Tanking Dancer?

We did Tyger for ZNMs last night. Pretty close to the setup that we did the last week, but with a few little job changes. Dexie was RNG, Teia subbed NIN, and I came DNC instead of BLU.

Yup! Instead of bring a heavy DD job capable of healing, dispelling, enfeebling and more, I brought out my little dance shoes, subbing NIN to try some experiments. The problem with BLU on this fight is... mostly my preferences. I'm not really big on the whole DD side of things, so going in to do damage and running back out again isn't my thing. That's one reason why I'm normally BLU/WHM or BLU/SCH, because I like the flexibility of Blue Mage. Those who go to Nyzul with me know how I adjust BLU for the job, handling everything from sleeping, pulling, debuffing and even spike damage. For Tyger, however, the flexibility of BLU is mostly wasted since everyone has a pretty much defined role. Last week I went BLU/WHM to heal. This week I decided to change things up a bit with Fuuji's consent.

Initial thoughts
My initial thought on bringing DNC was pretty simple. I figured that since the problem we had last week was that the healers were building up too much hate that I'd use Steps to help speed the kill along. More damage = faster fight, right?

I went DNC/NIN for this fight to absorb AoE attacks, even though I normally prefer /SAM. Accuracy was okay with my accuracy gear, but it still wasn't the perfect "land every step" that I wanted. Nothing that a bit of sushi couldn't fix, of course :D

Besides Utsusemi, I also kept Fan Dance up full time in order to reduce any damage taken. Since Fan Dance's effectiveness is based on how many hits I've taken instead of duration, keeping it up and refreshing it whenever the timer runs down is a pretty good strategy even if I wasn't the person being targetted. TP gain isn't a problem thanks to No Foot Rise & Reverse Flourish merits, and I figured that I'd be able to contribute a good bit to healing too.

1st Tyger & sudden backup tank
The first Tyger pop was going fairly well at first. I had a little problem keeping track of which Step was up next as I was trying to get both Box Step & Stutter step up to level 5. Steps only last about a minute on the mob and each type of step needs to be constantly refreshed. It's easy to miss a step if I'm busy doing something else like getting Utsusemi back up or healing people. That said, I did manage to get Stutter Step up to level 5 a few times and keep it there for a while, but later Varg pointed out that we didn't have as many BLMs to do much damage. I guess I should have taken a closer look at the roster first. ^^;

Tyger has a few really annoying moves for a Dancer. First, there's Tenebrous Mist that resets TP. This isn't a problem when he uses it once as I can simply use Reverse Flourish and be back on healing, but when he does it back-to-back, it can take another 30 seconds before I'm ready to heal again. Fulmination is annoying due to paralyze since that could cripple all my Waltzes until it is removed, and all the AoE damage moves are very annoying due to their side effects such as terror or stun.

That said, Fan Dance actually does help in the AoE attacks. Since some of the attacks are physical, it really helps when shadows are down. In fact, one of my deaths was because I had forgotten to put Fan Dance up before moving in >.>

Partway through the fight, Wuwu went down and Connie went down not too long after. Tyger was walking towards the mages when I used Animated Flourish. I was surprised that it actually worked and Tyger turned towards me since Animated Flourish is actually really weak for hate generation, maybe about a half strength Provoke. I'm not sure if having Fan Dance up made a significant difference either, since Fan Dance is supposed to "increase enmity". I guess that made me backup tank suddenly, and I wasn't really ready for it ^^;

Went okay for a while, with me trying to use Waltzes to heal damage. Since a Dancer's main hate tool is curing, I'd have to try to get my Waltzes in before the WHMs in the party could heal me, or else there'd be more risk of losing hate. One thing I screwed up on was that I would try to recast shadows using Utsusemi: Ichi when Ni was down. Tyger attacks too fast for this, and my attempts would end up being interrupted when I should have been attacking and Stepping for TP instead. I finally died when I made the wrong decision of trying to cast Utsusemi when I was low on health instead of simply curing myself back up again using Curing Waltz.

So... lessons learnt from this: Dancer does generate a large amount of hate, enough to actually grab it from tanks. Curing Waltz is our main hate tool, which requires us, or someone to take some damage. Keeping HP up is more important than Utsusemi. Rely more on Fan Dance to keep the damage down. Also, use mainly Utsusemi: Ni unless I can time shadow cancelling properly, which is something I don't have much practice at yet.

2nd Tyger - Front-line healer
The second Tyger went a lot better than the first. No tanks went down, and people were logging to clear hate as appropriate. A few things happened that were interesting though...

Just over halfway through the fight, I started trading hate with both tanks. That is, if either tank was hit, Tyger would switch attention to me and start taking my shadows down, or actually hitting me instead of just catching me in AoE moves. Now when a healer gets hate, what would normally happen is that the mob would end up moving away from the tanks towards the squishy mages, which could possibly result in a wipe. However, as a front-line healer, Tyger would just start attacking me instead since I'm right there next to both tanks. With Utsusemi and Fan Dance, two tools that regular healer-mages do not normally have, I can easily tank the mob until the regular tanks can put their shadows back up and work to try to get hate back. Instant, uninterruptable curing also makes staying alive and maintaining hate that much easier.

(It was a little funny when Tyger used Toubillion on me and knocked me back that Fuuji thought that a mage had taken hate :) I guess i wasn't standing in the right position to prevent from being thrown back?)

Wu is right though. If I'm at the front-line and holding hate, that means I'm one of the tanks and I shouldn't be afraid of pulling & holding hate and taking a few hits!

Further Dancer tank testing
What does this mean? Can a Dancer main tank? I'm not certain yet... I've noticed a few things from all this time experimenting with Dancer:

- It takes a long time to build up a solid amount of hate. PLDs, NIN and even RDM have lots of different tools to build hate. Flash, Provoke, Ninjitsu, or the RDM spamming of enfeebles are lots of ways to build up a lot of hate in a short amount of time. Dancers rely on healing to generate hate, and that means that someone needs to take a lot of damage for me to heal up.
- On the other hand, once we get our hate built up, it's really hard to get rid of it. For Tyger, our mages have to log out in order to reset hate. In Einherjar and Dynamis, if we have a large pull, I'll eventually end up pulling hate from the later mobs simply due to healing my party. Rooks says that's why I get a THF in my party for Einherjar!
- Evasion doesn't work against level 80+ NMs >.> I should have just stuck to using Haste or Accuracy gear against Tyger. In campaign, I can easily handle 5 mobs at the same time using evasion gear + Fan Dance, but evasion simply doesn't work against Tyger.

So, I think the best tanking situation for a Dancer would be a backup tank. We're up there on the front-line healing anyway. A mistake by a main tank would mean taking over until the tank is brought back up. Once our hate levels get high enough, we can take a few hits easily and co-tank to take pressure off the main tank. Main tanking would be tricky due to the small number of tools a Dancer has to generate initial hate. Perhaps if a few people would use Trick Attack on the Dancer, it might work. Further testing is definitely required.

Also, more Fan Dance merits. I might end up going 5/5 on this one instead of splitting some merits with Saber Dance if further testing proves to be positive! Maybe the next Omega, or ZNM run!

Finally: If you're leveling Dancer... be sure to unlock the three meritable abilities as soon as you hit 75! They really, really change how the job can be played!