Step JA Delay

The JA Delay for Steps cause a sizeable DPS loss for dancers. That dps loss gets more pronounced with higher haste and multi-hit, since we have to use them frequently to build finishing moves and use flourishes.

To resolve that, could the animation for Dancer steps be removed like what was done for Puppetmaster Maneuvers? Rather having an animation for the step, could the step effect instead be applied on the first hit of the next attack round?

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Originally Posted by Shyles

The JA Delay for Steps cause a sizeable DPS loss for dancers. That dps loss gets more pronounced with higher haste and multi-hit, since we have to use them frequently to build finishing moves and use flourishes.

To resolve that, could the animation for Dancer steps be removed like what was done for Puppetmaster Maneuvers? Rather having an animation for the step, could the step effect instead be applied on the first hit of the next attack round?

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This issue has been a long time problem with DNC. When they decide to build steps they lose DPS. Landing a step should of given TP to DNC would of been better off so most DNC or sub dnc can focus on helping out the party and landing steps. However, a DNC that have a mythic dagger usually don't focus on steps they just spam TP after TP for the aftermath.

sambas might be a good idea too. Been awhile since I looked at it but iirc saw some math on it showing even when you were uncapped on delay reduction haste samba could still be a dps loss part because of the cost and part because of delay

You want to remove the dancing from Dancer?

I'd rather them just remove the JA lockout from autoattack and keep the animation.

If I can't prance around in combat like an idiot, what's the point?

I just thought I would share an update to my experiences regarding JA Delay. I made this thread when I was first starting Dancer(admittedly a bit ignorant of me), and I have since been playing it almost exclusively. After learning more about forced JA delay, I've picked up some tricks on how to mitigate it quite a bit. I've used this technique a lot while soloing to 2100 JP with Dancer and it has improved my damage output dramatically. So I thought I would share it with up and coming Dancer enthusiasts! Some long time melee players may know this trick already, especially thieves, but I thought this might be a good thread to share it with new Dancers that might be struggling.

Okay! So just like in the OP, I mentioned that Dancer is particularly prone to DPS loss due to forced JA Delay because of the shear amount of job abilities we use during our "yandere stab time". It doesn't seem like SE is going to change it any time soon. However with proper job ability management, we can reduce this delay by about 30% on average!

Part 1: So what is Forced JA Delay?

Forced JA Delay is the animation delay after using an ability. It lasts for 2 seconds. During these two seconds, your character stops auto-attacking. This is why spamming steps really hurts your DPS, since every time you use a job ability, you're literally taking away two seconds of auto-attacks for each JA you perform. If you have capped haste, you lose a little over two auto-attack rounds, along with any multi-hits that might have procced every time you use a step or flourish.

What many people might not know, however, is that this 2 second forced delay is split into two phases in the seconds following any job ability:

Phase 1 (Hard Delay): For the 1st second following a JA, you can take no actions.

Phase 2 (Soft Delay): For the 2nd second following a JA, you still cannot auto-attack, but you can cancel the animation into any Job ability or Weapon skill.

So the trick is to always cancel your Job Abilities into a weapon skill! Weapon Skills always have a 2 second hard delay, which means for the two seconds you cannot do anything. However, we can take advantage of the JA soft delay (phase 2) by always starting a WS one second after using a JA, which means you would lose 3 seconds of auto-attacks instead of the 4 seconds you would have lost by using them separately. In other words, you are saving 1 second for every JA animation you cancel. Also remember that you can cancel job abilities into other job abilities in Phase 2. So the more abilities you stack together before the WS, the more time you save.

Part 2: A Practical Example:

When I was CPing on Apex Erucas, my strategy was to spam 3-step double darkness skillchains as hard and fast as I could. In order to get the most damage, I needed to use steps to build finishing moves for the flourishes I would use to boost my closing weapon skill. I made 3 specific macros for this purpose:

Macro 1 ... … Presto > wait 1 > Quickstep > wait 1 > Pyrrhic Kleos

Macro 2 … … Box Step > wait 1 > Evisceration

Macro 3 … … Reverse Flourish > wait 1 > Climactic Flourish > wait 1 > Rudra's Storm

For this 3-step skill chain alone, I used a total 5 job abilities and 3 weapon skills. If I used each job ability individually, I would have lost a whopping 16 seconds of auto-attack time because of all of the delay. However, by stacking the job abilities together and finishing with a WS, I shaved 5 seconds off of that, which saved me roughly 6~7 auto-attack rounds!!

With capped haste and proper timing, that allowed me close with Rudra's Storm with two flourishes boosting the damage for very big double darkness. So I was able to consistently close a 60k~99k double darkness every time Climactic Flourish was off of cooldown! I think it definitely plays to the Dancer's strengths with their significant amounts of skillchain bonus.

Getting into the habit of using this method can take a little getting used to. And by "a little" I mean about one or two minutes of setting up the macros and then trying them. It's literally that easy to do. The hardest part is learning to recognize the difference in the forced delay phases. With that said, I think that understanding how to "use" JA delay is essential to unlocking Dancer's potential. Just as an example, using this trick, I discovered that I could make a set of macros to consistantly land a 6-step skillchain in Vagary with TP generated purely from my job abilities. This means I don't have to rely on any outside support or even any special gear in order to make the 6-step work as Dancer.

Anyway, I just thought this might be worth sharing for dancers out there. I hope this helps out in some way!