Easier? Dancer vs Summoner Debate

[MahthildisMMORPG]

I find Dancer to be easier, it's like playing Simon Says.

Plus, it doesn't have pet management, lacks mp, and doesn't have to stand in one spot to cast anything.

[Ggwppino]

it has been more than a year now that the smn no longer has to manage the pet and it has practically no longer had a cast for two years (now every minute the smn at 90 has only 7 seconds of cast, the same as a sam). The rotation of the dnc isn't operationally intricate but it offers margins for optimizations, margins that the smn doesn't have because you just have to press all the buttons when they light up, also disregarding CDs that are all one-minute long

[SieyaM]

it has been more than a year now that the smn no longer has to manage the pet and it has practically no longer had a cast for two years (now every minute the smn at 90 has only 7 seconds of cast, the same as a sam). The rotation of the dnc isn't operationally intricate but it offers margins for optimizations, margins that the smn doesn't have because you just have to press all the buttons when they light up, also disregarding CDs that are all one-minute long

I'm a little late to this but SMN hasn't had pet management way longer than that. Ever since they became invincible there hasn't been management with them, they were simply things that the you used skills through by proxy, with some janky lag.

[Ggwppino]

I'm a little late to this but SMN hasn't had pet management way longer than that. Ever since they became invincible there hasn't been management with them, they were simply things that the you used skills through by proxy, with some janky lag.

You are right, i meant when sc was removed from the pet (for good cause), sqe definitively removed the management of the pet. SC was an excuse to move the pet to a strategic position during the general rotation that the smn has. Personally I sincerely hope that the Devs and designers have really understood why it was necessary in this expansion to remove SC from the carbuncle and are working on it. (sc's problem is not because it was on the pet, but because the pet keeps disappearing)

[Connor]

They’re both equal to me in difficulty, personally. Dancer’s optimisation is only really Fan Dance usage to avoid overcapping, hitting Sabre at around 70 and doing the same 120 sec buff rotation as every other job in existence.


Summoner’s optimisation I guess is Egi summon order, plus maybe where to put Swiftcast (Ifrit or Garuda phase lol). And of course it still has the ‘press this buff button every 120 seconds’ like every job lol.

Personally, I’d say part of optimising any job is being able to properly make use of your support skills.

Summoner has things like Rekindle, Addle, Radiant Aegis, Raise and Everlasting Fight. I’d say getting the most of out of them is as important as getting the most out of your other abilities, especially since every one of them is free except Raise.

Dancer of course has some of the most useful support there is and the same applies to them. Making good use of Shield Samba, Curing Waltz and Improvisation is just as important as making good use of damage.

I’m not saying Summoner (or Dancer) is some difficult thing with all these optimisations. They’re all generally very quick to solve with simple solutions. But I don’t think Dancer is significantly harder to optimise personally.

That said, the easiest job in the game to me by a large margin is still Bard, followed closely by Scholar. But then, the two jobs I have most experience with (since 1.0 / 2.0 lol) are…Bard and Scholar. I feel like whatever players find ‘easiest’ to optimise is always going to be skewed by personal preference and just general experience with the class

[ty_taurus]

The thing about DNC there's more nuance to your gameplay, particularly with your burst window. Not every burst window looks the same. You're generating a lot of different resources for different actions, and also trying to avoid drifting your standard step unless otherwise necessary. Sometimes you have to delay it a GCD because you're generating so much esprit so quickly, and it's better to drift standard than potentially lose a lot of esprit due to overcapping. There are opener windows where I generate 50/60/70 esprit in the 3 GCDs it takes to perform standard step. Other times I only generate 10. None of this is hard, but it requires you be very aware of all your resources and procs, something that SMN doesn't really ask for.

[remiff]

They are both extremely easy with the difference that the dancer has no cast and no obligatory gapcloser in his rotation and more resource management than the summoner, only 2 etherflow per minute for the summoner ...

[Valence]

DNC has a burst rng priority to its tools, which SMN can't really claim to have. But I'll grant you that it's nowhere near BRD's in comparison that has a lot more going on there.

[VictorSpoils]

I find Dancer to be easier, it's like playing Simon Says.

So is Summoner, only less often and usually in the same order.

[Reimmi]

I find dancer much more difficult because of proc overload at times
summoner is the easiest job in the game by a mile