How to Guide: Samurai Dancer

CAUTION!
	This article is a personal guide. Information expressed in this guide is one player's opinion and may be more opinion than fact. Strategies and information contained herein may not work for everyone. No non-minor changes should be made without consulting the author. Changes or questions should be discussed on the talk page.

Disclaimer: This guide was originally typed up with colorful formatting and posted on ffxi.allakhazam.com please visit: http://ffxi.allakhazam.com/db/jobs.html?fjob=13;mid=121808771248948713;num=13;page=1 for the way the guide is supposed to be formatted. I'm sorry for the horrible format this guide is here on ffxiclopedia.org, it's what I can do in a short amount of time. Thank you, and happy reading.

Getting Started

This guide will explain both the basics, and advanced soloing tactics to become a successful 75SAM/37DNC. To begin handling some solo work on SAM/DNC prepare yourself with a modest evasion setup. You must consider various things:

Evasion Skill (Character Stat wise, eg., is it capped?)

Parrying Skill (See Evasion Skill)

Evasion+

Evasion Skill+

Parrying Skill+

Agility+

This is the list of things that you will need to look at when deciding on your evasion gear set. A few other things to consider in your solo work are these:

Accuracy

Accuracy is needed so that you can successfully land steps and attacks. Without TP you cannot cure yourself or others.

With this, keep in mind the amount of accuracy you need varies with what you're fighting. Fighting anything below VT warrants the need of almost no Accuracy+ items. Merits alone (into Great Katana) should suffice for now. If you feel you are missing more than you should, by all means make a wise decision in your gear choices to allocate accuracy where it's needed.

Store TP

Store TP will help you reach 100% TP for Weapon Skills or the amount of TP you need to use a Dancer Job Ability, be it healing or erasing.

Attack

Attack plays an important role in soloing as SAM/DNC. The damage-over-time done by your melee hits make a great big portion of the damage you do to your enemy*, and how much you heal for.

Basics down, what's next?

What's next? There's still more to learn from here. You are however done with the basics. Lets move on to some more specific things.

Your equipment is just the first step into learning how to play a solo SAM/DNC correctly and efficiently. You must now grasp certain other concepts on how to better your performance and enhance your abilities as SAM/DNC.

Choosing your monster

The monster you chose to fight can greatly change the way you approach the battle...

Easy Prey to Decent Challenge:

These monsters are on the low end of what the majority of SAM/DNC's can handle with minimal equipment, merits, and so on.

Fighting monsters around this level range gives you a bit more leeway. More attack gear can be used instead of relying heavily on evasion gear.

Even Match to Tough:

Fighting monsters around this level range require a pretty solid evasion gear set and hefty amounts of merits.

Very Tough to Incredibly Tough:

Nothing but the best gear and merit choices can warrant successful solo's of anything in this range. Using oddball equipment, items, food, medication, and other things to keep yourself alive isn't strange at this level.

Choose which monster you're targeting and read up about it's TP moves, his elemental and physical weaknesses. Understanding this information before hand will give you a great benefit during battle.

Tactics, Equipment and Merits

At this point we're ready to begin soloing the mob of your choice. From this point forward we'll talk in-depth about the tactics to implement, ways to get out of trouble, and thinking ahead to try to give yourself the lead in the battle.

Since Equipment is the first underlying factor of survival, this next list of Merits and items will also help you survive, help you do more damage and so on.

Meditate Recast Down 5/5 Store TP 5/5 Food Reraise Signet Other (Explained later...)

Preparedness

Coming prepared is probably the best thing you can possibly do when beginning to solo anything. Your success in soloing something can be increased 10-fold by bringing what is necessary to defeat your foe. You can choose to bring other items to help out, including very situational gear like Ice Trousers or if the battle turns sour you can always pop an Icarus Wing to save the day.

Engage your enemy with TP Engaging your enemy without the tools to start off on a good foot isn't exactly what we're aiming to do. Use your Meditate macro and make sure at the very least you have Myochin Kabuto inside that macro, here's an example:

    /equip head "Myochin Kabuto"
    /ja Meditate <me>
    /wait 1
    /equip head "Empress Hairpin"

Stratagies

Depending on what you're fighting you may not want to waste your time using steps. If you plan on fighting something that is going to take a while, landing a few Box Steps can improve the battle in a few ways:

Shorter Battle - The enemy dies quicker due to increased damage.

Increased Regen - By doing more damage you increase how much you heal yourself with Drain Samba.

Finishing Moves - Landing Box Step grants you Finishing Moves so that you may use Flourishes where they are needed.

Gravity

Desperate Flourish provides you with an accuracy based Job Ability to weigh the enemy down to allow you to escape from it or to wait out a Meditate/Third Eye timer.

Here's my Gravity Macro:

    /equip waist "Life Belt"
    /equip ring1 "Woodsman Ring"
    /equip ring2 "Woodsman Ring"
    /ja Quickstep <t>
    /wait 1
    /ja "Desperate Flourish" <t>

Sekkanoki Equipping a hard-hitting weapon like Hagun instead of Soboro Sukehiro, using Meditate, and creating a self skill chain helps increase the damage you do every time Sekkanoki is up along with Meditate.

Thinking Ahead If you play your cards right, and by thinking ahead, you can implement ways to help you avoid TP moves, increase your survivability, or kill the enemy faster by thinking ahead. This can be summed up by paying close attention to your recast timers, and pay attention to the enemies movement and actions.

Fighting plenty of Tonberries, Promyvion-Mea bosses, and Tauruses will provide you with an edge fighting other monsters or these same ones in another event. These monsters are specific and have special TP moves. Some TP moves actually take more than an instant to fire. You do have a chance to do this: "Player is to far away from Monster". Running away from Throat Stab or Impalement is a tactic you can implement. Turning away from Mortal Ray is another. Taurus's Mortal Ray is a gaze type attack. Facing away from the enemy renders you immune to its effects.

So I'm fighting the Monster what can I do? Besides killing it, you have a great big arsenal at your disposal to help you finish off your foe or help you survive inside the battle and out.

The Arsenal:

Drain Samba

Curing Waltz

Divine Waltz

Healing Waltz

Desperate Flourish

Animated Flourish

Quickstep

Box Step

Spectral Jig

Meditate

Seigan

Hasso

Third Eye

Sekkanoki

Warding Circle

Tachi: Yukikaze

Tachi: Gekko

Tachi: Kasha

When you begin the fight there are several things you need to do to get the upper hand almost instantaneously. Knowing before hand the monster's elemental weakness is key. Let's set an example:

    Diamond Daig (Beetle)
    Weakness: Ice, Light

    Begin the fight with 110+ TP
    Engage
    Land Box Step (-5% Defense)
    Use Sekkanoki
    Use Meditate
    Use Tachi: Gekko
    /wait 2
    Use Tachi: Kasha
    Skillchain: Fusion (Fire, Light)

These 8 steps did the following:

Lowered the enemies defense by 5%.

Silenced the enemy.

Paralyzed the enemy.

Damaged the enemy.

Gained you a finishing move.

Landing this crucial head start in the battle helps tremendously. Using the information about the enemy can help you defeat it much quicker, or at least survive a lot longer than you would have without using the enemies weakness against them.

Job Abilities: Explained I'm going to list a few Job Abilities from the Arsenal to explain some of the math used to help you enhance these job abilities.

Drain Samba II Amount healed is Delay*8/100 Caps at 50% Damage.

Curing Waltz II Amount healed = floor((Target's VIT + Caster's CHR)/4+130),1)

Divine Waltz Amount healed = floor((Target's VIT + Caster's CHR/8+60),1) for each party member.

Animated Flourish CE 1 - VE 1500

Quickstep Level 1 removes 8 evasion, each additional level removes 4 evasion up to a total of 24 evasion removed.

Box Step Level 1 is a 5% decrease in defense. Each successive level is an additional 2% decrease, totaling at a 13% decrease in defense.

Ending Reminders

Play around with your equipment setup and try new combination's to find out what works best for you.

Since Curing Waltz works as a point system, (When healing yourself both VIT and CHR are used. It doesn't matter which stat you wish to enhance as long as it's on of them since you are the target of your own Waltz. We could refer to VIT and CHR as points) find which gear is best for you to increase your point total to get more healing out of your cures. If the VIT matches CHR in the same amount on two pieces of equipment such as:

Bibiki Seashell

Tsar's Egg

Get the one with the CHR boost, since this will allow you to heal others instead of only maximizing yourself.

To end here, thanks for reading and happy soloing :P