SE, please fix Dancer.

[Cidel]

Dancer as it is now is an unfortunate testament that the "PvP team" designs nearly everything around their small-scale modes (Feast/Crystal Conflict), and due to their rather narrow fixation on those modes or lack of meaningful playtesting in any large-scale environment with different rules (maybe both), Frontlines often ends up with major balance oversights. The SMN/WHM stacking and LB spam was the most egregious recent example. As a result, their knee-jerk reaction was to not only nerf SMN, WHM (and for some reason SCH's) damage across the board as to not directly address their Limit Breaks (the main issue), but give every melee job the latent capacity to survive nothing short of a full-party's targeted effort (maybe just 5-6 if some of them know what they're doing). Oh, and PLD's Cover single-handedly griefing entire Onsal matches.

DNC is similar to WHM and SMN in which it's "fine" in CC, but in Frontlines it goes in the opposite direction. Whereas WHM and SMN were overpowered when their LBs were stacked and abused, DNC's new playstyle rework is at odds with the sheer amount of crap going on in Frontlines and they are easily the most useless job there. They don't get to operate at a relatively safe distance like every other rDPS; they need to put themselves at mid-range where they are an easy target to engage directly, or at point-blank range where they are basically begging to get dog-piled. Despite this, they didn't get considered for defense buffs like every other melee despite needing to perform in essentially the same range to even contribute in fights. Even their LB is highly punishable due to the activation delay and essentially putting yourself in the worst possible place to be a rDPS in any Frontlines fight.

DNC in Frontlines is essentially high risk, low reward- and I rag on DNC in Frontline all the time, even though it was my favorite DPS job there before the PvP rework. I have yet to see any DNC in Primal achieve Battle High 5; highest was maybe BH3 before I locked it down when it got back into range and was subsequently mobbed to death. If the "PvP team" is even a bit serious about job balance in Frontlines, at the very least Dancer needs to be tankier than every other rDPS, if not as tanky as the melee DPS if they are going to leave it with it's current kit and expect it to function in situations where they need to wade into more than 5 enemies.

tldr: DNC is designed to work in CC, not Frontlines. The fact that it hasn't been addressed or acknowledged shows that Frontlines balance is an afterthought if the kneejerk bandaid of nerfing SMN and WHM's damage and buffing melee to survive getting ran over by a truck twice wasn't enough proof.

[Kuroka]

Dancer as it is now is an unfortunate testament that the "PvP team" designs nearly everything around their small-scale modes (Feast/Crystal Conflict) (...)

tldr: DNC is designed to work in CC, not Frontlines. The fact that it hasn't been addressed or acknowledged shows that Frontlines balance is an afterthought if the kneejerk bandaid of nerfing SMN and WHM's damage and buffing melee to survive getting ran over by a truck twice wasn't enough proof.

So true, the biggest problem was they reworked everything around their new shiny mode and let the rest get burned... Yes its also a matter of skill and what exactly the teams are made off etc, but thats exactly it, the teams are random and so balance is hard...ive lost 6 onsai matches yesterday bc of pala cover - 6-8 ppl could not kill a sinlge dps or just could barely. I as a rdm, even after all my skils cant kill others without help - even my lb barely does anything. While dare me gettin hit with anything. If at least my melee combo would have no CD, i could at least fend off a bit... but like that... once a War or whatever pulls me back and theres more then 2-3 ppl im dead, while melee frequently just flee...

Even old HW pvp was way move fun, with nin sneaking and stuff...

And im already scared for Rival wings cause i cant imagine the mess...

[Silhart]

DNC in Frontlines is essentially high risk, low reward- and I rag on DNC in Frontline all the time, even though it was my favorite DPS job there before the PvP rework. I have yet to see any DNC in Primal achieve Battle High 5; highest was maybe BH3 before I locked it down when it got back into range and was subsequently mobbed to death. If the "PvP team" is even a bit serious about job balance in Frontlines, at the very least Dancer needs to be tankier than every other rDPS, if not as tanky as the melee DPS if they are going to leave it with it's current kit and expect it to function in situations where they need to wade into more than 5 enemies.

Hey, can I be the first? Here's a screenshot from a match I played an hour ago. Was also the first person on my team to hit BH5.

I'm still learning, but I had no problem hitting consistent BH5s in my first week of playing DNC (this was also after the infamous melee buffs). It made me wonder what the hell everyone else was doing because I also found other DNCs to be easy kill targets, but after seeing this thread I think I'm beginning to understand. There are too many people treating this like old DNC.

___
@OP: It's fine to dislike the new direction, and I'm not gonna argue whether new DNC is good or not, but it feels like a lot of the issues mentioned in this thread are born from not understanding how to pilot the job properly. For one thing, you're not meant to use En Avant to dash in unless the enemy is on the back foot; it's far safer to position yourself at max DNC range, hit your GCD, En Avant backwards, reposition for safety/offense as needed, and repeat. 15y from your attacks + 10y dash with En Avant works out to be 25y between you and your target, so you can create enough distance before they have time to react. DNC has the potential to be very slippery in Frontlines--you just need to be proactive about your positioning and the way you use En Avant. Play your cards right, and you'll find that getting attacked is so rare, you could probably take Guard off your hotbar and still end the match with 0 deaths lol (don't actually do this)

But I'm also not gonna argue this too hard, because I kinda like that people see DNC as bad. That just means we'll get buffs, which means I get to unleash sweet, sweet violence.

[Sawamura]

Hey, can I be the first? Here's a screenshot from a match I played an hour ago. Was also the first person on my team to hit BH5.

From you screenshot damage taken 403k it show you dive in the best and retreat timing. So Both blue and yellow team didn’t even realize you hitting them. Is really well play as dnc.
But of course all job has pro and cons is depend how players performed and how well they understand game mode feature. Perfect balance in frontline is basically impossible with all 19 jobs ,and rework will be alway some job has strong/weak toolkit. Dev team change/rework is mostly depend on players data in matches and feedback only give hint to where to look at data but data doesn’t tell them how to fixed. And I believe that is reason why they keep frontline on but turn off rival wing. Cause they have no idea how rework does in large scale battle.