Dance or not to Dance?

[WaterShield]

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

Nope. Use flourish first and begin Standard Step around 5 seconds till pull. Hit Standard step next to boss (for 1000 potency) as your first attack of the pull. Rotate through the procs from flourish and use Cascade into Fountain (and procs) combo, saving any feathers generated so long as you don't cap and have a feather generating proc up. Begin technical step when standard step has approximately 8 seconds remaining before it comes off of cooldown. Use Standard step immediately after technical step(+10% damage to a 1000 potency nuke) and weave devilment as you hit with it. Begin to unload with OGCD weaving and your normal rotation. Saber dance becomes highest priority GCD during this time until standard step comes back up.

This is the selfish personal DPS opener. A case can be made for using Technical Step early with Ninja's Trick attack for greater benefit to the rest of the party's DPS.

Edit: I was jumping to conclusions based on the 20s you mention for standard step. So long as you fit it in the window of technical steps damage up, then yes you are right.

Dancer is designed to bank damage to unleash during a burst Window. Technical step and Devilment are both on a 2 minute cool down. So they should be aligned in that way for the greatest DPS you can contribute.

Standard step should be used on Cooldown at all times.

[JohnSeal]

WaterSchield I sincerely doubt, it’s not reasonable to use flourish 5 second prepull. Simply because you wouldn’t want to use your proc from flourish at the begin of the fight it’s a gigantic wastage, in the first 4/5 gdc won’t be any buff active and as with all classes you want to wait for raid buff like BL,BV,CS,TA etc etc. It’s better to fit flourish procs into those buffs and if your start the fight with Technical steps 20 sec is enough all inside

[HyoMinPark]

You should be using Standard Step on cooldown. Clipping a buff that will have 100% uptime anyways is not that huge of a deal. Losing 1,000 potency every minute from only using ST every 60 seconds is a big deal. Based on all the conversations I've been seeing amongst the DNC number crunchers, holding it is a larger loss than using it on CD and missing the GCDs you could have had during it. Its potency is scaled enough to make up for the time taken to prep it.

Think about it: you lose 1,000 potency every time you don't use it. Over the course of a fight, that will begin to add up very quickly. Aside from Quadruple Technical Finish, Double Standard Finish is our hardest hitting skill. There's no reason not to use ST on cooldown outside of a few niche scenarios (e.g., dungeon boss/trash pack is about to die and you'll want it up for the next pack, intermission /add phase is coming up and you'll want it for that).

The dances are 1 second a piece—with Standard Step being a GCD, at most you will lose 3~4 seconds during prepping it, which is not even 2 GCDs. Most of our weaponskills are not scaled high enough to add up to more than 1,000; meaning that you are losing potency by not putting Standard Step back on CD the minute it pops up.

[Rongway]

Think about it: you lose 1,000 400 potency every time you don't use it.

You're locked out of weaponskills for 5.0 seconds while performing Standard Step. Therefore, you need to account for the potency of the weaponskills you would have been using instead.

Cascade: 200
Fountain: 250
Reverse Cascade: 425
Fountainfall: 475

Reverse Cascade and Fountainfall have a 50% chance to proc Fan Dance 1 (150p), which then has a 50% chance to proc Fan Dance 3 (200p). So the expected potency of each of these weaponskills is 150*0.5+200*0.25 higher than listed.

Since Cascade and Fountain have themselves a 50% chance to proc each of their flourishes, there are four possible outcomes:

Cascade(200), Fountain(250): 450/2 → 225 per GCD
Cascade(200), Reverse Cascade(425), Fountain(250): 875/3 → 291.7 per GCD
Cascade(200), Fountain(250), Fountainfall(475): 925/3 → 308.3 per GCD
Cascade(200), Reverse Cascade(425), Fountain(250), Fountainfall(475): 1350/4 → 337.5 per GCD

The average of these four outcomes is 290.625 per GCD. At a GCD of 2.41s, this is 120.6 per second.

Standard Step takes 5.0s to execute, so it locks you out of 603 potency worth of weaponskills you would have been using. Therefore, it's really only worth 397 potency per use.

(This is still a big deal; just not 1000p big.)


(Edit: I prolly should have just added all those individual potencies and divided by 12, to account for each possibility having a different length. In that case, average potency per GCD would be 300, Standard Step would lock you out of 622, and it would only be worth 378 per use.)

[JohnSeal]

Also you will use Devilment right before Flourish so you fit all your burst phase in it including Saberdance and a Standard step too hoping they both crit

[YanderePrincess]

Use Flourish before Technical Step, then weave Devilment in at the end of Technical Step. Flourish lasts long enough that you won't drop any of them.

[HyoMinPark]

The pre-release opener had Flourish after the pull:

Standard Step (roughly at -10s) > Standard Finish (on pull) > weave Flourish afterwards. It may be subject to change now, but that’s what the pre-release openers looked like (for early and late TA applications). I believe the individual in the Balance who has been doing a lot of DNC number crunching said that they will post an updated opener soon.

[WaterShield]

The pre-release opener had Flourish after the pull:

Standard Step (roughly at -10s) > Standard Finish (on pull) > weave Flourish afterwards. It may be subject to change now, but that’s what the pre-release openers looked like (for early and late TA applications). I believe the individual in the Balance who has been doing a lot of DNC number crunching said that they will post an updated opener soon.

All I know is, I've been using the opener I provided and things melt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Edit: This seems to be ok for dungeons (Because who uses countdowns?) Definitely not best in a Trial or Raid scenario.

[HyoMinPark]

All I know is, I've been using the opener I provided and things melt. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Well, in terms of dungeons, of course they will. DNC is a monster in dungeons. I’m speaking more so in terms of optimal, single-target openers. All I know is that the DNCs in the Balance haven’t been saying anything about Flourishing prepull—just prepping your Standard Step to pull with a 1,000 potency attack.