Dancer Flourish is badly designed and not actually enjoyable to use

[HyoMinPark]

Flourish will always line up nicely with buff windows—which is about as far away from messy as you can really get. Your first, third, fifth, etc. will always be present during a Technical Finish window (alongside other buffs such as TA, Chain, Divination). If your party has a NIN, every Flourish use will line up with Trick Attack—so you get the benefits of TA’s increased damage on your strongest hitting procs (you also should use feathers here if you have any stored). If you have a DRG, your 1-minute, 3-minute, and 6-minute Flourishes will like up with Litany. The entire idea is executing Flourish during a raid buff window to maximize your damage. It’s not that complicated.

And it doesn’t feel clunky to use or execute—the only times it feels bothersome is IF you lose a proc during a TF window because Saber Dance is going a little crazy. But that doesn’t happen all the time. If you’ve had to delay it a GCD, continue to use it immediately after it comes off CD during a TF window, and prioritize your highest procs first so that they can still land under the buff window (especially if you have TA up as well). If your managing your rotation well enough, Flourish delays shouldn’t happen often enough to cause a huge delay on your TF Flourishes. If you’re constantly losing/dropping Flourished procs completely, it’s likely your execution of the skill itself (e.g., unnecessary delays, using it before Technical Step, etc.). Like I said: it may happen that you lose one during a TF window because of Saber Dance, but you shouldn’t constantly be letting them fall off.

Only Technical Finish Windows can get really crazy if you’re in a party with good players that are feeding you lots of yummy Espirt. But it’s honestly no different than 4.x BRD was whenever your burst window (Minuet+RS) would like up with Litany and/or Chain Stratagem. Frankly, I like the ups and downs of DNC’s rotation—I’ve always liked jobs that offer periods of busy-ness followed by periods of cooldown. And that’s what DNC is. It’s incredibly boring without your busy periods. As I said in my first post, I’ve come to a newfound appreciation of both Flourish and Saber Dance after reprogging UCoB, which syncs you down to 70 and causes you to lose both of them. Let me tell you how boring DNC’s rotation is without Flourish to force proc my strongest skills: it’s really boring. It also makes your Feather RNG particularly egregious; I personally don’t have issues with the Feather RNG from level 72+, but it’s quite abysmal at any other level.

I think SE did a very good job of designing DNC to flow excellently at level cap. It’s only sub-72 where the job feels slow and empty—Flourish gives us something to do.