Dancer is like Halloween Candy.

So, without my prior knowledge Omoi, Ninjafox and I all leveled DNC yesterday. I think this is because all three of us want to use it for Campaign and for solo/low-man stuff. Omoi got a bunch of levels on her DNC, while Ninjfox and I teamed up for some late night leveling but only got a couple of levels a piece. Dancer is fun to play in small groups for a little while but afterward I am left a little empty, quite like Halloween candy. I want to do it while I am doing it, but I am left without a compelling interest to continue it after I have swapped to another job, I just feel like its too much to switch back. LOL Dancer is like empty calories.

Anyway, I think the rest of this post is going to be dedicated to helping out Iceyb with a question that he has about Dancing Edge. Now, I will preface this as always by saying that I am not perfect on these calculations, so keep that in mind. Essentially, Iceblazek asked me if he had too much DEX on his Dancing Edge and should instead be focusing more on STR. I gave him some general advise, but I am going to do some of the calculations to help him out.

First, lets look at the modifiers for Dancing Edge. For all TP levels the damage modifier is 1.1875 for the first hit, and then like all WS it 1.0 for the rest of the hits. Then the stat modifiers are DEX 30% and CHR 40%, so lets haul out our WS damage formula!

Damage = WD * PDIF = (( D + fSTR + WSC) * fTP) * PDIF

And no I am not going to explain Weapon Damage or pDIF again, I have already done that once and it took me days and I think part of my soul is dead now because of it. ; ; Anyway, we just need a part of the equation really, because it is the meat of the matter.

The three main points are the D, fSTR and WSC. The D is just the damage listed on the weapon. The fSTR is... a long list of things, but to quickly boil it down, you get 1 more fSTR every 4 STR that you add. I am going to suggest that you could almost think of this as a 25% modifier, even though that is not true. It is a function that is rounded down, until you get to the next whole number, and it is also based on STR versus VIT of the mob, but if you think of it as one in four STR giving you an increase in fSTR then it is easier to make the comparison, even if it is not helpful for finding raw damage. WSC is the part of the calculation that considers the effect of the other mods, it is reduced by a level correction, but you probably only need to know the correction for 75, which is .83.

So for Dancing Edge if you want to compare STR to say DEX, you would say that STR you get .25 of each STR versus .30 of DEX multiplied by .83 or .249 which is very close to the damage you would get from STR.

Ah ha! It's not that simple though, because STR adds to attack, and DEX adds to accuracy, etc. AND! I could be wrong about all these estimates and I will update this tomorrow to get a better idea of the situation, and to help Iceyb! :)