Sword vs Dagger

[Sabaron]

Re: Sword vs Dagger

...and if you needed more refresh perhas bring some yag drinks or if you must sub smn or brd...

Refresh drinks do not stack with the Refresh spell. I don't recommend /SMN sub in general. I use it as a specialized "Pet Pull" sub for very, very specific applications. I have done some high-level testing of /BRD and it's not stellar. You can use it to boost Refresh output when you don't have access to Sanction Refresh, but /BRD is so terribly weak that everything else is hardly worth the bother sans instrument at 1/4 skill (Bard music is affected by the sum of your singing and instrument skills. Since /BRD cannot use instruments, you don't get to add your instrument skill and since it's off sub, it's 1/2 skill already, so you get 1/4 of the effect).

as for the fact of mp conservation i have decided it a futile thing RDM gets convert for a reason its what makes us capable of getting that party to keep the chain going, this as well as refresh (which in this case of explanation is specifically directed at the rdm not the casting on other members) this spell gives us a 150 points of mp recovery, which is enough to cast a teir 3 spell to end that mobs existance.

I don't generally nuke to kill--that's BLM's thing. It's more efficient if I'm sure that every point of MP I spent on that nuke went to damaging the mob. I nuke in the middle of the fight.

As for the damage side of being on the frontline, yes the ACC bonus trait from dancer sounds nice but it is too little to be of any real affect. the overal damage may look like your adding more however any rdm in decent int elemental skill and magic atk+ gear knows 1 or 2 teir 3 spell will out weigh any of our melee damage in a matter of seconds.

Raw damage output is not what you're going for with melee damage. RDM damage is about being cheap. You melee when you want to Conserve your mp yet don't have enough backline to need continuous resting (which usually isn't PT).

...speant 300K on decent str and acc gear for naught time to level nin i guess

The nice thing about gear in FFXI is that you can return it unlike games like WoW where it's like trying to eBay used underwear.

secondly on the debate on sword vs dagger,
...clip various tests...

Your testing is a bit loose. We can calculate most of the raw damage numbers, but if you like in-game testing, I suggest you pick up a parser. While it is a third party application it does not directly interact with the game, so IMO is not a violation of the ToS (though I'm sure someone will disagree). There are a few available. I use Tazzylyn and Sosuka's FFXI Parser. Their website was down when I checked last... I won't post the URL, you have to find it yourself since it's a 3rd party app.