The Last Dance II: The Show Must Go On

I was specifically answering this:


You made a point that it's low end content only, so I gave another example of high end content favoring it.

How much surplus acc are we talking about here to make Centovente viable and 95% capped?
I think it's gotta be around ~250 Accuracy.
If you're around ~250 accuracy above the number you'd require to 95% cap on the current target, you're gonna be capped at 99% on MH and 95% on OH with Centovente.

~250 is a big number... With recent gear I can see it viable in more content than just pure zergs though. It's not something you can use 100% of the time but then again I think it's not even something only available during SV/Bolster Zergs or pre adoulin content.


I mean check the numbers, compare an Aeneas/Twash build to a Twash/Centovente one. If we are to trust Katriina's nubmers the difference is HUGE, it's not "just" 500 DPS (which would be a lot already) but way above. It's insane.

But that's basically the same thing that Oraen already said previously, namely high buff zergs. Melees dropping their surplus Accuracy in gear and eating STP/Attack food is typically a given--but they'd still have less need for Acc buffs than a Centovente DNC would have, I'd think. In any case, I was mostly wondering if Centovente was usable in midrange content like Ambuscade or Omen. Getting enough Accuracy isn't the issue, but rather how much MA/STP you have to sacrifice for it.

Oh well, nevermind. I'll just drop it and move on.

DNC guide on bg wiki has Malevolence on off hand for AE set, problem is, dnc can't equip Malevolence.

Look at all these Asura Dnc...

Let's say hypothetically I was considering returning after 3 years. How far behind am I and how much work/time would it take to catch-up gear wise? (Ignore Relic/Mythic/Empy) Where would one even begin to researching everything I need these days. I read the last 4 pages just to try and get an idea of where Dancer is at now, but it's not as clear as I would have hoped.

you're obviously not trying hard enough

What's everybody's experience on Ishvara vs Mache+1 for Rudra's Storm?

I'm getting moderately conflicting data but that, all in all, sort of favors Mache+1 (small difference either way)

Hi Sechs and Elizabet,

I completely agree with your stance in regards to doing more testing and/or peer review the current consciences.

Please note the following:

This schedule was created in order to show Madranta's fix for the spreadsheet, after discovering that many functions weren't working properly, and that Terp PK DMG wasn't transferring across all hits, and my numbers fit theirs too [reference below].



Part of the reason why this is happening, is also concerned with R15 Augment on Twashtar, giving Rudra +10% across its hits.

Thanks, guide was updated accordingly.


I personally switched to Mache +1 after my friend crafted it, and I agree; the difference is minuscule in favor of Mache+1.

With Ishvara: 24487
With Mache+1: 24514

I wonder what are the thoughts on these notes for us Dancers:


I believe the current condition of Dancer abilities, necessitates few changes, or an introduction to new ones.
Yes, Steps are great, all of them, aside from Stutter [maybe].
The issue however, is the time it takes to apply all these steps, and the impact it leaves on the overall DPS.
While the same debuffs applied by other jobs are instant, Dancer needs to maintain them over time, its not an issue in current endgame mechanics [since most of them are short except of W3, and few HELMs], but rather an inconvenience nonetheless.

Would it be plausible to introduce new paradigms? Along the lines of:

• Higher level of Dazes per step [each step gives 2 levels, and Presto ones give 4 or 5?], to shorten the application time, reduce TP consumption, and increase the overall DPS by association?

• Introduce new steps; such as, a step that causes the monster to lose a percentage of its STP, or a Step that inflects plague?

• Remove the decay factor from Saber/Fan Dance and make them constant?

• Introduce a new iLvl Shield that mimics Uto Grip? to push the use of a single wield even further? Since it proved to be a very solid option.

• Increase Haste Samba to 25%, or at least add 15 STP to it?

• Introduce a TP-Bonus Flourish in Group 1? or at least modify Desperate Flourish to give TP-Bonus!

• Increase the enmity gained from Animated Flourish and the effect of Violent Flourish.

• Give [Conserve TP IV] trait to Dancer?

Just random thoughts after reading the Dev Post, dreams are free!

I think Dancer is in a pretty good spot except for the constant JA delay issue. I like the idea of having multiple levels of Daze applied per step, but that alone doesn't really fix the problem because, mathematically, you'll be doing the same amount of JAs as before because the effects will wear off sooner (since you're "updating" the daze status less often). You would also need to increase the duration of daze for this to be effective.

I like the Animated Flourish and Violent Flourish suggestions. Group 1 in general needs some attention.

Saber Dance and Fan Dance I think are fine as is personally, constant 90% multiplicative PDT would be absolutely broken... and you could say that maybe the constant PDT value should be lower, but 90% is really valuable as a one-time thing for certain TP moves.

The single best thing they could do for us is reduce/remove the animation lag and JA delay on steps. Also, there's no reason why Presto needs that delay. I understand that the delay is a feature that's built into the engine and has almost no chance of being changed but...

They could just overhaul the step system altogether. It's crazy that you need to take 10 JAs just to cap one debuff. Imagine if, instead, you had "Stances", e.g. Box Stance, and autoattacks under this stance would accumulate a defense-down effect. It would look like a Samba except the effect accumulates up until a cap. Something like this would reduce the number of JAs you need overall, since the effect is applied to autoattacks. Again this will never happen, but it's fun to think about as an exercise in game balance.

None of this will happen, but still let's go at it:

Think we're fine with steps, but a method to make them apply faster would be good.
Maybe increase the potency of presto would be a nice idea.

Personally I would also change Stutter from Meva- to MDB-.
I wouldn't personally add more steps.
I would add more info in the packets to allow for easier and better tracking through addons though.

Absolutely yes.
They should do the same to Innin/Yonin for NIN as well.

Against this.
They already showed that they want DNC to be dualwielding and made it clear by giving DNC Dualwield traits (previously you gained them through /NIN, remember?).

The fact Shield can be good in some strange setup/circumstances is a consequence of other things. They didn't "plan" for it.
I'm not asking to resolve this strange situation, but certainly they shouldn't promote it.


Meh... but they should at least increase Drain and Aspir.
Their values are completely off.
Or maybe make them scale with something I dunno.
Not too bothered about Haste Samba honestly.
But if they wanna increase it to 10% base (plus 5% merits) sure, I won't be against it.


Nah... All cool stuff don't get me wrong but I don't think any of this is "necessary".


Absolutely yes, to both.
One thing I've always dreamed about them adding is a Dispel move/step.
Wish DNC had one like that, maybe with a big cooldown, not 100%, whatever, but it could be useful.

The Enmity on Fan Dance I dunno, I'm mixed.
It's useful if you have to offtank or tank. But when you want to use it to reduce damage taken (I can think on Wave3 Divergence bosses) it's super annoying because it makes you reach sooner the point at which the Boss will turn around to fight you.
super annoying.

Sadly I don't think there's a solution for that of course.



C'mon Katriinaaaaa! :-P
I mean I'm not saying it wouldn't be cool or anything, but is it really "needed"?
DNC is already in an awesome position. Few minor (MINOR!) tweaks and quality of life (being able to track steps after 5!) are certainly welcome.
But simply giving DNC intense boosts in DPS is just a no-no imo.

Just my two cents.




Either way, none of this will happen.
I'm hoping for moderate job specific adjustments from january onwards though.

I forgot: make steps last slightly longer.
We already increase that through job points, but even more would be good. It's annoying on some very long fights.

It's also annoying that's so hard to track them, which is why I was hoping for SE to add more information about steps in the packets.

Should make steps take 0 time to apply and not reset weapon delay like maneuvers. That would really make Dancer a lot more fun to play.

Would that be possible to do?
It's a matter of applying a "something" to a target that's not you.
Whereas for maneuvers it's something that you apply directly to yourself.

Isn't there a difference in terms of how the game handles stuff, between these two things?

This, basically

I'm totally on board with this, not that I don't thoroughly enjoy it already!

As a player interested in hybrid roles more than pure DD, I personally don't think it's the enmity gained that needs increase, but CE gained AND recast that needs fix. It seems to me that the original idea of animated flourish + fan dance is to give dnc a way to "tank", but both JA aren't particularly good for tanking. Which made the job a lot less effective as hybrid.

We all know that provoke is a horrible ja to tank because ve decays as soon as ja is up again. Even if animated flourish VE increase to 1800 like provoke or slightly surpass it, it's still going to be terrible.

Compare with other DD jobs that really wasn't design to tank but able to, like drk, which has 11 enmity spells that can be spammed none stop, and 2 of them gains CE, animated flourish doesn't quite catch up in today's tanking game play, IMO.

For DD only players, they probably don't care about tanking as much though.


I personally think both stance suffers too much when player uses them, essentially punishes player for playing more hybrid playstyle. RDM can cast cure IV with temper2 up, never really losing any dps besides casting delay when they support pt in emergency.

Saber dance blocks waltz, and if you cancel it for waltz you will have to wait for the cool down again. As if losing tp for cure isnt bad enough for dps already. Essentially locked the job out of more support oriented playstyle if they want to maintain dps.

Fan dance is the same, RUN actually gains dps when they tank with their defensive JA battuta because of extra tp from parry. But using fan dance doesn't gain dps, they reduce dps. So by comparison fan dance is a lot more meh as defensive tanking JA.

And yeah, decay sucks when you super tank....And many mobs strong dmg isnt physical but magical too, so pdt- doesn't save lives. that's another thing that JA doesn't catch up to today's ffxi gameplay.

I certainly feel both JA need a buff, fan dance should be dt- not pdt-, and penalty for both stance should be removed, IMO.


Or don't use it :D. Saber all day everyday. I can't see fan dance being very useful in group play with healers and support, IMO. Not the way it is now. And yet I see people full time it in dyna and parse much lower than it should be.

I don't perma use it, but sometimes it's the difference between dying and staying alive after the boss turns and hits you with a couple of WSs.

FanDance is nice in granting you additional layers of survivability from occasional direct damage or AoE damage, but then again it's bad when you don't want to tank ;_;



While I don't own one, I think Fan Dance is particularly nice for Terpsichore owners.
When you have AM3 up, DA is greatly devaluated (which is different from being useless, but still...) so they can ride Fan Dance with a pretty minimal reduction to their DPS (compared to what it would be for non Terps owners) and be granted the full benefit of hybrid DNC playstyle.
Waltzes like there's no tomorrow, additional PDT to cover up the gaps in your TP gear... I mean, it's an effective playstyle.

It also cancels samba, which is dps for everybody and the user.



Probably not the case in full buffed pt but in lowman fan dance penalty make it worse to waltz like no tomorrow lol. I dont know why I have such different pov on fan dance compare with other people since I find this ja extremely meh as it is. Perhaps I didn't use it correctly.

Brain fart but... who exactely benefits from Samba, once you're at capped haste?
2H DDs reach that with either Hasso or Last Resort
1H DDs reach that with Dual Wield normally.
MNK can reach it with the right MA gear, depends on the Main Hand you're using, but lolmnk anyway.

I'm sure I'm missing somethiiiing, but who exactely were you thinking about with that "alliance boost" from Samba?

War isn't capping haste with just hasso, nor DRK when lr down.

Magic haste=43.75%, equip haste=25%, hasso=10%, total=78.75%, which is not 80%.

1h can remove dw gears for dps gain.

Not sure that apply to all jobs with native DW traits though :x
Other Dualwielding jobs, sure I guess. But then again it's not "necessary" thanks to DW gear.
Guess you have a point for WAR, not sure I'm convinced about DRK though.

I don't play DRK but isn't Last Resort for them like 45secs cooldown in which they can't have it up, with merits/job/points/gear/whatever it is that boosts it.
Doesn't look like it's gonna make a noticeable difference for them, one to worry about at least.

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Last_Resort

Merit has 10 sec- so 4:10 recast? Back is 15 duration + so 3:15 duration. That's 55 sec gap from what I've seen unless I'm missing something.

I think 55 sec gap isnt small because each point of haste values more at 78.75% haste, and there can be the time that drk died and lose it, or cancel it on strong offensive mobs like war to reduce defensive penalty. So in reality it may be down even more often than what we see on paper.


They are as unnecessary as fan dance, IMO. The only dangerous physical aoe move in dyna are fell cleave and maybe tarus boss aoe rudra (forgot the name), other physical moves are either single or conel.

Most of the real dangerous aoe moves are magical: wave 1 and 2 NIN sp, luopan blow up from geo, fetter attacks, smn sp if they are not slept, blu aoe nuke and petri everyone etc. I died to all of above since I started dyna at least once, and physical dmg reduction won't save me from these.

Unless fan dance gives dt- instead of pdt-, I don't think it's worth it to full time because they don't do much. On the same time everybody loses dps with fan dance including the user.

I guess you can pop it if you see a WAR mob, but full time, I'm not a fan(no pun intended).

I agree, equally unnecessary.
So it kinda falls down to personal preference and alliance setup.

From cor pov, I would certainly appreciate haste samba from dnc lol. So I can use stp/MA gears in 2 slots instead of dw.

Fan Dance and Saber Dance are both just utilities. And Fan Dance isn't used full-time, but as mentioned above, for emergencies or certain boss thresholds, and that alone justifies its existence. Most of the time you don't even go past the 70% threshold. Dancer is a big buffer/debuffer, but they are squishy and also in the front lines constantly, so this survivability greatly enhances its overall utility. (can't buff/debuff/heal if you're dead)

Terp users don't benefit from Saber Dance as much as others, it provides a DPS boost but again it's usually not fulltimed in all situations. Waltzes are important because humans make mistakes with putting up DT sets and healing.

Both of the above stem from the same idea that keeping yourself and others alive is absolutely worth sacrificing your (and potentially others) DPS for a short JA window.

I oftentimes opt to use neither because the reaction-time flexibility is one of the job's potentially greatest strengths. (Plus you get to keep up Sambas. Even if your party is beyond haste cap, some random form of haste can drop and having the redundancy prevents sudden drops in overall DPS)

The way I judge the ja is v.s other jobs though. So in a way I do feel fan dance/saber dance mechanic lag behind other jobs, and I personally feel it can use a buff even if some people think the sacrifice is worth it.

Like I said, RUNs battuta is a powerful defensive JA, and every hit they parries they gain dps with more tp. They can just fact tank mob, eat all hits and more mob hit the harder they hit. By comparison fan dance lags behind as defensive JA. It loses dps, isnt constant, and doesn't save the user from magical aoe.

If you are in more of a low buff situation, not having haste samba up makes noticeable tp speed difference that it's actually harder to waltz spam without fan dance. I feel the design of the ja doesn't make a lot of sense, more so than JA delay from steps that people seems to complain about.

Same can be said for rdm temper II. Temper II is an offensive ja that gives 33% TA for both tp and ws, and regard of the set there will always be 33% ta. Rdm can cast cures, debuffs, sleep mobs, bind them, silence, dispel and basically do everything without ever lose 33% TA full time. Why can't dnc do the same for cures if it's meant to be a hybrid?

With how powerful some other ja in game I certainly feel ja like saber or fan dance lag behind in terms of overall performance. There are jobs like run that face tank mobs and gain dps, or cor that spams 50k ws back to back with 24 dt- in every set and do 2 rolls, or rdm that do everything front line with no penalty, or drk war Sam that can do attack defense debuff ws AND do great dps, or thf that gets invite for the sake of TH while doing good dps. Almost every other job has utility that stands out and fan/saber dance isnt significantly better than other jobs utility ja.
Fan/saber can really use a buff to catch up between all other powerful utility from other jobs.


You can probably argue fan/saber just some utility on a already power 1h so it doesn't matter, and I have no doubt that career dnc will still get invite to endgame anyways.

But with how powerful some of other jobs are recently because of their DPS AND utility, I would still put dnc on the list of jobs that could greatly benefit from a buff. That would extend the utility of dnc a bit more, IMO.

Here's my short wish list, since we are in dream mode right now.

- Make Waltz more valuable by granting the healed player a stoneskin status or a separate status icon that achieves the same goal so that it doesn't interfere with WHM cureskin.
[logic: Dancers spend a lot of TP on cures which increases DPS loss, so at the very least there should be something to help circumvent that while also increasing their value as a front line hybrid job. This could be achieved by adding gear, similar to Dashing Subligars blink effect]

- Shorten Contradance timer to 1 or 2 minutes.
[Logic: What good is an "oh ***, there's an emergency" button on a 5-minute timer? Also, maybe I wont consider cutting my wrists when Contradance is eaten by paralyze. Sure, we all should be walking around with remedy's anyway but still, 5 minutes is far too long.]

- Make steps faster or instant.
[Locic: What everyone else has said]

Overall, I think DNC is in a good place-ish so I don't have a long list but the most important change for me would actually be the waltz change. I really think it would make the job more valuable and requested if it's cures had a utility that other jobs don't bring.

I can agree with that, and also that the abilities haven't aged as well as others, especially given that they're meripo group 2 abilities. I think my argument more or less boils down to "their current effects shouldn't be mitigated since they have niche but vital roles", but I wouldn't be opposed to extra buffage to make them more relevant compared to existing JAs.

Fan/saber used to be a lot more significant than they currently are, given how common x-hit and DT gear are these days (and Terp). IMO the easiest buff to Saber Dance would be bonus STP. Hell, even Regain.

For Fan Dance, thinking it benefit from a higher bottom-cap of PDT (maybe to 50%) and a significant adjustment to CE (would require extra hate tools for DNC too). My vision for Fan Dance would actually just turn DNC into an off-tank... something that would be really swell is a THF-like ability that steals hate from other party members (maybe even AoE... drool).

SE wouldn't have added the enmity+ to Fan Dance if they didn't originally envision tanking ability from the job.

EDIT: Currently, the best hate mechanic DNC has is Divine Waltz, which... is not totally reliable as a tanking tool...

Kat, some friends made me notice the Aeneas/Centovente DPS (bit less than 6k) is suspiciosly low.
It's ok for it to be lower than Twash/Cento, but ~1100 DPS lower sounds like a stretch.

Can you doublecheck that all values were fine and re-test Twash/Cento vs Aeneas/Cento? Both R15 of course.

Check the TPoverflow value as well. With the Aeneas/Cento setup you can't afford more than 250TP overflow or you're wasting damage.
250, while small, seems realistic though.

I dunno, it just feels like something is wrong with Aeneas/cento that much below. It's barely above Aeneas/Twash and Aeneas/Sari, that can't be right?