Let’s discuss Dancer

[IanFrench]

My concern is for male dancers, that would be hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

[Mansion]

My concern is for male dancers, that would be hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

That would be sexy.

[Neela]

Well that's my fantasy haha. +20% potency when there is a bard in the team.

I would love Brd & Dancer traits or even combo-skills – reminds me of the Brd/Dancer job-mechanics in Ragnarok Online :3

[JunseiKei]

I kind of hope DNC fights with sashes/ scarves. Something about the way Lyse fought using a slip of fabric was pretty appealing and lots of people thought she was a DNC to begin with. Hoping the job also brings status - not necessarily just pure damage buffs.

[Ghishlain]

I would love Brd & Dancer traits or even combo-skills – reminds me of the Brd/Dancer job-mechanics in Ragnarok Online :3

God, screw breaking Classical Pluck chokes during WoE, lol. It wasn't bad playing a full support Scholar to get through that but for all your real DPS trying to get through that, good luck >>;

And while I would love this, I doubt we'll see it happen given the structure of the game. Sad days ;_;

[TruebladeNuke]

I’ve had ideas dancing (no pun intended) around in my head about how Dancer could work in this game as a healer for quite some time. This thread seems like the best place to finally share at least one idea in my head.

I can’t help but note the constant back and forth debates about Dancer being a melee DPS healer, and the reasons why people want it to function this way VS those who keep saying that there’s no way it’ll ever happen due to certain mechanics in certain boss fights. If we were required to choose on Dancer on being a melee healer or physical ranged, I’d vote melee anyway, and I’d just simply say “Being required to attack at melee distance is simply one of the major draw backs to Dancer. Boss mechanics included.” I’m in favor of the idea of DNC taking notes from SAM on the melee healer idea though, in which DNC has both a gap closer AND a leap away attack as the situation calls for it. Though for some people, that won’t be enough, because they think they NEED to be DPSing 100% of the time. (Disregarding the fact that you sometimes land in a situation that prevents you from being able to DPS for at least a little bit)

Well, I eventually came up with a “Take a third option” idea. Why does it have to be one or the other? ... Why not both?

I see some of you already giving me that look. “But Nuke! If they do the same DPS at a distance, DNC may as well be a physical ranged unit!” This is where the trait idea comes into play. I don’t have a name for it, but basically, the trait has the Dancer switch between melee attacks and thrown weapon attacks based on their distance from the target. The point of the trait?

The thrown weapon attacks deal less damage, while also changing up the regular attack skills that Dancer uses (and animations) without the need of adding additional skill buttons to press when fighting at ranged or melee.

What this basically means for this idea is that a DNC that insists on fighting at ranged is roughly similar to a Tank keeping their Tank stance on the entire fight, even when there’s no need to. This will strongly encourage players who are looking to get the most out of DNC to be bold and close the distance to their enemy as much as possible, so that they can do more DPS via melee attacks. An extra thing they could do with this is make the DNC’s AoE attack(s) melee only, thus further encouraging them to get in close. Add in the idea of DNC taking notes from SAM and having both a gap closer and a jump away attack, and you’ll have a heck of a mobile healer just from that alone.

If this idea turned out real, I’d love it if the Dancers main weapon was some form of bladed cloth (finally giving Weavers a weapon to craft) while also finally being the first job since PLD to actually use the secondary weapon slot, which could be throwable Chakrams. But IMO, given how close we’re getting to 5.0 now, it’s more likely that DNC is more or less finished at this point (if the leaks are to be believed) and DNC will probably just have an attack skill for throwing a weapon, similar to DRG and NIN.

And that’s just covering the debate of Melee Healer VS Physical Ranged. There’s more I could get in to, but I feel others have already done a good job on Dancer move set concepts on this forum. I just hope the developers really are making DNC a healer. We could really stand a new healer that actually dares to be different from our current ones. (For the most part) From a personal character lore stance, my Miqo’te would be very happy to finally be a healer job that most closely resembles her.

I too have noted how funny DNC may be in the shared healer clothes, as others have pointed out. But IMO, RDM already says hi on that front. And more importantly... that’s what the glamour system is for. I mean, whenever I’m playing as a healer, my Miqo’te is using the Thavnarian Bustier for glamour, so she already LOOKS like a DNC. It’s just not what she does as any of the current healers. (Currently primarily play as SCH)

Anyway, I just really wanted to get that trait idea out of my head. I was getting sick of constantly thinking about it and never saying anything about it anywhere on the FFXIV forum or in game. I’ve finally said it. Take it as you will I guess.

[FalalaMaru]

My thoughts on dancer would be to make it a class that literally "dances" around the battlefield. The picture in my head is something akin to a person dancing in and out of aoes, dancing around it's targets be it player or enemies and using its instant abilities to move distances of 5 yalms or less rather than conventional movement. While i'm not sure how it would balance out the healing aspects of the class, I do think giving it this fluid action like movement gives it this unique identity compared with the other existing healers even if they were to copy the same formula of shield/heal/mitigation to it.

[Grimoire-M]

Truth be told I don't think Dancer even needs to have weaponskills if their offensive spells were to be based on dances as well.

I'd still like to see them get weaponskills but I'm leaning towards ranged weaponkills and a melee weapon if anything.

[Duskane]

My concern is for male dancers, that would be hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Oh please most the males who want Dancers will just wear best man slacks,shoes and nothing else but a bow tie or bunny get up maybe even nothing at all
But real talk they learned there lesson from af2 astro ,af3 AST and WHM on guys look great .

[Belgianbeer]

It just occured to me that these kind of threads carry an inherent risk with them. The more you get invested into the idea of what DNC could or should be, the more you will be disappointed in the very likely case that the job turns out to be much different.

I'll add this to my previous post though, I'll go on a rampage if most of DNC's skills are just one button aoe buffs. I would even prefer a step system a la Ninja, where different step combinations lead to different effects, to this (although they would have to be way more fluent than this mudra nightmare).