I think for pure damage Aeonic is more flexible, or rather it performs sorta always the same regardless of the situation, of the TP, of the lenght of the fight, it's quite solid and reliable.
Terps relies on different factors, you have the use of PK, mantaining AM3 (which is immensely easier on DNC than it is on other jobs), it favors /SAM in most situations.
These days AM3 is greatly devaluated by the huge amount of multiattack gear we get.
I dunno, if all you want is damage I think you'll be happier with Aeonic/Terps or Aeonic/Twash combinations.
The beauty of Terpsichore imo isn't just in the pure damage output but in the versatility it gives you to play your job with all those additional steps you get.
It suits you very well if you wanna play in roles that differ from pure DPS. Say you're in some strange setup and wanna give some additional focus on your support (healing/debuff) abilities.
In such situations I see Terps as the perfect weapon by far.
It really suits this playstyle and it adds an additional layer of depth to the job.
But really, if all you care for is pure DPS output, you'll probably be more satisfied with Aeneas MH.
Just my personal view on things of course!
Thanks Sechs. I always prefer weapons that add a new element to your play style or utility (whilst maintaining respectable dmg) > pure dps. I am the kind of player that will try main healing on dnc for fun. Based on this, I think you're saying terps is what I would get more out of.
I guess Twashstar kind of has the same play style as Aeneas in that you can get away with holding tp, with twash being more favourable as you can wait to 2750 without really hurting dmg.
Terpsichore is amazing in terms of how much it can change how you can play Dancer. For example, if you were to drop every single piece of multiattack gear to cap -DT
which you would never need to actually do, you'd still be getting the 40% Occasionally Attacks Twice/20% Occasionally Attacks Thrice. Which means if you're trying to survive something- like the tank and the other one or two DDs are dead, and you need to sit in a -DT set and help your WHM out by keeping yourself topped off until the tank can get up and/or unweaken, that can be an absolute life-saver, and the difference between a wipe or a successful run.
I ended up tanking Kin one run when our tank got hit by the 3 minute terror and our WHM was DCed. Full DT set, AM3 up, waltzing the *** out of myself, doing animated flourish, and a /WHM helping with the status effects. We would have wiped if I had been a WAR or a DRK.
That's my favorite situation- not that specific one, but that's a relevant, current end-game example- to trot out for what Terpsichore can do.
In a situation like that, you could swap to a Blurred Knife +1 off-hand (or an augmented Atoyac if it's lower accuracy and/or you're buffed well), activate Trance, Reverse Flourish, reapply AM3, and sit in capped DT with 3.2 attacks per attack round before any sort of multiattack. Which means once you're capped on DT or as close to it as you reasonably can be, you could swap multiattack for accuracy, status effect resist, MEVA, whatever.
It also means you can do more shenanigans with your Flourishes, and lose less white damage, because you're having to do fewer steps. 3 Steps to get to 9 Finishing Moves instead of 5 without Terpsichore, less time you're in animation lock, more time to auto-attack, use other JAs, like your Waltzes, or just more time to try to run away from something and/or slap on a panic -DT set.
There's also the accuracy on your steps themselves. Quickstep is "only" -44 Evasion when capped out, but that's and additional 22% hit rate for yourself and the other DDs, and you can stack it using fewer JAs. If you were are roughly rock bottom, 20% hit rate, you'd be missing half your Quicksteps instead of 4 out of 5, and going from ~20% to ~42% hit rate would be a major improvement in damage. Sure, you could do it without Terps, but it would take longer, and if the monster is occasionally removing its debuffs, you'd be wasting more time reapplying it, and that's not just time you're not attacking but time your other DDs are whiffing more than they could be.
The boost in damage to Pyrrhic Kleos- the +30% Kleos damage- combined with the AM3- is going to be significant, and you can spam it at 1kTP instead of having to hold TP for Rudra's. With Fotia Belt and Gorget, you're looking at Kleos going from an 'effective' 9.75 fTP to 12.675 (assuming ACC cap, not considering any multiattack, such as that from AM3). Rudra's Storm at 2kTP (1750 with moonshade) is 10.19 fTP- so if it's straight up spam you're not only spamming Kleos up to twice as fast (roughly) but it's also dealing over twice as much as unstacked Rudra's will. When you consider the fact that the odds of AM3
not activating on Kleos are 2.56%, you're looking at, before any multiattack, 5.72 hits (if hit rate capped), per Kleos, which translates to you spamming a weapon skill at 1kTP that has an 'effective' fTP of 14.5, instead of spamming Rudra's at 1750~2000 TP for an 'effective' fTP of about 10.19. So you're dealing about 40% more per WS, and twice as often. So when it comes to spamming WSes, it's a significant difference.
I have personally never seen a Dancer with Terpsichore and comparable gear and buffs outDPSed by a Dancer with Twashtar, and it contributes to your survivability, on top of -DT gear, in a way Twashtar can't.
tl;dr: get a Terpsichore.
Apologies for spelling errors and minor math errors; I've done this math before for my specific builds, which include other multiattack sources, and the results are extremely close to what the lower bound on mine are, so...
Meanwhile, finally got my Regal Ring last night, and I've been out of the Dancer loop and gearing for almost a year; am I going to be using Regal and Epona's more or less full-time outside of -DT, or Raja's and Epona's for the StoreTP for TPing, and switching to Regal for WSes? I'm ignorant of what other options I might now have. Leaning towards using it on WSes unless I can get more StoreTP somewhere else without sacrificing more than I'm gaining.