Dancer Suggestions: Round II

[Asymptotic]

Hello Again FFXI Development Team!
(also to everyone out there in FFXI Forum Land <3)

I assume you've caught wind of my original suggestion thread, because one of your responses relayed to us by Camate was basically a direct response to one of my suggestions (that I didn't see in the Japanese side of the forums). Anyway, I think I sort of have a feel for the direction you want to take Dancer now, and now that I absolutely know you think splitting waltz timers as they are would be unbalanced (as I've said you thought all along!), I'd like to address more things, as well as comment on things that I didn't comment on before.

I know the Dancer community seems pretty upset and perhaps even at arms with the unpopularity of Ternary Flourish, but I'd like to point out that people were simply disappointed that so many great support abilities have been suggested, but it seems like they were ignored for Ternary Flourish, an ability with dubious applicability to today's endgame. That said, I have full confidence that you will use Ternary Flourish as a learning experience and make better design choices down the road, as you have been very responsive to the concerns of other job communities.

Perhaps then we should discuss the existing issues and potential ways to address them.

The Dancer's Role: Many people, like myself, were drawn to the Dancer class because they like both support roles and being on the front lines, and the Dancer class theoretically combined the two. At the 75 cap, this was very true and Dancers were some of the most efficient healers around. However, mages have gotten exponentially more and more powerful (especially since the constraints of MP have mostly been removed everywhere), and the Dancer's support abilities have been increased very slightly. As such, the Dancer class has been transformed into a self-sufficient mid-tier damage-dealing class (think DRG/WHM) with minor support abilities (the usefulness of Haste Samba is even decreasing due to the increased power of Bard's March spell, and now, Embrava).

Dangers of the Front Lines: A major issue with the Dancer class especially in end game content such as Voidwatch, is that it gets absolutely torn to pieces on the front lines due to area of effect attacks. For Dancer to perform its job in these sorts of arenas, it needs to be able to survive. I discuss a way to address this in a later section.

The Waltz Issue: Healing waltz absolutely NEEDS to be on a separate timer from the other waltzes. Raise its TP cost if you want to. You don't need to touch the other waltzes, although I would poersonally split Divine Waltzes into a separate category and increase their TP cost, as well. Do it like this:

Curing Waltz --> Contains I/II/III/IV/V
Healing Waltz --> Healing Waltz, and you could maybe add a Healing Waltz II that is AoE or something (like BLU's Winds of Promyvion)
Divine Waltz ---> I/II and add a very expensive Divine Waltz III.

I'm sure this would require a significant amount of programming, but yeah. Trust me, it would be worth it.

That about addresses the existing issues, so I'll move on to specific categorical ideas.

(by the way Dev team, I need a new job, feel free to hire me. I have ideas for most of the other jobs, too!)

[Asymptotic]

Suggestions for Job Abilities

[SIZE="5"]Something Completely New![/SIZE]

The following two abilities are designed to give use to some of the flourishes that we have mostly forgotten about as high-level Dancers. It's also aimed at solving the problem where one flourish in a category particularly outshines the others, preventing the others from seeing usage, ever. Perhaps breathing life into some of our old abilities is the key to solidifying the role of the class? I put them on a shared recast timer for balance concerns, but I think the 2nd ability will be much more popular than the first. Maybe separating them wouldn't be overpowered after all?

À ma guise Dancer LV99 [Recast 5 minutes, shared with Glissade]
The next Flourish may be used without expending finishing moves.
** For finishing moves which can use differing numbers of finishing moves, it would use the lowest amount. It might be interesting to enhance this ability with a piece of equipment, adding one finishing move to the effect. The name means "As I please."

Glissade Dancer LV99 [Recast 5 minutes, shared with À ma guise]
The next Flourish may be used without resetting its category's recast timer.
** This ability would also give the other Flourishes III besides climactic some viability. It would open up a lot of possibilities. The name "Glissade" means to run two dance moves together in one fluid motion, so it's obviously meant to be used to combine Flourishes (Byrth pointed out that Striking/Climactic/Ternary are mutually exclusive, so they would have to be changed to not share the same buff slot, but I don't think that's too horrible of a fix to make?):

1.) Reverse ---> Step/No Foot Rise --> Building: would allow Dancers to buff the closing weapon skill of a solo skillchain.

2.) Ternary Flourish + Climactic Flourish --> This is pretty self-explanatory! Would certainly give a potential use to Ternary!

3.) Ternary Flourish + Striking Flourish --> Would result in a 4-hit attack, and allow enhancement from the Charis Casaque to the first and second hits. Also, then you wouldn't need to feel inclined to add a Quaternary Flourish. (Seriously, please don't give us a Quaternary Flourish)

5.) Reverse --> Step / No Foot Rise ---> Reverse Great for generating a large amount of TP very quickly, if needed.

6.) Wild Flourish --> Reverse Flourish --> Solo 2-step Skillchains. (Wild --> Evisceration --> Transfixion ---> Evisceration/Dancing Edge --> Distortion) etc.

There are countless other combinations, of course but I figured these were the ones best worth mentioning.

I have made my suggestions for the "TP-draining ability which gives party members some kind of effect" in the other suggestion thread multiple times, so I'm assuming Camate has already relayed that information

[SIZE="5"]Flourishes IV[/SIZE]

Since I'm assuming Flourishes III is over (seriously guys, It's over, time to move on!), we should start looking forward to Flourishes IV. Since Flourishes I were utility abilities, Flourishes II were self-enhancement abilities, and Flourishes III were aimed at increasing damage output, Flourishes IV should be party support abilities. Also, since it's Flourishes IV and presumably the last flourish category ever, I'm going to go crazy and put *4* flourishes here, one which is very silly, but could be fun.

Glittering Flourish: (3-5 Finishing Moves): Reduces the damage nearby party members take from a single magical attack. [Target: Self. Range: 20'] Reduces damage from the next magical attack by 30-40-50% (depending on number of finishing moves). Potential to enhance this amount with gear and/or merits. (Recast 1:30) [PLEASE HAVE THE ANIMATION SHOWER THE PARTY WITH GLITTER]
Prismatic Flourish: (2-5 Finishing Moves): Restores MP to the target party member [Target -Party - Cannot target self]. 5-10-20-25% MP recovery (depending on the number of finishing moves). (Recast 2:00) Potential to enhance this amount with gear and/or merits.
Tactical Flourish: (1-5 Finishing Moves): Restores the target party member's TP [Target - Party - Cannot target self]. 10 -25 -50 - 75 - 100 TP depending on the number of finishing moves expended. (Recast 2:00)
Arcane Flourish: (1 Finishing Move): Imbues your next attack with forbidden and poorly understood magic. (Recast 30s? 1m?)

Arcane Flourish would have a very unhelpful description, just for kicks, really. It would double the damage of your next normal attack (would not double the damage of a weapon skill) and attempt to inflict a random status ailment from a predetermined list. A critical hit under Arcane's effects would inflict more powerful status ailments. I haven't decided what sort of additional effects would be attached to arcane, but you could consider: defense down, magic defense down, evasion down, magic evasion down, critical hit evasion down (for normal hits) and more powerful effects such as strong slow and paralyze for a critical hit. You could use climactic to guarantee one of the better effects.

These are just my ideas for Flourishes IV, but I'd like others to give some ideas too

[SIZE="5"]Addressing the Dangers of the Front Lines[/SIZE]

The best thing I could come up with is sort of a stance. I actually think it's pretty neat, so maybe you'll like the idea too? Of course, one of the problems with reducing the damage taken by a Dancer is that it's already a good soloist, so you'd have to make it an ability that doesn't work solo, and I designed this ability with that in mind.

Contrecorps: As long as you are not the center of attention, you expend finishing moves to reduce the amount of damage you take. (Recast 5:00, Duration 5:00 or until you are the top of the enmity list.)

When taking damage from an area of effect attack, this "stance" would strip the Dancer of Finishing Moves and reduce the damage taken by some percentage depending on the number of finishing moves remaining. If the Dancer takes hate the effect would wear off immediately. I'd think it would be something like 15% per finishing move (75% for a full 5). Obviously only a Dancer with Terpsichore could keep up with the demands of an extremely AoE-heavy fight this way, so an ability like this would have the added bonus of adding viability to that weapon. This ability would also force the Dancer to manage their enmity quite carefully as to not remove the effect by taking hate, as well as make very smart decisions regarding the timing and usage of finishing moves.

This is a pretty radical and new idea, but I think it's a great solution that would add new aspects to the Dancer's role in many situations. It would also go great with the TP draining ability that gives party members an effect, because it would allow the DNC to much more safely keep this up. I don't think it's overpowered because other classes which support can keep themselves safe by just staying out of range. A Dancer simply does not have that option.

[Asymptotic]

Job Traits and Combat Skills

I provided a lot of suggestions for Job Traits previously in my other thread, so I won't repeat them, except for one idea:

Please add a job trait or series of job traits that enhances waltzes in some manner!

A main job DNC should see a much greater benefit to using Waltzes than people using it as a support job. Yes, the waltz formula is slightly weaker for them and yes, we can enhance it with potency gear, but the differences are pretty minor. Perhaps add a series of job traits that add weak stoneskin effects to waltzes, increasing with level? I'm thinking 3 traits that apply 10-15-20% of the waltz amount as a Stoneskin effect. It would just be a nice bonus to using DNC instead of /DNC.

As for combat skills, it would be really nice if you increased the Dagger combat skill ranking of the Dancer class. One handed weapons are pretty weak when it comes to accuracy and attack, and while our accuracy bonus traits help, they don't completely cover the issue.

It would be also pretty nice if we could use hand to hand weapons effectively, especially since you seem to make DNC NPCs like this weapon type a lot! Maybe raise Dagger to A- and Hand to Hand to B-? It would be kind of interesting if we had some sort of 2-handed weapon option, at a relatively low rank. Maybe a staff skill at a C ranking or something? To be honest, I really don't care, it would just be interesting. I'll settle for interesting at this point.

[Asymptotic]

Weapons and Weaponskills

[SIZE="5"]Unique Dancer Weapons?[/SIZE]

There has been a bit of interest in a unique weapon for Dancers, I think similar to how Kilij are BLU-specific swords.

War Fans have been suggested as a slashing-type dagger, although I think that these wouldn't fit well with dagger weapon skills.

I'm personally somewhat meh on this category. Not because I don't think there could be a good class of DNC-specific daggers, but I can't think of anything specific

[SIZE="5"]Dancer Specific Weapon Skills[/SIZE]

I posted a weaponskill idea in response to Ternary flourish before, but I think that my suggestion of Glissade is a better way to save Ternary Flourish from total obscurity. I think you should do something different with a Dancer-exclusive weapon skill.

I think when designing a DNC-exclusive WS you should think: What is a Dancer's role? What do we want DNC to do? A DNC-exclusive WS should have, at least in my opinion, unique supportive abilities while dealing damage. My original WS suggestion included attempting to remove a negative status effect. I personally think this is a great idea for a DNC - exclusive WS. But perhaps make it try to remove a status ailment from all nearby party members? The possibilities are endless.

[Asymptotic]

Placeholder for Post #5: Merit Adjustments

As it stands, many of our merit categories are completely worthless.

1.) Step Accuracy: I ne'er remember a time when I was uncapped on step accuracy. Maybe this should have been "Step Potency"?

2.) Building Flourish: Was a nice idea, but chances to use this ability are so rare due to timers.

Haste Samba and Reverse Flourish are awesome, and it's almost good that the other two are so awful I guess, since there's little reason to not have both of these maxed out. If you ever increase the number of points, it would be nice to have options worth meriting though.

New Merits

For LV99, you thought of a new merit system. So I thought of some new ideas:

Saber Dance Effect: Increases attack and critical hit rate under the effects of Saber Dance. Maybe 10%/10% at max upgrade?
Fan Dance Effect: Enhances "Magic Defense Bonus" effect under the effects of Fan Dance. Maybe MDB would scale along with the PDT effect and start at 90 and decrease to 20 at max upgrade?
Flourishes III Recast: Reduce the recast by a small amount per upgrade.

Additionally, there may be new abilities added that you'd want to enhance.

I can't think of any abilities to add as merit-unlockable abilities, but I'm sure someone has an idea?

[Asymptotic]

Placeholder for Post #6: In case I forgot something

[Asymptotic]

I'm done for now!

Better get translating Camate! <3
(you should pay special translation attention to the part where I told them they can feel free to hire me)

[Dijana]

I only just woke up so cant think of much to say worthwhile, but I think all your ideas are awesome, just as they were in the other thread. I support all these ideas! (and if I can think of something better to contribute when I wake up more..I'll come back)

[Asymptotic]

Give more ideas!
The more ideas the better!

[Alkalinehoe]

Lol'd at Quaternary Flourish.