Suggestions to Improve/Rebalance Vanadiel's Divas

[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.] 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.