Talk:How to Guide: Samurai Dancer

After reading your guide to SAM/DNC, I have to say that I felt that it was for the most part extremely vague, and not really even what I would consider to be actual "soloing". You fail to mention the advantages and disadvantages of SAM/DNC, what situations it would be appropriate, and offer very few actual tactics beyond what any non /DNC samurai would already be doing (meditate merits, store TP, using a Hagun). What you seem to offering is simply: go in and weaponskill the mob to gain an initial advantage. This really isn't any different than any other DD job without sub dancer "soloing" a mob. While the gravity section and facts regarding the specific effects of some DNC skills are useful. This guide can expand so much beyond what you currently have. For example:

Alternative merit distribution: Third eye merits instead of meditate. Combined with SAM relic pants, they make an extremely effective defense against single target physical attacks. Speaking from experience, I find myself needing to evade more attacks than needing to meditate for more TP. Especially since sometimes I prefer using the soboro, which you do not mention here at all whatsoever.

Alternative weapon choice: What weapon in the main hand? What grip is most effective? Sometimes fights come down to survivability rather than damage output. Soboro Sukehiro offers a SAM/DNC a huge advantage as opposed to other DD/DNC combinations due to a singe factor: High delay weapon + High attack speed. Due to the nature of drain samba calculating HP drained by weapon dealy, SAMs can drain up to 75 HP per attack round (if you attack 3 times), much much more than any other DD job out there. In addition, wearing a platinum grip +1 with the soboro opens a lot of stun proc situations that can allow you to put third eye back up or cure yourself. Yet, you mention none of these factors in your guide.

Gear choices: While you allude to wearing some gears for specific situations, you hardly go into detail about them. Most SAM/dnc wont accumulate large amounts of gear simply to solo a variety of mobs, a list of core "must have" gears should be included. For example, the most obvious of all macro ins: Kirins Osode and Genbu's Helm. Since Waltzes cure based on CHR of the dancer and the VIT of the target, equipping both items will add a substantial amount to your waltzes. Furthermore, balancing Haste, Eva, Def, damage reduction, are all important aspects of SAM/DNC soloing. What about Arhat's Gi +1 and or Arhat's Jinpachi? Evasion wont always help out with every job you solo, and high attacking speed mobs may require you to go defense or damage reduction instead of evasion. VIT is the second highest stat for SAM, second only to STR, you dont mention anything about taking advantage of a defense build.

Pros and Cons: What are the pros and cons of using some equipment over others? Obviously soboro feeds the mob a lot of TP. But is the steady TP gain on your own part and high regen rate enough to overcome that disadvantage? What are the limits of a SAM/DNC in general? I find that due to the low HP curing value of Waltz II, and the 7 second recast, sometimes I can still die even though I have plenty of TP. SAM/DNC simply cant cure itself hard enough or fast enough for certain situations. These things need to be kept in mind.

What you have here is a good jumping off point, but I would hardly call it a "Guide" to playing SAM/DNC. It is really more of an opinion on your part about how you do things, while offering no alternative points of view or flexibility to an extremely versatile job combination.