Suggestions to Improve/Rebalance Vanadiel's Divas

[Asymptotic]

Introduction

The Dancers of today are faced with a similar situation that Red Mages faced once in the past, that is "I can do a lot of things, but everything I can do, someone else does better." Through recent armor and ability releases, it has become relatively apparent that the Dev team does not see Dancer as the mostly-support-occasionalDD-class that it was originally tailored to be. The Manifesto, however, states that it wishes to keep the Dancers' solo skills in tact while further improving their ability to shine in group play. These suggestions will mostly focus on the latter concept, as I don't believe the Dancer class needs much help on the solo front.

A Brief Discussion of Opportunity Cost
A New Dancer Manifesto?

Opportunity cost is an important factor to consider when designing any Dancer job ability.
I'm sure the Dev team is aware of this term, but for those reading this forum who might not be familiar with the concept, I'll go over it a little bit.
Let's say, for example, you want to pop the Notorious Monster Orthrus. You need a Tiger King's Hide, which, on my server, sells for aroudn 200,000 gil on the Auction House.
One might say, "You can pop Orthrus for free if you just kill Ansherekh a few times or get lucky with gold chests?" But, in that case, if you pop Orthrus, you still pay the 200,000gil as an opportunity cost, because you could have sold the hide.

Similarly, we can think of a Dancer's finishing moves as "goods" that can be sold for "currency," or TP. At full power, 5 finishing moves can be converted into 100TP via the use of the ability Reverse Flourish.
So let's take a look at some Dancer Flourishes and their OPPORTUNITY COST.

1.) Desparate Flourish -- requires one finishing move, to MAYBE inflict gravity. The opportunity cost here is 25 TP - 1/4 of a weapon skill, half of a Curing Waltz III. It's not really worth using in most scenarios (if ever).
2.) Violent Flourish -- requires one finishing move to attempt to inflict stun. The opportunity cost here is 25 TP. Stun is a much more desirable effect though, and since the accuracy is so greatly enhanced by Etoile Casaque, it's definitely worth it if you have that item.
3.) Wild Flourish -- requires 3 finishing mvoes to inflict Chainbound. The opportunity cost here is 75 TP. It's almost worthless in its current state, unless maybe you're fighting Qutrub.

Suggestion: The Development team and player suggestions should be well aware of the Opportunity Cost to Dancers. If you program an ability, and Dancers don't use it, you wasted your development time and programming time to implement it. Make more effective and more useful abilities that Dancers should be willing to "pay the price" in opportunity cost to use. In addition, I'm sure Dancers would be enthralled to have reasons to use finishing moves besides stunning, forcing critical hits on weapon skills, and regenerating TP. Provide new and enticing abilities to prevent Dancer from becoming a "one-trick-pony" class.

Curent Issues with the Dancer Class

Damage: due to the rebalancing of 1-handed vs. 2-handed weapons and the calculation of Accuracy and Attack, and the nature of daggers in general, Dancers (along with THF) can have a fairly hard time contributing to the damage output of a party, except inside Abyssea where the critical hit rate is extremely high. The Dancer class, in general, is absolutely STARVED for attack. If Damage is the route down which the development team intends to take Dancer, this shortcoming will have to be addressed.
Healing Support: the Dancer class lags far behind Mage-based classes when it comes to support, particualrly healing, and a Dancer might as well be helpless if debuffs need to be removed from other party members. Dancers also tend to use "Curing Waltz III" more often than their other waltzes, which are available to anyone using Dancer as a support job, further detracting from the main job's allure.
Utility Support: The Dancer's main selling points to endgame in the past, Steps and Haste Samba, have lost some of their relavence due to the delay reduction caps, improvements to magical haste spells (March), and lack of improvements to their potency (both steps and sambas fall victim to this). Haste Samba is also available as a support job, and under optimal conditions (Haste (Spell) + Double Marches from the BRD with proper equipment), is equally as potent for most jobs (due to the delay reduction cap) as a fully merited main-job Dancer's.


Suggested Improvements

It would likely be overpowering to greatly increase the Dancer's prowess on all of these fronts. Instead, I will address each area separately without much regard for the other categories. Please note that the names and exact functions of these suggested abilities and traits are suggestions, and open for creative expansion.

Part I: Across the Board Adjustments

Conserve TP: this was a fantastic idea for a job trait, and was widely welcomed with open arms. However, it was flawed in that it works only on weapon skills. If it's not considered overpowered for mages to occasionally reduce MP cost on their healing spells, why should Conserve TP not be able to work on Waltzes and Sambas?

Suggested Adjustment: allow Conserve TP to occasionally reduce the cost of Waltzes, Steps, and Sambas as well as Weapon Skills

Note: Byrth has correctly pointed out that the implementation of conserve TP is different from that of conserve MP, which may pose as a problem to this suggestion. That aside, I don't think from a programming perspective that adding an aspect to conserve TP that allows it to function for some percent of a waltz's TP cost would be exceedingly difficult. Hence, this suggestion still stands.

Step Potency: At higher levels, most other jobs are able to maintain similar levels of debilitation on enemies with less "effort" than a Dancer must put forth to maintain a weaker effect. Additionally, players using Dancer as a support job experience no penalty to the potency of their steps, making a main-job dancer less valuable. This could be addressed by introducing a series of Dancer-exclusive job traits which improve the efficacy of specific steps.

Suggested Adjustment: New Job traits which increase the potency or otherwise augment steps.


My ideas:

Fancy Footwork I (DNC Level 55): Improves the effect of Quickstep. (roughly, should double the decrease to the target's evasion from -24 to -48 at daze level 5)
Fancy Footwork II (DNC Level 75): Improves the effect of Box Step. (roughly, should nearly double the decrease to the target's defense from -13% to -25% at level 5)
Fancy Footwork III (DNC Level 95): Improves the effect of Stutter Step. (instead of increasing the magic evasion effect which seems to be fairly potent already, perhaps add a decrease to magic defense as well)

Note that job traits augmenting existing job abilities is not unprecedented: take a look at the effects of Thief's Aura Steal and Assassin job traits.

The most important aspect is that these traits would need to come late enough that they would not be accessible from a support job.

Part II Improving the Dancer's Damage

There are few improvements I can think of in this category. The only possible suggestions I could think of here would be the following improvements to existing Job Abilities:

A Note to the Development Team: If the Triple Attack ability you have mentioned in the manifesto is in the same category as Climactic/Striking, it will never be used by educated players, and as I mentioned earlier, will simply be a waste of your creative skills and implementation ability, unless there is some major hidden bonus to the ability that you have not described.

Building Flourish: Alter this ability to no longer work only for weapon skills. Instead, Allow the dancer to consume finishing moves to increase its accuracy/attack/critical hit rate as before, but for all melee attacks. The duration would be one minute, but the potency of the increase would decrease over the duration of the enhancement, and would be consumed after the first weapon skill.

Wild Flourish: Upgrade this ability, perhaps through a job trait or piece of equipment, to perform higher-tier skillchains, as with the Samurai ability Konzen-Ittai.

Climactic Flourish: Lower the recast to 1 minute.

Alternatively, a job trait could be introduced to alter the effects of the Flourishes II category:

Attitude: (Dancer Level 99) Improves the effects of Flourishes II.
--Building Flourish ---> provides the augments I have listed above under Building Flourish.
--Wild Flourish ---> provides the augments I have listed above under Wild Flourish.
--Reverse Flourish ---> There are two ways that I can think of to deal with this, an obvious way, and a more interesting (and I think more appropriate to the job class) way.
1.) return 25% more TP, OR
2.) return 25% of the "reversed" TP to party members near the Dancer, as well.

Suggested Adjustments: See above

Part III: Improving the Dancer's ability to heal


I'm not convinced, as many Dancers are, that splitting the waltz category into multiple categories is a viable option. I think instead adding a new tier of abilties to improve the Dancer's healing prowess would be a better option.

Suggested Adjustments: A new category of dance which consumes finishing moves to power up waltzes and modify their recast and/or TP costs.

The following abilities would be in a new category of dance, separate from steps and flourishes, but also require finishing moves. We'll call them "Techniques"

Dessus (Dancer level 65): expends a finishing move to reduce the TP cost and recast of the next Waltz. (Recast: 30 seconds, Duration 1 30 seconds) -- in particular, this should halve the recast of the next waltz. The TP Reduction would probably be about 25%.
Rise (Dancer level 75): expends a finishing move to increase the potency of the next Waltz, for an increased TP requirement. (Recast: 1 minute, duration 1 minute). Should increase the potency of the next waltz by 25% *ignoring the current cap on Waltz Potency*, and increase its TP cost by 10-15%.
Assemblé (Dancer level 95): expends all finishing moves to transform the next Waltz into an area-of-effect ability, doubling the TP requirement. (Recast 3 minutes, duration 1 minute)

Since Techniques would be one category, the shared recast, in particular of Assemblé (which would eliminate the ability to use Dessus or Rise for 3 minutes).

There is also an extremely prevalent outcry for a Raise dance, but at this time I am unsure of how it would be implemented.

Perhaps a simple new job ability would be the best way to accomplish this, as I believe the recast associated with the ability would cripple the Dancer if tied to the Waltzes category.

Ritual Dance (Dancer Level 90, Recast 5 minutes): Consumes all TP and finishing moves to resurrect the target. Strength of raise determined by the amount of TP and finishing moves consumed. Requires at least 100 TP and 2 finishing moves.

This ability should probably have a longer animation, similar to Chocobo Jig.

Part IV: Improving the Dancer's Ability to Support

First things first: in the manifesto, you mention giving the Dancer the ability to consume TP to imbue a regain effect on party members. This could be an excellent idea, if implemented properly. It is probably best to NOT make this a samba. Instead, here is my approach:

Backup Dance (Dancer level 95, Recast 5 minutes, duration 5 minutes or until the DNC has 0 TP). Sacrifices TP to regenerate surrounding Party members' TP. ---Consumes 100 TP to give the dancer a "Sphere" effect that drains the DNC's TP by 2/tic to give party members a 2TP/tic regain effect as long as they are nearby.

There is also an outcry for a "Dispel" flourish from both the English and Japanese communities. I think this could better be accomplished as an addition to an existing Flourish through a job trait.

Smooth Moves (Dancer level 75) Augments the effects of Flourishes I.

-- Animated Flourish: increases the enmity of this ability, while decreasing enmity toward all other party members with variable potency due to FMs consumed.
-- Desperate Flourish: attempts to inflict "slow" as well as "gravity" on the enemy.
-- Violent Flourish: in addition to attempting to stun, dispels one beneficial effect from the enemy.

In this way, you can improve the dancer's support abilities by a lot without adding a whole lot of new job abilities. Similarly, while a support job would have access to the main abilities, they would not have access to the new "fully powered" abilities possessed by a main job Dancer.

There are also many new debuffs that could be considered for new steps. The most interesting (and most worth-mentioning) that I have heard is a step to reduce the target's attack speed. Traditionally, Dancer has not had access to "Defensive" debuffs, however, as we move forward and balance the game toward level 99, these sorts of debuffs may be worth looking into. It's possible that they could be come overpowered for solo play, but NIN/DNC has access to offensive and defensive debuffs and puts less effort into the maintenance of debuffs than a Dancer does. Ninja has a similar survivability to the Dancer class, especially when using Dancer as a support job. If it's not overpowered in this case, then I don't think they will be overpowered for a Dancer. I believe that adding one, or even a series, of "defensive" type debuffs (Slow, Accuracy Down, Attack Down -- these are just examples) to a Dancer's arsenal, given the unique nature of Daze abilities stacking with the debuffs of other players, will have an extremely positive effect on the class itself, and on group synergy as a whole.


Here are some examples of these sorts of steps, and ideas for naming them:

Rock Step: Decreases the target's attack speed. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.
Side Step: Decreases the target's accuracy. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.
Dazzle Step: Decreases the target's attack. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.

As a final note for this section, our Sambas, particularly Drain Samba, have become very weak with the rise in level cap, with no way to improve their efficacy. Perhaps a series of job traits to increase their potency, or otherwise augment them, is also in order.

A Final Idea: Stances for a Versatile Class

Two stances already exist for Dancer: Fan Dance and Sabre Dance, and from their introduction it appears the development team wishes that Dancer should be somewhat of a "chameleon" class, able to change its form to fit many different situations. Many, if not all of the ideas listed above, could be interpreted into a new pair of "Stances" for Dancer, a pair which would resemble hybrids of Ninja's Yonnin/Innin and White Mage's Afflatus Solace/Afflatus Misery.

The first stance would increase the damage output of the Dancer. I've given them names , like many of the other abilities I have suggested, from standard ballet terminology:

En Pointe: (Dancer level 95, Duration 5 minutes, Recast 3 minutes) Increases offensive capacities and abilities at the expense of defensive capabilities.

This ability would provide the augments to "Flourishes II" that I mentioned under the job trait "Attitude" earlier. For refreshment, they are as follows:

Building Flourish: Alter this ability to no longer work only for weapon skills. Instead, Allow the dancer to consume finishing moves to increase its accuracy/attack/critical hit rate as before, but for all melee attacks. The duration would be one minute, but the potency of the increase would decrease over the duration of the enhancement, and would be consumed after the first weapon skill.
Wild Flourish: Upgrade this ability, perhaps through a job trait or piece of equipment, to perform higher-tier skillchains, as with the Samurai ability Konzen-Ittai.
Reverse Flourish: There are two ways that I can think of to deal with this, an obvious way, and a more interesting (and I think more appropriate to the job class) way.
1.) return 25% more TP, OR
2.) return 25% of the "reversed" TP to party members near the Dancer, as well.

The ability would also increase the Dancer's Attack, Accuracy, and Critical Hit Rate as well as penalizing Evasion and Defense. Additionally, Waltz TP costs AND recast timers would be penalized by a "noticeable" amount. You may notice that this ability shares some parallels with both Yonin/Innin and Dark Arts. Indeed, these abilities were my inspiration for this stance.

Now, for the second, more supportive stance:

En Cote: A sideways stance which improves abilities that support allies.

This stance would increase the potency of waltzes while decreasing their TP costs and recast timers. It would also provide the bonuses to "Flourishes I" that I previously listed under Smooth Moves. As a refresher, they are as follows:

-- Animated Flourish: increases the enmity of this ability, while decreasing enmity toward all other party members with variable potency due to FMs consumed.
-- Desperate Flourish: attempts to inflict "slow" as well as "gravity" on the enemy. Or, as Byrth suggested, "Magic Evasion Down."
-- Violent Flourish: in addition to attempting to stun, dispels one beneficial effect from the enemy.

This stance would not have negative consequences. Instead, its penalty is the "opportunity cost" of not being able to use the damge-increasing abilties of En Pointe.

Complex abilties such as these have a precedent in Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Misery, and I don't believe the additions listed here are particularly more complex then those abilities already in place (in fact, I think the ideas here are less complicated than those of Solace/Misery).

Conclusion

There are multiple ways in which the Dancer class can be adjusted to "fit in" better in both today's endgame activities and future activities. In this post, I have described a multitude of ways that each "facet" of the Dancer Class could be improved, although obviously major improvements "across the board" have the potential to be overpowered. As a compromise, I have introduced the idea of a new "stance system" which would allow the Dancer to alter its strengths toward either damage or support abilities.

Please note that while my ideas certainly do not speak for the playerbase as a whole, they have come into fruition after careful consideration of the suggestions from English, Japanese, and European players alike, as well as long hours of considering how they may affect game balance. I am not an expert in this field, obviously, but I think we can all say we know at least a little, when we've all seen how the development team's own updates are constantly altering the face and game balance of FFXI.

Finally, the Dancer class is an exceptionally creative class and is unlike anything that FFXI had ever seen before it. I commend the past and present development team in their creative abilities to shape and culture such a diverse and interesting class, and extend my sincerest gratitude that I have had the honor and opportunity to both play this incredible class, and now, offer my suggestions for keeping it competitive as Vana'diel marches on into a new era. I'm sure there are countless players, across language barriers, who would stand with me on at least that statement.

有り難うございます！ 踊り子万歳！


With my sincerest Gratitude and Respect,

Asymptotic
Carbuncle Server

[Byrth]

Good ideas and well written. I'll address a few things:
1) The reason Conserve TP doesn't work on Waltzes, Sambas, etc. is because of how they implemented it. In order to prevent it from becoming too powerful, they didn't make the "conserved TP" a fraction of TP spent like with Conserve MP or Blood Boon. They just made it a random 1-20 TP that you save. When applied to weaponskills, this results in a fairly negligible overall increase in TP efficiency (not very powerful). But if we applied the same 1-20 range to Waltzes, Sambas, Steps, etc., we save a much larger % of TP consumed (and sometimes would gain it). Personally, I wish the Conserve TP and Save TP stats had been switched. So you're actually asking them to add a new mechanism to the game here instead of just applying one they've already written to Waltzes/Steps.

2) I like your general reliance on Job Traits instead of suggesting things like "Quickstep II" or "Dispelling Flourish." Whenever we make requests, it's important to make things as simple as possible for SE so that the odds of implementation are higher. I also agree that doubling Step potency is about the boost they'd need to be valued as debuffs.

3) I'd keep Building Flourish as a WS buff. It fits with the rest of the category that way, and a mini-Climactic Flourish for a few melee rounds really wouldn't be worth using unless it was quite potent.

4) I think splitting Waltz timers odd/even would pretty much be a solution, and it has to be easier than adding 3 new JAs (similar to point 2).

5) I'd pair Magic Evasion Down with Desperate Flourish's Gravity to keep things consistent. It'd be less useful than Slow, for sure, but SE has gone 90 levels without giving us a single defensive enfeeble, and I don't think they're about to start.

6) Similar to point 5, I think you're wasting your bandwidth asking for a Slow step.

7) I'm not sure I should really comment on this negatively, because it would be so awesome, but lowering Climactic Flourish's recast to 1 minutes is begging for a nerf. I've gotten pretty good at going 5 FMs -> Climactic -> Presto -> Step -> Rudra's -> hits to more than 43TP -> Rudra's -> Darkness and can do it pretty reliably with just Haste. My only defense of lowering it to 1 minute would be, "Don't worry guys, it doesn't matter because I don't need to one-shot NMs more than once every 90 seconds anyway."

Things that I think should also be done:

Waltz Adjustments-
8) Eliminate the Waltz Potency cap. 30% is ridiculous.

9) Waltz HP healed (http://wiki.bluegartr.com/bg/Category:Waltz)is linear (y = m*x + b), but right now m is so low that it's hardly worth carrying CHR gear around for Waltz. Decrease "b" and increase "m" (double it) so that a level 90 character outside Abyssea Waltzes for about the same amount, but CHR/VIT would matter more. This would make carrying a CHR build for Waltz more important. As it is, I think my near-perfect Waltz build's CHR adds about 50 HP to my Waltzes. This would also really help support-type Dancers out in Abyssea

Information Requests:
10) Look SE. I've put in a lot of time turning your single-phrase descriptions of job abilities into actual numbers, but I'd love it if you'd cut me a break and just tell me what the last few things are:
* Building Flourish - How does it work and what are the numbers?
* Stutter Step/Weakened Daze - Numbers per level?
* AF2 body - MAcc amount?
* AF2 feet / AF1 hands / Choreia Earring - Step Acc amounts? - I'm fairly confident I got these pretty accurately, but it would be nice to have it straight from the horse's mouth.
* Above is all I can really think of at the moment, but I'm sure there's more.

[Asymptotic]

I'm actually convinced that SE, for whatever reason, views splitting waltz timers as overpowered somehow. I honestly think they'd add 20 new JAs before they'd do that.

I could see them splitting Healing/Divine into a separate category, but even then, Divine blows and the recast on healing makes it ultimately a solo toy except for situations where your mage forgot echo drops :(

Edit: As I am no longer able to edit the first post without losing over half of it, I'm going to add any addenda here:

Addendum (to first post)


Edits to Post #1:

1.) I somewhat overstate the opportunity cost of finishing moves. One FM reversed does in fact give 26 tp at max power, however, Reversing 4 gets you ~18 tp/fm and reversign 5 gets you 20tp/fm. As Byrth points out, it may be more effective to call one finishing move "1/4 of a WS."
2.) Wild Flourish costs 2 finishing moves, not 3.

Inspiration Corner

The following are additonal "ideas" for new Dancer Job Abilities, mostly for fun, but perhaps they'll inspire someone? Feel free to offer suggestions.

Tango (Dancer Level 99, recast 3 minutes, duration 30 seconds to 1 minute) Consumes up to 3 finishing moves to combine your power with another player to perform a duet. (1 finishing move grants 30 seconds, each additional another 15 seconds up to 1 minute for 3 finishing moves)

Tango would grant the status effect of "Duet" to another party member, as well as the Dancer. Under the effects of this ability, the Dancer would receive a boost in attack power proportional to the recipients attack power, and vice-versa. Additionally, weaponskills from either player would inflict a short-duration "Daze" effect that would boost weapon skill damage if the other player uses a weapon skill before it wears off. Skillchain accuracy and damage would also be increased between the two players. Due to the "center stage" act of tangoing, however, the Dancer would be unable to heal their tango partner with waltzes until the effect wears off.

[Troupe]

Some great ideas there, let's hope SE read this and take it on board! Thanks for taking the time to post this.

[TybudX]

There is also an extremely prevalent outcry for a Raise dance, but at this time I am unsure of how it would be implemented.

Lap Dance. That Is All.

[Raksha]

I always wanted a reraise jig. Make it give 0 xp back (or hell make it a rr3, we got apoc atma and twilight set anyway)

[Asymptotic]

A "reraise jig" would have to have a long recast and short duration to remain balanced outside of Apoc-Zombieland.

[Ninian]

If they can't split the timers on Waltzes because its "over powered", and if they can't give us JAs that help that, I'd at least like more waltz timer- gear. And kill the 30% Waltz Potency cap and add more potency gear. That's the least they can do. :x

[Raksha]

A "reraise jig" would have to have a long recast and short duration to remain balanced outside of Apoc-Zombieland.

If it returned 0xp it would be somewhat balanced (I though all this up before abyssea though so IDK if it'd be viable these days, but with apoc atma and twilight gears I don't think an "Auto-Reraise 0" would be overpowered)

Doesnt matter anyway, was just a thought I had.

[Asymptotic]

Well I mean, BRD has Hymnus, but it's a short duration thing. I think it would need to be something like that.
Also, Nini, yeah, more waltz potency and timer reduction gear would be excellent.
Would certainly be an alternative to the "Techniques" I proposed.

[Suirieko]

What a great idea. I support this!

[Asymptotic]

I have added A LOT to the first post.
I'd like to hear thoughts on what I've posted.

Thanks!

[Troupe]

I think the idea for 2 new stances are excellent, everything you mention would make DNC so much more desirable at end game events as we move forward.

I really love playing DNC like no other job in FFXI and I really hope SE puts together some exciting adjustments like those above.

[Dijana]

I feel like SE never looks at the individual job forums, but then I dont look at many myself, so I wouldnt know. Moving on~
I really like these ideas, alot of people throw around ideas on how to 'fix' dnc, as well as every other job, though alot of them really are just overpowered or people wanting everything. (Im looking at you melee smns), these are probably some of the best ideas I've seen.

I like being able to solo on dnc, in groups I usually tank on it, but I know it was designed to be a support class and it never feels like its never considered for groups for that reason. All I keep seeing is SE giving useless/situational flourishes, although the one thing I would like more than anything is a dispel of some kind. Here's hoping someone sees and considers your ideas! I think they're awesome

[Insaniac]

While your DD buffs are pretty reigned in I think DNC already puts out too much damage considering everything else it can do. I'm not suggesting a direct nerf but buffing the other aspects of the job and encouraging you to trade more of your DD potential to support other DDs would be the most balanced type of change to the job.

[Korpg]

Disclosure Warning: I'm not a DNC, I got it to 49 and glad that is staying there for a while. This post may seem a little biased, and I'm sorry, I'm going to sugarcoat it as much as I possibly can.

To the OP: Your ideas are sound, and I agree with 95% of what you say, there are, however, a few points I want to make out to you.

Point 1: Dancer was never meant to take the place of a WHM. What you are asking is to take the place of a WHM, which, I think, would be a great insult to everyone out there. Be glad, however, that you guys are the second best healer in this game, and I personally would fight with you to get your waltz timers separated and Waltz V lowered dramatically. I have seen what a DNC can do, and I think you guys are a godsend for the times there is no extra healers out there.

Point 2: A Raise dance would be worthless in my opinion. I say this for two reasons, one of which is, how can a dance raise the dead? Kicking the dead guy in the nuts? I mean, come on now. Second reason is, the cost to raise a person will be very high, and therefor would probably take away 150% or greater TP away from you. Which means that you have to put yourself at a higher risk (unless you are have moves and/or a fresh timer for No Foot Rise) to raise a person. Plus, wouldn't an instant Raise also hurt the WHM and/or you, the DNC? The dance would most likely be a Waltz, and since Waltzes are global timers, to counteract multiple raises, the recast on Waltzes may be over a minute, possibly two. A Reraise dance might work, but again, that would most likely be considered a Jig, in other words, only for the DNC.

Other than that, you have made some really good points and I hope that SE looks into this very closely.

[Asymptotic]

As for the Raise dance, I admit I had no idea how to implement it in a balanced manner. The initial argument of "how can a dance raise the dead" is a moot point, because how then, can a dance heal wounds or remove status effects? The idea of the dancer class is that Dancers "weave their dances with forbidden magicks," and there are various cultural death-and-rebirth related dances which could be referenced in the ability. I am personally apathetic to to the idea of a raise dance, but there is a huge outcry from the playerbase - on all sides of the language spectrum for such an ability. A reraise ability would have to be short duration, like Hymnus, something you put up when "you know you're going to die," not "just in case you die," as a White Mage would use.

Dancer is also not currently the second best healing class in the game: BLU -mysteriously - holds that honor. Don't believe me? Magic Fruit blows RDM and SCH's un-JA-boosted Cure IV out of the water and BLU has access to both Erasega and abilities to reduce the frequency of TP moves.

Additionally, I never suggested that Dancer should take the place of a White Mage. Although, I would make the argument that, the more powerful White Mage gets, the less desirable DNC becomes as a healing/support class. I don't think that giving a Dancer the ability to reduce recasts and costs of waltzes would make the Dancer class better than White Mages, especially considering that anyone using Dancer as a support job has access to the all of the "only waltzes a Dancer ever uses." As Byrth has pointed out, the CHR/VIT modifiers of waltzes are so pointless that even the nerfed sloping coefficient for the Dancer support job doesn't make much of a difference in how much a Curing Waltz III heals.

Ultimately, I was simply making the point that for DNC to be "effective," Square-Enix needs to either:

1.) Choose a category: Healing, Support, DDing and focus on improving that area or
2.) Give Dancers the ability to enhance abilities on one side at the expense of the other (think Scholar or Ninja).

I personally believe the "two-stance" approach is the most interesting, and balanced approach. There are a few more ideas for support job abilities that I've had, and I'm probably going to add them as addenda to the original post, in hopes of providing the devs with "inspiration."

Dancer is a job that, while a powerful solo class, is designed for enhancing group play (hence why almost all of Dancer's abilities stack with other jobs' abilities for a more powerful effect), but at this point in the game, most of them -- even the once legendary Haste Samba -- have lost their potency.

Recent updates, in particular the buff to Climactic Flourish, have greatly increased the Dancer's ability to function as a damage dealing class, however, outside the Atma-empowered atmosphere of Abyssea, even these buffs are far from enough to inspire groups to "seek out" the Dancer class when deciding on a setup for a particular event. Obviously, a DNC should never compete with the likes of a WAR or SAM on the damage front, but it should be able to pull its own weight. Like many jobs in FFXI, the Dancer class is lacking a "killer app," so to speak.

This post is obviously meant to be a response to multiple posts, I apologize that I did not organize it or order it into direct responses, but I believe I have covered all of the points which were brought up by responses.

[Asymptotic]

The forum seems to have been ninja-updated with a 10000 character limit on posts, so I am no longer able to update Post 1.
However, I will add addenda to post #3, just under Byrth's post.

Sorry for any inconveniences.

[Byrth]

The forums have always had a 10000 character limit, I think. BG is the same way. I need to re-read the first posts with your new improvements, but last night in Salvage I was thinking about this and came to the conclusion that I really don't have any more space for more JAs in my macros. Pretty soon I'm going to have to start using the /macro set __ command just to have a single working macro book. Also, I'd like to see traits rather than JAs whenever possible because JAs have associated activation time that I'd like to avoid.

[Asymptotic]

I don't have most of my JA's macro'd.
I have Waltz III-V macroed as well as healing. I don't have steps or presto macroed, I find it easier to use those through the menu since step accuracy gear is useless anyway.

I'll have to rework my macros later today, most likely. 40/50 Itzpapalotl Scales. Upgraded Twashtar will definitely call for a macro re-do XD

[Byrth]

Okay, a few things from looking at the revised version:

1) Wild Flourish only costs 2 FMs. The bad part of it, though, is the long recast and the fact that it shares a timer with Reverse Flourish. It makes multi-step skillchains easier, but not that much easier.

2) 1 FM is worth a quarter of a WS, but not necessarily 25 TP. Reversing a single FM will get you 26 TP with AF3+2 hands, but you will be reversing either 4 for 87 TP or 5 for 100 TP if you're going to self-skillchain. There's a pretty reasonable chance that you'll end up with over 100 TP when you 5FM Reverse for a self-skillchain, really, so a single FM may be wasted. Unfortunately, Violent is the only one of our useful Flourishes that takes a single FM.

3) Turning Building Flourish into a mini Berserk/Blood Rage/Aggressor would be cool, but I'd likely just use it during zergs or situations where I have a lot of FMs. If it was powerful enough to be worth using ever, it would be powerful enough to be worth using all the time, and we could use it all the time given its recast. I don't think this change is very likely.

4) I would like to see Wild Flourish upgraded, as it would have the potential to out-class Reverse and encourage Rudra's usage if it could allow me to mirror Darkness, but I'm not holding my breath for the same reason.

5) Reverse Flourish is so powerful already, I'm not sure they're going to buff it further. I'd love it if their "we're giving DNCs regain!" thing was a hint towards a buff like what you describe though.

6) Building off something that Camate said in the THF thread, I think that Waltz adjustments are going to have to be passive (not a new timer), but I also think they're potentially not going to split Waltz timers:

We are looking into separating the two. However, we are close to reaching a point where there are too many recast timers going on simultaneously, so this isn't something we can implement right away.

7) I still can't make myself care about a Raise or Reraise dance. That said, I haven't been playing DNC in any supporting capacity in almost a year.

8) I still don't think they're ever going to give us "defensive" debuffs. It's not our schtick.

9) Haste Samba's superiority is unquestionable. The only way that Drain/Aspir Samba will ever be useful is if SE lets us keep two Sambas up at the same time and receive both effects. With 2 minute Samba durations, it would be possible.

10) I like the idea of an "offensive" and "supportive" stance, but I feel that it somewhat overcomplicates the issue. The things you're suggesting shouldn't be tied to a specific stance, or if they are going to be tied to a stance then we should just use Saber/Fan. Having two "stances" is redundant, although the Arts/Addendums show SE isn't entirely opposed to redundancy in the pursuit of stubbornness. When would I be in the supportive Stance with Saber Dance up, for instance?
I'd do this instead:
* Make the En Cote changes fulltime job traits not tied to anything.
* Add the benefits that you're suggesting for your offensive stance to Saber Dance, and permit penalized Waltzes instead of blocking them altogether.

11) I think your "Tango" idea is very nifty and would be a very fun way to play, but it also sounds complicated to program. I like thinking about it, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

12) JK, there is no 12. Thanks for writing all this up.

[Asymptotic]

1.) So it does. Shows you how often I use it :(
2.) This is a good point, ~18-20TP or "1/4 of a WS," as you describe it, would probably be a better estimate for the opportunity cost. I don't think it ends up changing much more than the numbers, though.
3.) In this ability, I had the potency decrease over time until wearing off and then being consumed on the first weaponskill. I think it's a lot more balanced than you point out due to the decisions it forces you to make. You can either use it right before your weaponskill for a major boost, or ride it out and WS later. Perhaps if it couldn't overwrite itself and the recast were increased to 0:30.
4.) I'm not holding my breath, but no one really saw Konzen-Ittai coming either.
5.) The SAM notes today mentioned something about a "Shikokyo" like ability to give party members Regain, and the response from the dev team was positive. I'm not throwing in my hat on making an already awesome ability more awesome. The responses from the on the SAM notes are basically along the lines of "If this isn't obviously broken, or impossible from a system perspective, we like this idea and we'll look into it." Then again, a lot of the requests they respond to on the SAM notes are absolutely ridiculous/
6.) It's not the reason I have been citing all along for not splitting waltz timers ever, but I think if the DNC community would realize that it's just not going to happen, we could get some interesting discussions of other ways to fix it. Unfortunately, people cling to the idea.
7.) I agree. I don't care, but a lot of people do, especially on the JP forums. I figure it's worth mentioning as something that people want. As I admit openly, I don't know how I'd balance it.
8.) They've done more random things. SCH got the ability to skillchain with magic (lol?), BLM got two powerful survivability tools (mana wall and enmity douse), when previously BLM survivability was up to the support job, gear, and the rest of the party. Even the abilities "Saber Dance" and "Fan Dance" were kind of out of the blue for DNC when added originally. Seeing as they respond to requests like "I want to be invincible during weapon skills," (those crazy sams) I don't see the harm in suggesting them :D
9.) That would be a samba buff worth seeing.
10.) Actually, the multiple stances was specifically designed to address "redundancy in the pursuit of stubbornness," LOL. I'm glad you found a way to word it!
11.) (It's secretly my favorite idea on the whole list. I reaaaaaly hope Camate finds it and passes it on to the dev team! I think it would be really fun! It's just a shame Rudra --> Ukko's doesn't chain!)
12.) <3

[Chuchuroon]

I actually find desperate flourish quite useful, especially so before you get violent flourish, it should be put on every mob that isn't immune or THAT is wasted potential. A gravity effect as potent as a rdms and an additional -10 evasion is not something to undervalue, and I find from personal experience that the gravity effect is actually quite easy to land.

Yes, violent flourish may have a lot more situational usage than desperate when soloing, but the way you write it make it sound like you think it's absolutely worthless, which it's not.

It's much more useful than wild flourish, and even after you get violent flourish, if you are fighting something that does not need stun, or something that already has a dedicated stunner, gravity can help in many ways. Smack it on when you need to kite something (e.g. during a 2hr like invincible or mighty strikes), smack it on something slept without waking up the mob so it doesn't make a mad dash after the mage who slept it when it wakes up, smack it on a mob with high evasion, there are many scenarios in which it has useful application. Yes, any RDM or /RDM can do gravity, but that's like saying any BLM, DRK, /BLM or /DRK can stun. Gravity is one of the most undervalued effects and people really should be exploiting every single opportunity to use it wherever it can be used.

I'm also a little wary that you place DAMAGE as the #1 issue as opposed to healing and utility/support, which is really the area where DNC can truly shine. DNC was not created as a "pure" DD, and "heavy" DDs such as MNK and DRK etc are not even half as versatile as DNC. To appear to ask SE to focus first and foremost on their damage-dealing abilities as opposed to the unique abilities (instant heal and erase, sambas, steps) I fear would lead them astray from the uniqueness of the job. You can deal great damage on many other classes, but no other class can be in the frontlines and yet dish out a ton of healing and support as well as a dancer can.



I'm not convinced, as many Dancers are, that splitting the waltz category into multiple categories is a viable option. I think instead adding a new tier of abilties to improve the Dancer's healing prowess would be a better option.

While you may not be convinced, it may be prudent to include that in your post since your thread is getting so much feedback and visibility, especially, as you said yourself, that many many many of us feel this way.

Most notably, splitting recast timers for the different waltzes would be much easier to implement than most of your suggestions, most of which involve adding new abilities or traits - and splitting just healing waltz on its own timer apart from the curing waltzes alone would do wonders in actually allowing dancers to actively assist in removing debuffs instead of only being able to cure in situations where they are relied on heavily to heal. Additionally, splitting up the timers between different tiers of curing waltzes would avoid the situation where healing dancers are forced to only spam Curing Waltz III due to the long recast and shared timer of the higher tier waltzes.

I think SE already tried to adjust for potency of steps with the introduction of Presto - not saying that it's the ultimate amazing solution to the problem at hand, but at least it's....something, but also I suspect it means they most likely will not further boost steps for Dancer as a main job anytime soon again.

Subjobs don't get presto, and it increases the potency of the daze. Most mobs die to fast before more than one or two steps get applied anyway, and when soloing we usually cap out on level 5 dazes long before the mob dies. Besides, from my experience anyway, the majority of people who /DNC never even bother using steps <_> (a lot of dancer mains also don't, which is a different reason altogether to cry rivers of shame, but I digress).


Anyway, while I don't agree with you on some of your points, and admit to skimming (wall of text, etc), I applaud you for taking the time to write out a well organized and articulate post addressing the dancer job.

[Alkalinehoe]

I'm also a little wary that you place DAMAGE as the #1 issue as opposed to healing and utility/support, which is really the area where DNC can truly shine. DNC was not created as a "pure" DD, and "heavy" DDs such as MNK and DRK etc are not even half as versatile as DNC. To appear to ask SE to focus first and foremost on their damage-dealing abilities as opposed to the unique abilities (instant heal and erase, sambas, steps) I fear would lead them astray from the uniqueness of the job. You can deal great damage on many other classes, but no other class can be in the frontlines and yet dish out a ton of healing and support as well as a dancer can.

I think he places damage as the (currently) most important aspect of DNC is because that's where DNC is very competent in. DNC can't hold it's own to a WHM ( and really, who doesn't have one now a days) SCH/RDM/BLU are also superior outside abyssea as well. Just for the fact that they have mutliple tier'd cures, -na's/erase that aren't tied to the same recast timers as cure, etc. However, on the DD side of DNC, they can rank as one of the highest DPS jobs.

[Asymptotic]

I actually find desperate flourish quite useful, especially so before you get violent flourish, it should be put on every mob that isn't immune or THAT is wasted potential. A gravity effect as potent as a rdms and an additional -10 evasion is not something to undervalue, and I find from personal experience that the gravity effect is actually quite easy to land.

Yes, violent flourish may have a lot more situational usage than desperate when soloing, but the way you write it make it sound like you think it's absolutely worthless, which it's not.


If you have Rudra's Storm, it becomes completely useless, as the Gravity effect from Rudra's is both extremely potent and highly accurate. And -10 evasion is something to undervalue, because you should be aiming to cap accuracy in gear without any help from special effects. It is absolutely worthless.



Gravity is one of the most undervalued effects and people really should be exploiting every single opportunity to use it wherever it can be used.


It's undervalued because you can't rely on it. Gravity lands on almost nothing worth talking about. No, Cirein-Croin isn't worth talking about. People have been soloing it since the day it came out just because gravity lands. Which is why gravity doesn't land on anything.



I'm also a little wary that you place DAMAGE as the #1 issue as opposed to healing and utility/support, which is really the area where DNC can truly shine. DNC was not created as a "pure" DD, and "heavy" DDs such as MNK and DRK etc are not even half as versatile as DNC. To appear to ask SE to focus first and foremost on their damage-dealing abilities as opposed to the unique abilities (instant heal and erase, sambas, steps) I fear would lead them astray from the uniqueness of the job. You can deal great damage on many other classes, but no other class can be in the frontlines and yet dish out a ton of healing and support as well as a dancer can.

I actually offer fewer suggestions to increase damage dealing capacities than any other category o_O, I can really tell you skimmed. I also state that I'm giving suggestions to improve each category without much regard for the others, meaning that I don't mean all of these suggestions would be to put in place at the same time. Obviously if you're going to greatly beef DD, you wouldn't adjust healing/support so much and if you were going to all of a sudden make DNC a healing machine you wouldn't want it tearing things apart as much. That's why I also offered a multiple stance model, allow the DNC to choose between two different modes of action - increased damage or increased support, both at an enhanced capacity to what they are now.




While you may not be convinced, it may be prudent to include that in your post since your thread is getting so much feedback and visibility, especially, as you said yourself, that many many many of us feel this way.

Most notably, splitting recast timers for the different waltzes would be much easier to implement than most of your suggestions, most of which involve adding new abilities or traits - and splitting just healing waltz on its own timer apart from the curing waltzes alone would do wonders in actually allowing dancers to actively assist in removing debuffs instead of only being able to cure in situations where they are relied on heavily to heal. Additionally, splitting up the timers between different tiers of curing waltzes would avoid the situation where healing dancers are forced to only spam Curing Waltz III due to the long recast and shared timer of the higher tier waltzes.


I've addressed this like 100 times already, they haven't split waltz timers yet, they aren't going to ever. I could be wrong, the dev could post the DNC manifesto response today and make me eat my words, but responses they've given to the suggestions of other jobs and the like have led me to the following conclusions:

1.) SE views splitting of waltzes as either too powerful, or
2.) SE realizes that waltz timers are a huge hindrance to the original role of the DNC, but is unable to make this change for system reasons (check the response to the THF thread, or in Byrth's post at the top of the page), and has turned to increasing DNC's damage output as a "consolation prize."

What sounds easy to you may actually be very difficult to implement, either from PS2 limitations standpoint, or game balance standpoints. It's hard to say what the dev team is thinking. I mention that many DNC believe it's the route to go, and there are 900 threads about it on both EN forum and the JP forum so the idea is getting heard, lol.



I think SE already tried to adjust for potency of steps with the introduction of Presto

Even at max daze (5/5) steps are still weak in comparison to the similar debuffs other jobs are able to inflict for much less effort and maintenance time. The potency should be adjusted.



Anyway, while I don't agree with you on some of your points, and admit to skimming (wall of text, etc), I applaud you for taking the time to write out a well organized and articulate post addressing the dancer job.

Skimming is bad, but I'm glad you appreciate it anyway XD
Sorry if this post in particular feels argumentative, but this is a discussion forum after all.

[Chuchuroon]

If you have Rudra's Storm, it becomes completely useless, as the Gravity effect from Rudra's is both extremely potent and highly accurate. And -10 evasion is something to undervalue, because you should be aiming to cap accuracy in gear without any help from special effects. It is absolutely worthless.

As you said - for dancers who have Rudra's Storm. Many do not, so it doesn't really seem fair to undervalue it's use because there exists a weaponskill that not everyone has easy access to. I know everyone and their mother seems to have an empyrean or the WoE equivalent these days, but for folks who are still leveling, casual players who don't have the time/energy to get the weapon, and non-abyssea (yes "lolthereareplacesoutsideabyssea"?) situations, it's still handy. Of course it's important to cap accuracy, but you know and I know that there are tons of players who don't/can't/won't, and who could use any extra help they can get <_>

and, as I said, for people who still solo/party their subjobs instead of keywhoring or FCburning it up, it's still a great ability to have for those levels. Yes, not many people do, but they still exist. Just because it greatly loses value as you get higher in level doesn't mean it should be changed or removed in favor of other things, which is what your original wording made it seem like - "It's useless to me at this level/with my gear/in abyssea so I would get rid of it for everyone if it were up to me" which was mildly off-putting.



It's undervalued because you can't rely on it. Gravity lands on almost nothing worth talking about. No, Cirein-Croin isn't worth talking about. People have been soloing it since the day it came out just because gravity lands. Which is why gravity doesn't land on anything.

But gravity saved my mages from Cirein-Croin quite a few times when the frontline was charmed! ;_;



I actually offer fewer suggestions to increase damage dealing capacities than any other category o_O, I can really tell you skimmed. I also state that I'm giving suggestions to improve each category without much regard for the others, meaning that I don't mean all of these suggestions would be to put in place at the same time. Obviously if you're going to greatly beef DD, you wouldn't adjust healing/support so much and if you were going to all of a sudden make DNC a healing machine you wouldn't want it tearing things apart as much. That's why I also offered a multiple stance model, allow the DNC to choose between two different modes of action - increased damage or increased support, both at an enhanced capacity to what they are now.

Yeah, I'll need to read over it more in detail when I'm not working, heh :P


I've addressed this like 100 times already, they haven't split waltz timers yet, they aren't going to ever. I could be wrong, the dev could post the DNC manifesto response today and make me eat my words, but responses they've given to the suggestions of other jobs and the like have led me to the following conclusions:

1.) SE views splitting of waltzes as either too powerful, or
2.) SE realizes that waltz timers are a huge hindrance to the original role of the DNC, but is unable to make this change for system reasons (check the response to the THF thread, or in Byrth's post at the top of the page), and has turned to increasing DNC's damage output as a "consolation prize."

Not even only splitting healing apart from all the curing/divine, or diving from /healing? Not trying to intentionally butt heads here, just honestly curious of your thoughts. Do you only oppose this idea because you don't believe SE would do it, or do you have other reasons as well?


Even at max daze (5/5) steps are still weak in comparison to the similar debuffs other jobs are able to inflict for much less effort and maintenance time. The potency should be adjusted.

I'm not 100% certain of this, but in the case of box step, aren't there limitations on how defense down effects stack with each other and a cap on how much can be applied to a target at any given time? E.g. acid bolt will stack with both box step and dia, but the total amount of defense down combined that can be applied to a target is -50%?

I'm wondering about this because it may be one of the reasons they are reluctant to increase daze/step potency - because they want people to include a greater variety of job types. If the cap is indeed -50%, for example, and box step max potency was increased to -25%, then you'd only need a DNC, DRG with angon and any mage with dia, as opposed to needing acid bolt ~12% lv.5 box step ~13% dia II ~10% those blu spells 5%~10% and whatever else has def down effects these days.

It would be nice if it were improved, but I'm not sure where you think it requires much effort/maintenance to keep up a level 5 daze. Might require pressing more buttons frequently then simply hitting a dia or /ra macro, but it's not that much harder. Steps/finishing moves are the lifeblood of dancers anyway, even if not to keep the daze at level 5, we would still be using steps every 15s to get finishing moves.

I would LOVE for dancer to get more debuff-type abilities, but doubt the wisdom of having it in the form of new steps. Even with the ones you suggested, it would probably still only be Box and Stutter or Box and Feather being used the majority of the time if we still only get to keep 2 types of dazes up, at least, I don't really see many situations where the new steps would be used over the current steps that we have.


Skimming is bad, but I'm glad you appreciate it anyway XD
Sorry if this post in particular feels argumentative, but this is a discussion forum after all.

No, I agree. I'm not a particularly mathy person but I'm always open to try to hear about and learn new things, and discussion is a great way to do it. :)


P.s. oh and hell to the yes with lowering climatic flourish recast. It makes me sadface when I get tp fast enough to WS at least 3~4 times before the timer is up again. :C

[Chuchuroon]

I think he places damage as the (currently) most important aspect of DNC is because that's where DNC is very competent in. DNC can't hold it's own to a WHM ( and really, who doesn't have one now a days) SCH/RDM/BLU are also superior outside abyssea as well. Just for the fact that they have mutliple tier'd cures, -na's/erase that aren't tied to the same recast timers as cure, etc. However, on the DD side of DNC, they can rank as one of the highest DPS jobs.

DNC can be an impressive DD, yes, but any equally impressive MNK WAR DRK SAM or even RNG can easily outdo it. If you PURELY wanted deal damage only, why would you level dancer? DNC may not be able to hold it's own to a WHM, but it's the only frontline job that can replace it in a pinch, and to completely ignore its unique abilities in favor of "showing down" other DD jobs that do not have the ability to buff/debuff/cure/give your entire party job ability haste, just to prove that DNC is a competent DD, seems like a huge waste of potential to me.

Because of this, I do NOT think, ever, that damage should be the first and most important thing to focus on for dancer -- that's like saying because SCH can be a decent nuker, they should first and foremost priotize on improving their nuking ability.

THFs have the potential to be very good damage dealers too, but if any THF starts going on an epeen damage dealing rampage without bothering to properly TA/collaborator/accomplice/manage party hate/pull etc when it's needed I would smack the shizzle out of them.

[Shibayama]

This is incredibly well planned and thought out and most of your ideas would be incredible if implimented. Personally I don't think dancer needs anymore situational combat flourishes, and they're thinking of adding a new one that does triple attack. A triple attack every 2 mins seems like a worthless addition, and even striking flourish is so laughably underpowered especially when you consider the buff to climactic. However there is one thing that I desperately want to see.

Defensive abilities. Yes we also need more support and abilities to augment our current bread and butter abilities but I would love to see SE move away from offensive flourishes and give us some defensive type moves to go along with the fan/saber dynamic. An example of this could be...

Stalwart Flourish: "Consumes all finishing moves. Autoparries the number of enemy attacks equal to the number of finishing moves. Not only would that give us some defense when subbing /sam /war or /whm as well as making it worlds easier to cap parrying (seriously... I've been trying for awhile and even with 8 fear deargs, AGL atma and the defense skill increase food on me I cant get past 200 skill...) but it would also give dancer more options on what to do with their FM's other than "convert it with reverse for self skillchains/heals" which is largely why the Flourish 3 category is so unpopular. Climactic was a joke because it consumed all of your moves. Now you can get big numbers with it but ONLY if you have Thwashtar/Daka+2, are in abyssea and have atleast 4/5 NFR merits. Striking has an obscenely long recast timer for a single forced double attack/potential crit with the charis casaque.

They've already made it so that monks can "perfect counter" why not add "perfect parry" to dnc as a flourish III? Then maybe they could change the whole "tactical parry" enhancement to be similar to the charis tiara effect that gives an extra parry and extra TP gained from it.

Also something needs to be done about steps. It's far too much work to maintain a level 5 daze when it stymies your TP gain and the overall effect is something anybody *subbing* dance could do just at a much slower pace. Our steps are the key to pretty much every aspect of our other abilities sans saber and fan dance as has been already pointed out, our steps have the same or less potency as other mage spells that just require one use. When we need to spend a minimum of 30% tp over 45 seconds for a paltry 3% increase over dia II there's a problem.

Sure, it's not that much more effort on our part but it's inefficient as all get out and has been a major stick in my craw when fighting big monsters where I want to maintain the effect. Particularly when it misses and you have to start over again...

I really liked the ideas proposed thus far about steps but the biggest problem I have is that there's no real payoff for all the work in maintaining a level 5 daze. So I suggest that similar to a corsair getting bonus effects when landing on XI, in addition to an overall potency increase, a level 5 daze can:

-Have an increased overall daze duration making it easier for us to keep our TP up without having to repeatedly go back and waste a step getting 1 FM to maintain it.

-Do away with the whole level 5 daze = 1 FM mechanic. I don't see why this is like that since it severely hinders our FM gain if we want to maintain a daze.

-Have an added additional debuff effect added once level 5 is reached that lasts for the duration - for example an added attack/accuracy/magic attack/crit rate down effect of sufficient potency on the mob.

-Have an added additional PTwide buff effect once level 5 is reached that lasts for the duration - giving the pt added attack/accuracy/magic attack/crit damage effect of sufficient potency.

I really hope that the dev team pays attention to all these suggestions we have, especially since they're doing this whole "job manifesto explanation" thing. I'd be pretty ticked if all we got was another extremely situational damage flourish on a long timer.

[Asymptotic]

I won't budge on the usefulness or non-usefulness of D.Flourish. If you're not capping accuracy, then you should be eating food which will easily cap your accuracy. BUT REALLY, you should be capping accuracy anyway, and eating meat! Most of the places a DNC has trouble capping accuracy (random NMs) are on things Gravity doesn't land on evarrrr. In XP situations/levelling up, chances are a mage can land gravity much more reliably than you can. I used D.Flourish while levelling up some, but only if and because I had absolutely nothing better to do. Once I got V.Flourish I used that to waste FMs, because at least it returns TP if it doesn't stun, lol.

If defense down effects are in fact multiplicative (which I believe they are) it's harder to reach -50% than you'd think. Angon (x0.8), Box Step 5 (x0.85), Dia III (x0.85), which are the only three which currently stack together (angon overwrites/isoverwrittenby most Defense Down effects), makes for a total of about -42%. If box step 5/5 were -25%, then the three stacked together would still only be -49%. This of course changes if the effects are additive. And IDK if there's actually a cap anyway.

As for waltz timers, I'm mostly apathetic. I wouldn't complain if they split them, but I'm pretty sure they won't, and thus would rather spend my creativity on alternative solutions.

Also this goes out to everyone: Rudra's Storm doesn't just perform well inside Abyssea. Stacked with climactic flourish, it outperforms DE/Evis/PK by far outside, too. Twashtar/Daka+2 is probably the best thing you can do for your DNC outside of maybe mythic, and even then mythic is really only good if you're main healing~

[Alaik]

For DNCs quoting THF's response, please keep in mind those were mainly BS answers.

Hell, they said they couldn't lower steal timers because people would abuse it and hide, when you couldn't hide to resteal for a LONG time. Even if you could hide would be on a 5 minute timer also.

They just like to piss on THF, you guys for some reason I feel might very well get your split timers, maybe not this update though.

[Asymptotic]

They don't tend to claim system-related reasons when there's no system-related reason. If they didn't want to split the timers for random balance-related reasons (valid or not), they would have said that.

[Alaik]

That would be a valid point if it was true in the slightest.

Look at their response and then look at how steal works. It is NOT possible to steal, hide to ditch aggro, then steal another item. Hell, if you don't want to look it up, hop on THF/RNG5+, find a goblin, steal a beastcoin, ditch it (Make sure to keep track of what mob it is via widescan), then try to steal again. You'll get "Goblin Fisher has no items to steal." which only occurs when a mob has 0 items to steal (Which we know isn't the case) or if it has already been stolen from.

Also, as far as "too many recasts being up" THF comes nowhere near WAR or DNC so that's also a BS system reason, and if it's a global thing (Which would make no sense, but we'll give them the benefit of a doubt) they could just not add the bajillion they want to already powerful jobs. Or remove some of those which are worthless. I personally wouldn't mind mug dying for a useful ability for someone. Or they could condense the already shared abilities via waltzes. Like steal/despoil, collab/accomplice, jump/spirit jump, etc.

Either one is a complete BS reason based on how the system works.

[Asymptotic]

I think they meant that they didn't like stealing and then hiding to ditch aggro at all, at least that's how I interpreted it.

[Alaik]

By adding attractive items to monsters, we fear that it would be re-creating the scenario from the past regarding beastcoins (stealing and then hiding right after)

The "scenario" in the past was oldton movapolos stealing + hiding repeatedly for gold coins. Not once. Assuming it was once they had a problem with, I'm sure they would have gimped what was stolen.

[Saerun]

This is an absolutely amazing thread, but it might be better posted in the General Discussion, since it seems like the Devs mostly check that forum (Even though all of the Job Manifesto threads really should be in the job forums, but eh!). These are some wonderfully thought out ideas, so kudos to you for doing so much work on this! I really hope that it gets noticed by the Devs!

[Byrth]

Heh, I just hope that they read it. Also, if they were clearer about the technical constraints they face, we could be clearer with our suggestions. In the short term, I'd be satisfied with some information.

As far as the Desperate Flourish useful vs. not debate, I used it on Jailer of Temperance the other day to Gravity him in Blunt mode in case of Optic Induration. Way-back-when I used to use it when I was soloing on BST/DNC for pet swaps. Before jug pets were the way to go, sometimes I'd do Box Step -> Desperate Flourish -> Rampage -> run away and let my pet take hate back while I kited the grav'd monster. Probably not the most efficient way to solo, but I thought it was a novel use of the ability. It doesn't come out of my arsenal very often.

[Moonbaq]

I agree 100% with the raise idea, dancer's could use that. But I feel that dancers could also use a few other perks,
1) Increased DEF Bonus (like an ability trait) If your like me dnc solos alot so this would help
2) Healing Waltz(ga) - if your with a party and ur mages r silenced this could be benefital
3) Lower recast time to use abilities - time between big cures is long, so if ur getting hit pretty good its hard to recover fast
4) Giving dancers ability to weild more weapons - just to give dnc a little more power, or alot xD
And 5) Giving a step that lowers targets attack. - You have Critical down, magic down, defence down, & evasion down but no attack.
Just some of my ideas - Comments Questions?

[Byrth]

I agree 100% with the raise idea, dancer's could use that. But I feel that dancers could also use a few other perks,
1) Increased DEF Bonus (like an ability trait) If your like me dnc solos alot so this would help
2) Healing Waltz(ga) - if your with a party and ur mages r silenced this could be benefital
3) Lower recast time to use abilities - time between big cures is long, so if ur getting hit pretty good its hard to recover fast
4) Giving dancers ability to weild more weapons - just to give dnc a little more power, or alot xD
And 5) Giving a step that lowers targets attack. - You have Critical down, magic down, defence down, & evasion down but no attack.
Just some of my ideas - Comments Questions?

I guess I'll bite!
1) Defense doesn't matter as much as you think it does, and the +30 Defense or whatever you'd get from a few levels of Defense Bonus trait really aren't going to do much for you.
2) I agree that we could use some kind of revision to Healing Waltz
3) Yeah, this is a common problem
4) If you're talking about more weapon types, we'd probably end up sticking to daggers even if we had an A- rating in all weapon types.
5) This falls into the "defensive debuff" category. They haven't given us a single "defensive debuff" in the last 90 levels, so they probably won't be starting.

[Alaik]

If I had the same rating in GK as daggers, I sure as hell wouldn't use daggers. 450 delay weapons are right along with daggers in TP gain according to the TP formula, even before sTP, you also get the 2H bonus and you could /SAM for hasso as well. Not to mention the superior weapon skills (Outside of abyssea on stuff that matters, AKA what SE said would be the next few updates)

Honestly, they need to fix 1Hs again before they do the new content or DNCs and THFs both are going to be shafted again outside of trash clear endgame like dynamis.

[Byrth]

If I had the same rating in GK as daggers, I sure as hell wouldn't use daggers. 450 delay weapons are right along with daggers in TP gain according to the TP formula, even before sTP, you also get the 2H bonus and you could /SAM for hasso as well. Not to mention the superior weapon skills (Outside of abyssea on stuff that matters, AKA what SE said would be the next few updates)

Honestly, they need to fix 1Hs again before they do the new content or DNCs and THFs both are going to be shafted again outside of trash clear endgame like dynamis.

Heh, you should try and make a theoretical GKT Dancer build before you post that.

[Alaik]

So you'd happily use daggers on high level content (Read not abyssea) instead of a GK?

K.

[Byrth]

So you'd happily use daggers on high level content (Read not abyssea) instead of a GK?

K.

Ninjas use GKT a lot, I heard. Your idea is demolished by:
1) WS frequency is a large part of why SAM is good, which is mostly due to their STP traits because 450 delay sits in a TP/sec trough.
2) If we did get GKT skill, we still wouldn't have access to Yuki, Gekko, or Kasha. They're all Samurai Exclusive.
3) We have very limited STR gear selection for WS.

In short, yes. I'd rather use Dagger instead of using GKT to slowly spam crappy Jinpus.

Okay, so what about Great Axe? Raging Rush is WAR exclusive, Steel Cyclone is WSNM. Polearm? At least we could use Penta Thrust, but if we're talking about high level content it doesn't buy us much. Scythe and Great Sword? The good HNM WSs are DRK or PLD exclusive and we aren't on the WSNMs.

Our job receives a high level of dual wield and a lot of gear that specifically benefits Dagger usage. The good WSs from other weapon types are locked off from us. Even if we had an A- in everything, there would be no reason to use those weapons. Daggers aren't that bad for DPS, and Evisceration isn't that horrible of a WS against high level stuff either if you have a good build and can still cap dDEX.

[Alaik]

One, it's hypothetical. And as a rule, if you have an A- in a melee skill as a melee job, you get all the WS associated with such. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

Secondly, TP trough? lol http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/File:Tpgain.jpg
Base TP gain for a 450 is about the same overtime taking only delay into account. Hasso's DA, haste and the sTP you'd get from SAM would be superior. Especially since any DNC who actually came DNC to events like Jailers, Kirin, etc at 75 would know hitting for 0 (Thus gaining 0 TP) was an issue, even if you somehow managed to get support, with stellar gear.

Capping dDEX? So did you misunderstand where I said not abyssea/meripo trash and said higher level endgame content? The stuff like jailers, kirin, kings, etc we had at 75 that SE said will be closer to 99's endgame than abyssea?

I thought I specified that. Also, I really don't know why you're bringing up multihits. There's a reason good DRKs used GS over scythe on higher end stuff. Spoilers: Look up pdif boost.

[Byrth]

You don't get Hasso DA from sub, 450 delay is the lowest TP/sec until 600+ based on the graph you linked, it's possible to cap dDEX on non-trash mobs in an Evisceration build, and jobs with an A- skill don't necessarily get all the WSs (Paladin and Hexa Strike, for instance). Also, I listed every WS with a pDIF boost in the previous post and pointed out that they were job-specific.

Regardless, this is a meaningless conversation in an otherwise good thread, so I'm going to stop it.

[Camate]

Greetings dancers! Here is some feedback from the development team in regards to your comments about the job adjustments concepts. Enjoy :)



Add new modes for dancers. Add dances that give sphere effects.

Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.


Make it so Waltzes don’t all share the same timer.

We would need to completely remake the system as it was originally balanced to have a unified recast timer with limitations placed on the amount of TP consumed. If we removed that, the cure capabilities of the job would be greatly enhanced throwing the balance off between other healing magic. If we were to split the Waltz timers, we would have to raise the TP consumption as a trade-off.


Reduce the recast timer on Waltz. (Especially higher tier Curing Waltz and Healing Waltz)

Since Curing Waltz was designed to be different from Cure in the sense that it has advantages with short execution time and it is hard to interrupt, but on the flip side is difficult to use in quick succession, we do not have any plans to reduce the recast time further. Instead we wish for dancers to focus on specific tactics taking into account the levels of Waltz and use the most appropriate one for the situation.
Similarly for Healing Waltz, since it is possible to address a large variety of status ailments covered by na-related spells and Erase, the recast timer was set to be somewhat long.


Make it possible to use Healing Waltz on people outside of your party.

It would be necessary to look into not only Healing Waltz, but also extending Erase to people outside of your party. In the case that we decide to extend the effects of Erase to people outside of your party, we will make it possible for Healing Waltz, too.


Increase the effect of Animated Flourish.

We are looking into adjustments for this. We are considering making it so you can generate the same level of enmity as Provoke when consuming two finishing moves.


Increase the accuracy for Desperate Flourish.

We are exploring the direction of adding equipment that enhances the accuracy.


Make it so you can perform level 2-3 skill chains with Wild Flourish.

Comparing this to samurai’s Konzen-ittai, the recast timer is shorter and it has multiple uses so the effect itself was set rather low for balance purposes.


Make it so you can stack steps over level 5.

This would require us to look into the effects carefully. Since the effect of level 5 is currently very strong, we do not have any plans of increasing this at the moment.


Lengthen the effect duration for steps.

We are looking into the direction of making it so the duration gets longer at higher levels.


Make it so you can generate two finishing moves even after you have reached level 5.

It can be thought that the fundamental problem here is that in order to maintain the effect of the step you need to continuously use the same step. First we will revamp the step effect duration and determine how many times you can use a step in a single battle, and then make a decision based on that.
The idea is to be able to fight by using a variety of steps and not using the same one over and over just to maintain its effect.


Make Chocobo Jig an AoE effect.

Since there is no cost for Chocobo Jig the effect is set to be only for the dancer.
In the event that we were to extend the effect to party members, there would be some room to explore this if there were TP consumption or some other trade-off.


Make it so you can overwrite Spectral Jig.

Please understand that this is the same as magic and items and it is following the rule that in order to re-apply the effect you need to remove it first.

[DebbieGibson]

The idea is to be able to fight by using a variety of steps and not using the same one over and over just to maintain its effect.

Do you understand how the game works? 99% of the time one of steps will be more useful than the others, there's usually no point in doing anything but trying to cap the one that is currently needed.

[Coldbrand]

TLDR: Nope.jpg

[Byrth]

Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.

You should make all our current Sambas into Sphere effects so that we can provide them to party members that are fighting different monsters. While you're doing that, you should fix the Sphere effect code so that the person with the Sphere also receives its benefit.


We would need to completely remake the system as it was originally balanced to have a unified recast timer with limitations placed on the amount of TP consumed. If we removed that, the cure capabilities of the job would be greatly enhanced throwing the balance off between other healing magic. If we were to split the Waltz timers, we would have to raise the TP consumption as a trade-off.

We don't need individual timers for each Waltz. Split the Waltz timers odd/even into Waltzes I and Waltzes II. We're limited by the amount of TP we can gain and the amount of TP that we give to monsters while we do it. Dancer could be a careful balance of these two forces if we weren't stuck for 20 seconds after each Curing Waltz IV.


Since Curing Waltz was designed to be different from Cure in the sense that it has advantages with short execution time and it is hard to interrupt, but on the flip side is difficult to use in quick succession, we do not have any plans to reduce the recast time further. Instead we wish for dancers to focus on specific tactics taking into account the levels of Waltz and use the most appropriate one for the situation.
Similarly for Healing Waltz, since it is possible to address a large variety of status ailments covered by na-related spells and Erase, the recast timer was set to be somewhat long.

It would be necessary to look into not only Healing Waltz, but also extending Erase to people outside of your party. In the case that we decide to extend the effects of Erase to people outside of your party, we will make it possible for Healing Waltz, too.

I assume that you answered the same question twice because it's often brought up by everyone that has ever had a passing association with the Dancer job. See the above response. You don't need to adjust the timers if you split them odd/even.


We are looking into adjustments for this. We are considering making it so you can generate the same level of enmity as Provoke when consuming two finishing moves.

I'm glad that you found something to say other than "no", but no one cares about volatile enmity (the kind that Provoke and Animated Flourish give).


We are exploring the direction of adding equipment that enhances the accuracy.

Again, Desperate Flourish has highly situational uses and really I can't make myself care about it. I'm assuming that this is going to be tacked on to the +2 version of AF2 body.


Comparing this to samurai’s Konzen-ittai, the recast timer is shorter and it has multiple uses so the effect itself was set rather low for balance purposes.

The difference between the two job abilities is that Wild Flourish is useless while Konzen-ittai is awesome. You either need to extend the duration of the Chainbound effect and let it work with Tier 2 skillchain elements, not extend the duration of the Chainbound effect and let it work with Tier 2/3 skillchain elements, or just give up on pretending to care whether this ability is relevant.


This would require us to look into the effects carefully. Since the effect of level 5 is currently very strong, we do not have any plans of increasing this at the moment.

You should double the potency without increasing the number of levels. Box Step 5/5 is a joke compared to Dia II, let alone Angon, Acid Bolts, or anything that matters.


We are looking into the direction of making it so the duration gets longer at higher levels.

Nice to hear, but then we'll run in to . . .


It can be thought that the fundamental problem here is that in order to maintain the effect of the step you need to continuously use the same step. First we will revamp the step effect duration and determine how many times you can use a step in a single battle, and then make a decision based on that.
The idea is to be able to fight by using a variety of steps and not using the same one over and over just to maintain its effect.

If you increased Step duration and failed to make the suggested change here, we'd have to rotate between 3 steps instead of 2. Considering we only have two worthwhile steps (and I only have macro space for 2), I'd rather not see either of these changes happen. The minor benefit we'd gain on hard fights where we want to keep step potency capped would be offset by the reduced FMs and damage output.


Since there is no cost for Chocobo Jig the effect is set to be only for the dancer.
In the event that we were to extend the effect to party members, there would be some room to explore this if there were TP consumption or some other trade-off.

This is another change that I can't make myself care about, but it's silly to deny us AoE Jig when you have Bolter's Roll and Chocobo Mazurka. Chocobo Jig freezes us in place for a long enough time that it's equivalent to Mazurka or Roll, so I'm not sure how you can claim that it shouldn't be AoE.


Please understand that this is the same as magic and items and it is following the rule that in order to re-apply the effect you need to remove it first.

We understand that Sneak doesn't overwrite itself, but why not change that? Apart from being annoying, it's unclear what purpose it really serves.

[Francisco]

Why not just increase the duration of Spectral Jig?

I sub DNC from time to time on my MNK, and the rate at which Spectral Jig wears off is pretty infuriating.

[Purpleeyes]

Could you at least CONSIDER separating Healing and Curing Waltz if you won't implement something like the WaltzI/II suggestion from Byrth.


Similarly for Healing Waltz, since it is possible to address a large variety of status ailments covered by na-related spells and Erase, the recast timer was set to be somewhat long.

Except for the fact that what it removes is completely random. When you're covered with five different thing and paralyze is one of them, there's a good chance paralyze will wear off before you even get a chance to get rid of it, thus totally wasting your time during that entire period. Not to mention you have to choose between curing (which can get paralyzed, therefore goodbye healing waltz for the next 10 seconds) and healing yourself.

[Troupe]

Byrth pretty much covered it all in his post.

The fact that you wrote 'Enjoy :)" at the beginning of the post just makes me think you have no clue how frustrating this update is...

By not considering any waltz timer split I feel like you forget that our TP caps at 300, while in abyssea WHM have a practically endless MP pool and can spam between Cure V and VI with added stoneskin effects. I appreciate DNC's cures are not intended to be the powerful but try healing something like Apademak on DNC, it's just not gonna happen due to having to already contend with front line debuffs. Even as duo and DNC main healing, if DNC got paralyzed and healing waltz doesn't go off you're now stuck with a huge recast for it to potentially be para'ed again. Something like waltz splits would mean if Healing waltz got para you could try curing waltz to try and see your HP through.

Has the dev team actually tested split timers in a fight to see how it does compared to other healing classes or do you just assume it will be more over powered?

In regards to 1 finishing move once steps are at Lvl 5 I don't see much reasoning behind this at all. You say we should alternate steps but surely that's down to each players own discression what steps they want to use. I don't want to alternate for the sake of keeping my finishing moves effective. Do other jobs have penalties for favouring a particular enfeeble...

[Kari]

Byrth basically said everything that needed to be said.

I can't believe SE thinks that Chocobo Jig has to have a cost to be AoE...
Is there going to be a a cost for Bolters/Mazurka/etc now too?

Gear with "Desperate Flourish effect" is going to be ignored. If you're going to buff it, make a direct buff.
Nobody is going to work for gear for a flourish that nobody uses.
Really need to make Flourishes in general better, considering there's only 1 per category worth using. Maybe 2 if you use Building.

[Shibayama]

Ugh... this just encourages the perception that the devs only know this game on paper, and not from actual player feedback or playtesting. In a group, dancer's healing abilities are shunned, particularly when up against something that does big damage and requires constant healing.

Level 5 step is "powerful" huh? A single spell from a redmage or even a blu outclasses something that takes a minimum of 30 seconds to get up to level 5, and lets not kid ourselves. Yes, you generally want to balance between two steps but just for the sake of "making it so you USE OTHER EFFECTS" is outlandish. I don't care if the steps stack with other effects - its just too big of a discrepancy between effort vs reward.

Also can we please reconsider the "triple attack" floruish III - abilities that solely enhance rudra's storm are abit of a waste, especially considering that nobody ever uses Striking anymore anyway. More *defensive* flourish III's would be better - such as climactic but it forces parries for each move used. That way there is less of a fuss about "bah offensive flourishes compete with just reversing for another weaponskill." Two weaponskills and a skillchain is almost always better than one slightly stonger one. And since monks also have the same evasion skill as well as access to perfect counter "just sub nin" is not an excuse to make this an unviable idea.

Also can we please have a rundown of what buffs and abilities we will actually get instead of just a rundown of which of our ideas are not viable? Might make for a more pleasant read.

[SpankWustler]

Wow. I guess in addition to being a difficult job to play properly, Dancer is a difficult job to develop properly.

You have my sympathies, Byrth.

[Atoreis]

Except for the fact that what it removes is completely random. When you're covered with five different thing and paralyze is one of them, there's a good chance paralyze will wear off before you even get a chance to get rid of it, thus totally wasting your time during that entire period. Not to mention you have to choose between curing (which can get paralyzed, therefore goodbye healing waltz for the next 10 seconds) and healing yourself.

This ^

I dont see how curing on DNC would be overpowered with Curing waltz I, II and healing waltz in waltzes I and curing waltz III,IV,V in waltzes II.

I dont see how you can even compere healing waltz with -na+erase combo. If you have paralyze on DNC you can end up not doing a single cure or healing waltz for a minute+ and just see how you recast is going up and down while nothing beside "xxx is paralyzed" will happen.

[Alhanelem]

Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.This seems like a cool idea, however, whatever effect is given would need to be relatively powerful to justify having a TP perpetuation cost.


Since Curing Waltz was designed to be different from Cure in the sense that it has advantages with short execution time and it is hard to interrupt, but on the flip side is difficult to use in quick succession, we do not have any plans to reduce the recast time further. Instead we wish for dancers to focus on specific tactics taking into account the levels of Waltz and use the most appropriate one for the situation.The strongest waltzes have disproportionately long recast timers to the point where using waltz V is no more effective than using a lesser waltz more times in the same time period.

Also, situations can change int he blink of an eye. If you use a high waltz and the situation gets worse, dancer cannot adapt to the situation. This recast problem prevents Dancer from being the support class it seems like it was built to be. Yes, they can use waltzes where white mages might h ave difficulty casting, but that alone doesn't justify this.

To put it simply: If Waltz V is not better than just using waltz III a few times, then there is no point in it existing. A higher tier waltz needs to have at least a slight edge over the previous tiers. This is true for waltz I II and III, but stops being true beyond that.

[Purpleeyes]

I've been reading through the JPN forums and it seems they have similar responses. It really is like the devs have never played this game.

[Fusionx]

Quite meh overall, though the thing about the recast timers is still a big issue.

At the very least, erase needs to be separated from cures. I can't count the number of times I've erased some kind of effect off someone to have them die afterwards because my timer wasn't back up. (should note this is when low manning/duoing content without any type of mage job present)

In regards to step levels.. why cant you let us have more than 5 but limit the amount of steps that can be consumed by a certain ability at a given time? ex. Reverse flourish uses "up to" 5 steps etc. We'd then still be limited by the recast timers of abilities that consume steps.


determine how many times you can use a step in a single battle
Please no. For myself personally (and probably lots of other DNCs) apart from trying to stack the most necessary step to level 5, the whole point of steps is to use them frequently if for nothing else, to build up TP. Limiting steps to a certain number of uses feels like it would essentially nerf the job. It would be like saying Samurai can only use meditate X number of times during a fight.


Also- resist amnesia would be nice, I mean jesus.... COR got it? But not DNC?

[Purpleeyes]

Honestly if you're in a situation that somehow requires Curing Waltz V, you should have a mage with you. Or are we supposed to rely on Fan Dance and Utsusemi to keep us alive until we cure ourselves again?

[Quetzacoatl]

It's official-

DNC is dead. There's no saving it now.

[Sira]

pretty much

[Quetzacoatl]

I regret leveling it thinking it would've been a decent main healer job.

Boy, how naive I was to think that.

[Purpleeyes]

How wrong you were! They're too busy trying to make DNC into a DD.

[Quetzacoatl]

How wrong you were! They're too busy trying to make DNC into a DD.

lolDD-DNC.

[Shibayama]

SO uhm, are we actually going to make productive suggestions to better further the direction we'd like to see dnc developed or...?

I have to say, one thing that also needs to be addressed is the strength of samba effects. As of right now there's almost no reason to use anything but 5/5 haste samba. Drain samba III is so pitifully weak that the only way to make any sort of productive use of it is if you need healing when you have saber dance up and are soloing. Aspir samba i have *never* used in any situation. Almost anybody would rather attack faster than get 3 mp back a swing.

[Raksha]

Man I don't think ive ever seen that many 'no's in one post before.

Bravo, SE.

[Nala]

as far as chocobo jig goes, bard gets aoe song at no cost so whats the diff?

[Raksha]

as far as chocobo jig goes, bard gets aoe song at no cost so whats the diff?

Mazurka is interruptable.

Yeah that's a dumb reason, but I'm pretty sure I've seen SE use that excuse somewhere before (or not, IDK i'm tired).

[noodles355]

Since there is no cost for Chocobo Jig the effect is set to be only for the dancer.
In the event that we were to extend the effect to party members, there would be some room to explore this if there were TP consumption or some other trade-off.There's no cost for Chocobo Mazurka either, but that stretches to party members. Why does the dev team continue over-and-over to decide that one ability is too overpowered if given to a certain job but absolutely fine if given to another.
JA dispel? It's too overpowered for thief to have it on a separate timer from steal or to be less than 5 minute recast. But it's fine for corsair to have it on 2 charges with 1 minute recast.
AoE movment ability? That's fine for bard, but not4u dnc, it's overpowered.
Subtle Blow for theives? Dont be silly, as you have en-TH, it'd be too overpowered. But it's cool to give it to ranger who can also raise the level of TH.


DOES NOT MAKE SENSE. I men really, does the dev team actually put any thought into players comments whatsoever? Or do they just immidiately shoot down anything that they hadn't already thought of? It really is absoloutely rediculous.

[Bubeeky]

It's been said before, but why not say it again...so many no's to dnc updates is crap...why not split timers? if we're supposed to "shine in the solo spotlight" why shouldn't we be able to keep ourselves healed decently? also, the step effects are mediocre at best...nothing to write home about, feather step is wonderful in theory, but when there's atmas that increase crit rate to max effortlessly, what do we need an additional few % on top of that? We're gettin' screwed here methinks....

and PS, I am in shock that we're not allowed to aoe our movement speed thing, like bards and cors can nor did they mention anything about lengthening spectral jigs absolutely abysmal duration...what exactly ARE we going to be getting over the next few levels? Cuz at this point, all it seems like that we're gettin' is no's over and over. :(

[Eradius]

Wow I've seen a lot of people claim about getting totally screwed, PLD, THF, even BLU. But dnc really is taking the largest beating of all. Are thew new devs intent to make it PUP the 2nd or something?

Come on Camate. You have to know this can't be right. Those are responses you were told to pass along, right? Try reasoning with the team.

It doesn't take a career dnc to see how awful SE is beginning to treat it.

[Urat]

I get back from sooling HNMs and apparently Dnc needs to be fixed?

I'm sorry but the only issue I have with dancer is the fact that my JAs get stalled out when I cast utsu, and have to wait 1-2 seconds after casting to get back to JA spam.

Other than that I have never had an issue with keeping up with any of the other jobs. Sure I don't heal as good as a white mage. You know why?

White mage is a *** healing class

*** We're not SUPPOSED to be main healers, has the giant pile of melee and DD JSE gear SE has been piling on us not given you the clue yet? Dancer is supposed to be a support job that also dishes out heavy damage. No other job in the game can debuff as strongly as dancer while also handing out some of the highest DPS, along with heavy duty weaponskills AND a high survivability for when we get hate.

I'm sorry but you people sound like Reddit's first world problems threads. Whaaaa, I can't heal as good as a White Mage, tank as good as Ninja, nor DD as good as a warrior.

But I'm going to ignore the fact I'm second best at all of these things combined, making me one of the most diverse and well rounded jobs in the game alongside blue mage and red mage, and whine about not being the best at everything.

We are a broken *** job that can kill things that takes 2-3 people in other jobs to kill. [Removed by Moderator according to the FINAL FANTASY XI FORUM Guidelines (http://support.na.square-enix.com/rule.php?id=20&la=1).] respect the fact there are more important things that need fixing over making dancer any more powerful than it is.

You know why our abilities are weaker than magic? Our abilities are either free or damn near free, and compared to their cost are pretty *** powerful. It only takes 30 tp to cap a single daze, and we get 100 tp back from that.

That's right, your capped daze costs negative 70 tp to use! And it can't be interrupted. And it casts instantly. And it lasts forever provided maintenance. And it has a 15 second recast. And you have the gal to request a buff?!

Chocobo jig is free and gives move speed +25%, I'm sorry but asking for it to be AoE is greedy. That would make it on par with mazurka which takes a long ass time to cast and holds the whole party down while casting, along with the fact it wears every time you zone. So unless you want the animation of chocobo jig extended to be twice as long and get cancelled if you try moving, and cost 40~70K to learn, give it a rest.

To Camate:



If we were to split the Waltz timers, we would have to raise the TP consumption as a trade-off.


This sounds reasonable, though personally I myself feel the more effective way to go about it would be to introduce some more -waltz recast gear for us dancers to work for, or let us merit waltz recast- in the future. Alternatively a tier 3 flourish that lowered the recast of our next waltz would be great. Each consumed finish = more seconds taken off the recast.

To everyone else: Stop whining, seriously. Seeing people playing one of the strongest jobs in the game whine about wanting more and more and more makes us sound whiny and spoiled. Remember the day square gave us our merits? Remember the day Square gave us dual wield?

Every single Update to dancer, SE has managed to slowly make us more and more powerful, slowly overtaking every other job in the game.

4/5 of our AF1 are usable, solid pieces. Our af2 is possibly the best set in the game. Our af3 is mind blowingly incredible. We're one of the few jobs that can fulltime 5/5 af3+2 and not be gimp for playing on the set bonus (though 4/5 with dusk gloves is still better)

We have an ability that gives us a 20~% double attack.

We have a -20~80% pdt ability.

And after all that, what does SE give us after much begging? DUAL WIELD, and not just tier 1 dual wield like blu, but at the time we got DUAL WIELD IV, we were on pare with ninja, the job that was known for dual wield!

And then next what does square give us? They take our already potent job ability, climactic flourish, and buff the *** out of it so hard that it makes us one of the high end damage dealers, on par with the others!

And yet you people STILL won't stop begging and pleading for more buffs. How about you all be grateful for all the buffs dancer has received with each update, and the fact we have not been gimped once since. You all take your titles of Dazzling Dance Divas to the next level, and I am ashamed of every one of you.

[Purpleeyes]

Every single Update to dancer, SE has managed to slowly make us more and more powerful, slowly overtaking every other job in the game.

This is the problem. They're making us more powerful... and that's all they're doing. We used to be a support job and that has pretty much vanished. Everything they've given us has been for DD. All we do now is solo really good, but what's the point of that when I can't proc anything inside abyssea, and there isn't anything worthwhile to solo outside that requires any skill.


We have an ability that gives us a 20~% double attack.
At the cost of healing ourselves. But hey if Drain Samba is all you need then why not. Unless they're undead, or have Ice Spikes.


We have a -20~80% pdt ability.
You gain something, you lose something. I hate not having Haste Samba up. Really useful for AE burns, though.


Chocobo jig is free and gives move speed +25%, I'm sorry but asking for it to be AoE is greedy. That would make it on par with mazurka which takes a long ass time to cast and holds the whole party down while casting, along with the fact it wears every time you zone. So unless you want the animation of chocobo jig extended to be twice as long and get cancelled if you try moving, and cost 40~70K to learn, give it a rest.
Holds the whole party down, but then they make up that lost time in seconds. You make it sound like it would be faster if they didn't give you Mazurka.
When they said cost they probably meant it literally, in that BRDs and CORs buy their way to give it to the party.
Also, giving AoE speed enhancement... greedy? Good going there buddy.


And then next what does square give us? They take our already potent job ability, climactic flourish, and buff the fuck out of it so hard that it makes us one of the high end damage dealers, on par with the others!
Why use Climactic Flourish when I already critical hit most of the time anyway? Considering the fact that mostly everything is done in Abyssea, Climactic Flourish was rubbish before the update. Not to mention that the only time it's really good is when used with Rudra's Storm.


You know why our abilities are weaker than magic? Our abilities are either free or damn near free, and compared to their cost are pretty fucking powerful. It only takes 30 tp to cap a single daze, and we get 100 tp back from that.
Except it takes a relatively long time to get to that point. Not to mention the occasional whiff. I'll just bring a RDM and have a near-instant 15% defense down. Even a WHM will give 10% defense down that won't take nearly a minute to do.
And regarding our abilities being free/near-free, mages have so much refresh potential that shouldn't even be an argument.


I'm sorry but you people sound like Reddit's first world problems threads. Whaaaa, I can't heal as good as a White Mage, tank as good as Ninja, nor DD as good as a warrior.

But I'm going to ignore the fact I'm second best at all of these things combined, making me one of the most diverse and well rounded jobs in the game alongside blue mage and red mage, and whine about not being the best at everything.

Second best? Since there's a bit of emphasis on this I'm going to assume you're not exaggerating. The way Waltzes are designed we won't be better at healing than most mages, but I won't argue the fact that one wasn't really needed on a lot of mobs if your DNC was good when the cap was 75.
DD? There's a lot of jobs that will deal more damage then we ever can, but I won't deny we have become pretty strong.
Tank? Depends. Solo we are way up there obviously. Other than that why bring a DNC tank when you you can have a NIN with Migawari, or a MNK with unlimited HP. I haven't got to tank Voidwatch yet, but I'd imagine they would rip a DNC to pieces.

Anyways, I don't mind the way things are. I agree that some -recast would also be a great addition.
However, I will always stick to my belief that Healing Waltz and Curing Waltz should not share the same recast in any way or form.

[Jem]

I really don't understand what is wrong with you people. I'm glad SE finally told you what was up, maybe you guys will take it down a notch now. DNC is great and has been getting nothing but better all the time. I've been DNC since WotG release and i never fully understood the whole "Main Healer only" desire for the job, DNC needs to be more like Lillisette enough said.

As for the DNC DD angle no one is saying it has to be a DD only, but DNC runs on 2 things; TP(JAs) and being engaged to buff(sambas), meaning the DNC has to melee to be effective. So SE made major changes to DNC not to "turn" it into a DD but made it so letting the DNC TP feed the mob was worth it. If the DNC was doing next to no dmg no one would let it melee ever and it could not function, healing or otherwise.

As for the notes provided it's easy to see some good stuff in there;

- Longer duration on Sambas
This is great as our number of JAs increases this gives us a little breathing room in both time and TP. Making it based on level also widens the gap between DNC main and /DNC sambas, a VERY good thing.

- Longer duration on steps
same as with sambas this gives us breathing room, seems like they want to make it easier for us to keep multiple different steps going at once. I've always wanted this, being able to lower the mobs eva/crit eva/def in a mainly melee party quickly and effectively would be very good boost. Maybe something like lowering the max level of effect to 3 but doubling/tripling the effect of each step or increasing the first and 2nd steps effect further then it is currently.

- New Ability(s) that give enhancing to other party members while slowly consuming TP.
Very interesting, because it constantly consumes precious TP i could see the effect being fairly strong. Having a DNC who could use Haste samba and a regain type aura at the same time would be a great benefit to a group. Because this doesn't seem useful when soloing or when there is not enough party members in range to warrant the TP consumed i hope it's reasonably easy to turn off and on when need be.

[Abithra]

Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.

Quick question, are you saying along the lines of Lillisette's Thorned Stance/Sensual Dance or along the lines of the Sphere effect from say Mextli Harness? (Sorry if I have got the wrong end of the stick about the Sphere business).

I like the idea of a type of Sphere and for things other then just giving Regain to party members.

Maybe instead of limiting to say one Sphere effect, could make a Stance category but instead of learning by leveling, we could do something like a solo only quest that requires defeating an NM (just a thought on something else to do), this means we could have a Regain effect, a form of PDT, a form of MDT, a critical hit, attack bonus, etc, etc. Not saying to do all but gives it a bit of supportive variety. Of course have it as a single casting timer so we can't just suddenly switch from say PDT to MDT and back again because a NM is about to cast Meteor/Comet or something like that.

As for the recast, shame really, only wanted Healing Waltz to be seperate. Don't care about the rest.

Would be extremely nice if you bring in more -Waltz Recast gear in to play or let us merit it like COR can with Phantom Roll/Quick Draw.

[Byrth]

I don't think anyone is arguing that DNC is a weak solo job. They're arguing that the level 75 party niche good Dancers enjoyed has disappeared. Here are three reasons why:

1) Waltzes are no weaker than they've ever been, but they're no more powerful than they were at 75. The setting where we used to excel at 75 (6-man parties killing things where we do the heavy healing with Waltz III) simply don't exist anymore, and our largest benefit in such a party is killed by number 2. Furthermore, it's frustrating to be unable to heal when we have TP and the increase in our healing power from splitting Waltz timers wouldn't be so substantial that SE is remotely justified in their concerns.

2) Haste Samba is getting more worthless all the time with a Bard in the party. 25% Haste from gear, 43.3% Haste from magic (BRD/WHM), and 10% from Hasso or 33% Dual Wield (which even THF can get) put you essentially at the delay cap. Combine that with the fact that you have to be engaged to the same monster, and you wonder why you brought the Dancer at all.

3) With Marches, it's not worth using Steps due to JA Delay. Because it's not worth using Steps, it's not worth using Flourishes. Because it's not worth using Flourishes, it's not worth self-skillchaining. Because of all of these things, if you have Marches you're actually going to do the best damage just riding Saber Dance/Haste Samba and pretending you're a monk with daggers.

It boils down to: If you have another support job in the party (Bard), which you should bring to any melee burn or event with a full party, Dancer is the closest approximation of worthless. Couple this with more sources of Refresh (a BRD+RDM combo has 17MP/tick from 2x Ballads + Refresh II with AF3+2 and an easy Ballad Instrument, which they can always keep on thanks to Tenuto, versus 6MP/tick at 75 with anything short of a G-horn) and our supporting niche has evaporated. We spam a Cure IV Waltz at a speed that a RDM and BRD backline can keep up with, let alone something like WHM/RDM with AF3+2 pants and capped cure potency/cast time.

[scaevola]

In fairness, the niche at 75 enjoyed by good dancers disappeared with subbable Convert. Even if we were currently viable healers, why bring a viable healer that has to feed tp, stand in AoE range, and generate huge amounts of enmity when you can bring a viable healer that does none of these things?

[Richie]

I personally could care less about an AoE chocobo jig, but I think the "draw back" from COR and BRD is that it uses one of thei buff slots. If that was one of the selling point updates to DNC in the next update over something else I'd be very upset.

I love the idea for a "Perfect Parry" type of ability, I think it suits us as solo artists. They should make it a 1:00 JA like perfect counter, seperate from flourishes.

I currently have three ideas for DNC:
1)A TP drain samba. The TP drained is based on the amount of TP given to the mob by the player's hit. I am not up to date with the current AGI based mob TP gain system, so I'll use the old system to explain it: Using an Ukon as an example, with 482 delay it gives 16 TP to the monster, before subtle blow. Let's say the TP samba absorbs 20% of the TP you give the monster, then the WAR would absorb 3.2 TP, only giving the monster 12.8 TP. This would be calculated after subtle blow, so if the WAR had 50% subtle blow the he or she would absorb 1.6 TP and give 6.4. The percentages could be different, maybe it could take anywhere from 5-30% TP per hit randomly, or maybe it could take 40%, but the war only gains 15% back. I don't know where balance would fall in this sort of ability, that is up to the devs.

2) a JT that allows the DNC to take less damage from AoE attacks that the DNC is not the central target of (at least magical types, though physical would be nice too.) When I'm the tank there is no problem, but when one of my friends is tanking I can't be on the front line supporting him if I am taking more damage than he is. I feel like the dragoon's wyvern in fights that are AoE intensive, except if I were to stay close I would waste the whm's MP. I'm talking a big damage reduction that would be enhanced as you level up in increments, ultimately adding up to somewhere around 70-75%. If the monsters attack does more damage than the DNC has HP, then this JT is ignored. Even if this means *cringe* before atmas/enhancements. Maybe this JT could only work when you are not in front of the mob.

3)This idea isn't that great, but I guess it is different. Allow us to use steps on ourselves and party members for the opposite effect (quickstep increases evasion, box step increases defense, etc.) If I'm fighting with another DNC or support job DNC party member, chances are any steps of value are going be capped fast. This would also allow DNC to stay away from mobs we quite frankly can't get close to. This however completely goes against the idea of DNC being a front line healing job.

[Deadvinta]

This was a useless speech. We didn't learn anything.

In regards to Chocobo Jig, I want the developers to remember that Mazurka is a free spell, with a cast time that isn't terribly long. Bolter's Roll (hopefully that's the right one) Is also free and instant. Sure, these two take over song and die slots respectively, but they're able to be instantly overwritten by other songs/rolls. Rendering that cost useless.

So what's wrong with AoE Chocobo Jig again?

[Asymptotic]

If you're serious about a TP-draining area-of effect style buff, please consider making a variety of effects that DNC can bestow this way.

Potential Enhancements to Consider
1.) Regain
2.) Critical Hit Rate + Critical Attack Bonus
3.) Double Attack Rate + Triple Attack Rate
4.) Other? Something defensive? Probably won't get used.

Originally, I suggested:
Backup Dance (Dancer level 95, Recast 5 minutes, duration 5 minutes or until the DNC has 0 TP). Sacrifices TP to regenerate surrounding Party members' TP. ---Consumes 100 TP to give the dancer a "Sphere" effect that drains the DNC's TP by 2/tic to give party members a 2TP/tic regain effect as long as they are nearby.

Instead, make this a new category of dance, like Sambas, and increase DNC's ability to support the party similar to the manner in which BRD+COR are able to enhance the party. Consider, however, that this will constantly drain the DNC's TP so the effect should be fairly potent to make up for it. And yes, they should stack with sambas.

Category: Backup Dances

1.) Rousing Cheer (DNC Level 92)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive the effect of Regain. Drains 2/TP tic from the DNC, and part members regenerate 2TP/Tic. The cost of this ability is set less than the others because the DNC will see no benefit from this ability.

2.) Tenacious Cheer (DNC Level 95)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to critical hit rate and critical attack bonus (including the DNC). Drains 3 TP/tic. This should be at least 5% each, but I think 10% is more fair for the cost. Still significantly weaker than Blood Rage, which is intentional.

3.) Frenzied Cheer (DNC Level 99)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to their double and triple attack rates. Drains 4-5/tic. 10% double attack and 5% triple attack.


Balance the ability by making it wear off if TP reaches 0 and give it a somewhat long recast (3-5 minutes?). You can even make it not have any effect when solo if that's a balancing issue you're worried about.

[Asymptotic]

I'd also like to point out that I could care less about AoE chocobo jig >_>
Please dev team, focus your attention to things that matter >_>

[Quetzacoatl]

To Camate:


If we were to split the Waltz timers, we would have to raise the TP consumption as a trade-off.

This sounds reasonable, though personally I myself feel the more effective way to go about it would be to introduce some more -waltz recast gear for us dancers to work for, or let us merit waltz recast- in the future. Alternatively a tier 3 flourish that lowered the recast of our next waltz would be great. Each consumed finish = more seconds taken off the recast.


I'd be all for this. Even if DNC doesn't get a place for HNM fights (so much for that heavy damage), lol.

[Economizer]

Question to Dancers: If you could cast a Waltz at any time despite your recast timer for the cost of some Finishing Moves in addition to the TP cost, would this be acceptable?

[Zatias]

How doesn't SE see that Healing Waltz is extremely inefficient?

[Quetzacoatl]

How doesn't SE see that Healing Waltz is extremely inefficient?

Seriously... it's bad enough that we can't even use two different waltzes on separate timers. Like Urat said though, if we had a reasonable tradeoff, we don't care, as long as we can play a support role.

[Windwhisper]

Oh Camate you made my day. I havent laughed this much in a long time. I know you only repeat what you have been told to say, but it shows clearly that the developers have no interest in changing anything on dancer at all aside from the Animated Fluorish.

Most funny is that the posts starts with "Enjoy" and then every reply you went into was answered with

" No, Not planned, Unfortunatly, It is not planned, No, We cannot, No" those are, unfortunatly as we say in german "Reizwörter", words that drive the conversation to a negative, disharmonial ending and not very tactful chosen.

Anyways. Thanks for the headsup. That alone means well :)

[Quetzacoatl]

Oh Camate you made my day. I havent laughed this much in a long time. I know you only repeat what you have been told to say, but it shows clearly that the developers have no interest in changing anything on dancer at all aside from the Animated Fluorish.

Pretty much why I quit playing DNC.

[Vortex]

The only thing i'd like changed in separating healing waltz and stronger potency on steps idea (because anyone /dnc can get the exact same potency) DNC is already strong enough.

weither you accept this fact or not.

If it is to difficult for you to maintain the job's abilites and work, then you should indeed quit playing the job and go back to a cookie cutter "easy" job that requires less work or thinking, like war or sam.

All this "waaah make us insanly over powerd so we can match all dds and mages" is not going to fly. if you cannot handle dnc i am sorry, it is not for you. yes it has it's downsides. but so does every other job in this game. no one job was meant to "solve everything"

as i said, the ONLY thing i disagree with is the healing waltz timer sharing curing waltz timers. if it has to cost more TP, so be it. and step potency so as to not have another job subbing it dosn't get the same thing, (example a ninja main gets 4 shadows with ni 5 with +2 feet while any other job subbing nin only gets 3 shadows, no matter the tier) i am perfectly fine with everything else and enjoy the challange.

May as well ask SE to give DNC "Doom Step"

[Byrth]

Unless you have Terpsichore, you spend >1 second and 3.333~5 TP to gain 1 finishing move. With capped delay reduction, one attack round is also a little >1 second. With Saber Dance and good gear, one attack round is about 2.7 swings.

In order to use a 5FM Reverse Flourish with Marches (assuming a 100% Step Hit Rate), you've spent 20 TP and 16.4 swings (including Reverse Flourish itself). If you hit for 5.5 TP, you've lost 110 TP total. You've spent over a weaponskill worth of TP and 16.4 hits worth of damage to make a self-skillchain and Defense -9%. That's assuming that you're entirely efficient and don't over-TP while you're readying yourself for the self-skillchain, and assuming what you're fighting has enough HP (left) that it needs the skillchain. Basically, as we approach the Haste cap Steps and Flourishes become not worth using for damage purposes because of job ability delay. This whole calculation was carried through assuming a much more efficient Dancer than reality.

Simplicity brings efficiency much of the time, so a simpler strategy (WS when you have 100TP) is going to be carried out more efficiently than a more complicated strategy (Use Presto, then use Box Step exactly 1 second after it, then use Box Step again exactly 15 second later, then use Rudra's Storm exactly 1 second later, then use Reverse Flourish exactly 1 (or 2?) second later, then use Evisceration exactly 1 second later).

Admittedly, I don't take my own advice and continue to do a step/flourish rotation even when I have enough Haste that I shouldn't. Still, I'd like for the fun and Dancer-ish way to play the job to also be the best way to play it.

[Rosina]

having played dnc to 90 imo the job is fine as is maybe add more weapon skills or its own weapon type. I've got desperate floursh to stick 99% of the time, and gravity also reduces evasion. Also I wild flourish is epic if you know how to use it. :)
here is what you do you use the floruish you boost ws then you use wild flourish with a weapon skill and with tyhe added boost effect you do some nice dmg. I solo most sea boss fights with it :) heck i out did my blu b/f in the disco ball nm to get into the inner gardens.

having read you stuff I gotta ask, how long have you played dnc? how much do you actually use the skills?
I've been playing the class since its release. I take pride in the class since I did take up dance in real life. (i took ballet for several years)

[Rosina]

Unless you have Terpsichore, you spend >1 second and 3.333~5 TP to gain 1 finishing move. With capped delay reduction, one attack round is also a little >1 second. With Saber Dance and good gear, one attack round is about 2.7 swings.

In order to use a 5FM Reverse Flourish with Marches (assuming a 100% Step Hit Rate), you've spent 20 TP and 16.4 swings (including Reverse Flourish itself). If you hit for 5.5 TP, you've lost 110 TP total. You've spent over a weaponskill worth of TP and 16.4 hits worth of damage to make a self-skillchain and Defense -9%. That's assuming that you're entirely efficient and don't over-TP while you're readying yourself for the self-skillchain, and assuming what you're fighting has enough HP (left) that it needs the skillchain. Basically, as we approach the Haste cap Steps and Flourishes become not worth using for damage purposes because of job ability delay. This whole calculation was carried through assuming a much more efficient Dancer than reality.

Simplicity brings efficiency much of the time, so a simpler strategy (WS when you have 100TP) is going to be carried out more efficiently than a more complicated strategy (Use Presto, then use Box Step exactly 1 second after it, then use Box Step again exactly 15 second later, then use Rudra's Storm exactly 1 second later, then use Reverse Flourish exactly 1 (or 2?) second later, then use Evisceration exactly 1 second later).

Admittedly, I don't take my own advice and continue to do a step/flourish rotation even when I have enough Haste that I shouldn't. Still, I'd like for the fun and Dancer-ish way to play the job to also be the best way to play it.

your playing wrong then I've had 0 issues with using my skills >.>

sorry for the harsh tones in my 2 posts Just you guys are making me giggle a bit on the complaint about this class.

some tips : steps get better with dex. wait till 300% tp, use reverse flourish alot. this help tons to be a great dancer. I do not relay on the best gear and solo alot of stuff as my old 90 dnc. The character was kekkaishi a mithra on lakshmi. Just in case someone can vouch for me :)

I'm also leveling dnc on rosina (hence the siggy) and doing great as dnc/thf. Doing well in keeping my parry skills capped. heck I was fighting 5+ mobs at a time in the canyon @ dnc 15. most the mobs were easy prey to decent minus the decent and even match yag that joined. XD

Kept alive pretty easily also.

[Rearden]

Byrth is by far, hands down, no contest, contenders where?, unmatched, world champion level, WWE Heavyweight Champion of the World best and most knowledgeable DNC to ever grace these forums.

I know you have ADD or Schizophrenia or something, so TL:DR? Shut up and listen.

[Karbuncle]

The answer to being a better dancer is to suck at being a DNC?

[Tamoa]

heck I was fighting 5+ mobs at a time in the canyon @ dnc 15. most the mobs were easy prey to decent minus the decent and even match yag that joined. XD

Kept alive pretty easily also.


Your example of how good a dnc you are, is telling people that you survived fighting 5 EP to EM mobs at once at level 15???

Good god.

[Economizer]

Your example of how good a dnc you are, is telling people that you survived fighting 5 EP to EM mobs at once at level 15???

I remember doing this when a ton of links showed up next to a maw in hopes that someone would do something about it. In the end I kept getting Goblin links for a while and killing things super slowly because I could only use TP for healing. It was cool Dancer could do that, but I think it would have been faster to home point and go back, it was so slow.

[Quetzacoatl]

Your example of how good a dnc you are, is telling people that you survived fighting 5 EP to EM mobs at once at level 15???

Good god.

Roflmao, I know right? She could at least provide a more epic example.

[user201108211515]

dnc could make very good use of juggler abilitys.. Since we wont ever be seeing that job...

A smile toss type ja to reset another players JA.. randomly im sure.

weapon , ball, ring toss type moves.

Dare I menton mimic...

[Asymptotic]

DNC excels at old content, but who cares if you can solo bosses that were designed for level 75 cap 15 levels later?
It's great in Abyssea, except that it's made useless by the proc system so there's little reason to bring it unless you're like me and militant about it :P

We're talking about making DNC useful on future HNM-type content, not on old trash content.

Also if anyone else mentions D.Flourish, I just might have an aneurysm :(

[Asymptotic]

some tips : steps get better with dex.


What the-?
Do you realize how wrong you are?

[Byrth]

What the-?
Do you realize how wrong you are?

Tip of the iceberg my friend, tip of the iceberg. Don't read the rest. Spare yourself.

[SpankWustler]

your playing wrong then I've had 0 issues with using my skills >.>

sorry for the harsh tones in my 2 posts Just you guys are making me giggle a bit on the complaint about this class.

some tips : steps get better with dex. wait till 300% tp, use reverse flourish alot. this help tons to be a great dancer. I do not relay on the best gear and solo alot of stuff as my old 90 dnc. The character was kekkaishi a mithra on lakshmi. Just in case someone can vouch for me :)

I'm also leveling dnc on rosina (hence the siggy) and doing great as dnc/thf. Doing well in keeping my parry skills capped. heck I was fighting 5+ mobs at a time in the canyon @ dnc 15. most the mobs were easy prey to decent minus the decent and even match yag that joined. XD

Kept alive pretty easily also.

Wow.

I wish I had the same skill at denying reality that you have at denying how FFXI works. It is enviable.

I would never age, I would be capable of sustained flight using only my pinky toes, and I'd eat two and a half Libertarians for breakfast every morning.

The effect of steps is static. Nothing affects the potency of a step unless it specifically says "Enhances X Step Effect".

I'm not even sure how to address the bit about 300% TP. You do know it's the recast of waltzes that eventually becomes problematic, right?

[Alkalinehoe]

Oh Rosina, you so silly gurl.

[Asymptotic]

If you're serious about a TP-draining area-of effect style buff, please consider making a variety of effects that DNC can bestow this way.

Potential Enhancements to Consider
1.) Regain
2.) Critical Hit Rate + Critical Attack Bonus
3.) Double Attack Rate + Triple Attack Rate
4.) Other? Something defensive? Probably won't get used.

Originally, I suggested:
Backup Dance (Dancer level 95, Recast 5 minutes, duration 5 minutes or until the DNC has 0 TP). Sacrifices TP to regenerate surrounding Party members' TP. ---Consumes 100 TP to give the dancer a "Sphere" effect that drains the DNC's TP by 2/tic to give party members a 2TP/tic regain effect as long as they are nearby.

Instead, make this a new category of dance, like Sambas, and increase DNC's ability to support the party similar to the manner in which BRD+COR are able to enhance the party. Consider, however, that this will constantly drain the DNC's TP so the effect should be fairly potent to make up for it. And yes, they should stack with sambas.

Category: Backup Dances

1.) Rousing Cheer (DNC Level 92)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive the effect of Regain. Drains 2/TP tic from the DNC, and part members regenerate 2TP/Tic. The cost of this ability is set less than the others because the DNC will see no benefit from this ability.

2.) Tenacious Cheer (DNC Level 95)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to critical hit rate and critical attack bonus (including the DNC). Drains 3 TP/tic. This should be at least 5% each, but I think 10% is more fair for the cost. Still significantly weaker than Blood Rage, which is intentional.

3.) Frenzied Cheer (DNC Level 99)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to their double and triple attack rates. Drains 4-5/tic. 10% double attack and 5% triple attack.


Balance the ability by making it wear off if TP reaches 0 and give it a somewhat long recast (3-5 minutes?). You can even make it not have any effect when solo if that's a balancing issue you're worried about.

This is another idea I had, but I'm quoting the original post so I don't have to re-explain anything.
Why not have this ability work somewhat like favors/impetus and start out slightly weaker, but increase in potency the longer the DNC is able to maintain it? Have it increase in tiers based on the amount of TP which has been drained from the dancer and cap out at some point. Obviously (at least, I hope) you all (being the dev team) know more about game balance than I do, so I'll leave the exact values up to you to decide.

Since the effect as I have described it would wear when TP hits 0, this would emphasize the Dancer's need to stay active and on the front lines (without major support from other party members), and there are interesting strategic issues involved with enemies who steal or reduce TP. Just a thought.

[Asymptotic]

Also please do something to make steps and waltzes stand out more when used by a main job DNC as opposed to someone using DNC as a support job, even if it's through equipment additions (such as the "Enhances Feather Step" on our Empyrean shoes).

[Sira]

Tip of the iceberg my friend, tip of the iceberg. Don't read the rest. Spare yourself.

precisely why i barely post here, let alone read what people say, people like this give me a headache

[Moink]

Only thing DNC is getting this update is another Flourish

•Dancer
•Ternary Flourish (Lv. 93)
Allows you to deliver a threefold attack. Requires at least three finishing moves.

[Asymptotic]

Only thing DNC is getting this update is another Flourish

•Dancer
•Ternary Flourish (Lv. 93)
Allows you to deliver a threefold attack. Requires at least three finishing moves.

Complete waste of the development team's time.

[Sira]

they will spend more time coming up with an animation than the players will ever use in their entire time in the game

[Retsujo]

Since there is no cost for Chocobo Jig the effect is set to be only for the dancer.
In the event that we were to extend the effect to party members, there would be some room to explore this if there were TP consumption or some other trade-off.

Bards require nothing to be consumed for their Mazurka song. I don't see the difference.

[scaevola]

If I had the same rating in GK as daggers, I sure as hell wouldn't use daggers. 450 delay weapons are right along with daggers in TP gain according to the TP formula, even before sTP, you also get the 2H bonus and you could /SAM for hasso as well. Not to mention the superior weapon skills (Outside of abyssea on stuff that matters, AKA what SE said would be the next few updates)

Honestly, they need to fix 1Hs again before they do the new content or DNCs and THFs both are going to be shafted again outside of trash clear endgame like dynamis.

If NIN doesn't get Y/G/K, why would DNC?

[Asymptotic]

Kasha has a flower animation, so does Trance, so we'd definitely get at least that!

Also inb4 next job feedback for dnc has the question "I want to use Great Katanas on DNC."

[Sira]

would give me a reason to get a masamune.

[TRiPP]

Make it happen. Oh man, and give them monocles as well. That would be dope y0. Wait... I think I'm doing this wrong.

[TRiPP]

All this "waaah make us insanly over powerd so we can match all dds and mages" is not going to fly. if you cannot handle dnc i am sorry, it is not for you. yes it has it's downsides. but so does every other job in this game. no one job was meant to "solve everything"


This made me chuckle, examine warrior. I've yet to see any downsides to Warrior except it can't use Great Katana, or Katana. Damage mitigation? Destroying a mob in several seconds has been considered a form of damage mitigation. Other than that, it can tank, and by tank. I mean retaliate, proc almost every red under the sun.

Appreciate the gesture at 3:21 in the morning.

[Sharnak]

Please make Pet and NPC can get benifits form Samba again. It's no reason that why samba will not have effect on both. =D

[Juri_Licious]

AYOOOOOOO CAMATE !

My Dancer Suggestions

1. Give Dancer a higher Dual Wield
2. Cut down Curing Waltz IV and V recast by 5 seconds
3. Infatuation Samba: Lowers enemies Attack and Magic Attack.
4. Piercing Samba: Lowers enemies Defense and Magic Defense.
5. Increase the strength of Reverse Flourish a tad.

This one may be crazy but.

6. Can we get a glowing effect for Trance? Kinda like FF9 Trance but it doesn't have to be as extravagant.

[Deathrose]

I just would like to know why we, the players, accept non-sense and bull effects for jobs like this. SE is always yelling about balance this and balance that but yet nin can do everything we can plus more and I believe fits closer to where dnc should be than even a dnc main. We sit back and think that whatever se comes up with like this ternary crap is balancing. What exactly is so over powering about giving us defensive debuffs like paralyze, atk dwn, such abilities(not sambas). It upsets me to see how we really have no place in pts expecially with nins being able to use our prized haste samba and have access to our Curing Waltz 3. I dont want hear about crap like, o well yalls is more potent or dnc can use nin debuffs too. #1 haste/delay reduction caps at some point eventually making our little merit boost pointless. #2 if we cant slow down the dmg that is coming at us some way it doesnt matter how much more we cure. #3 when are we EVER going to land AND stick a nin buff let alone it be potent enough to even matter. If it sounds like im furious good cause I am. This is non-sense and crap for people think o this would overpower dnc or that would overpower dnc but look mnk and nin are good though /nod /nod I call a boat load of BS. FIX THIS ASAP. *Points to past FF Dancers* Look at them. That is how we are really ment to be namely tactics. If you want us to solo and still be in pts fine just give us the defensive debuffs to help us out please!

[Juri_Licious]

I just realized that with the title of this thread, Male DNC are now "Divas". lol

[Richie]

These are some more ideas I have had for DNC. I would like to enhance DNC's ability as a support job, seeing as that aspect of the job has fallen behind DD, tanking, and Solo. I particularly like the idea of playing with a monster's spell cast time or time between casting. On monsters that players can only damage during spell casting, or when not casting, I think this could be a convenient tool for DNC.
Sorry for the long post. I actually have a lot more silly ideas but I figure I'll post them some other time.

Samba ideas:

Lvl 55: Piercing Samba
-Inflicts the next target you strike with Piercing daze, allowing all those engaged in battle with it to gain piercing type weapon bonuses.

Lvl 70: Blunt Samba
-Inflicts the next target you strike with Blunt daze, allowing all those engaged in battle with it to gain blunt type weapon bonuses.

Lvl 75: Slashing Samba
-Inflicts the next target you strike with Slashing daze, allowing all those engaged in battle with it to gain slashing type weapon bonuses.

Lvl 85 Magical Samba
-Inflicts the enemy with Magical Daze, allowing all those engaged in battle with it to gain magical type weapon bonuses.

Step idea:

Lvl 87 Fantastic Step
-Increases target's spell casting time. If successful, you will earn two Finishing Moves.
*8% first step, 4% each step after capping off at 24%.
**Ideally, some kind of gear enhancement would bring it to 30%
***The name of the daze would be Stupefied Daze
****this in conjunction with Addle or the new BRD song would prove to be a powerful combination.
*****Another idea for this step is that it affects "recast time." Which in this case would mean increasing the amount of time between spell casts for enemy AI.

Job ability Ideas:

Lvl 95 Parapara
Recast: 1 minute
Duration: 30 seconds or until next flourish is used.
-Grants effect of your next self-enhancing flourish to all members of your party
*Party members receive the full effects of Ternary, striking, climactic, and building flourish.
**The TP received from reverse flourish is distributed evenly between party members.
***This is an idea from the Jp forum I thought was very good. I elaborated on it and gave it a name. Unfortunately, I can't find the original poster's name to give them the credit they deserve :(

Lvl 10 Encore
Recast:45 seconds
-Uses excess HP or MP absorbed through sambas to preform an extra dance.
*Dancer would get another bar under TP (or an invisible bar,) where excess MP or HP drained from enemies would build up. Bar's max would be determined by a percentage of the dancer's Max HP. (60% for HP, 30% for MP)
**The dancer would only start saving up HP/MP when their own HP/MP is maxed.
***The type of samba the dancer has used most recently. Using Aspir samba will set it to MP mode, but if the dancer uses haste or drain samba all saved up MP in the pool will be lost.

Other ideas:

Gear enhancement for Ternary Flourish
-Allows each hit of Ternary flourish to remove one beneficial effect from the enemy.
*It could be something like a 50% chance to remove an effect
**can remove up to three effects, but also can remove nothing

Gear enhancement for the Divine Waltzes
-Adds an erase effect to both of the divine waltzes.
*only removes spells curable by -na spells
**does not remove status effects cured by erase spells
***or vice versa lol

Ideas I support:

-Strengthen the effects of steps as we level up.

-a perfect parry ability

-increase samba duration as we level up

-evasion boost IV, please

-5 seconds of of Curing waltz IV and V. Also, bring Healing Waltz down to an 8 second recast.

-allow DNC to use hand-to-hand and club type weapons with decent enough skill (C+)
Staves would be cool too.

[Asymptotic]

The damage type sambas are something I'd considered a long long time ago, but I gave up on them when they said they were going to make "damage type switching" a warrior ability in their manifesto.

The ability you named "Parapara," is interesting, also, the name is absolutely perfect, lol. It would have to alter the recast of the flourish, though.

[Camate]

I received some comments from the development team in response to your feedback.

To start out, let’s just go over the job concept a bit more.


Versatile entertainers who can both easily stand up for themselves in a brawl by trotting out sambas and steps to enfeeble their unlucky opponents, as well as stand on the front lines and invigorating their fellow party members with a dance.

We not only want dancers to continue to star as spectacular solo artists, but to enhance their teamwork skills and perform even better in ensemble casts as well.

The meaning behind the above concept is not we want dancers to “go solo!”
Dancer is without a doubt a complex job, but what we mean to say is that we will be making adjustments enabling dancers to fight solo as well as support parties.

Since we will not be adding any party support-type abilities in the September version update, we have seen a lot of feedback asking for it, however, as stated in the below quote, we would really like to hear your feedback on the matter.



Add new modes for dancers. Add dances that give sphere effects.
Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.

Now then, in regards to Ternary Flourish.

I can definitely understand your uneasiness about using Ternary Flourish since it is in the Flourish III group, considering how Climatic Flourish goes together very well with Rudra’s Storm and Abyssea areas (specifically talking about Atma here), and also using Striking Flourish with Charis Casaque +1/+2.

However, what if we were to implement a weapon skill that matched this nicely as well as equipment that enhances the stats of Ternary Flourish, just like the other abilities?

We aren’t really at the stage where I can say too much, but we are currently working towards making adjustments to other jobs as well as adding new weapon skills and equipment that make the real power of this effect shine. With this in mind we appreciate your understand and hope to hear feedback on this.

[Mightyg]

I think if the Ternary effect makes keeping steps up well worth the time, tp, and effort, you'll have some happy dancers.

[Byrth]

We aren’t really at the stage where I can say too much, but we are currently working towards making adjustments to other jobs as well as adding new weapon skills and equipment that make the real power of this effect shine. With this in mind we appreciate your understand and hope to hear feedback on this.

Well, I'm somewhat skeptical. To increase the impact of DA/TA, you need to dramatically increase the stat modifier portion of the weaponskill and keep the fTP to an absolute minimum. Some napkin math indicates that you'd need to give somewhere between 200 and 300% stat mods to make a low-fTP dagger weaponskill that's of somewhat average value unstacked. That's three times higher than the highest stat modified weaponskill in the game. Furthermore, you'd have to give it a natural crit rate so that Striking doesn't end up being superior to Ternary.

I mean, here's the problem:
1) All good Dagger weaponskills have high fTP and relatively high mods because Daggers have low base damage.
2) Due to their high fTP, adding a Triple Attack results in a fairly modest increase in damage.
Ex. Rudra's would be increased by about 33% and it's the most affected of all our useful weaponskills.
3) In order to maximize the effect of a TA, you need to minimize the first-hit fTP so that it's not preferable to force it to crit with Climactic.
4) Additional hits always have an fTP of 1, so if you want the weaponskill to be desirable with low total and first-hit fTP, it needs to have very high (200~300%) modifiers.
5) Striking Flourish gives a 50% chance to crit to both swings of the DA when paired with AF3+2 body. 2 swings, 50% chance to crit means 1 forced crit and +1 fTP. Couple it with lower recast/cost and it would be preferable to Ternary unless...
6) You give the weaponskill a native chance to crit.

So basically, unless you toss out a 1-hit, 1fTP, WS with 200~300% attribute modifiers and "Chance of critical hit increases with TP", Ternary won't be viable. If you fulfill all of those conditions, it might be useful for people without Twashtar.

[Purpleeyes]

I still don't see the point in using it. Climactic is just that much better.

[Babekeke]

However, what if we were to implement a weapon skill that matched this nicely as well as equipment that enhances the stats of Ternary Flourish, just like the other abilities?

And then THFs feel compelled to merit Assassin's Charge 5/5 (still with a longer recast than DNC has), assuming you don't make it a DNC only WS, in which case, THF had better get something that compliments SA/TA or the like.

Aside from this, Ternary Flourish doesn't seem to fit into your 'job concept' at all...


Versatile entertainers who can both easily stand up for themselves in a brawl by trotting out sambas and steps to enfeeble their unlucky opponents, as well as stand on the front lines and invigorating their fellow party members with a dance.

We not only want dancers to continue to star as spectacular solo artists, but to enhance their teamwork skills and perform even better in ensemble casts as well.

The closest it comes to is 'spectacular solo artists', yet if a DNC spends 3 FMs on a triple attack, they just lost 48TP from reverse Flourish to make a SC, or moves saved for Violent Flourish, or as said in your own post, Climacrtic Flourish or a buffed Striking Flourish. Both CF and SF are designed for creating a stronger WS, so why implemet yet another instead of something that helps in a party situation?

Maybe implemet this as a buff on the mob instead? After using this JA on the mob, everyone's next hit will be a triple attack, that stacks with WS. This not only HELPS the party, just like your 'job concept', but also makes the whole party think a little... they have to be sharp and on their wits to keep an eye out for the JA being used if they want to stack it with their own WS; They have to be told in advance if they want to get a triple attack after they just used a ws to get a 2nd ws out fast.
It would also make DNC MUCH more wanted in a zerg situation, which they lack a little right now, with a 2 hour that offers nothing in the DD department and it's only real use is an insta-cast curaga.

If anyone disagrees, please be polite about it^^

[Ophannus]

Was thinking that too, a Double Attack "Samba" people who hit get a 25-50% chance to OAT.

[FrankReynolds]

Perhaps if each of the additional hits returned like 15-20 tp per hit thus negating the current waste of tp that it provides. Hmmm... even that seems to weak though. /sigh.

[Leylia]

In my opinion it is simply wrong to add an ability that is "worthless" unless you get a certain piece of gear or a certain Weaponskill, even more so if that content is yet to come. I mean come on, if this "oh so nice flourish" is made so it goes well with something, then that "something" has to be released along with the flourish. It makes no sense whatsoever to release a pointless ability, which later will become useful. It makes as much sense as giving DNC Archery skill now but add no equippable bows at all until much later update.

In addition -as indicated above- I am very much against overly specific abilities, spells or traits only working together with one other thing but are otherwise useless. As a result, nothing Camate said makes me look forward to Ternary flourish any more than I did before (and that is not at all) especially since it is still in the "maybe" stage and if it is not easily to obtain for everybody. Cause justifing junk with future stuff that might even be very hard to obtain is a very, very bad system and logic.

[FrankReynolds]

Maybe they could just replace it with another stance? or make it buff the ones we have.

Ie Ternary Flourish - Makes the next attack a triple attack. Additional effect - removes the block on waltzes while saber dance is up for 1 minute / removes the block on sambas while fan dance is up for 1 minute.

I think that would make it useful, and people would ride it. recast still seems sorta long though.

[Raksha]

Make it a dispel flourish.

[Shibayama]

I'm sorry, but that just isn't viable Camate. Even if we're given a new weaponskill and gear that would make ternary worthwhile, then we have 2 other abilities that won't be used because when it comes to weaponskills we will always use the one that is strongest so unless the effect of the other two are heavily rebalanced, there ould be no reason to use them. We can either have one or the other but a new concept needs to be made for ternary or the flourish III category in general.

Honestly if the weaponskill is going to be *so great* that it makes ternary not horrible, then it should be put on hold and implimented when that is going to be put into play so dancer gets some chance to do the new content with a new support ability instead of leaving us with a crappy ability that has no synergy with our current stuff til december. :/

Also I agree with Leyla - you should never add an ability that's worthless until you get a specific peice of gear or weaponskill... even Striking isn't very good.

I'm sorry but Ternary needs to go. No amount of coming on here and saying "Just trust the dev team guys! They know what they're doing!" will make us feel better about this - if you want to see exactly how we feel not only about the ability, but our current status in the game in general and what you can do about it, read the "Ternary Flourish Removal Petition" Thread.

By now, you should be taking our feedback more seriously, not try and patronize us with saying "thanks for all the feedback but the devs have something SUPER SECRET in mind for LATER."

I'm sorry if this comes off as harsh, as I know you are just relaying the information to us. But if thats the case then please give the devs this message from us.

We DNC do not need clarification about the manifesto or how these ideas that are not viable now can become viable later. We would like to see some of our support (healing/enfeebling/non-combat buffs) to be implimented. If Ternary is going to be so great with the new weaponskill, then save it for when the weaponskill will be put in the game.

But when you tell them, you have to riverdance. If you don't know how,then you better get learning!
That is my homework for you Camate!

[Sira]

And then THFs feel compelled to merit Assassin's Charge 5/5 (still with a longer recast than DNC has), assuming you don't make it a DNC only WS, in which case, THF had better get something that compliments SA/TA or the like.


im for having a new job specific ws, still somewhat griping that thf and brd has 2 job specific ws, and dnc only has 1.

[Darkvalkyr]

I'm just stumped. Even though I'm a DNC, I look at my THF friend and wonder what he has that I can't match as far as dagger DPS goes bar TH, and realize we're not so different. And I have support abilities and heals.

Why all the DD buffing for Dancer? Why can't we get support and give Thief some DD love instead?

I'm not gonna go "QQ SE, give THF STUFF!" but it IS true that Thief isn't getting anything much in damage and gets weird gimmicky stuff, while dancer - initially a frontline damage/healer hybrid gets a lot more DD and less support/gimmicks and becomes very close to beating THF in damage (and in some cases beating THF outright). I'm saying this as a Dancer concerned for the other dagger job and my job not doing much what I envisioned it to be.

[Nightfyre]

The meaning behind the above concept is not we want dancers to “go solo!”
Dancer is without a doubt a complex job, but what we mean to say is that we will be making adjustments enabling dancers to fight solo as well as support parties.
What dancers do now is "go solo!" and they do it just fine. Focus on making them relevant in parties again.

I really don't understand why the devs keep beating around the bush when much of the problem could be solved by splitting Waltz timers odd/even, ie Waltz I/III/V in a "Waltz I" category, II/IV in a "Waltz II" category, and Healing Waltz in "Waltz III" since the recast on that is just flat-out appalling.


However, what if we were to implement a weapon skill that matched this nicely as well as equipment that enhances the stats of Ternary Flourish, just like the other abilities?
Equipment is good. WS... I'll believe it when I see it, you'd need unique mechanics to make it work. Byrth already covered this in detail.

[Asymptotic]

What sort of enhancements are they thinking of to improve the power of Ternary? It's something they should reveal to us so we can help decide if it's even worthwhile. Don't just do it, have it be pointless, and then require another update cycle to make the ability worth anything.

As it stands, the only way I can possibly think of making Ternary useable is as follows:

Ternary Flourish: Consumes 5 Finishing moves. Allows your next hit to perform a triple attack. Additional Effect: Improves the nearby party's Double Attack rate. (Recast 2:30, Duration 2:30)

You could also make it "Triple Attack" rate if you're feeling particularly adventurous. But I think DA is more fitting with the DNC concept: The DNC, always the diva, is the star of the show with a triple attack, and allows everyone to perform double attacks.

You could start the bonus to party members at 25% or so and have it decay to something around 10% over the duration of the buff. The duration is designed to allow a DNC to "ride" ternary flourish as a supportive character, since we're obviously not going to be using Ternary as it currently stands to maximize our DD potential. It also somewhat makes up for not using Saber Dance when fate necessitates you act in a healing role.

The power of the ability, as described here, is upped significantly, and as such I increased the cost of the ability to 5 finishing moves.

As for your the ability you wanted further comment on, I think it's going to be hard to get anything out of anyone because everyone is raging over Ternary, but I'll repost my suggestion from earlier in the thread:


If you're serious about a TP-draining area-of effect style buff, please consider making a variety of effects that DNC can bestow this way.

Potential Enhancements to Consider
1.) Regain
2.) Critical Hit Rate + Critical Attack Bonus
3.) Double Attack Rate + Triple Attack Rate
4.) Other? Something defensive? Probably won't get used.

Originally, I suggested:
Backup Dance (Dancer level 95, Recast 5 minutes, duration 5 minutes or until the DNC has 0 TP). Sacrifices TP to regenerate surrounding Party members' TP. ---Consumes 100 TP to give the dancer a "Sphere" effect that drains the DNC's TP by 2/tic to give party members a 2TP/tic regain effect as long as they are nearby.

Instead, make this a new category of dance, like Sambas, and increase DNC's ability to support the party similar to the manner in which BRD+COR are able to enhance the party. Consider, however, that this will constantly drain the DNC's TP so the effect should be fairly potent to make up for it. And yes, they should stack with sambas.

Category: Backup Dances

1.) Rousing Cheer (DNC Level 92)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive the effect of Regain. Drains 2/TP tic from the DNC, and part members regenerate 2TP/Tic. The cost of this ability is set less than the others because the DNC will see no benefit from this ability.

2.) Tenacious Cheer (DNC Level 95)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to critical hit rate and critical attack bonus (including the DNC). Drains 3 TP/tic. This should be at least 5% each, but I think 10% is more fair for the cost. Still significantly weaker than Blood Rage, which is intentional.

3.) Frenzied Cheer (DNC Level 99)

Grants the effect of "Cheer." Party members in a 10' radius receive a boost to their double and triple attack rates. Drains 4-5/tic. 10% double attack and 5% triple attack.


Balance the ability by making it wear off if TP reaches 0 and give it a somewhat long recast (3-5 minutes?). You can even make it not have any effect when solo if that's a balancing issue you're worried about.

Thank you for your response, please know that it's not you we're Diva-raging at, it's the development team, which seems to have "lost its way" somewhat with the Dancer class.

[Deadvinta]

In my opinion the entire skill isn't worth the steps. It prevents the use of it or any other Flourish III for two minutes.

I personally still don't understand what Charis Casaque +1/+2 does for Striking Flourish. Accuracy buff?

[Asymptotic]

In my opinion the entire skill isn't worth the steps. It prevents the use of it or any other Flourish III for two minutes.

I personally still don't understand what Charis Casaque +1/+2 does for Striking Flourish. Accuracy buff?

Approximately 25%/50% critical hit rate boost respectively to both the primary hit and double attack added by striking flourish. Also applies to Weapon Skills, regardless of whether or not they can Crit natively.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, Camate. After all, Blue Mages thought BLU Double Attack was 10% forever.

[Zirael]

I'm just stumped. Even though I'm a DNC, I look at my THF friend and wonder what he has that I can't match as far as dagger DPS goes bar TH, and realize we're not so different. And I have support abilities and heals.

Why all the DD buffing for Dancer? Why can't we get support and give Thief some DD love instead?

I'm not gonna go "QQ SE, give THF STUFF!" but it IS true that Thief isn't getting anything much in damage and gets weird gimmicky stuff, while dancer - initially a frontline damage/healer hybrid gets a lot more DD and less support/gimmicks and becomes very close to beating THF in damage (and in some cases beating THF outright). I'm saying this as a Dancer concerned for the other dagger job and my job not doing much what I envisioned it to be.
Thieves have been asking this question pretty much since lv76, if not earlier.
If Devs are so keen on buffing a Triple Attack JA, there's already one in need of attention, if Dev's have forgotten already:
http://wiki.ffxiclopedia.org/wiki/Assassin%27s_Charge
If there's a Triple Attack buff to be had, a native Triple Attacker (THF) with a serious need of DD capability adjustments would like to take part in it.
Dancers have already two ways of making a Crit-Rudra (+5 aftermath/crit hits afterwards, etc), what they lack, is a party support ability in situations where Haste Samba does nothing (since everyone is pretty much at delay reduction cap already). Making yet another T3 Flourish when there are already two potent offensive ones present makes no sense. How about a flourish that halves next n Waltzes recast, where n is number if Finishing Moves present? Or something...

[autobot]

Now then, in regards to Ternary Flourish.

I can definitely understand your uneasiness about using Ternary Flourish since it is in the Flourish III group, considering how Climatic Flourish goes together very well with Rudra’s Storm and Abyssea areas (specifically talking about Atma here), and also using Striking Flourish with Charis Casaque +1/+2.

However, what if we were to implement a weapon skill that matched this nicely as well as equipment that enhances the stats of Ternary Flourish, just like the other abilities?

We aren’t really at the stage where I can say too much, but we are currently working towards making adjustments to other jobs as well as adding new weapon skills and equipment that make the real power of this effect shine. With this in mind we appreciate your understand and hope to hear feedback on this.

First off who actually uses striking flourish now that Climactic actually does something good? And when it was better than climactic even then it didnt really do anything unless you got lucky and it did crit which was few and far between.

Second unless you have Rudra's Storm climactic isnt really good for anything as the crits do not apply to multi-hit weaponskills so it doesnt make evisceration or dancing edge any better. So climactic is Rudra's or bust.

Third now you want to add another ability for another weaponskill which will only be worth using if its better than climactic and striking flourish plus makes all past weaponskills, namely rudra's which took people lots of patience (and luck) to get worthless.

Fourth in the process of releasing yet more gear that DNC's will need to carry along to make another ability worth using you therefore make the AF3 head and body piece worthless if either one of those is replaced by new enhancing gear. Otherwise we are still left with inventory space -1.

What is the point in adding a new ability make other abilities worthless? This is just plain stupid.

DNC is supposed to be situational. It's situational down to which samba we use, which step we use, fan or sabre dance is used, and how we use our finishing moves. Now DNC is becoming a job where it's which ability does better and everything else is out the window.

While you are at it why not remove assassin so trick attack becomes worthless without sneak attack again. Or make it so BRD cant stack songs of the same type (i.e. paeon x2).

To be plain and simple about the whole situation take a look at the DNC forums on here, and pretty much everywhere and the response is the same, we dont want Ternary Flourish. If you implement it no one will use it. Take a look at the endless ideas we all have about the job and try to learn something. And if you should listen to anyone, Byrth would be the player, that dude is like a DNC encyclopedia. BELIEVE HIM!

[Kari]

However, what if we were to implement a weapon skill that matched this nicely as well as equipment that enhances the stats of Ternary Flourish, just like the other abilities?

1> It would have to have a PRETTY DAMN GOOD effect to be able to be worth using. Also, making it worth using will effectively make Climactic and Striking Flourishes useless. Please remember, making 3 Flourishes in the same category that are all meant to do damage results in the DNC only using the best one at all times.
2> If Ternary was changed to be a different effect, it would also have to be pretty amazing, as most DNCs will still use Climactic for a WS. Unless the flourish was changed to be a really short cooldown.
3> Remember that, every Step we perform takes time away from our auto-attacks, lowering TP gain, DPS, etc. The same can be said about any JA we use. A fair amount of our Flourishes aren't worth the time stepping + flourishing, nor the TP wasted to perform them, and such.
4> Stop giving us abilities that suck without modifications to them. If you intend on doing this, give us the items that modify them in the same update, instead of giving us a useless ability tied to useful ability timers. [This can be said about every job, give us something we can use immediately or don't bother.]

[Asymptotic]

As far as new weapon skills, I was able to come up with this:

Tarantella (DNC exclusive)
Paralyzes target with a frenzied two-hit dancing attack for which multiple hits become successively more effective. Chance of critical hit varies with TP. Additional Effect: Removes one negative status effect (Fusion / Fragmentation)
fTP 2.0 Modifiers DEX 40% CHR 40%

This weapon skill would have the unique property in that additional hits would receive a 0.25n bonus to FTP for each hit of the weaponskill beyond the first.

As such, with no double attacks, the WS would hit thrice (while dual wielding) for an ftp of 4.75

Using "Striking Flourish" would put the WS at 2.0 + 1.25 + 1.5 + 1.75 +2.0 = 6.75 (6.4 average, considering accuracy)
Using "Ternary Flourish" would put the WS at 2.0 + 1.25 + 1.5 + 1.75 + 2.0 + 2.25 = 8.0 (7.6 average, considering accuracy)

It is worth noting that if enough DA/TA were to process the total fTP of this WS would be 16 (15.2 average after accuracy), making it roughly twice as powerful as evisceration before considering the higher modifiers. You could make the coefficient of increase to fTP per multi-attack lower if you think this would be unbalanced. Anyway, some rationalizations because you may be WTFing at it currently.

1.) Paralysis was chosen because it would make this WS worth using occasionally, even unbuffed and adds a new debuff to DNC's arsenal. Strength should be roughly the same as Jubaku, perhaps even a bit more potent.
2.) The WS was designed to be rather powerful because it has to compete with climactic Rudra's Storm
3.) The WS attributes were chosen (Fusion/Fragmentation) to allow the WS to open and close Light skillchains, as well as create Fragmentation with Rudra's Storm, improving the Dancer's Skillchain arsenal to go along with our potent Skillchain Bonus trait.
4.) The additional effect (removing one negative status effect) addresses the DNC's weakness status and the finicky nature of Healing Waltz.
5.) The additional effect also refers to the name, Tarantella. For more information, check wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantella#History.2C_past_and_today

For those of you who care enough to want to know, but not enough to click a hyperlink, here's the important part:


In the region of Taranto in Italy, the bite of a locally common type of wolf spider, named "tarantula" after the region), was popularly believed to be highly poisonous and to lead to a hysterical condition known as tarantism. The stated belief in the 16th and 17th centuries was that victims needed to engage in frenzied dancing to prevent death from tarantism using a very rhythmic and fast music. The particular type of dance and the music played became known as Tarantella.

The nature and history of the real-world tarantella would open up some awesome opportunities for storyline intricacies if this were a quested weapon skill.
6.) This weapon skill should be Dancer specific. Seem powerful? Other jobs will be jealous? No. Just make a new line of weapon skills which will be competitive for all jobs, with buffs that those jobs will appreciate. Give BRD a powerful, CHR and MND modfied, light-based magical WS so they can actually use all that MAB gear you throw at them. Give THF a powerful, new multi-hit naturally critical dagger WS that ignores defense and increases the probability that Treasure Hunter's effects will increase. These are just ideas, but this will be the last level increase: make the new WS count!
7.) Sorry I'm always TL;DRing you with ideas. I just hope that they're actually going somewhere.

[Sira]

i love it asy

[Richie]

I've already said this earlier this thread, but I personally wouldn't mind if Ternary Flourish was DNC's version of dispel. Three dispels every two and a half minutes is enough for me,at least when it comes to soloing. (Not to mention incredible for ballista <_<;)

As for support abilities, Asymptotic's idea's are great and more than reasonable. One thing that could be an indicator of what these would do for DNC is SMN's ability Avatar's Favor, which adds an aura to their pet consuming extra MP. Ifrit's favor brings Double attack up 24%. I imagine this is the same for Ramuh's favor and critical hit rate at level 90, which also capped at 12% at level 75. Both of these are more potent than what we are asking for, but SMN aren't really sought out for these abilities. With its third roll, cor can have a more potent version of all three up at one time.

We could easily stack them, the same way we used to stack our haste samba with other forms of haste to push merit PTs over the edge, though. I don't know if this is something that would give DNC that extra thing it needs that makes a LS leader say "come DNC to voidwatch tonight." Maybe it is though!

Here are my ideas that I'd also like to throw out there:

Aura Ability Ideas

-high activation rate conserve TP aura(80~100%)
-Increase critical hit damage aura
-Increase multi-hit damage aura (includes multi hit WS?)
-an aura that increases WS damage of pt members as time increases
-A high triple attack or critical hit rate aura

I think it'd be good if DNC could recreatethe universal atma Razed Ruin for their party outside of abyssea between a Samba and this aura.

New Weapon Skill Ideas:

I'm personally interested in utility over damage. The idea of a dispel WS would be unique, especially if each hit added another dispel. Would be a one hit WS, off hand dagger would not be able to dispel. Seems a little over powered though lol... (as if any of my ideas aren't unbalanced o.O) TP would add extra hits. (200% 2 hit 300% 3 hit all on main hand dagger)

Perhaps a 2 hit WS that Deals some kind of status effect in increments of 5%. Each hit increases the strength of the debuff 5%. Ternary would bring it to 25% strength (whatever it is.) TP would influence duration of the status effect (2:00, 30, 30; 300%= 3:30) I'd personally like Slow or Paralyze. If it took 25% AGI that would increase our subtle blow significantly outside of abyssea, where we lack GH.

The gear enhancement to go with these would make Ternary triple attacks have 100% acc.



Job Specific merit revision ideas

Heck.. my post is so long I may as well write how I think they should edit fan dance, saber dance, and no foot rise while I'm here.... no one is probably reading this anyway xD.

Fan Dance and Saber Dance should be brought down to 3 minutes each.

Fan dance adds 2 MDB each merit

Saber Dance adds 1 Crit hit rate each merit

No foot rise is naturally 5 FM, each merit adds a regain effect for 36 seconds (adds up to the full three minutes 5/5, 60 tp)

I still have a lot more on my mind but this post is already way too TL;DR so I'll stop here... Thank you o.o;

[Babekeke]

Have to remember that at the end of the day, the devs only seem to listen to what the JP playerbase is saying. If they like it, it will be implimented, if they don't, it won't.
If a suggestion arises that looks like what the English/German/French playerbase has recommended, it's 99% likely that someone also mentioned it in the JP threads.
All of our responses are simply /translate of the original.

[Richie]

The JP aren't really saying anything different from what we are though. They are asking for most of the same stuff lol.

というか、開発に日本語で意見を述べることは僕には無理ではありませんよ　：＜きっと不器用な日本語ばかり使ってしまうでしょうが

[Asymptotic]

I could translate my suggestions into Japanese, however it's been a while since I've had to write something that in-depth in the language lol.

[Vortex]

What dancers do now is "go solo!" and they do it just fine. Focus on making them relevant in parties again.

I really don't understand why the devs keep beating around the bush when much of the problem could be solved by splitting Waltz timers odd/even, ie Waltz I/III/V in a "Waltz I" category, II/IV in a "Waltz II" category, and Healing Waltz in "Waltz III" since the recast on that is just flat-out appalling.

This has already been beat into the ground and explained, they do not want to separate the "curing waltz" timers because of the advantages that it has over cure spells i.e dosn't cost MP no way of interuptting it and it's instant. i DO however agree that healing waltz NEEDS to be separated.



Equipment is good. WS... I'll believe it when I see it, you'd need unique mechanics to make it work. Byrth already covered this in detail.

It seems to me based on what camate was saying that the New WS will accomedate ternary flourish but for people without rudra's. this is also something i'd have to see as well.

[Atoreis]

I think you are a little overexcited Asy. You want to one WS be on par with Rudra damage and at the same time be erase and debuff? If you want to have damage do a Twashtar. Making better damage WS over Rudra would pretty much put all ppl who made Twashtar into frenzy.

Byrth you forgot that usefulness of WS not really need to come up with damage. They can for example make 1hit WS (like some ppl suggested) that have add effect dispel for each hit landed and add piece of gear that will enhance magic accuracy for this WS to some really high lvl when using Ternary flourish. It can be also some Paralyze WS with potency of paralyze highly connected with number of hits landed. could be a 1 hit stun WS with each hit (counting additional ones and from sub) stun for around 2 sec and piece of gear that makes it 3 sec for each hit under ternary flourish. There is really a tons of effect that I could write hear including both buffs and debuffs that can be use for this.

All of those can be really good and doesn't need damage competing with Climaticed Rudra.

[Richie]

Another idea for an aura ability.

Blitzkrieg Parade
Recast: 3 minutes
Duration: 6 minutes or until the Dancer runs out of TP. (lasts three tics at 0% TP)
The Dancer leads an exuberant War Parade, granting all members of the alliance regain while consuming TP. The amount of regain received and TP consumed would increase as the parade marches on.
*Starts out at 1 tp regain for 2 tp consumed. Increases every 36 seconds until the regain:consumtion ratio becomes 5:10 (at three minutes.)
**Radius is 30 yalms.
***The Dancer would not receive the effect of Parade.
****Would effect pets aswell.

Obviously melee would receive a huge boost from this, but since black mages now get TP from spells I think this would help them too. I have a feeling SE might add something worth while for BLM who use TP. Hvellgeregrg users using Myrkr would also appreciate it, I imagine. This would particularly shine in Einherjar type battles. SMN and Pet type jobs would also recieve a large boost from this. The best part is the DNC doesn't really take the "spot" of any key jobs because it doesn't have to be in the DD or mage party to give the effect, of course it would completely stack with all brd and cor buffs.

edit: the historical name is a kind of sinister, but I think it fits in with the German words often used with DNC. German users might not appreciate it though.

[Asymptotic]

You want to one WS be on par with Rudra damage and at the same time be erase and debuff? If you want to have damage do a Twashtar. Making better damage WS over Rudra would pretty much put all ppl who made Twashtar into frenzy.

I have a Twashtar. I spent around 120 hours in Tahrongi canyon duoing/trioing Glavoid Popsets. I killed way more Tungas than I ever wanted to touch. And I would not go into a frenzy if a new WS were introduced that added something else to the DNC class. Even if a WS like this were introduced, Twashtar would pull ahead due to ODD and Climactic being on a shorter timer.[/quote]



All of those can be really good and doesn't need damage competing with Climaticed Rudra.

Actually, on average, the WS as I proposed should do less on average than a Climactic Rudra's Storm if I'm calculating it correctly, although it may have the potential to spike higher. It fares even worse when you consider the timer of Climacitc (1.5 m) versus Ternary (2.5 m).

But yes, I deliberately made the WS quite powerful, with a unique set of additional effects because even with a WS like this, you'd still prefer to use Rudra's Climax if you have access to it. The unique effects give the weapon skill a purpose, even if you have Rudra's Storm in your arsenal.

In the current context of the game, it may be a little off-balance, but I envision a series of LV 99 quested job specific Weapon Skills to accompany it with unique and never-before-seen properties which will showcase the full extent of the new development team's creativity and vision.

This is getting into material for another thread, but here are two of my ideas:

Sappho's Plea (Bard Exclusive Dagger Weapon Skill)
Delivers a light elemental attack which lowers the target's defense and magic defense. Damage varies with TP. Additional Effect: The next song you sing receives the equivalent bonus of "+1" (Fusion/Gravitation/Transfixion).
fTP: 3.0 (100) 4.0 (200) 5.0 (300) Modifiers: CHR 40% MND 20%

Plunder (Thief Exclusive Dagger Weapon Skill)
Delivers a 6-hit critical attack which lowers the enemy's critical hit evasion and ignores defense. Amount ignored varies with TP. Additional Effect: Temporarily improves the likelihood that Treasure Hunter's effects will increase.
fTP 2.5 Modifiers: DEX 40% AGI 40% (Distortion/Fusion/Compression)

I have similar ideas for most jobs, but it's hard to design new and interesting weapon skills for some jobs.

[autobot]

i got to give it to Asymptotic for his great ideas, but honestly you seem to be wasting your time, as is everyone else with their suggestions. Think about it. How many people have posted multiple suggestions for creative ways to give DNC some really good abilities? Out of all of those abilities suggested did anyone suggest a triple attack flourish III that is on its own worthless? Doubtful. It just seems like everything anyone suggests just gets over looked.

As far as the wishes for a dispel i think we can pretty much move past that as dispel was one of the first threads created when this forum was made along with a raise dance.

And i cant see us getting any actual enfeeble such as paralyze because then we will be like a NIN. I think the only reason we got weight added to rudra's is because we could already give a gravity effect.

They already said
Since we will not be adding any party support-type abilities in the September version update and since they already have plans to add a new ws and gear for it we are pretty much stuck with Ternary Flourish.

The only thing that stands out in my mind is when they say
considering how Climatic Flourish goes together very well with Rudra’s Storm and Abyssea areas (specifically talking about Atma here) is they plan to make this one shine outside of abyssea. The only problem i have with this is a climactic > rudra's already does really good damage outside of abyssea and i cant see this new weaponskill with Ternary being much better than that because of the unbalancing issues they always talk about. So with that being said what is the point of making another weaponskill that does the same thing as rudra's? If the argument is to let people who dont have Rudra's get a better weaponskill then what is the point of obtaining Rudra's? Futhermore will this make Rudra's worthless in abyssea since it will be that much better outside?

[FrankReynolds]

Does anyone really want a Weapon Skill tied to this timer? That would suck arse in my opinion.


Ternary Flourish - Makes the next attack a triple attack. Additional effect - removes the block on waltzes while saber dance is up for 1 minute / removes the block on sambas while fan dance is up for 1 minute.

I like the sound of that.

[Asymptotic]

Another idea for an aura ability.

Wehrmacht Parade
Recast: 3 minutes
Duration: 6 minutes or until the Dancer runs out of TP. (lasts three tics at 0% TP)
The Dancer leads an exuberant War Parade, granting all members of the alliance regain while consuming TP. The amount of regain received and TP consumed would increase as the parade marches on.
*Starts out at 1 tp regain for 2 tp consumed. Increases every 36 seconds until the regain:consumtion ratio becomes 5:10 (at three minutes.)
**Radius is 30 yalms.
***The Dancer would not receive the effect of Parade.
****Would effect pets aswell.

Obviously melee would receive a huge boost from this, but since black mages now get TP from spells I think this would help them too. I have a feeling SE might add something worth while for BLM who use TP. Hvellgeregrg users using Myrkr would also appreciate it, I imagine. This would particularly shine in Einherjar type battles. SMN and Pet type jobs would also recieve a large boost from this. The best part is the DNC doesn't really take the "spot" of any key jobs because it doesn't have to be in the DD or mage party to give the effect, of course it would completely stack with all brd and cor buffs.

edit: the historical name is a kind of sinister, but I think it fits in with the German words often used with DNC. German users might not appreciate it though.

The chances of them extending the aura-type TP draining ability to alliance members and pets is about the same as the probability that I'll spontaneously combust exactly 3.5 seconds after writing this post.

Also regarding the name...while holding the likelihood of drawing ire from particularly the European crowd, German words were used with DNC in our AF quests and that's it. Since then we've only really seen 2 foreign names and they've either been French (Casaque) or Italian (Presto).

[Asymptotic]

I like the sound of that.

Consider the lack of precedent for a non-merit ability (Or any ability, or piece of equipment) to reference or enhance a merit ability.

[Byrth]

One dispel effect per hit would be nice, but iirc only the first hit of weaponskills can have an additional effect just like how only the first hit can have a different fTP. They'd have to do something like that if they wanted Ternary to be useful though.

Assuming they don't re-work the entire weaponskill system just for us (doing things like allowing additional effects on extra hits, or changing fTP of additional hits), the only way to make Ternary competitive from a damage standpoint is the way I outlined.

Observe~!

* (3~5 FMs) Presto -> Climactic (0 FMs) -> Step (3 FMs) -> NFR (5 FMs) -> Rudra's -> Reverse -> Rudra's -> Darkness
or
* (3~5 FMs) Presto -> Climactic (0 FMs) -> Step (3 FMs) -> Saber Dance -> Rudra's -> 2 rounds -> Reverse -> Rudra's -> Darkness
Total: 3.3 Climactic'd Rudras, 90~95% chance of completing it.

If this buff was totally amazing (like a 100% crit rate on the stacked hit and triple attacks), you could do:
* (5 FMs) -> Evisceration -> Reverse -> NFR -> Ternary -> Rudra's -> Darkness
* (5 FMs) -> Presto -> Evisceration -> Reverse -> Step -> Ternary -> Rudra's -> Darkness
Total: Evisceration, 2.3 Ternary'd Rudra's, 95~100% chance of completing it

You can replace "Evisceration" with "Opening WS" and "Rudra's" with "High fTP Closing WS" and the comparison remains the same regardless what WS they give us. The only way to increase the damage value of Ternary Flourish is to make a ridiculously low-fTP modifier-heavy WS, or to make it almost exactly like Rudra's but Distortion instead of Darkness property.

I'd obviously prefer something like what you guys are describing, but I think a WS system rework just so Dancers can feel special is unlikely at this point. Additional hits are going to have 1 fTP and additional effects are only going to proc off the main hit.

If you want to take a Carnage Rapier/Blade/Sword, figure out the max you can drain, and Vorpal some shit (looking at HP before and after) to prove me wrong, be my guest, but I haven't noticed any increase in effect accuracy on stuff like Full Break or Shadowstitch from increasing hits, which is something you'd predict. Also, I've noticed that the "main" hit of the weaponskill also is likely the last hit, which explains why Shadowstitch doesn't break its own bind. You can test this with mobs that cast Utsusemi and forced DA/TA abilities.

[autobot]

Well they could always make it dispel 3 things to make it like it was dispelling 1 thing per hit. that would be the easy fix for this. But i really cant see them giving us a way to dispel more then 1 thing as to not "overpower" us and therefore "unbalancing" us as tends to be their response to anything and everything anyone suggests as an idea.

If they wanted to make this ability useful WITH the other flourishes they could make it so the flourishes 3 category had charges like stratagems. Then you could pull off some Ternary > Climactic > WS of your choice. And you could totally pull that off with

3~5FM > Presto > Ternary > Step > Climactic > WS > NFR > Reverse > WS = Skillchain
or even
3~5FM > Presto > Climactic > WS > Step > Ternary > WS > NFR > Reverse > WS = Skillchain

This would make Ternary useful. But this is a highly unlikely scenario.

[Richie]

The chances of them extending the aura-type TP draining ability to alliance members and pets is about the same as the probability that I'll spontaneously combust exactly 3.5 seconds after writing this post.

Also regarding the name...while holding the likelihood of drawing ire from particularly the European crowd, German words were used with DNC in our AF quests and that's it. Since then we've only really seen 2 foreign names and they've either been French (Casaque) or Italian (Presto).

It doesn't have to hit pets, that would just make it better for more jobs. As for the name, I was referring to the kriegstanz, schwerttanz and gauklertanz stuff, but as you can see I'm not nearly as knowledgeable about it as you are. The truth is, I'm not that particular about the name at all... though I like the idea of it being a parade seeing as it would be a grand effect. As I woke up more I began to realize just how bad the name was. @_@ I like the name ticker-tape parade, but that is only because I want to experience one in real life, lol.

Really, the key idea I wanted to stress here is an alliance wide aura, which is as you implied, very unlikely to be implemented. I feel was too specific within the layout of the ability, but I had figured it is better to ask for a lot and get enough, rather than ask for enough and get something disappointing. Maybe the regain should be lower or the consumed TP should be higher, what I was aiming for was the Sea Dog atma. The idea behind this ability having a one minute recast is so the DNC could keep using it as it is ready, which would keep the TP consumption low therefor making it possible to keep the effect up with only steps. I personally don't think this is an unreasonable ability (except for the pets part lol) and I feel it would give fights like the ones for voidwatch a nicer flow to them. I could very well be failing to consider any horrible ways that an alliance wide regain could be abused though.

I don't want to make it seem like I'm really fighting for this specific idea over any of the others presented in this thread. I welcome and appreciate all criticism to my suggestions, which are generally just passing thoughts. Quite frankly I'm fine with DNC the way it is and would be pleased to receive a boost like any of the suggestions in the OP, and most throughout this thread.

In regards to the points Byrth brought up, I know that multi hit WS do not end in the final hit from using both penta thrust and evi/pyrrhic in ballista into utsusemi for years. Granted, that is ballista, I'm willing to bet it is the same outside. I'm fairly certain Pyrrhic kleos' additional effect evasion down also procs on WS where you only receive 8 tp (again from ballista). I think you are right, though, if that it was infact too difficult to program we would not recieve it. I wouldn't mind an erase WS based on TP as asymptotic proposed. Just like the dispel WS, It would be a 1 hit WS that erases multiple effects based on the number of "hits", hits from the main hand dagger only would count. Number of hits increase with TP. maybe it'd heal some HP too (if I really want to make you spontaneously combust, why not throw in a 15% haste too>:D, jk<0<; )



In finishing, I'd like to apologize for the large post. :n
I understand that my suggestions are far overreaching, but if you see any you like let's discuss them down to something reasonable.

[Byrth]

I went out and did Striking -> Shark Bite on NIN mobs with 2 shadows (because I was assuming the DA would be last and wanted to see its damage) and kept getting 5 TP return and higher damage than I should have from 1 fTP. Single wielding, of course

[Richie]

whaaat, very interesting. I was wrong m(_ _)m Thanks lol
I want to try with pyrrhic khleos, and in ballista to make sure i'm not crazy <_<; (I can't play at the moment or else I would've tested myself before running my mouth)

[Byrth]

Well, this was back when I was doing testing for Striking Flourish so it isn't exactly current.

[Richie]

No, I realized I flubbed up with my comment about pyrrhic kleos, where I didn't consider dual wield. It is very possible that I noticed low tp return hits all of the time in ballista, and just assumed it was the same for WS into shadows. Ballista isn't good to go off of because you're being hit by multiple people and spells while concentrating on your next move; it's distracting. Even if it is a habit to check tp after WS, it is probably fairly easy to mess up in ballista.

[Abithra]

It is a nice idea to cater it towards the next WS but recast is an issue. I really hope you are not thinking about leaving it at 3 minutes (sorry if it has changed but I am not on the Test Server :()

However, looking on to 99 are we going to be limited to merits for support abilities or will they be through the last 4 levels and if so can we expect to see more then just Regain?

Also are the dev's thinking about bringing in what Lilisette can do or should I just ignore her pretty looking abilities?

Prrretty please reply this time :3

[AyinDygra]

Since sphere effects are extremely strong and completely negate the opposite enfeebling effect, we won’t be implementing the sphere effect itself. However, we are planning to add something that gives your party members some kind of effect while continuing to consume your TP. As we are not at the stage where can give info on specific effects, we would love to hear your ideas.

Granting all party members an effect in exchange for consuming the Dancer's TP...

Since not all party members benefit from the same things, I think the effect should be dependent on the receiver of the effect. Maybe call it "Interpretive Dance", (except the meaning in this case is how other people are interpreting YOUR dance, a "play on words" that may not make as much sense when translated)

Basically, it would increase rates and/or potencies for each job's special traits:
Warrior: Double Attack Rate, Monk: Kick Attack Rate, Thief: Critical Hit Rate or Triple Attack Rate, White Mage: Cure Potency, Black Mage: Magic Attack Bonus, Red Mage: Enfeeble Potency/Accuracy?, etc

These increases would have to be potent to be draining away TP from the Dancer who could otherwise use it for healing and weaponskills, and by necessity, it would require the Dancer to be building TP; meleeing on the target of the party in most cases (especially with recent bosses that enforce battlefields with no "lesser" enemies to build TP on - I'm not saying to add minions), so it would have to be worth the "TP feed" to the enemy as well.

This also keeps the Dancer in harm's way, and their normal method of survival in these situations is personal healing ability, which is severely diminished if they're losing their TP to enhance others. (I'd add a strong regen effect to the Dancer while using this ability to offset the damage they can't prevent or restore in these situations, and possibly to make it useful while soloing.)

Anyway, that's my thought on such an ability, to make it worthwhile in most circumstances.

[scaevola]

A passive ability that consistently drains your TP is a one-way ticket to boringville. If you just want to auto-attack and not do anything else, why not play a monk instead?

[Richie]

@AyinDygra

I was thinking of something like this too! I like it, I also like the name you chose and concept.

[FrankReynolds]

Bah! This is why we can't have nice things.

[Nightfyre]

This has already been beat into the ground and explained, they do not want to separate the "curing waltz" timers because of the advantages that it has over cure spells i.e dosn't cost MP no way of interuptting it and it's instant.
I'm aware, but like so many of their other "balance" concerns I strongly disagree. WHM and RDM can easily gather enough fast cast/-casttime to make their cures all but instant and they're able to stand out of range of most AoEs whereas we're crippled without a means of constantly generating TP. Even then, splitting them in the above fashion puts our best waltzes (III and V) on the same timer and the low Waltz Potency cap reduces the relative efficiency of our cures now that WHM and RDM have access to substantially more Cure Potency gear.

[Karbuncle]

Doesn't Haste Samba technically "negate the opposite enfeebling effect"?

Its a Haste that can be applied even if you're slowed, Am i wrong? Same can be said for BRD March, and even Madrigal with Acc down, Minuet with Attack down, etc... All of these are "Extremely strong and negate the opposite enfeebling effect".

If i'm reading that right. Also, I'm pretty sure Sphere effects don't make you immune to the debuff (I.E if you have Haste Sphere you're not Immune to Slow...?)

Either way, I think their reasoning for no Sphere is pretty bogus, Theres plenty of Abilitys/spells That counter-act/ignore their Enfeeblement.

Could be reading this all wrong :X

[Sira]

karb im pretty sure the devs just dont know what they are doing with dnc

[SpankWustler]

Honestly, I think the best addition to Dancer would also be one of the most simplistic. Also, I'm sure somebody mentioned it before and in a more intelligent manner than myself. Also, it might be flatly retarded for some reason I have not realized in my current state.

One Waltz that grants Regain or simply gives TP to the target. It would provide an equal amount to whatever the TP cost of the Waltz was.

One Waltz that grants Regain or flat-out gives other people TP in an Area of Effect identical to Divine Waltz. It would cost twice the TP that it restored, but it would have a recast such that you could keep it up full-time for other melee to benefit if it were Regain.

I think the benefit of such things being part of the Waltz line is that it would provide an offensive option when you flat-out don't need to cure anyone. I imagine this would be pretty often, since given the awful recast of Waltzes, it's rare that a Dancer is depended upon to be a healer nowadays. This would further Dancer as a support job, and stick with the theme of "that guy who does stuff with TP".

My apologies if this is idiotic, has already been suggested 10000 times, or most likely both. I took quite a few opiates earlier and my cat got tired of playing with a piece of string with me, so I decided to post this idea instead.

[FrankReynolds]

Honestly, I think the best addition to Dancer would also be one of the most simplistic. Also, I'm sure somebody mentioned it before and in a more intelligent manner than myself. Also, it might be flatly retarded for some reason I have not realized in my current state.

One Waltz that grants Regain or simply gives TP to the target. It would provide an equal amount to whatever the TP cost of the Waltz was.

One Waltz that grants Regain or flat-out gives other people TP in an Area of Effect identical to Divine Waltz. It would cost twice the TP that it restored, but it would have a recast such that you could keep it up full-time for other melee to benefit if it were Regain.

I think the benefit of such things being part of the Waltz line is that it would provide an offensive option when you flat-out don't need to cure anyone. I imagine this would be pretty often, since given the awful recast of Waltzes, it's rare that a Dancer is depended upon to be a healer nowadays. This would further Dancer as a support job, and stick with the theme of "that guy who does stuff with TP".

My apologies if this is idiotic, has already been suggested 10000 times, or most likely both. I took quite a few opiates earlier and my cat got tired of playing with a piece of string with me, so I decided to post this idea instead.

I like that Idea, might be better as single target though, being as it would have to be super weak to not be overpowered if it hit the whole group. Also, it would be hard to time during fights without overloading some people with TP.

[SpankWustler]

I like that Idea, might be better as single target though, being as it would have to be super weak to not be overpowered if it hit the whole group. Also, it would be hard to time during fights without overloading some people with TP.

Very true. Maybe the best of both worlds would be if the single-target version were instant TP and the AoE version inflicted Regain?

[FrankReynolds]

Yeah, would be a good way to prep for zergs too. Make dancer useful for that. That is if they add more fights like that anyways.

[Deathrose]

For the moment im gonna wait and see what happens. The recast still needs to be cut whether or not it becomes useful. 2:30 is still excessive in regards to locking other abilities out. Make it the same recast as SF or something like that unless like said above the ws crits or maybe ooooo gives Status effects like some sam ws, and depending on how many hits the ws is will depend on how many effects it gives along with dealing good dmg. That would most definitly make it worth using. I would be happy with 2:30 if the latter happend ^^.