Contradance and Steps

[Byrth]

First, I'd like to say that I am excited that Dancer is getting new abilities and stronger maximum debuff potency and agree that these abilities will likely improve the job. The job will certainly be better after these changes than it is right now. I am glad that you guys are still paying attention to the job and attempting to fix it in some way that does not involve job points.


However, the changes will not make DNC desirable and fail to seriously address any of the problems with the job's healing/debuffing.


Dancer fails as a healer under the following conditions:
1) A lot of AoE damage spam with too many people in range - Critical flaw: Dancer always has to be in range and has to feed TP to continue healing. There are definitely monsters where Dancer fails as a healer when you consider damage created through their TP feed.
2) AoE status effects that hit the Dancer - Critical flaw: Dancer always has to be in range
3) Situations where monsters are able to do a lot of single target damage rapidly and wear out our timers - This used to be a much larger problem but has been substantially addressed by splitting the Waltz timers.
Example: If you are fighting AATT, Sleepga or being hit with Amon Drive would render you impotent as a healer. If fighting Ouryu, any of his Slowga forms would render you impotent as a healer. If fighting AAMR, being hit with Havoc Spiral would render you impotent as a healer. If fighting AAEV, all the AoE damage would overwhelm you. If fighting Shadow Lord, all the AoE damage would overwhelm you. If fighting Puppet in Peril, all the AoE damage would overwhelm you. etc.


Dancer fails as a debuffer under the following conditions:
6) Fights are quick, so daze potency is low on average - Critical flaw: Most fights are quick, even in events like Ra'Skirmish. Heck, Tojil takes 3 minutes to kill?
7) Dancer's debuffs aren't useful - Feather Step is always useful, but Quickstep/Box Step/Stutter Step are not useful against the level 75 content that most people use Dancers for.
8) Dancer's debuff delays outweigh their benefit - This is similar to #2, but factors in Haste. In situations with high Haste, you take on considerable DD-burden to maintain an aggressive Step rotation.
Example: It currently takes 75 seconds for dancer to provide an average of 11% Defense Down. This assumes that the monster lives for 75 seconds (most do not) and that Presto is up when you start. It realistically costs about 7~8 seconds of JA delay. So the Dancer sacrifices ~10% of their DPS for 11% Defense Down. It might net a gain in DPS for the group, or it might not depending what you're fighting and what your other buffs/debuffs are. After the patch, we will be able to continue spending ~10% of our DPS for slightly stronger average debuffs in longer fights, which is an improvement over the current situation but will only apply to monsters that live longer than a minute.


Superior solutions would have been to give us an AoE status removal Waltz with low recast (#2 addressed) and increase Level 1-5 Daze potency for Dancer main job (#6, #8 addressed).
* As proposed, the Step changes will not have any effect on the vast majority of fights, because the vast majority of fights do not even reach Level 5 Daze. If implemented as I proposed, this would have affected all fights.
* Contradance is fine as a JA and I look forward to using it, but its 5 minute timer means that it can't be relied on strategically in any fight. If I need Erasega every time a monster uses a bad TP move, the monster uses the bad TP move 1/5 of the time, and the monster uses 10 TP moves per minute, then I need Erasega twice per minute on average and sometimes as often as twice every 6 seconds. A 5 minute timer is not going to work for that. I will probably just save it for a Divine Waltz II in bad situations.

[Grekumah]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback on dancer.

The September version update is right around the corner and we’d like to hear your feedback after you've actually had a chance to try out the adjustments that are to take place.

In the mean time, however, I’d like to give a tiny bit of supplemental information about the dancer adjustments.

First, Contradance is an ability that is on par with white mage's Divine Seal, so you can expect it to give healing potency a nice boost. Additionally, we've made adjustments so that dancer as a main job can play a bigger role in longer party battles by boosting the effects of steps. As an example, if you stack steps up to level 10 with Feather Step, the entire party’s critical hit rate will increase by 10% and if you stack steps up to level 10 with Stutter Step, the monster’s magic evasion will be reduced by 30.

Also, as a side note, we've been receiving requests for waltzes that are similar to white mage's Esuna or blue mage's Winds of Promyvion, but we do not have any plans to add something like this at the moment.

[Karbuncle]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback on dancer.

The September version update is right around the corner and we’d like to hear your feedback after you've actually had a chance to try out the adjustments that are to take place.

In the mean time, however, I’d like to give a tiny bit of supplemental information about the dancer adjustments.

First, Contradance is an ability that is on par with white mage's Divine Seal, so you can expect it to give healing potency a nice boost. Additionally, we've made adjustments so that dancer as a main job can play a bigger role in longer party battles by boosting the effects of steps. As an example, if you stack steps up to level 10 with Feather Step, the entire party’s critical hit rate will increase by 10% and if you stack steps up to level 10 with Stutter Step, the monster’s magic evasion will be reduced by 30.

Also, as a side note, we've been receiving requests for waltzes that are similar to white mage's Esuna or blue mage's Winds of Promyvion, but we do not have any plans to add something like this at the moment.

Thanks Grems

On the steps bit, I think what Byrth is trying to say is that most battles won't last long enough for any one DNC to get a step up to 10, so It would be hard to fully utilize the bonuses this update offers. Also, is DNCs design to be a DD healer or a Healer DD? Cause at the moment it excels at neither, and I can't even remember the last time, in years, I've even seen a DNC in endgame (let alone in town walking around). I mean, people complain about how useless SMN and BST are but at least I see those in Dynamis and a little ways back ADL/Legion... but DNC? Can't even remember getting a tell from a DNC for events like skirmish where im just looking for any DD....

Sorry... I didn't mean to turn this into a complaint (I don't even play DNC) =.=a

Thanks again!

[Astrael]

I for one am in love with the Step changes, not all fights are going to be over in under 2 minutes so you'll get to take advantage of them here and there and it's not like we go from 0 to 30% in one shot, it's gradually stronger over time... even Step level 1 is a debuff. Plus more finishing moves to reverse flourish or pre-load building flourish/climactic flourish is always nice.

A little iffier on Contradance just for the recast but it's got two uses I'd use it for and that's better than 0, so it's not going to waste on me.

I play DNC in all endgame content (minus Wopket, the piercing resist is just not worth fighting against), and really, this is what I was asking for the whole time for DNC main. All I really want now is a better distribution of the Flourish timers so we can use and stack finishing moves more often and I'm set.

[Ataraxia]

Greetings,

Thanks for the feedback on dancer.

The September version update is right around the corner and we’d like to hear your feedback after you've actually had a chance to try out the adjustments that are to take place.

In the mean time, however, I’d like to give a tiny bit of supplemental information about the dancer adjustments.

First, Contradance is an ability that is on par with white mage's Divine Seal, so you can expect it to give healing potency a nice boost. Additionally, we've made adjustments so that dancer as a main job can play a bigger role in longer party battles by boosting the effects of steps. As an example, if you stack steps up to level 10 with Feather Step, the entire party’s critical hit rate will increase by 10% and if you stack steps up to level 10 with Stutter Step, the monster’s magic evasion will be reduced by 30.

Also, as a side note, we've been receiving requests for waltzes that are similar to white mage's Esuna or blue mage's Winds of Promyvion, but we do not have any plans to add something like this at the moment.

The only good part to this update is that you get level 10 steps and more TP. I personally have not use Feather step but i do use box step more. The delay to using every step is about 15 second wait time so that about 2 minute and 30 second to reach level 10 but your not gonna have that much time when your dealing with Eudaemon Skirmish. There is a time Limit and the fastest DD like SAM, MNK, WAR, DRK is best for it. Also i like to point out that critical hit rate 10% at level 10 is kind of weak when Empyrean weapon 119 afterglow Aura offer 10% critical hit rate if I am not mistaken? As a DNC I was hoping for new steps like magic defense down, attack down, magic attack down but i guess not. If Feather step was to include all the effect of Quickstep and Boxstep than just maybe it might be popular. I have doubt that many people would want to invite a DNC but it's a lot of fun to solo stuff but as for getting invited to do Delve good luck with that.

The delay to using steps should be remove completely or lower it down to 5 second. I would like to post a link to a japanese video so Akihiko Matsui and Grekumah to watch. The speed of seeing a SAM and DRK clearing a Delve make DNC a complete Joke with all the delay they have to deal with steps.

Taru user name is Casas Casa and here is his youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZAx9hC0O7g
FF11 - 1-5B Yorcia Weald Delve clear in less than 15 minute.
There are more of his video you can check out. The skill of a japanese player in FFXI are fun to watch =).

So if you gonna make DNC update at least make it awesome and good just like a RDM + GEO update because that was awesome.

[Malithar]

Also i like to point out that critical hit rate 10% at level 10 is kind of weak when Empyrean weapon 119 afterglow Aura offer 10% critical hit rate if I am not mistaken?

Most of your post is pretty lawlsy, but this really takes the cake.

[Minikom]

now you guys added new ja for dnc and recast is lower than Divine seal and basically this new jA does same thing, are whms gettng reduction on timer for divine seal?

[Karbuncle]

In all seriousness, good for you for going DNC to things, but my point was not a single person or group is wanting/shouting/thinking DNC for anything. You might play it all the time in endgame, but, your situation is seriously as unique as the word can justify. DNC is by all means a suboptimal and subpar job, excelling at neither healing nor damage nor debuffing, and brings little unique aspects to the table.

[FrankReynolds]

The amount of effort / time it takes to get and maintain 10 steps is seriously prohibitive to the point that no one is even going to consider bringing dancer for that. This job needs help.

[Liteholt]

As someone who plays DNC, and plays it well, I can say that DNC is a very viable addition to end-game content. In Skirmishes, we can tear things up, provide spot-healing to take some pressure off the WHMs when AoE attacks land with Divine Waltz (my waltz setup can restore 600+ HP with DW2, 770+ with CW3), and use our steps to enfeeble the mobs. Just last night, I was in an AA party. We tore up the MR, EV, and TT (on normal, but still not anywhere near easy). I've also done extremely well in Alluvion Skirmish and Outer Ra'Kaznar Skirmish, as being on the move and still being able to heal is a big advantage in those events.

The biggest issue, that I see, with DNC is that it is a job that can very well perform in the top-tier, I find myself often out-parsing SAMs, but it takes a player who knows how to play the job, and can shift with the flow of battle to what is needed in the moment.