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

I'd imagine they're not.

This is unnecessary, and probably detrimental to your damage.


And this is the reason why. There's a reason we never used our artifact legs for anything, despite them having skillchain damage + 14. It was always better to equip something that increased weaponskill damage even when you were closing a skillchain, because bigger weaponskill numbers also make bigger skillchain numbers. Skillchain damage is a stat that we want to add more of when it comes as a bonus on already good pieces that we want to use anyway. Nyame and maculele earring +1/+2 are prime examples of this, as are our empyrean gloves for pyrrhic kleos. You wouldn't put skillchain damage +10 on your ambuscade cape instead of WSD 10 or crit 10 or DA 10 would you?

Here's a current list of gear sets for general use. These are pretty much BiS assuming you have R30 gleti's and R25+ Nyame. Glet's body, hands, and legs get some stellar augments at rank 30. Ruthless stroke would use the same set as rudra's storm, piece for piece if you have a rank 3 or higher prime as well.

ItemSet 393475
ItemSet 393472
ItemSet 393474
ItemSet 393473

They weren't wrong, it's just a matter of the higher number.

Like the +2 earring (without pdl) would be more total damage than an ishvara. 7 skillchain will beat 2 wsd
(10200+10200 < 10000+10700)

There just aren't many slots were it matters if you have/access to everything. The sc bonus has to be more than double the wsd. (Of course str dex att pdl blahblahetc too)

That was the main point in was trying to convey. I can't think of any gear that has big enough skillchain bonuses as a standalone stat to overcompensate any other deficiencies. Between our JSE +2 earring, nyame for rudra's/ruthless, and maculele gloves +3 for multi hit there aren't really any notable weaponskill pieces with good skillchain damage worth using.

It sounded like people were suggesting using maculele bangles +3 for rudra's storm instead of nyame though, which was why I made the artifact legs comparison. I'm pretty sure even rank 20 nyame has enough WSD to beat out our empyrean gloves.

The gear sets I posted should be pretty up to date for everything though. I can't think of much I'd change with them.

I, also, wouldn't go seeking SC damage over WS damage unless the slot isn't really doing much anyways.

If you are fighting something with high physical resistances but poor SDB for a specific element or several elements, sure. But that sounds pretty niche. If you don't have a toggle for SCing (I do) then you're gimping your damage against the opposite scenerio, which is much more common.

The only place were I do something like this is CDC. It's not going to hit for better numbers regardless of what you put in the slots but after 4 or 5 steps, the SC damage is good enough to warrant throwing it at all. Why not use Orpheus Sash and Weatherspoon ring to increase Light affinity? It's another multiplier on top of SC damage. I think my SC damage hits for right under 4x the WS damage on the 4th step. The definition of polishing a turd imo.

Oh it does, nevermind this edit

Never use it so never thought about it. Affinity enhances sc damage.

DNC only needs 19 in gear to cap bonus anyways

Maybe aug'd Warder's Charm +1 over the PDL in the JSE +2 neck? Seems like it would only compete if you were:

1. Not attack capped
2. Closing a skillchain

Even then, sounds like Fotia would still beat it? I don't know, I'm not a rocket surgeon.

This is the most relevant thing said on the subject. Skillchain damage bonus caps at 50%, and we already get 31% from traits and gifts. Wearing nyame for rudra's or ruthless overcaps us, and empyrean gloves with our +1 or +2 earring is enough to cap us on multi hit. There's no need to consider any additional skillchain damage bonus gear beyond those pieces because it won't actually do anything.

Is it worth making TP sets based on possible haste values anymore?

Was thinking about making 0/15/30/45 haste sets but would then need a hybrid 0/15/30/45 for 8 or more sets. Not to mention if samba isn't up due to fan dance.

Don't want to put in lot of work if not really needed these days.
Thank you.

General rule of thumb, in content that it matters, you should be getting full buffs and should assume you're at the (magic) haste cap. In solo situations, even with trusts you will always be very close to, if not capped. Of course, if you're relying on trusts, it's probably not content that a little more DW will make a difference.

Really just depends how often you do stuff without capped haste, DNC has one of the highest natural DW + haste samba so you shouldnt be in too many spots where you need to go nuts with DW tiers anyway

I sometimes have the odd desire to just do junk completely solo. Think also sometimes I want to over complicate things. Thanks for the advice :)

Wiki has a great chart for it.
https://www.bg-wiki.com/ffxi/Attack_Speed

If you're getting haste II form a trust you'll be capped with haste samba and won't need any dual wield. If you're getting extra haste from march, indi, what not, just drop the samba.

As Cerderic pointed out, there are very few situations where you won't be haste capped, especially on DNC.

If you're doing some lua based swaps that are mostly automatic, or even just a toggle, it can't really hurt to have all your bases covered. but if its all equipsets i can understand wanting to keep it simple

Which WSs are you all using on basement bosses?

Nothing seems to pair well with savage.

Well Ruthless, but without Prime it's still Rudra.
Distortion from Rudra is really only a problem for E, but you can just do Rudra right after someone's else WS to avoid skillchain.

Thanks for confirming, pretty annoying for E but at least he goes down fast.

Which boss? The E boss you want to avoid Distortion / Darkness, the F boss you want to avoid Fragmentation / Light. G boss you want to avoid Gravitation / Darkness, and H boss you either want to avoid everything or just pile drive him so hard he doesn't have time to respond.

Can also use Shark Bite for E if you're stuck w/ Twashtar/Aeneas. Won't do as much damage per WS as Rudra of course but it eliminates any risk of error.

Shark Bite is really not worth it, it's just better to time this 99k climactic Rudras just after other WS to avoid skillchain. It should be really easy if you use few people for DPS. I guess the best alternative to timing non-climactic Rudra, would be to use Dancing Edge to close detonation after Savage and let Savage follow with Scission.

The E boss is pretty squishy. If there's a risk you're going to make darkness from rudra's I'd recommend sticking with shark bite.

I mean that'll still potentially make distortion lol

EDIT: great you edited your post so now I look like a crazy person

Why Macu feet in TP?

Tankier (DT, Meva, MDB), more baseline acc and the main reason is it's not reliant on standing in the mobs face which isn't always practical.

Still worth having a toggle for relic feet or diff engaged set with them when you can make use of them/don't need the extra defensive stats.

I disagree. The only time you don't want those extra defensive stats is against something so squishy it’s dumb, You're gonna be facerolling that kind of content no matter which feet you wear so there's really no point. Neither option is gonna affect kill speed by much. So you may as well just take the sturdier piece and be done with it.

The main takeaway is that once you're geared to the approximate level I posted in my sets you're going to be getting tp so fast the relic feet become superfluous. The extra defensive stats on the empyrean far outweigh the benefits of the relic. You're looking at a difference of 10 additional store TP with the condition that you have to be facing the mob, versus an unconditional 12 sTP (5 more total sTP any time you aren't facing the mob), 10 extra -dt, and a pretty decent chunk of both evasion and magic evasion. The tp set I posted is highly offensive, with a ton of sTP, crit rate, and a good chunk of multi attack (the three gleti's pieces are so good at R30). Yet despite that it still has 44 physical -dt and the empyrean feet bring your magic -dt to -39% with shell 5. That's a really sturdy set for a build that isn't a fully defensive hybrid.

We are dancers. We get TP at an absurd rate. We have reverse flourish. We don’t always fight mobs from the front. The empyrean feet are just a much better piece to tp in, and I'm not even considering situations where you may be mainhanding terpsichore. I use empyrean toe shoes with twashtar and mpu gandring mainhand. The tp gain is beyond silly when you run with terpsichore.

I was thinking maybe Herc feet with TA+4 more than anything

Herc feet lose in every conceivable way; they have lower DT, eva, meva, MDB, DEF, HP, acc, atk than both of the proposed pieces. 6 TA compared to 22 STP isn't even close. When compared to 12 STP it's competitive, as long as you aren't dead on the ground and/or need the acc/benefit from the atk.

I think a lot of people's sentiment these days goes something like: if you're fighting something so weak that you CAN wear gear like herc feet, your DPS doesn't matter that much because it's trash-tier content. If you're fighting something strong enough that it will murder you for wearing herc feet, you can't wear them. So general consensus is: don't wear any gear with D-tier defensive stats on it. It's even worse in this case though because even the offensive stats are quite bad.

Where did 22 STP come from?