Is dancer a waste of time?

[HyoMinPark]

Those are some cherry picked parses. Dancer doesn't do dps like that unless you get lucky with procs. Dancer has pretty bad sustained dps if your luck is average. I'd say 9000 is a more reaistic dps number for dancer with rDPS. It's a good 1000 or so behind everybody else.

Those are not cherry picked. I specifically stated 95th because it's a fair representation of higher level play. I also only brought up its rDPS against jobs it directly competes against (the physical ranged). It doesn't compete against melee or against a caster for a spot in a raid.

95th percentile on Innocence has DNC at 10,244 rDPS. 90th percentile is 10,028. 80th percentile is 9,718. Even 75th percentile is above your 9,000 spitball (9,595). At 75th percentile on Innocence, DNC is 900 behind BLM, the highest damage dealer. For MCH and BRD, the gap is ~600 to ~700. This gap lessens the higher you go (95th is ~200 to ~250 between DNC and BRD/MCH for Innocence). It widens for DNC versus BLM at the higher levels, where it actually exceeds the 1,000 you presented, but my comparison was against the physical ranged (and the difference between DNC and other DPS above it in terms of rDPS only exceeds 1,000 with regards to BLM; the second highest DPS [MNK] exceeds by ~900, and each one beneath MNK lower than that)..

The numbers are present on the website under statistics. That's where I pulled them from. Not from a handful of parses I randomly looked up. The lower you go, the larger divides become - but this applies to any job.

[Mhaeric]

I really like Dancer a lot.

That said, the only problem I have with Dancer so far is that our personal DPS is reliant on a huge AoE damage ability (the damage component of our Standard/Technical Steps). The main concern I have with this is that it makes a bad tank have a doubly negative impact on my output. I've had several runs where I have had to use the buff between fights only, because as soon as I use it during a fight most of the mobs attack me because the tank isn't doing AoE enmity management. If there's a bad tank like this, I'm content to switch to my single target rotation to go with the flow and take the DPS output hit that comes from changing from AoE to ST on a pack of mobs, but I lose out on even more DPS due to not being able to use the biggest hitting ability I have (1000 potency attack every 30s.) without pulling hate on the pack.

This also makes certain pre-70 dungeon mechanics a bit of a pain, but at least with those I can plan around them. E.g Amdapor Keep's second boss has 4 pillars that need to stay alive, but the Dancer's damage buffs are guaranteed to hit at least 2 of them and possibly all 4. Also, that fight with the moths where the tank needs them to keep aggro on the boss moth had me running all over the arena to make sure I was hitting as few of them as possible with the damage component of my AoE buff.

This isn't a huge problem that is breaking Dancer by any definition, but it would be nice if there was a way to perform a version of the steps that output damage to just a single target. It would fit the theme Dancer already has going by having a ST and AoE version of almost every other skill in their rotation.

Edit: Heck, come to think of it, I've even accidentally pulled a boss once when I pre-buffed with Standard Step because the AoE on it is so large and I was apparently standing far enough away to not body pull it but close enough to hit it with the AoE. Standard/Technical Step is the new Mage's Ballad.

[jarlmcqueen]

It's fun to play, but can get repetitive because due to it's simplicity.

[Kurando]

Only you can decide if it's a waste of time or not, if you enjoy the job then nothing else should matter too much. It reminds me of the DRK player that cleared Ultimate Bahamut, even though the job wasn't meta at the time they said they chose it because they liked/enjoyed it.

[Maero]

I would not worry overly much about DNC, it for sure needs slight buffs but would say is in a better position then Ninja

[Hydrium]

It smelly smells, but here it goes:

Outstanding raid contribution = Low personal dps

or

Low or non-existent raid contribution = High personal dps

Pick one.

Except logs show DNC is near the bottom for both rdps and pdps so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Hysterior]

Is dancer a waste of time?
Are videogames a waste of time?
Is life a waste of time?

So many questions, so little time.
If you enjoy the class, play it. If you do not, do not play it.

[Neela]

...and not be the lowest dps.

thats actually the choice u made with a support cls - be part of the crew. ;'3

[Macleod]

But I generally go with the argument, unless you're looking to optimise to the max, go with what you enjoy playing because chances are, you'll be better at it versus a meta job you don't enjoy. And if bigger deeps and bigger numbers are what do it for you, then yes, DNC might not be what you're looking for.

Exactly, I've said this to everyone in every MMO I've seen that's ever asked the question "should I play <this class> or <that class>?" My answer is always the same..."the one you like playing more", you'll never be happy playing something someone else decided for you. Play what you enjoy. There's been plenty of times in these games where I've been playing "the worst class in the game" but I didn't care because I liked it, and it didn't prevent me from accomplishing the things I wanted to either.

[Saefinn]

Exactly, I've said this to everyone in every MMO I've seen that's ever asked the question "should I play <this class> or <that class>?" My answer is always the same..."the one you like playing more", you'll never be happy playing something someone else decided for you. Play what you enjoy. There's been plenty of times in these games where I've been playing "the worst class in the game" but I didn't care because I liked it, and it didn't prevent me from accomplishing the things I wanted to either.

It's something that's always bugged me lol. I feel it's only important when you are of that level for it to matter. The MCH in my FC ended up getting refused to PF groups in HW because he was a MCH and MCH can't DPS well and yet he was capable of out DPSing a lot of people.

But you've reminded me, I was pretty stubborn about playing the job I liked in FFXI. I was a SCH main there, for the Abyssea content SCH was pretty undesired, I used to get told it couldn't heal well enough to keep up, and WHM was considered the only choice as healer, because SCH was 2 tiers of Cure behind WHM.

And the proc system they had meant there was a pretty exclusive group of jobs. Shout groups would ask if I had a WHM or BLM instead, I had refused to level them so I was able to leave them with the choice of taking me or wait ages for a WHM to respond. I found I kept up fine and we still had a set up by which they could cover procs. When it came to forming a static, I ended up our main healer and was dependable.