Monday, December 10, 2007
Dancer
Here is the first in a series of dancer and dancer related posts. This one is about a week old with a few small updates.
After about a week break I came back and dived into leveling Dancer as soon as I could. This turned out to be Friday night after finishing up in Tu'lia. Over the weekend most of my play time was dedicated to leveling dancer. I managed to hit level 30 before calling it quits for the weekend. The last two levels I managed to get into a party. There are so many low level dancers running around it is probably hard to find any other jobs to fill out a party. I know I saw at least one party of six dancers in Qufim.
I had mixed feelings with dancer in the beginning. With very low hand-to-hand and sword skill after a certain point dagger is the only option for TP. I stuck with dancer/monk until level 20 then upgraded for daggers as dancer/ninja. Even now as level 30 dancer hand-to-hand isn't a bad choice with the merits I have already put into it. Hand-to-hand is two levels or so behind daggers. I would prefer to avoid daggers, but with no natural martial arts I would be attacking too slow to bother.
Like all low level jobs I solo as much as I can. Using daggers and low hand-to-hand means that I solo poorly. Compared to the other melee jobs I have taken to 37 dancer cannot kill anything. Kills are painfully slow, so I have been recruiting someone with a closely leveled damage job to kill mobs for me. In exchange they get fast hassle free exp. Personally, I think this is a great deal for them. I am going to have to party more as I find it more difficult to find properly equipped melee to duo with, but for now it is smooth sailing. It is very possible I will be able to get out of Gustav before any serious exping with a reliable partener.
Where is dancer going to fall into in endgame? The job definately has potential as for support in limit parties, but where does it go from there? The things that stand out the most to me where dancer will not be welcomed include any mobs where TP gain on the mob is a concern. Anything from Salvage chariots to Tiamat or anything else where TP spam may quickly kill the tanks is a problem dancers will be useless. Samurai sub on dancer? What is that going to do? When curing waltz IV cost fifty TP the seventy from meditate will be used up before you know it. Even changing finishing moves to TP is unrealistic. You still need to melee and land those flourishes and if a flourish misses there is another couple swings from your weapon. With very limited access to haste armour dancers cannot even put their animated flourish and fast cures to use with ninja subjob against most difficult mobs.
Interestingly where dancer seems like it will work is in Dynamis, Limbus, non-chariot Salvage, and maybe more things I can't think of. While dancer may be limited to only healing their own party under normal circumstances they could easily heal a melee party brought into most of these areas. The problem would be why have a dancer when you could have another monk, bard, or red mage. Dancer definately does not replace any of these jobs when attempting to low man an event.
I intend to take dancer to seventy five and properly equip it, but if exp parties are not tolerable later on who knows if I will be able to last.
After about a week break I came back and dived into leveling Dancer as soon as I could. This turned out to be Friday night after finishing up in Tu'lia. Over the weekend most of my play time was dedicated to leveling dancer. I managed to hit level 30 before calling it quits for the weekend. The last two levels I managed to get into a party. There are so many low level dancers running around it is probably hard to find any other jobs to fill out a party. I know I saw at least one party of six dancers in Qufim.
I had mixed feelings with dancer in the beginning. With very low hand-to-hand and sword skill after a certain point dagger is the only option for TP. I stuck with dancer/monk until level 20 then upgraded for daggers as dancer/ninja. Even now as level 30 dancer hand-to-hand isn't a bad choice with the merits I have already put into it. Hand-to-hand is two levels or so behind daggers. I would prefer to avoid daggers, but with no natural martial arts I would be attacking too slow to bother.
Like all low level jobs I solo as much as I can. Using daggers and low hand-to-hand means that I solo poorly. Compared to the other melee jobs I have taken to 37 dancer cannot kill anything. Kills are painfully slow, so I have been recruiting someone with a closely leveled damage job to kill mobs for me. In exchange they get fast hassle free exp. Personally, I think this is a great deal for them. I am going to have to party more as I find it more difficult to find properly equipped melee to duo with, but for now it is smooth sailing. It is very possible I will be able to get out of Gustav before any serious exping with a reliable partener.
Where is dancer going to fall into in endgame? The job definately has potential as for support in limit parties, but where does it go from there? The things that stand out the most to me where dancer will not be welcomed include any mobs where TP gain on the mob is a concern. Anything from Salvage chariots to Tiamat or anything else where TP spam may quickly kill the tanks is a problem dancers will be useless. Samurai sub on dancer? What is that going to do? When curing waltz IV cost fifty TP the seventy from meditate will be used up before you know it. Even changing finishing moves to TP is unrealistic. You still need to melee and land those flourishes and if a flourish misses there is another couple swings from your weapon. With very limited access to haste armour dancers cannot even put their animated flourish and fast cures to use with ninja subjob against most difficult mobs.
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A waltz! |
Interestingly where dancer seems like it will work is in Dynamis, Limbus, non-chariot Salvage, and maybe more things I can't think of. While dancer may be limited to only healing their own party under normal circumstances they could easily heal a melee party brought into most of these areas. The problem would be why have a dancer when you could have another monk, bard, or red mage. Dancer definately does not replace any of these jobs when attempting to low man an event.
I intend to take dancer to seventy five and properly equip it, but if exp parties are not tolerable later on who knows if I will be able to last.
Labels: FFXI, Wings of the Goddess
# posted by Mazzic @ 11:57 AM 
