Dancer Tanking FAIL and Scholar FAIL -- ZNMs

So far, Dancer tanking has been somewhat limited to being the main target of a ton of mobs (campaign, einherjar or dynamis) where Fan Dance + Waltz spam keeps me alive easily, or brief tanking experiences in ZNMs. My first attempt with Tyger ended with a fast death as I wasn’t seriously thinking about it. 2nd attempt with Nosferatu ended with me being charmed, and 3rd attempt with Gotoh end with me being… one shot –.-;

Fan Dance & Utsusemi work great against physical attacks and single-target magical attacks. Tier III-aga spells usually aren’t a problem since a single Curing Waltz IV brings me back up to 8-900 HP instantly. The problem in this case was Firespit, that hit me for 1.3k damage. I had no Protect, Shell, or Barfira, so I’m guessing that’s full strength. I only have 1.1k HP –.-

So, to survive something like that… I’d need HP merits and HP gear. I’m not certain if Shell or Barfira would have helped much, but increasing resistance to avoid one-shots like this is the reason why i go DNC/WHM (or /RDM) when I go to solo avatar battles.

Getting and maintaining hate is also a problem if I don’t have anyone to heal. Having THF & /THF SATA off me helps a lot of course, but possibly what would be better is to have me just be together with the main tanks. That way I can heal them for hate as well as get the usual buffs from mages.

So… now I’m wondering if I should keep trying to actively tank, or should I just let it happen naturally as a consequence of spamming cures. As much as I’d like to try to see what Dancer can do, I’d rather not be a burden on other people…

Scholar FAIL

A few minor annoyances during the last ZNM fight last night… getting left behind during the escape from Mamook which meant I was wasting my time going through the Mamool Ja Staging Point… getting hit by R0 right when I was sneaking around Bugards which lead to my death… and barely arriving at the fight right as the frog was popped without a chance to buff my party up.

And of course, for the 3rd time in a row, I switch out of Light Arts/Addendum: White at exactly the wrong time to Dark Arts to nuke. I figured that since the alliance was at full health and fully buffed, and the frog was nearly dead, I could switch over and nuke a little. Next thing: Breakga + –aga III spell. Having no stratagems left and stuck in Dark Arts, there wasn’t much I thought of doing at that point and I just… well, sat there dumbfounded for a few seconds.

Looking back, I realize now that I could have used Tabula Rasa to break out of the deadlock, Stona’ed the whole alliance and cured everyone back up instead of resulting in the partial wipe that we had. I guess speeding SCH to 75 in 3 weeks, and all these level-sync/powerleveled parties didn’t really help in teaching the job in panic situations…

That or I’m a sucky Scholar.

In other news, looks like I freelotted the Toad Mittens that this frog NM dropped. My first Scholar piece of endgame armor that provides magical attack. Interestingly, it’s also usable by BLU. I’ve adjusted my SCH macros to swap these gloves in. Perhaps I should swap my BLU nuking set too.