Dancer - Blue Mage, how they could be done interestingly

[PangTong]

The issue I see with Blue Mage is this: The entire concept of the job is about learning new skills. In a single player game where you gradually learn skills over the course of the story and then complete the game, this system works fine. However in an MMO like XIV where most of the active users and content is at endgame, with a very fixed set of final skills for each job, this presents a problem. Even if you go out of your way to design a special skill-acquisition system specifically for Blue Mage, eventually they are going to get all their necessary skills and have nothing left to learn. So then, what distinguishes them from any other job in endgame content? What is their unique defining trait, once learning monster skills is over?

My idea is that "learning" skills should somehow be incorporated into their rotation. Let's say Blue Mage has 2-3 basic skills, a single-target attack, an aoe attack, and a buff. Under normal circumstances, these skills are quite weak and just use the BLU's normal weapon. However BLU also comes equipped with a special "Learn" trait or ability, where by taking damage from an enemy or using an ability on them, these basic skills are transformed into new, special ones based on the monster that the BLU is fighting.

Enemies would be divided into a few broad categories, such as Humanoid, Beast, Mechanical, Voidsent, Elemental, etc. When "Learn" is used with an enemy of one of these categories, the basic skills become special monster skills based on that category. If you use Learn on a mechanical creature, then your basic attack becomes Rocket Punch, your aoe attack becomes Missile Launcher, or Flamethrower. You get free use of these new abilities for a period of time, and then you can "Learn" again to either get them back or pick a different type of enemy. Each of these attacks in each category would have slightly different functionalities, meaning BLU's rotation and overall party utility would change depending on what type of creature was being fought, which I think would be VERY interesting.

This would be in conjunction with staple BLU spells that they always have access to and learn while leveling, such as Goblin Punch or White Wind.

[Grimoire-M]

Dancer would probably have a split between TP based damage skills and MP based heals. I'd like them to get a Synastry-style oGCD skill that they just mark a player with to guarantee they get a passive heal every time the dancer uses a weaponskill. Unlike Synastry, this would always be available, and using certain abilities could empower the healing done by the mark. It would be their regen/fairy equivalent. This ability would also be tied to other cooldowns, like an AoE heal (comparable to Cure III in range and indom in potency/cooldown) that originates from the marked target, a mitigation tool for the marked target (Basically Rampart), or a damaging AoE skill around them.

I'd like an enemy equivalent of the healing mark as well, that would trigger a weak damage nuke on them if you used spells. This would mostly be for proccing debuffs, since that is another aspect of Dancer's kit. This would include Disable, their raid dps cooldown (probably Vul Up), a bleed DoT, an AoE stun centered on the target on a cooldown, and a reliable Silence. Maybe introduce a stack-based nuke debuff that the party could trigger by attacking them, that way it always totals the same potency, and gives them some spike DPS in raid CD windows. Could even have the marks interact with a cooldown that allows the marked ally to trigger both marks when attacking the marked enemy with a spell/weaponskill, boosting the throughput of both. A personal cooldown could enable the dancer to trigger both marks regardless of whether they're using a spell/weaponskill at the time.

I'd expect Dancer to not have very much shield-based mitigation and instead rely on percentage buffs/debuffs and empowering these marks to carry their throughput through a fight. They'd still have the standard Cure I/II/Medica/Raise equivalents, a basic weaponskill combo, a filler DoT, and an AoE skill, but like Scholar they'd rely more on using their shorter cooldowns and matching them together to carry them through a fight.

[Seraphor]

I really like the sound of that Dancer set up.
It didn't occur to me to utilise damage debuffs in place of shields, but it makes perfect sense. I had wanted Dancer as a debuffing melee DPS before but now this seems much better.