Presto Useful?

I love dancers who try to become a DD. Makes me laugh.

haters gonna hate, but my DNC does pretty well as a DD, I've even kept up with other DDs, as well as main healing/enfeebling, and this was BEFORE the update

yeah no one is saying DNC is going to replace WAR or SAM, but they can do some damage, more then anything else that can Cure as high as DNC does. I've done many 1K+ Dancing Edges on my DNC while still doing heavy Backup healing.

A good DNC can do it all ya know.

also yeah, Presto is something you use on the opening of a fight and pretty much thats it

/facepalm

just..... /facepalm is all i can say

Tbh, depends who you're calling a real DD. I can beat a fairly well equipped DRG (TPing in haste gear, yes) and come close to respectable, merited Tomoe SAM without concentrating on DDing, as weird as it may sound. 99% of pickup DDs would be no contest for me. Maybe you don't believe me, I don't really care. At the point that I'm at 200% TP, 4-5FM and Haste Samba is refreshed and WHM is good on MP, though, I'll use Waltz>WS since I'd be waiting on a timer anyway. Really can't WS any sooner than that, because there's no way Reverse Flourish timer will be up by then, let alone having 4-5 steps. But I'm not ready to sacrifice my job for the sake of marginally higher parses.

Edit: err, numbers for most recent party were
SAM 293,197
DNC: 263,221
DRG: 226,811

And my gear is no where near perfect, but neither were theirs. But keep in mind a majority of DNC's DD comes from melee, not WS. I'd be excited to parse again with upgraded Fusetto and Parazonium, but no one ever wants to merit with my DNC and I still have a lot more jobs to level first -_-

Its only a joke if you don't gear yourself properly. I've seen plenty of DNC's weapon skilling in evasion gear or full AF and they wonder why they're getting abysmal performance. You (god help us) don't see DRK's or SAM's weapon skilling in full evasion gear do you?

Honestly when did DNC ever need a party to begin with? DNC excels at soloing, its like its own plvler. Your list #1 - #4 mentality is a very narrow minded point of view of one of the most versatile jobs in FFXI, which now it seems is SE's pet project.

DNC is a very versitile job, i doubt anyone is gonna argue any points of its versatility. The thing about such versatility though is you never really excel at something that is the main focus of a non-versetile job. Also, if you focus yourself on just one aspect of a "jack-of-all-trades" job, you lower the effectivness of those other aspects you are neglecting. DNC is as versatile as the player who plays it wants to be, wants to gather the gear to be, and invests the time in the merits to be. Will it ever replace a job that does one of our aspects better ? No. Anyone and thier momma can preach all day about how good a dnc DD is and how they parse well over said job, good for you. Remember parses are not perfect and just cause you did better than this PLAYER on this MOB doesnt mean your better than everyone who plays that job, or you are better than even that given player in ever circumstance. SHould also take into account that they could have just been being lazy that day, not wanting to gear swap for WS, not hitting timers right on th 0:00 mark, and even being slow to engage the mob. While your working your fingers and timers to the bone to be marginally better than someone who is being lazy, dont think you have accomplished this great miracle of nature. Take it for what it is. YOU had a good day, while someone was having a bad one. /clap

From my experiences dnc works a bit different then most jack of all trades concepts.

If you are in a DD situation pop saber dance and and with this you will notice quite a spike in damage, both your straight melee damage from attacking and your WS damage from the extra hit procing most of the 30%ish of the time. Haste samba works on others too remember so technicly any extra effectiveness that other DDs get could count as the dnc because with out them they wouldnt be getting it. Also as dnc gets its own DW now sub war for damage (not sure why i see alot subing thf after getting DE). Im sure somebodys gunna call the no shadows part but if dnc is as weak DD as alot of people are saying they shouldnt have a chance pulling hate of the real DDs right? Theres always fan dance as a panic button as well and if you are getting too much damage /war to maintain it can sub sam to lower your spike damage and spread it out to keep mob off you, and again another panic button with third eye if you time it right to mob WS. Focus on building and wild flourish with this as if your getting hasted reverse flourish should take too long for you to pull off propery. Or an extra option is to just spam eviseration... you wont get much damage but all those gekko spaming sams will have you to thank for potentally doubleing there WS damage (like haste samba bonuses the extra damage could be considered as much yours as theres)

If low man tank fan dance either subing nin for shadows and working similar way to nin tank but waltzing self and others for your hate, Divine waltz 2 should make this pritty effective now (if the enmity calculations i saw on wiki for animated flourish are correct dont even both with it, gives half as much as provoke which meens that all the enmity it gives you is gone after 15seconds). Use reverse flourish when needed but focus on keeping stutter step up and spaming violent flourish (every 20 seconds is alot of stun time and it tends to last 3-5 seconds in my experiences). Once you get 2 or 3 stutters up it becomes almost compleatly accuriate with out relic body even if not accurate before that. If you have macros for violent flourish and utsu ichi hit them in a 1 2 manner and you will instantly start to cast as you stun garrenteeing that it wont be interupted.

For a healer/support dont use either and keep your sambas up. Haste or drain samba will be situational, if lots of AoE drain probably best but if not haste is good for more damage. For steps you wana alternate quick and box, should be able to keep both up with enough acc but if not pick one and focus, in most situations I notice quick is much better because the def down from box is low enough that you wont see results except for HNM or such mobs where as quick step is 2 acc short of an instant scorp harness or O hat equivolent in terms of them hitting the mob at lv1 step. curing waltz 3 is hands down your most effective cure, too lazy to do the math on hp healed vs tp used atm but the recast on 3 is much much shorter then 4. save 4 for emergencys because if you use it you might end up falling behind on cures. Dont shy away from WSing either just have 5 finishing move or meditate ready or if its up sekkanoki it, wont be as powerful as if your playing for DD but its free damage... if you need to sit on 300tp at all times then something is wrong with your party members. The only time i would say sit on that tp is if it is a mob you are struggling to hit. Now that dnc has DW sub sam for this, or /nin if your tank/dds your healing in a burn part are that bad at keeping shadows up that you are tanking instead.

These are just my takes on the job, i normally focus on the healing/support aspects of it but when DDing in the right situations i can compair to a well geared DD (and im not as well geared as id like to be) by working it right. Low man tanking is more of an on paper build but it should function well with the right gear, bonus if you have closed posistion merits. Shows that dnc isnt really a jack of all trades because it cant really effectivly switch between but rather it picks one while starting and focuses on that roll.

Wall of text almost over,
To the OP since this is pritty derailed and yes i didnt help much. Its a free finishing move if theres a pause between mobs. not all that great but if you open with a prestoed stutter the mob is already very open to your stun.

You've obviously never seen a decent DNC. Myself and Erudisia of Bahamut are able to put out 1000+ Dancing Edges consistently in a merit party.

Who said any of us was doing 100% of our maximum potential? Like I said, I can't even WS before 200% TP because I refuse to WS without 4+FM and Reverse Flourish timer up, and most of the time I had 300% because I was getting TP faster than my head could manage. DNC's a pretty busy job compared to other DD jobs, and I don't think I handle it anywhere near perfectly because I rarely ever use my DNC and am used to having less things to deal with on other jobs. Hell, the only reason I leveled DNC to 80 first was to get it over with asap.

Furthermore, as I said, I wasn't trying to DD, but I still managed to outparse a DRG, lazy or not. If I was actually trying to DD, I would've ignored everyone else, WS'd every 100% TP and fulltimed Saber Dance, which is a JA that I don't even macro because I never use it. I'm not stupid, I performed the so-called "duty of a DNC" and happened to do damage in the meantime. It's not hard, it doesn't mean I take DNC seriously or do my job better than everyone else. A majority of my damage, as I already said -came from melee attacks-. In other words, engaging and standing there. You think that really takes effort?

And yes, parses aren't everything, but I don't think most people play like a robot, myself included. You act like the other person was watching TV while they were meriting and engaging every other mob and I was sweating getting all my macros off. I'll admit, DNC inherently takes more attention than another DD job, especially DRG (at least for me, maybe I'm a bad DRG), but that doesn't mean I was playing more to my potential than either him or the SAM. I'd offer you other parse results, but I don't have a parser, SAM simply gave us numbers at the end.

A perfectly equipped DRG or SAM would of course not be outparsed by a DNC. However, my DNC can easily do "more than half of a real DD." So when you talk about DNC, you can talk about your own DNC in your own experiences, but when you bring absolutes into the discussion or tell someone it's impossible, I am going to tell you that you're wrong.

dnc dps, what I don't even

I think the problem is alot of dnc maybe try gearing off the AH and cobra gear... cobra gear is decent but to do anything other then the healing and support side of dnc you wont be very effective with out alot of the gear from endgame. can get most of haste set easy enough from it but in terms of WS gear your looking and enkidu from the ZNMs mainly i think are best bet for WS but also looking at sea torque + ws gorget relic from dynamis (all the peices play a roll somewhere excpet maybe hands cant remember what they do) and now the ToM weapons are gunna be important to get which some are soloable but for dmg and OaT ones you deffinetly need some help to complete although dnc lucks out on it being able to equip as brd :P

Honestly... Climactic Flourish(while it only grants one critical hit to your WS) is probably better to use before evisceration vs. building flourish.

I get a consistent 900+ evisceration when I use climactic flourish before it.

Also... I'm very disappointed in Climactic flourish. I was under the impression that if you used a 5FM climactic flourish then Dancing Edge or Evisceration that every hit would be critical... HAHA YEAH RIGHT! You got me SE.

Are you sure? Because wiki states that it will consume 5FM and have 5 combined rounds of crits assuming you landed each of the 5 hits:

http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Climactic_Flourish

I have a question for people who say DNC should not skillchain and "waste TP". If I am sitting on 5 finishing moves and meditate/sekkanoki with No Foot Rise up, is it wasting TP if I weaponskill or is it more of a waste if I do nothing becuase everyone is at full HP. I could drop a Presto/B.Flo/Step/WS combo with sekkanoki and be right back at 235 TP with 5 finishing moves.

With haste samba at 8% vs 10% its not a huge difference in TP gain. Honestly unless I am the ONLY healer in a group or I am with some HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE as SCH or something I usually have TP shooting out of my ***.

I dunno, I think its funny that 99% of the people who hate on Building Flourish are mindless dancer robots who have never even tried the merit out themselves. BzzZzT Haste Samba BzzzzZT Cure BzzZzT Damage error error error... Will I dream Daaaaaave.

2% haste will matter the more and more haste everyone has. 2% is a lot. Building Flourish, whether I'd have it merited myself or not, I never use. It's just not worth it.

I'm not a mindless dancer robot. I simply try to look at what's best for the party before what's best for my own epeen. Hell, the 2% haste is better for -YOU- DD wise than Building Flourish merits, let alone the rest of your party. I'm just going to leave it at that; if you want to continue being ignorant because that makes you more special, then be my guest. But please don't insult people by saying because they've done their research and know how this game works, it makes them a robot.

Yup, I'm ignorant because I do something different from you and all the other dancer robots. Really though I spend 95% of my time solo with drain samba up, haste samba is really only used when I am in dynamis or something. So 95% of the time those merits are wasted on my character.

So let's come to a middleground mayhaps? In my case where I solo most of the time and like to put down EP mobs faster with bigger WS's while I save TP by using drain flourish to heal myself, then Building Flourish is better.

For dancers who party a lot, or are involved in many endgame activities then Haste Samba 5/5 hands down.

I am not trying to convince people to take merits away from HS and put them into BF. I am just telling people hey, this is here and most people don't know what it does, so here's what I get out of it.

After reading what Tristean said about climactic flourish though I might change the way I think about BF and throw the merits back into haste once I hit 80 and play around with it. Like I said though I never use HS much and that's why I took merits out of it to play around with BF.

I tested it myself. I used climactice flourish then evisceration; after evisceration was gone and done the four following hits on main hand were critical as well and climactic flourish was still in effect when these critical hits occured. I did this also on EP and Too Weak mobs so accuracy wasn't bad but I was in mostly accuracy gear.

The way you keep referring to Building Flourish makes it sound like you can only use it if you have it merited at least once. It's a natural job ability you gain from leveling. Two merits give an -additional- enhancement of +4 acc +7-odd attack and 2% crit rate on top of what you had; it just...isn't much.

:O Wow I am HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE. >.> Looks like I am meriting haste again once I hit 80. I am sorry ><

Don't know how in the name of crap I never noticed that.

funny how everyone is like "ohh my dnc can do (insert number here) " . but letz say put a GK sam and a dnc on a mob without using weaponskill goes who got hate all the time? right! . dnc main source of dmg is DoT . and 80 it becomes even more powerfull with another tier of dual wield .