Thread: Dancer 6.0 Speculation

Originally Posted by Rai_Takara

I agree. That doesn't mean we can't have RNG of course, but we need to better reduce our RNG spread. They reworked AST because RNG was bad, and surprisingly kept it with DNC. Having a high RNG spread means you can't balance the job well to its peers. If you balance it based on the average damage, then half the time DNC would be the best ranged. If you do it based on best RNG, then you'd have to farm RNG to make it comparable to other ranged. And of course, if you balance based on the lowest RNG, then most runs DNC would be superior. It's kind of ridiculous that you can be in a situation where DNC has more raid contribution than a melee DPS if you farm enough RNG.

Ideally, they'd just reduce flourish to 30 seconds. This makes it so you rarely end up in a situation where you won't have a proc. This won't fix the fan dance 1 and 3 RNG though. Also depending on whatever new dances or other procs/combos they add, it might be too much.

I Agree... Currently DNC has 2 layers of RNG to acquire their feathers, which sounds quite jarring. A 3rd layer if you count Fan Dance 3. A trait that reduced Flourish cooldown to 30s would be a nice, but honestly I'd rather have Flourish's flourished procs grant a feather 100%.

Originally Posted by ty_taurus

I find Dancer's burst phase a lot of fun, but the downtime between the end of your first Technical Step and the next can get a little slow, so this is designed to try and rectify that, though the challenge comes into trying to enforce it's use outside of your technical window as the point is not to just make the technical step burst more insane which is why Phoenix Flourish is something you alternate between Flourish uses. I think the idea needs a bit of work to iron out some complication areas, but I like the idea of thematically upgrading our peacock feathers into phoenix feathers for a period.

Improvisation really sucks when you realize it is the level 80 capstone. Other jobs usually get an exciting action while DNC gets a situational spell that only sees use in a handful of situations. Even if you decide to use just for the healing boost, it's pretty overkill given the state of the healers right now. I would literally change to grant feathers as well as faster Esprit gain through the duration.

And yeah, I really like the Phoenix Dance idea, and I hope they do something like that to smooth out the janky downtime phase. I'm speaking for myself here, but feels awful to sit through your whole downtime phase looking at those 3 juicy feathers and not being able to weave a single one of them because you can't risk getting to the TS phase with less than that - plus not having things to weave for that duration makes it feel really slow... It's supposed to be like that for a job like DNC?

Mayhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but Phoenix Flourish wouldn't really help. Heck, with this, you'd actually have to store feathers both for your burst window and for Phoenix Flourish, because you can instantly upgrade them to Phoenix Dance I/II. Even with the proc rates boosted to 100%, you "only" get a Phoenix Dance III every other GCD, meaning you can easily double-weave PD I/II > PD III to use up the stored feathers for more potency.

Also, by buffing proc rates and Fan Dance potencies, you may actually push Saber Dance too far down the priority list. As of right now, going Cascade > Reverse Cascade > FD I > FD II amounts to 800 potency, or 400 per GCD. Following from that, Fountain > Fountain Fall > FD I > FD 2 is 900 potency, or 450 per GCD. Together that's 425 potency per GCD (which you're guaranteed to get every time if proc rates go up to 100%), while Saber Dance is 600
So if you buff the potency of the feathers too much, you might actually make Saber Dance a DPS loss

Also also I'm personally not a fan of having cooldowns have alternating effects. Deviating from the optimal rotation can already be punishing enough in this game, and stuff like this is just bound to make that punishment so much worse.

As for an alternative? It's not particularly elegant, but:
Hot Streak (Trait) - while performing Technical Step or Standard Step, you gain 1 Feather for every step sequence you input correctly.
Say you press Technical Step and get R B G Y, then inputting R > G grants you a feather. Inputting G afterward gets you another and finishing with Y gets you a 3rd. However, if you mess up and go, say R B Y G Y, you only get 2 feathers total, one for R > B and another for G > Y. Alternatively, you can make it a tad more punishing and make it so when you mess up, you can't get any more feathers for this Technical Step, i.e. going R B Y G Y will only get you 1 feather total.

Thematically it makes a lot of sense to get some sort of punishment for screwing up a dance performance IMO, plus it makes it so that in order to play optimally, you only need to save up 1 feather for your burst phase, meaning you can use the rest freely during the downtime to keep up the pace.

Originally Posted by Big-Isaac

Mayhaps I'm misunderstanding something, but Phoenix Flourish wouldn't really help. Heck, with this, you'd actually have to store feathers both for your burst window and for Phoenix Flourish, because you can instantly upgrade them to Phoenix Dance I/II. Even with the proc rates boosted to 100%, you "only" get a Phoenix Dance III every other GCD, meaning you can easily double-weave PD I/II > PD III to use up the stored feathers for more potency.

Also, by buffing proc rates and Fan Dance potencies, you may actually push Saber Dance too far down the priority list. As of right now, going Cascade > Reverse Cascade > FD I > FD II amounts to 800 potency, or 400 per GCD. Following from that, Fountain > Fountain Fall > FD I > FD 2 is 900 potency, or 450 per GCD. Together that's 425 potency per GCD (which you're guaranteed to get every time if proc rates go up to 100%), while Saber Dance is 600
So if you buff the potency of the feathers too much, you might actually make Saber Dance a DPS loss

Also also I'm personally not a fan of having cooldowns have alternating effects. Deviating from the optimal rotation can already be punishing enough in this game, and stuff like this is just bound to make that punishment so much worse.

I do like the idea of gaining feathers on correct inputs. It would probably fine to just give you a feather for a correct input even if you make a mistake in between. You get a small DPS penalty for correcting your steps. I think the idea is to raise the skill ceiling without having to drop the skill floor, generally speaking. There are a few issues though with just gaining a feather per correct input. First, Technical Step nets you all 4 feathers if done correctly, which almost every does 95% of the time. This means there's no real reason to save feathers ever and they become just resources you use as you generate them. More importantly, it slightly slows down the time where you want to use technical step after standard step, because if standard gives you 2 feathers, then you'll overcap if you go straight into technical step, and that would push back the burst window, no?

As for an alternative? It's not particularly elegant, but:
Hot Streak (Trait) - while performing Technical Step or Standard Step, you gain 1 Feather for every step sequence you input correctly.
Say you press Technical Step and get R B G Y, then inputting R > G grants you a feather. Inputting G afterward gets you another and finishing with Y gets you a 3rd. However, if you mess up and go, say R B Y G Y, you only get 2 feathers total, one for R > B and another for G > Y. Alternatively, you can make it a tad more punishing and make it so when you mess up, you can't get any more feathers for this Technical Step, i.e. going R B Y G Y will only get you 1 feather total.

Thematically it makes a lot of sense to get some sort of punishment for screwing up a dance performance IMO, plus it makes it so that in order to play optimally, you only need to save up 1 feather for your burst phase, meaning you can use the rest freely during the downtime to keep up the pace.

These are some good points. The Sabre Dance DPS loss during that window wouldn't be too much of an issue because you could rely on that OGCD Esprit Spender to avoid overcapping and then go back to Sabre Dancing after the window finishes, but you bring up a good point about the punishing nature of alternating GCDs. The question becomes, how do you create something to help the flow of the rotation outside the technical step window without pressuring DNCs to save whatever new tool gets added for that window?

IMO having an oGCD spender would be problematic in its own right. The fact Saber Dance has the opportunity cost of a GCD means the oGCD version would have to be worth significantly less potency per Esprit spent, making it not feel satisfying to press.
I'm also not a fan of creating bloat to paper over cracks in a job's design, which I feel this would be.

As for an alternative to that? Take Saber Dance off the GCD (and adjust the potency accordingly). It's the odd man out among DNC's GCDs and it's never fun to have to press it instead of a Flourish or Dance, so this fixed that problem. And while you're at it, crank up the amount of Esprit you generate outside of Technical Step, which in turn would contribute to increasing the job's pace outside of the burst window.

For feathers, there are a few ways they could prevent having to save them up so much
- Give them a duration, similar to the Flourish procs, making it impossible to stockpile them
- Make Technical Step generate a bunch of feathers upon execution, making it unneccesary to stockpile them
- Make the Fan Dances completely unaffected by any and all damage/crit buffs

Of these, I favor the 2nd option, as I described in my previous post, but the other two would work as well.

And while I'm here, might as well try to redesign the worst skill in the game:

Improvisation:
Grants 6 stacks of a buff that each increases the proc rate of your next GCD Flourish skill to 100% and removes combo requirements. A stack is consumed each time you use a GCD Frlourish skill.
Upon use, your Improv button becomes "Finale" for 60 seconds
Finale:
Performs a 6-hit combo for massive damage. The potency and nature of the attacks depend on which Flourish GCDs you used for the 6 stacks of Improv
If you performed more single target skills than AoE, then Finale is single target. If you used more AoE, Finale is an AoE. If it's a tie, the first skill you use determines the effect.
The potency of Finale is incraesed for each unique Flourish skill you used with Improv (i.e. incentive to use all 4 at least once), and for each Flourish skill that isn't a repeat of the previous one

Probably needs work, but with a dancer who is trying to slit you up with chakrams, then the term "improvistation" invokes something like this for me far more than that... thing... we have right now.

Originally Posted by SpeckledBurd

Espirit as a whole needs fleshing out I think. It currently has an AOE dump, so it's open to gain a Single Target dump and other actions on longer cooldowns that are more than just filler.

...Why spend an extra button on a mechanic that amounts only to whether we can count if our enemy is singular or plural?

I'll agree that Espirit needs to be more than just a pseudo-cooldown convoluted by a linked party member's presence, but if it's ultimately just going from firing on readiness (or damage window near enough to readiness) to firing on readiness in priority order, each with no further interaction, and correctly hitting A for one enemy or B for two or more... is that a meaningful improvement?


Aside:

In general, what of things that actually make us feel like... a Dancer, or our gameplay to feel more like... a dance? There's so much more we could do by which to make the job feel more iconic in its actual gameplay, rather than being just a skin to a generic Ranged DPS with further dependence upon a single party member's throughput.

I'd like another step. One that bring more utility buffs instead of damage buffs. One of their highlights is that they are able to provide buffs while attacking at the same time. So expanding on top of that would be great.
The utility buff could be anything to help when dealing with mechanics like movements speed or healing potency increase. Both also can indirectly increase damage as well as everybody will be able to get through certain mechanics faster and healers would be able to deal more damage since they heal for more per cast. (those are just spitballs, to give a rough idea)

A small-ish change to make solo-ing on the job more fun:

- Allow you to cast Closed Position on yourself, granting the "Lead Performer" buff.
"Lead Performer" doubles the damage buff and Esprit generation of Standard Step, quadruples the damage buff and Esprit generation of Technical Step (but it doesn't spread to others in range any more) and double the duration of the crit buff.

Originally Posted by Big-Isaac

A small-ish change to make solo-ing on the job more fun:

- Allow you to cast Closed Position on yourself, granting the "Lead Performer" buff.
"Lead Performer" doubles the damage buff and Esprit generation of Standard Step, quadruples the damage buff and Esprit generation of Technical Step (but it doesn't spread to others in range any more) and double the duration of the crit buff.

I like this idea! Blue Mage already has a spell Basic Instinct that only works if you're alone in instanced content, so I presume the tech is already possible for a variable of Closed Position that works when you're solo.