DNC Endgame

Me and a friend were just doing Abbysea (mea) last night.. Me as DNC and him as SMN/RDM (Ice Spikes were really screwing everything up because of paralyze, initially we were DNC and THF)

We were doing IT+ mobs with little to no difficulty, and I was tanking, not his avatars (mostly he was just using Carby) I don't think I'd attempt that with any other melee job, the stuns for -aga's are hugely helpful, being able to instantly cure myself after that one move they do (can't remember it's name) is vital, the evasion is needed, and so are the shadows.

@Niniann: It depends on what the party is doing. A job that can solo heal an entire party while tanking and debuffing doesn't seem like an inefficient party slot pick to me. It's true that I don't know the potency of step accuracy for end-game. It would be something I'd need to see for myself before I could choose. I have a hard time imagining the steps not having accuracy problems on high tiered mobs but that could definitely be inexperience.

When I found out the value of the increase for haste samba I was definitely impressed. I think the main thing keeping me off-board is my desire to tank as Dancer. Fan Dance just looks too tasty to me. If I'm using fan dance in my main vocation, I won't really have use for haste samba.

True, but you have to keep in mind to gain enough TP to matter, you essentially need to be meleeing the mob. You can't solo heal a party while not meleeing, you won't be able to hold hate if you're not meleeing OR really keep yourself alive (there are other tanks better suited to tanking without meleeing). Holding hate is another issue.... I don't think a DNC will be able to pull hate for a significant amount of time... ever.

On mobs that you can melee (Dynamis, Ein, Limbus, Abyssea?) DNC is an amazing party slot, I'm not denying this. You still won't be able to pull hate off real melee, you should probably get over this dream of yours. Until SE gives DNC hate tools, they won't be doing crap. You can solo.... but like.... do you really want to merit just for soloing? Fan Dance is nice. You can even 5/5 it, but don't not merit Haste Samba because Fan Dance makes it 'useless'. Keep in mind the -PDT degrades over time. I don't know the math/theory on fully meritted Fan Dance, but I don't think you'd be fulltiming that. Even so, group situations etc and Step Accuracy merits are useless.

I have hands/feet/earring for step accuracy, and macro additional accuracy gear and never have issues. I haven't tried to step say, Kirin, but IMO there are other jobs better suited for that type of fight so I don't really count that as an argument to merit Steps accuracy. Focus your merits on what DNC is good at--which is TP burn-type scenarios.

(If this doesn't make sense I'm in class, so can ask for me to clarify, learn to speak coherent english etc.)

@Ravax

I don't think you should give up your dream of dnc tank, but you have to remember that you will need a healer, you can't do it all your self if you go that route. I have had a decent amount of luck dnc/war for the two vokes, and spamming things like Divine Waltz 2, weapon skill, keep voking, warcrying, use defender and fan dance of course since fan dance increases your enmity gane and I bet you will see good results, I have only had to do this for small parties/nm fights but if you have some friends who have DD that will help you you can test it in xp party situations, but for 3-4 person nms at least this works fine.

Yeah. I wasn't proposing the "don't face" solution as a method for tanking. Fan dance is, what I think, makes tanking viable. Dancer not only gets the damage reduction but a healthy enmity boost as well. Used in conjunction with cures, holding hate on mobs should be possible. In situations like that, the mob turning to smack a non-tanking job is a favor as an instant Cure Waltz III will provide a nice chunk of hate to work with.

I don't want Dancer as a blood tank, either. I just imagine that having fan dance up for when shadows fall makes Dancer a tank that, with just that one point, exceeds anything a ninja was ever capable of.

I know that Ninja tanks are out of style these days. Dancer gets everything Ninja ever wanted. Superior evasion through traits, meritable to thief levels or higher. Cures that go off in an instant for solid hate. Damage reduction for when shadows aren't up grouped with a hefty enmity boost. They give up one shadow per Ni, a stronger provoke, and the ability to WS. Just what makes a dance tank impossible?

@Xexferra: I know. There are multiple situations in my head. I don't doubt for a second that for stronger mobs a healer would be necessary. A Dancer can not solo the world. I do believe that a small group fighting T-VT level mobs with a more traditional (some would read that as "slow) setup could operate without a healer other than a dancer, though.

I don't think DNC should really be full on tank anyway.
I am not really sure how it'd work on endgame.
I've been working on lvling DNC up and I cotank and main heal, but then again this isn't on endgame mobs/NMs.
I really don't seeing the general opinion of dancer changing much with endgame, but it's awesome as hell for everything else now which makes me happy.
I get killed in campaign and then while I'm weakened I sit and heal non-engaged peoples.
Makes me happy doing that since I don't get stuck getting killed early on in campaign with shitty exp.
edit: I would like to try some more endgame-level ***with dancer, and I'd imagine there are gonna be quite a few dancer-fanboys that'd like to get together to do so.
I plan on having DNC be my 2nd to 75 atleast(still not sure about 80 yet but time will tell)

Something ive noticed about dnc endgame is that its usefullness wont stack by bringing multiple ones true you could get haste sambain multiple partys but should only need it in one. You could have all steps up but that might be over kill and not as useful as it sounds. Just having 1 dnc though steping HNMs (with back turned in the case of magic damage only mobs) will make a fairly noticable difference and the more people on the mob the more effective your steps are.

My experiences crafting a DNC tank so far...

DNC/NIN evasion tank. Curing Waltz III spam for hate.

So far, it's a "Holder" it can hold any mob, even NMs and evade/take hits/survive NP! but can it hold hate from a barrage of DD? no.

Now, in a lowman situation with SMN and PUP DD/dismiss, DNC "tank" is king. But ppl really have to plan to utilize the DNC.

Most people enjoy going normal DD and going batshit crazy which is the situation the PLD shines the most in.

But for battles of endurance where the mob may hit too hard/rapidly and the party lacks a fresher and a whm to keep a PLD alive, an evasion DNCer steps in nicely:)

I always wondered why people are always so balls to the walls saying that dancer doesn't work as a tank...which it doesn't really work as a "full tank"
but cotanking works out pretty well from what i've seen so far.

The thing is, against truly powerful DDs, Paladins can't hold hate on a mob, either. It's not like Dancer loses out big-time there. Paladin tanks are also a stall. Ninja and monk are "tanks" that actually make progress on the mob.

No matter what job you're tanking on, if the melee don't come prepared to let the tank tank or to help the tank tank, then the tank won't tank.

Actually, they do.

http://kanican.livejournal.com/20722.html

The above is a link to the enmity tools a DNC main has at their disposal. Notice that every single one of your abilities other than Curing Waltz is pure VE, no significant CE component. This means that the entirety of your CE generation comes from Curing Waltz and doing damage.

This is a bit of a problem. Cures are notoriously inefficient in terms of CE gain - great for spiking VE, but you can do that without them if you really want. So that leaves DDing to handle much of your CE generation.

You're a DNC. Your attack is very low and you use low base damage weapons. On mobs that justify a designated tank or two, you're likely going to struggle in terms of DPS, potentially even struggling to hit for more than 0 or single digits. Further, you don't have a solid 750 damage stack enmity WS like PLD does in Atonement, which is where the majority of their CE comes from. Even if you did have such a WS, your abilities eat into your TP pool and you won't be able to WS often enough to build CE quickly. Anything you can DD tank will probably see hate ripped off you by another DD, at which point you're better off letting them tank and you going back to your support/DD hybrid role.

This is not to say DNC doesn't make a decent evasion tank in duo/trio situations, but for serious tanking purposes it is unfortunately a flop.

Also,
Eh? MNK, SAM, and DRK tanks are certainly more capable than PLD tanks in the DPS department, but NIN tanks were more of a stall than PLD post-Atonement. It's a moot point now since NIN/DRK and NIN/RDM tanking was crippled along with RDM tanking, but the fights where PLD can't DD are the fights where even it falls short as a tank (again, lack of efficient CE generation).

According to what you just linked me to, the cures have VE and CE both. Cures as the main method of providing hate was something I had in mind all along. I suppose I chose poor words, though. I don't believe Dnc can ever win in a hate fight with Pld. Pld has too many good tools for it.

Dismissing Dnc because they're inferior in enmity production is a little drastic. FFXI is all about strategy in the first place. If a group wants to bring a Dnc as tank, they'll have to prepare for it and choose jobs for the party that will compliment it. Trick attack would probably be very necessary in maintaining hate for a Dancer.

It may seem like I'm trying to push dance where it was never meant to go. There are too many aspects that tell me SE had Dancer in mind as a tank all along, though. Ultimately, I guess it comes down to "is it worth it?" And THAT comes down to "can it do it better than x tank on any mob at all?"

I can't really say it can until I find out for myself, I suppose. You make a very strong argument, though. First post that dented my confidence in trying at all. Either way, I still want to try it out.

To me, SE gave us a lot of oh ***job abilities to use for oh ***moments. DNC is a better "holding" job than a "tanking" job. Holding usually happens in an oh ***moment. One time in sky I had to hold byaako after stuns and all the good stuff got messed up and everyone started dying. I gave everyone enough time to recover and kill the kitty. Btw, there's your use in sky, holding the gods in oh ***moments and also help cure bombing the tank while providing nice debuffs. As far as kirin goes, you'll need the earring+shoes+hands+food to land steps(I haven't tested this at 80 though). However, when quick step and box step are on Kirin you can definitely tell a difference. Two quick steps seems to be almost equal to Feint.

With dynamis, you're the oh-***the main tank just died back up tank as well as fulfilling you're usual debuffing/hasting/curing jobs duties. Taking care of NIN blow ups and all those nasty AOE tp moves is nice as well.

However, in abyssea, DNC is like a god send. Almost everything in abyssea has some sort of -ga or horrible AOE move that you need to stun or if it misses, instant cure. Divine Waltz II is great for that because not only does it get you instant hate but it gives your DDs a second to breathe after taking a lot of damage.

Just got sea access, so IDK if DNC is useful there... I just know I can hold a UFO after aggroing one XD

You need to be able to adapt and adjust with DNC and persuade your end game shell leaders to see what's good about it. DNC tank is a really cool idea and I'd like for it to actually happen one day but really... DNC to me is one of the greatest jobs for all oh ***moments you have in FFXI.

As I mentioned, it's unfortunately not very efficient for CE generation. I can go more in-depth about it though.

Assuming you've some kind of HP cheat to maximize the impact of your Waltz, you've maximized your waltz potency (AF body, relic head, Roundel, Sonia's Plectrum), and TP is never an issue, you're looking at ~435 HP cured every 10 seconds (CWIII) if you use it at recast. You have 15 enmity from Fan Dance if it's active. A quick glance over DNC's enmity options shows

x/x/---/x
x/3/x/3
x/3/4/2
5/3/6*/1

as an essentially perfect set. Total 30, with the potential caveat of using ASA legs for the TP cost reduction over Ocelot Trousers. +45 enmity assuming Fan Dance is up.

At level 75, 435 HP at +45 enmity is 458 CE and 2752 VE. The VE number is pretty spiffy since that's a bit over 25% to cap (though VE decays), but you'd have to Waltz 22 times (assuming you take no damage) to cap CE. If Fan Dance is not in play, you're looking at 411 CE and 24 casts.

Again, this is assuming you cure for the full amount each time. I'm not sure an HP cheat like that is even possible with a full potency/enmity build. If it's not, you resort to either 1) dropping some gear for HP+ gear (reducing enmity per use) or 2) using CWII (reducing TP efficiency and drastically slowing hate generation due to reducing recast by only 2 seconds while halving HP cured).

22 casts is 3 minutes 40 seconds if you're right on top of recast timers every single time. 24 casts is precisely 4 minutes. This is assuming essentially perfect gear and never getting hit. The number of Waltzes required will also increase at level 80 due to decreased cure enmity multipliers, but I don't know the CE and VE multipliers above 75.

Let's assume your CE from dealing damage is compensated for via damage taken. A DD with 20% gear haste, Hasso, Haste, and 2x Marches will WS every ~14 seconds (more or less depending on job, delay of weapon, and x-hit involved). Assuming a level 90 NM and no +/- enmity modifiers on the DD, if they deal just 490 damage every TP->WS cycle then they'll outpace your CE generation and thus after the first minute or so, your total enmity generation (VE caps quickly). This is well within the realm of feasibility; a fairly average Gekko build will average about that much on a typical level 90 NM after accounting for 95% accuracy. TP phase damage will add still more. GKT is also faster than other 2handed weapons, so their TP->WS cycle is faster than my given value.
If you want to bring a DNC tank then sure, you can build around that. From a pure efficiency standpoint, you could have the DNC give a party Haste Samba (boosting everyone's DPS) and let one or two SAM/NIN or other DD/NIN tank it more efficiently (since it's obviously DD tankable if a DNC can tank it). Further, that eliminates the need for somebody to /THF. You then have two DD/NIN tanks, everyone else /SAM, /DRG, or /WAR as appropriate, and a DNC who's helping improve the damage of the group as a whole. The NM simply dies faster this way; it's a more efficient approach.
I'd say yes it can, but under a limited scope (***is situational as always) that does not encompass mobs you'd bring an alliance or even a full party to. In these situations, you'd be better off with a SAM, DRK, MNK, PLD, or BLU as appropriate.
The best thing to do is definitely try it for yourself and experience all its advantages and limitations. It may work better with your group than it does in my vacuum theorycrafting (for reasons most likely involving your DDs or their support), or you may come to agree that it's not worthwhile on harder targets. I don't like being a downer about this - believe me, I've been in your position. I used to be really into BLU tanking but eventually sold my enmity gear because I very rarely got to tank. It simply wasn't an efficient choice. This past update changed that though (mixture of eliminated competition and greater self-sufficiency), so I'm actually working on rebuilding my tanking sets... perhaps you'll get some more tank-friendly tools in the future as well. Either way, hope you find this post informative.

Best of luck!

I found myself very useful in Dynamis by being a buffer for the Blm party. Oh a Blm or Brd is going down, Curing Waltz ... instantly boosts their HP and draws the hate to a evasion and Cure spamming godling. Yeah... sambas weren't coming into factor but keeping sleepers alive is incredibly overlooked.

It was brought up but, yeah.. it needs reiteration... steps can be used whilst not facing the mob. Oh... you want the sleeping NM to be bitchslapped by your mages, Stutter steps.. you want DD's to do more damage, Box steps.

Those who have not played the job right will nay-say... but Dnc is a golden god in this game. We are Ruffles of Doom!!!

\('o')/

One of the things not mentioned ever really (probably cause we don't get gear there...) is Salvage.

Most people prefer the typical set up of DDx2, Thf, Brd, Cor(or whm/sch/rdm) and Rdm. For a standard six man set up.

Replace that cor/whm/sch/extra rdm slot for a Dnc now that we are able to go in at 80 (78+ would really be advised)

Give DDs +10% haste samba since everything is fought melee. Salvage is one of those things where there are a wide variety of easy-difficult mobs. On things that require little healing you can be a DD. Yes a DD, with saber dance we do just as well as thf or a little better. This works great on lower floors where you're just burning through mobs.

Where we really shine is on gears since they are weak to piercing and if you manage tp well you can open darkness for both mnk and sam (the two preferred jobs for salvage) Also the constant aoe's are covered with Divine Waltz II.

For boss is where people often look down on us for our tp feeding. You can look at it from two approaches though. The extra time you get from previous floors will allow you to take a boss down still np, albeit slower.

Also we now have the ability to Divine Waltz II, having the ability to drop big curaga's will greatly increase our versatility. (Though more than likely you'll probably still be better off to single target III's)

Just something to consider... Is it the BEST. No, is it viable? Yes. More so now then before.

@No Foot Rise i would advise not to build that one on merit at 5/5 cause can still be combined with a normal step to have 5 finishing moves( so 3/5 might be smart allowing u to put some points on Fandance and maybe Saber Dance).

DNC is the swiss knife of the melee as the SCH is for magics.

Don't underestimate dancers.
Hiphop rulez :p

bump!

I have personally done quite a bit of dynamis in the past and i was always on Dnc for salvage when I did do it. I haven't had the chance to do it in Einhinjar. Salvage was a win especially at the beginning especially when Praecipitatio Cells are being a pain to drop sometimes. Just open ja and get chr down cells(hardly anyone uses them anyways) and since dnc does have some H2H skills(crappy ones but still) instant non-mp healing until your mages get there cells.

Dynamis, I've done backup healing, haste samba, even had to help kite stats(usually have my eva setup with me then) when our backup tank had to take over as main. Even throw in a Stutter step as I'm kiting to help the blm's nukes do more dmg.

Its all situational but there is always a use for Dnc in endgame. Sometimes yeah you might be wanted on something else. I'm that way alot, but if its your only job at lvl, then do your best. max. your potential and learn the job well.

as far as merits:
full Reverse Flourish
full Haste Samba
Saber Dance 1
Fan Dance 1
No Foot Rise 3(any more would be a waste personally)
the rest in Closed Position

DNC/THF on Byakko + Fient and Bard support makes for an easy zerg session.

Didja know steps stack with Sneak Attack?
I'd love to have to have that one DNC in any alliance to really push us past 'having a slight advantage'.

Didja know it's also another source for magic resistance down outside of NIN SCH BRD and DEATHBLOSSOMU?

It stacks with them too. :3

And the Gravity flourishing is doing eva- too which sounds logical.

edit: i main play dancer and thinking more and more to put more merits on FANDANCE, cause it's too good for tanking, reducing the recast would probably allowing to make a better "/ja's rotation" with the /ja's.

If you DNC85 bring a friend or 2 and see how Sky is ... Ulli,Zip,Faust,Despot all went down with /SAM.

Sky's not even hard anymore. Easily 4-manned Byakko at 80, 4 manned Byakko at 85, but didn't need a stunner anymore. Just saying.