[Yoona]

Aleera :
Taken from an interview:

This might be hard to answer, but this is about the new jobs. Just what kind of job will they be?
Koichi: At the moment, we are thinking to create jobs that can fill in the high-demand roles(tank/refresh/things), but also opening new subjob options.

There are numerous jobs from the past FF series, will you be using those existing jobs? Or will there be new job like PUP?
Koichi: That depend on what the job does, and what role they would take in a battle. If the role is similar to one of the past, we might borrow a name or 2 from there.

How many new jobs are there?
Koichi: There will be..... more than 1.

Bolded the important parts. Just to show that the new jobs can take these roles, if we choose to play them that way. NIN, like aformentioned, was never intended to be a tank, but we play it that way. The way I see it is this: Dancer could become a tank for a number of reasons. A) They seem evasive. Their dances can create enmity as mentioned in their description. C) They cast debuffs and may have a "shadow dance" mentioned by someone in another post, which means they could possibly blink tank without the consumption of things like shihei, leaving their sub job open to /War or something else for tanking purposes.

If not then they might possibly be a DD/Debuffer/Possible refresher? They seem to almost have geomancer like abilities if those en-spells with the rose and thorns came from them. If anything I think Time mage will be the new 'refresh' job, giving hMP spells and haste, and maybe their own form of refresh. Who knows? We will in 2 months.


Note: I want a thing job. "(Tank/refresh/thing)"

The problem with your tank is with the way evasion works in this game it won't work. Even if they had A+ evasion with evasion traits, IT+ monsters and especially HNMs are gonna have no problem hitting them. NIN is our "evasion tank" because of their blink abilities. I'm starting to think that time mage isn't gonna be added. If it is, then my guess is that its gonna either be a DD, or support. Dancer will be whatever time mage isn't.

[Pidion]

ok guys after digging throw all the "Dancer" info, and asking around... i found some info that, Dancer will NOT be a tank job, it will be more along the line of a Thf + Brd, main weapon dagger/sword, skills buff up self (i don't know if buffs are AoE)/ debuff monster, more or less same Eva as Thf.. As for tank i found little, to nothing.. only info i was told is "Get Nin, War to 37 before WotG comes out, it's worth it"

[Eric the Wicked]

If I remember correctly, Dancers in FF5 could absorb HP/MP from mobs, I wonder if they'll imply that into the game. And they had the job ability "Flirt", which caused an enemy to lose a turn and such.

I can see how they can possibly be tanks. Also it was awesome when Dancers used Sword Dance, was only a 1/4 chance of using it, but it knocked off a ton of damage.

[vifrague]

Yikes self buffs meh knowing the closed minded people that roam FFXI they would not invite a dancer just because they cant get the buffs I hope SE does not do that.

[MIR The Great]

why whenever a new job is announced everyone wants to make it a tank?

It happened with BLU, with PUP and even with Geomancer despite it was never actually released.

Come on!

If you really want to try new tank jobs with unprobable combinations of subjobs, party setup and equipment, why don't you try it with MNKs WARs and SAMs?

Besides against HNMs, evasion becomes totally unrelevant and since /NIN with capped recast time is broken enough to make ANY job capable of survive against the strongest magics and attacks, all that you need is a way to grab hate and keep it stable for a long period of time.

But then again even if Dancer would be able to grab hate with its dances (which i highly doubt else SE wouldn't nerf mazurka), making a dancer tank would be as effective as making a DRK tank, and you know DRK/NIN works as tank provided he's got the needed support, it can also grab a lot of hate, but why make a DRK tank instead of a PLD or a NIN?

So basically there's only one situation when you really feel the need of a new tanking class and that's for exp parties only. But there /NIN doesn't really work untill lv74, and that's too bad cause by then you don't even need a tank anymore for exping.

High Eva alone doesn't work, else you'd see THF/WAR and PUP/WAR tanks, but you don't, right? And those two forementioned jobs in addition to high eva skill also have Evasion bonus job trait, which i doubt Dancer will have.

In addition dancer will most probably have many buffing abilities at its disposal and therefore it will be considered a waste not to let him use different buffs for melee and mages.

[caca]

MIR The Great :
why whenever a new job is announced everyone wants to make it a tank?

It happened with BLU, with PUP and even with Geomancer despite it was never actually released.

Come on!

If you really want to try new tank jobs with unprobable combinations of subjobs, party setup and equipment, why don't you try it with MNKs WARs and SAMs?

Besides against HNMs, evasion becomes totally unrelevant and since /NIN with capped recast time is broken enough to make ANY job capable of survive against the strongest magics and attacks, all that you need is a way to grab hate and keep it stable for a long period of time.

But then again even if Dancer would be able to grab hate with its dances (which i highly doubt else SE wouldn't nerf mazurka), making a dancer tank would be as effective as making a DRK tank, and you know DRK/NIN works as tank provided he's got the needed support, it can also grab a lot of hate, but why make a DRK tank instead of a PLD or a NIN?

So basically there's only one situation when you really feel the need of a new tanking class and that's for exp parties only. But there /NIN doesn't really work untill lv74, and that's too bad cause by then you don't even need a tank anymore for exping.

High Eva alone doesn't work, else you'd see THF/WAR and PUP/WAR tanks, but you don't, right? And those two forementioned jobs in addition to high eva skill also have Evasion bonus job trait, which i doubt Dancer will have.

In addition dancer will most probably have many buffing abilities at its disposal and therefore it will be considered a waste not to let him use different buffs for melee and mages.

listen to this man he is telling the truth.. only one thing that bugs me is nobody ever tried thf/nin with another thf in party to plant hate or thf/war with def setup so will never know for sure.

[MonkeyKat]

only one thing that bugs me is nobody ever tried thf/nin with another thf in party to plant hate or thf/war with def setup so will never know for sure.

Been there, done that. Outside of bird mobs, THF/NIN really doesn't have the hate control needed to tank. THF/WAR can do it pretty decently at low levels, but their DEF/VIT factors aren't good enough for higher level blood tanking, even with their massive evasion.