Dancer Skills
Dancer Skills & Job Actions
Dancers function quite a lot like the Machinist in Shadowbringers. That is to say, their abilities combo into one another without the need to channel spells. This offers them much more freedom of movement than mages, but there’s a cost. Dancer combos are very dependent on RNG, or randomness, to function at full strength. Most of their direct damage skills only have a 50 percent chance of triggering a combo.
In practice, 50 percent is usually plenty. You will throw out single-target combos all day long. But it can occasionally lead to dry spells where your individual damage just doesn’t cut it. To compensate for this, the Dancer gets an ability like none other in FF14: Closed Position. This designates an allied player as a dance partner, imbuing them with all the beneficial buffs the Dancer can accrue for themselves.
Dancing this way grants a number of benefits. You and your partner can do more damage, take reduced damage, boost your crits, and heal nearby party members. It’s an incredibly powerful, versatile collection of bonuses. And it can more than make up for DPS lost to RNG.
Dancer Tips
Keep moving. Group content in FF14 is all about positioning. Most bosses, and even many normal enemies, will constantly bombard you with AoE attacks that need to be dodged. One great thing about the Dancer which also helps make up for its random damage combos is that the Job can attack and range while on the move. Learn to stay on the move while weaving in attacks, and help compensate for mages that need to stop dealing DPS every time an AoE arrives.
Stay close. Despite being a ranged class, the Dancer actually has some very important close-up skills. Curing Waltz, for instance, is a fairly potent healing skill (for a DPS Job). But it doesn’t affect every single party member automatically. You need to stand near allies for the effect to reach them. Of course, your Closed Position partner will also provide this effect when you cast it. In short, stay close to your allies, but away from your partner for maximum coverage.
Consider your partner. Different dance partners will benefit more or less from your various Dancer buffs. In general, though, tanks are the safe bet. For one, healing them with Curing Waltz will take some pressure off dedicated healers — increasing your overall wiggle room to screw up. You can also easily predict where main tanks will stand (i.e. right next to a raid or dungeon boss). If you have lots of melee DPS allies, this increases the odds that you will spread the effect of Devilment as widely as possible.
Always be dancing. Randomness can be a real pain. And the Dancer has to worry about it more than most ranged DPS Jobs. To compensate, you need to make sure that you are always dancing with Standard Step and/or Technical Step to boost your overall damage output.
How to Unlock the Dancer Job?
Unlike most Jobs in FF14, the Dancer isn’t accessible at the outset. Instead you need to play through the game as any normal combat Job for a while. Once you reach level 60, however, the Dancer becomes available in Limsa Lominsa – Lower Decks. Just accept the quest “Shall We Dance.” Finishing “Shall We Dance” will unlock the Dancer in FF14. And unlike base game classes, the Dancer begins at level 60.
