Friday, 26 December 2008

The DNC and the NIN

Having almost completed levelling DNC as a sub I just wanted to make a few comments about my experience with the job.

First, we all know it's great for solo but most of us would probably only put one in a party if we needed some extra healing. However, since dinging 30 I've found that DNC fills a clever niche in the party enmity dynamic. This is all due to Animated Flourish: a {Provoke} so weak you wonder why they bothered. Well, I think the answer to that question is NIN/WAR tanks before 37.

We all know that NIN tanks can have trouble holding hate, especially at lower levels. We also know that blink tanking before 37 and Utsusemi Ni is not really that effective. A nice solution to this is to have 2 NIN/WAR tanks voke off each other for shadow recasts. However, I think SE intended DNC/NIN as the perfect compliment to a NIN/WAR tank.

A nice Flourish

Due to low damage NIN don't pull loads of enmity at low levels and rely almost solely on provoke for enmity spikes. Conversely, DNC has to be careful about how much hate they do pull. As a result unless you have a DD massively out damaging the NIN tank there is a good chance a DNC will be 2nd on the hate list and this places a DNC/NIN in just the right place for a well-timed Flourish, grabbing attention while the NIN gets shadows back up. The extra enmity produced by Animated Flourish is nothing like that produced by Provoke so the NIN will have no probs pulling hate back consistently. With WAR/NIN you have a Provoke vs Provoke face off and with the extra dmg a WAR does it can be hard for NIN to rebuild solid hate; a badly timed WS can pull hate right of the NIN until Provoke is ready again.

So, unless you are massively over curing and already causing hate problems never be afraid to voke on DNC/NIN if it looks like someone is going to take a beating, the tank will never struggle to pull hate back off you ^^

A quick word on Steps

If you're a DNC you should be doing Steps. Quickstep provides evasion down and Boxstep defense down, both are great effects for speeding up fights, also you need to land Steps to get Finishing Moves for Flourishes.

Due to timers and duration of effects you can happily alternate between one step and the other. However, because you want to maximise your chance of landing your Steps I'd suggest going for at least two Quicksteps and build up Lethargic Daze 2+ before you start on Boxstep, otherwise your just wafting away TP ^^

I've really enjoyed DNC, it's actually good fun once you understand just what it can do. It's just a shame about all the prancing /sigh

No comments:

Post a Comment