Dancer as a healing/dps job

[Kenji_Shiratsuki]

I just had a bit of a brainstorm on how they could implement another healer that is just as effective and yet different from the current three. Astrologian was made to stradle the dichotomy of White Mage's HoTs and Scholar's Shields, but a lot of people, myself included, feel like that was a cop-out to making a new method of healing dynamics in the game. I think that Dancer could change all that.

Dancer was one of my favorite jobs in FFXI and I think now in XIV, we can make it more of a main healer. The first thing is, we would need to have an ability that we can place on a party member that grants them healing as we damage enemies. The main feature of Dancer (in XI) was the ability to convert the TP you gained from hitting things into energy your dances ran off to heal people. That can still work if we have an ability that marks another player, perhaps only party/alliance members, to receive automatic healing when the Dancer uses their combos.

Another ability would be a stance shift that makes them do far less damage, but heal much better. Perhaps the first ability can only be used when in this stance, requiring that automatic healing to come only at the cost of DPS potency from the Dancer.

Lastly, there should be some abilities that outright heal, perhaps channeling MP instead of TP, or using TP but have abilities that consume MP for large TP restorations to the Dancer, so their TP fluctuates much like a Black Mage's MP, almost never running out completely for long, but not bottomless either.

What do you guys think? Would a combat medic like this, who gains most of their healing power through stabbing the enemies be something SE can balance against the HoT/Shield paradigm?

[TatoRazzino]

I think your idea is good, but for an off healer instead of a main healer. At the moment, AST and WHM compete for the main healer slot in end game content, while SCH remains the king of off healing. The Dancer job could balance that, becoming the next off-healer, since the main focus here is mixing damage output with healing. The balancing can be tricky, but the idea is good. We could have the Dancer be mainly a HoT healer, with few burst options. The HoT effects could be refreshed or made stronger by the DPS combos, as a kind of aura effect. The burst options could be implemented in the form of skills that got reduced cooldowns from the combos. That in the DPS stance, of course. The regular healing stance could have the damage weaponskills converted into spells. The Dancer weapon could be a pole, and the whole healing thing could be implemented as some sort of arcane air bending (like Mistweaver from WoW). The Dancer could also benefit from the Blunt debuff while in DPS stance, and they could get their cross class from MNK and CNJ.

[VanilleFang]

I really like your ideas, but I can see the balancing for it being hell. I'm wondering if you were thinking they would use spells to deal damage, or be within melee? 'Cause that is a major thing to consider.

I would love to see this type of healer though...

[Rawrz]

Read dis.
Another in Depth Dancer Thread

[Roxas_Andrade]

Well, I didn't play XI and don't know how dancer was there.

I think the dancer as a stationary, magic character, that would be grounded for most of the time, like this:

High HP and High def/mdef so he could endure a few hits, his dances would be like a regen dance - an aoe regen dance with small potency, an aoe def boost dance, an aoe speed dance and so on... Every dance would work kind of like a sect and it would be active as long as the character is not moving. While this things are happening, the dancer would be able to cast spells as the other healers.

One cool thing is that they could have different animations for the different dances.

[Itseotle]

I think the dancer as a stationary [Job] that would be grounded for most of the time

This is not a dancer. This is some other healer, but not a dancer.

[Roxas_Andrade]

This is not a dancer. This is some other healer, but not a dancer.

The dancer in FF X2 was kinda like this, but was support. You would choose your dance and benefit the party while dancing. After the whole bunch of complaints about Collective unconscious, I guess that just be grounded, wouldn't help much and wouldn't be well received by the community. My Idea was it to be like a bard, but healing instead...

[Ragology]

Should have a stance that puts heavy on the dancer but also allows them to move while casting. And maybe some kind of system where you can mark an enemy and then generate a stack for each time you walk a circle around them.

[Yhisa]

Hmmm tbh DPS and healing just won't work... It's been done in other games and feel flat on its arse... Give Warcraft for example mistweaver monk is getting a massive rework as smart healing (healing by dealing damage fistweaving) as its a terrible design and a nightmare to balance , so u will never see a DPS that heal whilst DPS because it does not work

Problems if this dancer does happen

Dealing too much damage =nerf
Due to damage nerf it effects healing = require buff
Require silly rotations to heal and is not efficient = require buff reworks
Have major MP issues due to acting as DPS = require buff and rework

See now this is just a few of many outrageous problems that will happen in the end they will scrap the idea and just turn into into a full healer

[Vlady]

How is it a balancing nightmare? As far as I know the paradigm of wow and FF 14 are quite different despite its similiarities. Healers and tanks have greater dps roles then they do in wow and are even as of now considered for beating dps checks on the higher end. And the balancing is mainly handled on the higher end which is also compounded by another circumstance that wow is faster paced which puts pressure on stronger preventive abilities like the discipline priest over efficiency which is the holy priest and druid. The balance for ff 14 does not come to the fact a job can heal so therefore it must not have strong dps abilities like it does in wow so a dps that heals through its damage is a feasible role that could be implemented. Rift does it with that plant based healer chromancer I think it is called.

It is time we break away from the mold that every job has to be 100% even with every other job which is what is creating a bland gaming experience for which 90% of the playerbase does not care that one certain job can pull 100 dps more then another job. A fun engaging experience is something that is starting to become lost in the MMO sphere for sake of balance when you can have retaliative balance and combine it with refreshing new ideas and playing experiences. SE has stated they are not against testing new systems and experiences (diadem) so give them a chance as long as the idea is not blatantly overpowered.