Haste Samba Merits

Been looking at it, and the situations they are useful seem less common that when its irrelevant.
Haste samba merits seem only useful for:
Drk and Run when LR down
Run if sub blu
War fencer or 2h sub drg

Has the game finally evolved to a point where these merits are no longer auto-pick? I could see value in double flourish 5/5 for a greedy dnc approach.

And and....that poor single wield cor brd who needs haste samba without subjob!


So that means 2h get to sub drg with dnc in pt for wsd and hate management. Why drop it then? It seems like the biggest value dnc provides in a pt.

war needs samba to cap even with /sam. no merits required, though

Correct, any 2h user with 10% ja from wyvern or hasso caps without merits.

I'm thinking a greedy dnc merit distrobution may be more useful unless you are partying with a war

merits are cheap, you can optimize for your group if you need to.

I personally see haste samba having more value than whatever flourish you are getting.

At ml30, cor/drg with 10% haste samba should be stronger than cor/nin because of that juicy wsd. Jump is a nice bonus too.

It also means war can /drg or something more defensive and still use 2h, so does drk. Drk can drop LR for more defense if they want.

Even if you have hasso you have the freedom to drop it for seigan for oh ***moment.

Overall, it offers plenty of flexibility and benefit for everyone else.

Im not sure if sacrificing Haste samba for BF/RF is really worth it. In fully buffed groups I rarely find the JA delay from bf/rf worth it. They honestly make more difference in solo situation to me, because I tp much slower solo. then again 10% haste samba is just as important for solo...I guess less so now with cornelia active.

But yeah. If I am inviting a Dnc to pt as DD over another choice, 10% haste samba is one huge factor to me. Ironically I find haste samba having more value now than 2 years ago.

Building flourish merits are almost useless too. You will use BF mostly for Rudra, which means crit rate and acc is pretty much useless. So you only get 5% attack.

RF merits are must have, because you should always use RF with Climactic to maximize numbers of Rudras with Climactic and dont waste forced crits on melee rounds. RF is also core mechanic for SP zerg.

I agree that Haste Samba merits are a lot more niche than they used to be... but I don't really think the alternatives are compelling enough to warrant changing merits to Building Flourish. There are still enough practical current situations where 5/5 Haste Samba IS useful that you probably want it in your toolkit.

- Sheol Gaol without subjobs (no DW subjobs for jobs like COR BRD BST, no /SAM)
- Allows DD/SAM or /NIN (for those who need to DW) to change to DD/DRG for stronger WS and better enmity control while still capping delay reduction
- WAR fencer builds (pretty popular these days)
- SAM or /SAM who pops Seigan at some point
- DRG in an oshit situation where the wyvern died and timer is down (not unreasonable to think that might happen in major AoE fights, and it's nice for you to be able to cover for that as the DNC)
- Niche stuff like dealing with a slow aura (e.g., Dyna Bastok wave 2 boss)

If you're using DNC more for solo, you never play with any Naegling WARs, and you don't bring DNC into Gaol with any jobs that normally need subjob to hit cap, well... OK, maybe for you it makes some sense to go for Reverse + Building Flourish merits in Group 1. For most people, I'd think the long standing advice of 5/5 Haste Samba (and 5/5 Reverse, the truly non-negotiable one) is still the better call.

Or if you know exactly why you want it, and don't mind reconfiguring merits, go for it. I'm just hesitant to say that should be a general recommendation (especially for DNC who don't know precisely why they're changing for a specific situation).

SimonSes said: »

Building flourish merits are almost useless too. You will use BF mostly for Rudra, which means crit rate and acc is pretty much useless. So you only get 5% attack.

Not seeing how crit rate +5% is useless on Rudra's, though I do think it isn't enough to outweigh the benefits of Haste Samba merits for most DNC.

because crit rate on a ws that can't crit naturally is useless? Unless i misunderstood

As to dnc merits, I can't think of the last time anyone needed step accuracy, RF is mandatory, and BF is incredibly niche as already mentioned but of the 4 its probably the only one id consider swapping samba merits to, main benefit would come from a PK/evis spam build over rudras or alternating when climatic is down? Still can't see it being all that useful unless you find yourself in a spot where the extra haste is really doing nothing for you or anyone else

I'm drunk and had Evisceration in my brain, nvm! Thanks for correcting me lol.

So yeah, that point makes the argument against Building even stronger, like Simon mentioned.

Nah....Id say haste samba is even more useful solo than groups, unless your solo is actually multibox. Because brd trusts just *** won't march me sometimes. Or sometimes I need another trust to counter a mechanic so I don't have brd trusts.

In that case not having capped haste samba makes it 10 times harder to 4 step.

Cornelia solved the problem but she'll be gone one day anyways. I'd still merit haste samba for solo as soon as she is gone.

Fair point on trusts being unreliable. I usually 2box when I do stuff by myself, with my alt often on a job like BRD GEO RDM that can add some haste. So yeah, true SOLO with trust perhaps you'd want to keep Haste Samba just to reduce the hit when trusts die, don't buff as quickly as you'd like, or use another song (Ulmia and her damn ballads).