Dancer 6.0 Speculation

[ty_taurus]

I've mained Dancer since Shadowbringers began and have played it roughly 95% of the time outside of leveling other jobs. This is my personal wishlist/prediction for 6.0:

1. Move Flourish down to level 54 from level 72. Synched content as dancer is particularly boring and while I do hope that we see some sort of solution for this for all jobs, I see no reason why Flourish needs to stay at such a high level for what it is really. It's a small thing, but I think it would be well worth it.

2. Change or remove Improvisation. I see no real value from an engagement standpoint for these "use-it-once-during-phase-change-channels" such as this, SAM's Meditation, or MNK's Anatman. There used to be a case for MNK where holding onto your Greased Lightning was important, so it made sense there, but now that that's gone, I really don't feel like these abilities add anything. You get a few extra resources during a phase shift then never touch these buttons ever again anywhere... woohoo?

One thing I've thought of is if Improvisation gives some effects to Emboite, Entrechat, Jete, and Pirouette when performing Standard Step--rather than having a predetermined pair that you have to Simon Says, you choose which two you want to use, and each is associated with some kind of utility. The question is, what would that utility be, and how could you make them all feel balanced without one feeling more important than the rest?

3. A trait that increases Esprit generation when you do not have a dance partner (roughly you should be gaining the same amount of Esprit as you normally would with a Dance Partner). This is largely just to make you gain more Esprit in solo content, not invalidate your dance partner in raids or dungeons, although perhaps it could have some niche value in fights where your party is dying a lot like when you get a rough party in Bozja.

4. New Action: Mincing Minuet - An OGCD Esprit spender that consumes 20 Esprit or something in that range on a 10 second CD. This is to help smoothen out burst phases where you're generating so much Esprit but don't have time to use Sabre Dance, like when you're at 80-90 Esprit during your technical window and Standard Step is about to come off cooldown. The damage should ultimately not overshadow using Sabre Dance.

5. New Action: Tempting Tango - This is not really a necessary action, but something I'd like to see anyway just as a throwback to the Dancer in older Final Fantasy Titles. This is a pointblank AoE that Confuses all enemies in range for 6 seconds and reduces their magic damage dealt by 10% for 15 seconds. Sits on a 60 second cooldown. You can totally argue that there's no point in adding this and I agree, but the confuse would be fun in dungeon pulls, deep dungeons, and instance zones like Bozja, and the magic damage gives is some added utility in raids. I'm really just throwing this out there to shoutout Dancer's origins.

6. New Action Phoenix Flourish - Using Flourish while in combat changes your next Flourish into Phoenix Flourish once (meaning once you use Phoenix Flourish, it changes back into regular Flourish. Phoenix Flourish not only grants you all of your Flourishes, but also grants you the Flight of the Phoenix buff for 20 seconds. Flight of the Phoenix increases the proc rate of all your flourishes to 100% and upgrades Fan Dance, Fan Dance II, and Fan Dance III into Phoenix Dance, Phoenix Dance II, and Phoenix Dance III respectively. They each have increased potency.

I find Dancer's burst phase a lot of fun, but the downtime between the end of your first Technical Step and the next can get a little slow, so this is designed to try and rectify that, though the challenge comes into trying to enforce it's use outside of your technical window as the point is not to just make the technical step burst more insane which is why Phoenix Flourish is something you alternate between Flourish uses. I think the idea needs a bit of work to iron out some complication areas, but I like the idea of thematically upgrading our peacock feathers into phoenix feathers for a period.