Monk75/Dancer: Better than /NIN for soloing VT o.O (1500xp in < 8min, chain3+ ending with full HP)

[genomeffxi]

Monk/Dancer: Better than /NIN for soloing VT o.OI've been kinda busy recently, but I still managed to level my DNC subjob completely and test it a bit as MNK/DNC .
I recorded a video of a few solo xp chains and I have to say it works out better than MNK/NIN for many situations.

This was in part thanks to the fact that now BST is such a great subjob (now that your pet doesn't take xp away from you, you can choose to keep the same pet for hours if needed, or sacrifice it to spare you some tanking when you see a better choice). As usual, faster solo xp all the way to 37 and much better than risking bad frustrating PTs that take long to form and warm up and compete for the same 2-3 camps (people are not as creative as they could be when they make PTs).

So today's entry will be about
-testing MNK/DNC in practice in a hard solo xp situation (with a video) and also
-giving some final tips on how to level DNC to 37. MNK/DNC video:
So here is the video of me soloing as MNK/DNC, chaining VT imps.  I also picked imps because they are supposedly bad for DNC since their abrasive tartara move prevents you from using JAs or dances. As it turns out, it's not a huge problem, as long as you keep your HP up until they do it, you will have enough HP to finish the fight even without dances, and can recover a  few seconds after winning when it wears off.
So here is the video I made.  I used the soundtrack from Bleach in case you are wondering about it (I tried to put it together quickly to make it more useful so it's not very polished).

Click to view

A few notes on MNK/DNC as you might notice from the video:
The total xp I got was 1468 without any xp enhancements (aside from signet) in 8 min of fighting as MNK/DNC (so still about 11-12k/hr but more safely than with /nin and without the need for resting).
Here I got chain3 but I would have easily gotten chain4-5 if I hadn't run out of nearby enemies.
I omitted the first fight to make it shorter and just show the ones that chained after it, but it was an extra 322xp. 

Note 1: I didn't use any macro swaps and I used the menu for this video to make it clearer and easier to follow. Using macros however can improve your performance a lot (it's faster, more efficient and you can swap gear to strengthen each ability (e.g., CHR and VIT for cure waltzes etc) or to compensate for different situations (for example changing to evasion builds during amnesia etc).

Note 2: I also didn't really use much in terms of normal monk JAs or WSs just to show how easy it is to use MNK/DNC. But obviosuly those make it even easier and should be used, just like macros and gear-swaps.

Note 3: Somehow the en-drain effect from samba doesn't register if your hit animation happens while you dance. I would think this is a bug that might get fixed at some point, so I am not going to look into this in details.

Note 4: The drain effect changes based on delay, with H2H I get 7-13 (so using faster attacks like from hundredfists doesn't necessarily give you more drained HP). I'll test this in more details later perhaps.  

Note 5: Quickstep (lowers evasion and stacks up to 5 levels) and Boxstep (lowers defense and stacks up to 5 levels) had a very high success rate, i'd say something like 80%. Desparate Flourish (gravity and lower evasion, so good for both battle and running away/kiting) seems to have a lower success rate, maybe 50%, but still worked great.
Conclusion: while abrasive tartara can be a little risky, i would say /DNC is actually safer and better than /NIN for solo xp situations like these imps, or monsters that have annoying moves that cause a lot of damage even through shadows, like Phuabos (the blue sharks/mantas in sea) which have shock spikes that do ~35 damage for every punch you throw.


DNC/BST soloing tips to 37:
The /BST sub is especially needed for DNC because DNC is incredibly weak in terms of damage. For example, this is the difference between one of my critical hits (25dmg) compared to a normal hit from a DC pet I charmed (55dmg):


That's with the best dagger in the game for that level, and H2H actually does worse and attacks more slowly for that job (as opposed to how awesome mnk is with H2H).
Anyways, to help people out who might still be leveling it, here is an approximate list of camps I soloed in to get it to 35 and some more screenshots. I chose camps that were if possible just 1 outpost warp away (at 10 you can go start using them, I think dunes is lvl 15). I think I did ome buburimu, maze of shakrami and dunes up to 19, also some korroloka tunnel up to something like 22ish, then some qufim island worms and pugils, and finally I just climbed up qufim tower (delkfutt) which was a great camp (the mid-levels lasted me until lvl 34, with plenty of goblins and gigas all for myself and plenty of bats at the right levels to use as pets). And with/bst sub I could handle massive links (4+ monsters) and make difficult pulls safely.

I also got a little xp around other locations while doing things like chocobo digging (I might as well make use of my capped digging skill)



After that I used lufaise meadows and misareaux, again just 1 outpost warp away from my moghouse and the auction house.
Here's a few screenshots, with xp ring,


and without:


I also used a few xp scrolls and got some xp from besieged (I got full points even at level 32):


That's it for this entry, I did a few other things like getting some maps, quests and missions done but they are nothing too special, I did find a use for those flee-charges-during-noncombat shoes though, they have some use in the past since you can't use chocobos and there is a lot of walking involved until you unlock all the teleport maws that connect to the present areas.