Introduction

Self-Introduction

Hey, I go by Sora. I’ve been playing Kali since it was released on DN EU in 2014 and played both dancer specializations ever since, until the closure of Europe. I started playing Project Duck in January 2020.

(If you're interested in learning other classes, check out our Class Guide Archive) - Vino

Class

Are you tired of not hitting your skills? Does attacking by yourself seem like torture? Why can’t it just be someone else doing it for me? Search no further and welcome to the one and only Spirit Dancer Guide.

I'll guide you step-by-step through the ins and outs of our very erotic gameplay. You won’t have to feel the aching pain of loneliness anymore because SD's ghost squad will always have your back.

Spirit Dancer is a melee to mid-range class with great burst potential. The class has high offense and sustainable defense paired with a lot of iframe and mobility skills. While every class performs higher on better ping, she can still perform quite well and safely even if you have high latency.

Skills

Kali

[Phantom Guard]: One of my personal favorite buffs and a very underrated skill.

[Spirit Blow]: Activator for [CM3]. This is your bread and butter skill for any moment you aren’t using the [Praetor] and [Crushing Hammer] combo.

[Genie’s Blessing]: A great party buff, so make sure to share your blessing to everyone around you whenever they need rebuffing.

Dancer

[Illusion Dance]: You must use this skill as soon as it is off cooldown. Understanding how to control this skill combined with the other cooldown reduction SD has will lead you to great distances.

[Illusive Gaze]: Your new best friend. Can be activated after any Spirit Dancer skill by pressing right click right after. Increases action speed by 15% for 10 seconds. Activator for [CM 1]. When used with 10 bubbles, it reduces all skills by 30% (except [Dance of Ecstasy] ). If an [Illusive Gaze] hits accurately its own cooldown is then reduced by 50%.

[Stalker]: Low priority filler skill. It can be used when you're temporarily out of range of the target or when [Dusk Hunter] and [CM3 Spirit Blow] are on cooldown.

[Awakened Dusk Hunter]: Hits the target with a ghost’s bow via roundhouse swing, then shoots arrows on the target with moderate damage and spawns 3 cones on the location of impact. If any of the 3 attack sequences hits, you collect 5 bubbles for your [CM 1]. Your own animation time should end once you shoot the arrow. Has 2 usages which have separate cooldowns.

[Dance of Ecstasy]: The final stage of erotic power. On use, you will start charming the audience with lustful movement, mesmerizing even the gods themselves to grant you their blessing. There can only be 1 Blessing at the time.

• Right clicking after 0.5 seconds or any point during the stages of the dance grants you 60% increased damage for 20 seconds.
• Left clicking summons the elven worshipers, presenting you with 1.5% bonus damage for every 1% of enemy Health Points drained up to a max of 70%, lasting 15 seconds.
• Hitting space bar summons the orc and ghoul devils, which heals you and your party for 428% max hp + 27,000 flat HP every second for five seconds.

This skill is what makes or breaks you. You will depend on it more than anything. Using it at the wrong time can be frustrating and tilting; executing it at the right time can change the whole run for you.

[Butterfly Twirl]: The second spin has an iframe. Great gap closer and iframe once you get the hang of it.

[Abolisher]: Your number 1 filler priority. Should be chained on cooldown with [CM3] and should never be used by itself, only after [Spirit Blow]. Be careful when you use it in order to not make certain stomps very deadly and delayed.

[Mist Capper]: Your all damage debuff skill. This is also a very good gap closer: left click lets you attack downwards and quickly while right clicking makes you jump backwards. Refunds cooldown on proper hit. Can be chained by using a [Tumble] or [Dash], and pressing space bar will start the animation. This can sometimes be very deadly if you try to dodge and press space bar too early and get chained in the animation.

[Whirling Dervishes]: Should be used at the start of openings.

[General Dawnblade]: What used to be the glory of Spirit Dancers is now either a filler skill with decent damage or a great pushing skill. The impact of the shockwave has 2 attacks – if used offensively, use [Stalker] --> [General Dawnblade] for minimal animation. Most of this skill's damage comes towards the end of the animation, so do not cancel the shockwave.

[Typhoon Ewiniar]: Transforms you into the storm god himself. While that sounds powerful the actual damage is neither high nor fast enough to be used as anything other than an escape tool. Lasts for 5 seconds and gives a full iFrame for the duration.

[Dance Augment: Ecstatic Audience]: Changes your [Dance of Ecstasy] from a solo skill to a reduced party wide effect. Permanently reduces your elemental damage by 10% and your physical damage by another 10%. Should only be used to boost team damage in competent parties where you might be one of the lower DPS players.

Spirit Dancer

[Awakened Sting]: Low priority filler skill. Barely any damage, long animation, and the crit damage buff doesn't work on the PDN client so it's almost useless. Can be canceled as soon as you raise your head from the ground during the animation (after the first shot).

[Awakened Praetor]: Let me introduce your other best friend. First place in your damage rankings and always first place in our hearts. Summons a ghost to smash away all your problems. Turns to a lingering skill after the first of your chakram hits the ground. Has a wide hitbox allowing you to cleave many things at once very nicely ex: Kodiak's baby mech in IDN.

[Class Mastery 1]: This skill introduces your bubble system and buffs your skill [Dusk Hunter] giving it 5 Bubbles if any of the 3 attack sequences of a single [Dusk Hunter] animation hits, up to a max of 10. These bubbles turn into a collectable resource for you and refund 30% of the cooldown on all skills except [Dance of Ecstasy]. It activates if you use [Illusive Gaze] with 10 bubbles. You rely on this more than you rely on good Dance timings.

[Class Mastery 2]: Gives a general damage increase and gives [Illusion Dance] the power of reducing all cooldowns by one second.

[Class Mastery 3]: Enhances [Spirit Blow] and allows you to use [Abolisher EX] by pressing the spacebar to create 2 shockwaves with 20% increased damage.

Awakening

[Acanthus]: Summons a samurai god to aid your services. On use you turn your chakrams like a slap from left to right. Once the chakram covers your front you can use any other skill and [Acanthus] will still attack with his spin and low cut which both deal moderate damage.

[Crushing Hammer]: Did I say best friend? Yes because that's what [Crushing Hammer] is. High damage with a full iFrame? You can have it both here. Pair him up with [Praetor] every time you can. Deals damage from mid-range so don’t be too close to the target when you use the skill.

Invincibility Frames

[Tumble]: Kali tumble has one of the longest and farthest moving classic evades in this game.

[Ghostly Kick]: On successful hit during the backward jump ( hard to actually make use of it)

[Abolisher]: At the start of the animation

[Butterfly Twirl]: During the second spin

[Illusive Gaze]: Until your chakram goes down again, full duration

[Typhoon Ewiniar]: Throughout the Ghost infused part, 5 seconds

[Hammer Crusher]: The whole time baby

Golden Rule: When in doubt, spin it out!

(If in non-zoning danger, use [Crushing Hammer] to avoid any incoming damage.)

Skill Crests

[Illusion Dance CDR] / [Abolisher CDR] / [Whirling Dervishes DMG] / [Dusk Hunter DMG] / [General Dawnblade DMG] / [Praetor DMG] / [Spirit Blow CDR]

+1 [Praetor]

Skill Build

Gameplay

There are other ways to play, but this is the best way fitting for my kind of gameplay

Basic Rotation

General Idea

Buff yourself -> debuff target -> burst with big skills -> collect cdr -> filler till you start smashing again

My opener is always [Whirling Dervish]. From there I set up my 5 Goon Burst Safety Dance Combo. Made up of your biggest skills, the 5 ghost goon squad is [Praetor] and [Crushing Hammer], then [Whirling Dervish], [Acanthus] and [Stalker]. My goal is to use as many of them as I can in the time frame of the fight.  The reason I have [Stalker] and not for instance CM3 [Spirit Blow] combo in it, is because I always collect my bubbles from CM1 with [Illusive Gaze], after [Crushing Hammer]. [Crushing hammer] is a full animation, that means any lingering skill I want to pop has to be used before casting [Crushing Hammer].

My generic opener should be as follows:
[Illusion Dance] --> [Mist Caper] --> [Whirling Dervishes] --> [Dusk Hunter] --> [Spirit Blow CM3] -->  [Dusk Hunter] -->[Acanthus] --> [Illusion Dance] animation cancel --> [Praetor] -> [Stalker] --> [Crushing Hammer] --> [Spirit Blow CM3] --> [Illusive Gaze CM1] -->[Illusion Dance] --> [Spirit Blow CM3] --> [Sting] same way as before --> [Stalker] --> [General Dawnblade] --> repeat.

Long video of different SD options

Bubble generation on Spirit Dancer is so fast because it caps at 10 and each [Dusk Hunter] earns 5 bubbles. In actual content I always make sure to have 1 [Dusk Hunter] recharging to have fluent and smooth transitions.

The way I handle [Dance of Ecstasy] is pretty simple: over 70% Health Points  --> Minotaur, under 70% Health Points --> Elven Dance. In four player content, I tend to only use Elven Dance (I wait for the first HP bar to drop before I use [Dance of Ecstasy] in four player content).

Estimating Priorities

In general you have a dps phase of roughly 10-15 seconds (depending on what stage and enemy) before any mechanic or any situation occurs that forces you to do something other than just damage (i.e.: dodging mechs/attacks, destroying things, pushing objects, dps checks, etc.). The game doesn't allow you to freely combo nonstop, which brings me to priority skills. Waging between time offered to attack and skills on hand to use can be a tough call and can only truly be learned by playing a lot and learning boss patterns. My general priority list is as follows:

1. [Illusion Dance]
2. [Praetor] and [Crushing Hammer]
3. Having 10 bubbles via CM1 or being able to produce 10 bubbles with [Dusk Hunter] and collecting them after [Praetor] and [Crushing Hammer] AND CM3 with [Illusive Gaze]
4. CM3 [Spirit Blow] with [Abolisher]
5. [Acanthus], [Stalker], [General Dawnblade], [Whirling Dervishes] and any other skill

So first on the list is cooldown reduction / damage taken reduced / damage done increased. It is crucial to have the buff up at all times. Using it as many times as possible means faster skills and most importantly faster [Dance of Ecstasy]. Try using it after collecting CM1 with [Illusive Gaze] to min / max your cooldown reduction.

Second priority is using your big skills, successfully hitting the enemy with them and reducing their cooldown as much as possible for more uptime. No other skill matters if you cannot execute [Praetor] + [Crushing Hammer] + CM3 with it or from it. Use [Illusive Gaze] with 10 bubbles once your [Abolisher] animation ends from CM3 if the game allows you. But also feel free to skip CM3 before getting bubbles if the only other option is not hitting the target fast enough because of animation ([Praetor]) or any other reason that won’t let you fully execute your combo. You can always CM3 but you can only spin to win every ~17 seconds. Reducing both [Praetor] and [Crushing Hammer]’s cooldown should be your first priority (after [Illusion Dance] ofc ).

Thirdly is setting up proper conditions for you to maintain your flow and cooldown reduction so you won’t run out of skills mid combat. Missing [Illusive Gaze] is not a big deal, but using it without 10 bubbles or it greeding it by pressing it too fast so it doesn’t collect and doesn’t reduce cooldown either can stretch out your whole gameplay in a negative direction. Generally you want to have your bubbles ready to pop after CM3 or [Crushing Hammer].

Fourth in the list is CM3. Squeezing in as many as you can during your dps phase is very important.

Lastly are just your generic filler skills. Waiting room for if big skills are up again. Still means to use them fully and properly to not waste dps potential. Especially [Acanthus] and [General Dawnblade]’s damage are heavily proportioned towards the end of the animation, punishing rash movement or canceling skills.

iFrame Examples

Dodging spin with Hammer

Dodging cross with Hammer

Dodging cross with twirl

Dodging stomp with twirl

Slightly Interesting Details

Super Armor and Face Tanking

What does that really mean for dancers? How does [Phantom Guard] work for you? How much can you mitigate and when do you have to dodge instead of pushing your health into critical levels? Never forget about your own self heal, 10% every 5 seconds via [Illusion Dance]. Allowing you to stand in line of smaller attacks, allowing you to position yourself in a place where you can constantly attack the target even if you get hit, as long as it is not a debuffing attack.

Cooldown Reduction

We all love it. Spirit Dancer even has 3 versions of reducing cooldowns. But when do I use it? [CM1] is 30% instant cooldown reduction, meaning at whatever cooldown your skills are from that will be x.3 and that will be reduced from it. Meaning it is really important when you cast it and what you play around the most. If it is the usual [Praetor] / [Crushing Hammer] / [Spirit Blow CM3] gameplay, then you want to prioritize the 25 cooldown of [Crushing Hammer] and 24 seconds cooldown on [Praetor] as much as possible (considering if you also play with [Praetor DMG] skill crest). The bigger the cooldown the more seconds you benefit from collecting your bubbles first and then using [Illusion Dance] for an additional second for all skills.

You generally want to use [Illusion Dance] at least 3 times in the timespan of 1 combo cooldown.

Depending on the person and their respective gameplay, using either [Praetor DMG or CDR] skill crests can help you perform better. For me, I personally like working around the same cooldown for [Crushing Hammer] and [Praetor] instead of having a 4,5 second faster skill. Because of the way that I play Spirit Dancer, even if it is up earlier, it doesn’t fit in my rotation well and causes me to monkey around. Also if you play properly and use [Illusion Dance] on cooldown and [Illusive Gaze] as early as possible after [Praetor] + [Crushing Hammer], then the real cooldown of both skills will be around 15-17 seconds.

Dancing is both beautiful and powerful as well as frustrating and humiliating at the same time. Timing [Dance of Ecstasy] demands a lot of experience of enemy attack patterns, movements and RNG itself. Using it at the right time rewards you with outstanding damage. Mistiming it may cause you to fall into a bad cooldown timing and ruins the whole run for you. But there are also situations out of control which make it fail to cast / cancel it by accident yourself / get canceled out because of environmental situations. Finding a safe spot to cast it + a safe attack pattern by the enemy is generally the best first step to make sure you are able to use every second of your buff uptime.

Conclusion

If you have made it this far, then I want to firstly thank you for taking your time to read this guide. You own!

My goal with this guide was not to show 1 variation of playstyle and saying this is the best way to play. It was to give a little perspective on maybe another playstyle that might work in your favor, seeing various different playstyles and making them your own. Spirit Dancer has a lot of potential, big - and fast damage as well as awesome defense and iframes. Especially in raiding, it is a class that can perform outstandingly.
I want to say thank you to Mysexyhoe and EvaLynn for proofreading and various inputs. And I want to give a special thanks to Cucharoth who reignited my passion for Dragon Nest and Kali, spending countless hours listening to my nonsense.