Dancer vs. Blue Mage

So, one of the things that happened during last week's Swift Belt/Subligar runs was that I got to try out both Blue Mage & Dancer in the level capped zones, specifically the level 50 cap area. I'd taken Blue Mage out at one time, then Dancer another before switching back to BLU. This gave me a fairly decent feeling of how both jobs played in basically the same situation. On both jobs, my main purpose was to heal + do damage.

On Dancer, I ran into a few Dancer limitations at once... First, healing is limited to party-only, same as BLU's native heals, but since I normally sub NIN for Dancer, this means that I really could only heal my party. Gaining TP was generally not a problem, even though it was a little tight with the Fomor TP resetting move. All I needed to do was keep a few Finishing Moves stored away so that I could still regain TP and heal when my TP was reset.

The nice part about Dancer was that I didn't have to stop to rest at all. I could keep going without pause, and all I had to worry about is TP management. What I did miss about coming as Dancer instead of Blue Mage is the utility spells that I normally set... No Sleep spells, and not as many enfeebles. The Dancer enfeebles are oriented towards doing damage to the enemy, not to disable them. I also missed being able to stun-lock the mob using Head Butt. While Dancer has Violent Flourish, the timer on that is much longer compared to Head Butt, and it's the same timer as Desperate Flourish, making it hard to use.

On Blue Mage, the normal Head Butt, do damage, backup heal cycle came in. In this case, however, since there was only me and Aqqy to main heal the party while we were pulling continously, I actually had to rest in a few battles to regain MP. Blue Mages just aren't designed for long periods of fighting, and that's where Dancer excels.

So... which do I like better? It really depends... Blue Mage can be very flexible, and really good in a pinch if things start to go wrong with sleep spells, stun-spam and gravity. Dancer has a much longer endurance, but has less options compared to Blue Mage except to heal, and maybe Gravity & run.

So, that's my brief take at BLU & DNC at 50... on a side note, I started leveling SAM last night as an eventual situational subjob for Dancer... The Emperor Band is quite nice and I got to level 7 in about an hour. Looking forward to this weekend when I can double up on the band and hopefully get SAM up high fast. As a pure DD job, it seems a little boring compared to Dancer & Blue Mage... hopefully it'll pick up soon...