FFXIV Dancer Guide
Dancer is a physical ranged DPS class from FFXIV, it is more on the supportive side bringing mitigation, small healing, and buffs to the whole party. This FFXIV Dancer guide will summarise the Dancer class providing information about the gauge, rotation, and unique actions they have in their kit.
Fourfold Feathers and Esprit Gauge
The Fourfold Feathers have a chance to be obtained by using Reverse Cascade or Fountainfall. There are a total of two different Fourfold Feather moves that will be available once you obtain a FourFold Feather in your gauge.
The first move is called Fan Dance, which is a single-target attack move.
The second move is called Fan Dance II, which is an AoE attack move.
When using either Fan Dance or Fan Dance II, you do have a chance to proc a third move which is called Fan Dance III which is a second AoE but can only be activated if proc’d by either of the first two Fan Dance moves.
The Esprit Gauge is related to the number below the Fourfold Feathers, this part of the gauge is filled by doing weapon skills or casting a spell by both you and your dancer partner. When hitting 50 in the Esprit gauge, you can then consume this with Saber Dance.
Dances
The biggest part of dancer is the dances. Make sure you choose one of your party members to be your dance partner, this is usually the party member who is most likely to do the biggest damage. Then for every dance you complete, your dance partner also shares the Esprit buff which will help fill your Esprit Gauge.
Standard Step is your main dance, you want to aim to use this off cooldown as it does high damage to all enemies.
Standard Step only requires you to complete two dance steps before being able to complete the dance with Standard Finish. Depending on how many dance steps you complete will depend on how strong the dance is. This will be buffing you and your chosen dancer partner.
Technical Step is your big burst window every 2 minutes. Different from Standard step, this dance will be buffing your whole party and instead of doing two dance steps, you will need to do four dance steps to maximise the amount of damage and party buff Technical Step can do.
Once you have done the four dance moves you will then be able to finish the dance with Technical Finish, which will start the buff window for you and your party members.
Once you have finished the dance with Technical Finish, you will then have another proc called Tillana. This works the same as Standard Finish, which will reset the Esprit buff for you and your dance party.
There are four different Dance steps for both Standard and Technical, when you start either dance, these can be any dance step in any order. There are eight different attack moves that will change to these dance steps when you start to dance. Each dance step changes from both a single-target attack and an AoE attack.
Emboite will change from Cascade and Windmill
Entrechat will change from Fountain and Bladeshower
Jete will change from Reverse Cascade and Rising Windmill
Pirouette will change from Fountainfall and Bloodshower
Dancer Actions and Abilities
Since dancer is a physical ranged DPS class, they can attack enemies from far away, they have a single target, and also an AoE damage rotation while also having a few utility actions to help heal and mitigate your party.
However, different from the other physical ranged classes in FFXIV, dancer needs to be up close to the enemies when using the AoE rotation as they can not be used from a distance. So lets go over all their main abilities in this FFXIV Dancer guide
En Avant, this is a dash that can stack up to three.
Curing Waltz, is a small heal, when activated there will be a small AoE around both you and your chosen dance partner.
Shield Samber is Dancer’s party mitigation that mitigates 10% of damage for 15 seconds.
Devilment, a 20% increase critical and direct hit rate for both you and your chosen dance partner. This also activates Flourishing Starfall.
Flourish activates Flourishing Symmetry, Flourishing Flow, Fan Dance III, and Fan Dance IV.
Improvisation is a small party regen that stacks the longer you have it activated, when activating it again, it will grant a shield to all nearby party members.
Cascade is the first basic single-target attack in Dancer’s rotation.
Fountain is the second basic single-target attack that combo’s with Cascade
Reverse Cascade has a chance to be activated by Cascade
Fountainfall has a chance to be activated by Fountain
Windmill is the first AoE damage weaponskill
Bladeshower is the second AoE damage weaponkill
Rising Windmill has a chance to be activated by Windmill
Bloodshower has a chance to be activated by Bladeshower
Saber Dance costs 50 of your Esprti Gauge, it’s good to save this in burst windows but make sure to not stay capped at 100 so you don’t lose any damage
Fan Dance IV is activated when using Flourish, can be weaved between gcds
Starfall Dance is activated when using Devilment
Leg Graze – Slows the target giving them heavy for 10 seconds
Second Wind – Small heal
Foot Graze – Binds target for 10 seconds
Peloton – Gives all nearby party members movement speed (out of combat only)
Head Graze – Interrupt
Arm’s Length – Acts as an anti-knockback
FFXIV Dancer Rotation
Dancer’s rotation can be quite overwhelming at first glance but you mainly want to use your single-target attacks (or AoE on ads and packs) then whenever you activate an extra action, use it.
Aim to keep your Standard Step on cooldown as this is your big damage, it buffs you and your chosen dance partner. As for your 2 minute burst window you want to use your Technical Step, then activate Devilment and Flourish. This will activate all of your weaponskills and extra damage buffs.
While using your weaponskill actions remember to weave in your other actions like your Fan Dances, as they are off global cooldown and can be used between actions like Cascade and Fountain.
Dancer Materia - Stat Priority
When melding materia for Dance you want to prioritise in this order:
Crit > DET > DH
Just be aware of over melding in a certain stat, if you are looking for BiS builds, we recommend looking into The Balance as they have different types of builds based on your preference.
We hope this FFXIV Dancer Guide has helped, check out our other FFXIV Guides down below!