What if DNC is SHOMHOW a DPS?

[Xtrasweettea]

The same game had Bard do the exact opposite of the Dancer in a way as all they did was sit in the back singing giving boosts and buffs to your units.

Which was awesome. Especially if you paired them up and put both of them in a corner and ignored them the rest of the fight.
Since you have mentioned Bard… I will hold onto that and use that for something towards the end of my post.

FF6 Mog, does a lot of things, mostly attacks.

FF6 Mog was more akin to a Geomancer than Dancer. Its GEO abilities were tied behind named “dances” based on the area Mog fought in. Though, unlike other GEOs in other games, Mog could change the environment you were fighting in order to perform that set of “dances”. So, you were not environmental locked like in FFV.

FF11 Dancer, Buffer melee DPS hybrid, with some heals? I dunno. Didn't really play 11 all that much.

DPS Healer Hydrid. It only had a few “debuffs.” It had “flourishes” to provide “debuff” to the mob that allowed someone who was attacking that mob to get a buff (like a weak Haste) or drain HP. DNC also had healing abilities at different tiers (single target and AOE) and had a way to remove debuffs.
It didn’t have an innate Raise or Protect/Shell spell. Which in FFXI, you could subjob WHM, RDM, or SCH to get those.

But overall, Dancer in past has been mainly about debuffing and attacking, it'd be a lot more sensible to make it into a DPS class. Even if a new healer is due, alongside the Gunbreaker tank. They can just release another class as a healer.

Unfortunately, “in the past” doesn’t mean much of anything in this game.

An example of an FFXIV job that defies the “did in past” statement (which you mentioned earlier): Bard.

Bard in FFXIV is completely unique compared to all of the other Bards in all of the other FF titles. In no other FF games does Bard use a bow as their main weapon*, concentrates on dealing damage, and makes singing secondary. Bard usually held instruments, stood in the back, and sung songs.

In FFXI, an MMO, Bard was just a buffer, debuffer, and crowd controller. It could use clubs, daggers, staves, and could use them all poorly as melee weapons. Bards in FFXI were entirely reliant on parties for their leveling after level 12 or so. Soloing was painful as an FFXI as a Bard.

Yet, FFXI’s Bard was more true to “did it in the past” than FFXIV’s Bard.

So, the whole “did it in the past” just goes out window for this instance.

Me saying that FFXIV’s DNC (if they implemented it), could just stand in the back and dance to use spells for their advertised role (for whether it being DPS or Healer), would not be that far out at all compared to what DNC “did in the past.”

Now, in my opinion for DNC being “more sensible” as a DPS versus Healer? I would like to see a Healer oriented version of the job, more flesh out than it was in FFXI. If it was a DPS, I wouldn’t get upset about it. It's neither more or less sensible based on how the job has to fit into the game without it being limited.


*The only Bard that could have used bows… in one time in the game, was Edward, and it wasn’t worth spending the gold on a bow when it would completely lock him out of his ability to sing and he got a free weapon in the first dungeon you would take him in. Of course, this was in the original FF4, so if they made changes, I am not aware of them.