DNC Merits?

They're pissed because everyone uses the job differently and your DNC merits have a large impact on how you can use the job.

Tier 1 (Not really debatable, though people with AF3+2 hands may consider alternatives):
5 Haste Samba
5 Reverse Flourish

Tier 2 (Heavily debatable):
5 Saber Dance
2 No Foot Rise
1 Fan Dance
2 Closed Position

The logic behind my Tier 2 merits:
* Saber Dance - 1/5 is +15% Double Attack. 5/5 is +20% Double Attack. This just isn't replaceable when DDing, and +1.25% Double Attack per merit is brokenly good compared to, for instance, WAR Tier 1.
* No Foot Rise - Presto -> Step gives 3 Finishing, unless the Step misses. If the step misses, No Foot Rise gives 2 finishing and the following Step will get the Presto effect and still return 3 (5 total), keeping up your 5-step rotation.
* Fan Dance - There are very few solos where I rely heavily on Fan Dance. Myrm (kind of, doesn't really help because Gravitic isn't phys) and Delageed (freaking Petrify) are the only two I can think of. So 1 merit into it is enough for me. If I can't reliably evade something, then I shouldn't be trying to solo it on Dancer. If I can reliably evade something, then (barring weird cases like Delageed's enpetrify) I should be able to ride Saber Dance most of the time, saving Fan Dance for when I get into trouble.
* Closed Position - This is where I dump the rest of the merits, and it helps me use Saber Dance more.

Group 1:
5/5 Haste Samba
5/5 Reverse Flourish Effect

This should be a given. 10% Haste effect and when combined with AF3 Hands, roughly 85% TP return upon each Reverse Flourish.

Group 2:
1/5 Fan Dance
1/5 Saber Dance
5/5 No Foot Rise
3/5 Closed Position

I left Fan and Saber Dance at 1 simply because of the recast and duration are the same. And as far as people understand how the JAs work, there is no other reason to further merit these two abilities simply to shorten the re-cast when you can full time it if you pay attention to your buffs.

5/5 No Foot Rise because there will be times where I'm entirely idle, unable to TP on another mob, and I'm /NIN. With the short re-cast and AF3 Hands, this is nice to make sure TP is always readily available.

And 3/5 Closed Position was mainly to help Fan and Saber Dance, but also at the same time, while soloing or doing something else, the added Accuracy and Evasion helps regardless. If we do it right, we're always face to face with the mob anyway. ;)

Just to clarify something, Saber Dance's potency seems to decrease with time. So if you max the merits and use it over itself, you actually end up double attacking about 5% more.

Fan Dance's potency decreases on a per-hit basis.

These were my main reasons for transferring closed position merits up to saber/fan. It's also nice to be able to drop saber for a cw and put it back up earlier. The goal for my dd/eva hybrid set is to do the maximum amount of dmg without needing a cure until saber recast is up. In the future I may change to 4/5 saber, 1/5 fan, 5/5 NFR. I'll wait and see how often the slightly shortened fan timer from 2/5 saves me over the next few weeks.

My experience is that (in cases where I'm playing conservatively enough to use Fan Dance), I end up getting hit about 3 times every 5 minutes tops.

This is why I don't like other DNC. They're either sitting around Port Jeuno rocking the pink gear, or they think they're the second *** coming.
Ugh.

Group 1, I have Haste Samba at 5/5 because that used to be law. It used to be a matter of have Haste Samba capped or we're not letting you play. It's still probably a large reason my linkshells humour me by letting me come on DNC instead of RDM or RNG. Then I have 5/5 in Reverse Flourish because... it's awesome really. Building Flourish is for e-peen purposes only so don't bother with that. You can put some in step accuracy if you want, but there's enough gear for it really. Macro in the bangles and the shoes for a start and you shouldn't have much of a problem.

Group 2. Fan Dance you should have at least at 1/5. Lifesaver if you're soloing something that does AoEs. Sabre Dance is good, clean fun so long as you're not having to cure people so stick one on that. I'd say put at least 2 or 3 in No Foot Rise. When the fight starts, the first thing you should do is Presto > Step > Reverse Flourish > Samba (if you're not using Fan Dance) so that would put you at 5/5 with 2 merits in it.

That should give you 6 group 2 merits to play around with. It's not worth putting any more in Saber Dance so I'd put a line through that. No Foot Rise I have at 5/5 merits because I like to start the fight with TP. Like I said, it's not vital, but it's nice to have a safety net if you need to cure off the bat for whatever reason. Fan Dance I have at 4/5. It's really nice to be able to use this as much as possible. If you're soloing then it buys you time really between shadows. Makes life easier. So that puts me at 10/10.

Some people like to put merits into Closed Position, but it's nothing you can't do with gear, in my opinion. Maybe you could cap eva rate earlier, put in some haste gear and get a faster kill, but I don't really care how fast kills are if I'm soloing an NM.

go solo ovni or yacumama without fan dance fully merited and u'l lunderstand why fan dance > saber.

Saber is a toy for doin Omfg DE+Skillchain
Fan dance make u survive Nms plps cant usually solo...

No, we let you come DNC so Chipper can stare at your ***...

He stares at my *** no matter what job I come on.

Yacumama is an easy solo, and I did it 7 times with only 1 merit in Fan Dance (forgot to equip my magian dagger on the first kill >.>).

My merits are not specialized towards soloing, tanking, or DDing. I took a generalist approach to my Group2 merits. I'm fully aware that others with more specialized setups will easily out-damage me or solo more effectively than me, but I'm fine with that. I like being able to switch roles on the fly.

Group1:
Haste Samba 5/5
Reverse Flourish 5/5

Group2:
Saber Dance 1/5
Fan Dance 1/5
No Foot Rise 4/5
Closed Position 4/5

I love having a built-in Scorpion Harness +1 whenever I face a mob, which is often, but I still kick around the idea of dumping my Closed Position merits for 3/5 on Saber Dance and Fan Dance.

With the adjustment to Presto, No Foot Rise merits aren't nearly as good as they were in the past. I still kept them though, although these days I don't ride the timer like I once did.

I think of No Foot Rise as an ace up my sleeve. I can build TP and FMs on the move. When I engage mobs/NMs without first building TP/FMs, I can instantly apply Haste Samba and a Presto'd Step. If something goes wrong or starts badly, I have immediate access to either Curing Waltz 3 and a Presto'd Step or Curing Waltz 4. I can also choose to throw out an extra weaponskill without first building up FMs.

My merits aren't optimal by any means, but DNC is still a hybrid job and I try to approach it as such. I tried to balance my merits to grant me flexibility in play-styles and to give myself multiple options and courses of action during battle.

I'm not really sure how to respond to this without being derogatory, so I'll just give some advice:
Cap your Evasion skill and try again.

The only dangerous part of Ovni is Vitriolic Barrage, which is magic damage. I do him full-timing Saber Dance and Haste Samba with a hybrid Haste/Evasion gear (26% Haste, Evasion and Subtle Blow elsewhere). Dusty Elixir and Lucid Potion 1/2 are enough to take care of the damage I take on the average fight. I got my belt pretty quickly and a while ago though, so maybe he has some super awesome combo move that I never saw. THF/BLM + DNC/NIN for the dropping fight =p. Force Blue during piercing time (conflux if it isn't dagger) and then put TH on it!

Yacumama I soloed on DNC with 1/5 Fan Dance. Violent Flourish and run away during Hundred fists. He does catch up, but our Violent flourish recast is low enough that this buys you a lot of time even without pinning him, which is another option. When I had a healer (4/6 times), I just killed him regardless of Hundred Fists.

5/5nfr
5/5haste samba
4/5 closed position
1/5fan dance

works perfect for me, would never change it

I went 5/5 Closed Position, 1/5 on Fan Dance and Saber Dance, 3/5 on No Foot Rise, then 5/5 Haste Samba and Reverse Flourish. With 5/5 Closed Position, I rarely have issues getting hit or hitting a target, the 3/5 No Foot Rise is nice for FMs when needed, or if I need quick TP at the start of a fight for a Samba/Waltz. Definetly do agree with having at least 1 merit on Fan Dance, it makes a HUGE difference when soloing/duoing/tanking a mob. As for Reverse Flourish and Haste Samba, those are still the 'standard' for Tier 1 Merits, 15 extra TP from Flourish (100 TP with AF3 gloves is :Q) is worth it, and the extra -5% Delay from Haste Samba helps a lot as well

fan dance reduces vitrolic barrage

Ah, are you sure about that? I assumed it didn't because Vitriolic counts as magic damage. It works essentially like a magical 1000 Needles.

Anyway, if it does it reinforces my point that I never bothered using Fan Dance against Ovni.

yeah it does, it's weird to be honest, it's a magical attack that is reduced by pdt (tried with pdt and mdt gear and pdt gear reduces dmg as well) fresh fandance reduces the dmg to less than 100 dmg.

I quit FFXI shortly after the first Abysea come out, Dnc was the Only job i cared about playing and I dont wanna say i was the best but I was damn good at what I did on my Dnc but I was always kicked in the corner by everyone.. lolDnc level a real tank/healer/DD, *** all you I can do it all on Dnc.. then months later and 2 expansions later I hear Dnc is the greatest thing since Treasure Hunter from my friends still playing...

/Rage quit