Why DNC is not performing well

[Valence]

It seems that the devs do not seem to understand the fundamental problem of the job so I'll try to toss another bottle to the sea just in case, and scream in the void to vent some frustration.

You keep buffing the skill set of the job in pvp patches. I do appreciate the crazy buff to Waltz, that's definitely better than the 1k potency we had the patch before on the main combo.

And yet, the job starts performing absolutely awful as soon as you reach serious ranks (crystal+, omega/ultima especially), because people aren't blind, know your LB is ready, and are all ready to just step back as soon as they see you. Worse, everybody and their mothers have gap closers and teleports this expansion, so they also have tools to just give us the middle finger.

Since you decided to change the snapshot of Contradance to the tail end of the crazy long wind up, not only it's incredibly easy to demolish or stun/pushback the DNC with basic buttons while it's being cast, but it's also incredibly easy to just move away.

This is why this job doesn't perform well. You literally butchered the functionality of its LB and made it a meme past novice leagues, and on top of it didn't even stop to consider the damage the changes to purify would deal to the job as a whole.

That or you just don't care.

Beyond the immense frustration, this makes me sad because I really like playing that job.

/rant

[Divinemights]

This is why this job doesn't perform well. You literally butchered the functionality of its LB and made it a meme past novice leagues, and on top of it didn't even stop to consider the damage the changes to purify would deal to the job as a whole.
That or you just don't care.
Beyond the immense frustration, this makes me sad because I really like playing that job.
/rant

It is not necessarily that the developers don’t care.
Could it be that overall DNC is actually performing quite well across FFXIV PvP modes.
This includes Crystalline Conflict, Rival Wings, and Frontline.
The reality is, we don’t have access to the full data and only Square Enix does.
So there is no concrete proof that DNC is underperforming as a whole
What you are claiming is largely based on your own personal experience and perspective as DNC players.

You mentioned the buff to Waltz, which is fair, but there are also strengths that aren’t being acknowledged.
For example, during the Fan Dance → Blade Dance window, DNC becomes surprisingly durable, even if only for a few seconds.
Given that DNC is designed to step into the close range, having that kind of survivability makes sense.
however, if Contradance were left unchanged on top of this, wouldn’t that level of mitigation be considered excessive?
The changes to Contradance effectively introduce counterplay for other jobs.
It may not feel good from a DNC perspective, but that’s part of how balance works; where trade offs are necessary to prevent a job from becoming too dominant.

[Valence]

It is not necessarily that the developers don’t care.
Could it be that overall DNC is actually performing quite well across FFXIV PvP modes.
This includes Crystalline Conflict, Rival Wings, and Frontline.

Respectfully to any RW and FL players, that's not the modes around which jobs are balanced or designed. I hope someday they get their own balancing, but that's not the point of this thread.
This thread is specific to CC.

The reality is, we don’t have access to the full data and only Square Enix does.

Yeah surely if they're still balancing jobs according to their winrate metric. Can't argue with that, for sure.

So there is no concrete proof that DNC is underperforming as a whole
What you are claiming is largely based on your own personal experience and perspective as DNC players.

And it doesn't matter right? Feedback irrelevant, apparently winrate metrics we don't know about should overrule this right?
Surely this is why top ranked players tried the job out of curiosity after the buff, had fun with it for 2 days before going back to meta jobs.
Surely this is why there is nobody playing this job seriously past crystal beyond a couple of nutjobs like myself.

You mentioned the buff to Waltz, which is fair, but there are also strengths that aren’t being acknowledged.
For example, during the Fan Dance → Blade Dance window, DNC becomes surprisingly durable, even if only for a few seconds.
Given that DNC is designed to step into the close range, having that kind of survivability makes sense.

Damn I didn't think about Honing and Fan Dance damage reductions and the melee part of the job. Maybe I should use those and that's why I'm hard-walled like that.

Unlike many, many top players think, I do and have always believed that the core kit of the job is fine. Even solid now with the crazy waltz buff. It lacks crowd control which dramatically hurts the job, but that's what the LB is supposed to take care of, but utterly fails at doing past certain ranks. Do you know why? Because that's literally the only LB that behaves like a pve boss mechanic, with a wind up and a mechanical resolution. Once people know how to deal with it, it becomes a non issue for them.

however, if Contradance were left unchanged on top of this, wouldn’t that level of mitigation be considered excessive?
The changes to Contradance effectively introduce counterplay for other jobs.
It may not feel good from a DNC perspective, but that’s part of how balance works; where trade offs are necessary to prevent a job from becoming too dominant.

Contra has always had an endless amount of counterplays before the snapshot change.
At what level do you play in CC and do you play with DNC players or DNC yourself, out of curiosity?

[Valence]

If your argument is that "in spite of all your evidence, maybe SE has more evidence than you that contradicts yours"...

Okay, cool story to entertain I guess, but then there is no way for me to know what they do have anyway, so I'll continue giving my feedback why this job sucks, and I'm not too worried being wrong saying that it's a shared sentiment among most high rated players, which are all probably completely wrong as proven by all that evidence the devs have that contradicts them, even if a single one of them has infinitely more experience than the whole dev team together. A job without a functional LB, or a LB that only has stars lining up every blue moon, is not a good job in a mode that's about LB plays.

[Atreus]

The reality is, we don’t have access to the full data and only Square Enix does.
So there is no concrete proof that DNC is underperforming as a whole

Gotta stop you right there. DNC is not good; utterly eclipsed by other ranged jobs and was left behind in the arms race that was these last few patches.

[Divinemights]

If your argument is that "in spite of all your evidence, maybe SE has more evidence than you that contradicts yours"...

Okay, cool story to entertain I guess, but then there is no way for me to know what they do have anyway, so I'll continue giving my feedback why this job sucks, and I'm not too worried being wrong saying that it's a shared sentiment among most high rated players, which are all probably completely wrong as proven by all that evidence the devs have that contradicts them, even if a single one of them has infinitely more experience than the whole dev team together. A job without a functional LB, or a LB that only has stars lining up every blue moon, is not a good job in a mode that's about LB plays.

First of all, I never said you shouldn’t provide feedback.
I even framed my point as “could it be?”
It was meant as a discussion, not a dismissal.
At the core, both of us are arguing from personal experience.
The real difference is perspective: DNC vs. non-DNC.

I haven’t played these past two seasons on NA because I’ve been focusing on my characters on JP and TC servers.
The goal there is to experience different environments and viewpoints.
For what it’s worth, I did reach Crystal on both JP and TC
Unfortunately, it is too time consuming to proceed further on two characters at same time.

The reason I made my statement is because TC is still on patch 7.0, which gives me a direct comparison between older DNC and the current version.
From that perspective, I have to ask: is it really incorrect to say that DNC becomes extremely tanky during the Fan Dance → Blade Dance window?
That’s something you didn’t address.
From your standpoint as a DNC player, it may feel fine, but from a cross-patch comparison, it stands out.
I’m not trying to shut down your feedback, but having access to multiple regions and languages lets me see a broader range of perspectives, which is exactly why I’m raising this point.

[Divinemights]

Gotta stop you right there. DNC is not good; utterly eclipsed by other ranged jobs and was left behind in the arms race that was these last few patches.

I have a different perspective than yourself.
Under the current crowd control system where diminishing returns effectively don’t exist, i think individual job survivability matters a lot more than fire power.

[Valence]

First of all, I never said you shouldn’t provide feedback.
I even framed my point as “could it be?”
It was meant as a discussion, not a dismissal.
At the core, both of us are arguing from personal experience.
The real difference is perspective: DNC vs. non-DNC.

I haven’t played these past two seasons on NA because I’ve been focusing on my characters on JP and TC servers.
The goal there is to experience different environments and viewpoints.
For what it’s worth, I did reach Crystal on both JP and TC
Unfortunately, it is too time consuming to proceed further on two characters at same time.

The reason I made my statement is because TC is still on patch 7.0, which gives me a direct comparison between older DNC and the current version.
From that perspective, I have to ask: is it really incorrect to say that DNC becomes extremely tanky during the Fan Dance → Blade Dance window?
That’s something you didn’t address.
From your standpoint as a DNC player, it may feel fine, but from a cross-patch comparison, it stands out.
I’m not trying to shut down your feedback, but having access to multiple regions and languages lets me see a broader range of perspectives, which is exactly why I’m raising this point.

I do not just play as DNC. I've played as other jobs at the same level even though I don't main them as much. I have also played against DNCs, both on DNC mirrors (absolute cancer how DNC is literally designed to "win more" or "lose more" in regard to the usability of its LB), and on me as non DNC vs a DNC in the opposing team. I know perfectly well what to do to completely neuter another DNC, both as a DNC myself or as a non DNC. Even when I play WAR, which is one of the few jobs that DNC actually counters, I know what I do to dodge a contradance, or mess with it. It's not exactly hard, because it's a pve boss mechanic and behaves as such.

The interesting part in that from my own experience DNC has a very narrow rank window where it performs decently well, which is Diam/Crystal. If you take any DNC player below Diamond they have literally no clue how to play the job and generally grief their team more than anything, because that job isn't intuitive and they have no idea what to do with its LB most of the time. If you take any DNC player above Crystal (Omega/Ultima), they may be the greatest DNC players, their LB will still be a total nightmare to execute unless they're hard winning or cornering the enemy in overtime, because it's that easy to neutralize or outright ignore it. So like for the lower rated leagues, you end up with some lucky strikes that will maybe end up in multi kills, but otherwise, it's gonna be a big flop leaving you and your entire team frustrated.

But if you're within the low crystal or crystal range, DNC starts performing decently because a crystal DNC knows how to play the job better than at low ranks enough to pull decent LBs, and because people at that level are still tricked by a decently set up Contra.

-

The problem I have with your question about Fan Dance and Honing is that it's literally the basics of DNC. Yes it's very tanky during it, but if you expose yourself to any kind of burst attempt while doing it, you'll still die horribly because even if you survive the burst (which isn't always the case) you'll get stunned to death during the spin and getting out of it at very low HP, which essentially means dead unless you have potentially a pocket healer or PLD.

You'll see DNC players getting absolutely deleted all the time while spinning for that reason. The only places where this doesn't happen is below diamond maybe.

Now, it's still a powerful tool if you use it properly, but it's absolutely not comparable to say, VPR scales that has a heal that comes attached. And yet, even though this job is played a lot on JP, ask anybody what they think of VPR. Survivability doesn't mean anything in a vacuum. That's why GNB's meta level will drop dramatically the more you rank up (it's completely OP under crystal, solid in crystal, and starts lacking above, or especially in LPs, for a reason).

I'm ultimately not sure to understand what you're trying to say with Fan dance and Honing either way? Like I said I think the core toolkit of the job is in a solid state (it was abysmally underpowered in 7.1). That's not the root of the problems with the job.

-

I don't know why you keep thinking that I play on NA. I don't.

I play on EU and JP equally. I probably have more games of CC on JP currently considering the state of the EU DC. But thank for assuming that my perspective is not broad...

[Themarvin]

It is mostly a support job?

I think there is too much whining about it all instead of focusing on playing the job you like to play in FL, RW and CC.

[MayuAmakura]

Bard used to be a very bad job in endwalker until it was buffed in DT by adding massive CC potential and damage, thus now it's no more of a joke job.
DNC used to be bad in endwalker but then JP players started to spam it massively, got popular, got buffed and ever since it has became a problem for CC meta.

DNC main issue is that it relies too much on your teammates. Having a premade (someone you know who appears into your game) makes the chances of winning much higher. Dance partner with tank such as GNB and you are set to win. DNC also shines pretty well if it is in a team with Dragoon, GNB, Warrior or any similar that can perform tons of damage while dancer occupies every player with its lb. It's a disgusting thing to say the least. DNC can also use its LB to make people die in clock tower (unless that was fixed, I don't know).

It's definitely one of the most annoying classes out there solely because your LB dictates how everyone plays around it and thus why this class will be always hated by everyone.