The Last Dance: Gearing Paradigms For A New Age

What % of the fight did you assume its Defense Down effect was active for? Proc% is proportional to delay, so the Polearm for DRG would have a higher proc rate than the dagger (2.5x proc rate if it's linear). Also, the DRG polearm can proc on 100% of your hits, while the Defense Down dagger could only proc on your offhand. You swing it less often (by %) and it procs less often, so it might not be active for a considerable amount of the time.

Hadn't considered that it would be significantly lower due to lower delay. For it to be competitive with Str-magian, it would have to be applied near the start of every fight.

Well, thanks for pointing that out. Saves me the headache of magian trials.

Does this defense stack with other (mainly dia/angon/box step/acid bolt) ?

Angon/Acid Bolt I believe no
Dia/Box Step it should

Yeah, there are three debuff statuses that lower defense:
* Dia - Dia, Dia II, Dia III (Light Shot increases this)
* Sluggish Daze - Box Step (only source)
* Defense Down - Angon, Tachi: Ageha, Magian weapons, Full Break, Armor Break, Garland of Bliss, Shell Breaker, Tourbillion, Corrosive Ooze, Frightful Roar, Acid weapons, etc.

You can only have one of each debuff status on the monster at the same time. Somewhat amusingly, the only quasi-viable source of Defense Down is Angon.

Ok thank you I knew about dia(light shot) / box step, but I had no clue if acid bolt/angon etc were the same debuff or not.

That dagger sounds like a good idea for TH mules, doesn't it? When all you do is SA/TA to increase TH, might as well luck out with some def down. But I guess the question is are you willing to trial it up just for that?

I made the def down dagger. It sounded like a great idea but like Byrth said sometimes it'll proc non-stop and then you'll go 3 minutes without seeing a proc and just wondering why you aren't using your str one.

They're very easy trials to do if you just single wield it and fight multiple monsters so you can switch targets and keep proccing on the next one. I don't know if it's worth it for you, though.

Hey guys~ so I just hit DNC99 and fortunately I had alot of stuff to ding into from my THF.

I have a question regarding daggers though. I was considering making a Twashtar (as it would be utilized both THF and DNC) however I've just been thinking that I'd make a 2nd STR Thokcha instead.

So what I guess I'm asking is; what do you guys suggest?

STR/STR, Aluh/STR, Twash/STR, or something else?

Thanks in advance!

Edit: I didn't mention what I plan on using DNC for... mainly for dreamlands in Dyna. Maybe more depending on how much I enjoy it :3 I like my jobs to be fairly high tier in gear though, even if it is just a currency ***.

IIRC Aluh/some other dagger (STR?) beat Twash if kept 90 or lower? It was a few pages back when that discussion came up.

Edit: found it

Hey~

Yeah, I did read that but I just wanted clarification~ I'm assuming Aluh would be better than STR/STR then too?

I'll leave the expert 100% sure answers to Byrth and Sylow but again IIRC yes.

Hokay lol. Makes life easier on me in the meantime :P I'll just grab an Aluh for the time being~

Edit: Ooops, posted from my other account lol

It may also not be better but the gain from STR and Twash are so marginal it's not worth while save for Twash 95/99 or Terp. I don't remember exactly it's late.

At work so I can't pull up the sheetz, but I want to say the delay advantage pulls STR/STR ahead of Aluh/STR. Even so, the difference is so marginal that it's probably not worth the headache of making a STR weapon and then paying 4 times as much as a completely sunk cost for geodes.

Also, you'd still potentially need a dagger proc weapon on other jobs so Aluh's job flexibility means inventory +1 (does for me, anyway). And Jambiyas look cool.

Yeah, pretty much this. Aluh is very competitive in the main-hand slot (extra base damage on WS) but has slightly more delay. It might lose by a miniscule amount overall, but it costs less, requires no effort beyond walking to the AH, and you can use it on other jobs when you need to.

DNC friends,

Does the "enhances violent flourish" effect change from relic to relic +2? Thanks.

Probably, but unknown. The highest level Hpmede vs. the lowest level subjobless DNC (that can wear AF2 NQ) still has a capped hit rate and Stun rate with Violent Flourish, so we can't test it in any easy/automated way. For all we know it gives an even larger melee Accuracy bonus.

Anecdotally, though, I do believe it increases Magic Accuracy.

The 2-4 hit Dagger is pretty good for that, if you don't have the means to annihilate DC monsters like Sylow or Byrth do. Rather than compete with a million BSTs for job ability monsters you can pull a handful of weapon skill monsters and off hand the dagger to spam Aeolien Edge. With a decent enough setup it takes 15-20% off Hippogryphs in Valkurm so it's not totally rubbish either. And of course you will stagger most of what you pull.

I pull between 4-6 monsters at once and only occasionally need to use Fan Dance. I'd say about four to five pulls per run will not have every monster staggered but you're getting more shots at drops than targetting JA, at least with Lakshmi's crowded zones.

Kill speed is decent enough. Smallest amount in one run was 165 (including a mess up on an extender), largest was 243 as DNC/THF with the above method. By no means bad, but if you have the gear and weaponry to outright kill things quickly it's probably a better option.

Thanks Byrth. I guess I'll +2 it after all.

I'm no dnc, but I'm pretty sure the augment on that body is pretty damn sexy too. Extra tp, yes please!

Interested in pursuing this a bit further, since we don't often talk about aeolian edge applications. How much is your AE hitting for in this scenario? Are we talking EP or DC mobs? 15-20% of even an EP dynamis mob is actually quite a lot for it, in my experience. Do you think this translates into more overall damage than if you'd just used two TP Bonus daggers?

Gotta be honest; I really don't see myself going through the headache of an OA2-4 for dynamis regardless, but this would be nice to know.

I used to farm that way back when AoE WS procs weren't nerfed, but now that they're nerfed in CoP Dynamis I find that I get much more currency farming normally (the five times I've done it since I got Terpsichore). Also, I'd typically pull half of the monster population (had a WHM mule) and then go back for the other half.

When it comes to killing hoards of monsters that are low HP, Aeolian Edge is hard to beat. The weapon-damage/WS damage/TP gain tradeoff is a tough one to eyeball, but I think about it like this:

Aeolian Edge is good in situations where:
1) When you're fighting enough monsters. Doing a 700 damage Aeolian Edge to 5 monsters is a 3500 damage WS, and it's very reliable.

2) You're fighting multiple monsters that you frequently overkill otherwise. So the trip to 100 TP and the WS will do more damage than it has HP. You can either constantly swap targets for WS and swap back and piss yourself off, or you can start using Aeolian Edge. This doesn't eliminate the "multiple monsters" requirement, but it does help.

3) You are fighting multiple monsters that are physically damage resistant, like slimes. Again, I feel there has to be multiple targets for this to work. - I still have not been in a situation where 1v1 it was a better choice for me to use Aeolian Edge than Exenterator or Pyrrhic Kleos.

4) You are fighting multiple monsters in Abyssea (or some other situation where you can really pump up AE damage). Once more, I don't think that you can get enough damage out of AE 1v1 to justify using AE Atma over Razed Ruins/etc, but all the buffs in Abyssea sure lower the upper limit on the number of monsters you have to fight.

5) You need to do magic damage for some reason (Hi Cronos). This is the main situation where the number of targets is irrelevant.

6) A less durable friend has slept a large hoard of monsters and you want to make sure their attention is on you when they wake.


The last times that I have used AE were:
* The Sauro Meebles mission where you kill a bunch of slimes. I pulled them all back to the start and AEd them to death.
* Cleaving with a friend in Abyssea - Konschtat for . . . I don't know, we just started doing it.
* I was using it as a magic damage source to lower Cerberus's physical defenses in Bhaflau Remnants II, but I've found it's not actually useful enough to justify the WS damage sacrifice. I just sub NIN now.
* I imagine that RDM+DNC could pretty much clear an entire wing of trash monsters by spamming this WS in Arrapago II.



As far as comparing TP Bonus to OA2-4, the first TP Bonus+100 is typically ~damage+25% for Aeolian Edge. The second TP Bonus+100 is ~damage+14%. Superficially, OA2-4 would only have to provide a 14% increase in WS frequency to outclass the second TP Bonus dagger, and I'm sure it does.

It would have to provide +25% WS frequency to outclass the first one, and that's more dicey for me. I find that I get a lot of TP from Parrying, being hit, etc. Also, you take a substantial DPS hit. I'd sooner go TP Bonus/OA2-4 than Martial/TP Bonus (outside Abyssea) if I was trying to spam AE and didn't have Terpsichore.

The stagger rate is not too bad if you have the patience to change monsters once the one you are fighting is staggered. I don't notice many monsters not being staggered when I run, but this could be because I'm too busy or too disinterested to notice. From general observation, however, it doesn't seem to be too bad. If I pull 4 to 5 monsters and stagger 4, that is still 3 more than I'd be getting in that time frame competing with BSTs. It seems the time I choose to do Dynamis conflicts heavily with a recurring group of them.

When I started making this 2-4 hit Dagger my Dancer was not very well geared. It's still nowhere near as good as Byrth or Sylow's (though I wish it were!) but it's better. I might try taking on DC with my improved gear and soon-to-be-complete Twashtar and see if it's better. As I said before, the main motivation for farming WS monsters was the lack of competition. My choices are DC or WS and my results were always better going with the WS approach.

I have not parsed dynamis since I first started doing it so I don't have numbers on hand. But with an intentional effort to add to its damage through a weapon skill set it produced improved results to just spamming it, for sure. And with four or five monsters hitting you, as Byrth rightly said, it helps down them much quicker.

If you like, I will parse next time I do this so we've got some actual numbers to look at. But certainly if your Dancer is well geared and you have a fancy Dagger to go with it then I would fully expect focusing on stabbing DC monsters more vigorously to be more rewarding long term.


The worst trial was Hippogryphs because you can not do it in Abyssea. Almost every one of the 600 or more trials was completed doing Fell Cleave or alliance beat down XP parties with my linkshell, so it was a lot quicker than the trials imply.

I soloed them outside of Abyssea, so Peiste were the worst for me.

Ok, just wanted to clarify that. You're going to have a hard time maintaining this on DCs, I'd think; your WS proc rate will go up but your actual WS rate will tank, as multiple DCs will tear a hole in your face.

Maybe more importantly, no matter what your strategy DNC/THF is going to have a pretty difficult time breaking 250 currency without a mule, so congratulations: you've found a viable approach!

Indeed, but since the point of going for WS procs altogether is having zero competition there's no realistic reason to do DC over EP. And Byrth, you are a trooper. I found it bad enough doing that in Misareaux.

Going forward you really might consider a TP Bonus dagger (they're a breeze to make) and the PDT set Byrth mentioned a few pages ago when we were fighting about fan dance.

If you aren't being unnecessarily modest about your gear, breaking 250 currency as a true solo really is no mean feat, so it might be worth considering running with.