Dev Tracker: Discussion

[Byrthnoth]

Store TP would have almost no effect on Dancer as a job. They need to fix JA delay or reduce the number of JAs we use to make the job viable.

[ccl]

They should fully change step; can only have one up, give 5 finishing move and maximum potency in 2 step, presto make it max potency/5FM in 1 step.

[dasva]

Change dual wield to ja haste. And reduce the amounts of course

[Damane]

Change dual wield to ja haste. And reduce the amounts of course

this would be a strong point if they increased the JA haste cap (but not the overall haste cap), which would be also an indrect buff to haste sambas usefullness.

[Capuchin]

I think the assumption that DNC needs to be "fixed" by focusing on its melee ability and TP generation is fundamentally off. DNC is not designed to fill the same roles as a SAM MNK etc.

I actually like the changes to focus on giving DNC more of a group identity as a much improved debuffer, since that's a role that is far more likely to be useful in group content.
- 30 seconds to get a step up to lv10
- It's now fairly easy to maintain multiple lv10 steps on any mob that matters, and steps are pretty potent
- Steps help the entire alliance instead of just single party buffs
- Steps stack with other debuffs (i.e. Box Step + Dia, or Quickstep + Madrigal/Hunter's Roll/Distract), so it works as a job that's complementary to another buffer.

DNC the way it seems S-E is positioning it with the last two updates is more competing with GEO and RDM for a spot, as opposed to the yet-another-DD slot. I'm kind of OK with gimping my own damage to constantly spam JAs, and dealing with the JA delay is just part of the job. If the alliance benefits more overall than my personal DPS is hurt, isn't that a win for everyone? Think more like a COR or BRD, less like a THF with some dancing JAs. You don't see a COR grumbling that they wish they could melee better, but that pesky delay from all the rolling and doubling up keeps getting in the way - and rightly so. DNC having to sacrifice DPS through high reliance on JAs that come with delay is the tradeoff for the substantial benefits to your group.

If you want further improvement, I think focusing on other support functions would be far more useful than the futile effort of trying to make DNC a top tier DD. Some possible tweaks:
- AoE Healing Waltz II? Some of these AoE enfeebling mobs are really awful and more common these days, and honestly a Yagrush shouldn't be a requirement (and could still retain its superiority through lower recast times). Besides, BLU got AoE erase so if that's fair game, so is a waltz.
- Enhancements to Step potency
- A new Samba. Maybe Double Attack (nice if your party is already delay capped)?
- Maybe a new Step? Something like GEO's Fade (mob Magic Attack down) for instance?

EDIT: Hell, with the power of skillchains these days, sometimes another WSing melee is just getting in the way and is actually counterproductive from a total party damage standpoint. I'd rather have 1-2 SAMs hitting massive light skillchains, and me as DNC spending my TP helping lower the mob's defense/evasion with steps to make that SAM even stronger, tossing Waltzes, and keeping a Samba up.

[Byrthnoth]

Please explain to me why I should take your Dancer instead of a BRD/DNC, COR/DNC, or GEO/DNC.

Haste Samba:
* SAM can cap JA Haste using Wakido Kote +1, so it doesn't benefit from Haste Samba at all unless they specifically gear for Haste Samba.
* Other 2H melees need 1.5% Haste to cap, which any job /DNC can provide.
* 1H jobs typically cap delay without Haste Samba, and the only job that can rely on having Haste Samba when choosing their equipment is Dancer (or a job subbing Dancer), so its benefit to them is kind of irrelevant because in practice no one adapts for it.

Box Step:
* /DNC provides more than half potency (13% instead of 23%), and the listed jobs can provide Attack buffs or defense- debuffs (or both) that trump the remaining -10%.

Quickstep:
* /DNC provides more than half potency (-24 instead of -44), and the listed jobs can provide Accuracy buffs or Evasion- debuffs (or both) in excess of -20.

Waltz:
* White Mages have equipment that converts HP healed into MP, so you actually hurt their MP supply if you toss helpful Waltz IIIs that they weren't expecting.
* Waltz is still insufficient when compared to the amount of damage monsters do. I Waltz III myself for something like 703 HP the last time I checked (maybe remembering wrong) with the recast hat on and it's still not sufficient. Dancer's healing ability is insufficient except as a stopgap in a catastrophic situations, and in most situations helpful Dancers just drain WHM MP pools and make the experience more frustrating for them.


6-man parties rarely already have BRD, COR, and GEO, and their debuffs/buffs are exclusive. 2H jobs show that Utsusemi is hardly necessary for current content. I'm certain that any of the above jobs could melee about as well as a non-WSing DNC melee-wise. So why should I take your dancer?

Spoiler: show

The answer is that Dancer would be providing debuffs/buffs while also doing respectable damage. The kicker is that BRD is almost as good a melee DD as DNC.

[NynJa]

* SAM can cap JA Haste using Wakido Kote +1

I thought the Hasso enhancement didnt affect its haste?

[Bukadan]

also why take another job that requires heals while giving sub par buffs to what wed normally get? even in the case of cor/dnc, the dps to cure necessity ratio is significantly higher. you'd have to be one of the indisputably elite players to even be considered. being "that guy" when someone asks "anyone wanna do Xevent?" says "yea is blu/dnc/bst/ect ok?" when the goal is a farm-status run, isnt that something you want to avoid?

[Draylo]

Don't lump BLU into there.

[Bukadan]

blu is one of the jobs that the player has to be good in order for it to contribute anything meaningful. otherwise its just inhibiting the party sucking cures out of a spot better served by even the most nq of bards. thats what my point was.

[FaeQueenCory]

Store TP would have almost no effect on Dancer as a job. They need to fix JA delay or reduce the number of JAs we use to make the job viable.

I disagree that it would have no effect on the job.
It would fix the DW-overflow... Especially how gear haste is autocapped nowadays... It could really help DNC in party situations. (eg fully buffed)

It wouldn't be a crazy boon in the same way that Saber Dance boosts DNC's DD power massively. But it would fix the job's main problem created by DW4.

And with that fix (more TP gain) DNC's potential as frontline support and DD would increase to viable levels.
And with that, DNC would be useful in party setting.
Being able to reliably and quickly put step debuffs that help the party (-def, -eva, +crit rate), AoE -na, divine waltz 2 in emergencies, haste samba, and damage spike JA for their WSs now (flourishes 3)... DNC has been pushed to the level of BLU in terms of weird hybrid-DD usefulness.
(Though BLU is more offensive than DNC, DNC's enfeebles and buffs spread the increase in damage to all melee DDs.)

Obviously SAMs and MNKs will be "better" because of Fudo and Formless... But for stuff like incursion where neither of those are "needed"... You're not horribly gimping yourself with DNC or BLU shenanigans.

However, I agree about your spoiler post (can't double quote on phone) and that the biggest hindrance is the system delay... But that's something that will never be changed... At least I doubt it ever will.
Plus all jobs have to suffer with it.

Basically: DNC will never be top tier DD, but it never was meant to. But with how it is now, the only thing holding it back from being legitimately good is the DW overflow lowering its TP return.
Which is the same as mage jobs not using any refresh or MP return gear... Only not gear based.

[dasva]

Haste Samba:
* SAM can cap JA Haste using Wakido Kote +1, so it doesn't benefit from Haste Samba at all unless they specifically gear for Haste Samba.

Not to be nitpicky but in case anyone reading is thinking omg sam with 25% ja haste.... it's not Ja haste that is being capped but total -delay...

I should also note that in light of this and the other point about how close 2hd jobs are it kinda makes the dual tp gimp completely unnecessary. Back in the day when dual wields could reach -delays much greater than 2hd weapons it kinda made sense but now when 2hders are doing it with just haste or getting dmg close it's retarded

[Kincard]

Yeah, the original idea that dual wielders attack make up for their lower damage through speed loses relevance if you're going to put a cap that's not too difficult to reach on just about every single job. Maybe they should let DW go past the 80% cap a little bit? Damage goes up really fast the more attack speed you get though, so I'm sure that could break BLU really easily.

Regardless even if you did that it wouldn't un-break DNC out of all of them, it still has the problem of needing to spam the hell out of JAs. I think if its possible system-wise they should give a JA speed up trait of some kind to DNC and PUP.

[Damane]

@cappucchin: the dnc debuffs and buffs are laughable ar best compared to my Idris geo.

if they wanted DNC to be buffer/debuffer/hybrid job they the following things need to happen:

- enhance step debuffs to a compareable lvl like a dunna geo. dnc main only
- make potency of steps cap faster. 3-4 step max. dnc main only
- change drain samba formula to deal deal extra drain dmg instead of converting dmg, add a weapon base dmg factor into the formula (not sure if they adjusted this all i know is that its delay dependend) to reflect ilvl increasr.
- add haste samba 2, 25% haste, 30% with merits

system changes: raise the following caps.
- raise gear haste cap from 25 to 40
-raise ja haste cap from 25 to 40
- maintain the current overal haste cap.

[Prothescar]

reduced TP gain penalty from DW would be nice. as it was mentioned before, there's really no reason for it anymore now that 2h can cap delay reduction almost as easily as a DWer while maintaining a faster WS frequency. 75% reduction in the current penalty for 1h weapons, 35~50% for H2H.

[Sechs]

I understand what Capuchin wants to say with "DNC isn't meant to be a top tier DPS".
But as things stand now they have two ways to make DNC a job that can fit in group content: 1) Make his buffs/debuffs relevant, 2) Make his DPS stronger
SE picked the third hidden choice: a bit of everything.
Indeed DNC received some things for 1) and some for 2), but nothing that's gonna make a difference for the types of content where you wouldn't have wanted a DNC before these changes.

Personally between the two I would have liked number 2), at that point the JA thing wouldn't have been too much of an issue, but to achieve that they should have made so many more different things compared to now, like
1) Increase JA haste cap (not overall cap)
2) Make Drain/Aspir samba do additional damage and work on everything, not just drainable/aspirable targets
3) New sambas (DA? Crit? Whatever)
4) Steps still capping at 5, but double/triple potency for DNC main
5) New steps
6) More resist amnesia
7) More STP (MUCH more)
8) Healing Waltz II (AoE, with a big enough cooldown)
9) Make Healing Waltz remove more stuff than it currently does
10) Make Sambas work alliance wide and not party wide (like steps)

Dunno what else, a dispel Flourish maybe?
With these changes, or maybe even just some of them, DNC could have come a wanted job at least for alliance content (anybody still does stuff with more than 6 people these days? =/)
Clearly it was too big of a change and they tried to address it in another way but that will sadly change nothing about DNC being more wanted in game content.


At the same time trying to see the glass half full, the situation over the last few months clearly improved for us DNCs. We're not where we would like to be but for the type of stuff we used DNC before, things got much better.

[Malithar]

It wouldn't be a crazy boon in the same way that Saber Dance boosts DNC's DD power massively. But it would fix the job's main problem created by DW4.

And with that fix (more TP gain) DNC's potential as frontline support and DD would increase to viable levels.
And with that, DNC would be useful in party setting.
Being able to reliably and quickly put step debuffs that help the party (-def, -eva, +crit rate), AoE -na, divine waltz 2 in emergencies, haste samba, and damage spike JA for their WSs now (flourishes 3)... DNC has been pushed to the level of BLU in terms of weird hybrid-DD usefulness.
(Though BLU is more offensive than DNC, DNC's enfeebles and buffs spread the increase in damage to all melee DDs.)

And what about Dnc's issue of JA spamming making their DPS all but nil? Or their Waltz's being largely unneeded in a party? Or their debuffs lacking greatly in the ratio of potency to build up time, while being generally less useful than other much easier gained buffs/debuffs? Never mind that all of this is available as a sub.

More TP does not fix Dnc, at all.

[Byrthnoth]

To be clear, I didn't think that the DW changes were going to help DNC that much either. It would have boosted my TP gain by 20%, but only boosted my DPS by something like 7% thanks to WS delay. It just felt dumb that SE canceled the changes and then gave Ninja a job trait instead when Haste Samba is what really pushes DW jobs over the edge and makes them unable to compensate for their job traits.

Giving Store TP traits would obviously have a similar effect as the DW changes, but all the time. Its effects would, also, be minor.

The real fix for the job is to reduce JA delay.

[Draylo]

They could add some damage to steps at least.

[Sechs]

That would be inconvenient for stuff like Dynamis etc, altough I guess that's hardly relevant at this point xD