On SAM & DNC/SAM

Last week I got a sudden urge to finish off my SAM sub and use it on Dancer, mainly cos I was bored of DNC/NIN, and especially realizing that I don't really use the features of /NIN. Utsusemi is neat and all, and definitely useful for merit parties, but I rarely go on merit parties, and for campaign and soloing... well, DNC evasion is high enough to avoid a good portion of hits, and campaign you actually *WANT* to take damage.

So, in the course of a few nights, I went from SAM 21 to 37. Surprisingly, I quite enjoyed the process... For some reason, I was called upon to tank a lot more on SAM compared to when I took WAR to 29, probably cos WAR to 29 was in AP blitz-type parties where nobody cared where hate went. I made a point to try to keep my Great Katana up-to-date, and was consistently surprised at how easy it was to maintain hate while tanking. Just about the only person who could pull hate away from me was Zurar on RNG, or a nuke-happy BLM who would start the fight with nuking. I'm done with SAM as a sub for now, but I'll probably pick it up again for fun later and continue leveling it.

DNC/SAM
One thing I noticed... and I'm a little surprised by this... is that I'm the only DNC/SAM on the server. All other Dancers are using DNC/NIN, with a few lower level ones using DNC/MNK or DNC/WAR. I'm a little surprised by this as DNC/SAM is turning out to be quite a workhorse for events.

For starters, Meditate really lets a Dancer start out strong. At first I thought it would have limited use, just 60 TP every 3 minutes, but I forgot that you can start Meditating as soon as you zone. For events, this pretty much meant that I had at least 120-300% TP to start since it takes time to get places, buff up and prepare. Between Meditate & Reverse Flourish, I never had any issue of not having TP.

With the ability to basically go back to 100% whenever I wanted, I could actually start toying around with using Dancing Edge just for fun without neglecting my healing duties :D Only did it twice so far, and I didn't bother checking damage, but at least it's something different to do.

Third Eye isn't the same as shadows, but at least it's a job ability and cannot be interrupted. For most battles, I'd forget to renew Utsusemi after it wears since most of the time I'm not pulling hate. However, once I get hate, it's a pain to get shadows back up. Third Eye just lets me get it up at once and at least avoid some damage instead of being constantly interrupted.

Store TP probably helps a little. Every swing of my dagger I'm building up 7% TP. This is compared to the 10% TP for two swings with /NIN, so I think it's a decent tradeoff since I'm swinging more frequently. A Dancer really wants to get to 10% TP as soon as possible since that's the minimum required to use steps. Not being able to do so with the first swing is annoying, but Meditate really makes it a moot point. Unfortunately, Store TP gear didn't make much difference. Even after putting on all the Store TP gear I have, I still only get 7% TP per swing xD It probably makes some difference over time, but I'll just stick to my normal accuracy or haste gear.

Overall, I'd use DNC/SAM for events over DNC/NIN. For any event where there are actual tanks to hold hate, DNC/SAM would allow for more flexibility either with WSing, or simply being able to start the fight with TP instead of having to start from scratch!