Saber Dance Testing

Hello fellow Dancers!

I've been playing with Saber Dance for many moons, and have had 5/5 Saber Dance for much of that time. It turns out . . . not so useful!

Saber Dance's time decay is much more rapid than the original report on ffxiclopedia. After parsing against a Hpmede in sea (and some kparser adjustments), I've pretty much convinced myself that it works like this:
When you activate Saber Dance, you have a 50% Double Attack rate that decays to 20% at about 1%/second (so 30 seconds.) It then remains at the 20% rate for the rest of the JA's duration.
Graph

Control test with 5 minute usage.

If you do the math, this means that 1/5 Saber Dance grants 21.5% Double Attack, while 5/5 Saber Dance grants 22.5% Double Attack average (and you activate it more often, so you suffer more JA delay). As far as playstyle, this means that you should try to stack Saber Dance with WS usage, instead of being sloppy about putting other JAs between it and a WS like I used to.


Edit: Oh yes, and corollary-
Step Accuracy is pretty much worthless. Steps get an innate +10 Accuracy over your normal swings. If you TP with near-capped hit rate (which should always be the case) then you don't need to swap any accuracy gear in for Steps at all.
Additionally, it looks like all the easily accessible Step Acc gear in the game (Hands/Feet/Earring) amount to about +20 Step Accuracy (+10% Hit rate) when combined.

Edit2: Oh yeah, and it looks like we may have gotten Accuracy Bonus IV. I need to test this more thoroughly though.

Outstanding work, Byrth. Thanks for testing and releasing your findings! ^^

I agree... good work! I have never really been a fan of saber dance because when I'm on dnc I usually am soloing. I do use saber dance for ws primarily and would get ripped for not full timing it. I'm glad I stuck to my guns... your testing proved them wrong!

Thank you, but that's not true. Even at 21.5% DA with 1/5 merits, Saber Dance is still our second best JA for DDing.

If you're DDing or "tanking" with good support, you should still fulltime Saber Dance.

I like saberdance but like Tawhoya, I use my DNC for soloing. Didn't put a single merit into it. Fully merited Fan Dance though ^^

Good job on your work nontheless

Thank you for testing..I am always looking to improve DNC as I do love to solo on it =)

Have you revised you current merits or have they remained unchanged, and do you use the same merits as nini has on her guide?

I am not sure what merits she's advocating in her guide, but I'll likely rework my merits to be:
1/5 Saber Dance <-- Needs at least 1/5
2/5 No Foot Rise <-- should be 2 or 5
5/5 Closed Position <-- Where the rest of your merits go
2/5 Fan Dance <-- Needs at least 1/5

Fan Dance having a lower recast than 5 minutes will be mostly useful when I'm cleaving with other people supporting. I don't think having higher tier of Fan Dance or No Foot Rise is going to be more useful than Closed Position, so I'm going with the merits I listed above. The other alternative I'd consider would be:
1/5 Saber Dance
5/5 No Foot Rise
3/5 Closed Position
1/5 Fan Dance

I'm doing a control test (5 minute Saber Dance timer) right now to make absolutely sure this is correct though.

How does Saber Dance affect DA gear/atmas? I've read a lot of differing viewpoints on the subject. But otherwise, great work.

Edit: You wouldn't happen to have done any testing with evasion vs. evasion skill? Looking at the Closed Position and starting to doubt my 4/5 Fan Dance merits now after thinking about my experiences with the AGI Kila+2's...

"Oh-***!"-insurance every 3½ minutes or just plain evasion+9 when getting pummelled by the mob?

So far, DA gear appears to stack. +8% DA through gear (Atheling/Brutal) raised my average to 30.5%. I just managed to get an Acerbic Sash, so I'll either be running Feather Step testing or /WAR testing tonight overnight. Just to be entirely clear, everything I've posted so far involves thousands of attack rounds. I can't promise this is exactly how the JA works, but it's at a confidence level that you can only reach by leaving your character hitting Hpmedes in sea for hours.

Decreased Fan Dance recast has very few uses in my opinion. There are specific NMs where it could be useful if you're trying to lowman (like Emperador de Altepa), but in general I don't find it very useful.

Here is the proof that Saber Dance doesn't stack with /WAR's DA, unfortunately. It does stack with any Double Attack from gear, however.

Saber Dance used every 5 minutes, /WAR, 0% DA in gear. (20.95% average+/- .91%)

Tonight I intend to test Feather Step!

There are quite a few situations in which a solo DNC can ride Saber Dance for an extended period of time, situations in which it would benefit you far more than Fan Dance.

I don't think Ninian actually advocated a specific G2 setup in her guide, but the information on Saber Dance probably needs to be revised per this data.

I think 5/5 Saber Dance still has a place even with this information. The lower recast offers a two minute window in which you can drop Saber Dance for a quick Waltz or two and then throw it right back up, and if you have to drop it in the first three minutes then it's up more often. Of course, being able to put more points in Closed Position has its own benefits, both in terms of safety and damage output. Not sure what I'll do with my merits just yet.

Nice job on this, I do what Nightfyre said and drop Saber Dance after the period you said the decay goes below 50 to use some Waltzes.

Since I'm not doing anything heavy I really like Saber Dance, but if I'm soloing or duoing I doubt I'll use it that much unless I'm pretty sure the mob isn't going to completely destroy me.


I hate having to decide whether to use Haste Samba with Fan Dance and then decide if I should keep Fan Dance on and change Samba to Drain, or turn off Fan Dance while keeping Haste Samba and just Waltz. The 2nd option seems like the smarter deal.

oh dear lord thank you! if you need any help let me know. inside abyssea i've actually been forcing myself to do box step. i know feather step is good, but tbh i have no clue wtf it's doing. are you gonna test what it does or how dnc af3 feet enhance it?


*edit* my guess has always been that it increases crit hit damage resistance. kind of like how magic evasion is equivalent to having all ele resist. the less eva the higher the crit damage.

Ah yes, I suppose I forgot to report that.

Without AF3+2 feet, Feather Step 5/5 is +4% Crit rate
With AF3+2 feet, Feather Step 5/5 is +7% Crit rate

I don't know the progression below 5/5. I'll likely keep updating this thread on BG and maybe the BG wiki, depending.

thanks. i was never sure about that. it's really hard to eyeball a crit hit increase.

Yeah, the Hpmede method is really the only way to go for stuff like that. I got a 14000+ sample size in about 4 hours.

I'd anticipated rushing off and stopping my testing for a few days, but the update doesn't exactly have any exciting gear for me so I might not. The lack of a tangible reward leaves me pretty "meh" about it.

I will probably try to test the Level 1 and 2 Dazes, and I'll be doing more Striking Flourish testing tonight.

Has anyone tested the DA +10 dagger with saber dance? Or if it stacks with /war DA? I heard somewhere that it doesn't stack at all, but there was nothing to back it up that I know of. I'll prolly end up making one if it stacks like normal gear DA

It's the same as any other piece of gear with DA on it.