Sub-Routine: Dancer

For soloing, duoing and low-manning in the future, it looks like Dancer may be the most important job to have leveled. Even if you are thinking about doing events with more people, Dancer may still be an option because of all the self- and party-wide buffs that are going to become available. The one major thing to note first is that even with the increase in the level cap, those that want to sub DNC will still not be able to get to the next major heal, Curing Waltz III. It probably should be noted that if people were able to sub DNC and get Curing Waltz III it might have really bad balance issues. Curing Waltz II already is a pretty big cure, about equal to a Cure III, and it has a pretty low recast time with a decent TP cost. If Curing Waltz III was added to this some jobs like PLD or SAM it might make them just too survivable.

On with the show.

Reverse Flourish @ 40.
This ability is very nice for main-job Dancers as it lets you convert Finishing Moves that you get from using Steps into TP. Dancers often need this for situations where they can't build TP on the mobs they are fighting, or just for a nice TP boost. I don't know how great this will be for those that are subbing DNC though because most people use /DNC while soloing or low-manning and are actually fighting mobs and getting a decent store of TP anyway. The one place it might be quite useful (and Dancer mains may do this too but I don't know that much about Dancer) is to boost your TP back up after you do a WS and are left with very little. Since /DNC doesn't have many uses for their Finishing Moves right now, I can see this being a nice little boost and a better reason to use some of the Steps that currently might be ignored or at least marginalized. Just remember that the amount of TP you get back from Reverse Flourish is based on the number of Finishing Moves you have stored up, and the more you have the better the TP return so you want to make sure you save up those Finishers as long as you can until you get 5 of them.

Stutter Step @ 40.
At first glance this appears to be nothing of interest to most people that would sub DNC, but a deeper look makes it a bit more intriguing. The magic resistance reduction provided by Stutter Step effects other "magical" effects that /DNC can use. The problem is that up until now there hasn't been much of anything that was so great as to demand a reduction in magic resistance to make sure it lands but just wait a moment until we get to...

Violent Flourish @45.
Now that decreased magic resistance is going to make a difference. Violent Flourish by itself is basically a weapon swing with additional effect: stun, but there is a little bit more to it than that. The stun effect of Violent Flourish can miss even if the weapon swing lands, because it has a separate calculation for the stun effect and that is based on magic resistance. So if you want to make sure that your stun is going to land you are going to want to make sure the mob's magic resistance is as low as you can get it. That means you should be building up your Finishing Moves by using Stutter Step. Unlike Reverse Flourish, Violent Flourish only takes one Finishing Move to pull off so you can use it as soon as you get your first Stutter Step on the mob.

Haste Samba @45.
Ahh, the sexiness that Dancer brings to subjobs. Well, it's definitely a little bit of sexiness at 5% weapon delay reduction, but it's not game breaking that is for sure. Any decrease in weapon delay especially without losing TP per swing is a nice bonus, but 5% is still small when you consider that other buffs like Haste and BRD songs give you a much larger bonus. The neat thing about it is that while it does stack with all other forms of Haste it doesn't count toward the Haste cap like almost every other form of Haste. Normally, your "Job Abilty" haste would be capped at 25%, but with Haste Samba you can actually go above this. The problem is that you can't go that much higher if you aren't a DRK with Desperate Blows. Once Haste Samba is available through /DNC it will almost definitely be better to use it than Drain Samba if you don't need all the healing you can get.

Evasion Bonus II and Subtle Blow II @45.
Another nice boost to evasion and a little less TP spam. These traits are never going to be the reason you choose to sub DNC, but they are a bit of an added benefit that you don't get from many other jobs.

Dancer is going to be a strong subjob as the level cap increases even if it is just for the same roles that it is used for now. This is another one of those "must level" jobs, even though leveling it isn't going to be anywhere near as fun as using it as a subjob.