The Last Dance III: A Dancer's Guide *New*

Being over DW has a negative affect on your TP gain correct?

Correct, reduces your TP/hit for no benefit

Dang I was hoping that reducing your TP did not have a cap, but it looks like it does...

It didnt used to loong loong ago iirc there was a minimum tp/hit so the meta was just using 2 super low delay daggers/katanas and just swinging fast, but once they re-adjusted tp based on delay i think that all went away, just wasnt really a factor to consider til further down the line where more gear/magic haste became available from level cap increases + higher dw/martial arts tiers

Yeah with ~65 total DW, and 362 total delay, I was getting 40 TP.
even with 300 total delay, it looks like it would be like 38 TP.

There isn't a hard floor of 40 (used to be 4) TP/hit anymore, but the lower TP region does still have higher TP/delay than the high TP region:
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Tactical_Points#Hitting_the_mob_for_more_than_0_damage

A fun little dancer build for everyone's consideration:

DNC/MNK

ItemSet 400131

There is a bit wiggle room on the gear, but this is pretty good.

The main idea is to keep Fan Dance and Counterstance up to complement each other. 80% counter mean's Fan dance's pdt does not decay so quickly. and Fan Dance helps mitigate the defense penalty of Counterstance. and how lovely it is that both can be kept up full time. I really didn't like the counter builds I could come up with from gear alone, but /mnk and counterstance solved those issues quite nicely.

with /mnk and counterstance up, that is 55% counter rate, and dnc has a few good options for capping it from gear.
You can put 10% counter on Senuna's mantle
10% counter from bathy choker +1
5% counter from corneilia's belt
6% counter from Horos Bangles +3/4
or 10% counter from Gleti's mask if you have it upgraded

With /mnk and counterstance you only need 25% counter from gear. so take your pick. and mix the rest of your tp gear or hybrid tp gear in the mix.

Depending on your exact gear configuration, its not hard to have 41~50% damage reduction in the same set w/ very little reduction to tp building capacity.

I put this together to help tank crowds of Limbus mobs when i'm not with a group. I use Sylvie, King of hearts, and Joachim trusts for this. thy all do some healing, but mainly i want the dd buffs.

I don't have trouble skillchaining in this build even without reverse flourish. Its quite fun. It lacks magical defense that /run would, but this is an excellent tanking build for physical damage and groups of mobs. You just might not want to pop counterstance until after you have them positioned in front of you.

curious what ppl might think. I didn't find any references to such a build elsewhere.

(I also like crepuscular knife in there since I'm avoiding sambas)

I didn't realize focus also helps w/ crit rate and dodge w/ guard, not that I really want to use h2h on dnc, but can its available, chakra is nice emergency if you low hp and out of tp. but I've never had to use it yet.

I'm just happy to find a really useful situation for /mnk

but I find I don't have to cure nearly so frequently when holding a small group with this build. It really lets me tank and still do better damage than i was before.

So Twashtar seems obviously the strongest from a look at the posts in this thread and everywhere else, but wondered what Gleti and Aeneas had above it, and why someone might use those?

For Aeneas, I know it gives a light SC option, and I think Gleti has more DT, but any other reason to use these?

I was considering investing in DNC (coming from a RDM main) and just wasn't sure if it was justified farming up a Twashtar in case I could just join my LS in an Aeneas or farm a Gleti after setting up a Gleti farming Ody static.

I'm assuming you intentionally took Mpu Gandring out of the picture, but to make sure, Prime is stronger than Twashtar, unless you specifically want to use Rudra.

Oh right yep forgot that option, but also I haven't done any sortie content with groups yet so wasn't keen yet.

Having said that, I imagine if I did it daily with a consistent static it would eventually be quite easy to get, or at least I'd say braindead compared to going for Twashtar which I feel I don't have the brain to juggle for.

I'm not sure what you mean with "easy" but if we assume a regular 8 bosses sortie run, that's 50k Gallimaufry per day.
A full prime takes 8.630.000 Gallimaufry, if I remember correctly.
That's roughly 173 days.
And that's assuming you go every *** day, your group never does a mistake (so it's never less than 50k galli) etc.
It's a lot of motivation required to sustain that, plan your real life according to that and hoping you don't get bored/burned out before 6 months have occurred.
Which could potentially become much more if you end up not being able to go 7 days out of 7.

Then there's the psyche thing, but you'll be done with those in 6 months. It's a simple thing to do once a month after all, that's no problem.



Going back to your initial question.
Yes Twashtar is the best option after Prime, and it's tipically paired with Centovente, which is by far the best option to pair Twashtar with.
If you don't wanna use that then other good offhand options probably are Air Knife, Crepuscular Dagger, Gleti and R15 Ternion+1.
Out of all these, I would focus on Gleti probably.
Crepuscular and Air aren't exactly easy to obtain xD And I'm not entirely sure they beat an R30 Gleti anyway.

After that, other options?
Aeneas MH and Twashtar OH is probably the next best option, and if you don't wanna use Twashtar OH then the same OH list said above likely applies to Aeneas as well.
Last but not least, Aeneas is good mostly for the 500 TP bonus. The Light Property on Exenterator is moot, you hardly ever use that WS if not for SC purposes.


I purposedly left Mythic dagger Terspichore out of the picture because of the amount of work it requires, but I'm pretty confident it might be better than Aeneas MH in terms of pure DPS. Pyrric Khleos now has TP transfer properties so I believe that's ahead of Aeneas, especially with all the PDL gear you get access to now

I multibox and im about 4 days to finish 6 I did h2h, ga, gun, club, staff, instrument. I'm for sure not making anymore going every single day... good damm no thx...

You did 6 prime stage 5 on each account (36 total) or one on each of 6box squad?

You need to have a group capable of doing 9 boss clears if you want to try to get a stage 5 in 6 months time frame. The extra 30k per run makes a world of difference. You can still do it with 8 boss runs, but it will take longer and you'll end up getting surplus psyches. It's easier to just stick with stage 4's doing 8 boss runs, which is fine because those are still plenty strong for the effort.


Terpsichore is very strong when you're properly buffed. But you do need a significant amount of attack and some pdl to make it competitive. Mythic aftermath is really amazing and pyrric spam can put up some strong numbers, but twashtar and mpu gandring with cento offhand still put up similar or better numbers under the same situations and scale better into less buffed/harder fights. From personal experience with it I'd definitely rank terpsichore ahead of aeneas, but your goal should always be to aim for mpu gandring or twashtar if you want to play dancer seriously.

Thanks all.

Also, what Ody pieces does DNC specifically make use of? Just thinking about which to RP and skip.

I know Nyame and Gleti are used, but are of those left out?

In general you want all Nyame and all Gleti's, but NOT all of them equally. Depends what other jobs you play feet and hands nyame B and other can be A, but since you play RDM I would think only head could be A for you and the rest B. Gleti is mostly used for Evisceration and Pyrrhic and only for attack cap. I would say body and legs are priority and so are their augments. Hands, feet and head are less important.

This. I love my Terp, it was my first mythic, but since getting Mpu Gandring I haven't touched it much. The numbers Ruthless Stroke puts out is very satisfying. Twash like mentioned is very good as well.

Not OP but: It's impossible to have 6 primes on one character at this point. 4 is the most, it will be 5 in....October, I believe?

Hello, I'm new to DNC and I just got my Maxixi tights and I'm a little confused about how to use SC + gear.

I see
sets.precast.Skillchain

but I don't ever see this being equipped when I am playing even if I am solo SCing; I'm using Arislan's.

From a lua standpoint, I have very little idea. Maybe it goes on for wild flourish?

From a gameplay perspective, it's rarely a good idea to put on SC damage gear, especially on DNC for a few reasons:

It caps at 50% and you have 31% in traits.
Common WSD gear, notably nyame armor, gives you more SCD.
It only counts on WS that close a SC, meaning you need to have a toggle/separate macro and manually handle it every time to optimally take advantage.
Most importantly: SCD is based on WSD, so dropping your WSD by a little bit to increase SCD, will often end up with a net loss in damage.

Is there anywhere I can look for updated set, tp, ws ect?
Is the BG wiki up to date?

There hasn't been a lot of new gear recently so almost everything should be up to date. There is also the whole can of worms argument people tend to get into about different situations where you're capped on attack versus not because PDL changes what gear is best. Gleti's cuirass versus nyame mail for example always favors gleti's when you're capped on attack but nyame when you aren't. I just design my gear sets with the assumption that attack won't be capped sometimes and use those, because they're still going to perform very well when you are capped on attack and better when you aren't, and if you are capping attack it's not going to make much difference anyway.

Here's a list of the primary dancer sets for you with current gear. Just adjust the accessories based on what you own. I have a +2 dancer earring, and I picked lehko's ring myself. Swap in epona's for tp if you picked cornelia's, epamoninda's if you picked lehko's, a similar earring if you don't have +2 JSE, etc etc

TP
ItemSet 393475

Rudra's storm and Ruthless Stroke both use the same sets
ItemSet 393473

and the only change for climactic flourish is to add charis feather in the ammo slot
ItemSet 400263

Evisceration
ItemSet 393472

and finally Pyrrhic Kleos
ItemSet 393474

Why those feet in evis? How about crit damage +5% herc feet when you don't need the accuracy and attack? Gletis when you do?

Awesome, thank you!
I appreciate having some sets to look at and play around with. Much appreciated!

There is a balancing act between critical hit rate and raw stats. There comes a point where adding more critical hit rate starts to become less effective than just adding more dexterity and attack, particularly when the amount added is small. The set already has 56 critical hit rate without the feet or the weapons, and if you offhand gleti's knife you're up to 61%. At that point your critical hit rate is so high adding more starts to give diminishing returns. Gleti's boots only has 4% crit rate, so for the feet I opted to use empyrean +3 because

1: It has 10 more dexterity, which matters since dagger has inherently low base damage. Evisceration has a 50% dex mod, and I honestly think empyrean may come out ahead. At worst it's a wash.

and

2: I value the extra 10 -dt

Gleti's only has -pdt and my crit cape is also -pdt, which means nukes can hit you especially hard if you get caught wearing the set. Throwing the empyrean feet in raises magic damage taken to 39% with shell V. That matters. And in some cases it matters a LOT. Obviously gleti's is the superior choice for situations where you ARE attack capped. But I already mentioned that I was posting a general purpose set meant to serve well in all situations. I stand by my decision to use empyrean feet here.

That's fair on the DT. For trash mobs herc feet Crit dmg+ would be optimal though right?

There are too many situational "what if" scenarios to cover them all. Are you capping attack on the trash mobs with buffs? If so, gleti's wins. Are you high in attack but not capped, with moderate crit rate? If so, herc wins. At this point, should you even be using evisceration at all or would it be better to just spam rudra's or ruthless stroke? If so, maybe you don't even bother using evisceration at all.

Once you get geared up evisceration becomes one of the least used weaponskills in our arsenal. Its most practical uses are breaking up a weaponskill wall and setting up an extended 4 step darkness. I almost never use evisceration on trash mobs because their HP is so low that a 3 step light via ruthless stroke is enough to kill, and if I wanted to make darkness evisceration would be the opening step for rudra's to close on. In all of those situations the damage difference between the feet options is so minuscule I will always err on the side of the extra 10-dt. It's too little damage difference for me to care, and I'd rather not get flattened by Arebati's nukes when I use evisceration to proc blue against him on KI1 or get rolled over by gartell's Zap if I happen to use it to break up the wall. On junk mobs it's a non factor and on the fights where that -dt actually matters I always want the empy instead.

What's the 4 step darkness you use?

Edit: To correct an earlier mistake

Ruthless Stroke > Ruthless Stroke > [Fusion] > Evisceration > [Gravitation] > Rudra's Storm > [Darkness] > Rudra's Storm [Double Darkness]

Edit: And after this discussion I've come to realize that I should probably change my critical hit rate cape from -10 PDT to -MDT. That way I actually cap -mdt with shell, empy feet and the cape. I care far more about magic defense than physical defense when I'm using evisceration. Gleti's has plenty of PDT to keep me alive if I use it on junk mobs, and HNM's are almost purely magic damage nowadays. We can waltz through anything junk mobs do, so I'll have to remember to make that change next time I log in.