Dancer Tank!!!

[Duelle]

2. The core premise seems solid, though I'd very much like to know the generation rate for your stacks.

I was thinking your standard attacks (AKA your enmity rotation) would generate stacks of Flair (what I've decided to call it) at lv8. The idea is that you're constantly generating and consuming Flair because you have a Flourish to keep active in addition to a Samba.

3. Does Drain Samba convert (dps loss) or duplicate (what the game calls 'converting') damage as healing? Also, unless your doing some really extreme auto-attacks, this seems very underpowered.

I guess duplicate would be the word. The idea was basically an auto-attack focused version of Bloodbath that could be kept up indefinitely. The 10% is sort of a placeholder, though I agree that it could be more depending on how Graze is tuned.

4. Are any of these dance buffs party-wide?

As of right now, no. Drain Samba is there to supplement healing while your staggered damage ticks away. I guess Haste Samba could be turned into an aura that affects allies nearby, but that would require me nerfing it since it'd be too powerful if left as is. The idea of one Samba is also to not create needless overlap in the event a party ended up with 2 DNCs in it.

5. If a DNC tank goes into combat with Animated Flourish faded and no stacks at the ready, is s/he screwed?

If you mean entering combat without Animated Flourish active, no since the flourishes can be activated for free. If you mean a DNC entering combat with 5 seconds left of Animated Flourish and having no Flair stacks to refresh the effect, sort of. I was thinking of giving DNC an ability like Infuriate (call it Trance, since we're lifting stuff from FFXI) so that in such a situation you could activate it and get some stacks to renew or reactivate a Flourish.

6. Graze aids eHP, but it does not itself supply overall mitigation. Even if DNC had the same Defense as other jobs, it would still be a heal-spunge. What does it actually have to make it a tank and not just a threat-holder?

I'm still trying to decide between focusing on parries or maybe buffing the self healing. Tying into this, Healing Waltz basically removes the DoT effect and replaces it with a HoT.

1) You get hit by a mob attack for 10,000 damage
2) You Graze it, meaning 7,000 affects you on contact and the remaining 3,000 affects you over 15 seconds
3) Assuming you have one stack of Flair available, you can use Healing Waltz
4) The DoT worth 3,000 damage disappears and is replaced by a HoT that heals you for 600 HP over 12 seconds.

Using one single hit may make it seem like nothing, but the Grazed damage stacks as you continuously gets hit, making the challenge in playing DNC managing your Grazed damage by using Healing Waltz to remove the DoT before the Grazed damage overwhelms you and the healer, and recover some HP in the process. The numbers would obviously need to be tuned, but that's one of the ideas for the mechanic.

7. What's its rotational flow?

Not sure. The key points I have in mind right now is properly dealing with Grazed damage, keeping your chosen Flourish active and keeping your chosen Samba active.

8. Is Waltz a CD, a persistent effect...? Will there be any other Waltzes? Will be it be mutually exclusive with them?

Since Healing Waltz is based on Purifying Brew, I'd set the cooldown to 2.5 seconds. As for other waltzes, that may be a possibility.

9. Is Steel Wing oGCD or GCD?

OGCD, though that would require removing the graze requirement.

10. Given the 20s CD on the Flourishes, we can quickly swap from one to the other, but must then stay in that 2nd flourish for the remainder of the first's 20-second CD?

This is an oversight in my write up. My intent was that activating a Flourish would put both on a 20s cooldown.

11. Are the flourishes oGCD or GCD?

OGCD.

12. Deflective Sweeps seems easily pinched by rapid attacks. Either it takes a real TB and two autos or half an attack stream. There are certain instances it would probably excel in (e.g. Bahamut's Claw), but also many that would wreck it. I almost imagine that using half the mitigation but at specific attacks/timings of your choosing (think Lustrate?) would get more average mitigation, and might well feel a tiny bit more Dancer-like??

I'll admit that Sweeps is my answer to the gripes people seem to have with Shelltron. I was also trying to avoid copying another Brewmaster Monk ability (Guard, which creates an absorb shield based on your max HP), though it would seem to better fit.

13. Enmity bonus/stance is no longer paired with an eHP increase, but is still exclusive with damage bonus/stance. Can enmity itself really be considered worth enough to have no additional benefit? Consider: Defiance -25%dps, +20%hr, +25%eHP, +100%enmity. Shield Oath -20%dps, +20%miti, +100% enmity. To me at least, enmity without being attached to a better-mitigating unit (or causing an overall improvement by holding said threat in raid damage taken vs. dealt) isn't tanking--just directing. For DNC to come out balanced without mitigation attached to its tanking stance would mean that even its OT stance has a significant mitigation. If that's the case, it would seem that its stance dancing would have nothing to do with incoming damage, but rather just maxing personal dps while keeping up with enmity needs, bereft of healer/tank synergy and probably getting far more out of Shadewalker and Quelling Strikes than any other tank (curse those Monks/DRGs).

Here's where I get evil with the number tuning, since DNC skills would not have bonus enmity attached to them and could even have lower base potencies sans Flourishes. This is also why the bonus from Violent Flourish is relatively greater than what you see with FoF, Darkside or Maim. In theory you'd generate less enmity if you focus on dealing damage and should open the fight in Animated Flourish to secure aggro (Animated Flourish would have generous enmity modifiers to make up for that lower base potency). If you trust your aggro lead, then you can swap to Violent Flourish.

While all this is going on, you'd still have Perpetual Motion active to Graze damage, self heals from Drain Samba and the HoT from Healing Waltz ticking along, on top of heals from the healer and whatever other methods of mitigation you might have access to.

Something I'm considering is scrapping the "converts all evades into grazes" bit, instead simply throwing in the 75% graze chance as a benefit from Perpetual Motion. This may allow DNC to have actual evasion buffs (Feather Step) come into play. Haven't made a decision on this yet.