Improving/Rebalancing DNC For The Future

Suggestions to Improve/Rebalance Vana'diel's Divas

Introduction

The Dancers of today are faced with a similar situation that Red Mages faced once in the past, that is "I can do a lot of things, but everything I can do, someone else does better." Through recent armor and ability releases, it has become relatively apparent that the Dev team does not see Dancer as the mostly-support-occasionalDD-class that it was originally tailored to be. The Manifesto, however, states that it wishes to keep the Dancers' solo skills in tact while further improving their ability to shine in group play. These suggestions will mostly focus on the latter concept, as I don't believe the Dancer class needs much help on the solo front.

A Brief Discussion of Opportunity Cost
A New Dancer Manifesto?

Opportunity cost is an important factor to consider when designing any Dancer job ability.
I'm sure the Dev team is aware of this term, but for those reading this forum who might not be familiar with the concept, I'll go over it a little bit.
Let's say, for example, you want to pop the Notorious Monster Orthrus. You need a Tiger King's Hide, which, on my server, sells for aroudn 200,000 gil on the Auction House.
One might say, "You can pop Orthrus for free if you just kill Ansherekh a few times or get lucky with gold chests?" But, in that case, if you pop Orthrus, you still pay the 200,000gil as an opportunity cost, because you could have sold the hide.

Similarly, we can think of a Dancer's finishing moves as "goods" that can be sold for "currency," or TP. At full power, 5 finishing moves can be converted into 100TP via the use of the ability Reverse Flourish.
So let's take a look at some Dancer Flourishes and their OPPORTUNITY COST.

1.) Desparate Flourish -- requires one finishing move, to MAYBE inflict gravity. The opportunity cost here is 25 TP - 1/4 of a weapon skill, half of a Curing Waltz III. It's not really worth using in most scenarios (if ever).
2.) Violent Flourish -- requires one finishing move to attempt to inflict stun. The opportunity cost here is 25 TP. Stun is a much more desirable effect though, and since the accuracy is so greatly enhanced by Etoile Casaque, it's definitely worth it if you have that item.
3.) Wild Flourish -- requires 3 finishing mvoes to inflict Chainbound. The opportunity cost here is 75 TP. It's almost worthless in its current state, unless maybe you're fighting Qutrub.

Suggestion: The Development team and player suggestions should be well aware of the Opportunity Cost to Dancers. If you program an ability, and Dancers don't use it, you wasted your development time and programming time to implement it. Make more effective and more useful abilities that Dancers should be willing to "pay the price" in opportunity cost to use. In addition, I'm sure Dancers would be enthralled to have reasons to use finishing moves besides stunning, forcing critical hits on weapon skills, and regenerating TP. Provide new and enticing abilities to prevent Dancer from becoming a "one-trick-pony" class.

Curent Issues with the Dancer Class

1. Damage: due to the rebalancing of 1-handed vs. 2-handed weapons and the calculation of Accuracy and Attack, and the nature of daggers in general, Dancers (along with THF) can have a fairly hard time contributing to the damage output of a party, except inside Abyssea where the critical hit rate is extremely high. The Dancer class, in general, is absolutely STARVED for attack. If Damage is the route down which the development team intends to take Dancer, this shortcoming will have to be addressed.
2. Healing Support: the Dancer class lags far behind Mage-based classes when it comes to support, particualrly healing, and a Dancer might as well be helpless if debuffs need to be removed from other party members. Dancers also tend to use "Curing Waltz III" more often than their other waltzes, which are available to anyone using Dancer as a support job, further detracting from the main job's allure.
3. Utility Support: The Dancer's main selling points to endgame in the past, Steps and Haste Samba, have lost some of their relavence due to the delay reduction caps, improvements to magical haste spells (March), and lack of improvements to their potency (both steps and sambas fall victim to this). Haste Samba is also available as a support job, and under optimal conditions (Haste (Spell) + Double Marches from the BRD with proper equipment), is equally as potent for most jobs (due to the delay reduction cap) as a fully merited main-job Dancer's.


Suggested Improvements

It would likely be overpowering to greatly increase the Dancer's prowess on all of these fronts. Instead, I will address each area separately without much regard for the other categories. Please note that the names and exact functions of these suggested abilities and traits are suggestions, and open for creative expansion.

Part I: Across the Board Adjustments

Conserve TP: this was a fantastic idea for a job trait, and was widely welcomed with open arms. However, it was flawed in that it works only on weapon skills. If it's not considered overpowered for mages to occasionally reduce MP cost on their healing spells, why should Conserve TP not be able to work on Waltzes and Sambas?

Suggested Adjustment: allow Conserve TP to occasionally reduce the cost of Waltzes, Steps, and Sambas as well as Weapon Skills

Note: Byrth has correctly pointed out that the implementation of conserve TP is different from that of conserve MP, which may pose as a problem to this suggestion. That aside, I don't think from a programming perspective that adding an aspect to conserve TP that allows it to function for some percent of a waltz's TP cost would be exceedingly difficult. Hence, this suggestion still stands.

Step Potency: At higher levels, most other jobs are able to maintain similar levels of debilitation on enemies with less "effort" than a Dancer must put forth to maintain a weaker effect. Additionally, players using Dancer as a support job experience no penalty to the potency of their steps, making a main-job dancer less valuable. This could be addressed by introducing a series of Dancer-exclusive job traits which improve the efficacy of specific steps.

Suggested Adjustment: New Job traits which increase the potency or otherwise augment steps.


My ideas:

Fancy Footwork I (DNC Level 55): Improves the effect of Quickstep. (roughly, should double the decrease to the target's evasion from -24 to -48 at daze level 5)
Fancy Footwork II (DNC Level 75): Improves the effect of Box Step. (roughly, should nearly double the decrease to the target's defense from -13% to -25% at level 5)
Fancy Footwork III (DNC Level 95): Improves the effect of Stutter Step. (instead of increasing the magic evasion effect which seems to be fairly potent already, perhaps add a decrease to magic defense as well)

Note that job traits augmenting existing job abilities is not unprecedented: take a look at the effects of Thief's Aura Steal and Assassin job traits.

The most important aspect is that these traits would need to come late enough that they would not be accessible from a support job.

Part II Improving the Dancer's Damage

There are few improvements I can think of in this category. The only possible suggestions I could think of here would be the following improvements to existing Job Abilities:

A Note to the Development Team: If the Triple Attack ability you have mentioned in the manifesto is in the same category as Climactic/Striking, it will never be used by educated players, and as I mentioned earlier, will simply be a waste of your creative skills and implementation ability, unless there is some major hidden bonus to the ability that you have not described.

Building Flourish: Alter this ability to no longer work only for weapon skills. Instead, Allow the dancer to consume finishing moves to increase its accuracy/attack/critical hit rate as before, but for all melee attacks. The duration would be one minute, but the potency of the increase would decrease over the duration of the enhancement, and would be consumed after the first weapon skill.

Wild Flourish: Upgrade this ability, perhaps through a job trait or piece of equipment, to perform higher-tier skillchains, as with the Samurai ability Konzen-Ittai.

Climactic Flourish: Lower the recast to 1 minute.

Alternatively, a job trait could be introduced to alter the effects of the Flourishes II category:

Attitude: (Dancer Level 99) Improves the effects of Flourishes II.
--Building Flourish ---> provides the augments I have listed above under Building Flourish.
--Wild Flourish ---> provides the augments I have listed above under Wild Flourish.
--Reverse Flourish ---> There are two ways that I can think of to deal with this, an obvious way, and a more interesting (and I think more appropriate to the job class) way.
1.) return 25% more TP, OR
2.) return 25% of the "reversed" TP to party members near the Dancer, as well.

Suggested Adjustments: See above

Part III: Improving the Dancer's ability to heal


I'm not convinced, as many Dancers are, that splitting the waltz category into multiple categories is a viable option. I think instead adding a new tier of abilties to improve the Dancer's healing prowess would be a better option.

Suggested Adjustments: A new category of dance which consumes finishing moves to power up waltzes and modify their recast and/or TP costs.

The following abilities would be in a new category of dance, separate from steps and flourishes, but also require finishing moves. We'll call them "Techniques"

Dessus (Dancer level 65): expends a finishing move to reduce the TP cost and recast of the next Waltz. (Recast: 30 seconds, Duration 1 30 seconds) -- in particular, this should halve the recast of the next waltz. The TP Reduction would probably be about 25%.
Rise (Dancer level 75): expends a finishing move to increase the potency of the next Waltz, for an increased TP requirement. (Recast: 1 minute, duration 1 minute). Should increase the potency of the next waltz by 25% *ignoring the current cap on Waltz Potency*, and increase its TP cost by 10-15%.
Assemblé (Dancer level 95): expends all finishing moves to transform the next Waltz into an area-of-effect ability, doubling the TP requirement. (Recast 3 minutes, duration 1 minute)

Since Techniques would be one category, the shared recast, in particular of Assemblé (which would eliminate the ability to use Dessus or Rise for 3 minutes).

There is also an extremely prevalent outcry for a Raise dance, but at this time I am unsure of how it would be implemented.

Perhaps a simple new job ability would be the best way to accomplish this, as I believe the recast associated with the ability would cripple the Dancer if tied to the Waltzes category.

Ritual Dance (Dancer Level 90, Recast 5 minutes): Consumes all TP and finishing moves to resurrect the target. Strength of raise determined by the amount of TP and finishing moves consumed. Requires at least 100 TP and 2 finishing moves.

This ability should probably have a longer animation, similar to Chocobo Jig.

Part IV: Improving the Dancer's Ability to Support

First things first: in the manifesto, you mention giving the Dancer the ability to consume TP to imbue a regain effect on party members. This could be an excellent idea, if implemented properly. It is probably best to NOT make this a samba. Instead, here is my approach:

Backup Dance (Dancer level 95, Recast 5 minutes, duration 5 minutes or until the DNC has 0 TP). Sacrifices TP to regenerate surrounding Party members' TP. ---Consumes 100 TP to give the dancer a "Sphere" effect that drains the DNC's TP by 2/tic to give party members a 2TP/tic regain effect as long as they are nearby.

There is also an outcry for a "Dispel" flourish from both the English and Japanese communities. I think this could better be accomplished as an addition to an existing Flourish through a job trait.

Smooth Moves (Dancer level 75) Augments the effects of Flourishes I.

-- Animated Flourish: increases the enmity of this ability, while decreasing enmity toward all other party members with variable potency due to FMs consumed.
-- Desperate Flourish: attempts to inflict "slow" as well as "gravity" on the enemy.
-- Violent Flourish: in addition to attempting to stun, dispels one beneficial effect from the enemy.

In this way, you can improve the dancer's support abilities by a lot without adding a whole lot of new job abilities. Similarly, while a support job would have access to the main abilities, they would not have access to the new "fully powered" abilities possessed by a main job Dancer.

There are also many new debuffs that could be considered for new steps. The most interesting (and most worth-mentioning) that I have heard is a step to reduce the target's attack speed. Traditionally, Dancer has not had access to "Defensive" debuffs, however, as we move forward and balance the game toward level 99, these sorts of debuffs may be worth looking into. It's possible that they could be come overpowered for solo play, but NIN/DNC has access to offensive and defensive debuffs and puts less effort into the maintenance of debuffs than a Dancer does. Ninja has a similar survivability to the Dancer class, especially when using Dancer as a support job. If it's not overpowered in this case, then I don't think they will be overpowered for a Dancer. I believe that adding one, or even a series, of "defensive" type debuffs (Slow, Accuracy Down, Attack Down -- these are just examples) to a Dancer's arsenal, given the unique nature of Daze abilities stacking with the debuffs of other players, will have an extremely positive effect on the class itself, and on group synergy as a whole.


Here are some examples of these sorts of steps, and ideas for naming them:

Rock Step: Decreases the target's attack speed. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.
Side Step: Decreases the target's accuracy. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.
Dazzle Step: Decreases the target's attack. If successful, you will earn a finishing move.

As a final note for this section, our Sambas, particularly Drain Samba, have become very weak with the rise in level cap, with no way to improve their efficacy. Perhaps a series of job traits to increase their potency, or otherwise augment them, is also in order.

A Final Idea: Stances for a Versatile Class

Two stances already exist for Dancer: Fan Dance and Sabre Dance, and from their introduction it appears the development team wishes that Dancer should be somewhat of a "chameleon" class, able to change its form to fit many different situations. Many, if not all of the ideas listed above, could be interpreted into a new pair of "Stances" for Dancer, a pair which would resemble hybrids of Ninja's Yonnin/Innin and White Mage's Afflatus Solace/Afflatus Misery.

The first stance would increase the damage output of the Dancer. I've given them names , like many of the other abilities I have suggested, from standard ballet terminology:

En Pointe: (Dancer level 95, Duration 5 minutes, Recast 3 minutes) Increases offensive capacities and abilities at the expense of defensive capabilities.

This ability would provide the augments to "Flourishes II" that I mentioned under the job trait "Attitude" earlier. For refreshment, they are as follows:

Building Flourish: Alter this ability to no longer work only for weapon skills. Instead, Allow the dancer to consume finishing moves to increase its accuracy/attack/critical hit rate as before, but for all melee attacks. The duration would be one minute, but the potency of the increase would decrease over the duration of the enhancement, and would be consumed after the first weapon skill.
Wild Flourish: Upgrade this ability, perhaps through a job trait or piece of equipment, to perform higher-tier skillchains, as with the Samurai ability Konzen-Ittai.
Reverse Flourish: There are two ways that I can think of to deal with this, an obvious way, and a more interesting (and I think more appropriate to the job class) way.
1.) return 25% more TP, OR
2.) return 25% of the "reversed" TP to party members near the Dancer, as well.

The ability would also increase the Dancer's Attack, Accuracy, and Critical Hit Rate as well as penalizing Evasion and Defense. Additionally, Waltz TP costs AND recast timers would be penalized by a "noticeable" amount. You may notice that this ability shares some parallels with both Yonin/Innin and Dark Arts. Indeed, these abilities were my inspiration for this stance.

Now, for the second, more supportive stance:

En Cote: A sideways stance which improves abilities that support allies.

This stance would increase the potency of waltzes while decreasing their TP costs and recast timers. It would also provide the bonuses to "Flourishes I" that I previously listed under Smooth Moves. As a refresher, they are as follows:

-- Animated Flourish: increases the enmity of this ability, while decreasing enmity toward all other party members with variable potency due to FMs consumed.
-- Desperate Flourish: attempts to inflict "slow" as well as "gravity" on the enemy. Or, as Byrth suggested, "Magic Evasion Down."
-- Violent Flourish: in addition to attempting to stun, dispels one beneficial effect from the enemy.

This stance would not have negative consequences. Instead, its penalty is the "opportunity cost" of not being able to use the damge-increasing abilties of En Pointe.

Complex abilties such as these have a precedent in Afflatus Solace and Afflatus Misery, and I don't believe the additions listed here are particularly more complex then those abilities already in place (in fact, I think the ideas here are less complicated than those of Solace/Misery).

Conclusion

There are multiple ways in which the Dancer class can be adjusted to "fit in" better in both today's endgame activities and future activities. In this post, I have described a multitude of ways that each "facet" of the Dancer Class could be improved, although obviously major improvements "across the board" have the potential to be overpowered. As a compromise, I have introduced the idea of a new "stance system" which would allow the Dancer to alter its strengths toward either damage or support abilities.

Please note that while my ideas certainly do not speak for the playerbase as a whole, they have come into fruition after careful consideration of the suggestions from English, Japanese, and European players alike, as well as long hours of considering how they may affect game balance. I am not an expert in this field, obviously, but I think we can all say we know at least a little, when we've all seen how the development team's own updates are constantly altering the face and game balance of FFXI.

Finally, the Dancer class is an exceptionally creative class and is unlike anything that FFXI had ever seen before it. I commend the past and present development team in their creative abilities to shape and culture such a diverse and interesting class, and extend my sincerest gratitude that I have had the honor and opportunity to both play this incredible class, and now, offer my suggestions for keeping it competitive as Vana'diel marches on into a new era. I'm sure there are countless players, across language barriers, who would stand with me on at least that statement.

有り難うございます！ 踊り子万歳！


With my sincerest Gratitude and Respect,

Asymptotic
Carbuncle Server