The Last Dance: Gearing Paradigms For A New Age

Job Abilities



While Dancers have a wide array of abilities at their fingertips, many of them will go unused in favor of the strongest abilities. It may sound tempting to use as many abilities as one possibly can, since many of them are reasonably powerful; unfortunately, Dancers are saddled by the delay associated with activating a job ability. Without going into detail, the dancer essentially loses an an entire attack round (potentially more if there are many sources of haste) every time a job ability is activated. This results in a substantial loss of damage and a significant opportunity cost in TP - on top of the TP cost to activate many of these abilities. Since the offensive nature of any front-line job should not be ignored, job abilities should be used sparingly and the most effective job abilities should be favored.

Dancers run into another weakness in their abilities in their competitive nature: many abilities share a recast timer. Fast decisions often must be made on the battlefield to determine which ability is best for the current situation, because the alternatives may be locked for a significant period of time after using an ability (even if the ability fails to activate due to Paralysis).

Level Job Ability Effect SP1 Trance Negates the TP cost of dances, reduces the recast of Waltzes 5 Sambas Consume TP to imbue your melee attacks with supportive effects. 15 Waltzes Consume TP to restore HP or remove negative status effects. 20 Steps Consume TP to enfeeble the target and earn finishing moves. 20 Flourishes I Consume finishing moves for a variety of effects. 25 Jigs Convenient travel-related self-enhancement dances. 40 Flourishes II Consume finishing moves for a variety of effects. Merit Saber Dance Grants a high level of the "Double Attack" job trait, but restricts access to Waltzes. Merit Fan Dance Reduces physical damage taken and increases enmity, but restricts access to Sambas. Merit No Foot Rise Grants finishing moves based on merit level. 77 Presto The next step will be enhanced and grant an additional finishing move.. 80 Flourishes III Consume finishing moves for a variety of offensive enhancements.

Sambas



Their supple frames adorned in magnificent garments, dancing in plain view on the battlefield, boldly defying downpour after downpour of beastman arrow, the dancers bestowed countless of Altana's legions with both courage and resolve, earning them the title "maidens of the battlefield."

Level Sambas TP Cost Duration Effect 5 Drain Samba 10 2:00 Party members recover HP on melee strikes. 25 Aspir Samba 10 2:00 Party members drain MP on melee strikes. 35 Drain Samba II 25 1:30 Party members recover HP on melee strikes. 45 Haste Samba 35 1:30 Increases attack speed of party members. 60 Aspir Samba II 25 1:30 Party members drain MP on melee strikes. 65 Drain Samba III 40 1:30 Party members recover HP on melee strikes.

There are three types of Samba: Drain, Aspir, and Haste. Drain Samba comes in three tiers of increasing potency, Aspir in two, and there is a single tier of Haste Samba. While enhanced with a Samba, your melee attacks inflict a "daze" effect on the target. All party members who strike a "dazed" enemy will receive the beneficial effect of your samba.

Drain Samba allows party members to recover HP proportional to the delay of their weapon upon striking the dazed target (attacks do not do additional damage), but this is ineffective against undead targets. This ability is rarely used at higher levels.

Aspir Samba allows party members to drain MP proportional to the delay of their weapon upon striking the dazed target, but this is ineffective against undead targets or targets without MP. This ability is rarely used, even at lower levels.

Haste Samba grants 5% (51/1024) job ability haste to any party member engaged with the dazed target. This is a powerful effect and can be increased to 10% (101/1024) via group 1 merits. This ability significantly increases not only your own TP gain and damage per second, but that of all party members engaged. Once this ability is learned, it's essentially the only Samba worth using. (And it's definitely worth using.)

The duration of all Sambas can be increased by 30 seconds by equipping a Dancer's Tiara or Dancer's Tiara +1 upon activation. (You are free to remove it after activating the ability and still reap the increased duration).

Waltzes



The next ability you will encounter in your Dancing career is the Waltz. These soothing dances consume the TP you gain by attacking enemies to restore HP or remove status ailments. Unfortunately, their shared timers somewhat cripple their effectiveness, and as white mages and scholars have seen their healing prowess increase by leaps and bounds as the level cap increased, Dancers mostly saw an increase to their offensive prowess. Still, waltzes are situationally invaluable and a good Dancer knows when to halt their pirouette and waltz the party out of a perilous situation.

Level TP Cost Waltzes Effect Recast Scaling Factor (k) Base (B) Est. Recovery* 15 20 Curing Waltz Restores target's HP. 0:06 0.25 60 123 HP 25 40 Divine Waltz Restores HP for party members in area of effect. 0:13 0.25 60 123 HP 30 35 Curing Waltz II Restores target's HP. 0:08 0.5 130 258 HP 35 20 Healing Waltz Removes one detrimental effect from target party member. 0:15 45 50 Curing Waltz III Restores target's HP. 0:10 0.75 270 473 HP 70 65 Curing Waltz IV Restores target's HP. 0:17 1.00 450 736 HP 78 80 Divine Waltz Restores HP for party members in area of effect. 0:20 0.5 280 431 HP 80 80 Curing Waltz V Restores target's HP. 0:23 1.25 600 963 HP

*Estimated recovery calculated with caster CHR + target VIT = 190 and Waltz Potency +15%

The table above includes a value for "Scaling Factor" and "Base" for each waltz. These are used in the waltz formula:



Where P is the sum total of the waltz potency you have on your waltz gear (for example, if you're wearing Dancer's Casaque (+10%) and Sonia's Plectrum (+1%) then P=11), C is your charisma, V is your target's vitality. The funny bracket things represent the floor function - in other words, evaluate everything inside of the floor brackets and then chop off anything after the decimal point (round down). The waltz formula adds up your CHR to the target's VIT, scales it by the scaling factor k adds B, floors that value, applies your waltz potency, and then floors the value again.

The estimate potencies in the table above includes a minimal amount of waltz gear because it's generally not worth carrying around.



The Anwig Salade from A Moogle Kupo d'Etat can be augmented with Waltz Recast -2, which is a pretty significant reduction and helps alleviate the annoying timers - although it does compete with two of our strongest pieces of Waltz Potency gear. In the past, the waltz potency Anwig made or broke the Dancer, but these days they waltz a lot less and it's more of a convenience.

For more information on Waltzes handled more technically, check out Byrth's article on Waltz Efficiency.

Steps

Steps enfeeble the target and grant finishing moves with which the Dancer can perform its other abilities.

Level Steps Effect 1 2 3 4 5 20 Quickstep Lowers target's evasion. -8 -12 -16 -20 -24 30 Box Step Lowers target's defense. -5% -7% -9% -11% -13% 45 Stutter Step Lowers target's magic evasion. -?? -?? -?? -?? -?? 83 Feather Step Lowers target's critical hit evasion (increases player critical hit rate). 3%* 4%* 5%* 6%* 7%*

*Value assuming Charis Toeshoes +2

Steps inflict a debilitating status on the target (called a "Daze" despite working very different from Samba-related dazes) that increases in stages. Each application of a particular step increases the associated daze (and as a result, the potency of the effect) by one level, up to a maximum of level 5. Successfully landing a step will grant the user two finishing moves - or a single finishing move if the daze associated with the step was already at the max level. Dancer's coveted Mythic Weapon, Terpsichore, increases the number of finishing moves granted for a sucessful step by one (at all upgrade stages - but will not grant additional finishing moves if the daze level was already capped). Daze effects from steps have a base duration of 1 minute, and each step applied after the first increases the duration by 30 seconds, up to a maximum of 2 minutes.

The success rate of steps is dependent on the Dancer's melee accuracy, although all steps receive an innate accuracy bonus of +10. They are suject to the accuracy cap, however, so steps will fail 5% of the time even for a level 99 Dancer fighting tiny mandragora in East Sarutabaruta. Because Dancers are highly accurate to begin with, and steps receive this innate accuracy bonus, there is virtually no justification to the group 1 merit category "Step Accuracy." Seriously, don't do it. Additionally, gear that enhances "Step Accuracy" is dificult to justify because there are often pieces of gear with comprehensive acuracy bonuses matching or exceeding the amount available on gear specific to steps - and these comprehensive items have applications outside of steps.

Furthermore, steps are often combined with the job ability Presto which grants a +50 accuracy bonus to your next step and causes it to raise the associated daze level by two instead of one (For example, utilizing Presto + Step on a target with no daze effect would inflict Daze Level 2). Additionally, for a step for which the daze level has not been capped, Presto will cause the step to grant an additonal finishing move on success. This additional finishing move stacks with the additional finishing move granted by Terpsichore. This is especially notable because for the cost of 10 TP, a Terpsichore-wielding Dancer can store 4 finishing moves which can be in turn reversed for 77 TP - a net gain of 67 TP - every 30 seconds. (Unfortunately you lose about that much to much more from the forced delay associated with the job abilities, so it's really only worth doing for skillchaining).

The most useful of these abilities is, of course, Box Step which goes a long way in alleviating a Dancer's attack woes (and of course, benefits the other melee party members). Combined with Presto, a dancer is essentially guaranteed 7% defense down on virtually any target which is susceptible to melee attacks.

Actual Box Step Values!


7% defense down may not sound like a lot, but it's actually more potent than adding 7% to your own attack. Additionally, it compounds with other sources of defense down additively and defense reduction has an exponential effect on the potency of attack. This may not be intuitive, but we can see it easily by expressing defense reduction as the equivalent attack increase as follows:



And plotting it:



And now things we know intuitively start to make sense! While 7% defense down is modestly equivalent to a 7.6% increase to our attack, and 25% defense down is equivalent to raising our attack by 33% - halving the enemy's defense (50% reduction) is the same as doubling our attack (100% increase) which is what we'd expect. Of course, for high levels of defense reduction, we may not see the full effect due to the cap on ratio but Dancers usually only have this to worry about in high-buff situations.

Feather Step is what a Dancer will want to use in most situations where the ratio cap is of concern, since a boost to critical hit rate is always welcome. Quickstep sees niche uses versus highly evasive enemies such as THF enemies in Salvage, and could see some use in higher level alliance content if Dancers become viable in these events, but for now the situations where it would be useful are rare. Stutter Step has a sole function in increasing the accuracy of Violent Flourish's stun effect, but if you need the magic accuracy boost to land the stun effect, Violent Flourish is probably a poor strategy in the first place. In an event like Besieged or Campaign, where other jobs frequently use Dancer as a support job, it can be a good idea to rely on Feather Step for finishing moves since only Dancers can use this Step and other players increasing daze effects for the subbable steps can lead to disappointing single-finishing move steps!

Flourishes I



These abilities consume finishing moves to inflict some sort of effect on a target. At higher levels, these will be used uncommonly.

Level Flourishes I Effect Finishing Moves Recast 20 Animated Flourish Provokes target. 1-2 0:30 30 Desperate Flourish Weighs target down with a low rate of success. 1 0:20 45 Violent Flourish Stuns target with a low rate of success. 1 0:20

Animated Flourish generates 1000 Volatile Enmity for one finishing move and 1500 for two, making it a bit weaker than provoke. There's not much use for it at higher levels except for as a claiming tool. Desperate Flourish can weigh a target down, which reduces its evasion; unfortunately, if you need to lower a target's evasion due to low accuracy you will have difficulty landing this ability due to its hefty accuracy penalty. Violent Flourish on the other hand has a high accuracy bonus similar to that of the first hits of weapon skills (in the ballpark of +100). Unfortunately, the stun effect is easily resisted on many targets. You can however equip an Etoile Casaque, Etoile Casaque +1, or Etoile Casaque +2 to greatly enhance the accuracy of the stun effect.



Magic accuracy also affects the stun rate, but it's generally not worth carrying gear specifically for this purpose. If you need to stun a target for which a Dancer would require magic accuracy gear, bring a mage or Dark Knight with access to Stun.

Versus targets on which the stun effect is reliable, Violent Flourish can be an invaluable tool to maintain Utsusemi images on DNC/NIN. Simply stun the target and immediately begin casting Utsusemi: Ichi for an easier time getting shadows back up without being interrupted. It's also useful to interrupt spells or enemy weapon skills, particularly if they have a long ready time. Keep in mind that this ability can both miss and be resisted, however, making it somewhat of a gamble. All of the Flourishes I can trigger Job Ability weaknesses in Dynamis.

Flourishes II



These abilities consume finishing moves various utility effects.

Level Flourishes II Effect Finishing Moves Recast 40 Reverse Flourish Converts finishing moves into TP. 1-5 0:30 50 Building Flourish Enhances the next weapon skill. 1-3 0:10 45 Wild Flourish Readies target for a skillchain. 2 0:20

The first, and most valuable, of these abilities is Reverse Flourish. Reverse Flourish converts your stored finishing moves into TP, which can be used as a source of starting TP along with No Foot Rise or used to perform two weapon skills back to back forming a powerful self-skillchain. With the proper equipment and merits, Reverse Flourish will return up to 5 times the amount of TP you spent on steps to generate finishing moves (even more if you have Terpsichore!). It's certainly one of the defining abilities of the Dancer class. Building Flourish is powerful, providing, among other things, up to 25% attack, but relatively expensive since it competes with Reverse Flourish. Why enhance a single weapon skill when you can just use those finishing moves to perform two? This is especially true at higher levels when the TP return from Reverse Flourish is higher. Wild Flourish can be useful in fast-paced events versus weaker enemies for which two weaponskills and skillchain damage would be overkill, but a single weapon-skill and closing skillchain damage is enough to deplete their HP. It can also trigger Job Ability weaknesses in Dynamis.

Flourishes III



These abilities all consume finishing moves for some sort of offensive enhancement.

Level Flourishes III Effect Finishing Moves Recast 80 Climactic Flourish Consumes finishing moves to force the first hit of a certain number of rounds to go critical. 1-5 1-5 89 Striking Flourish Consumes finishing moves to force a double attack. 2 0:20 93 Ternary Flourish Consumes finishing moves to force a triple attack. 3 0:20

Striking Flourish and Ternary Flourish rarely see any use due to their long recast (and in the case of the latter, high cost) relative to their effectiveness and competition with the more useful Climactic Flourish. Although Charis Casaque +2 enhances Striking Flourish to add a 50% critical hit rate (even to non-critical weapon skills), it's more effective to just force a critical hit outright with Climactic Flourish. Climactic Flourish does consume all finishing moves, so it will take a little finesse to complete a Solo Skillchain involving this job ability. The general strategy is as follows:



With Saber Dance and haste buffs, this strategy is pretty reliable to execute. However, it's really only useful to Twashtar wielders who have access to the powerful single-hit weapon skill Rudra's Storm. This strategy would actually be much easier for a Terpsichore-wielder to execute but a Terpsichore wielder has no interest in using Climactic Flourish! The above strategy can also be simplified if combined with the job ability Sekkanoki from a Samurai support job.



Please note that when using Climactic Flourish on a Weapon Skill you'll want to be sure to wear your Charis Tiara +2 upon activation - and during relevant attacks. Not only will the tiara grant a bonus critical hit (up to 6 critical hits for 5 finishing moves spent), it will also grant a 20% critical attack bonus while equipped! That's an incredible boost to a Weapon Skill like Rudra's Storm, where the majority of the damage will spring from the initial critical hit. Many people also use Spellcast to ensure that the tiara stays equipped for all melee attack rounds while the Climactic Flourish buff is active.