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.
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:
- Very High damage, if you utilize Tempo/Crit potential in your favor
- Good FP recovery Options to keep you going
- One of the best burst heals in the game
- Extremely potent 1v1 fighters
- Good Mobility options
CONS:
- All of the Pros are basically tied to Main Class only, except Mobility.
- No innate defense Options outside of Limbo
- No hit buffs nor a real use for weapons outside of 3 skills (double dance, Skating Spin, Curtain Call)
- Extremely high FP consumption, therefore, needing high amounts of Will, and only a short window to make use of your FP recovery
- Good in PvE as Mainclass for up to level 60, beyond that or as a subclass, very ineffective to borderline useless.
- 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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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!
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