[Shujin]

Introduction
Disclaimer:  First and foremost I want to clarify that I am not trying to put any flag on Dev for designing it this way nor for anyone who enjoys playing the class the way it currently is. It's fine if you do, I personally have played about any variation of it that I could think of and always find myself doing the same thing in different flavors, and do find that very boring in a game that has such a high focus on individuality. Dancer is currently the most Egoistic class in the game, even beating Boxer in that regard. This post is a genuine attempt to make this class more enjoyable to face against, and to play, while opening different playstyles.

I wanted to do this thread for Months, but every time I think about it I realize just how much is wrong with the class. 


I am not saying it's weak or too strong. I am saying it has a very unfun balancing that makes it very railroaded to play as, and if played against it without specifically attempting to counter it you will have a bad unenjoyable time too. It really leans heavily into either "WAY to strong" or "Oh wow this class is useless" in simple matter of match up or if you play PvP and PvE

In short, this feels horrible to play, unless your brain only has the capacity to press 3-4 buttons and maybe a rest beat every so often and you enjoy big numbers.



Cons and Pros of Dancer as a class in itself

PROS:

1. Very High damage, if you utilize Tempo/Crit potential in your favor
   
2. Good FP recovery Options to keep you going
   
3. One of the best burst heals in the game
   
4. Extremely potent 1v1 fighters
   
5. Good Mobility options
   

CONS:

1. All of the Pros are basically tied to Main Class only, except Mobility.
   
2. No innate defense Options outside of Limbo
   
3. No hit buffs nor a real use for weapons outside of 3 skills (double dance, Skating Spin, Curtain Call)
   
4. Extremely high FP consumption, therefore, needing high amounts of Will, and only a short window to make use of your FP recovery
   
5. Good in PvE as Mainclass for up to level 60, beyond that or as a subclass, very ineffective to borderline useless.
   
6. Very Egoistic class, Leaving very little effective subclass options, also synergizes very badly with most other classes even within its own promotion AND partly within itself. Railroading you in mainly just spamming dances, with no real strategy.
   

How to Play Dancer most efficiently! (In my experience)

When I make a Dancer build, the thought process is very simple: Choose 2-3 elements you wanna spec in, one of them WILL BE ICE or you are wrong. You are also wrong if you pick fire, period. Wind just happens because you want to usually play it as a dodge to make use of Limbo, your only defensive option.
So your options are usually: Ice, Lighting, Light, Earth or Wind, Darkness (only really works when you hyper focus dark, in my opinion inefficent element compared to the others).
Lighting being the most efficient damage-wise cause: A.)Its kinda hard to resist B.) You passively build your secondary powerful Multi on top of your multi. Cause Multis upon Multis is just freaking overpowered. (Lightning atk Multi from skill*30% tempo Multi*25% crit Multi)
Once you have that panned out, you consider if you are either going all in, on one element with Luminary Element and alot of will building, cause you want the FP anyway or if you keep it somewhat balanced. The all-in options means if your enemy isn't resisting that element with about 50%+ Elemental resistance, you basically still nuke them with it or at least deal a considerable amount of damage. Or you do not hit at all if the opponent has high evade and hit debuffs.

After that I consider my Subclass. I do not really have all that many options, cause you WILL go dancer Mainclass, or you are playing it wrong. This isn't a choice, cause Tempo is Main Class only, and its what gives you your recovery AND damage. Dancer as a subclass isn't good.
The Classes that I personally found more useful, are classes that either provide recovery Options or long buffs for you to use every so often or during break windows such as restbeat while you focus on only spamming your dances so my personal go to picks are: Void Assassin with Impure Element, Evoker with an element of your choice, Spellthief, Aquamancer and Priest.
I have had played with Hexer around aswell, it works fine, but I find all of the above universally more effective. All other classes do not bring enough to the table to make you not want to rush 6 Tempo as fast as you can or you need to reapply stuff too often breaking your combo. Yes even the other bard promos completely ruin your dancer game. (I haven't played Dark bard yet, to be fair, but I see no reason why it wouldn't from reading its skills.) 

Next you consider your weapons: Just kidding. You 95% do not consider it. Its basically just sticks for you to hold to further increase your Elemental damage of choice OR, if you do a big brain...You dualwield 2 staffs of eyes, one of them enchanted with Bloodhunt. Atleast I am like 70% sure bloodhunt actually applies, I might be wrong on that though. If its not staff of eyes its one of the staves for elemental damage of choice OR if you are being funny...Two swords with locking guards for more evade in melee. Everything else isn't really efficient and just flavor.

Rest of the equipment is your general thought process, depending on your build of choice.

I kinda skipped over Race, but the only really efficient ones that even do something for it are Wild Elves and Oracles...The latter needing to adjust your game a bit to always end your dances in melee range. I think you might be able to get creative with a Corbie and gasprock/double dance shenanigans, but I haven't tested that one. I do imagine it being a hassle though.

Thats basically it. There are only very few options that make sense for a Dancer to even pick, and even if you play dancer, half your skills are not useful for what you wanna do, and I point that out later once I go over all the Skills. And oh boy, that will take me a hot minute, cause there is alot wrong with it.

I will double and tripple post, so sue me if you want, but for the sake of keeping it somewhat Organised I write another post with all skills I think need to get nerfed or rebalanced in someway, and another post with skills that just need a buff....Also maybe a cheap self promotion to my old thread to the physical dancer tree.

---

Nerfs/reblance to Skills that I think are fair

Dancer's Tempo:
Not the only issue regarding damage, but I do want to nerf this one first, cause it will automatically nerf everything else. So probably the easiest thing to tackle first. Give it a swift cut in half. All of its parameters.
5%*Tempo-> 2.5%* Tempo
Increased cost Tempo*2-> Increased costs Tempo
Bonus Elemental Atk Tempo*2-> Either cut this entirely or reduce to Tempo
Reasoning:
Puts way too much Focus on Dancer as a Main Class, and its pretty high multis ontop of Multi, especially if combined with crits. Makes it easier to look at the Dances individually to shove numbers around.
My secondary reason is, that the cost increase is pretty high and even applies to skills that do not really benefit from Tempo in the first place, just making them super expensive for no reason, further railroading you to spam the Bard base dances over and over again to get the most out of your FP.
The Elemental Atk part, is probably just too much when stacked with all other hyper focused options. An alternative would of course be to tie all dances to SWA, but I do not mind this uniqueness to dancer and rather see different ways to play it, but more on that later...

Idol Dance:
My beloved meme dance. And the true Finisher of the Class. A lot more manageable now that its no longer bugged to deal full damage for a couple of hits if RNG chooses so, but still very potent.
The only thing that makes me think that it's somewhat fine is that it applies the debuff Battlerush to your party. You can not convince me, that this is a buff.
Battlerush made me lose so many fights, cause I accidentally deleted the FP of my teammates with it, while it probably 90% of the time didn't even benefit them at all as it only boosts basic attacks. And EVERY skill, even quick 1 momentum ones cost +15 FP with it, even Basic attackers that would usually benefit from it, run out of FP in an instant due to their usual low FP. I actually dodge my teammates, when I use idol dance, unless I know they can handle it or its a lost cause anyway. In a Duel situation, however? This can burst heal you from Zero to full if you build for it, almost. healing 600+ is very much possible in a luminary element build and you yourself do not get Battle Rush.
Outside of that it has a half infliction chance for Glowing 15 (the actual only hit helper in this class, albeit with an very low affliction rate) and charm. Charm effect is fairly lowish, so I think its fine.

The way I would probably change it, if its still perceived too strong, is to make it a Finisher instead of a Tempo Building move and shove its power behind consumed Tempo instead of upfront loading it. In short it remains how it is, except it deletes your Tempo. With the above change its numbers are also pressed down a little. 
I kinda want to remove Battle Rush and replace it with a simple SWA boost, but that be a buff to the skill...So I rather just see it being gone, which also would be a buff to the skill. Cause I wouldn't need to dodge my Teammates anymore. 

Rest Beat:
An actually needed Evil, its FP heal is super high, but that's because Dancer literally needs that to even function. That's how high its FP costs are. However with the change to dancers Tempo above it can probably get away with a little less. I probably change it to

R1: 20 FP/HP * tempo
R2: 25 FP/HP * tempo
R3: 30 FP/HP * tempo

And reduce the effects cured by Tempo/2, instead of Tempo. 

Reasoning:
With my changes to Tempo, the class needs less FP recovery to function, but in my experience only the Spirited version of it truly was a bit overbearing to it. So I would want to cut down on that a little. Having otherwise 6 effects cured is a bit much. I do think this skill is fine however, on the note that Idol dance now consumes Tempo, making it a decision you want to make for either "Hey I am kinda running out of FP, might wanna refresh on that" or "Nah I use my Tempo for some bigger HP heal and damage, but burn through my FP more." This keeps the current spirit of Dancer alive, I believe. I think it will still remain a very good Damage dealer and rush down option. even with the changes so far. But its a little less... Obvious how you play.
I am not cutting down on the recovery numbers because you need to technically do more dances in between, than you do now to pop both Idoldance and Rest beat to current effectiveness, therefore even with reduced FP costs, still probably being heavy on it.

Thunder Step
Not much I want to say about it. It caps out at a theoretical 400% elemental atk, while Ice dance for example is 350%, however ice dance has 5*25 base damage while Thunder step has only 25*2. 

I would still push down the damage of Thunder Step a little anyway to maybe 180% per step instead of 200%. Simply on the premise that Lighting step passively builds for a higher crit chance and therefore has an easier time critting and boosting the damage further but mainly because it's an even better mobility skill than Ice Dance. These two reasons make me think that its very much deserving of an additional damage nerf next to what comes with the Tempo nerf. It will probably still be king of damage under the elemental dances, with maybe Idol Dance to rival against, which I think is fair for a Finisher.
Its also a lot easier to use to full potency than ice slide is for example, why I leave Ice Slide untouched for the time being outside of the general tempo damage nerf.
(Some random Math to explain how much tempo as nerf already does: Ice Slide 350% ele atk and 125 base atk with old Tempo 6 would be 455% and 162.6 versus new 402.5% and 143.75 pre crit, against 5*magic armor. 
Thunder step 400% and 50 base to 520% and 65 base to 460% and 57.5 base versus 2 times Marmor pre crit
I think that isn't a small nerf, since all the damage during the build up is lower as well. I try to push down high multiplicators which is why I also want to tackle....)

Dancers Intensity
This one I am a little torn with. You DO need to build for it, and you do not have the benefit of Weapons to boost your chance, nor the usual Elemental impact lighting crit boosts. Its almost entirely yourself, and buffs that boost crit directly. This is something that mostly comes into play in PvE later, where the mobs have so high Crit evade that there is basically no hope for you to land them reliably as a dancer.

For that reason I almost want to leave it untouched, but reducing it by just 5% to a 20% increase, might already go a long way.
I think it be fine left untouched for the time being.

---

Skills that are very underwhelming or do not play well with Dancer itself.

Fire Dance:
I know technically a Bard skill, but whatever. Fire Dance is Ice Slides little brother, that Ice Slide is ashamed off. Not only is it awkward to build on a Dancer (Possible, but awkward), it does what Ice Slide does in every aspect, except worse. I theory it does the same damage, but in practice thanks to its very limited range, a lot harder to hit your strikes with. That paired with an 1 tile range disadvantage ontop of Higher FP costs. Higher FP costs only at max range though, as its 14+8FP versus Ice slides 20FP. Minor difference, but it is the worse skill.

Either Copy paste Ice Slides, but in fire. Which I personally think is boring. Or give it something more unique.

How I would change it at rank 5:
-In exchange for being Linear, its base range is 5
-It now only hits every opponent once for 200% Fire Atk, but only on tiles you directly pass.
-Create Flame Tiles level Rank*10 on the tiles you pass for 3 rounds. (Flame tiles, not cinder. the ones arbalest does drop with oil chain)
-If passing Flame OR Cinder tiles, using this skill, the flames are consumed and boost the skill by an additional 20% Fire atk (cap 5), if atleast 5 flames are passed, you finish with a 4 tile circle explosion for 50% of the damage to all enemies in range as bonus damage which will at least glance.

Or something like that. Give it its own thing entirely. I think this would give it purpose and be pretty alright in the damage area too, not thunder Step level, but pretty good.


Wind Pirouette:
First off: Increase animation speed by like 25% atleast, please.

In theory this skill has a very good status effect attached to it in terms of Confusion, so some might argue it doesn't need to deal damage. And to a degree, I agree. If it wasn't for the fact that even on a 200 Infliction chance Character, you barely get over 100 infliction chance, meaning even the Debug prinny might escape your infliciton if you have less than 200 infliction chance. Forget applying ANY status effects in later PvE dungeons, its impossible which is another nail in Dancers coffin for PvE content.
People not even trying to build for status resist have a decent chance of not getting it applied from someone who tries to build for it. I know it was probably balanced around the idea of: "Hey they do a lot of hits so they have more infliciton chances, right?" but no one cares about having 100 application chances, if all of them are 0%.

Based on that, I do believe Wind pirouette could do with a bit off a buff damage wise as its currently the weakest dance of them all. a lousy 3*70% wind atk, that is even entirely randomly split between the people in range. I have two ideas to buff it:

Lazy Variation:
-It now hits everyone in range 3 times
-Elemental atk is at 100% at rank 5

Still making it the weakest atk damage wise, but since its an AoE that be fine.

Less Lazy Variation:
-It now hits everyone in range 3 times
-If  Wind Pirouette is used right after Wind Pirouette, range +2, The damage is increased and the infliction chance by 2. If there are allied special effect tiles on the ground, they will be spread within the range, with the same duration.

This would make it pretty good. Costs a bit more FP, and the first cast is still very MEH, but hey, its better than it is now. I am open for anything that makes it fun though. The special tile effect spreading, also would synergize well with the Fire Dance effect.

Signature step:
The idea behind this is super cool, but in praxis, mostly in PvE? This is horrible. There is about no way you as a dancer will ever have enough status infliction to have a 1% chance of inflicting a staus effect at later dungeons. Here is a simple fix to it that I would suggest:

its new chance is 55% +Tempo*7.5%

Reasoning:
You have atleast a hope to apply a status effect in higher level dungeons then, while being at high Tempo. So you have exactly 100% inflicition rate at tempo 6.

Rose Toss:
Oh boy, where to even start with this? What's even the intention of this skill? 

Here is what I thought I could do with it, as it seemed to be the only reasonable application to me: 
-Apply charm to your enemies around you with Idol Dance
-Use Dancer's invitation to let them sourround you, to possibly use them as living shields.
-Use Rose Toss to possibly extend an already inflicted charm, so you can have a form of defensive since they are already around you.

However, Rose Toss doesn't do that. in fact, in this scenario above it does literally nothing. Cause its level is so low, it will neiter replace the charm, nor extend its duration, making it very useless in this situation...And probably in most others aswell. The only saving grace is that it counts as dance and doesn't break your combo...But you are better off just dancing something else.

Its secondary effect popping one two step? Why would you ever waste 3 momentum, to deal 25 Damage. It its usually 25 Damage, cause the duration of one-two step is only 1. If it were atleast a duration fo 2 then you could chain 3 dances into it and then pop it for 75 damage. Still very low number, but..Yeah.
In a team fight with other dancers in your party, you might get 75 damage off, but again...Kinda not worth 3 Momentum, even with the attached charm, cause dancer has the curse of basically instantly breaking any and all charm effects you apply within one offensive skill due to the nature of multi hit skills.

Proposed Changes: 
Allow it to extend the duration of charm effects and reset it back to 3 turns. This alone would make it atleast useful within its own class.
Alternatively you could atleast buff the level of charm when targeting only a single opponent.

This would give it more synergy with itself, and still make it weaker than pied piper by a long shot.

One-Two Step:
Simple, just extend its duration to 2 rounds.
Currently its too short for even yourself to make use of it. And if you are going after your team mates that do basic attacks, you have zero chance off making them pop it. And for yourself, the only way to pop it is spending 3 M on Rose Ross, or with Curtain call...In both cases its only 25 damage though that still goes against res and resistances. Kinda doesn't work well in the class and way to tight requirements for as little as it does, for 5 whole skill points.

Dancers Agility:
I personally think 1 hit evade buffs, have aged a bit bad with the existence of buff cap. I guess in certain builds its kinda useful, but in reality if you are an evade character, you will be trying to be at buff cap at all times.

I personally think it should change to an Active Dance Skill, that buffs your evade. However I do not really care if it stays the way it is. Its just a minor gripe that I find 1hit evade buffs borderline useless in todays meta.
Another thing that would be interesting if it was instead a melee debuff to hit, cause you know? Dancers are kinda used to be close and personal. I'd reduce it to 10 though in that case.

General gripes with Dancer:
Its currently only functional as Main Class, and the things that make it so, also make it deal so much damage that its crazy. I feel like an asshole playing it, when it works. And I feel bored when I play it, cause there isn't much thinking behind it. And when I play it in PvE I just feel entirely useless.

Its also way too egoistical as a Class, Not being able to even play songs, or use like a 1M racial Song skill, with heron without nuking your Tempo and with that any damage and recovery options, makes it synergize with quite literally nothing that doesn't work either passively or you can buff up with pre your dance spamming. I would trade so much of its power, simply for it to be more combinable with other things, but as it stands, it doesn't even syn with its own sister promotions. 

This makes the class a bit too one-dimensional, in terms of how you play it. Sure you have the choice of some elements and stuff, but in the end you play the exact same rotations about every fight. Also the elemental dances while cool, to me personally atleast, do not fit the class fantasy I have with it at all. I always see dancers either was very supportive, or as assassin type of characters. Since Performer takes the supportive Role, I would very much love to see it going more down the blade assassin route.

Double Dance is like still my favorite skill of all time, it just sits inside a class that barely promotes basic attack yourself, or well it atleast pales so heavily compared to all the other options that you just feel stupid not spamming elemental dances, which is a shame!


 

Cheap and shameless Self promotion:

I would still like there to be a choice in picking your class skills, for a more physical approach on the matter, I think it fits to be in the same class instead of a new one. Something along the lines of this thread, though thinking about it a bit, it would still lack solid options to make itself functional as a basic attacker in terms of hit buffs/Survival power, but it would still be very fun to play with, if properly expanded on.
https://neus-projects.net/forums/showthr...p?tid=9441

I have spend a couple of hours on this thread, so I probably missed a few things, or some of you have better ideas!
But I think most atleast agree that dancer is a very awkward class. I personally hate playing it cause it never feels fair, when I absolutely destory people without them ever having had a chance to fight back I feel like an asshole, and when I go dungeoning I hate myself, cause I basically barely can't do anything, unless I cheese the fuck out of it with Invisible Weapon and dualwielded staff of eyes. And I do not like that being basically my only way to deal with mobs.
Thanks for reading!

[Shujin]

Good Lord, it is done. Only took me almost 4 hours

[firehawk11]

When people say Elemental attack and recovery from a class I can only imagine they sub-class Void Assassin because Impure Elements is just too good not to run. 50% of total void energy as damage every time you add +60 to elemental attack, it's ust too good. It's just one of those weird classes that was so focused around the main class skill that Tempo should be removed as a main class only skill, nothing else is like that. Ki isn't or Void Energy...Neither is Fire Bird feathers or Boxer. Even as bard when Lightning steps deals more then my Critical Rye as a Mage (Evoker) something is wrong, not like it's a close range vs long range but even then with enough cel I can dodge most things, this isn't even talking about Tempo from Dancer.

Also yeah one Element will ALWAYS be ICE because out system forced Ice in EVERY, FREAKIN, BUILD....Unless you do unoptimal cheese.

[sadbot]

I have a few thoughts on dancer.

Dancer's tempo being main class only makes no sense to me. It is incredibly powerful, but making class resources that the whole skill set interacts with main class only just makes the class not worth playing at all as a sub class. It probably should have all of its effects cut in half, then made not main class only as well. To be honest I'm not a fan of its design in the first place in the same way as schwarz sturm. These 'do this class stuff and nothing else or get punished' type class resources mesh very poorly with a dual class system that's supposed to encourage variety, in my opinion at least.


Dancer's damage is insane. This is particularly egregious when you consider that dancer has the same issue that runemage had during the giant beyblade days, that most/all of their damage has nothing to do with their weapon or swa. This allows them to essentially 'cheat' with their stats, equipment and other build choices, because what is a core part of any other class or build is just an afterthought for dancer. Dancer can take stats, equipment and other things that would usually come at a heavy price to a build's swa or damage at large because swa is essentially irrelevant to a dancer. Dances should absolutely be swa + ele scaling rather than pure ele scaling, even if it still leans more into ele atk than swa. I've added some rough numbers for the usual suspect dances below, using 70 of the corresponding elemental attack. This seems like a very conservative estimate to me, given that dancer is free to do things like forego less useful weapon scaling stats entirely to dump extra points elsewhere for more ele atk. This is also not even taking the bonus ele atk and damage multiplier of tempo into account, or the likes of dance crits, spirited skills, impure element or other potential boosts. Keep in mind that any normal 3m attack hitting 250 or more total damage before reductions is on the higher end of power, in my experience.

Ice slide - 25 base damage per hit, 70% of 70 ice atk is 49, 5 hits  = 370 damage (296 even on four hits assuming you don't have good positioning)


Thunder steps - 25 base damage per hit, 200% of 70 lightning atk is 140, 2 hits = 330 damage

I'll do two here for idol step. One with 30 light atk assuming little investment, as it's not so easily dumped into as other elements even for dancer, and one with 60 just to show the kind of war crimes it can pull off if the dancer does decide to lean into it. Both assuming one target for both healing and damage.

Small idol step - 25 base damage per hit, 150% of 30 light atk is 45, 5 hits (4 at half damage and heal) = 210 damage + 210 heal

War crimes idol step - 25 base damage per hit, 150% of 60 light atk is 90, 5 hits (4 at half damage and heal) = 345 damage + 345 heal

That's easily a 500+ hp swing in your favor after even the beefiest of damage reductions and all you need is 60 light atk, because swa isn't real. Yikes. Obviously these numbers are more susceptible to magic armor than the average attack, but they still come out the other end of even around 20 magic armor with more damage than a 250 damage attack that's only getting a single reduction. I think these numbers pretty much speak for themselves, and I'm left scratching my head wondering how dance scalings have gone without a change or nerf since bard's release. I guess maybe it's just that other parts of the class are so uninteractive, one dimensional and generally dysfunctional otherwise, that it needs damage numbers this overtuned to prop it up into looking balanced in the middle somewhere. I don't know. Moving on.


Dancer is way too susceptible to immobilization. No one class is as shut down by a single status effect as dancer is by immobilize. Even silenced mages can use skills, some basic mage spells or at least run away until it wears off. Dance hour is a flimsy band aid, which only serves to deal with builds that can't immobilize very often or to buy you a little more time to finish off those who can't handle your absurd damage. I think that dance hour, or perhaps a second skill alongside dance hour, should be more like whispering cant. Something that allows you to still function under immobilize at least, just at reduced capacity. Make dances cost 4m, increase their fp costs, reduce their range, something like that.

Tl;dr - Dancer is a very dysfunctional class, propped up by bat shit crazy damage numbers. It needs a few things:

1. Its class resource in tempo needs toning down, but also removal from main class only.
   
2. Dances need reduced scaling that's split between swa and ele atk, even if they still lean more into the ele atk for class theme.
   
3. Its ability to deal with immobilizing effects needs to change. Maybe something akin to whispering cant, that still allows it to function at reduced capacity under immobilize.
   

[firehawk11]

I will point out if it is nerfed in it's current format it may get the Runemage treatment, no one every plays Runemage I've noticed. So do you really want to make it feel like that?

[Ray2064]

I will point out if it is nerfed in it's current format it may get the Runemage treatment, no one every plays Runemage I've noticed. So do you really want to make it feel like that?

No one plays Runemage because it's overall a bore
The class is pretty broken though

[Trexmaster]

For the record, Rest Beat already got nerfed to dispel Tempo/2 debuffs. Dev just never updated the description after the nerf that happened about 7~ months ago when Dancer was at its peak.


As I noted in a past thread Dancer is in a precarious spot right now. It's extremely potent when it works and feels terrible when it doesn't.


For ease of readability and clarity I'll be analyzing every ability of Dancer/Bard's Dance skills, along with some of my own input on what the OP's had to say.


One Two Step and Signature Step: I agree entirely. The former is useless in most scenarios and the latter is actually useless due to being walled out entirely by status resistance exceeding around 90-100, which many new mobs have in spades (some attaining well over 150).


Thunder Steps and Ice Slide: The former being an amazing mobility and damage tool and the latter having the highest damage potential + scaling off a MANDATORY stat to play the class means you're not going to see any of its other abilities. Just adding cooldowns will only make the class feel worse though. As the OP suggested, the other skills (Fire Dance, Wind Pirouette, Quaking Step) need to be better somehow to feel worth using. Only Wind Pirouette is even feasible for a Dancer to currently use without totally compromising on its stat lineup, all to do 40% less potential damage than Ice Slide whilst not being able to move in the same action. While the statuses may be valuable, the extremely low infliction rate of Signature Step means you'll almost never see these statuses on anything with above 0 status res.


Wind Pirouette: The only other dance skill you MIGHT see from Bard's repertoire, as mentioned earlier. Its status effect is powerful (Confusion) but as I'll mention later, is highly unreliable to ever even land. Combined with randomly picking targets and only ticking 3 times at the same level of power as Ice Slide, you rarely want to use it. 210% Wind ATK vs an average of 280% Ice ATK. Arguably, it's useful if you do not want to move at all, but very rarely is it worth it to remain immobile.


Quaking Step: Got nerfed immediately. Went from being map-wide and 200% Earth ATK to 180% and only 7-9 range. It'd be nice to have this back to being a map-wide if it had a 1-2 round cooldown. The whole thing that made it overbearing was being double-tapped constantly from across the map. It didn't need to have both its damage AND its range slashed. It's already using an elemental ATK that Dancer doesn't want without Luminary. If only Signature Step's inflict wasn't so terrible, its status would be useful. The mobs you need Magnetize on will never get inflicted due to having 100%+ status resistance.


Fire Dance: If you're using this, it's because you're a Salamandra. Otherwise stop and get help. Its range is extremely limiting and scales a stat no Dancer wants bar using Luminary. It really should've had the range of Ice Slide, especially with how hard it is to stat for currently. Either adjust its range or adjust its damage to be more worth using.


Rose Toss: It's a meme skill. You use it to BM people. Seriously though, its only purpose is to provide charm to activate Double Dance or ensure Dancer's Invitation works. The LVL of charm is far too low to make much use of and you're going to lose it immediately the next round if you try to damage them yourself. It's just to enable the meme setup of getting people in range to Double Dance on their friends, which is entirely reliant on the enemies setup as to how effective it'll even be. It's fantastic if you find low status res non shaitan excel weapon users, but that requires having Rose Toss and Double Dance in your back pocket, otherwise it's entirely separate from what Dancer normally wants to do for damage.


Skating Spin: This is just Peddling Wheel without elemental augment. You even punch and kick things as per the skill description too! On a class that hardly incentivizes using a weapon at all due to how few things it has that make use of it. This and...


Double Dance: A nice utility skill for when you're with teammates who primarily basic attack, and a hilarious counter measure in group fights against those same people if you can actually land charm on them AND have them close to an enemy to even hit. Extremely situational, and doesn't help Dancer at all 90% of the time, but hey, you can puppet your friend's dead bodies with it.


Curtain Call: Along with the prior two skills, among the only skills Dancer has that use SWA at all. For this reason you'll almost never see it, as a MC Dancer does not want to use a weapon. Even if it did, the damage of Curtain Call isn't that great (175% Dark ATK + 175% SWA at max tempo). It's about comparable to Duelist's Eclair Lacroix. Except Duelist actually wants to use a weapon. Why couldn't Curtain Call just be pure Dark ATK scaling like Idol Step? Even if it was, Dancer doesn't have the stats to spare to use it, which I'll address near the end.


Idol Step: is mostly seen as OP because when it gets every single proc on both ends on the same two targets it's incredibly potent (450%-610% Light ATK + 98-105 damage and the same amount healed to the user). Its extremely long cooldown (7 rounds) means you'll typically only ever see it once per fight. Currently it does not feel like a healthy ability. It's far too powerful in 1v1s and extremely unreliable in scenarios with multiple targets (be it enemies or allies), as your healing could all end up wasted if you don't position yourself to only heal yourself or gamble on healing an injured ally (and still be susceptible to healing only yourself every single time). For an ability with such a long cool down, you want to make sure you get the most out of it, so it's encouraged to ensure you are the only possible healing target and that you're hitting everything on one target. This needs to change if it's ever going to be more than a single target burst.


Dancer's Invitation: Because for some reason Dancer needed Forced Move. It's entirely a support tool for your allies unless you've grown tired of living and want your face caved in pronto. It has a niche use if the planets align and your enemies are perfectly in position to setup a Double Dance on an ideal target on ideal target(s). Otherwise this is mostly for enabling other classes/allies, Dancer itself can't make much use of it beyond Double Dance. It's not bad.



Rest Beat: I honestly don't think the change to make it a movement skill was necessary. It already has an 8 round cooldown and burns all their tempo for it. This on top of limiting the number of debuffs purged made it far less useful in PvP, being unable to purge the debuffs the Dancer needs to remove the most (Frozen, Immobilize, Clumsy) thus forcing them to crutch on Dance Hour for the latter two---which has a 10 round cooldown and removes all their tempo as it is not a dance skill, or be entirely helpless as the enemy has removed them from the game effectively. If being unable to immediately CC the Dancer out of existence means they're OP something else needs to change, not their one way out of it. The HP/FP heal of Rest Beat is fine, it has an insanely long cooldown attached to it. If your fight is lasting long enough that they're rest beating again you have other problems.


Dance Hour: If only this cured Frozen. Having an answer to Clumsy/Immobilize is nice but it costs all your tempo and has a 10 round cooldown, meaning you're never going to get to use it again in most fights, so you're forced to end the fight in 3 rounds or have your class turned off. As I mentioned in my linked post, it could afford to have its cooldown reduced by the tempo you lost in casting it. I mean come on, Martial Artist has an answer for immobilize, why can't the class that entirely relies on NOT being immobilized to use any of its skills have a reliable skill to react to immobilize?

Polished Step: Not much to say. It's a nice 1m move and provides you 1 free tempo every 2 rounds. You always want this.

Discourteous Dip: As the name implies you use this skill to BM people. It's just Fegen. No, seriously, it's literally just Fegen, except you lose all your stacks to cast it. Why? Just make it a Dance skill. It doesn't need to sack your tempo. How often do you see Boxers spamming Fegen on people every two rounds? Not often because they usually spend their full stacks on Grand Upper or just keep hitting you until you die. Not something you typically want to pick up on a Dancer unless you're building it for another class/ally.


One-Two Step: As mentioned by the OP this is borderline useless being at 1 round duration. Just make it two rounds, please. So your allies have a better chance of making use of it ever. Dancer loses way too much potential damage not just casting one of their damaging skills to try and pop their One-Two steps. Curtain Call sucks too much as is to want to use for that purpose (and has a massive cooldown + destroys your stacks + scales on a stat you don't typically want on a Dancer).

Limbo: A unique and very nice defensive ability provided you've built CEL, even without it it might still work though. Solidifies CEL as the go-to defensive stat for Dancers. Something you always want to have regardless of your stat-line given it potentially negates entire attacks.


Dancer's Tempo: Mandatory to make use of Dancer abilities primarily for your damage. As Sadbot mentioned, this should really not be a main-class skill. You lose so much from not having tempo that Dancer's hardly worth using without it.


Wide Stage: +2 range on Dance skills. Mandatory.


Dancer's Agility: Just change this to be like Boxer's Wind Weave. Evade bonus based on current tempo. More reliable in the current evade environment where you always want to be capped on your evade buffs.


Dancer's Confidence: Great for....double tapping people through resists? It's nice but at the same time it doesn't feel necessary. You can Polished Step without worrying about losing your second Dance skill that turn, so in a way it's good to prevent Polished Step from feeling like a liability.


Dancer's Intensity: More damage good. Needing to build for crit make stat spread tight. Lacking weapon crit make crit almost impossible sometime.


Dancer's Stat Spread: Moving on from all its abilities, and onto what sort of stats Dancer even ends up wanting.


Generally you're looking at WIL SKI VIT FAI LUC. For more durability, FAI gets dropped for CEL and if you still want beefy Idol Steps, you Luminary it. These stats are largely unchangeable if you want to be dealing damage as a Dancer. You need WIL for sustaining your FP and extra elemental atk as a bonus, SKI to even do damage in the first place lest you miss everything you do, VIT so you don't explode the first time an enemy looks at you, FAI to amp the self heal and damage your Idol Step does, and LUC so you can crit and add damage to your best ability, Thunder Steps.

CEL being your go to if you want to be more viable in PvP/survive at all in higher level content (maybe).

As it stands Dancer literally cannot crit some mobs without heavy sub-class support and gets 70%~ hit at best against the more evasive mobs at higher levels. Then explodes immediately when the mobs turn around and hit them, as their desired stat spread leaves them no room for defenses. Some might drop their FAI for CEL then get pigeonholed into running sub-class VA or ST due to the current state of evade crutching on Rogue to function well (which dev's already aware of), as Dancer + Bard itself offers no evade buffs beyond Dancer's Agility which isn't reliable due to being for only one attack.

In response to Sadbot's comment about Dancer's stat options....no. Dancers cannot cheat their stats. They use the stats above or they're not dealing damage with their dance skills or they're dying immediately.

This means that Dancer has little to no freedom in even deciding a weapon to use for its SWA. Their stats are already bound to their class. Comparing it to Razor Rune is disingenuous as that requires no stats at all, whereas everything in Dancer needs stats. They're forced to use something like a Crossbow that scales a stat almost every single build needs by default.

In Conclusion:

Thunder Steps/Ice Slide/Idol Step are the meat and potatoes of Dancer. Its other abilities need to be brought up to par, as currently they're borderline useless outside niche scenarios. In relevant content (lvl 60-80 dungeons) it struggles to survive and deal damage (no i dont count Lava Lake).

Idol step needs to be altered to not make it a 1v1 monster.

Dancer needs a good answer to Immobilize/Clumsy/Frozen/Grappled that doesn't leave it a sitting duck immediately afterwards.

Dancer's damage is a hard issue to solve without totally reworking the class. Simply gutting its high performing skills and giving it nothing in return will kill the class. Something like changing all Dance skills to be Fist skills, then lowering their elemental ATK and giving Tempo a greater bonus to Elemental ATK to compensate, but even then you may run afoul of minimal viable options for weapons to use as a Dancer with their stat-line up.

Whatever changes with Dancer, it needs to address the large amount of FP it uses or its need to crit for ideal damage, or its stat crunch will be largely unchanged.

[Shujin]

An obvious idea for Idolstep could also be the DH reaver treatment.

first prog on a Person 100% second 50% any beyond that 25%

Would considerably reduce the damage and healing output on a single target, it might need a reduced CD then though to like...5