Honest Question: Why so many Level 80 Dancers who do not do their steps?

I have been back on my main on FF14 for over 3 months now after being AFK for nearly 3 years.

Suffice to say, I have thoroughly enjoyed ShB and look forward to Endwalker. After playing healer, DPS and mainly tank...one thing that really bugs me is how every 3rd que in raids I end up normally(there are exceptions to this) with a Dancer in my party who never does their Technical Step once during the entire event and/or only does their Standard Step like once every 2 mins or more.

Has Dancer become the new Bard from Heavensward where the only spam 3/4 buttons and nothing else?
Aren't Dancers supposed to...you know...Dance?
I remember playing with Bards that never used their songs...and I am talking about endgame content...not stuff like leveling roulette. Has Dancer become that role of a job?

I am not trying to be toxic or get hatred from others...but I truly feel this is a huge problem. They made Bard a great class that actually makes you work your DPS...and after playing my 80 Dancer for the last 3 weeks and seeing its DPS potential, it sucks to see how in my opinion(you are more than welcome to disagree)Dancer has become that job now.

Dancer is seen as an "easy job", therefore it attracts a large number of players who are looking for a class they can put the least amount of effort into while still functioning. They aren't interested in learning to play a class well.

Which is a shame because Dancer is both fun and can put out decent numbers through itself + partner. But then folks also said the same of Bard back in 2.X series.

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Originally Posted by TheRealMadruck

Has Dancer become the new Bard from Heavensward where the only spam 3/4 buttons and nothing else?
Aren't Dancers supposed to...you know...Dance?

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I just taught a level 80 bard the other day that their caustic bite/storm bite are a major part of their dps output.

It's unfortunately not just dancers. There's a whoooole lot of people who just don't bother learning how to play their class. And to make matters worse, it's now a borderline punishable offense to tell someone how to correctly play their job.

The same reason people don't AOE or use other basic parts of other jobs- ffxiv players love doing the absolute bare minimum for battle content.

In my experience, when I ask these players why they aren't using X ability (no I'm not being mean about it, this forum loves to jump to that conclusion), the answer is usually something along the lines of "we're getting through it, aren't we?" or "you don't pay my sub."

It's just toxic casualism, most of the time. Not all the time, because there are people who just don't read tooltips, just most of the time.

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Originally Posted by iVolke

In my experience, when I ask these players why they aren't using X ability (no I'm not being mean about it, this forum loves to jump to that conclusion), the answer is usually something along the lines of "we're getting through it, aren't we?" or "you don't pay my sub."

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Right? Every basic-boy in FFXIV loves to talk poorly about WoW's elitist community, but holy heck it's like FFXIV is bizzaro WoW where all the bad players are the toxic frick-boys.

At a guess, Dancers don't have as much time to experience their skill set - most healers and tanks tend to have run through every single instance in-game to get to the level of competency that is required at level 80.

Perhaps you are simply unlucky in the draw, or the tank is pulling mobs too far away from the dancer, or knockbacks and other mechanics are preventing them from approaching the mobs. It is understandable that DPS doesn't want to waste 2 GCDs to work through Standard Step in such cases, doing exactly 0 DPS because they're more than 15 yalms away from any mobs. It is hard to know if the additional 5% damage buff is going to compensate that 0 DPS. For raids under level 70, Technical Step doesn't exist. For 70/80 raids, it is still 3 GCDs that can be wasted, every 2 minutes, although I expect it is less that than just inexperience with how Esprit works for Technical Step, and whether or not a 5% damage bonus is worth those 3 GCDs if the end result is 0 personal DPS during the Step.

Dancers may not be aware that increasing the Esprit guage allows Sabre Dance to be used more often, and this may be worth using Steps to increase that guage. However, Esprit is tricky, in that the tooltips imply it is auto-generated by weapon attacks/spells, when it is only a chance to do so. If a Dancer tried it out and it is perceived that it doesn't really do much, it may be ignored.

If one is trying to maximize DPS, one really requires a dance partner when testing things with a level 80 target dummy.

With a single expansion to learn your job, there are bound to be people who haven't realized their full potential yet. If you are in story-mode raids, you should expect more players to fall into that category than not.

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Originally Posted by DPZ2

At a guess, Dancers don't have as much time to experience their skill set - most healers and tanks tend to have run through every single instance in-game to get to the level of competency that is required at level 80.

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imo technical step is literally one of the first things they get starting the job at level 60

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Originally Posted by Merhouse

imo technical step is literally one of the first things they get starting the job at level 60

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Your opinion is wrong. Standard step is given at level 60. Technical step, as I stated, is granted at level 70. The ability to actually use the Esprit gauge for anything useful doesn't show up until level 76, and the ability to generate Esprit without a Step isn't provided until level 80 (on a 2 minute timer).

Standard step is wonderful in dungeon instances. Unfortunately the OP (and I) were talking specifically about raids.

You can step if you want to, you can leave your friends behind. Cuz your friends dont dance and if they don't dance then they're no friends of mine.