Not to be a 'Negative Nancy', as I really enjoy the jobs DNC and DRG, but both in their current state are 'lacking' to some extent and these updates don't really get me excited.
On topic of DNC, my current favorite job in the game, of which I spend 99% of my playtime on, the 'fixes' needed are on a grander scale than "more step count" and what appears to be a "divine seal" for waltz. The problems I personally experience with DNC is that, while the job itself is fine, it suffers from two critical flaws: Lack of flexibility in damage output type, and lack of immunity to the debuff paralyses.
On DNC Damage types:
Currently nothing but daggers are really an option, and there are no 99 'blunt damage type' daggers, for example. MNK once suffered from this same stigma, so they altered a huge chunk of the FFXI universe to compensate for blunt dmg type reduction as well as introduced things like formless strikes. Dnc could use it's own classification of dagger (lets call them fans) that do slashing or something to that extent, or an ability similar to formless strikes to grant some options.
On DNC Paralyses:
This one hurts DNC a **** of a lot more than it hurts other classes in my experience (I only have 19 jobs leveled, so there may still be a couple out there that have a harder time, but for me, this ability is always annoying as all **** on DNC in events); it's especially bad with the current state of the game where this debuff seems to be 'everywhere'. It seems like every other fight in SoA spits out this debuff, which means any front-line support from DNC is going to be extremely unreliable as they frantically fail to healing waltz themselves and then wait on the full-timer CD to try again (even in small stuff like WKR, trying to tank something that has a paralyses aura... is... yeesh... frustrating as **** compared to alternative jobs). Even if it were in the form of an ability that wasn't the ghetto-as-hell healing-waltz, some 'guaranteed to work even when para'd' AOE ability that granted a temporary para immunity to the party, or... I don't know... something along those lines, it'd reduce a tremendous amount of grief that the job has to deal with. Similar to other double-check abilities in the game, this debuff on this particular job just adds another layer of potential (guaranteed?) failure that really shouldn't exist, or rather, can be almost completely ignored if on another 'better suited' job combination.
One Final note on DNC in regards to Fan Dance & Saber Dance:
Fan dance and Saber dance are two really incredibly awesome abilities for DNC, one allowing dnc to take a stronger melee role, and the other really assisting in physical tanking fights. As someone who plays this class a lot, I appreciate both of these abilities and use them both frequently. However...
Both have two severely limiting factors.
1) They are easily removed... so fighting against anything that can Dispel these means the abilities are all-but-useless. It is my believe that these two abilities really should function as abilities that cannot be dispelled. If tanking a fight for an event and relying on fan dance, a dispel shouldn't nullify 20% of a DNC's total -PDT% so easily... add to this an NM that can easily paralyze (or paralyze aura) that stops you from getting fan dance back up... and it's game over, buster sword in the spotlight splash screen... etc.
2) The waltz lockout on saber dance and samba lockout on fan dance are very extreme penalties. When tanking you are basically no longer offering a support role via samba, which is a big strike against what the job has to offer. When acting as a melee in a DD role via saber dance, not being able to heal yourself is a huge detriment to the 'survivability' DNC implies when joining a group. This means you spend the vast majority of your time in most groups trying to fill a hybrid role without either buff active so you can contribute both to emergency waltz support (for yourself and aoe recovery), and so your merits in haste samba don't go entirely to waste. For these reasons, I see DNC's Saber Dance and Fan Dance abilities as awesome ideas that are implemented poorly. Rather than allowing someone to participate as a solid DD or solid Tank, which "situationally", can be done right now, DNC ends up being an "unstable hybrid" with some very odd party expectations that just don't seem to fit any realistic gameplay roles. I often end up opting just to come as a different job because people literally get so confused they won't heal me on dnc if I am in the DD role, and a 'tank' role as we know it doesn't exist in most current endgame, so it's very rare I find utility for a solid fan-dance slot fill.
On the topic of DRG (currently my second favorite job in the game, despite it's many shortcomings (at work and busy so this will be a quick wall of text rant) ):
The wyvern needs to be damned-near invincible for it to be viable. Not because the player isn't 'good', but because Square is stupid in the sense that they designed a front-line job to have a pet that you can't reasonably keep alive when a boss (the most important fight you'll want to bring someone for...) spams AOE abilities in almost all cases. DRG is a unique pet job in that the wyvern doesn't have the standard "pet" controls of BST, SMN, and PUP - but instead attacks on it's own very similar to NPC trusts. You wouldn't trust Trion to tank Delve for you... and likewise, you shouldn't trust a wyvern to be 'reliable' on it's own. Pets are stupid, especially on fights where part of the strategy is to "turn away" (not disengage), the pet just stays there and attacks stupidly. They need a GREAT DEAL of automated assistance, and in the wyvern of a Dragoon's case, that should come in the form of nearly complete immunity to AOE / indirect damage (so they can't just jump and let the pet solo tank enemies in random places, I.E. direct damage does the expected amount). The class also needs to do-away with the "wyvern level up" system and just be allowed to call the pet out at full power... the level up system is also stupid, as there are many scenarios there just isn't time to "go kill random mobs" to level it up, not to mention this excludes the level up possibility entirely from things like BCNMs. They just keep making VERY BAD design decisions for a job that should by all rights be really cool and fun to play. Finally, the class functions as a "glass canon" currently, which as a plate wearer is just ... silly. Personally I'd trade every wyvern ability I have in favor of an option to "consume" my wyvern for something like a 10 minute undispellable debuff that gives me some ridiculous MDT/PDT/JUMP ACC buffs so I wouldn't have to rely on the dumbed thing during a boss fight. Oh, and one more wall-of-text thing that may be nice = more jumps on different timers than the core 3! Theres this annoying dead-zone in abilities for DRG right now because of jump timers, it'd be nice to fill that with something that helped survival or damage output via native job abilities... (PS I DON'T MEAN RESTORING BREATH LOLOLOLOL -.-).
Edited, Aug 25th 2014 5:45pm by FUJILIVES