Dance or not to Dance?

[Irohma]

I am getting used to DNC after reaching level 70, but I am wondering how exactly our rotation will work at the end. One of my main concerns is about whether we dance or not. Let me explain.

Standard Step: This is a 30s cooldown skill which gives a 60s damage buff. It requires a total of four global cooldowns to be executed (1 to start the dance, 2 steps, and one to finish it). It has potency of 1,000 when done correctly.

Technical Step: This is a 120s cooldown skill which gives a 60s damage buff (to everyone). It requires six global cooldowns to be executed (two additional steps). It has a potency of 1,500 when done correctly.

Now, I am pretty sure we will want to use Technical Step every time it pops up because of its 5% party-wide damage buff. I mean, it is worth wasting those 6 cooldowns and dealing only 1,500 potency for that trouble.

Standard Step, however, I am not sure. The buff is 60s long, which means we can use it after Technical Step's buff expire. However, it will be ready for use again when the buff still has 30s remaining. It deals 1,000 potency damage for its execution and it is an AoE.

What do you guys think? Any theorycrafter wrote some numbers to see which is better?

I round up some numbers, but because the DNC rotation is based a whole lot on 50% chances, the numbers are not exact, but so far I am pretty sure we can deal up to 1,200 potency damage in 4 global cooldowns, which is the same amount of time required for Standard Step. It seems it is better NOT to dance (Standard Step) when facing a single enemy, but DO dance (Standard Step) when facing mobs.

[RowanLauron]

That's the thing about DNC. It's a support job, it's not supposed to be able to match the other dps with its personal dps. They sacrifice their personal dps to give a boost to others. It'll wash out in the end.

Think about it, yeah you may only get 1500 potency, but that 5% spreads to the whole party and will add up, especially if your dps is good. If you have a dnc and nin in the party, you can line up TA with Technical Step for a really strong burst phase. It'll more than make up for any of dnc personal dps.

[YanderePrincess]

The steps don't take a full GCD. I think 2 steps = ~1 GCD, though this could change with skill speed which I don't think affects the steps.

[Irohma]

The steps don't take a full GCD. I think 2 steps = ~1 GCD, though this could change with skill speed which I don't think affects the steps.

Yeah, you are right, it is 1s cooldown and is classified as an ability, so maybe it isn't even affected by skill speed.

Hm... that would mean it will always be better to use Standard Step when it is ready and not only when the buff is fading? Because instead of 4 GDC it would be around 2GDC... and 1,000 potency is a lot more than our flourishing rotation with random chances for Fans for the same time.

[YanderePrincess]

Yeah, that seems to be the situation currently. Skill speed stacking could make it less worthwhile to use SS every time it's ready rather than just for refreshing the buff, but I have a feeling we'll be going more for crit and dhit than SS because of our steps and oGCDs. Hard to say atm, though.

[Hezzlocks]

My take is that without high skill speed, Standard Step will be worth using on cooldown. If the dance steps were a full GCD's worth, then you'd only use it to refresh, to be sure, but since the dance steps are 1s each as opposed to ~2.4s, you're able to fit a Standard Step in slightly under 3 GCDs, provided you're hitting the buttons optimally.

It's worth noting that any currently active flourishes are *irrelevant* in the calculation, unless they are about to expire, as the duration of the flourish buffs are substantially longer than how long it takes to perform even *both* Standard and Technical steps, let alone just Standard, so you can pop a Standard Step very easily then continue along with your flourishing rotations. As such, the only thing that matters is what the average potency per GCD a Standard Step is.

As far as I can see, both initiating and executing the Step invokes a full GCD, while the steps themselves are 1s each. So, we're looking at slightly less than 3 GCDs for a Standard Step rotation. For simplicities sake, and just because I don't really care to go too in depth into the calculations or anything (I'll leave that for people smarter than I), we can just say a flat 3 GCD for that 1000 potency, which makes it, on average, about 333 potency per GCD.

Given that that is higher than Cascade's 200 potency, Flourishing Fountain's 250 potency, and Flourishing Cascade's 300 potency, only being beaten by Fountainfall's 350 potency... I would say that's well worth casting on cooldown. You don't even need to factor Fans into the equation as they *ONLY* matter if you're about to use Fountainfall or Reverse Cascade (or the AoE equivalents) while capped on feathers, which you should avoid doing anyway, but since Fans are instant oGCD, you can just weave them between your attacks anyway.

Technical Step is different, though. Due to the fact that it buffs the entire party, whatever its average potency is (which i don't care to calculate right now) its execution is entirely dependant on the fight and the party makeup. Ideally you want it to line up with other buffs as best as possible, in particular Trick Attack for that double dipping. You also certainly don't want to use it if the boss is about to jump away or otherwise go invulnerable. In the event that neither of those factors are relevant, though... *absolutely do* use it on cooldown. 5% extra damage for your entire party is a substantial boost that should not be taken lightly.

[Liquid_Amnesia]

I usually dance on cooldown. Like it's been stated above, the flourish buffs last long enough that you can throw in a step and go right back into your rotation.

My question for the other DNC players is about BEDEVILMENT! Should we be using it before or after Technical Step? I feel like it'd be nice to have the boost to Technical Step's 1500 potency, but seeing as your burst window lines up right afterward, maybe it's better saved until after the buff takes effect for & your partner... I realize I probably just answered my own question. Haha.

[Raikai]

I usually dance on cooldown. Like it's been stated above, the flourish buffs last long enough that you can throw in a step and go right back into your rotation.

My question for the other DNC players is about BEDEVILMENT! Should we be using it before or after Technical Step? I feel like it'd be nice to have the boost to Technical Step's 1500 potency, but seeing as your burst window lines up right afterward, maybe it's better saved until after the buff takes effect for & your partner... I realize I probably just answered my own question. Haha.

The only reason I can think of using before is if there's a priority target to be taken care of and you want to fish the big crit with technical step damage

[Hezzlocks]

I usually dance on cooldown. Like it's been stated above, the flourish buffs last long enough that you can throw in a step and go right back into your rotation.

My question for the other DNC players is about BEDEVILMENT! Should we be using it before or after Technical Step? I feel like it'd be nice to have the boost to Technical Step's 1500 potency, but seeing as your burst window lines up right afterward, maybe it's better saved until after the buff takes effect for & your partner... I realize I probably just answered my own question. Haha.

Gotta admit, that's a good question. There's no doubt that scoring a Crit + Direct Hit on the Technical Step is *huge*. I would dare say it's worth a lot more than you'd get on average from your following damage rotation, which may very well make it worthwhile doing, especially when you need burst damage.

That said, there's two things complicating that answer. One being that Technical Dance takes about 8-ish seconds to pull off, which is a substantially large amount of time to be doing absolutely nothing with your Bedevilment with, and the other being that your dance partner *also* gets Bedevilment, which means you also need to take *his* damage into consideration on whether or not taking a chance at the massive Technical burst is worth it or not. Oh, and of course, there's also the entire hit-or-miss aspect of using Bedevilment for your Technical Step burst. You might get the full crit/direct, you might only get one or the other, or you might whiff completely. Big gamble, there. If it whiffs, man, thats a feels bad.

Without doing any math at all, because man who got time for that with all these variables, I'm going to take a guess that it's better to use Bedevilment *after* the Technical Step.

[JohnSeal]

Often I realise people don’t even read their skills each step is 1 sec, that mean 2gcd + 2 secs for standard steps: 2:45 sec multiply 2 + 2 sec for steps so it’s less than 3 gcds. You certainly want to use Standard steps as often as possible! Cascade + Fountain + RC/FF is 750/800 pot vs 1k of Standard steps
Technical steps is 2 gccs to dance + 4 sec for steps it’s less than 4 gcd in total for 1.5k pot.
Opener wise at lvl 80 my guess ( and it’s just a guess) you will use Standard step 15 sec prepull (just for the buff) then Techincal steps around 10 sec prepull and land your 1.5k skill on sec 0 to spread your 20sec buff to the team. On the 5 gcd you will see probably TA go up and BOOM:FLOURISH!! Then Standard steps again at sec 20ish into the fight ^^

Hope that help