Dancer Flourish is badly designed and not actually enjoyable to use

[HyoMinPark]

Don't you mean SB MCH? As apparently DNC inherited their previous RNG problem.

No. I meant SB BRD. SB BRD’s song mechanics were based entirely on RNG crits ticks from your DoTs—old Repertoire was not the flat 40% that it is now, but scaled with your crit (and could subsequently be manipulated favorably if one double-snapshot crit-enhancing buffs onto their DoTs, such as Battle Litany, Chain Stratagem, and Spear). BRD burst and damage could either be god-tier or crap depending on if RNGesus blessed you during Minuet+Raging Strikes.

As for Esprit, whenever I got 90, I have to dump a Saber Dance, but that's ok because it's better than overcapping and that 30k+ dmg out of no where isn't a complaint of mine and I always seem to hit 50 again right in time for Technical Step. /whenallgoesaccordingtoplan

The ideal dumping point for Esprit is 80—simply to avoid overcapping from a double tick of Esprit generation from your weaponskill and your partner’s weaponskill during a GCD window. But I also manipulate mine depending on when my odd-numbered Flourishes are coming up so that I don’t risk proccing Reverse Cascade or Fountainfall, and delaying Flourish’s use.

[KalinOrthos]

The only badly designed thing about Flourish is that it should be available earlier. It's not complex and no one is under the impression that it is; all it does is force procs. It's so much simpler than Reload because it doesn't require additional skill usage to proc, so unless you also thought reload was...too complex, or added the illusion of complexity, or whatever your bumbling argument against Flourish is, you're letting your subjectivity delude you into thinking it's objectivity.

Also, I take particular beef with this statement:

I could make Ninja more un-dull by introducing more chaos to its mudras. Give it a mudra-version of flourish too why not which oh wait, it already does! Two in fact, TCJ and Kassatsu. See how uninspired this kind of design is. It's a neutered down version for individual procs instead of procced combos. Much easier for newcomers to input.

You have absolutely no idea how Kassatsu and TCJ work other than their barebones mechanics. They aren't and never were mudra refresh or proc forcers; they're damage steroids. Kassatsu becomes even more apparent that it's a steroid when you hit 76 and drop Raiton in favor of Hyosho Ranryu to have your hardest hitting ability. And TCJ was always strictly a damage steroid that sacrificed all movement so you could become a black mage for a few seconds. Your statement here is absolute nonsense.

[battleshadow66]

Thats an odd way of spelling Curing Waltz. But seriously, Flourish is fine.

Now Curing Waltz, thats a pain to use outside of stacking mechanics...

[JanVanding]

DNC’s burst is not inconsistent—it’s every 120s when Technical Finish and Devilment are up.

Cut to reply.

DNC isnt inconsistent and your argument here is 3 long rotation cooldowns? Do you perhaps ever look at logs and do the math to work out where we\\'re averaging? If it wasnt for BRD we:d be dead last and the least consistent performer. 3 long cooldowns dont change that, its minor consistency and a see of inconsistency.

DNC can perform really well, if RNG is on your side and you feast

thats not the reality, you will have feast but you will also have famine, you will use sub optimial skills in the chase for Feathers, you will get Devilment up with 2 or less Feathers getting no Fan Dance 3 proc other than the one from Flourish and no further feathers. You\\'ll be down the bottom of the charts because unlike the RDM our bad luck streak protection isn\\'t as useful.

The RDM went from being on the verge of being discluded from Savage content to competing fiercely for the top spot along side SMR and BLM, all it took was making Acceleration stacks instead of one every 45 seconds.

Yes the class is RNG, however every class in FF that relies on random elements even the Gambler had/has some form of bad luck protection (forcing the reels to to avoid Joker Doom for example) in an MMO where a certain level of consistency is expected..

Bottom of the charts dps and famine streaks are unacceptable, we need Flourish to bad luck protect better than it does to offer us that consistency we currently lack.

Id also like to point out that you\\'re expecting perfect synergy all the time. In a game built around pick up groups (statics exist, but the main audience of the game is the JP market, who mostly party finder pick up group) you\\'re not going to get perfect raid synergy in 90% of your groups, so you\\'re going to look to synergize with the one person you can which is the person you\\'re pairing with.

Also just a side note on your last note, the Dancer was never RNG in any of its other incarnations in FF they were either a mobile ranged assassin with buffs/debuffs or a back line support that took time to build into a status affliction monster.

The Gambler was rolled into the DNC for this incarnation the problem.. Even the Gambler had loaded dice and the ability to force slots to stop on what they wanted, we get a buncha 50% chance for Feathers and a Fan Dance III as our protection.

Don\\'t get me wrong, nothing wrong with an RNG class, whats wrong is that RNG having poor protection so they have no expected consistency of performance in raid environments.

Feast or Famine never works in an mmo, the only reason we don\\'t get benched is because of people liking having us along to pad their own stats through Step buffs.

Trial 3 stacks and see where it goes from there, because right now we need something other than stat padding to ensure we\\'re not feeling like a charity case.

[Mhaeric]

Cut to reply.

DNC isnt inconsistent and your argument here is 3 long rotation cooldowns? Do you perhaps ever look at logs and do the math to work out where we\\'re averaging? If it wasnt for BRD we:d be dead last and the least consistent performer. 3 long cooldowns dont change that, its minor consistency and a see of inconsistency.

DNC can perform really well, if RNG is on your side and you feast

Uh, they said DNC burst is consistent. It's right there in the sentence you quoted. And it is. Every 120s and all of the necessary procs are preloaded during the build up for it so it always has its full damage potential. The chance to have no feathers or esprit built up by the next technical step is so small as to be non-existant. I.e. even if your proc RNG during technical step is bad, you still have all the procs you need. The only issue that comes up is that sometimes you have too many procs due to the RNG while in technical step being good and end up with leftovers. The regular rotation between bursts is variable and is reliant on good procs.

[JanVanding]

Uh, they said DNC burst is consistent. It's right there in the sentence you quoted. And it is. Every 120s and all of the necessary procs are preloaded during the build up for it so it always has its full damage potential. The chance to have no feathers or esprit built up by the next technical step is so small as to be non-existant. I.e. even if your proc RNG during technical step is bad, you still have all the procs you need. The only issue that comes up is that sometimes you have too many procs due to the RNG while in technical step being good and end up with leftovers. The regular rotation between bursts is variable and is reliant on good procs.

It's actually very possible to get 0-2 Feathers or have 1 Feather turn into 6 and several FD III procs. That's the 50-50 we have to deal with and why I said it's feast or famine.

It's the old flip a coin ten times and get heads 7 times, you are automatically drawn into confirmation bias, as for everyone that gets 7 heads, there's someone that gets 7 tails.

I've had runs where I've gone full on feast, constantly proccing like it's going out of fashion and ones where the procs were so rare I'd be worried that the healers would be nipping at my heels (over exaggeration ofc, more stating I knew I was going to be bottom dps and there very little I could do to change that)

The true point is improbable vs impossible.

Is it improbable that you'll get bad RNG streaks? Yes

Is it impossible? No.

So in a mmo where consistent performance matters, while the odds say you won't have bad streaks, you can indeed have bad streaks and thus feel very unrewarded/bad about your contribution because the bad luck protection we have only makes for improbable, it doesn't remove impossible.

[HyoMinPark]

Cut to reply.

DNC isnt inconsistent and your argument here is 3 long rotation cooldowns? Do you perhaps ever look at logs and do the math to work out where we're averaging? If it wasnt for BRD we:d be dead last and the least consistent performer. 3 long cooldowns dont change that, its minor consistency and a see of inconsistency.

DNC can perform really well, if RNG is on your side and you feast

DNC isn’t inconsistent. That’s exactly what I said, so no idea why you’re arguing otherwise. You quoted where I said DNC isn’t inconsistent.

Perhaps I misunderstood what you were saying? Because your premise was that their burst was inconsistent, and then you brought up how they have to rearrange their burst windows with their Dance Partner. I was interpreting your comment as that their window shifted around inconsistently, which is false. Technical Finish/Devilment is always used on cooldown unless you have to delay it for a mechanic or grouping (E4S is a good example of tactical TF/Devilment delay). Hence my reply. Is that cleared up now?

You can argue that their damage during their burst is inconsistent, but that’s only really because of Esprit/Saber Dance and FD3. Flourish exists to stabilize some of the burst window damage as you always use it with TF. Opener burst may not have a stable amount of fourfold feathers, but I’ve never had any issues about starting a mid-fight burst window with 3 feathers. Stockpiling them for burst windows averages out your TF burst—but you stated that you’re already using them as they proc. That’s a rotational issue on your part.

I raid Savage on this job, and I parse fairly well, if I may be able to say so. So I think I do have a fair grasp on how my job plays and where it stands. I may not be a theorycrafter, but I never claimed to be. How about yourself? Because I can’t find evidence of you playing this job at a higher level, and you’ve already stated that you do two things incorrectly with regards to DNC’s rotation. Are you sure that you have an adequate understanding of the job?

thats not the reality, you will have feast but you will also have famine, you will use sub optimial skills in the chase for Feathers, you will get Devilment up with 2 or less Feathers getting no Fan Dance 3 proc other than the one from Flourish and no further feathers. You\\'ll be down the bottom of the charts because unlike the RDM our bad luck streak protection isn\\'t as useful.

“Use suboptimal skills to chase feathers”? What do you mean by that? Because your Flourished procs are equal to (Reverse Cascade/Rising Windmill) or stronger than (Fountainfall/Bloodshower) than your Cascade > Fountain combo; and those are the skills that proc feathers, not the combo. So...what are you even talking about here?

Speaking personally, I’ve never gone into a TF window with anything less than 3 feathers, and that was with having a NIN in my static where feathers are blown during TA windows in between TF windows. FD3 may be RNG, but it’s not nearly as terrible as you’re making it sound. Spending your feathers the minute you get them doesn’t really help your RNG complaints, because it seems a lot more egregious when you have empty gauges from not stocking your feathers. Which, again: you stated that you blow them immediately in a previous post.

DNC is lower in damage than RDM—but DNC dosen’t compete with RDM for a static spot. I can understand why DNC is so low, since if it ended up being stronger, it would be instantly meta and kill the other two physical ranged—and I think the developers don’t want to have a repeat of SB where BRD solely dominated the physical ranged and MCH was basically dead.

The RDM went from being on the verge of being discluded from Savage content to competing fiercely for the top spot along side SMR and BLM, all it took was making Acceleration stacks instead of one every 45 seconds.

Where are you seeing this?

For the last 2 weeks, the uploads have been as such:

E1S—
SMN: 6,167
BLM: 4,496
RDM: 3,982

E2S—
SMN: 6,609
BLM: 4,641
RDM: 3,812

ES3—
SMN: 5,571
BLM: 3,982
RDM: 3,304

E4S—
SMN: 5,170
BLM: 3,588
RDM: 2,936

This doesn’t look like RDM is competitive with SMN at all. There may be a slight argument for BLM versus RDM, but BLM is still ahead by several hundred uploads on each fight. Wherever you got your information that RDM was being competitive with SMN/BLM...well, it’s incorrect.

Id also like to point out that you\\'re expecting perfect synergy all the time. In a game built around pick up groups (statics exist, but the main audience of the game is the JP market, who mostly party finder pick up group) you\\'re not going to get perfect raid synergy in 90% of your groups, so you\\'re going to look to synergize with the one person you can which is the person you\\'re pairing with.

No synergy is perfect, and I never claimed that synergy would be perfect nor did I say that was my expectation—you’d likely only find that in super optimized speedkill statics. You are completely missing my point.

You do not synergize your buff windows based on your partner’s burst. That’s not how buffs work. Unless mechanics call for you to delay TF/Devilment, then you always use it on cooldown. If you are delaying TF to align with your partner’s burst, you’re using it incorrectly and hurting your raid—even without “perfect synergy”. +5% for 7 people is better than the +5% for one job that’s bursting.

Also just a side note on your last note, the Dancer was never RNG in any of its other incarnations in FF they were either a mobile ranged assassin with buffs/debuffs or a back line support that took time to build into a status affliction monster.

The Gambler was rolled into the DNC for this incarnation the problem.. Even the Gambler had loaded dice and the ability to force slots to stop on what they wanted, we get a buncha 50% chance for Feathers and a Fan Dance III as our protection.

Don\\'t get me wrong, nothing wrong with an RNG class, whats wrong is that RNG having poor protection so they have no expected consistency of performance in raid environments.

This isn’t FFXI, though. Or any other FF iteration—this is FFXIV, and it just kind of does its own thing when it comes to job design. DNC in this game is RNG, and if you don’t like that, I don’t see that as a reason to change how the job works. Just because DNC was X in XI or whatever FF game doesn’t mean it has to be X in FFXIV as well.

Personally, I have zero qualms about how the job plays outside of perhaps shifting some skills and traits down a few levels to make sub-70 rotations not boring as sin or feeling bad when one syncs down, like in UCoB and UwU (e.g., shifting Flourish down a few levels to have it pre-70 would be excellent, in my opinion). I think the job is really well designed in terms of how it flows and feels even with the RNG.

Feast or Famine never works in an mmo, the only reason we don\\'t get benched is because of people liking having us along to pad their own stats through Step buffs.

Trial 3 stacks and see where it goes from there, because right now we need something other than stat padding to ensure we\\'re not feeling like a charity case.

It is very possible to have RNG jobs work very well in this game. DNC RNG is not punishing enough to say that the job does not work in this game. But I think this ultimately boils down to a difference in opinion. After the buffs in 5.1, I don’t feel really as if I’m griefing my party by existing as a DNC, where as before I did. But the entire physical ranged role as a whole was basically on the cusp of total exclusion. I think there’s still a bit more room for buffing the role, but not by a lot. I’ve never expected us to be top of the DPS charts in terms of aDPS or rDPS—that would likely make us broken.

I think some tweaks could be made, but I don’t think that the job as a whole needs to be redesigned in any significant way. I quite like how it plays—RNG included.

[JanVanding]

RDM vs BLM, Sharps put it best on his stream. "a hundred dps is about right given how much pressure a RDM can take off the healers, SMN being as powerful as they are is concerning given that they have that same priceless utility, they could well push everyone else out and we end up with BLMs benched again"

Some in chat talked about the current state of BRD and DNC, I take Sharps as someone that is very knowledgeable, raids Savage several times a day and helps fresh progs learn and clear.

"They haven't weighted them properly at all, it's something that desperately needs addressing, when you've got the most in demand utility on the top dps class in Raise and BRD and DNC are both highly punished for pretty standard utility, they definitely need something maybe consistency, something"

Sharps knows his dps classes inside out, when he's pointing to consistency, I'm gonna take his word.

[HyoMinPark]

RDM vs BLM, Sharps put it best on his stream. "a hundred dps is about right given how much pressure a RDM can take off the healers, SMN being as powerful as they are is concerning given that they have that same priceless utility, they could well push everyone else out and we end up with BLMs benched again"

Your post never specified RDM vs. BLM. You said RDM versus both other casters. RDM isn’t touching SMN. SMN is currently broken, just as it was in 4.1 because the developers overbuffed it too much. Again.

Looking at the 95th percentile for the fights for the last 2 weeks, just between BLM and RDM (values are rDPS):

E1S—
BLM: 13,068.66
RDM: 12,828.75
Difference: 239.91

E2S—
BLM: 15,817.64
RDM: 14,973.96
Difference: 843.68

E3S—
BLM: 14,590.14
RDM: 14,101.72
Difference: 488.42

E4S—
BLM: 14,871.81
RDM: 14,130.99
Difference: 740.82

All Bosses Average:
BLM: 14,565.33
RDM: 14,008.85
Difference: 556.48

So while RDM isn’t nearly as far behind BLM as it was in 5.0 (anywhere from ~1,000 to ~1,500 rDPS was usually the average difference per fight), I wouldn’t call this “competing fiercely” with the job. “Competing fiercely” is something more like within ~100 rDPS of one another. Some of the melee “compete fiercely” with one another now. RDM is still a bit behind.

Some in chat talked about the current state of BRD and DNC, I take Sharps as someone that is very knowledgeable, raids Savage several times a day and helps fresh progs learn and clear.

"They haven't weighted them properly at all, it's something that desperately needs addressing, when you've got the most in demand utility on the top dps class in Raise and BRD and DNC are both highly punished for pretty standard utility, they definitely need something maybe consistency, something"

I will agree that BRD is in a bad spot right now. The developer did not take into account how much the DoT potency nerfs would affect the job—or about how minuscule the song buffs actually are. I wonder if they overcompensated for Army’s Paeon’s buff (+3% D.Hit) with regards to their nerfs: because BRDs usually always clip that song 10 seconds early, so it’s not rolling for the full duration thereby not giving the party the full duration effect (because going 30-30-30 in your song rotation delays your burst, and you don’t want to do that unless a mechanic or phase demands it). Though, +3% D.Hit is still fairly lackluster compared to critical hit or direct damage. BRD would have likely been fine if they hadn’t taken potency off of its DoTs, and would not be getting curb-stomped by DNC.

The physical ranged now are in a spot where they are not at risk of exclusion, unlike prior to 5.1 where taking double BLM was straight up better than bringing a physical ranged—LB generation and +1% party buff be damned. I think they could up them a little bit more, but they don’t need huge amounts of damage adjustments. Because you also do not want to get into a scenario like HW where people start considering taking double physical ranged again OR a scenario like SB where one physical ranged dominated the role completely (BRD). I think those are both fears of the developers, so they are moving very slowly with regards to how they tune the physical ranged right now.

You have to be really careful not to buff the physical ranged so much that they become more desirable than the casters—or even the melee. With DNC specifically, you have to make sure that it’s rDPS contributions are not so high as to completely kill the other two physical ranged; because then it’s just Stormblood all over again, except with a new job dominating.


All that said, just because a person raids every day doesn’t mean they know jobs inside and out. If you want opinions on each job, the best people to talk to would be the theorycrafters for each one. Those are the people I tend to listen to when it comes to knowing where the jobs stand—and I also take into considering the FFLogs uploads and numbers provided on the site. They uploads are substantial enough to be fairly representative.

Sharps knows his dps classes inside out, when he's pointing to consistency, I'm gonna take his word.

I didn’t even know who Sharps was until you mentioned him and had to ask around for who he was. Is this a “SharplyDressedMan” on Twitch? Because I looked up his Lodestone, and he doesn’t even have DNC unlocked, BRD is only level 65, and MCH is level 59; and his uploads and raiding experience seem to be primarily BLM. I would feel hesitant to take the word of someone who doesn’t even have a job unlocked as to how well it plays/functions.

I may not be a theorycrafter, but I’m listening to those who do know the jobs well. I’m not just spouting off crap because I feel like it; and I think I have a fairly decent enough understanding of DNC to challenge your perceptions.

[JanVanding]

Yet we're dead last on the parsers aren't we?

So what do you propose? More potency? That just means when they fix the issue of feast or famine we'll end up laughably overpowered like has happened with SMN now they simplified their rotation to not be so busy.

Lowered cooldowns on tech/Devilment? More busy/ups our burst still doesn't solve our feast/famine issue SE does not like too busy as shown by NIN and SMN changes as well.

That's why I'm proposing giving us an extra stack or two on Flourish to give us better bad luck protection