Hi old friend Bloodlusty here, glad you’re still rocking it 👍

Hey Rua this is Kwech! I'm a DNC main and just love the job. Really glad that people picked up on my addon, as I originally just made it as something to help my own awareness. Great approach to the guide!

From a DNC main who quit the game over how DNC is viewed, thank you. Hopefully people will actually listen to what you say.

For any new/returning players watching this, Dancer is the king of one of FFXI's endgame content and thanks to prime weapons now has access to light skillchains! DNC was slept on for a long time but now it's shining.

Great CS of Lilisette you picked to go along your explanation of the fighting style of dancers

As a R15 Terpsichore DNC I am glad to see the job getting more attention on a channel like Rua's where it will (hopefully) further educate the community on how well a DNC really does perform, and maybe even remove some of the stigma that may still be out there among the jUst gO dRk oR sAm crowd. Well done, Rua! DNC really is a monster when played properly.

I'm a Rune Fencer main 1 year returning after nearly a decade of FFXIV. This guide.... Dancer can be so awesome in FFXI, I want to make it my main DPS/support job. Thank you for showcasing the wonder of Dancer.

Hail, Rua. I have been waiting for you to make this job guide and I'm sorry I've not been available lately and seemingly forgot to talk to you in game about contributing to this guide prior to its making, lots on my plate currently. As such, here's my critique of what, at about 16 minutes in, is thus far a spot-on guide. That said, here's my two cents, from a career DNC, much of which was derived through discussions, debates, and rigorous testing with other career Dancers, most notably Merils, Kiania, and Elizabetha, to whom equal credit is certainly due (and at least one of whom wouldn't let me hear the end of it if I didn't mention them.) Right so here goes: The waltz set you're showing has horos tights +3 when you should absolutely without exception ALWAYS be waltzing in a dashing subligar. Aside from the 10% waltz potency, it has the unique effect of granting a blink effect while the waltz is being performed. There is no number of shadows, you simply have blink shadow image while performing the waltz, period,. full stop. What this means is that you simply cannot be caught by a physical attack in your waltz set. Needless to say, this adds an incredible layer of security to the Dancer, and frees them from worrying about getting one-shot while waltzing due to the lack of defensive stats on waltz gear. The af+3 body and feet are absolytely correct, as is the jse +1 or +2 neck. The +2 neck has 10 potency to the +1's 5, which allows you to cap potency with just those four pieces, Body 19, subligar 10, feet 14, and neck 10 for 53, or 48 with the +1 neck, in which case you would want to probably use the Yamarang ammo to make up the additional few points. You DO NOT want to use the etoile head in any situation, as waltzes to yourself will be in the mummu bonnet +2 for the waltz potency received, and waltzes to others should properly be performed in the Anwig Salade from iirc A Moogle Kupo D'etat scenario, for additional waltz reuse delay reduction. Further reduction to this can be achieved with one or more Enchuflas which have not only reuse reduction but also 10% potency each, which could potentially allow you to sub out pieces like the neck and ammo in favor of enmity + or enmity - or even very high CHR pieces. Hoever, if you're going to be in a waltz-heavy situation, you will be better served by the raw tp gain from Terpsichore and an offhand like the occ. atk. 2-4 version of the magian dagger Centovente, of which you should also have the tp bonus +1000 version for obvious reasons. In situations involving extremely high content levels and debuffs or dispels where you simply cannot achieve the accuracy needed for the OA2-4 Centovente to be practical, an Enchufla is a good option. With the TP gain from Terpsichore, the reuse timer reduction from the AF+3 body, anwig salade, and enchufla for a combined -6, the combination of No Foot Rise and Reverse Flourish, and the now separated reuse timers for waltzes, I would challenge your assessment that a DNC cannot main heal a group like a back-line healer. This, combined with the newer gear options with much higher accuracy and evasion, is why I also challenge your allocation of 3 merits to No Foot Rise and 5 to Closed Position, as well as the dangerous position being face-to-face or tet-a-tet as it were with the monster places you in. While yes, with gear and merits enhancing reverse flourish, 3 finishing moves from no foot rise is enough to grant you 1000 tp, and yes you can always NFR, step to reach the 5 that reverse flourish will convert to tp, that takes time you may not have. No Foot Rise lvl 5 followed immediately by reverse flourish is an instant buttload of tp which, while handy for completing difficult long multi-step skillchains, is *invaluable* as a panic button when engaged in a healing capacity or when the proverbial shit hits the fan. As to steps, when discussing presto you mention using it to quickly cap box and feather and then taking your time on quick and stutter, but that isn't the norm. If you're in a party using mostly critical weapon skills I would agree with that statement, but I rarely find that to be the case. In most situations I would prioritize presto for box step, and quickstep, then work on stutter step and feather step. In a mage-heavy setup, stutter step and box step then work on quick and feather. Just a minor note and subject to personal preference. The rest of the guide from here on out is spot on, very well done sir. There are a few items of note that you didn't mention that are worth pointing out in addition to this very solid job guide. When using WAR sub, one thing most people overlook being that dancer is naturally a dual-wielding job, is the fencer job trait. Fencer only becomes active when you are wielding a single handed weapon in the main hand and your offhand is either empty or holding a shield. While many people discard this option flatly without full consideration deeming the rate of TP gain too slow, I beg to differ. Using the stopwatch test, I've seen a DNC/WAR Fencer build go from weapon skill to weapon skill equally fast or even faster than when dual wielding depending on circumstances. The reason for this is that, as you mentioned, a master dancer natively gets Dual Wield V, and we all know what Dual Wield and Martial Arts do to TP gain. Interestingly, when in Fencer build, since you are not Dual Wielding, the effects of that Tier V trait on your TP gain are no longer active, hugely increasing the tp gained with each swing. When you create your TP build with that fact in mind, still piling on plenty of triple attack, but taking the huge amounts of Store TP where they are available, particularly from the Malignance set and the Relic +3 feet when in closed position, You can potentially TP faster in Fencer build. With warrior subjob, you get only the first tier of Fencer job trait, but that's enough. In addition to the arguably insignificant 3% increase to critical hit rate (which does come in handy and I'll get to that in a moment) it also grants a TP bonus effect of 200. When stacked with the Moonshade Earring from completion of Wings of the Goddess, that's 450 TP bonus. If the weapon you're fencing with is Aeneas, that adds up to 950 tp bonus which is really something. Aeneas is not the ideal choice for most situations though. Should you have a summoner in your party, Shiva's crystal blessing adds another 250 TP bonus for a total of 700 on daggers other than Aeneas, and with the amount of multi-hit DNC can pile on, more often than not I've found my TP over 1300 following the first hit to put it over 1000, and over 1550 from the next attack following reaching 1000. This can do a lot for your damage, but isn't the big show. The Big Show as I put it, comes when you are single wielding the Twashtar, particularly at Rank 15. Given Twashtar's native WS (aftermath WS) is your best WS, Rudra's Storm, which gets remarkably better at higher TP, it is certainly not hurting you to Rudra at 3000 TP as needed to maintain AM3. So should you find yourself, for one example, afflicted with amnesia, but you've wisely put up Twashtar's AM3, a 50% chance for melee hits - including additional attacks in the attack round (DA, TA, QA, Zanshin, but not counter or retaliation) - to do Triple damage, and you swap from your TP gain set to a set involving 2 or more pieces of Empyrean +1 armor and a combination of Crit rate and crit dmg, you've added a small chance for those same attacks to do double damage as long as you have a samba up, and coupled with that, a good rate (+3% from fencer! told you i'd get back to that) of critical hits which you've boosted with critical hit damage, you will see the occasional white damage hit deal 6x the dmg of an enhanced critical hit. It's a small percentage, but when a crit, an am 3 proc, and an empy set bonus proc all line up, it's as good as a WS, and any two of those 3 stacking on any hit is pretty damn devastating in itself. I don't recal Merils's exact build, but I would use something like Maculele +1 head and feet for the high store tp, mummu+2 hands and legs, meg cuirie +2 or abnoba kaftan, hetairoi ring, mummu ring, chiner's belt +1 (hey toss in some triple attack damage should those 3 procs line up on a triple attack) charis feather, etoile gorget +2, odr earring, balder earring, and an ambuscade crit rate cape. This particular setup is rather a novelty at the moment, but depending on what empy armor +3 looks like and whether they increase the proc rates on the set bonuses, could end up being an extremely devastating setup and not just for DNC. Finally, as you have traditionally avoided discussions on which weapons to use at the endgame level, owing to what I'm going to assume is the opinion that if you're going to make a job a "main" or "career" job, you should have *all* the relevant weapons for it as they *all* have their uses, I will likewise refrain from my opinions on those weapons apart from those previously stated regarding taking a healing role. I would, however like to hear your opinion regarding the DNC SU5 weapon and its 3 available paths sometime, prefearably in game. In summary, fantastic guide. Brilliant, as we or at least I have come to expect from your Job guides, excellent for players just approaching a job, everything they need to know without getting bogged down in min/maxing. I hope my take on the job gives you something to chew on and has value at least for someone. Cheers, mate. All the best hope to see you soon. Cel.

striking and ternary flourish would be fantastic in the rare times using h2h

Thank you for this ! I can't believe I'm gonna start FF XI in 2021

Started playing again after many years gone & have been maining dancer. Been having a lot of fun acting as a main healer while leveling. Even as a broke newbie with garbage gear I've managed to pull myself out of a number of hairy situations because of the jobs insane utility.

Man I really want to try ff11. Have been a big fan of ff14 for a while now, and dancer is my favorite job in that game, and the way they work in ff11 seems very interesting.

These job videos are sooo dang good! Thanks for them :)

I have to say as a long-time player since this game was released i never really thought of dnc as a main job. I spent a lot of time thf/dnc for various things, after recently leveling dnc and playing it its some of the most fun ive had on this game thanks to your guide video.

I love Dancer, especially in Dynamis when they changed it to Job Ability proccing on certain enemies. Farming currency for relics is so easy now.

Another. Great. Guide. Video. Thank you Ruau.

Thanks man appreciate the work you put into this video.

I have always been known as a WHM main but truth is, I adore DNC. The ability to do tons of damage right in the mobs face AND heal yourself and those in your party... Well, that makes my WHM very happy. To be able to take on Faust, before Trusts, and solo him as DNC/WHM was awesome. Took me a long minute to kill the sucker, they hadn't dumbed down the game yet.

Yessss Rua thank you this dnc guide ...Ammon here see you in the server brother ! Great Vic

this guide has really helped me, i was playing dnc all wrong!

I loved DNC when it launched... it appears it's only gotten even better!

It was really good, I'm glad you didn't get into the mess that is wild flourish combo's XD

Much apreciated DNC really needed some awereness, specially on how usefull box step truly is, i was messing a bit with it before i quited the game last month and saw some really great potential withing it (also once past the initial learning barrier it should be an pretty friendly newcomer/solo/lowman DD). Anyway one remark i have tough is that striking flourish is a bit more usefull then it looks due to his recast being over 2x faster then climatic, sure it does not do much damage by itself, and with empy body its not an garanteed crit, however crit chance is pretty high and can be pushed further. I used it alot on non priority targets inside dynamis D to push up the damage a bit and save the longer recast climatic for high priority targets like nin or bsts that need to be ditched out asap, i can see it working like that in cp parties as well if you are killing too fast.

Prime Dagger making those light based skillchains more accessible than ever

HEy, I've watched your videos on and off, I'm still very new to the game, but dancer has become my absolute favorite, and this video is genuinely helpful as mainly for4 now I'm playing with trusts and don't know all my own strengths and weaknesses. Just wanted to thank you for making such good content.

Minor fix at 32:35 It says Evisceration (Gravitation) followed by Pyrrhic Kleos (Distortion) which is followed by distortion. The distortion property creates distortion when preceded by fragmentation. In this instance, it's actually Evisceration(Transfixion) > Pyrrhic Kleos (Scission) both weaponskills' secondary attributes which is creating the distortion. Also, the WS animation shown during this is Shark Bite.

Maybe things are different now (?) but when I last played a couple years ago, no one welcomed a Dancer for virtually any group content "because it is squishy and any 2H beat it at dps", especially without a mythic or empyrean weapon. It was my main job after 75 cap was lifted mostly because it became incredibly fun (plus it was very solo friendly, so much better than /DNC on another melee job imo). My friends carried me on their FOTM jobs and when they quit I was unable to keep the desire to continue solo. I miss the game so much, but I'm afraid if I come back I will just ruin my memories by being bored and frustrated from lack of friends and party invites from strangers. Really great video though; I enjoyed it a lot. I found your lack of gear overview a little bit of a bummer, but realizing that is ever-changing or ever-situational, I think you made the right call.

Oh yes as someone who occasionally subs dancer it was evident right off the bat that it was a severely underrated job. I'm not a dancer main and I'm only creeping into melee slowly because I am caster main with Black mage as my Primary but I've found it as a subjob for melee to be absolutely invaluable and pretty much anything that makes that good of a subjob HAS to be amazing as a main job. Thanks for the guide. It probably wont make me Dancer primary but it will encourage me to at least put some Effort into Developing it as a level 99 job.

I've always really liked the job... ever since defending it as a dps over healing in a colibri party at 75 cap. Coming back and picking up a few job points and slowly gearing I've already seen some impressive (to me anyway) numbers with it alongside the survivability and utility when solo (Asura yell makes me think I might always be solo... not the point). Thanks for this guide as I picked up a number of useful tips (and was already considering trying /drg for a change of pace, neat seeing it confirmed as potentially viable). Your guides in general have been a great help to a returning player, thank you for your contributions to this community.

Been a Dancer pretty much since Wings came out because I had stonewalled on RDMaat and MNKMaat, and fell in love ever since. Truly knew what DNC could do when I soloed Adamantoise for over a week and a half trying to get my Adamantoise Egg for Black Belt back during DNC75/NIN37, and finally got it by tank-holding Aspicheledone until my LS arrived to help me finish it off. Since then I've gotten Terpsichore (Still needing the NeoDyna win to unlock augmenting) and my usual setup is DNC/SAM, offhanding either Twashtar on content I really need the dex/acc boosts on, or the TP Bonus+1000 Magian dagger when I can afford to lose some of the offhand white damage in favor of being able to spam the heck out of effectively 2000+ weaponskills.

Hey man, thanks for these guides they are treasure! lol I learned more in 30 min than playing for months and months on my own. Have u planned on work on a Thief guide?? That would be awesome!

I picked it up for relic currency farming as a thf sub and even though I only have it at 20 so far I'm in love with the job

Yes!!! Finally!!! Thank you so much!!!

I am honestly *shocked* at just how overlooked DNC is -- seeing one participating in end game content is like spotting Bigfoot. :-/

DNC was my main in XI. My main now in XIV.

Galkapryme, here. You said Healing Waltz removes a random status ailment. In my experience, it removes the oldest ailment first.

Was just watching your BRD guide and now this : )

Thanks for the guide!

Thank you for the great guide. I have a few questions. Any recommendations for trusts that would work well with Dancer? Also, is it possible to skillchain with trusts?

Enjoying your job guides very much. Would like to know if SE has updated Thief like a lot of the other jobs and if you've done a job guide for it. THF is my main, iLVL 116 SU4 working on getting Aeonic weapon. Any advice would be welcome. Thanks

Excellent video Rua as usual. Its not worth editing your video over this but Healing Waltz is not the full spectrum of Na spells as, for whatever reason, it can't remove petrify.

FINALLY, YEET Let's go~

Great video. Just pointing out: Dancer has D Skill in Sword (the same as hand-to-hand) but it wasn't mentioned. Dancer can also use the OAT2 Demersal Degen from Bakunawa UNM. Which should see an upgrade soon enough, so it will get an even better sword option. Also, I don't know if you mentioned that steps operate off of your own accuracy, with step accuracy gear added to it. Which means, if you can hit the target, you can debuff it Buukki

Been waiting for this one :D

love that they took the names for abilities and used them for DNC in FFXIV

Quick question. Why do you use Polyhymnia in your Offhand? I thought the augments only work on MH. I would recommend getting Ternion Dagger +1 or Taming Sari if you are going to keep with Dancer.

I wish there was a healing set link! Bump 2023 ❤

Hi Rua, Thanks for shining some light on DNC. Question, around 34:28, you said Sekkanomi (SAM sub) would allow for Evis at 1000tp(I get that) but then said followed by 2 climatic Rudra’s back to back? Do you mean 2 Rudra’s back to back with 1 being climatic? Thanks again for the great guide! Freaking I might be missing something lol

I leveled dnc before it got the dual wield job trait was added so i favored hand to hands over daggers until I got dancing edge

Just started playing FFXI and hoping it still has plenty of years on it! Going DNC and haven’t done much but rdy to see what it can do

Turms is a good set before malig

I'm still a Dancer Main since WotG

Great guide. If any critcism could be provided to show off a job better, i'd enable damage numbers in your battle log. it's hard to see the numbers that pop up sometimes.

Does /thf make any sense for dnc? I want to create a new character and play solo with trusts to replay the story. My idea was to level one of the starting jobs to 49 and then unlock dnc and level it to 99. My frist idea was to pick war as starting and sub job, but then I rememberd that some missions require item farming and thought TH could be useful and started to wonder if dnc/thf would make any sense with sneak / trick attack and sub job th.

So, what you're saying is... Bst next :D

I can Tank as this bloody job.. I solo shit with this amazing job.

I'm starting to hate these guides. Every time you post one my job ADHD gets triggered and I want to abandon everything I've been working on from my current job (usually from the last guide) and jump balls deep into the new one. In the future could you stop making the job look so awesome? My poor mog house will thank you......

Months late - did not get around to watching it - but one thing I would add is that the Building vs. Reverse issue is often a false choice, as Building has a 1-minute duration with its 10 sec cooldown so there's no reason not to have Building up in whatever combat situation you're using Reverse for. Building, wait a beat, step, and your Group II cooldown will be ready for Reverse when you need it.

So should I even bother making macros for Animated, Desperate, Wild, Striking, and Ternary Flourishes?

What are your thoughts on the DNC su5 dagger vs twashter rnk15 as main hand for best dps. Would really appreciate your thoughts

Dnc slaps. Can confirm

So I'm relatively new to ffxi, and my game doesn't look like yours, is there a way I can make it so I'm capable of seeing the damage I've dealt like you have instead of it being just in the chat log?

What set was that you were wearing on BST? That's badass.

I really should try /drg on this

DNC also has en enormous pro going for it in that it's not subjob reliant at all, there's a lot of viable options for them. Also, their magic evasion is not low at all (they're on turms, among other options), I disagree with that. When a situation calls for it, you can even sacrifice your subjob for it as /run, where all you'd lose out on is berserk/warcry (which aren't that valuable in ultra-buff scenarios, nor in low-end content like Kist, where /run will make the fight as easy as the other t1's).

I’m here for Mikkel’s response.

👌

Rua can you do a samurai job guide please I watch you all the time

i've been looking to play this on pc. help?

Rua, you are a gift :>

You ever gonna do Summoner?

I'm sorry, but I will watch this in parts. Not much time and im too curious to wait till midnight and family asleep lol. DNC is my main btw. In case someone misunderstood my intention. I wrote all of this to help making this guide even better. Doesnt even matter if i am wrong or right with my arguments, because meritoric discussion is always good and I love to be proven wrong and learn something. Few things I noticed so far: 1. I dont think DNC gets TP exceptionaly fast. Maybe withing few seconds of activating saber dance, but otherwise not so much imo. You have base 35% dual wield (and that lets you get to haste cap easier ofc, but also cuts down your tp per hit), so you cant for example use 10% haste from samba to keep haste cap with capped magic and gear haste and lower dual wield. Furthermore you dont have things like NINs Daken, SAM zanhasso, MNKs kicks, THFs high triple attack, WARs double attack, BLU base storetp and triple attack, DRG high base double attack and capped haste without dual wield cons etc. You generally need Terpsichore or fresh Saber Dance to TP really fast on DNC. Of course you have reverse flourish that gives you immidietate TP, but to be able to get tp from reverse flourish you first need to use at least 3 abilities, so JA delay kinda evens overall tp gain, but gives you freedom when you want to use it and same as Climactic flourish let you really spike damage, reverse flourish lets you spike tp gain, but if you take avg of tp gain from even a 2 min fight, it wont be anything special. 2. Fan dance gives you semi good benefits of more merits. Augment from relic hands gives you additional physical damage reduction with fan dance, based on fan dance merits. This pdt is multiplicative with regular pdt, so effectively 4/5 fan dance DNC with relic hands can have 62% pdt instead of 60% and also shorten recast on waltzes could be situationally useful for clutch especially on aoe cures. That might not be anything special, but OFR isnt anything special too imo. Both are situational I guess. 3. Haste Samba is kinda useless or almost useless in many setups, because setups are not build around haste samba. Most jobs dont need samba much in setup with brd and haste. It marginaly benefits all jobs with 35% dual wield and maybe mnk with high delay h2h and slightly more WAR/sam with great axe. Drg, sam, drk (during last resort) dont need it. Some jobs with lower dual wield could benefit from it replacing dual wield gear with something better, but they are often not ready for haste samba being present, unless they play regularly with DNC. Really the most benefit from samba takes fencer WAR and BST. Also haste samba cant be used during fan dance and fan dance is often used for high end game content like dynamis to counter DNCs low hp and helps not being one shooted. This means its sometimes not reliable source of haste for other jobs. EDIT: 4. "Cant solo light skillchain effectively" what does that mean? You can either do it by switching weapons, which is problematic indeed or you can use Wild Flourish > Aeolian Edge > Shark Bite (that should be Fusion > Light), which is kinda problematic to, because you need to use flourish and aoe WS. I never tried that too, but in theory you should also be able to make Wild Flourish > Aeolian > Exentrator > Exentrator(Aeneas) which would result in fusion > light > Radiance. While WSs used for it might not be the best, skillchain damage should still be solid and I assume if you really need to make light skillchain its because mob is weak to it or you do it for other mechanic reasons. Thats all so far

welli never see the guido to get it...

Notification SQUAD!

I want to make final fantasy cartoon with you

I hate this job for 1 reason....once it came out the end of the 75 cap days came to end shortly after.

I would like to point out that Muhammad Ali and Bruce Lee were attending dance classes to help with their fighting, timing and rhythm.

Wasn't dnc stupidly broken when it came out? Lol

my dad said this job ruined the game bc u solo with DNC lol

Haych pee

They neeeds to put this on Nintendo Switch

You make it sound so boring in the way you describe the abilities without showing them