Dancer Flourish is badly designed and not actually enjoyable to use

[HyoMinPark]

>Tax for movement being ranged

> Fights no longer have Windows of melee dps stopping and they have similar, decent mobility

>optimal strats are all uptime strats where movement is minimal

>claims were taxed for our kits, when classes with better support skills aren't taxed as highly

Are you absolutely sure youre a DNC player because the more I read from you the more Im like.... Nobody can be that blind to the performance gaps.. Nobody can be that deliberately ignorant about DNC damage being broken down into phases (Burst/Waiting/Building, you didn't want to hear me out, you just assumed I was doing it wrong so I let you go with it, I parsed 65 percentile at i453 so ya know.. )

Nobody can believe the power budget we have is remotely correct. I'm beginning to think you arent a DNC at all.

Caught the wrong quote there, apologies, was meant for the two that have spent half the thread sneering/acting like we should be 3k behind the rest of the pack with their half evidence (presenting the top ends dps numbers while ignoring the glaring obvious of how far the phys ranged dps numbers are behind)

If that was directed at me, then you’re free to look me up. Since you don’t think I’m actually a DNC. I cleared E1S-E3S Week 1 and E4S Week 2 on DNC and have above 95th percentile on all fights. I’m not normally one to brag about my own performance, but I will defend myself against attacks like this, if the first quote was directed at me. Which I’m sure it was.

“Half-evidence”? I beg your pardon, but at least I provide evidence for my arguments. Which is more than you can say. I still haven’t seen a shred to back up any of your assertions throughout this thread. And you continue to not provide sources or numbers every time I ask.

I presented 95th percentile numbers because they are an indication of high level play without leaning into cheesing/padded territory like 99th and Max can be. If you actually paid attention to rDPS (the important metric here), we aren’t ~3,000 below the top. We’re roughly ~1,500 (little less than that) on All Bosses in Savage. No, you do not pay attention to EX primals here because it barely takes more than a pulse to clear those anymore, and TEA is fairly skewed due to two phases being comprised of two bosses, allowing for padding, which Savage generally does not do. If you struggle with Hades EX, that is an entirely “you” problem (general “you” being used here). However, you’re continuing to quote aDPS values and completely ignore DNC’s rDPS contributions (which you cannot do since a huge chunk of our contribution to a party comes from Technical and Standard Finish). That gives the impression that you are attempting to willfully misrepresent data to further your argument, and that’s disingenuous. Or that you’re just going off of feelycraft.

If you think arguments shouldn’t be based around high levels of play, then what should it be based around? Certainly not 65th percentile. That’s barely above average play. And yeah, I did say you were playing DNC wrong since you said that Technical Finish needs to be revolved around your Dance Partner’s burst (it doesn’t and never should be executed like that), and that you don’t hold your Fourfold Feathers for your burst (you’re supposed to). Those are rotational errors on your part.

[Harmonea]

HyoMin, my goodness, the post to which you're responding was not directed at you; go see who that poster quoted.

As for who the job flow should be balanced around, certainly not the top 5%. Job changes in SHB have been pushing jobs toward more general usability and a lower gap between the skill floor and skill ceiling. If forced to choose, SE very intentionally balances toward the middle of the pack, and this has clearly been their philosophy since late HW when they admitted their AST changes would make the job OP in the hands of a highly skilled player before going on to specify that the average player who played whatever card they got, not the top end who painstakingly fished for Balance between pulls, was their balance target.

While SE definitely wants things balanced for their most hardcore fans, it's not either-or; sometimes there's a way to please both, and that's usually by tweaking how the job flows to be usable from top to bottom rather than raw potency tweaks.

Which segues nicely into a general response to the thread:
As for the design of dancer itself, I would like more to DO during between-burst downtime. You go from "go ham on every button you can reach" to "shh shh shh don't touch anything unless it's about to cap," and it feels very constraining to me. Sometimes I end up using extra fan dances or saber dances because I'm bored and I'm... pretty sure I can still get back up to 3 feathers/50+ gauge before tech. Probably. Maybe. It's objectively the wrong choice, but I'm so desperate for stuff to do that it's damn near unconscious, like my fingers just DO it.

As for flourish itself, I find it difficult to manage optimally when things are busy. Popping it in the opener feels great as a way to get you some early feathers to use in that opening burst, but in subsequent burst windows, I find it hard as a middling player to make full use of all four GCD procs before they fall off when they're competing with a standard step and 3-4 saber dances. I'm not sure if that's my failing or flourish's design failing, but it doesn't feel good to play Sophie's choice with your procs.

I adore dancer as a job and would keep playing it for years even if nothing changes, but it could use a liiiiiittle ironing out.

[HyoMinPark]

@Harmonea - They stated they quoted the incorrect person in the second quote. Please go back and read it.

Caught the wrong quote there, apologies, was meant for the two that have spent half the thread sneering/acting like we should be 3k behind the rest of the pack with their half evidence (presenting the top ends dps numbers while ignoring the glaring obvious of how far the phys ranged dps numbers are behind)

As the one who has been debating with them the entire thread about DNC and bringing up the Savage numbers they’re mentioning above, who else would it be directed at?


You should not balance around the average play. Because then you can end up in situations where jobs are either gimped or completely broken at higher levels of play at the hands of players who know how to squeeze out the most from the job. You need to look at the highest possibility of a job and balance around there, not somewhere in the middle of play or at the lower end.

[Harmonea]

Alright Hyo, if you insist, have your little hissy fit about your respective parse percentiles, I won't stop you. Just let me pop some popcorn before you keep going though, alright?

Anyway, you can say they shouldn't balance around average play all day long, but that is absolutely their design philosophy, like it or not. I edited an example into my post there just before you responded. And I get it; from a development perspective, a job that only works well for 5% of your playerbase is a job that doesn't work well for 95% of your playerbase, and that means it simply isn't working. I find it interesting, though, that you ignored that there's a third option, in which design changes bring a job back in line for players of all skill levels.

I'm not arguing aDPS is king or anything absurd like that, but there ARE some design flaws.

[ForteNightshade]

As for who the job flow should be balanced around, certainly not the top 5%. Job changes in SHB have been pushing jobs toward more general usability and a lower gap between the skill floor and skill ceiling. If forced to choose, SE very intentionally balances toward the middle of the pack, and this has clearly been their philosophy since late HW when they admitted their AST changes would make the job OP in the hands of a highly skilled player before going on to specify that the average player who played whatever card they got, not the top end who painstakingly fished for Balance between pulls, was their balance target.

Uh... citation needed? To my knowledge they never once mentioned intentionally making Astro OP. The community more or less assumed 3.4 Astro was a desperate plea from the dev team to give the job a chance because it had been DoA for over a year by that point.

Balancing around the average player is pointless. They aren't going to push the jobs to its limits, therefore it won't provide an accurate assessment of their potential. The average player will consistently die, mess up their rotation or some other valuable that will not be consistent; making the data useless. Case in point, at the 50% margin Black Mage is pulling lower numbers than all four melee and Summoner by no small amount. This would suggest a serious buff is needed, yet if you look at the 95% range, Black Mage is beating out Dragoon and Ninja while only lagging slightly behind Summoner. Had they buffed Black Mage based on the average player... it'd be hilariously overpowered to the point you may drop the melee entirely.

Simply put, the data will never be consistent enough to make it useful.

[HyoMinPark]

Alright Hyo, if you insist, have your little hissy fit about your respective parse percentiles, I won't stop you. Just let me pop some popcorn before you keep going though, alright?

Pardon, but when someone starts questioning whether or not I actually play my job simply because I keep countering their arguments, I’m going to defend myself. I’m terribly sorry if that offends you.

Anyway, you can say they shouldn't balance around average play all day long, but that is absolutely their design philosophy, like it or not. I edited an example into my post there just before you responded. And I get it; from a development perspective, a job that only works well for 5% of your playerbase is a job that doesn't work well for 95% of your playerbase, and that means it simply isn't working. I find it interesting, though, that you ignored that there's a third option, in which design changes bring a job back in line for players of all skill levels.

Can you provide citation to support your AST example? I’m very curious to see where you got it from.

In terms of damage and job potential, you should always consider the highest for each job. You should never balance around average play because then you could end up with scenarios where the same job is broken at the higher levels of play. If, for example, they balanced BLM around 50th percentile: currently, BLM is being outdone by all 4 melee DPS and SMN. If their design philosophy was that BLM should be on top because if its nature as a selfish DPS job, they might opt to buff it. But then we run into issues at 95th percentile play, where BLM is below SMN and tied with MNK and SAM in E4S. Imagine buffing the job and what it would do to the job at a 95th level of play: it would now be busted. That’s why you cannot consider the middle in terms of job potential and balance.

I'm not arguing aDPS is king or anything absurd like that, but there ARE some design flaws.

Is it possible that we’re arguing two separate things, then? I’m arguing job potency—how strong they are, and why they should be balanced around higher play to prevent balancing issues in strength. You seem to be arguing job design.

[Maero]

Hyomin is correct and has been around for sometime. Jobs should never ever be balanced around the average playerbase.
It's like the memes that people had been saying for sometime PS3 limitations, bleh bleh. Balancing around average players limits the job from it's true potential.
How can some not see the benefits of making adjustments to jobs based on higher level of play?

[Harmonea]

Uh... citation needed? To my knowledge they never once mentioned intentionally making Astro OP. The community more or less assumed 3.4 Astro was a desperate plea from the dev team to give the job a chance because it had been DoA for over a year by that point.

Balancing around the average player is pointless. They aren't going to push the jobs to its limits, therefore it won't provide an accurate assessment of their potential. The average player will consistently die, mess up their rotation or some other valuable that will not be consistent; making the data useless. Case in point, at the 50% margin Black Mage is pulling lower numbers than all four melee and Summoner by no small amount. This would suggest a serious buff is needed, yet if you look at the 95% range, Black Mage is beating out Dragoon and Ninja while only lagging slightly behind Summoner. Had they buffed Black Mage based on the average player... it'd be hilariously overpowered to the point you may drop the melee entirely.

Simply put, the data will never be consistent enough to make it useful.

You've got an incredible talent for multitasking; you're both misrepresenting my position (by saying BLM must need potency buffs if it's below melee at 50%) and further derailing the thread.

AGAIN: Like it or not, balancing around the average player is not pointless. No, they're not going to give BLM a potency buff, but why exactly do you think changes like drastically lowered cooldowns on abilities like transpose, aetherial manipulation, and between the lines happened? It wasn't so the top 5% could uptime more gooder, it was so the average player didn't feel awful every time they had to move and lost a load of DPS as a result. Why do you think ice spells now have zero cost in fire? After all, GOOD players knew how much they needed to cast a Blizz3 and didn't let themselves fall under that number. Now they've made it so not only is it not punishing to drive yourself to zero MP, it's the entire point to end your fire phase with Despair.

Why do you think blood of the dragon now has a self-sustaining effect in that its CD is lower than its duration? Why do you think Anatman is a thing? Losing your main buff and having to do the ramp-up all over again feels punishing. Top end players don't have to deal with that on the regular, but they got added regardless. Why do you think tank stances had their DPS penalties removed? Top end tanks were proficient at stance dancing and knew exactly how much hate they needed to get before they could turn it off, and some burden of responsibility was shifted onto the DPS and healers, which again, top end players had no issue executing, but those all got nixed, too.

Notice I didn't point out a single potency buff? These are all about job QoL and flow. When an ability feels clunky for a large enough portion of the playerbase, SE is going to take a look at how it fundamentally works, regardless of whether the top 5% think it's perfectly fine.

Which is the entire premise of this thread, so can we get back on topic? Dancer? Flourish?

As for a source on the AST thing, it was in the Q&As surrounding the Vegas Fanfest in Oct 2016, which were about a month after 3.4 and the AST buffs. That Fanfest footage is trapped in the awful paid streaming service they used that year, so it's not feasible for me to find at work, but that should be enough for you to get looking... if you're actually interested.

Is it possible that we’re arguing two separate things, then? I’m arguing job potency—how strong they are, and why they should be balanced around higher play to prevent balancing issues in strength. You seem to be arguing job design.

The premise of this thread literally is job design so.... Yeah, obviously that's what I'm discussing.

[HyoMinPark]

In terms of design, Flourish is fine. Only adjustment it needs is for it to be learned at a level earlier than 72 so that DNCs can get used to managing it during burst windows sooner rather than later. It would also help with the boring, empty feeling the rotation has pre-70.


EDIT now that I’m not on mobile because god, typing on mobile sucks:

Notice I didn't point out a single potency buff? These are all about job QoL and flow. When an ability feels clunky for a large enough portion of the playerbase, SE is going to take a look at how it fundamentally works, regardless of whether the top 5% think it's perfectly fine.

Can you prove that this is the case with Flourish?

As for a source on the AST thing, it was in the Q&As surrounding the Vegas Fanfest in Oct 2016, which were about a month after 3.4 and the AST buffs. That Fanfest footage is trapped in the awful paid streaming service they used that year, so it's not feasible for me to find at work, but that should be enough for you to get looking... if you're actually interested.

Well, if the developers were THAT concerned with AST being broken in the hands of a skilled player, need I remind them that it was their idea to give them +20% Balance (+10% AOE Balance) in Patch 3.4 as a panic measure to get people to play the job? If they were concerned about it being broken, that is of their own making. They were the ones who broke it—and then left it that way until Deltascape released in Stormblood...which got a lot of eyebrow raises from even the hardcore crowd.


As an aside, the tone of the thread shifted from job design to balance in the midst of the conversation between myself and a few others regarding DNC’s current state in terms of job potency and damage. I suppose this shift in conversation is what prompted the misunderstanding between myself and you, Harmonea, with regards to what we were talking about. But I do have to add a little caveat to your proposal that job design should focus around the majority: you also need to be extremely careful that you do not redesign a job in such a way that removes rewarding complexity from it that high-tier players may enjoy. Sure, you can argue that they are the minority, but they also play this game. The designs of the current healers have done a fairly decent job of chasing away both high-tier and more casual players, and the changes to BRD stated during the Media Tour and the pre-expansion PLLs were not well received by those BRDs that enjoyed the complexities SB BRD offered them. Gameplay has to feel more than just smooth, simply, and easy—it needs to also feel rewarding.

[Harmonea]

Can you prove that this is the case with Flourish?

How exactly does one "prove" something so subjective? Lol.

The only thing you can do is get together and discuss it. We should do that.

*Checks thread title* Huh. Neat.

I've given my thoughts on the matter, but they were sadly ignored in favor of derailing the conversation every which way. Oh well. I tried. Still, the devs will see the amount of activity on this thread and see that it's contentious, and I'm certain if they look at ironing out the "lumps" of Dancer, Flourish will be one of the first places they look.