New Dancer ability in the benchmark

[SweetPete]

After checking out the new dancer ability it seems to be another step of some kind with a bluish finish. Beautifully done by the way. What do you guys think it does? I’m sure it’s a buff but will it buff just your dancer partner or the entire party? Also what effect do you think it will have? Haste maybe? Drain effect? Hp and mp regen?

What are you guys thoughts?

[Aurida]

Also what effect do you think it will have?

10% damage up for 60 seconds

[SweetPete]

10% damage up for 60 seconds

Oh you think it will increase the standard step from 5%-10%? But why do that? Just make a trait that that increases standard step.

[Rongway]

Oh you think it will increase the standard step from 5%-10%? But why do that? Just make a trait that that increases standard step.

Maybe it requires more steps? The Finish would need to do more damage too; not because it's an upgraded action but because additional time locked in the dance.

Probably not increasing to 10% though; based on past upgrades I'd guess more like 8%. It's a damage increase to two players, not just one, and 5%->10% would be a big upgrade even for one person. For reference ShB traited SAM's maintenance buffs up from 10% to 13%, while BLM traits Enochian from 5% up to 15%. Enochian is unusual in that dropping it locks BLM out of their most powerful spells, and dropping it is much more punishing than just the lost 15% bonus, so a 10% increase is easier to justify for BLM. It may be harder to justify a 5% increase to a Standard Finish that buffs two players.

[SweetPete]

Maybe it requires more steps? The Finish would need to do more damage too; not because it's an upgraded action but because additional time locked in the dance.

Probably not increasing to 10% though; based on past upgrades I'd guess more like 8%. It's a damage increase to two players, not just one, and 5%->10% would be a big upgrade even for one person. For reference ShB traited SAM's maintenance buffs up from 10% to 13%, while BLM traits Enochian from 5% up to 15%. Enochian is unusual in that dropping it locks BLM out of their most powerful spells, and dropping it is much more punishing than just the lost 15% bonus, so a 10% increase is easier to justify for BLM. It may be harder to justify a 5% increase to a Standard Finish that buffs two players.

But we have damage so I hope it’s something else. Really don’t need a second damage buff. We already have a 100% uptime 10% since both dancer and partner each get 5%. More different utility Im hoping for. Like a haste skill will be ideal. We don’t have any attack speed buffs but bard I think.

[Rongway]

But we have damage so I hope it’s something else. Really don’t need a second damage buff.

I didn't say it's a second buff.

You asked why it would be a different action instead of just increasing the effect of Standard Step by trait. I'm saying maybe they want the upgraded action to require more steps, and if so it might be a new action rather than a trait that increases the effect of Standard Step.

[AnotherPerson]

Standard Step. Technical Step.

Lv 81 - 90 It might be Standard Steps' Trait upgrade, or a different step sequence - Advanced Step (requiring 3 steps).
If that's the case, Lv 100 maybe Ultimate Step becomes Technical Step's Trait upgrade... or a 5 step sequence.

It's possible that it could be a 2-step sequence or 4-step sequence, but instead of superbuffing your attack, it does damage, but also gives a bonus party defense buff too. If that happened, we may see a return of MCH's dismantle or bard getting another support buff. We'll have to see.

[ty_taurus]

The main thing we have to go off of at this point is that the special effect is blue rather than gold. Why? Color usually means something in this game, so the fact that it's blue makes me want to believe that its effect is different than the typical 5% damage buff we're familiar with. I'm also curious about where in our 2 minute rotation it's supposed to fit. There's very little to go off of course, but I'm going to throw out an idea...

I think this new Step will share a recast timer with Standard Step, be a 2-step dance, and have the same DPS potency while granting a different effect. This would make the dance interchangeable with Standard Step, which works out nicely since Standard Finish lasts 60 seconds despite Standard Step being used on CD. This means we could possibly take advantage of those otherwise useless additional 30 seconds (though they are nice for holding onto the buff between pulls/phases otherwise), and give us some other form of utility to weave into our rotation when we see fit. For that reason, I believe this will have a more defensive form of utility (maybe only 30 seconds, or possibly even less depending since it likely won't be something designed to be maintained throughout the fight like Standard Finish is).

Here are some ideas:
1. Defense Up +5-10% for 15-30 seconds (it's a really boring option that I'm not a huge fan of, but it's the most straightforward possibility). You could also stack this with Shield Samba for additional mitigation. Too much for a DPS? Possibly, though they did put a pretty massive emphasis on barriers/defenses throughout the benchmark (New barriers for PLD, SGE, AST, and probably SCH along with upgrades to Blackest Night and Divine Benison). It could be that they're trying to up the damage finally but are trying to be more cautious about it?

2. Lost Sprint effect. This one's more wishful thinking, though not all of you might like the idea. Bozja's Lost Sprint speed is something I became really fond of and is an interesting way to approach defensive utility indirectly. It helps your party position themselves theoretically, but doesn't offer any actual value when receiving a hit.

3. Some kind of debuff on enemies in range rather than on allies. Dancer has historically always been a very debuff-heavy support in Final Fantasy, something that's unusually absent from FFXIV, so perhaps they could be trying some sort of damage down on enemies to foil the damage up Standard and Technical buffs. It's pretty similar to option 1, but I like this more on a thematic level and feels like it makes even more sense with the color scheme, though personally I'd like to see a bit more of an interesting debuff like Slow.

I think it could be taken in any number of directions, but what do you think about something along these lines?

[SweetPete]

Here are some ideas:
1. Defense Up +5-10% for 15-30 seconds (it's a really boring option that I'm not a huge fan of, but it's the most straightforward possibility). You could also stack this with Shield Samba for additional mitigation. Too much for a DPS? Possibly, though they did put a pretty massive emphasis on barriers/defenses throughout the benchmark (New barriers for PLD, SGE, AST, and probably SCH along with upgrades to Blackest Night and Divine Benison). It could be that they're trying to up the damage finally but are trying to be more cautious about it?

3. Some kind of debuff on enemies in range rather than on allies. Dancer has historically always been a very debuff-heavy support in Final Fantasy, something that's unusually absent from FFXIV, so perhaps they could be trying some sort of damage down on enemies to foil the damage up Standard and Technical buffs. It's pretty similar to option 1, but I like this more on a thematic level and feels like it makes even more sense with the color scheme, though personally I'd like to see a bit more of an interesting debuff like Slow.

I think it could be taken in any number of directions, but what do you think about something along these lines?

I definitely like your idea about debuff. It could truly be that. I almost forgot dancers were debuff heavy in past games. So yeah I can see that happening. I don’t think it will be defense but I could be wrong there too. Maybe we will get closed position 2 to have a second dance partner and which ever step you use first goes to the first one and the second step goes to the second one. Thinking a bit outside the box but it could happen.

[Kabooa]

Given that you get a 1min buff on a 30 sec timer, it's reasonable to think that perhaps this alternative dance finish is a higher potency hit (Or perhaps a higher-over-time influx for the dancer) but doesn't refresh Standard Step.