

Reverse: use them if you try to connect multi step SC, otherwise spend them on Building if you ws spam I think? Not sure about this.

I think the key is to stack JA, use them right before ws and use them together as often as possible.

I may be doing wrong, so any advice are welcomed too.

Generally speaking you're going to get more mileage out of Box Step than Quickstep. The short explanation is that DNC has sky-high accuracy anyway, so if you're missing, you're probably gonna lose regardless.

Your basic rotation is fine, but there aren't too many situations where you shouldn't have either one of the Dances up. Usually you'll be using Saber Dance + Haste Samba and acting like any other DD. There will be times you'll want to turtle up with Fan Dance, but those are pretty subjective based on your own power (and using Fan Dance pretty much commits to tanking the mob until it's dead) so I'll leave that up to your discretion.

Just using Reverse is fine for now, but as you open up Job Point bonuses and unlock Rudra's Storm more options will be worth exploring. For now, unlock Pyrrhic Kleos or Rudra's Storm and get used to self-skillchaining either of those (Distortion) with Evisceration (Gravitation). The resulting Darkness skillchain is your bread and butter, and the stuff you'll be able to do later on basically expands on that principle: DNC is the second best skillchainer in the game after SAM, but needs to mix up its own weapon skills to do it.

You're Changle on Asura, right? I've been shooting the ***soloing Intense Easy Ambuscade this month (600 points a run) since I can handle it pretty easily and I'd be happy to drag you along for points and generally talk this out if I see you. Evenings this weekend should be fairly free for me if you want to PM me and schedule something.

Thank you very much, I would love that! It would be really helpful to be able to talk to a DNC player in real time, aswell as getting to do some ambuscade.

Yeah I am Changle on Asura too, I'm hoping to be on this weekend in the evenings, do you go by Schaevola on there too?

Minus the H, yes

How does this stack up in the R15 tier?
Terps gets a huge bump in base dmg +16(144)
4 less then a r15 Aeneas

These were done with R15.
Aeneas wasn't included in this comparison, there is no significant edge for Dancers to use it. (thats my own opinion though)

Where does the new ammo for Cait Sith fall in for DNC? Would it only replace Charis Feather when accuracy is needed? Thanks.

Unstacked Rudra's and Exenterator. Charis for Evisceration and stacked Rudra's Storm.

So it looks like I won 3rd prize for mog bonanza. Now my question is, how much better is Tauret over Kaja? Is it worth getting a pulse weapon as the prize over a Tartarus Mail? The armor would be purely cosmetic as I don’t play any of the jobs that could use it, besides maybe picking up drg at a later date.

I know I get a pulse weapon from heroics in 2 months (just came back during free login campaign) but I also still need to make a Naegling for blu.

You get a free pulse weapon next month!

So many damn kupons for bonanza jesus. I think that's your best choice value wise, tauret is pretty big upgrade from kaja.

Dusting off DNC and tidying up macros. I currently have a full row for most of the Waltzes since the DNC update but would like to simplify this. Was anyone able to successfully incorporate simon's code on page 72?

I was not sure where to insert the second bit of code.

Thank you!

I'm pretty sure I have brought this up in the past but cant exactly remember so forgive me if I am dredging up an old topic but does anyone know how Terp/Poly compares to Terp/Twash?

Also, is building flourish being used strictly for the wsd20 or are ppl putting merits into it? Thanks

I've never put merits into Building Flourish. the accuracy and crit rate are irrelevant and 5% attack is never going to be better than Reverse Flourish and Haste Samba.

Building Flourish Merits are nice for Tauret MH users!

I would think even Tauret MHers would rather have the TP overflow from Reverse Flourish merits.

I saw it claimed that Haste samba affects alliances similar to geomancy debuffs. If this is true, when and where was it tested?

Y'all posting in the old thread.

This way:
https://www.ffxiah.com/forum/topic/53853/the-last-dance-iii-a-dancers-guide-new/

Building DNC after years and years of sitting in Dust. (Dynamis Procs was the last time I used it seriously)

This job has come a long way and I find it incredibly fun and versatile.

Almost done with this SB set, which gives up very little in terms of DPS for capped SB. Thought I would share and of course would love any feedback.

ItemSet 373240

DNC 99 - 20 SB
Gifts - 13 SB
Setan (Path B) - 25 SBII
Adhemar Head (Path B) - 8 SB
Adhemar Hands (Path D) - 8 SB
Sherida - 5 SBII

If you aren't master you can sub in a Chirich+1 ring. You can make the same swap if you won't want to make a Adhemar Wrist Path D. When not in front Herc Feet can be used and Adhemar wrist path A or B swapped in.

Potential ACC swaps:

ItemSet 373245

You are going quite low on accuracy with that Cento (~1040) and I would guess you want SB build for something hard, so this could be a problem I guess?

Personally I would go for dignitary earring over Balder+1 and Malignance legs and head. This caps SB too, adds like 60 accuracy and also adds 13%DT, which let you use saber dance with less risk. I have a feeling you dont want to stop using that expensive earring tho :P

Noted!

I don't usually factor in ACC for base builds and toggle as needed. But yes the basics allow for tons of ACC adds without effecting SB.